Leman Russ (an unboxing)

What a legend, only primarch to have a tank named after him - what better accolade could the imperium bestow upon someone???  As a die-hard Space Wolves player and collector of course I have a soft spot for the big hairy brute, and I'll tell you what, I'm definitely looking forward to seeing what Forgeworld do when they get around to the Sacking of Tizca.

For some, I'm sure the abiding image of Leman Russ is the one below from the cover of Prospero Burns:

For me however, I think I'll always first think of the (very) old Leman Russ model that once was available from GW:

Wulfen in 6th?

A development in the saga of the Space Wolves that I sadly missed whileout of the hobby was the Eye of Terror campaign that GW ran during 3rd edition, and the addition of Wulfen and the 13th Company army list.

How cool are Wulfen, seriously.  Space Wolves that have lost their rag, been subsumed by the wolf within and now exist in a semi-feral state, chasing the forces of Chaos over 10,000 years and throughout the Eye of Terror.  You just know that Chaos is fleeing terrified that these guys might one day catch up and give them a serious kicking.

It helps of course that the models are some of the nicest GW ever made.

Wolf Guard in 6th

In 5th, it was a no-brainer to take a Wolf Guard to lead a squad, and of course the only way to arm them was to give them a power fist and combi-melta.  However, with the advent of 6th and challenges in close combat, that Wolf Guard choice involves a lot more thought.  Now, I'm not exactly a tactical genius, but I'm going to try and consider a few of the possibilities you may face, and what kind of weapon options you may want to take.

With the new rules, you can't pick out a character that has joined a squad when in combat, so the provision for a power fist isn't quite as important.  Couple this with the greater ease in attaching a grenade to a vehicle/walker now and there is even less reason to take a power fist at all in your squad.  As far as a challenge is concerned, what is most important about the opponent you are facing is Initiative, and I'm going to split things up into whether a Wolf Guards Initiative of 4 is greater than the character you will be in a challenge with, or if it is equal or less, and labelling the likely loadout you may want to use too.

They're behind you...

After a game a few weeks back when my wolf-scouts were stars of the show again, a guy down at the local club challenged me to come up with a 1750 list with as much outflank in it as possible (limited to the SW codex and the models I own).   

I've only managed to get in 2 games with it so far, but I'm quite enjoying playing it as it is somewhat different and it confuses players as they aren't sure how to deal with it.  I thought I'd post it up here and a few thoughts on it, to see what others thought of it.

Defence of Vercote Hive - Wolf v Tyranid Battle Report

I thought I might try something a little different with this battle report, maybe people will like them, maybe not, but I like the idea of trying to bring a little more personality to my games.  (I'll point out now that I started writing this before the release of Thousand Sons, Prospero Burns and Battle for the Fang so the style is pretty different to most of the current Space Wolves fiction.)  Let me know if you like it or not...

  "That is a fell-wind, do you smell it brother?"  

Njärv stood, his nostrils flaring as he drew great draughts of air into his lungs.  Surveying the outskirts of the hive from his vantage point, he could sense that all wasn't right, not only by sniffing the air as it gusted across the crater strewn landscape, but in a tremor that seemed to be rising up out of the earth and into his body, as if the ground itself was trembling in fear.

  "Aye, and one I recognise far too well.  I remember this foul thrall-stench from Ahmrads Hope, and that day we barely held Eden's Gate from the xeno."

Thogard knelt down, drawing a handful of carved bones from a worn hide pouch at his belt and tossed them onto the earth, watching as they tumbled and how they landed.  A frown creased his heavy brow,  

  "Not good, not good at all.  There is something more to this, something other than the usual interference caused by the wyrm, something powerful awaits and this world feels it in its bones, its spirit is restless."  

Gathering up the runes, Thogard stood and turned to one of the Wolf Guard gathered around the two Rune Priests,  

  "Gather your pack-mates, and awake the spirits of your Rhinos, we'll join battle within the hour if I read the winds correctly.  The wolf spirits will be with you."

Contemptor Pattern Dreadnought

So happy and yet so gutted!

Forgeworld have just announced the release of their new Contemptor Pattern Dreadnought.  I am so happy about this for a very specific reason.

Bjorn!  A Wolf Guard at the time of Russ, who when too injured was encased in a Dreadnought sarcophagous against his express will in the first 1000 years after the Heresy.  I have wished to have a model of the old style dreadnoughts (for those of you that remember them from Rogue Trader days) to represent Bjorn but the old ones are far too small and flimsy, and I'm not good enough to convert one.  Now, finally, we have one and I think I'm going to have to get one.  I'm gutted because the day before BlogWars, while at Warhammer World, I bought the Space Wolves Venerable Dreadnought for just that reason, now I'm going to have to buy another dreadnought from forgeworld - grrrr.

BlogWars Game 3

Third and Final round of BlogWars and after my defeat in game 2, I'm on table 7 and facing Ian (Ginge from Need More Tanks) with his winter themed Speedfreak Orks.

The final mission was the setup that was left over, so we were playing Seize Ground (with everyone having 5 objectives) and Pitched Battle setup.  We had 3 objectives spread around the centre of the battle field, one that was in the centre of my board edge (the lovely santa-claus in the pic to the left), and one that was to the upper-right of the board (my point of view) in front of a large tower.

BlogWars Game 2

So with my win in the first round, VPs meant that I was on table 4 for round 2 of BlogWars and it turned out I was facing up with a now much more familiar opponent, Andy (Atreides from Sons of Sanguinius) who I met the day before at Warhammer World.  We managed a game that day which you can see here.

The random selection meant that round 2 was Annihilation with Dawn of War deployment, and I just knew that Andy would be out for revenge after the previous day ;).  You can find my list here, and Andy's list was in his own words a Straken Hybrid.

BlogWars Game 1

So, BlogWars game 1, and I'm on table 1!  OK, the table draw was random, but still, table 1.

The mission and deployment selection was random, and round 1 saw us playing Capture and Control with Spearhead deployment.  My opponent was Rich (Mighty Simo - Cupboard of Nurgle) who had a Kharn the Betrayer Khorn Bezerker list.  

BlogWars T-minus-1

My weekend was a bit of a hobby pilgrimage, as I mentioned here, not only did I go to my first tournament and visit Maelstrom games for the first time, I also had my first visit to Warhammer World in Nottingham.

What can I say about the place, its amazing!  I really, really wish that I could live close to this place and it could be my regular gaming locale, but on the other hand, it'll remain somewhere to go for special gaming events and meet-ups.

Final Blogwars List

Right, the list is finalised, its been submitted, and I'm just about to book a hotel for the Saturday and a car to get me to BlogWars.  If anyone needs a lift from anywhere between the Oxford area and Mansfield let me know, I'll be happy to pick you up on the way.

I'll be heading up on the Saturday in the morning, planning on spending that day in Warhammer World as I've never been and am very interested to see the place.  Looks like Atreides and some mates are going to be there that day too so should be able to get in some warm-up games.  Anyway, onto the list:

Revised BlogWars List

So I've played a few games with my Njal Stormcaller Blogwars list, and to put it frankly, I just don't like it.  I had a victory against an all foot guard list, and lost to a Dark Eldar list and a couple of others.  I just couldn't get used to running Njal in a way that would protect him long enough to make the most of his powers, I missed having two priests so being able to cast the same power twice and the area of board that I could cover.  I guess I'm just a little too keen to get my Wolves into the thick of things.  In the past, I've really enjoyed running Ragnar with a group of Terminators, sometimes out of a Land Raider, when I've needed to bump my usual lists up to higher points for opponents, so I think I'm going to fall back on that kind of Special Character use - I just find it more fun.  However, if you've seen my Twitters, you'll notice that I haven't been working on Ragnar...

Wulfen Scouts

Thought I'd lost this post with the Blogger outage, but thankfully its come back at last.  This was supposed to go out at the end of last week, but best laid plans and all that.  Anyway, onto the post:


Wulfen, such awesome models and I was gutted that I'd missed them in my decade hiatus when I first saw them.  I've kept a weather eye on ebay ever since in case some came up for a bargain and a few months ago my prayers were answered and I got these guys for a not too crazy price.  They sat in Dettol for an age while I tried to figure out what to do with them (I've already got Mark of the Wulfen models for all my squads), and it wasn't till only a little while ago that I realised that 5 is exactly the minimum number of scouts in a pack, and that these would work perfectly.

Blog Wars - I'm going, are you?

I'm going to Blog Wars!

For those that haven't yet heard of this, and if you haven't, where have you been?  Blog Wars is being run by Alex over at From The Fang and is aimed at getting together members of the UK blogging community (non-bloggers are welcome too of course) for a relaxed tournament, a chance to meet up with all those names we know from blogs but may never have met, and throw down on the tables and "see who's best" ;)  It's going to be at Maelstrom Games in Mansfield on Sunday 5th June.  To try and help out, I've set up a Google Group for people to use to for organising lifts, nights out etc, you can find it here.

EDIT:  Second list added for consideration.

Fenrisian Wolves

Just a very short post to show off the Fenrisian Wolves I've made up based on the Chaos Warhound models.  Nothing too drastic here, a basic warhound without the horns, and some green-stuff to fill in the gaps, extend the fur onto the hind-quarters and make a tail for them.  Painting was a basic drybrush over the black basecoat to get them onto the table.

I've got a unit of 10 of them, sometimes I run them just as is or with one of the Cyberwolves I've made up to go with my Iron Priest to act as a screen or shock assault unit (3 Space Marine type attacks each on the charge, at I5 if you have Saga of the Wolfkin on one of your Lords can do some pretty serious damage), other times I split them up and assign them as ablative wounds to characters and Lone Wolves as needed.

Iron Priest and Mount

A while back I posted about a mechanical Thunderwolf mount I was converting from the old, metal juggernaught model I started.  This all began way before the plastic models were announced, but with the pace of my work its only just now that I can bring you a semi-completed model.

Space Wolves Terminators

From GW, used without permission

Until recently, my local club almost always played 1500pt games, and as such I had a 1500pt list.  In fact, I've got a list here which goes all the way from 500pts to 1500pts incrementally which is pretty much all I ever use.  However the last couple of weeks, both of my opponents have wanted to play 2000pt games, and so I've had to try and find another 500 pts.  Rummaging around in my army case the best/most effective way I could think to add those points in was with some terminators and a special character, ideally Ragnar.  Another option is to put the terminators in a Land Raider but as I didn't have one with me that wasn't possible.

New Space Wolves painting scheme

Hello blog-o-sphere-o-world-net type thing,

Despite my severe absence from here, I've actually managed to get quite a bit done in the last few months.  I had some days free at Christmas house sitting for the 'rentals and managed to paint up the whole Skaven section of the IoB boxset, I'm currently looking to swap the high elves if anyone out there has a set, I've assembled a large fraction of my first Necron boxset, and made plans on how the further conversions are going to go, and I've been experimenting with a painting method for my Space Wolves as I've just not been satisfied with the look of them so far.  I've even managed to get in a few games!

The swarm approacheth

Here's a bit of a blast from the past, a write up from the night the Tyranid Codex was released:


For the release of the Tyranid codex, my local GW ran a massive games night, a series of combined narrative games linked to a central Apocalypse game entirely against Tyranid opposition, using the new codex. I was lucky enough to take part in the Apocalypse game with 2000pts of Wolves. I teamed up with another 2000pts of Wolves, 3000pts of Crimson Fists and 2000pts of Guard. Facing us were 9000pts of Tyranids who even got endless swarm, a bio-titan and 3 barbed hyrodules!

The whole night was organised by a provisional campaign organising group that GW was trialling in our store, although the campaigns have somewhat gone by the way, they certainly put everything into this night and it was truly epic.  One of the organisers who dabbled in blogging, FlingItNow, wrote up the night in a great review on Imperius Dominatus which is far more comprehensive than this (theres big chunks missing from my report as I was far too engrossed in the action on my board - it was awesome!).

Outflanking wolf list of DOOM!!!

Used without permission, will remove if requested

So last night after games night, a few of us had a jar or two and chewed the fat over random GW related stuff.  One of the things that came up was a possible loop-hole kind of thing in the Space Wolves codex (I know, shock, horror).  In the description of Saga of the Hunter it says "Infantry only" and where it can be selected in the Army List section there is a little * and at the bottom of the page it says it can only be taken by those in power armour that aren't either on a bike or using a jump pack.  In the Wargear section it does say that those who take a Thunderwolf mount count as cavalry, so in reality the following list won't work.  However there are those that would say that since in the Army List section it specifically singles out bikes and jump pack but not thunderwolves that its allowed - really lame reasoning, not one I'd use, but this is all a bit of fun and got us thinking about what kind of army you could build based on this.  So, considering the models I already have at my disposal we're going to see if we can try this out sometime in the future.  The list I'll take is: