Thunderwolf army

Well with the recent improvement of characters buying Wulf mounts I thought I might write something up on them as I try and make a list around them. By making the characters base S and T of 5, Thunderhammers become S10 and ID is much less of a worry. Insane. Moving on.

Why are Thunderwolfs so good? For 50 pts you get a T5/W2/A4/3+Sv/Rending model. Not bad. They are calvary. Very bloody good. Let's recap what calvary does:

Move 6"
Fleet D6"
Assault 12"

Bikes are initially faster and more durable with the 3+ cover save but once these units get rolling, it's hard to stop them. With such a long charge range it is also possible to tie up multiple units a bit more easily as you have more leeway (make sure you follow the assault rules please...).

Now these units bring a very mobile but foot element to the SWolf army so this will most likely be the theme of the army. Taking up all 3 FA slots with Thunderwolfs also impacts the SWolf ability to saturate the board with armor (no Speeders). Furthermore they are only WS and I 4. They are going to chomp through minor units and decent cc guys due to their high T and good save but good CC units with high I should generally try and be avoided.

So how to equip them? As I said, these guys are still going to get trumped by super-cc units like Command Bikers, Nob Bikers and Councils unless we start dropping points into them. We don't want to do this so we'll prob stick with 3 and maybe 4 members. They all have rending base (and 6A on the charge...wow) so not everyone needs a special weapon. S5 rending also gives them fair anti-tank but we should take advantage of their base S5 and improve this with a TH. This also lets it really threaten MCs reliably whilst keeping its anti-horde going. Remember we don't have to use the TH against gribblies (though we don't gain the +1A as we have taken away the pistol or CCW).

So 3xThunderwolfs w/TH is 180 pts. We'd like to have 3 different models, too. Therefore we'll take meltabombs on one. So that's 3x185 for 555 pts.

Next up is Troops. We don't want Rhinos or Rbacks as we can't really spam them but Drop Pods are an option to keep up with the Thunders. So let's try 2 squads of 10 with dual meltagun in a Drop Pod and mark of the wulfen. This is a decent cc squad and can do something on the turn it drops whilst also giving something for the opponent to worry about as your Thunderwolfs run across the table. So that's 205x2 = 410pts.

So far thats 965 pts and we've got a core set up. Now we need a 3rd drop Pod obviously but we'll get to that later. Next up we'll get some more calvary units to run alongside the Thunderwolfs. I really like Lone Wolves but I don't want to sink too many points into my HQs so will take some Iron Priests on mounts. They come with a free TH which is nice but are only W1. Therefore we should take some 15pt wounds called cyberwolves. IPriest with mount and 4 cyberwolfs is 155 pts. We'll take 2 for 310 pts.

We're at 1275 now and still need an HQ and another Pod somewhere. Let's see what we have so far:

Iron Priest w/Thunderwolf Mount and 4x cyberwolfs

Iron Priest w/Thunderwolf Mount and 4x cyberwolfs

10x Grey Hunters w/2meltaguns, Mark of the Wulfen and Drop Pod

10x Grey Hunters w/2meltaguns, Mark of the Wulfen and Drop Pod

3x Thunderwolfs w/Thunder Hammer, meltabombs

3x Thunderwolfs w/Thunder Hammer, meltabombs

3x Thunderwolfs w/Thunder Hammer, meltabombs

We've got a pretty decent in your face army which is quick and can block some movement with Pods and we've got 725 pts left.

First let's see what we can do for the other Pod. We'll try a Wolf Guard unit. To make the unit effective outside of just using it for a pod we'll take 5 WG and give one TDA w/a CML. So that's 170 pts. Now this unit can either start onthe table or be podded in to fire a CML into rear armor but that seems a hefty price simply for that. If we take out a GH in one of the squads and add in a combi-melta and MotW to a WG we can improve a GH squad's combat prowess for +10 pts overall.

We now have 530 pts left to spend and still need an HQ. Canis Wolfborn is most likely the best buy in keeping up with the army style. It's cheaper than anything you could make in the Wolf Lord section and turns Fenrisian Wolfs into Troops which we can make use of. So for now we'll put him in our list taking our total to 1655. Running out of points here.

Still have a nice solid base there but lacking a bit in scoring. We could take another GH squad but we would have to re-work our Pod numbers again and I don't like too many pods as they are too easy to counter. So with our new Wolfkin saga we'll take some puppies. Whilst these don't score they give us a lot more bodies on the table, screen the Thunderwolfs and are beasts (aka calvary). 2 full squads sets us back 240 pts and gives us 30 more beasts but we've only got 105 pts left, certainly not enough for more Thunderwolfs which is what I would of liked!

Well we need some psy defense so let's add a Rune Priest to the Wolf Guard squad. I like him with Chooser and Saga of the Beastslayer. Chooser screws up all infiltrating and gives the Priest a nice BS5 whilst Beastslayer helps out against those tough targets. This puts us over 15 pts so we'll drop a puppy from each squad. Since we are dropping in I think Living Lightning and Jaws of the World Wolf are our best bets here though Storm Caller might be a good investment, too.

So to recap:

Canis Wolfborn

Rune Priest w/Saga of the Beastslayer and Chooser of the Slain
Living Lightning and Jaws of the World Wolf

5x Wolf Guard w/Drop Pod
1 w/TDA and CML
1 w/Wulfen and combi-melta

Iron Priest w/Thunderwolf Mount and 4x cyberwolfs

Iron Priest w/Thunderwolf Mount and 4x cyberwolfs

10x Grey Hunters w/2meltaguns, Mark of the Wulfen and Drop Pod

9x Grey Hunters w/meltagun, Mark of the Wulfen and Drop Pod

14x Fenrisian Wolves

14x Fenrisian Wolves

3x Thunderwolfs w/Thunder Hammer, meltabomb

3x Thunderwolfs w/Thunder Hammer, meltabomb

3x Thunderwolfs w/Thunder Hammer, meltabomb

Total: 1999 pts
48 beasts
25 infantry (all 3+ saves bar one)
3 pods

Not bad. The army is in your face quickly though we don't have the ability to really drop two empty pods on T1 (the GH will have to footslog a long way whilst the WG can at least shoot from afar). The anti-infantry is rather ridiculus and foot armies will fold rather quickly. Anti-armor is abit lacking but every unit excepting the puppies are very capable. The problem with much of this capability is most of it is close combat oriented. Avoid dreadnoughts please!

Thoughts?