Army List Tactica For Beginners

[Death Dealer 101]

Greeting fellow space wolves’ players. What follows is a tactica for building space wolf armies with mission objectives in mind. First a bit about myself, I have been involved in the hobby for around 15 years, starting quite young and have been playing space wolves for about 3 years. I consider myself more of a builder/gamer and tend to never have time for painting (Or don’t want to make time). I don’t consider myself the world’s best tactician but have enough skills to feel confident putting up a great fight in all battles I play and thought I would share some of my thoughts.

 

This is my first attempt at a space wolf army list building tactica that I have decided to produce for my fellow wolf brothers. The main reason for this article is that throughout my gaming I often see people asking simple questions such as “what is the best HQ I should take” and “is this army good”. I also see people making army lists by basically cramming together all of the best units with little thought about mission objectives or list coherency. There are other methods and tacitca’s about building armies each with its own processes and methods such as using “natural elements” to describe the way units/lists work and other more complex methods such as “killhammer”. I often find these methods either too complex or just not direct enough and too variable. I find such methods of unit A has a high K but a low D just simply to variable and is an unnecessary over complication that new players don’t need as they should be focusing on the rules. I am a firm believer that list coherency and knowledge on how your army plays wins battles, not just putting down a cookie cutter list.

 

So here is my method that aims to relate list building to the actual methods of winning, being the scenarios in the rulebook. This way I shall think of an army as different types of bricks that must all come together to form a cohesive and stable wall. The tactica aims to not simply put down a copied list from the net and say go play this because part of being a successful player is understanding how your army works and fits together. Thus the examples I use while very competitive are in no way means trimmed to such an extent that the list is a boring mindless killing machine.

 

Firstly I shall briefly describe the missions and how they relate to army structure.

 

Mission 1 Capture and Control: This mission has you placing one objective in your deployment zone and your opponent placing one objective in his deployment zone.

 

Mission 2 Seize Ground: D3+2 Objectives placed alternating between you and your opponent spread out around the inner part of the board.

 

Mission 3 Annihilate: Kill Points. Each unit, vehicle and character is worth one kill point and the player who gains the most kill points by killing these units wins.

 

Now the mission that I think best describes how an army should act, what it aims to do and how it performs is the Capture and Control mission, which happens to be my favourite mission. For this mission I spilt the army into three separate blocks and will provide some examples of units that fit into these categories while deliberately keeping it simple. So the three blocks that an army needs to consist of are; Units too attack, units to defend and units that makes things interesting and can often yield high damage for little investment. I shall also explain detailed examples of each category with smaller battles in mind.

 

Block 1: Objective Capturing and Killing the Enemy.

These are the units that can take the fight to the enemy, kill the enemy, forcibly take objectives and are often quite robust, being able to take a good kicking and still perform their role.

Examples of these units are; both large grey hunter and blood claw squads, thunderwolf cavalry, terminator squads and the majority of HQ choices. All of these units can do plenty of damage up close and personnel and can either claim or contest objectives.

 

Wolf Guard with power fist and combi-melta attached to 7 grey hunters with meltagun in a rhino.

Now this unit is fairly robust with 8 3+ armour marines and has the potential to take out any pieces of armour that it may encounter. While the large amounts of basic attacks and the power fist on the wolf guard means they are the perfect units to kill enemy troops defending objectives. The rhino provides great protection, mobility and a platform from which this unit really excels.

 

 

Block 2: Objective Holding and Defending.

These units need to be able to sit back and protect your home objective, be self supportive and able to effect the battle most often from range.

Examples are; small grey hunter squads in razorbacks, longs fangs, whirlwinds, typhoon land speeders, and predators.

 

5 Grey hunters with plasmagun in a razorback. Combined with 5 long fangs with 4 missile launchers. Now I have found these two units to work perfectly together, one provides great fire support while the other can actually claim an objective, provide additional bodies and contribute light shooting.

 

Block 3: Unpredictable’s and Potential High Damage Units.

These are the units that bring a little something different to the army. These are the more interesting, fun and sometimes unreliable units. These units include things like scouts, landspeeders and lone wolfs. All have the potential to do plenty of damage but all can be hampered by bad luck or just dying quickly because of low armour or few models etc.

 

Land Speeder with multi-melta and heavy flamer.

Now this unit is great against just about any army you may face, except maybe an all foot slogging terminator army. This unit has the potential to melt tanks and burn infantry with equal ease but with armour 10 and the fearsome array of weapons it is often targeted quick smart.

Another example is 5 space wolf scouts with meltagun, a perfect unit to pop and be a big pain to the enemy. However they can be ever so slightly susceptible to popping up on the wrong edge or knocked off easily due to their weaker armour and generally fewer models.

 

Now that I have described the three elements that make up an army for capture and control I shall briefly touch on the other two missions.

 

Seize ground: Now if your army has been designed to go and capture objectives and also defend objectives this mission doesn’t really need too much thought. A thing to bear in mind is with the potential for 5 objectives you will most likely need a minimum of three troops units to stand a chance of winning without relying on wiping out your opponent. The previously mentioned large grey hunter units in rhinos and smaller squads in razorback just perform the same role; one goes after the further away units while the razorback units deal with closer objectives.

 

Kill Points: Now this is harder to really put a number on. Really if an army is made with equal amounts of expensive squads, moderate units and cheaper squads there is a fair chance that it will have a similar amount of kill points to the opponent’s army. So I would encourage people to make sure that their amount of kill points doesn’t get too large but to generally not worry as much about them. It is hard to say a definite number that should be watched but for a small 1,000 point battle somewhere in the ball park of 8-10 seems to be what I usually have and pushing around 14 at 1,500.

 

Now onto the army examples and practical methods of implementing the three blocks into your army. I will be using my latest army as an example and I will also describe why the elements fit well together. Every half a dozen battles I tend to swap around the elements and try something else. For example my HQ rotates between jump pack wolf claw lord, rune priests and my new addition the thunderwolf lord. I have found that 1,000 point lists are an ideal amount for beginners to learn the rules, be able to include something besides the minimum and only take a couple of hours to play.

 

This is a great example of a list to use against marines, necrons, chaos and the like. This has enough anti-tank and close combat ability to deal with mechanized and hordes respectively while including a varied and interesting diversity of models.

 

Block 1. Take the fight to the enemy and their objective.

Wolf Lord, Frost Axe, Bolt Pistol, Runic Armour, Thunderwolf, 8 Fenrisian Wolves. 254

Wolf Guard, Power fist, Combi-Melta, 8 Grey Hunters, Meltagun, Rhino. 203

Wolf Guard, Power fist, Combi-Melta, 8 Grey Hunters, Meltagun, Rhino. 203

 

Block 2. Protect my objective and shoot the enemy.

Wolf Guard, Power Axe, 5 Grey Hunters, Plasmagun, Razorback. 153

5 Long Fangs, 4 Missile Launchers. 115

 

Block 3. Deadliness but Fragile.

Land Speeder Tornado, Multi-Melta, Heavy Flamer 70

 

This army has a solid foundation laid down by the firepower of the long fangs whose main aim is to shoot enemy transports, monstrous creatures and the like. While the razorback squad sits back and provides additional support and holds the objective. With both a plasmagun and power axe this unit at 6 men can also provide a great second wave assault unit in kill point based games.

 

Block 1 is there for one and only one reason to charge forward popping smoke and fleeting as it goes. The two large grey hunter units are a match for most things while the lord and his companions are deceptively fast and not too fragile with clever placement to improve the 6+ save to a 4+ cover save. The lord with his 7 S6 attacks on the charge will scare the pants of an unprepared enemy and often be the bullet magnet that lets the rest of the army survive nicely.

 

Lastly the land speeder is there to zoom around providing support to block 1. I often find that placed right next to the other units it either dies quickly where at 70 points isn’t too big a loss if it means the rhino’s survive. While if it is ignored it has the damage output to really perform well for you.

 

As a whole with this type of army and variations listed below I have yet to be defeated in around 15 games against a variety of opponents and armies so I have worked on the idea of including 3 blocks for quite a while now. Although it is not overly fined tuned, with room for improvement it is an interesting an effective army that includes a little bit of everything.

 

I will now discuss methods of changing this army but still keeping the theme of having units in each of the 3 blocks.

For example say you are unhappy with the mounted lord and is companions since it is a large point sink and often doesn’t really get enough charges off to do lots of damage. Option would be to:

1. Swap them with a jump pack lord with accompany skyclaw squad. This is a good option if you simply want more marines on the table and still want an interesting fast unit.

2. Swap them with a rune priest and grey hunter squad in rhino. This is great to further stretch the enemies’ anti-tank ability, provide nice physic powers, have some form of protection against enemy physic powers and provides another scoring unit.

 

While if land speeders are not your favourite unit. Try swapping them out for wolf scouts with a meltagun. This unit provides a different way of popping enemy tanks and can force shooting armies to be wary of the table edge, a handy advantage. In my last battle this 85 point unit killed 2 leman russ, a chimera and a veteran unit, that’s 460 points of death, with a little luck of course. While the ability to get the drop and charge a small unit at the back of the field acts similar to the heavy flamer on the land speeder.

 

If you like mobile firepower then in block 2 some options would be to swap the long fangs out for a whirlwind, a predator or a land speeder typhoon. They all stay back and provide firepower but provide different platforms and types of support.

 

So there you have it, a more objective based method of building army lists. I will not delve into the deployment methods just yet as this was my first attempt at a tactica. I would greatly appreciate advice, thoughts and opinions from both the new space wolf players as well as the more experienced members to expand and improve what I have already done.

 

Cheers.

[Valerian]

Death Dealer,

 

Here is my Guide to Army List Building; check it out and let me know what you think.

 

Regards,

 

Valerian

[Death Dealer 101]

Valerian

 

Great job that is pretty much what I had eventually in mind. I was just trying to keep it simple and only have 3 sections. Well looks like you have got it all pretty much covered. The only thing that I can really recommend you adding to this is some example army lists that include the different elements acting together. Similar to what I have done where you have an army and show how certain units are direct replacements for others so one can change the armies’ theme but still understand how it functions.

[Wysten]

Your tactica looks pretty solid to me. Something I kept to kind of anyways, though I kind of went OTT on Block 1 with a ton of grey hunters in Rhinos and kind of only got Long Fangs for Block 2 and a Landspeeder for Block 3. Something I really must work on XD

 

This will be a nice reference point for balienced building, easpically at higher points.

[Wolfbrother John]

As a fairly new 40k player i want to thank you guys for putting together these write ups on tactics! It is very helpful for new players wile i am starting to get a hang of the rules it seems i am still not comfortable on what to do during my turn. I feel like this will be a big help.

 

I do have a question though, I often play against a very experienced nid player and it seems against them any unit that thinks about running forward at all just gets eaten in a turn. i am finding it hard to come up with a strategy against this. It seems if i just sit back and shoot i don't kill enough and next thing i know i am surrounded by bugs and killed of in CC. So i guess my question is, how would you modify your tactics against a nid army that is very strong in CC and rocks though units of grey hunters like they weren't there.

 

thank you again for the help you have already given many new SW players like myself!

[Valerian]

As a fairly new 40k player i want to thank you guys for putting together these write ups on tactics! It is very helpful for new players wile i am starting to get a hang of the rules it seems i am still not comfortable on what to do during my turn. I feel like this will be a big help.

 

Sure, no problem; that is what it is there for.

 

I do have a question though, I often play against a very experienced nid player and it seems against them any unit that thinks about running forward at all just gets eaten in a turn. i am finding it hard to come up with a strategy against this. It seems if i just sit back and shoot i don't kill enough and next thing i know i am surrounded by bugs and killed of in CC. So i guess my question is, how would you modify your tactics against a nid army that is very strong in CC and rocks though units of grey hunters like they weren't there.

 

I haven't bothered to get the new Nid codex yet, so I'm more familiar with their previous edition version, but the recommendations remain the same. Understand that you are facing a close-combat oriented army, and know that you'll need to use a defensive scheme of maneuver. Focus on thinning them out with your Shooting for a few turns prior to moving to control or contest objectives. You can go with less assault-focused units (although you'll still need a couple), and maximize your base of fire units. Tyranids biggest advantage in close combat (for many of their units anyway) is their high-Initiative; however none of them (that I know of) have anything like Offensive Grenades, so if they are assaulting you in Cover (just keep >50% of each unit in some form of Cover) then you are going to go first. With your extra attacks from Grey Hunter "ultra grit" (the weapons load of Boltgun Bolt Pistol, and CCW) combined with their Counterattack, you'll find that your Grey Hunters start mowing through Nid units when assaulted, instead of the other way around.

 

Lone Wolves are great versus Nids, too (did you read the section on Disruption forces?), especially if you can move them forward to intercept, but still get yourself into some Cover.

 

Also, get yourself some fast units like SwiftClaw Bikers and/or Land Speeders. These units can hide pretty well, contribute to the early shooting game, then sprint (24" Moves for each with Turboboost and Skimmer moving Full Out) to contest enemy Objectives.

 

I'm sure some of the other folks that are more experienced against the new 'Nids will come along with some advice as well. If you build a good flexible force then you can do well against an army like the 'Nids and then transition to fight a completely different army and do just as well.

 

Best of luck,

 

Valerian

[Death Dealer 101]

Against nids in say a smaller battle for example I would take my example army and then do this.

 

Drop the lord and his wolf companions replacing them with a rune priest and unit of grey hunters in a rhino. This gives you a lot more power armour bodies, more boltguns and some handy rune priest powers that can hurt nids at range.

 

Then I would look into dropping the land speeder and downgrading the 6 man squad maybe dropping the wolf guard (moves to rune priest squad) and finding some extra points for another long fang unit.

 

You will now have a lot more bodies on the table, and more importantly have more ranged firepower. With the extra long fang unit you will be potentially able to produce 8 missile shots a turn (depending on models and loadouts) that will really hurt the nids synapse creatures, and produce healthy amounts of spammed small blasts. This will leave the more vulnerable hordes to be rapid fired to death with the grey hunters who can then handle them in combat.

 

This gives you an army that should go well against nids and also any other armies, if you are still having trouble then think about some flamers. As for deployment try setting up the two long fang squads apart from each other so you can cover more of the board and make it harder for him to hide the tyrants and the like. Then use your now 3 large grey hunter units in rhinos to form a wall of armour that he will have to deal with if he wants to get at your men. This leaves the razorback squad to contribute firepower from the heavy bolters and to plug any gaps.