bran redmaw

[skeletoro]

The more I think about it, the more I think Bran redmaw would do really well in an army that infiltrates or drop pods right into the enemy's face on turn 1. He takes at least 1 round to warm up, but once he's going, he's a powerhouse. Infiltrators+drop pods seems like a good way of getting into CC ASAP.

 

What methods do we have (including allies) to get most of your army in rapid fire range (or even charge range - infiltrators can charge on your first turn if you go second) on turn 1? Infiltrating seems like it might be the best delivery method for grey hunters, bar none, but can we get all of our army infiltrating all together? What options do we have?

 

1) Bran allows a unit of grey hunters to infiltrate (or outflank behind enemy lines, but I think infiltrate is preferrable.)

2) Wolf scouts can infiltrate. However, they're not particularly durable. And I'm not really sure what to do with them. With sniper rifles, they cost 18 points per model (and lack camo cloaks). It almost seems better to put them to rapid fire duty and just make sure to attach a power/runic armoured wolf guard/IC to the unit ASAP for some extra durability.

3) A single drop pod would allow us to drop down an extra unit of grey hunters on turn 1 to support our infiltrators. If you took 3 drop pods (possibly leaving one of them empty), you could drop 2 on your first turn. Pretty good if every other unit in your army is also infiltrating, no?

 

We've also got access to:

Saga of the hunter: Bran, plus another wolf priest or WGBL. Stealth is pretty good when applied to a 4+ or 5+ cover save. Outflanking can be really good too, but the delay seems to make it less worthwhile.

Fast attack choices: Bikes, WTC, fenrisian wolves, etc, can all be assaulting turn 2 with a little luck, even without infiltration. And if you've got 3 or 4 units infiltrating or podding on turn 1, your opponents might have a slightly harder time dealing with the large unit of swiftclaws or TWC coming up that flank.

 

Allies?

C:SM

Shrike allows one extra unit to infiltrate. The really nice thing about this is that it affects the whole unit. So, if I'm not mistaken, Shrike's infiltrate ability applies to any extra independent characters you feel like tacking on (you couldn't do this with Bran's grey hunters or wolf scouts).

Lias Issodon (IA Badab War) apparently gives all vanilla marines stealth. The stealth USR transfers to all models in a unit, so if you had a few units, each with a mix of space wolves and C:SM models, you could get stealth for basically your whole army. This opens up some possibilities, such as attaching a techmarine on a bike to a swiftclaws unit and boosting their jink, as well as bolstering a ruin. In fact, any scout unit or bike unit is quite good with Lias. or just about any unit of bikes, such as: bike command squad (attach to your rune council and now they all have 3++ or 4++ cover and feel no pain),

Space marine scouts. A pretty decent infiltrating troops choice! Can get +2 to cover saves if you take Telion (who is pretty awesome in his own right). If you took Lias Issodon, Telion's stealth is unnecessary.

 

 

Anyway, a few options there. I can see a few ways of getting 3 grey hunters packs in rapid fire range on turn 1... worthwhile, do you think?

[Russ Brother 92]

regarding Lias Issodon he does indeed give the entire (although ofcourse it would only affect those in a C:SM army) Stealth instead of their regular Chapter Tactics - he's in IA 9: Badab War Part 1 another fella in the same book is Knight Captain Elam Courbray makes Assault and Vanguard Squads scoring (not Troops mind so they don't get in the way of your GHs or Scouts...) and all Flamers/Heavy Flamers become Twin-Linked, for this you lose Combat Tactics (not a great loss imo. for the heavy CC support you get from then having a potential for 30 or so heavily armed scoring jump troopers, AND Courbray himself is pretty beastly - 185pts gives the unit of 'Jump Pack Equipped' (so could be Wolf Guard or Sky Claws presumably) he's with Hit & Run and Counter-Attack plus his Power Sword has Rending although in the vein of Sicarius he can forgo this for a S8 Power Weapon so AP3 attack with Rending).

[Brother Ambroz]

^{If you guys don't mind using models other than GW/FW, there are some awesome MC sized werewolf-like models in other games. I remember Hordes has some great ones, then there's another game too but I forgot the name.....}

[skeletoro]

What about forge world skin wolves?

[skeletoro]

OK forget what I said about raven guard.

 

First, I think Mantis Warriors are the best option here. The special character, Ahazra Redth, is a pretty fantastic psyker in his own right (he can grant Shrouded to a unit AND make charges against that unit lose the +1 from charging, and then gets another power either from C:SM or rolled from BRB; he's level 2). More importantly, he has infiltrate as a combat tactic for all infantry models. This... apparently... includes ICs. Now, there's a rule that prevents ICs without infiltrate from joining units with infiltrate. But the rule doesn't go the other way round, and all infiltrate requires is that at least ONE model in the unit has it.

 

So, Redth as your HQ choice. A techmarine as your Elites choice. And then an infiltrating tactical squad or maybe scout squad + telion for your troops choice.

 

Deploy Redth and the techmarine with grey hunters squads, and including the grey hunters unit granted by Bran, that's 3 grey hunters units plus your mantis warriors troops choice all infiltrating on turn 1.

 

That's going to make for some early melee, meaning Bran will hopefully transform quite early on; perhaps even turn 2!

 

Second: Bran only gets a bonus to his die roll for each SPACE WOLF unit in combat. Allies don't count. So if you're taking allies with bran, you may as well focus on a support or buffing role, rather than trying to get some melee specialists (like Death company or whatever).

[Russ Brother 92]

my only problem with using Mantis Warriors is a fluff pov. wherein we would doubtless not ally ourselves with known traitors, traitors by association but traitors nonetheless - whereas from a purely game perspective they are indeed very good :)

[skeletoro]

Hehe, yea, fluff-wise, I'd either say that we were playing a few hundred years earlier... or else I'd "re-fluff" :D

[skeletoro]

Hmm. I've been reading up about the fluff (I'm seriously considering making my army Redmaw's great company. I have about 2500+ points worth of space wolves but haven't really started painting in earnest yet!!) and it looks like it would be a bit un-"fluffy" for Bran to be deployed along with the rest of the force.

 

His fluff says he tends to stay apart from the rest of the army, fighting solo or with a few trusty fenrisian wolves, leaving the command of his company to his wolf guard. This speaks in favour of outflanking with fenrisian wolves. But given the rules in 6th edition, this seems a bit sub-optimal.

 

Is there a happy medium between the fluff and optimality here? Perhaps outflanking Bran with a unit of grey hunters, appropriately converted to appear relatively "stealthy." Perhaps you could try modelling them with camo-cloaks, though the sniper scout kits aren't particularly compatible with the power armour models. That way, he'd be staying away from the bulk of the army, in accordance with fluff.

[hendrik]

in all honesty, that piece of fluff is total BS, sure he may prefer to hunt alone but above being a CC monster bran is also a competent wolf lord. if he knows he needs help from his grey hunters he'll use them!

[skeletoro]

Yeah, it is a tad silly. I imagine he's not above being occasionally talked around by his wolf guard.

[skeletoro]

Death company and a blood angels librarian might be a good option for outflanking with Bran!

 

Death company can choose (relentless) bolters instead of bolt pistols, making the "can't charge after coming in from reserves" rule a bit less painful. A librarian would give the whole unit a 4+ cover save (thanks to Bran's Stealth rule) and could grant Bran +d3 attacks (even when he's smashing... bringing his attacks on the charge up to 5+d3, I6, WS7, S10, AP2). Kinda scary!

 

You could even model/fluff them as a kind of mark of the wulfen elite - it would make sense given the high rates of the curse amongst Bran's great company.

[Grimtooth]

What makes you think that the restriction lifted from assaulting after firing rapid fire weapons somehow affects the restriction from assaulting after coming in from reserves?

[skeletoro]

I don't. It's just that if you're going to have to wait a round before you can charge, it's nice to be able to take bolters and rapid fire for 2 shooting phases before closing to melee.

[eyeslikethunder]

And reinforces it later stating that a wolf lord is a leader of Great company of 200 space wolves bu this has been discussed in the the stickyed how many space wolves are there thread

Russ Brother 92, on 17 Jan 2013 - 15:34, said:

ahh thank you very much khine this does fix me up with a thirst for an outflanking army haha

and sorry if this constitutes stealing your thread Postal http://image.bolterandchainsword.com//public/style_emoticons/#EMO_DIR#/sad.png - I've just found an interesting bit of info regarding the numbers of Space Wolves in each company, now we know that those of Grimmy and Rags are the largest but I now have reason to believe they would be nearing 250-300 men each without extras such as Dreads/Priests etc. as they're only attached as/when required and are primarily for the Great Wolf... pg. 47 of the IA11: Doom of Mymeara states "...the Claws of Russ digging deep into the ice world, as close to two hundred Space Wolves made planetfall." <- now I know that FW are sometimes a little loose with canon etc. but here we have a 'regular' and up until this point completely un-fleshed Great Company having numbers ranging 180-200+ Space Wolves at his command, and that's only those who have used Drop Pods.

[Grimtooth]

If anyone writes up a nicely done Tactics thread for using Bran, send me a PM so I can update the Forum FAQ 2.0 thread with it as well. I am going to be going through it this week checking dead links and whatnot with the forum upgrade.

[toonarmy]

Just thought i would add a point that hasn't been touched on here.  in the main rulebook FAQ it says when making a smash attack you take your base stats and half that number rounding up.  you then apply the +1 attack for charging.  this will mean that Bran will get an extra smash attack in the turn he charges as well as a hammer of wrath attack :)

[skeletoro]

Yep, and with an allied Blood Angel's Librarian he'd get d3 on top of that!

[toonarmy]

Or in a unit with ragnar :)

[skeletoro]

Heh, true that (although it would be d3 instead of +1). Still. Ragnar + Librarian... 3 + 2d3 s10 AP2 init 6 attacks on the charge? That's pretty funny (especially when the wolf standard allows you to reroll 1s). 

[Rift Blade]

Just throwing this out there model wise for Bran. Wathced some of te guys play Warmachine at the local shop & one was playing Oroborous, basically wolves. One of their characters is sligthly bigger then a Termie & might make a good model for Bran. Appearently their is an old version & a recently released new version. For anyone interested.

[postal105]

yea i havea  buddie of nime woh plays  Circle Orboros and i knwo tha tther warp wolves are  rather large a lot larger then a termanator more about the size of  a dreadnought all 4 versions of it.  but  the gorax on the othe rhand is  a bit biger then a termanator not by much.

[Anaraion]

^{To one of you who is more knowledgable... is this a good choice for Bran?}

 

^{http://privateerpress.com/hordes/gallery/circle-orboros/privateer-exclusives/classic-feral-warpwolf}

 

^{http://privateerpress.com/files/products/circle-orboros/warbeasts/warpwolf.png}

[postal105]

that guy is the size of a dreadnought  he is way to tall oh and he si one of the warpwolves i tlaked about in my earler post. and his base is  smaller then a dreads but biget then a termanators. this guy is  smaller and would  worlk nicely i thing  i am thinking of using him as the basus of my conversion.

 

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-wtoM0gcKdaA/TpxBqLNTWKI/AAAAAAAAAuk/H1ziCaHnC0A/s1600/Gorax.jpg

[DanPesci]

So ive read the rules for bran redmaw, and he seems like a great, fun choice to take (esp after seeing skeletobros list with him in).

 

Looking at getting some sort of model, but havent really read the fluff around him.

 

The last couple of posts seem to suggest that something dreadnought sized would be 'too big' for him?? Yet he's menat to be a monstrous creature...so to me anything smaller than a dreadnought seems a bit 'undersized' for the MC rules.

 

I was going to try get my hands on a FW skinwolf to try my hand at a bit of conversion/greenstuffing...as these models look great, and seem 'monstrous' enough to me....but does the actual fluff state that the redmaw isnt actaully that big?

[hendrik]

.but does the actual fluff state that the redmaw isnt actaully that big?
 

forgeworld actually messed up here pretty much. besides the doom of myamar there is not a single other source that suggest gaint werewolves in space! I really hate what they've done with the whole wulfen theme. the only other source that mentions a space wolf turning into a gaint wolf is prospero burns, and that is only because of evil chaos magic. besides those two stories almost all sources (especially the 13th company sources which i think are THE best sources about wulfen) somewhat specify a man sized "monster" with extended talons, yellow eyes etc, IMPOSSIBLE to return to their "human" state (ragnar etc only manage to turn back because it was chaos magic and yet he will remain wolf bitten for the rest of his life. forgeworld simply decided they wanted to have the true werewolf themeand decided bran could change into this gain-van helsing like werewolf, then turn back afterwards.

it was this piece of fluff that made me repaint my entire redmaw company into morkai's company, simply because IMO forgeworld ruined bran