We’ve had a lot of articles lately on comp and army list e-mails, so before I go away for the weekend (yes I’m going away, leave me be) I thought it would be nice to give the most loyal readers a nugget. Whether or not it’s chicken or gold, meh! Several days ago I started to look at Hybrid Wolves, the new ‘it’ list. In this post we looked at the basic foundation blocks of most competitive Wolf lists: Long Fangs and Grey Hunters. What these units provide is cheap and flexible long-ranged firepower and a midfield presence which can run around MSU style and provide combat support, meltagun/flamer fire and trundle around in a pillbox (Rhino) or gunboat (Razorback). What you do with Grey Hunters often defines the rest of your list and how it operates. Let’s take a look at the rest of the Hybrid Wolf army now.
Since we’ve already used our Heavy Support and generally most of our Troop slots (unless using big squads) on Long Fangs and Grey Hunters, we need to use Elites, Fast Attack and HQs to supplement our force and give it an identity. A quick note: ISTs are a viable choice to supplement Grey Hunters and be a cheap double special weapon option to hijack Rhinos or simply hang around. It’s also important to remember we generally use one Elite slot to grab some Wolf Guard for our Grey Hunters and any other squads we may want and Long Fangs are also capable of taking Razorbacks for more firepower/mobility. So what options do we have? Rune Priests, WL/WGBL on TWC, TWC, Wolf Scouts, Dreadnoughts, Lone Wolves, Land Speeders and Attack Bikes are all highly viable options. How do you decide what you want though?
Here is where your Grey Hunters and deciding what you want your army list to do will help in picking. If you’ve gone for a more aggressive stance with Grey Hunters in Rhinos (especially maxed out), combat units such as Lone Wolves, TWC (inc. WL and WGBL), etc. might be better whilst a more shooty stance with MSU Grey Hunters in LasPlas RBacks will appreciate more ranged firepower such as Rifledreads, Typhoons or Rune Priests. However, all lists can take advantage of units such as Speeders and Wolf Scouts who are able to disrupt your opponent’s deployment and movement through deepstriking, behind enemy lines and infiltrating. What these units really allow is a way to force your opponent to re-consider their deployment for only a couple of units. If they do so, the rest of your army can often can an advantage and if they do not, these units have the potential to be very annoying. What’s important about these units is they are not so powerful or numerous that it’s easy for your opponent to defend against them (i.e. pure Air-cav IG) and can provide your army with some extra reach and utility on the board.
What is also great about Wolf lists is they can take their counter-assault units built into their army. Whether this is simply Grey Hunters with Wolf Guard and multiple combat weapons or actual combat beasties like TWC (inc. Lord and WBGL) or Lone Wolves, even non-combat oriented Space Wolf lists are very capable in combat. For 100 points a Space Wolf commander can have two TWC hiding amongst his lines waiting to pounce with a 24” charge range and slam 12 S5 rending attacks into whatever needs it. Ya, 100 points. All the while you can be suffering the ranged firepower of LasPlas Rbacks, Dreadnoughts, Rune Priests and Long Fangs whilst having Grey Hunters and Land Speeders camp midfield and Scouts in your backfield (though this obviously a very mixed list). An important part of Hybrid Wolves is having those couple of extra combat units which are pretty cheap but can run out and give your opponent a very bloody nose. You want to have a stranglehold on your side of the board.
So, with these concepts in mind, let’s design a 1750 Space Wolves Hybrid list.
We will start off with some firepower. 3 units of Long Fangs with 4 missiles and a LasPlas Razorback will set us back (115+75)*3 = 570 points and gives us 12 missiles across 6 targets, 3 lascannons, 3 TL-pguns and 3 tanks. I’d like to go for a more midfield presence so 5 Grey Hunters with a meltagun, and Wolf Guard with combi-melta in a Rhino should do the trick. Let’s go with 4 of these and also buy a LasPlas Rback for the Wolf Guard. I’ve gone for this setup as I get 4 pillboxes + an extra LasPlas Razorback for armor saturation purposes and can control midfield a bit better. (75+5+35+18+5)*4+75 = 627 so we’ve already crossed the 1000 point barrier (1197) without any Fast Attack, solid Elites or HQ. We’ll take a Rune Priest as our HQ w/LL and...tempest + chooser setting us back another 110. Running out of points quickly here! Wolf scouts w/Meltagun + Wolf Guard and combi-melta, power fist would be some great distracters and not too expensive. They will really help out in my opponent’s backfield so will take two of these at (85+18+25+5)*2 = 266 points. We’re sitting on 1573 points here. I’ve opted not to go for Dreadnoughts as 4 LasPlas + 12 missiles from Fangs + Priest should be some decent ranged firepower in a pinch whilst my Grey Hunters and Scouts can secure midfield (or scouts can run disruption). Without any combat weapons though my Grey Hunters aren’t that scary in midfield so let’s add some TWC support. A TWC w/Wolf Claw costs 70 points and this sucker gets 5 attacks on the charge with re-roll misses @ S5. Taken. Two of these drags out points total up to 1713, time for some fiddling. By changing one of the GH squads to a simple 5 man and upgrading the Rhino to LasPlas we spend 7 points leaving us with 20 to screw around with but this leaves our midfield a bit bare. The easiest use of those 20 points is to stick them in as Power Weapons on two of the GH squads (through Wolf Guard) but with only 3 squads mech’d in midfield...
That’s 1750 for you :P, let’s hear your thoughts on the list in general (seen in full below). Is it too weak in midfield and too strong at shooting with extra LasPlas? What would you do to take this to 2000 points?
HQ –
Rune Priest w/Lightning, Tempest, Chooser of the Slain
Elites –
Wolf Guard (seen in attached squads), Razorback w/Lascannon and Twin-linked plasma gun
5x Wolf Scouts w/meltagun, Wolf Guard w/combi-melta, Powerfist
5x Wolf Scouts w/meltagun, Wolf Guard w/combi-melta, Powerfist
Troops –
5x Grey Hunters w/meltagun, Wolf Guard w/combi-melta, Rhino
5x Grey Hunters w/meltagun, Wolf Guard w/combi-melta, power weapon, Rhino
5x Grey Hunters w/meltagun, Wolf Guard w/combi-melta, power weapon, Rhino
5x Grey Hunters w/meltagun, Razorback w/Lascannon and Twin-linked plasma gun
Fast Attack –
Thunder Wolf Cavalry w/Wolf Claw
Thunder Wolf Cavalry w/Wolf Claw
Heavy Support –
5x Long Fangs w/4x Missile Launchers, Razorback w/Lascannon and Twin-linked plasma gun
5x Long Fangs w/4x Missile Launchers, Razorback w/Lascannon and Twin-linked plasma gun
5x Long Fangs w/4x Missile Launchers, Razorback w/Lascannon and Twin-linked plasma gun
Totals: 1750 points
8 tanks
51 infantry + 2 beasts
6 pinkments:
Looks fun, you made a teenie weenie mistake on the cot of the powerfists for the scouts, they're 20 points instead of 25. You actually have the points to put a 3rd powerweapon on the first Rhino squad.
I would miss my skimmers though, 3+ dodge and all that..
Attack bikes are not an option for wolves, because you can only get them from bloodclaw bikers of focused badness.
For 2k, I'd add a third squad of cav, and make all three units 2 strong each.
K first of all, isn't this a copy and paste from steleks 2k list? Not very original ;D! 2nd, please check your post before posting, had to read it twice to understand what half of it meant.
Now there's a lot of baffle here and not enough explanation on what your doing with these units, so bare that in mind next time.
Rune priest powers, lolwut? Tempest? Gtfo lol. get jaws for sniping those tervigons & nobs. Get murderous huricane to dictate the battlefield. Remember, its effects are unlimited range according to the Space Wolves FAQ, so if you want to slow down a unit, cast murderous huricane from 90 inches away ;).
P.weps suck, take wolf claws. You have a combi-melta, so why take a one handed weapon when you don't benefit from the extra attack, which is really the only point in taking a p.wep over anything else. Take a wolf claw, they rock. If needed, drop chooser for them, or as stated, you have 10pts spare from overcosting your scouts.
Apart from that its similar to what my army looks like at the mo, but bare in mind, not every tourney is like the Nova. This list was built with VP's in mind, not KP's. MSU's WILL fail by an incompetant player with this list.
@grav; ya didn't have codex on me. You could either drop in the 3rd power weapon or as Killswitch mentions later Wolf Claws could work too. With only 3 squads securing midfield the 3x power weapons might be a better bet. Cue someone running mathammer.
@Vt2; will edit that, cheers.
@killswitch; No, good job for reading. Excuse any typos but a really fast read-through didn't pick any up. Could you point them out?
Jaws is only good against good armies against Tyranids for dropping Tervigons/T-Fexes. I’d rather take Tempest which affects skimmer armies (Eldar, DE, Tau + IG & SM), Jumper armies and deep-striking armies to just Tyranids especially due to the amount of missiles SW can put down. Sure it’s nice for it’s sniping ability but limited by 24” and the chances are pretty low anyway. Tempest and Hurricane have much better utility. And gtfo yourself, 18” is 18”. Oh it’s out of range, FAQ does not override the range.
Correct re wolf claws and see above, doing points from memory causes issues and since there are points to spare, they can be done. Losing chooser loses a lot of utility from the Priest, pass.
Oh right, MSU is only a VP thing, silly me… right. Hybrid Wolves were around before Nova. Stelek popularised it and did well with it, good for him. Want something different? Drop out the Scouts for Dreads. Compress the TWC to 1 squad and add some Speeders. Increase number of LasPlas. Run Lone Wolves instead, etc. Good to see you understood the point of the post. MSU works in 5th edition not because of VP but because of how the game works. Thanks for playing 5th edition.
I can't see in the FAQ where it says Murderous Hurricane, unlimited range...
Q. Does Murderous Hurricane require the power
to hit or wound its target to affect them?
A. No, a targeted unit is affected by Murderous
Hurricane even if the power fails to hit or
wound.
Q. Is the unit affected by Murderous Hurricane
for the entirety of their turn or just the following
Movement phase?
A. The unit treats terrain as difficult and
dangerous for the entirety of the next player
turn.
Is there another MH entry I have missed?
Being out of range is an "auto-miss", but since the power affects even if it misses... I see where he's getting unlimited range, but I only play it as 18.
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