Fenrisian wolves: often overlooked?

[skeletoro]

Fenrisian wolves seem to be regularly dismissed for being a waste of points. But is this really the case? With a few well-placed buffs, they're quite overpowered, as far as I can tell.

 

Durability.

Fenrisian wolves only have a 6+ armour save, so do tend to die quite quickly to small arms fire. That's assuming that they don't have a cover save or other invulnerable save, however. With move through cover or allies to hide behind, it's not too hard to pick up a 5+ cover save. Storm caller provides a 5+ cover save to all squads within 6" - you could happily apply the buff to a couple of squads with one rune priest. With the cover save, fenrisian wolves are actually pretty durable.

 

Against bolter fire, your fenrisian wolves only die twice as fast as grey hunters. But at 8 points per model, you get (almost) twice as many. So they're about as tough as grey hunters vs. bolters. Against AP3+ they're much tougher, as their save is invulnerable (they're about as durable as 16 pt marines with a 3++ save)

 

This doesn't help you in melee (or against template weapons for that matter) but on the other hand, you're striking at initiative 5 if you have saga of the wolfkin. Striking first is a kind of armour save all of its own. 20 fenrisian wolves will kill about 5 marines on the charge - cutting a 10 man tactical squad down to half strength. Marines will kill 1.11 marines with bolt pistol shots on the charge. That means the fenrisian wolves will concede (5/8.89) * (8/15) * (5/2) = ~ 3/4 the points against AP- and about 9/10 the points against AP 4-6.

 

Give the unit receiving the charge AP3 attacks and the fenrisian wolves only concede (5/8.89) * (8/15) * 1 = ~0.3 times the points that marines do.

 

Things get kinda nice when you throw in Forewarning: a 4+ invulnerable save to one unit. With this buff, your 8 point models each have a 4+ invulnerable save (including in melee). Each 16 points of wolf-flesh has the durability of a warlock on a jetbike buffed with fortune (toughness 4 and a 4++ save, "rerolled"). After taking the 5 i5 kills on the charge, and taking the difference in points cost into account, your fenrisian wolves only concede (5/8.89) * (8/15) * (3/2) = ~0.44 times the points that marines do, when charging marines. Against power swords, they only suffer 0.15 times the wounds. YES, you could give 4++ to marines with this same power, but marines will only benefit from the invulnerable save against AP3 or better - and even then they're init 4 and cost 15 points or more per model.

 

Killing power.

Again, cost is a factor here. Fenrisian wolves get 3 attacks on the charge, but they're only 8 points. Grey hunters get 3 plus a bolt pistol shot, but they're 15 points.

 

A ws 4 str 4 attack at initiative 5, for under 3 points per attack, seems pretty crazily good. Sure, a wolf guard terminator might get 3 AP3 attacks (and 2 bolter shots) on the charge for 33 points. That's fantastic against marines. For one point fewer, four fenrisian wolves get 12 attacks and will kill more MEQ models than the wolf guard terminator will.

 

This is all unbuffed, too. Because fenrisian wolves trade specialty weapons for raw number of attacks, they scale quite nicely when buffed. Enfeebling a marine charge target of 20 fenrisian wolves will increase the wolves' damage output by about 1/3rd. Against 10 marines, that means that only about 3.3 marines will survive to retaliate (3.7 after adjusting for manifest check and deny the witch). Those marines will each wound on 5s rather than 4s, and therefore only cause about 2/3 the damage per model (about 3/4 after adjusting for manifest/DtW). The fenrisian wolves will end up killing 25% more models and losing about 44% less.

 

Give the fenrisian wolves prescience instead (note, this blessing only applies one unit so this example is slightly less plausible), and they'll cause 7.3 wounds on the charge (and lose 46% fewer models). Apply misfortune to the target and you're looking at 7.56 kills and 51.2% fewer casualties.

 

As a final demonstration, consider 25 fenrisian wolves versus 5 TDA+SS terminators. 3.125 kills (125 points) on the charge, leaving about 1.875 terminators - who in turn will smack down 1.56 fenrisian wolves (12.5 points).

 

So, what's wrong with fenrisian wolves? They seem pretty good to me..? (Oh, and I just realized I left out overwatch, which will generally kill 1-2 wolves if they lack cover.. not enough to completely change the picture I painted above)

[helosv]

Hello,

I will add to your demonstration:

they are "beast", so

not slowed down by difficult terrain = 12 inches moving

not slowed down by difficult terrain when assaulting...

can climb into buildings, without being slowed down (see above) = potentially 12 inches inside... climb directely to the third floor !!!

[irwit]

I think you should probably include that for saga you have to buy a character plus pay for the saga which should really be included in the points cost per wolf.

 

I also dont get how a GH is only twice as survivable vs bolter fire as the marine gets a 3+ so its 1/6 vs 4/6 chance of survival?

[skeletoro]

Chance of survival isn't quite the key thing here. It's chance of death. More to the point, it's probability of death multiplied by the points cost. With a 5+ cover save, FWs die on a 1,2,3 or 4 where GHs would die on a 1 or 2. So FWs die (conceding 8 points) with double the probability of GHs (but GHs concede 15 points per failed save). Think of it this way. For 120 points, you can get 8 grey hunters or 15 FWs. When benefiting from a 5+ cover save, those 15 FWs will die to roughly the same amount of bolter fire as the GHs. 24 successful to wound rolls will result in 8 failed saves for the GHs, and 16 failed saves for the FWs. There's not a lot in it.

 

If the GHs are caught out in the open, then yes, they're less survivable than marines (24 bolter shots will kill 24 fenrisian wolves - extinguishing 192 points of dog vs 120 points of marine). But it doesn't seem very hard to get the cover.

 

And yeah, you need to factor in the cost of the saga. I've wondered about this, and am not sure exact how you'd calculate this. I'd probably steer away from Canis (he only has a 3+ save, completely neutering him in duels) so that leaves a chaplain on a bike or a thunderlord. I'd probably lean towards the latter, because thunderwolves allow fenrisian wolves to reroll morale checks and lords are able to pick up 2 additional fenrisian wolves as wargear. Of course, that eats up a fast attack choice, so you'd be looking at just 2*15 fenrisian wolves, but that ought to be enough for anybody.