Musings on list building and units that can best be described as “the middle child.”
-A Big Fat Floater.
Remember list building? I don’t mean net-listing, but really sitting with the codex and thinking about what you are putting into your force? I do. When I started playing regularly, this was my favorite aspect of the hobby. My first 40K army was the imperial guard (great choice I know), and by far my favorite thing to do with the old green codex from third edition was try to figure out which way to tweak a vet squad or a platoon’s load-out to make it a more effective part of my army. This was long before I had internet in my home, and when I did get it I wasn’t 56King my way into forums about warhammer, rather, I was looking up grainy Jpegs of Liv Tyler’s nipples, pre-LOTR. Gotta have priorities right?
Nowadays, the hive mind of the internet has dissected the game down to a mathematical formula and some of my unit choices would be soundly laughed at by some of the most prominent online groups. Here’s the thing… I’m not really all that worried about winning the game. If I painted a model that I liked putting together and it gets to have dice rolled on it then I am happy. If the unit gets blown off the table, I’m okay with this because I put the unit there because I liked the way the unit fit in my army as opposed to because it would statistically help me win. I feel the same about several units that went from reasonable to pyrovore level choices in games. I loved the storyline behind wolf scouts, assault marines, Erasmus Tycho, khorne berserkers, furiosos, genestealers and tyranid warriors.
These units represent what brought me into the hobby and while they are not the most competitive I would be remiss to not include them into a list that I bring to a gaming day with my group. I enjoy the modeling aspect and the fluff aspect of the game, If I wanted to play something competitively I’d play chess or enter one of those “eat as many Cannolis as you can” contests. I’d be pretty set there. I guess what I am saying is “dare to be non-competitive if it fits the design you desire for your army.” It’s a bit of a mouthful and I’m trying to pare it down.
As this is a space wolf blog and I am a space wolf player, I want to discuss two units that often are overlooked in our codex for much more “competitive” units: wolf scouts and dreadnaughts. Both of these units occupy elite slots, which is a premium position in the codex. The units are in direct competition with wolfguard terminators, power armored wolf guard, lone wolves and iron priests.
The wolf scouts are a BS4/WS4 scout unit with access to a variety of weapon options, camo-cloaks, and benefit from the standard infiltrate, scout, and move through cover that all space marine scout units benefit from. Up until the 2015 codex Dark Angel and codex Space Marine releases, the wolves had exclusive access to BS 4 scouts. In the game universe, the codex compliant marines used neophyte marines in scout units as reconnaissance elements, whereas the space wolves use veteran marines to fill the scout role and attack the enemy rear.
In tabletop terms this amounted to a better chance to hit when shooting and in close combat. The wolf scouts have the counter attack USR, which can allow them an additional attack when charged. This may be handy if the wolf scout unit finds itself charged when attempting to complete their mission in the enemy backfield.
Now that codex compliant marines have access to WS4/BS4 scouts, the benefits of the wolf scout units being “veterans” are somewhat lessened. We can see they have greater access to the armory than the standard scouts do, with the ability to select from melta guns, flamers, plasma guns, and add up to two plasma pistols in a five man squad. While some will argue that plasma can be a detriment given the “gets hot!” rule, I think I am willing to take a chance on it for the chance of putting between three and four Str. 7 AP2 shots into some rear vehicle armor or 2+ save units. I’m not really going to address sniper rifles because we know how the weapon works and the likely effect of it being useful. While I love the look of the models armed with long rifles, and I am thoroughly entertained when they DO manage to knock out some high value target in what can best be described as a “Viking varmint hunt” The unit becomes a static shooting unit rather than something that can cause some havoc in the enemy backfield.
The dreadnaught are a little less maligned than the scouts, primarily due to their access to high strength, high rate of fire weapons and reasonable front and side armor. The space wolf specific dreadnaught rules are not too different from the codex compliant chapters as far as a vanilla dreadnaught with the exception of weapon options and the codex compliant marines getting access to the ironclad variant. Where the space wolves’ dreads really shine is in the venerable dreadnaught rules. They gain access to frost-ray weaponry, as well as a great axe and a giant storm shield combination that makes the model significantly more survivable.
Close combat with a walker is generally a death sentence for the unit unless you very carefully choose your target. A dedicated assault unit such as terminators with SS/TH, and units with access to high strength, low AP grenade attacks (Melta bombs, and to an extent krak grenades) can seriously wreck a dread because of the low number of attacks a dreadnaught can make in close combat. While the Dreadnaught close combat weapon available to many dreadnaught variants will kill outright most standard infantry, likely causing a morale check, each glancing blow or penetrating blow with reduce the dreadnaughts hull-points and possibly immobilize or destroy it.
The space wolf venerable dread has access to a very nice shield/great axe combination that provides it with a generous invulnerable save and a fairly nasty CC option. While this set up will reduce your ability to shoot with the specific model, its survivability increases significantly and allows you a good chance to survive long enough to get into combat. As far as I am concerned, this is one of the better builds for the venerable dreadnaught for the wolves. While I am a fan of the new frost-ray weapons, the ability to increase the survivability of a cantankerous old washing machine with bipolar syndrome is worth the lost shooting.
Regardless of how you feel about the dreads, they compete with some of the better units in the book and they ultimately have three hull points, which can be stripped fairly quickly by high volume, medium strength fire. This makes them a risky proposition given the added cost of the pod, weapons, and any upgrades you may give them, especially if you want to include a lot of terminator units or wish to send the lone wolves out.
I will as a rule, take at least one or two if I am also deploying Bjorn and/or murderfang… mostly because it reminds me of old war vets at a VFW post hanging out and complaining about kids on their lawn… very large metallic, heavily armed old men.
Alfred "El Lobo Cubano"