The Stormwolf allows you to get a maxed-out pack of Blood Claws and Independent Character (most likely a Wolf Priest to mitigate the WS 3 of the Blood Claws) into a vehicle that has capacity and an assault ramp that acts as a Dedicated Transport, where the best we could hope for in previous iterations of the Space Wolves's rules was yielding a vital Heavy Support slot and dropping them into a Land Raider Crusader. On top of that, it's got a nice complement of weaponry, enabling it to counter other flyers, tanks, and infantry.
So, conventional wisdom states that the Stormwolf is where it's at. It'll deliver your Blood Claws, provide good anti-armor, anti-aircraft, and anti-personnel support fire, and Bob's your uncle, whereas the Stormfang has a meager transport capacity of six models, doesn't have the assault ramp, costs five points more base, and still needs upgraded weapons (twin-linked lascannons and multi-meltas, for a grand total of 35 more points) to truly excel as a flying tank. That's not an incorrect perspective. There's actually a lot of wisdom to that view.
However, I think that view sells the Stormfang short.
Flip to pages 62 and 63 of the Codex, and you'll start to see how (with the utilisation of that limited transport capacity) the Stormfang might just be potentially a better choice.
Up until this most recent iteration of Codex: Space Wolves hit the street, the biggest gap in their toolkit lay in its ability to address flyers, which have become an integral part of force construction since their arrival in the core rules of 40K.
Sure, if you had the access, time, patience, and permissive local gaming environment, the Storm Eagle and Fire Raptor were available, or you could ally in Storm Ravens or some other army's flyers, or pin your hopes to an Aegis Defense Line or other fortification, but within Codex Space Wolves itself, there was no true answer to flyers.
Pair with Iron Priest & Servitors
Now, the game has changed, and despite the twin-linked helfrost turret and transport capacity of the Stormwolf, I'd argue the Stormfang, properly supported, is a serious and thus-far-neglected game-changer for the Wolves. And the reasons for this are right there on pages 62 and 63: the Iron Priest and his thrall servitors, and could potentially make the Stormfang one of the best flyers in the game, for the meager addition of 85 points.
An Iron Priest with three servitors restores a hull point or fixes a destroyed weapon each turn on a 2+, basically conferring an enhanced It Will Not Die 2+ upon a vehicle he is in base-to-base contact with or embarked upon. Taking Jink, Armor 12 all-around, Ceramite Plating, and three hull points into account, that's taking a pretty durable flyer and giving it some serious second chances. Potentially, the Stormfang ends up being more durable than a pack of Long Fangs with the Iron Priest and his retinue embarked, and with Power of the Machine Spirit, there's still a version of Split Fire available. Plus, because it's a flyer, it can directly engage other aircraft with its heavy weaponry, whereas Long Fangs can only do so with flakk missiles, which come at a premium price-point for a one-wound model in a squad with no real ablative wounds. And the Helfrost Destructor either provides Lance or Large Blast, depending on its mode of fire, adding some seriously threatening versatility to optional twin-linked lascannon and multi-melta upgrades.
The Stormfang avoids the principal weakness of the Stormwolf. It need never drop into hover mode to deliver its cargo, because its cargo is what keeps it so durable. Sure, if there's an objective or a vehicle that needs to be tended to by the Iron Priest, you could disembark him and his servitors to do so, but for the majority of the game, you want that flyer zooming and engaging high value targets it's uniquely qualified to address. And point-for-point, turn-for-turn, that means the Stormfang is potentially more effective on the tabletop than the Stormwolf, whose pricier, melee-oriented cargo must be disembarked to begin to earn its points back, leaving the flyer as a skimmer and much more vulnerable to ground fire that turn. With its large template, heavy armor-penetrating weapons, and the Iron Priest's ability to repair it mid-flight, the Stormfang is providing more bang for your buck every turn it's on the table.
Imagine a game where you've got two of these babies in a Wolves Unleashed detachment, coming on guaranteed in the second and third turns, possibly appearing on the enemy's flanks on a 6+. Wolves players who favor Land Speeders arriving via Deep Strike to kamikaze an enemy Super Heavy or other hard-to-kill unit might want to look here instead, as this potentially survives that first strike to conduct a second, possibly a third, and is harder to hit, harder to damage, and harder to destroy. True, the helfrost effect rarely will come into play, but a S 6 AP 3 (per FAQ; I know it said AP 2 on the foldout in the codex) Large Blast with the option to go S 8 AP 1 with Lance is nothing to snort at, in and of itself, particularly since it's not ordnance, so your other weapons won't have to snapfire. You're potentially removing whole squads of Guard/Tau-equivalent foot or leveling a multi-prong threat at squadrons of armor or a Super Heavy each turn your nose is pointed at the enemy. It's a flying, jinking, up-gunned Vindicator with a longer reach and more durability. Sure, it costs a bit, but it's cheaper than flying a Stormwolf into the teeth of the enemy's defenses to hopefully deliver that pack of Blood Claws and then having it and its pricey cargo become a flaming, bloody pile of scrap inches short of getting those Blood Claws stuck in.
So, for 85 points for the Iron Priest and his three minions, you can add technically give a 2+ It Will Not Die roll to a Stormfang. No need to upgrade them or have the Iron Priest pull out any special wargear. So, for 320 points, you have a gunship that with a threat radius of 48 inches (twin-linked lascannon) that just gets nastier closer in (twin-linked multi-meltas and helfrost destructor at 24"), which can shoot at two targets (via Power of the Machine Spirit).
Alternatively, if you want the extra range to "reach out and crush someone," save yourself the 15 points on the lascannon upgrade, and keep the two single-use stormstrike missiles. 72 inches in range mean that you'll be able to shoot pretty much anything on the board from anywhere, with Concussive effects to boot, with only a one-point drop in strength. Sure, you'll only be able to fire them twice, but how many rounds are you going to be on the table-top?
This is arguably the most durable aircraft in the game, and puts out enough firepower per turn that you might consider leaving the Fire Raptor at home sometimes. If you plan to use the Iron Priest and his servitors to claim a late-game objective, you could add two servitors (and take up the full six seats in the cargo hold of the Stormfang), and swap their servo-arms for heavy bolters, plasma cannons, or multi-meltas for an additional cost. It's really up to you and your play style.
- Josh