Competitive Play without Wulfen?

[Watcher]

 

 

My last few games have been wulfen getting shot out of their stormwolf or failing their charge when they outflank. Meta is lots of shooting and standing in your deployment zone. Most opponents can see the wulfen coming a mile off. Also with the resurgence of marine based armies auspex scan will just strait up counters them when outflanking. 

 

They have an allergy to losing initiative if you deploy them. 

 

While they are certainly our strongest unit on paper, most of my opponents know that if they kill the wulfen they've basically won.

Very true. I think a majority of experienced (and in some cases) players recognize that if we build lists centered around Wulfen, losing them can destroy the chesion of the list and leave you very open to an easy defeat. It one of the reasons I brought up this topic It could be said as a low tier army, we need to come up with better and more cohesive alternatives to Wulfen. 

 

And so I present to you: Triple Gunships! One Stormfang, two Stormwolf's, and 2 units of Wulfen.  Expensive? Sure.  But hits hard, transports our melee threat, moderately hard to kill (gets harder if you get T1 and get some spells off with a Rune Priest to pop Cloaked by the Storm), and is psychologically damaging.  

 

Each ship is 14W T7 3+ and -1 to Hit in Supersonic.  Add the cover spell and stratagem for 2+ and -2 to Hit.  Helfrost/Bolters/Lascannons give you options for shooting.  The Speed of the ships mean you can put them way back out of range of most things, but get them in range during your movement phase.  

 

You sir, must play some form of chaos with a list loadout as mean as that 

[Iain_Stormeyes]

 

 

And so I present to you: Triple Gunships! One Stormfang, two Stormwolf's, and 2 units of Wulfen.  Expensive? Sure.  But hits hard, transports our melee threat, moderately hard to kill (gets harder if you get T1 and get some spells off with a Rune Priest to pop Cloaked by the Storm), and is psychologically damaging.  

 

 

 

Each ship is 14W T7 3+ and -1 to Hit in Supersonic.  Add the cover spell and stratagem for 2+ and -2 to Hit.  Helfrost/Bolters/Lascannons give you options for shooting.  The Speed of the ships mean you can put them way back out of range of most things, but get them in range during your movement phase.  

 

You sir, must play some form of chaos with a list loadout as mean as that 

 

My local group has banned the list unless both parties are agreed that we want a Tournament level game.  Most of the time, I don't even bring gunships, and I still do very well.  The best way to success in 8th is making their shooting useless in some way.  So go all in on one profile in your units so that either their anti-tank or anti-horde is useless, and spam Invulnerable saves to make AP useless as well.

[Watcher]

 

 

 

And so I present to you: Triple Gunships! One Stormfang, two Stormwolf's, and 2 units of Wulfen.  Expensive? Sure.  But hits hard, transports our melee threat, moderately hard to kill (gets harder if you get T1 and get some spells off with a Rune Priest to pop Cloaked by the Storm), and is psychologically damaging.  

 

 

 

Each ship is 14W T7 3+ and -1 to Hit in Supersonic.  Add the cover spell and stratagem for 2+ and -2 to Hit.  Helfrost/Bolters/Lascannons give you options for shooting.  The Speed of the ships mean you can put them way back out of range of most things, but get them in range during your movement phase.  

 

You sir, must play some form of chaos with a list loadout as mean as that 

 

My local group has banned the list unless both parties are agreed that we want a Tournament level game.  Most of the time, I don't even bring gunships, and I still do very well.  The best way to success in 8th is making their shooting useless in some way.  So go all in on one profile in your units so that either their anti-tank or anti-horde is useless, and spam Invulnerable saves to make AP useless as well.

 

That's fair. My playgroup run's a majority of ITC meta lists and it can be a little discouraging, but I'm sure this list would allowed against their classic Bobby G bubblewraps.

 

 I appreciate the idea, I'll see how it matches up. The only thing I'm trying to exclude is Wulfen at the moment. Mostly because I want to see a difference in SW competition playstyle, but I also don't own any.

[Iain_Stormeyes]

Then bring 3 Stormfang Gunships, cheaper and better Helfrost.  You need some melee threats to get into magic boxes, so Jump Pack HQ's, Wolf Guard with Hammers, or other things.  Also, Aggressors are great because T5 3W with anti-horde shooting and anti-tank melee.  You can deepstrike them if you need to.  Inceptors are also a solid option because they are fast, have a decent number of shots, and can enter ruins to kill infantry hiding there.

[TiguriusX]

That is hilarious...telling SW they are too competitive hahaha

 

We are like bottom 3 in ITC stat tracking

 

We are a space marine chapter with NONE of the new doctrine benefits or updated stratagems

[Iain_Stormeyes]

That is hilarious...telling SW they are too competitive hahaha

 

We are like bottom 3 in ITC stat tracking

 

We are a space marine chapter with NONE of the new doctrine benefits or updated stratagems

I may be flattering myself here, but I am probably one of the best players in my group.  I play one army, I've played it for 2 years, and I get 1-3 games a week.  I have 10k points of it and have played a wide variety of lists.  I use the terrain, play to the mission, and always play the odds.  

[lonewolf81]

 

The best units I used so far are the smash lord, smash battle leader, long fangs in a pod with 4 or 5 plasmacannons/leader plasma gun, 5 terminators 5 combiplasma, 3 shields 2 power fists and stormfang gunship. I don't often use wulfen cause they are too expensive and die really fast.. I prefer plasma termies who also pack some melee punch

I do a similar loadout. I run commonly run a mixed pack of combi-melta and combi plas termies. They tend to do quite well for themselves. I don't use plasmacannons however, I've found them to be unreliable in comparison to lascannons or going anti-infantry with heavy bolters. 

 

What do you use them for as a focus?

 

 

I used to play longfangs with lascannons as anti tank too... but i realised that they were too expensive and have very few shots which can do 1- 2 damage if you roll low on the D6 damage.

Plasma cannons on the other hand are cheaper (you always over charge thnx to build in reroll 1s ) and you always use keen senses and wolfs eye for reroll wounds. The reroll wounds really shines with lots of shots. So 5 D3 with 2 damage shots are always better than 4 shots with D6  damage  against any target (even 8 toughness) with reroll wounds. 

[greysquigg]

 

 

My last few games have been wulfen getting shot out of their stormwolf or failing their charge when they outflank. Meta is lots of shooting and standing in your deployment zone. Most opponents can see the wulfen coming a mile off. Also with the resurgence of marine based armies auspex scan will just strait up counters them when outflanking. 

 

They have an allergy to losing initiative if you deploy them. 

 

While they are certainly our strongest unit on paper, most of my opponents know that if they kill the wulfen they've basically won.

Very true. I think a majority of experienced (and in some cases) players recognize that if we build lists centered around Wulfen, losing them can destroy the chesion of the list and leave you very open to an easy defeat. It one of the reasons I brought up this topic It could be said as a low tier army, we need to come up with better and more cohesive alternatives to Wulfen. 

 

And so I present to you: Triple Gunships! One Stormfang, two Stormwolf's, and 2 units of Wulfen.  Expensive? Sure.  But hits hard, transports our melee threat, moderately hard to kill (gets harder if you get T1 and get some spells off with a Rune Priest to pop Cloaked by the Storm), and is psychologically damaging.  

 

Each ship is 14W T7 3+ and -1 to Hit in Supersonic.  Add the cover spell and stratagem for 2+ and -2 to Hit.  Helfrost/Bolters/Lascannons give you options for shooting.  The Speed of the ships mean you can put them way back out of range of most things, but get them in range during your movement phase.  

 

 

Yeah, but once again that requires you going first. I've played that a bunch myself and it's probably the only half competitive way I've managed to play my pups. But it's only a gnats chuff if you go first and a flying pooh biscuit if you go second. The other weakness to it is of course the no boots on the ground rule. Which means you need a footslogging character to bring up the rear.

There are a fair few lists that can just strait up shoot 3 stormwolves/stormfang gunships out of the sky before you even do anything.

[Guest]

 

 

 

My last few games have been wulfen getting shot out of their stormwolf or failing their charge when they outflank. Meta is lots of shooting and standing in your deployment zone. Most opponents can see the wulfen coming a mile off. Also with the resurgence of marine based armies auspex scan will just strait up counters them when outflanking. 

 

They have an allergy to losing initiative if you deploy them. 

 

While they are certainly our strongest unit on paper, most of my opponents know that if they kill the wulfen they've basically won.

 

Very true. I think a majority of experienced (and in some cases) players recognize that if we build lists centered around Wulfen, losing them can destroy the chesion of the list and leave you very open to an easy defeat. It one of the reasons I brought up this topic It could be said as a low tier army, we need to come up with better and more cohesive alternatives to Wulfen.

And so I present to you: Triple Gunships! One Stormfang, two Stormwolf's, and 2 units of Wulfen.  Expensive? Sure.  But hits hard, transports our melee threat, moderately hard to kill (gets harder if you get T1 and get some spells off with a Rune Priest to pop Cloaked by the Storm), and is psychologically damaging.  

 

Each ship is 14W T7 3+ and -1 to Hit in Supersonic.  Add the cover spell and stratagem for 2+ and -2 to Hit.  Helfrost/Bolters/Lascannons give you options for shooting.  The Speed of the ships mean you can put them way back out of range of most things, but get them in range during your movement phase.

 

Yeah, but once again that requires you going first. I've played that a bunch myself and it's probably the only half competitive way I've managed to play my pups. But it's only a gnats chuff if you go first and a flying pooh biscuit if you go second. The other weakness to it is of course the no boots on the ground rule. Which means you need a footslogging character to bring up the rear.

There are a fair few lists that can just strait up shoot 3 stormwolves/stormfang gunships out of the sky before you even do anything.

My DG haulers chew through flyers I feel, and if not then missile/Las helbrutes do. Thing is that it might work for stormeyes local meta, others it may not. The reason tourney lists are so analyzed is that is sets a standard, and shows how some things can be abused. So some of you may have great luck with 3 stormwolves other not.

[Watcher]

 

 

The best units I used so far are the smash lord, smash battle leader, long fangs in a pod with 4 or 5 plasmacannons/leader plasma gun, 5 terminators 5 combiplasma, 3 shields 2 power fists and stormfang gunship. I don't often use wulfen cause they are too expensive and die really fast.. I prefer plasma termies who also pack some melee punch

I do a similar loadout. I run commonly run a mixed pack of combi-melta and combi plas termies. They tend to do quite well for themselves. I don't use plasmacannons however, I've found them to be unreliable in comparison to lascannons or going anti-infantry with heavy bolters. 

 

What do you use them for as a focus?

 

 

I used to play longfangs with lascannons as anti tank too... but i realised that they were too expensive and have very few shots which can do 1- 2 damage if you roll low on the D6 damage.

Plasma cannons on the other hand are cheaper (you always over charge thnx to build in reroll 1s ) and you always use keen senses and wolfs eye for reroll wounds. The reroll wounds really shines with lots of shots. So 5 D3 with 2 damage shots are always better than 4 shots with D6  damage  against any target (even 8 toughness) with reroll wounds. 

 

The math seems to make the point. I had completely forgotten plasma cannons were D3. Currently, I'm running split squads of Lascannons and Heavy Bolters and they've been doing well.

[Watcher]

 

 

 

 

My last few games have been wulfen getting shot out of their stormwolf or failing their charge when they outflank. Meta is lots of shooting and standing in your deployment zone. Most opponents can see the wulfen coming a mile off. Also with the resurgence of marine based armies auspex scan will just strait up counters them when outflanking. 

 

They have an allergy to losing initiative if you deploy them. 

 

While they are certainly our strongest unit on paper, most of my opponents know that if they kill the wulfen they've basically won.

Very true. I think a majority of experienced (and in some cases) players recognize that if we build lists centered around Wulfen, losing them can destroy the chesion of the list and leave you very open to an easy defeat. It one of the reasons I brought up this topic It could be said as a low tier army, we need to come up with better and more cohesive alternatives to Wulfen.

And so I present to you: Triple Gunships! One Stormfang, two Stormwolf's, and 2 units of Wulfen.  Expensive? Sure.  But hits hard, transports our melee threat, moderately hard to kill (gets harder if you get T1 and get some spells off with a Rune Priest to pop Cloaked by the Storm), and is psychologically damaging.  

 

Each ship is 14W T7 3+ and -1 to Hit in Supersonic.  Add the cover spell and stratagem for 2+ and -2 to Hit.  Helfrost/Bolters/Lascannons give you options for shooting.  The Speed of the ships mean you can put them way back out of range of most things, but get them in range during your movement phase.

 

Yeah, but once again that requires you going first. I've played that a bunch myself and it's probably the only half competitive way I've managed to play my pups. But it's only a gnats chuff if you go first and a flying pooh biscuit if you go second. The other weakness to it is of course the no boots on the ground rule. Which means you need a footslogging character to bring up the rear.

There are a fair few lists that can just strait up shoot 3 stormwolves/stormfang gunships out of the sky before you even do anything.

My DG haulers chew through flyers I feel, and if not then missile/Las helbrutes do. Thing is that it might work for stormeyes local meta, others it may not. The reason tourney lists are so analyzed is that is sets a standard, and shows how some things can be abused. So some of you may have great luck with 3 stormwolves other not.

 

I would agree. Current meta-lists are either the extreme (max flyers etc.) or hard counter lists with a lot of A-T. With our army being bottom tier, its hard to find that happy medium or play effectively against said lists.

[TiguriusX]

 

I would agree. Current meta-lists are either the extreme (max flyers etc.) or hard counter lists with a lot of A-T. With our army being bottom tier, its hard to find that happy medium or play effectively against said lists.

 

 

 

 

The "balanced" armies don't tend to give me any trouble

 

My toughest tournament opponents are the ones that take a concept and max out (i.e., spam) the units they can take to make use of the concept

 

The target saturation means even though you may have a tool to deal with something....you can't deal with all of them at once

 

Being an elite army with low body count we have no room for error and if your opponent can remove your key unit we usually don't have a backup to do the same job nearly as effectively

[Watcher]

Do you think the new Primaris (Infiltrators etc.) allow us to compete on a higher level? With standard marines slowly being invalidated, I cant help but think the more Primaris we take, perhaps the better?

 

Take this of course with a grain of salt, but as we don't have much versatility outside of Grey Hunters/Wolf Guard and Wulfen, perhaps more Primaris centered combos (much like White Scars or Iron Hands) would help? Of course we lack the same power stratagem wise (and we still cant take Centurions ), but it may be worth considering.

 

Anyone gone through this process?

[Guest]

Do you think the new Primaris (Infiltrators etc.) allow us to compete on a higher level? With standard marines slowly being invalidated, I cant help but think the more Primaris we take, perhaps the better?

 

Take this of course with a grain of salt, but as we don't have much versatility outside of Grey Hunters/Wolf Guard and Wulfen, perhaps more Primaris centered combos (much like White Scars or Iron Hands) would help? Of course we lack the same power stratagem wise (and we still cant take Centurions <_<), but it may be worth considering.

 

Anyone gone through this process?

I have been playing only primaris with a dash of Wulfen units. The problem with primaris units is the lack of melee options. I want to get into the thick of it but I am prevented from doing that due to primaris can get wrecked in melee.

[Watcher]

 

Do you think the new Primaris (Infiltrators etc.) allow us to compete on a higher level? With standard marines slowly being invalidated, I cant help but think the more Primaris we take, perhaps the better?

 

Take this of course with a grain of salt, but as we don't have much versatility outside of Grey Hunters/Wolf Guard and Wulfen, perhaps more Primaris centered combos (much like White Scars or Iron Hands) would help? Of course we lack the same power stratagem wise (and we still cant take Centurions ), but it may be worth considering.

 

Anyone gone through this process?

I have been playing only primaris with a dash of Wulfen units. The problem with primaris units is the lack of melee options. I want to get into the thick of it but I am prevented from doing that due to primaris can get wrecked in melee.

 

I have definitely shared my struggle with that. My largest benefactor in battles is having a 3+ invuln. in as many of my units as possible. Do we have any methods of making our Primaris more durable or giving them invuln/FnP's ouside of Rune Priests?

 

Things I can think of on the spot would be running them with a Logan/Arjac blob or popping a Saga of the Bear near them.

 

Would love to see what strats can be done.

[Karhedron]

I have been playing only primaris with a dash of Wulfen units. The problem with primaris units is the lack of melee options. I want to get into the thick of it but I am prevented from doing that due to primaris can get wrecked in melee.

MSU Intercessors with Power Fists might be interesting in the this area. Take the ABR variant and Advance them up the field quickly. The lack of melee options on Infiltrators and Incursors is disappointing. On the other hand, Eliminators make up for our lack of Sniper Scouts quite well.

[Watcher]

With the bonuses we can get to attacks from Shock Assault, there becomes more advantage in running them as 10-man units. I've been seeing this a lot in ITC formats (larger squads means more screens and length to reroll auras) and it gets pretty devastating due to the weight of dice over higher damage. If they aren't wiped, they'll hit back hard. Even a MSU squad of Intercessors can pump out 16 attacks on charge (Wulfen stone: 21, +SotH= 26 attacks. Although this is sacrificing buffs for Intercessors to do well that would be better used in a squad of WG or Wulfen). What have you been fighting with these?

 

Running a power fist in such a squad is definitely beneficial, especially due to Space Wolves +1 to Hit, that PF will be hitting on 3's and more than often killing on 2's (Infantry). Although I do think its use is situational.

 

Coming full circle though, the only Space Wolves lists used in a few GT's that came out on top were two soup lists with the only Space Wolves element being... you guessed it, THREE squads of Wulfen and a Wolf Priest w/jump pack. 

 

Does anyone have list formats they've been using competitively with a variety of Primaris? (I'd be interested even if there is Wulfen, although this is about not using them as the backbone )