space wolves

[khurdur]

Yesterday I was beaten by space wolves...just a bit of a rant...

 

a 250 point lord with S5 T5 due to being mounted on a wolf, and a storm shield, power fist-3+ invul save against everyhting??? what happened to a 3++ save against just cc attacks? Then extra attacks for evry kill he gets in the previous assault phase, add to that an item that allows him to hit on 3s...he is Angron incarnate!!!! And no meltagun can instakill him due to 5 toughness. What happened to a normal 4(5)??? he can take on princes no problem at all...

 

and thunderwolf cavalry are very powerful, as you can't instakill them, how many AP2 shots can you fire at them to kill them??

 

Any tips??

[chaplain belisarius]

vindicators...that sorts them out! :P

[khurdur]

that won't stop the lord slaughtering a goodly part of my army....

[Skirax]

Avoid him. Or send your most godly units against him, such as Abbadon or Typhus.

[Rain]

Abaddon might do ok against him, but Typhus would get eaten, especially as the wolf lord in question apparently has a power fist that would instant kill Typhus. As for Abe, he requires a Land Raider while the WL just runs around on his thunderwolf, and WL+TWC would kill Abe+Berzerkers unless you charge and get real lucky. Honestly just like Nob Bikers, there isn't really a hard counter for this in my opinion, yeah he is beardy as hell and will just devour anything he comes in contact with. Tarpit him, kite him, or just hope he doesn't kill too much of your army throughout the game.

[Chengar Qordath]

vindicators...that sorts them out!

Indeed; the Vindicator is pretty much the only weapon in the Chaos arsenal that can inflict instant death on Thunderwolf-mounted units. Sure, the Lord and possibly some of the TWC have their 3++ from Storm Shields, but they will start to fail if you force them to roll it. Ideally, you'll be able to hit them with multiple Vindicators (after all, general wisdom says that you should always field multiple Vindis or none at all).

 

I would agree with treating TWC like Nob bikers, jetbike seer council, or other super-units; often, it's more a matter of damage mitigation than a matter of actually being able to destroy the unit. Trying to build a unit that can take them on in close combat will not end well; your best bet for taking them down is more dakka.

[chaplain belisarius]

take at least 2 vindicators and hit them with demolisher cannons...after this concentrate your firepower on them. Thunderwolves take a lot of killing but they are expensive and not very numerous...

 

good luck!

[Captain Idaho]

Dreadnought counter units might be useful. A single failed 3+ and he is dead!

 

Of course there is a stigma attached to them at the moment, but I believe it is a big hoo-har over nothing really.

[chaplain belisarius]

thats a great idea idaho! charge 1 or 2 dreads with 2dccw into them (after hitting them with vindicators...after that i doubt there will be any left!)

[Zhukov]

I use a lord very similar to that. Its not overpowered to be honest, but he can good. The lord has only 3 wounds while he has the cost of a land raider.... Did I mention 6"+d6" movement? Charge range is pretty epic though.

 

If he's alone:

Poor fire into him till he drops. (making him fail 3 saves should not be that hard really) Or you could weaken him a little and finish him off with Berzerkers or something like that.

 

Dont charge him with a single Deamon prince...thats suicide. Charging with 2 while he has only 1 or 2 wounds left is a possibility.

 

Thunderwolf cavalry:

Plasma is not that effective against them due to their 3++ save. (which counters the Plasma his AP2, same for melta). On the other hand, they only have a 3+ normal save and 2 wounds! Again mass fire and berzerkers do well against them, although it can be tricky to get the charge. Plasma is still needed though, because we dont have acces to lots of cheap S5/S6 shooting...

But indeed, they have a low model count and cost a lot. They are not as good as Nob bikers, as TWC die to small arms fire too and they dont score. Nob bikers score and have feel no pain...

 

Generally focus on him/them with possibly your whole army. Ignoring is generally a bad idea, as he/they hit hard. Setting up for smart counter attacks etc while sacrificing a unit could be an option. To be honest, its depends on your whole list and his list too.

 

Crying overpowered is an overstatement, I can assure you that. I'm sure you do better next time as you now know what is good about him. (T5, 3++ and hits hard with a big charge range).

[Rain]

So in other words, what is good about them is that they are really good against Chaos. Our army is built around close range, 12 inches or so and CC, but TW have a long enough threat radius to often void our ability to engage them at 12 inches. A good SW player will screen his TWC, but let's just say that he is just running them straight at you like a lobotomy patient, what do you do? With careful maneuvering you might well get one turn of rapid fire at them, but then you're done.

 

And with a 19-24 inch per turn threat range, even getting that one turn of rapid fire is questionable, but in either case, the next turn, your unit will melt. 200 or however many points, gone. And really barring a Land Raider, the SW player must be quite bad to get his TWC charged by berzerkers, and even then he will probably only lose 2 or so wolves (just off the top of my head, didn't do exact calc) which is bad, but far from catastrophic for him, and over the ensuing turns your zerks will die and zerks+LR are pushing 500 points.

[Blitzkreig]

Slanneshi lord with a Daemon Weapon might work... you swing first and if he has the +1 attack saga he doesn't have eternal warrior... other than that Vindicators are probably the way to go.

[Brother Hadafix]

Do people not use Defilers anymore? Better than a Dread, and can cause more fear in you opponent than a vindi.

[Zhukov]

So in other words, what is good about them is that they are really good against Chaos.

Well the problem is not really the TWC in itself. Its the whole SW army actually. They are very similar to us, but arguably overall better.

 

However you now talk about 1 unit. Exactly which unit do you mean? A complete 5 man TWC + lord on TWC? Thats ~600 points and gimps the rest of the list, while still having that 6"+d6" movement.

 

I need an exact list to be able to tell a little more about how I would deal with them. You could screen your units with Princes and/or Rhinos for example. And if he charges a unit (our units are ~200 each), he will be open to counter charges from Berzerkers and Oblits next turn for example. There are too many variables to tell what would happen in a real battle. They dont work much different from Nob bikers in how you would deal with them though.

 

Nob bikers also have something else which makes them harder in my opinion to deal with them: Shooting + large squad size. TWC only do something in CC. If they lose 2 of their 5 models, they only got 3 left. Then they arent that strong in CC anymore.

 

Overall its a good unit, but they dont really stand above the rest of the SW army, which is just as good.

 

I could advice Vindicators, but I dont. You should always try to deal with units with your regular army as tailoring towards a particular oponents/army is of no use. Not to mention Vindicators are pretty bad against SW with all their Long Fangs and meltas in their troops.

[Rain]

Oh I agree that Nob Bikers are better, but even at 600 points for the 5TWC+WL the 900 points of "army" that would leave in a 1500 point list isn't so bad, that's 4 squads give or take, which is a good amount for that points level. Or 3 squads + a tank, or whatever else, in any case this would be very nasty against Chaos, and why would you charge TWC with obliterators? Sure you wound on 2's but oblits don't have many attacks and he still saves on 3's and each of your oblits costs 75 points.

 

Also I agree about the SW army as a whole, that's kind of the point. To kill TWC or any such unit, we would need to devote an enormous amount of our army, because we have nothing that directly counters them, leaving the rest of the SW army to just run amok. Which brings me to another thing, he can often deny our countercharges simply by locking our units into combat with GH or BC if he takes those. Or even do a multiple charge if he positions his TWC right, or detatch his lord from his cavalry and use him to charge something else to deny counter. Then there's the fact that fluff players like myself don't have Berzerkers because I play Death Guard, but I guess that's irrelevant to real codex metagame.

[Zhukov]

Then we seem to agree.

 

Although 900 points left means he has to chose between Long Fangs/rune priests/troops. You cant spam those choices anymore, which makes the rest of the Chaos list suddenly better. (without multiple Long Fangs, we suddenly outshoot them with Obliterators, without Rune Priests Deamon Princes suddenly become better, without many troops, we outnumber them with ours etc). So it certainly does hurt the list. I actually tried to make very good lists with both a Wolf Lord + TWC unit in it, but I think the overall list suffers too much from it (at least a lower point levels, at higher their impact gets less). As a chaos player I rather face TWC compared to rune priest/long fang/grey hunter spam, as all those units outperfom our counterparts pointswise. But thats just my personal opinon ofc.

 

Why charging with Obliterators? Well tbh, I did not really mean to charge only with Obliterators. But they can shoot first with TL-plasmaguns and then charge after that, if its possible. He really has to be close for that though and depending on squad size extra help might be needed. They also dont have all 3+ invulnerable saves, in a squad of 5 ussually only 2 of them have Storm shields, they are too expensive to give them to every member. But with wound allocation this isnt much of a problem.

 

Pure deathguard...has big problems with that unit, I admit that right away. Unless your enemy makes some big mistakes, I cant see how Deathguard can deal well with that unit.