Power Armored Horde

[Vash113]

Ok so in 4th Edition I ran my wolves mainly as a Drop Podding force with anywhere from 5-9 Drop Pods depending on the size of the game. Now in 5th I've been running my wolves as well... a running horde of Power Armor. I find that a direct approach with maxed troops does quite well, most of my opponents have little idea how to deal with so much power armor and when I get into combat, the enemy vanishes remarkably fast. 30 Blood Claws and 36 Grey Hunters form the core of the force and few enemies have even been able to put a sizeable dent in that force. Especially with the ability to run my Wolves cover the distance across the table in record time and by keeping some terrain between themselves and the enemy the losses aren't even that bad.

 

I fought a game against Grey Knights yesterday and at 1500pts I had 29 Blood Claws, 32 Grey Hunters, 5 Long Fangs, 5 Wolf Scouts, a Battle Leader and a Wolf Lord. My opponent was so occupied trying to bring down the horde of power armor advancing that he never got a chance to deal with the Long Fangs who did a pretty bang up job of downing his armor including immobolizing both a Land Raider on Turn 1 and a Dreadnaught on Turn 2 and even blew off it's DCCW allowing the Blood Claws to finish it off without taking a single loss in cc. The Wolf Scouts never even got a chance to show up. I was worried cause the Grey Knights force had not 1 but 2 Land Raiders and one was the Grey Knights Land Raider Redeemer from Forge World. The LR's did significant damage but 3 Melta Gun's, 2 Lascannons and 10 Power Fists managed to down them fairly easily. A slight disruption happened when one Blood Claw Squad was annihilated by 10 PA GK, a GK GM, the Redeemer and the Crusader all dumped all their fire onto it and then finished off the survivors in assault, but the Battle Leader put the smack down on the Grand Master in cc and held up the squad long enough for the Grey Hunter reinforcements to arrive and mop up.

 

So far my horde of Space Wolves has not lost yet and it seems like a fairly potent way to go in 5th Edition with the plethora of available cover saves and the ability to run, distance that would have been suicide to cover in 4th takes half the time to cross now and as a result half the cassualties. I fought my brother's Eldar in 4th and got about 12 out of 66 models across the 30" of table to his lines, in 5th I got 63 models out of 69 across the field against Guard. Different opponents and different armies but still a pretty marked difference no?

 

So what do you guys think about running a horde of Space Wolves? Does it really work well or is it too crude and simplistic in a competetive environment?

 

Personally I love the psychological impact. Sort of like in the Return of the King movie when the Orks try to shoot down the Rohirrim riders, arrows fly, riders drop, but they still keep coming and the Orks get more and more skittish as the riders get closer. It's that same sort of reaction, confidence at the beggining, after all it's just another marine army... right? Then as the Wolves get closer and only a handfull drop that confidence starts to crumble, and as the Wolves get nearer the confidence crumbles more, until the wolves hit the enemy lines and all hell breaks loose and the confidence finally goes completely out the window.

[Korhal Ragingspirit]

I have been trying out a very similar army as yours recently. Mine was 15 Blood Claws w/ Rune Priest , 15 Blood Claws w/Wolf Priest, 9 Grey Hunters w/WGPL in a Rhino, 6 OBEL scouts, 6 Sniper/ML scouts and Drop podding Ironclad w/2 Heavy Flamers at 1500 points. I'v only played a few games with it so far but it seems to be working nicely.

[Brother SRM]

It's done reasonably well for me in the past, but I usually lose about 15 or so Blood Claws on the advance. Since I was using 2 15 man units, each costing a little under 300 points, I've decided to replace one with a Land Raider Crusader. I figure it's a pretty good way to get them up without getting wiped out by things like demolisher cannons, Leman Russes, you know. I usually take 2 15 man packs of Blood Claws and 3 10 man packs of Grey Hunters, all with attached leaders. Points permitting, of course.

 

I've used an all PA horde army before and it's done reasonably well. Losses are pretty high with the Blood Claws, since people tend to ignore the Grey Hunters. In bigger games, it's nice to take out one pack of Grey Hunters or Blood Claws and get a really tough WG Terminator squad though. Those rerollable 2+ saves and the variety of equipment are almost broken, and serve as a great hammer to bring down enemy units. Those have won the game for me multiple times, especially against Necrons.

 

All in all, the pure PA horde is somewhat formidable, but best done if it's supported by at least a decent amount of armor or elites. Troops aren't the most "killy" things around, resilient as they may be.

[dietrich]

I haven't tried it, but here's my thoughts.

 

It can work, but will struggle against mechanized forces. And there's more mechanized forces being played in fifth edition. Mech Tau or Mech Eldar will give you fits. Having a unit of Wolf Scouts will help, but if they don't show up until Turn 3 or 4....

 

Run a unit of 15 BCs in front. Have a Rune Priest throw Stormcaller on them for the 5+ cover save. Everyone else runs behind them for 4+ cover. Don't put the RP in the lead BC unit, let them Run during the shooting phase.

 

I would take at least 2 big units of BCs for the number of bodies you can field.

[Vash113]

I find even Mechanised armies aren't too hard to deal with. Especially Mech Tau and Eldar... they have nowhere to go. Especially if I move up in two big blocks of 30 or so models it flushes them out of cover for the Scouts and Long Fangs to bring down and I'm planning on getting a Drop Pod for my Venerable Dreadnaught soon for that little extra bit of deep striking killyness.

 

For their cost Blood Claws are rediculously effective in my experience, two power fists and two power weapons in the unit combined with 15-16 PA bodies in each unit is very hard for most opponents to deal with.

 

Long Fangs or tanks forming a firebase with a block of infantry swarming up both flanks, OBEL scouts and a Drop Pod or two coming in from reserves, opponents have so many different threats and so many bodies to deal with that most just can't handle it.

[Ullr Direfang]

i have done well with runners from day one with wolves from my side. granted my runners tend to have 2 to 3 packs of long fangs to help with "big" stuff. but i feel the statement of "people don't know what to do" is very true. most marine players i have seen don't leave home without some dreads(i usually only field one), preds, vindies, and LRs. i have done nothing but infantry before, 5 termies max, and around 100-ish ground pounders. people go back and forth about what to shoot/concentrate on and before they now it they get overwhelmed but CC with heavy supporting fire. it is actually how i was facing the DE player from my sig.

[hendrik]

is there any chance you would give us a more detailed look at that list becuse somehow i just don't seem to get all that into a 1500pts list