Monday, 4 October 2010
Pack Focus: Wolf Scouts - Memkel
Fluff
I have always loved the idea of Wolf Scouts - dark humoured, brutal and silent, sowing the seeds of havoc and confusion behind enemy lines. Peerless trackers and huntsmen, they strike where the enemy least expects them yet where they can do the most damage.
My scouts are led by a grizzled and brooding old Wolf Guard named Memkel, a master of fieldcraft, marksmanship and survival. He is my great company's master tracker and lead scout, Wolf Priests, Rune Priests and even the Wolf Lord deffering to his knowledge and experience of tracking when planning raids, ambushes or scouting missions. After finishing his aspirancy as a Blood Claw he was inducted straight into the Wolf Scouts, his cold demeanor fusing seamlessly with those of his new peers. After decades of murderous service to his company he was finally gifted the mantle of Wolf Guard after the infamous battle of Svarlbad wherein he and his squad infiltrated and destroyed 50% of a traitor guard artillery position that was hurling explosive murder down on his comrades in the snowblinding Hel valley below. After dealing with the initial traitor artillery he and his squad set about gutting the command bunker of the enemy position, going room to room with frag grenade and hunting knife before marking the remainder of the enemy guns for orbital bombardment.
Tactics
On the tabletop I like to stick with the fluff, my scouts almost always operating behind enemy lines in an attempt to get into the back of the enemy army. The squad typically packs in a melta gun with Memkel taking a combi melta, melta bombs and a power fist just to make sure that any tanks the squad comes into contact with get scrapped asap. It might seem a bit strange to take both melta bombs and a powerfist for a primary tank hunting unit but I've found that if there are no tanks around for me to melt there always seems to be an almost inexhaustable amount of infantry nearby waiting for a bout of fisticuffs. The melta bombs are only really ever used for land raiders (which anyone who plays against space marine players on a regular basis knows - they crop up a hell of a lot for such an expensive unit) or even walkers at a push.
Besides tank hunting I find that the unit plays a very good role in distraction. They're often seen as a kind of bogeyman unit, people get itchy when they know you have them in reserve and so play more cautiously. Then when they do come on its very common for an entire army to turn around and throw everything at them to gun them down. This is pretty awesome if you're packing a footslogging army as it gives your front line a free turn of movement in which to close with the enemy. As long as your scouts can take down their intended target before they get swamped they've usually made their points back.
Pack Focus
As I get more and more of my Space Wolf packs fully painted and based I'm going to start adding articles focussing on the different packs of my army. In these I want to include a few bits and pieces to do with why I chose them; from both fluffy and tactical viewpoints along with a few pictures. You'll have to forgive me for now for using a terrible camera phone to snap my minis with, I'm hoping to have a new camera in the next month or so so bare with me!
I'm hoping these focus posts give my army a more personal feel to it, these are Space Wolves after all and they're all about charisma and personality!
I'm hoping these focus posts give my army a more personal feel to it, these are Space Wolves after all and they're all about charisma and personality!
Thursday, 30 September 2010
Novelty Deployment shock troops
So after a pretty gruelling night my Space Wolves have walked away from two pretty bloody draws. Both 750 points, both capture and control games and both with crazy deep strike style deploying units giving me a right royal headache.
To my embarassment my first game against Imperial Fists was dominated by Darnath 'the tank' Lysander dropping into my line with 5 sternguard, breaking my nearest blood claws squad before marching around my deployment zone mullering everything in sight with his big meaty death hammer. Even though I completely respect the big yellow Jessie as a commander I'm strongly of the belief that he should have gone down to the mighty sons of Russ in hand to hand combat... 8 grey hunters, 10 fenrisian wolves and a dreadnought later and I was forced to rethink my position.
The second game was against nids. Now I'm no stranger to the be-tentacled freaks jumping on my shiny grey boys but usually I get a turn of shooting to thin them out, then counter attack gives me a decent edge. Today it was Ymgarls and boy do they hurt. Charging straight out of 'deep strike' is an absolute shock to the system, going into the game I was completely at a loss on how to deploy in order to minimise my casualties and hang on to my precious objective. In the end I chose to cluster my army centrally, meaning that any Ymgarls coming at me would have to face the threat of a full on space wolf counter attack. Initially this failed as the creeps skirted my castle formation, managing to get round one of my flanks to the juicy grey hunter goodness inside. Shamefully my boys broke as the stealers managed to get out enough hits to snipe my fisty wolf guard down. Even though I wiped up all the stealers in the end I found that the game just turned into a desperate assault brawl, me having to throw guys into the meatgrinder to try to regain control of the central ground.
I suppose the point I'm trying to make is that novelty deep strike/crazy deployment units have a real nasty habit of messing up my entire battle plan, forcing me to play reactively rather than taking control of the situation. The usual close proximity of deep striking sternies and hardass multi limbed bugs really limits the amount of tactical options you have. So I'm just wondering how to sidestep them. The two most obvious tactics seem to be:
a) pack your guys in transports (obvious but pricey at smaller games)
b) gamble with placing units in reserve (great in a perfect world where your whole army comes on at the same time, scary as hell when only one or two of your units show up isolated)
I'm going to attempt both of these in the coming weeks... the Ymgarl Drop Pod challenge has been thrown down!
To my embarassment my first game against Imperial Fists was dominated by Darnath 'the tank' Lysander dropping into my line with 5 sternguard, breaking my nearest blood claws squad before marching around my deployment zone mullering everything in sight with his big meaty death hammer. Even though I completely respect the big yellow Jessie as a commander I'm strongly of the belief that he should have gone down to the mighty sons of Russ in hand to hand combat... 8 grey hunters, 10 fenrisian wolves and a dreadnought later and I was forced to rethink my position.
The second game was against nids. Now I'm no stranger to the be-tentacled freaks jumping on my shiny grey boys but usually I get a turn of shooting to thin them out, then counter attack gives me a decent edge. Today it was Ymgarls and boy do they hurt. Charging straight out of 'deep strike' is an absolute shock to the system, going into the game I was completely at a loss on how to deploy in order to minimise my casualties and hang on to my precious objective. In the end I chose to cluster my army centrally, meaning that any Ymgarls coming at me would have to face the threat of a full on space wolf counter attack. Initially this failed as the creeps skirted my castle formation, managing to get round one of my flanks to the juicy grey hunter goodness inside. Shamefully my boys broke as the stealers managed to get out enough hits to snipe my fisty wolf guard down. Even though I wiped up all the stealers in the end I found that the game just turned into a desperate assault brawl, me having to throw guys into the meatgrinder to try to regain control of the central ground.
I suppose the point I'm trying to make is that novelty deep strike/crazy deployment units have a real nasty habit of messing up my entire battle plan, forcing me to play reactively rather than taking control of the situation. The usual close proximity of deep striking sternies and hardass multi limbed bugs really limits the amount of tactical options you have. So I'm just wondering how to sidestep them. The two most obvious tactics seem to be:
a) pack your guys in transports (obvious but pricey at smaller games)
b) gamble with placing units in reserve (great in a perfect world where your whole army comes on at the same time, scary as hell when only one or two of your units show up isolated)
I'm going to attempt both of these in the coming weeks... the Ymgarl Drop Pod challenge has been thrown down!
Wednesday, 29 September 2010
Obligatory first post!
This blog is intended a a brain-fart/dumping point for any 40k related ramblings that might pop into my head. I will mainly be talking Space Wolves related rubbish but will also likely talk about my beloved Salamanders and my foundling Storm Talons Space Marines.
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