Canis Ultimus: The Prelude

[d@n]

i will have a bash at ragnar

 

Ragnar blackmane is a close combat monster, on the charge he is I6 s6 meaning there are very few things that are going to be hitting first.He hits everything on a 3+ and is wounding marines on a 2+ when he charges, that means if you combine him with a wolf standard he is only going to fail to hit and wound on a roll of a 2. he comes with 5 attacks as standard plus d3 on the charge so in reality your getting betwean 5-8 attacks on the charge. If that dosnt sound good enough for you he also gets saga of the warrior born furious charge +d3 attacks for him and his unit and his war howl.

 

 

Ok when i said he was a close combat monster i lied a bit, he is in the respect that nothing chews through troops like ragnar but dont throw him against super elite characters like abbadon or mephiston as they will kill him, he's there's there as an assault amplifier and to add some muscle to your army. wolves are ok in combat but there by no means the best at it and ragner helps to tip the balance in your favour.

 

 

 

The dreaded power fist assassination

This seems to be the main thing that puts people of using ragnar, really its not a big problem, people see he is not an eternal warrior and write him off thinking that he is going to get wacked with a powerfist, i have played hundreds of games with him and its never really been a problem. When you charge make sure you move a few models into contact with the offending power fist and get ragnar as far away from it as possible.He has a 4+ invun save and ws6 so even if you do get into contact with a power fist it generally works out ok Anyway not alot gets there attacks when facing ragner, i have seen him chomp through 10 strong units of thunder hammer termys death company nobs ect before they have even got a chance to attack back.

 

 

being counter charged

Now i hear you say what about being counter chargedor charged with force weapons? well you have forgotten about his saga of the warrior born, your looking at ragnar having 6 attacks most of the time plus how ever many kills you got from the previous round of combat so even if you are counter charged your likely to wipe out the whole unit just using ragnar and you can consolidate towards the next unit of victims move and charge your turn.I love it when people counter charge ragners unit i cross my fingers hoping that they will, its one of the few ways you can make sure once he is in combat you keep him there.

 

 

 

transport

You can put him in a land raider and that works well but ragnar dosn't come cheap and neither do land raiders, if you take both your army is generally a bit on the sparse side.

I generally just stick him in a rhino and drive that rhino up the board behind another rhino giving him a cover save or blocking line of sight completely. I also take rhino's for my long fangs so even if his rhino does go boom i can jump him and his squad in a spare one.

 

 

What unit to put him in?

Dont bother with blood claws, a wolf priest is cheaper, your not going to get blood claws bonus for charging with ragners so basically your spending the same points that you would if you bought grey hunters but with a worse weapon skill.

Wolf guard in power armour are ok, the tda dont really throw out enough attacks.

 

 

Grey hunters, this is were ragner works best.bolters are essential. if you dont want to charge him at a unit then you can fire the bolters at something else and it stops ragners rule about having to charge him at a unit if he can. The wolf standard and mark of the wulfen are what makes grey hunters the unit to use with ragner, you get to re role 1 on the wulfen+d6 attacks if you use the wolf standard and remember on a d3 2 is also a 1 meaning most of the time your getting between 2-3 bonus attacks, so if you use a wolf standard your mow is generally going to get at least 2 bonus attacks from the d3 roll and 3 attacks from his mow roll plus one and upto 10 attacks if you luck out. The wolf standard is so important that a tactic i use is to pop one kill everything i charge and then move ragner to another unit of grey hunters and repeat the process until there are no more wolf standard or everything is dead. with the saga of the warrior born this makes for alot of attacks.

How you equip your grey hunter is upto you but take the mark of the wulfen, wolf standard and a melta gun.The plasma gun is rapid fire and dosnt allow you to charge after firing it and a canny opponent will remove models from the front ranks meaning you may be just out of charging range if you take a flamer.

 

 

Rune priest There

By now i hope i have made it clear that charging with ragnar is important and one of the ways to make sure you do is to take a rune priest. Generally there is no need to take him in the same unit as ragner but keep him close by. The reason i take one other then the fact there awesome in themselves is murderous hurricanes, any enemy unit that looks like it may want to charge him hit them with mh and there going to be moving through terrain and unless there very lucky with there dice roll want reach ragners unit. jaws also works well for sniping powerfists/klaws that could kill ragnar.

 

 

war howl

You need to bring 3+ large units of grey hunters equipped as i have previously mentioned, roll them half way up the board jump them out of there rhinos and let them do what grey hunters do. keep them all within 12'' of ragner and if it looks like your loosing or you just want to put the death nail into you opponent unleash rangers war howl, pop banners if you have any left and charge the whole army at them, if your long fangs have blown up all the transports ect i have in the past moved them up as-well to take advantage of the war howl. Dont bother saving it or holding back with it, as soon as you see all your units are in range to take advantage of it use it, its also a great way of taking out death star units as not much survives being charged by 30 odd furious charge space wolves.

 

Wolves

thunder wolves strike at strength6 and can charge 12" so if you keep them 12" infront of rangar and use his war howl they can move half way up the board, if you take fen wolves and saga of the wolfkin on another character then the fen wolves are charging the same distance as the thunderwolvwes and are striking at i6

 

svangir and ulfgir (spelling)

The question with taking his fenrisian wolfs is are they worth 4 grey hunters? well not if your in a rhino but take them if your using a crusader. They can take wounds for him when your unit hopping and dont reach the unit from laser cannons and other shooting attacks that could instant kill him and if you keep them in base contact with him they will stop your opponent moving power fists into base contact with him, if his unit does get charged.

 

The long and short of it is ragner costs around the same cost as a pack of grey hunters with a wolfguard and he will kill alot more. Againt horde armys like nidz and orks he is awsome but things like dark elder not so much.

[Decoy]

Hello, boys! My apologies for taking so long. Work is kicking my arse something fierce (five call ins in two days) and I made the mistake of writing up all the Canis Ultimus stuff on paper instead of digital, so the translation process is long and difficult. However, by the end of the day (assuming I'm not called in to work) I hope to have the links up and a right proper discussion of these things. What everyone has submitted is good so far and I encourage further development.

 

Expect links up within the next... Three hours, perhaps.

[Loki-LaughingDeath]

I meant the additional Psychic save, not the invulnerable save. This is another thing that confuses me, does Njal have a bolt pistol with Runic TERMINATOR armor :( ?!? I don't get it either, most of the time when you swap out for TDA you get a Storm Bolter so what happened?

 

I.Q. I am not a big fan of the Deep strike.... my scatter dice like to place me in very bad situations. While that is a viable option I would think that if you have first turn drop him in the middle of the opposing army and let fly. Go after HQ and other juicy bits then put up Storm Caller and hunker down from the incoming fire plus you could counter attack if they get charged.... oddly enough my wolves do worse damage counter punching then on their alpha strikes....go figure.

[Iacton Qruze]

If you drop him first turn, that gives your opponent all game to blow his unit apart. The joy of the Drop pod, is it allows you to drop in anywhere there's enough space, getting you safely close to where your opponent has the most stuff, with you only having to worry about mishap if you somehow drift off the table. Dropping in with 1 spell first turn, you can do with any rune priest. Dropping in with a 7+ role on Stormcaller and having 50% of his remaining force within 12", can basically end the game for your opponent. And then you can still unleash that Jaws or living lightning, or whatever you feel is best

[Adarul Greystalker]

Here's my first draft of the battle leader article. It has no conclusion at the moment. Feedback is welcome.

 

Wolf Guard Battle Leader

 

As the least popular HQ in the Space Wolves codex, the wolf guard battle leader is often considered to be overshadowed by the wolf lord or wolf priest entries. In some cases, this may be true, but the wolf guard battle leader is a unique HQ choice with its own advantages and disadvantages relative to others.

 

For starters, the battle leader has a great stat line for its cost. It has the destructive potential of many more costly HQs, although its wounds characteristic is something of a weakness. It also has a very extensive array of upgrade options, including runic armor and a storm shield that can bolster the battle leader’s otherwise questionable survivability. These upgrades are not cheap however, so equipping a battle leader will be a tradeoff between cost efficiency and survivability. Furthermore, the battle leader has the option of taking a thunderwolf mount, making him a different kind of beast entirely. In this article, I will discuss three ways of equipping and using the wolf guard battle leader: The bare bones variant, the storm shield variant, and the thunderwolf variant.

 

The bare bones battle leader is the cheapest HQ available in the Space Wolves codex. It’s also extremely simple to equip. At its most basic, you just take a battle leader with a power weapon and a bolt pistol. For a meager 85 point investment, you get a character whose lethality in combat can only be matched or surpassed by the much costlier wolf lord. Of course, his survivability is extremely suspect. With nothing but power armor and a couple of wounds, any close-combat-oriented squad can ruin this guy‘s day. This kind of battle leader can be useful situationally. Stick him with some grey hunters and they’ll tear through tough enemy units, but don’t expect him to come back alive if he gets involved with anything that can ignore his armor or put a lot of wounds on him. In low points cost games, the bare bones battle leader can be formidable, but as the size of the game increases, the more likely it becomes that the enemy will have an assault or counter-assault unit that will be able to take your cheap HQ down unceremoniously. Note that you can take things like saga of the hunter and a wolf tail talisman to make this kind of battle leader more useful to its squad, but once you reach 100 points or so and you’re looking to help squads with your HQ, you should really be considering a wolf priest instead.

 

A more useful variant of the battle leader is the storm shield version. The only way that you can give a battle leader an invulnerable save (other than terminator armor) is with a storm shield, but doing so increases his lethality/cost ratio to the point that he becomes a different kind of HQ. No longer is he just a handful of cheap power weapon attacks that go away if you direct enough attention at him. With runic armor and a storm shield, the battle leader becomes a pretty tough character. Granted he still only has two wounds, but with a 2+/3++ and an initiative 5 wolf claw, he can kill basic troop squads by himself and pose a real threat to enemy close combat squads if he’s used at the head of a well-equipped pack. This setup comes out to a very reasonable 140 points and the addition of saga of the hunter can allow him to use a variety of tactics, such as outflanking with scouts, going to ground with stealth on an objective in the late game, or just granting greater protection to his squad with stormcaller, screening units, or other kinds of cover. Note that you can try to do a cheaper version of this type of battle leader with terminator armor, but then you’ll end up with an unreliable 5+ invulnerable save and the inability to ride in normal transports or take saga of the hunter, so I wouldn‘t recommend it.

 

Finally, there’s the cavalry battle leader. Now, a thunderwolf mount is not a cheap upgrade, so it’s my opinion that you should go ahead and protect your investment with runic armor and a storm shield. Add a wolf claw and you’ve got a 185 point cavalry battle leader. That’s hardly a cheap HQ but at least it’s not the 200+ that most thunderwolf lords will run you. Of course, those thunderwolf lords are often worth their point costs, so a comparison is probably in order. With an additional wound and saga of the bear, thunderwolf lords are ridiculously hard to kill. They are also, of course, highly lethal, and they are one of the only true “kill anything” units in the game. As such, I would normally recommend a saga of the bear thunderwolf lord if you’re in the mood for a cavalry HQ, but if you want a cheaper or different option for some reason, a battle leader can definitely work. For instance, if you plan to take multiple cavalry HQs, you can save a lot of points by only using a wolf lord for your primary character and then taking battle leaders for the others. If you’re working on a smaller point value army, you can take a battle leader with wolfkin and a bunch of fenrisian wolves as a solid fast attack assault unit.

[Grimtooth]

I will contribute by coming in from time to time and poke holes in everyone's articles and posts.

 

=)

[Brother Crazywolf]

I meant the additional Psychic save, not the invulnerable save. This is another thing that confuses me, does Njal have a bolt pistol with Runic TERMINATOR armor ^_^ ?!? I don't get it either, most of the time when you swap out for TDA you get a Storm Bolter so what happened?

 

I.Q. I am not a big fan of the Deep strike.... my scatter dice like to place me in very bad situations. While that is a viable option I would think that if you have first turn drop him in the middle of the opposing army and let fly. Go after HQ and other juicy bits then put up Storm Caller and hunker down from the incoming fire plus you could counter attack if they get charged.... oddly enough my wolves do worse damage counter punching then on their alpha strikes....go figure.

 

The psychic save was what I was referring. I looked again at the codex. I am wrong. His runic tda gets a 4++ against everything. So wouldn't that balance out against the loss of a 5++ against psychic attacks only? As to the bolt pistol, I have no idea why it wasn't upgraded to a storm bolter. Maybe balance issues? Thanks for taking the time to help me understand. I am new and still trying to figure everything out. Great write up. Fills in the blanks for me and gives me some ideas.

[slmellon]

I meant the additional Psychic save, not the invulnerable save. This is another thing that confuses me, does Njal have a bolt pistol with Runic TERMINATOR armor :D ?!? I don't get it either, most of the time when you swap out for TDA you get a Storm Bolter so what happened?

 

I.Q. I am not a big fan of the Deep strike.... my scatter dice like to place me in very bad situations. While that is a viable option I would think that if you have first turn drop him in the middle of the opposing army and let fly. Go after HQ and other juicy bits then put up Storm Caller and hunker down from the incoming fire plus you could counter attack if they get charged.... oddly enough my wolves do worse damage counter punching then on their alpha strikes....go figure.

 

The psychic save was what I was referring. I looked again at the codex. I am wrong. His runic tda gets a 4++ against everything. So wouldn't that balance out against the loss of a 5++ against psychic attacks only? As to the bolt pistol, I have no idea why it wasn't upgraded to a storm bolter. Maybe balance issues? Thanks for taking the time to help me understand. I am new and still trying to figure everything out. Great write up. Fills in the blanks for me and gives me some ideas.

 

Whatever the reason he has a bolt pistol with TDA, which gives him an add'l CCW. Since he probably wont be shooting bullets, its actually a boon because a SB isnt a add'l CCW. so when he gets in close he has an extra attack.

[Vassakov]

Firstly Decoy, might I congratulate you on the scope and ambition of the gauntlet you have laid down for us of the Fang - it is a worthy goal.

 

Long have been my wanders from the Fang of late, dabbling in the lores of Gods and Daemons, in Traitors and Renegades. However, I shall be happy to contribute the knowledge I have gleaned from my times both in and away from the Fang.

 

I note that you have not including Drop Podding within the list - are you intending to cover it seperately (if so, I will be happy to do work on this) or within the unit choices themselves?

 

Further, I can also offer my observations from playing both with and against Daemonic Armies to this most worthy guide.

 

Good luck all!

[hendrik]

I note that you have not including Drop Podding within the list - are you intending to cover it seperately (if so, I will be happy to do work on this) or within the unit choices themselves?

there are two things i must say to you brother

first, i've been discussing the canis ultimus a lot with decoy and once he gives me his go we'll be in for quite some interesting topics at the fang, including droppods :)

 

second, *smacks you in the gut*, that's for going traitor you silly one! :)

[Vassakov]

Sounds good, I look forward to these discussions.

 

*catches fist, sidesteps and uppercuts Hendrik*

 

Wolf Scouts operate behind enemy lines, even to the point of betraying our enemies to one other. Question not my loyalty to the Allfather. :)

[Loki-LaughingDeath]

My only question with Njal is why didn't they just drop the Bolt Pistol all together and give him the extra attack.... After all in his story he prefers the up close and personal....the psychic abilities just help him get there quicker.

 

Hendrick, Vassakov this is a tactics forum, you want to behave like claws they have a special thread for just that....helmet optional in the short bus. :cuss

 

Nice summary Adarul, you covered the important parts nicely and left it to us to debate the rest.

[hendrik]

Hendrick, Vassakov this is a tactics forum, you want to behave like claws they have a special thread for just that....helmet optional in the short bus. :P

i am fully aware of that fact whelp and once decoy gives me the "go" i'll be starting the next big contribution to the canis ultimus. trust me, it's going to be BIG! :P

[elithren]

So what is the status of this?

[hendrik]

currently awaiting decoy's premission ;)

[Decoy]

currently awaiting decoy's premission ;)

 

And I do apologize for the delay in said permission. A recent spat of RL issues has left my family without a major source of income, meaning I've had to pick up two jobs (soon to get a third) to make up for the lack of cash. That, I'm afraid, is running me ragged, and I have about... ten minutes a day to myself. Hopefully, once this situation has resolved, I'll be able to be more... active... directly.

[Jonas Stromclaw]

currently awaiting decoy's premission :)

 

And I do apologize for the delay in said permission. A recent spat of RL issues has left my family without a major source of income, meaning I've had to pick up two jobs (soon to get a third) to make up for the lack of cash. That, I'm afraid, is running me ragged, and I have about... ten minutes a day to myself. Hopefully, once this situation has resolved, I'll be able to be more... active... directly.

Ouch, that really sucks. Good luck brother, and God bless.

[Decoy]

Ouch, that really sucks. Good luck brother, and God bless.

 

Many thanks, Brother. The luck I'm not so worried about; Divine intervention wouldn't go unappreciated. We may need it.

 

Off to Job 2 for the day.

[hendrik]

too bad to hear about that mate! therefore i propose we put the canis ultimatus currently on hold untill you have more time for it.