Space Wolves v Eldar Army List

From Warhammer 40k Wiki

Last game I had was against Eldar who, along with the Tyranids, I have struggled against. However, before the game I sat down in the sun with my dog (who was no real help really, she just likes lazing in the sun) and set about writing a list I felt was going to be able to handle my Craftworld opponent.

The battle was set at 2,000pts. Knowing I was up against Eldar also meant I needed to be able to lay down a fair amount of shots per turn, so Heavy Bolters were going to feature heavily.

My friend also runs Wave Serpents, therefore negating the need for high strength shots as all weapons are counted at Str 8 so Missile Launchers were the most cost effective anti-tank weapon I could field.

He also runs Dark Reapers with an Exarch, which can be troublesome to any units in cover as the exarch has the quick shot/crack shot which also ignores cover saves and is AP3, which means trouble for your basic Marines/Long Fangs. The Pathfinders he usually fields also needed to be closed down early due to the rending they have on their sniper rifles.

Bearing all this in mind, here is the 2,000pt Space Wolf list used:

Rune Priest - Runic Armour, Master of Runes, Chooser of the Slain, Wolf Tooth Necklace, Wolf Tail Talisman, Living Lightning, Tempests Wrath.
Wolf Guard Battle Leader - Runic Armour, Thunder Hammer, Storm Shield, Wolf Tooth Necklace, Wolf Tail Talisman, Saga of the Beast Slayer.

Wolf Guard Squad - Frost Blade/Combi-Melta, Wolf Claw/Combi-Melta x 2, Powerfist/Combi-Melta, Power Weapon/Combi-Plasma, Razorback (WGBL with this unit).
Dreadnought - Assault Cannon, Heavy Flamer, DDCW, Wolf Tooth Necklace, Wolf Tail Talisman.

Grey Hunters 1 - 10men, Rhino, Standard, Powerfist, Meltagun x 2.
Grey Hunters 2 - 10men, Rhino, Standard, Power Weapon, Flamer x 2.
Grey Hunters 3 - 6men, Razorback, Standard, Plasma Gun, Plasma Pistol.
Grey Hunters 4 - 6men, Razorback, Standard, Plasma Gun, Plasma Pistol.
Blood Claws - 15men, Flamer x 2 (Rune Priest with this unit).

Long Fangs 1 - 6men, Missile Launchers x 5
Long Fangs 2 - 6men, Heavy Bolters x 5, Razorback.

Obviously the deployment and general rolls of the dice had a huge effect on how the battle turned out, which hopefully should be reported on once the campaign my friend and I are playing through at the moment is complete. For the time being I can say that the WGBL can be a monster having seen him destroy a Wave Serpent, survive a fair few Fire Dragon melta shots, before slaughtering that same entire 10 man Fire Dragon squad. Your general Grey Hunters will also take apart the standard Eldar squads as I had 4 men take down a squad of Pathfinders and two squads of Guardians before the battle was finished.

Next up in the campaign is a massive 3,000pt final showdown. Should be interesting to say the least. 

Long Fangs - Complete

My second squad of Long Fangs is now complete. The squad as a whole (in gaming terms) is only a sergeant (not pictured as he was completed a long time ago), 3 Plasma Cannons and 2 Heavy Bolters. The Missile Launcher is just a model I have had hanging around that I decided to finish off with these guys.

Should be able to get them varnished tomorrow so they will be ready for next weekends final campaign game I have against my friends Eldar.

Here are some shots of the models in pairs, hope you enjoy:

Next up is a Wolf Priest on a bike, which is also the final model I need to get painted to finish off all the models I have in my big Space Wolves case. That isn't the end of my Space Wolf painting days though, as I still have 15 terminators, 2 Land Speeders, a Rhino/Razorback, 5 Fenrisian Wolves and 3 Thunderwolves left to do.

As always, please feel free to leave a comment, request or question, I will promise not to bite!

Long Fangs Update

Since finishing the Daemon Prince I have been working away on the five Long Fangs you can see in the picture here.

The missile launcher guy is just a spare I had lying around in my Space Wolves case that I thought I would get painted up while I am doing the other Long Fangs. The remainder of the squad will join the sergeant and heavy bolter that I finished around a year ago.

For this squad all the base colours have been completed and the primary application of washes has been applied. Next up I will be adding all the details to everything, before finishing off the armour and adding a final wash onto/into the edges of the armour.

Then I'll be finishing their bases and hopefully varnishing them, without frosting them up, ready to carry on with a campaign me and a friend are doing which sees the Space Wolves going up against Eldar. Only done one scenario/mission so far but the game and ideas coming from it sound pretty fun and exciting.

Aside from the painting of these Long Fangs I have also pretty completed building up three Thunderwolves, five Fenrisian Wolves and five Wracks. This leaves me now with a smallish pile of things left to build. I am trying not to think too much about what is left to paint as there is a constantly growing pile to get through, which I don't ever seem to be able to put a dent in!

Thanks for reading, hope to see you again next time.

I am Rubber, You are Glue...

I have had a think recently about the amount of different glues there are available to us doing this hobby and how effective each type of glue is.

From my own collection of glues (seen on the right) I have three general groups of glue - the superglue type, the plastic glue type and then PVA glue.

Each of the three perform very differently and are used in different situations. The first one I will look at being the superglue, can in fact be broken down in to two groups again. I have a tube of the gel superglue and a tub of the 'free-running' superglue. The gel I use on all resin to resin fixing and metal to anything parts as the amount and direction it is applied to can be easily controlled, which saves a slick of superglue running over areas of your model which you do not want covering in glue. I tend to save the liquid superglue for more general areas where accuracy and amounts are not so much of a problem, for instance gluing debris to bases. Drying time for superglue is generally instant, but on some occasions can take a couple of minutes.

The plastic glue can only be used to glue plastic pieces together. It will not glue plastic to anything other than plastic. It will not glue finecast models together. You get the picture. Plastics only. I have also just started using the Revell Contacta Liquid plastic glue which comes complete with an application brush, which is absolutely perfect for gluing those plastics together. Originally I was using the Army Painter glue, but whenever I used it I would have to spend time brushing away glue 'strands', which were always produced regardless of how I tried applying the glue, from the model. This was very annoying and I have not been back to that glue since getting the Revell stuff. Drying time for the plastic glue is no more than a minute and, once dry, you will have an impossible task to separate the pieces.

The last type of glue I use is your standard PVA glue. This is used solely for gluing the basing material to bases. It dries clear and is rock solid once set. It will also glue any material to your base that you want, meaning you don not have to worry about what you are adding as decoration to your base. The drying time for this glue is well over 12 hours, so you have plenty of time to position items on your base and see what they look like before moving them around again and trying something new before the glue sets.

Superglue gel, Revell Contacta Liquid with brush and PVA glue are my fixing agents of choice and they are never far away from my modelling table. There are probably a few more glues out there, but I have never felt the need to use them as I get the results I want from using those previously mentioned. But if anyone has experience of using something different, please leave a comment to let me know what you use and how it compares to other glues.

Daemon Prince Complete

Last night I completed the Daemon Prince for my Slaaneshi/Chaos Marines army, so I thought I would post up the few pictures I have of him.

The wings and vents are magnetised, so depending on what I have in mind for the army I can alter the Prince to suit.

 

Hope you enjoy this quick post, hopefully I will be returning soon with an update on the making of my Space Wolves Thunderwolves and the painting of a pack of Long Fangs.

Thanks for looking, please feel free to leave a comment if you want to, it's good to hear your opinions!

Completed Thunderwolf Lord, with Added Daemon Prince

If you have seen my previous post on frosting whilst varnishing, then these photos are from before that incident. Thankfully its only a couple of areas affected, but still enough to be gutted about it happening.

Anyway, here is the completed Lord, with his base fully completed and snow covered. In fact I think the snow application is what I am most pleased with on the model. It did take 4 days and 4 layers of snow flock to get to that stage, but I am glad my patience held out for once and I did not rush it.

The wolf claw shown is magnetised and can be exchanged for a thunderhammer as detailed in earlier updates on the model. I may also add in a frost blade to the Thunderlords armoury in the future, once I have decided what my other Thunderwolf cavalry are going to run with. Anyway, here are some other pics I have taken of the model:

 

And my next painting project is the Daemon Prince who will be joining up with my Slaaneshi forces:

An update for his progress should be forthcoming very soon as currently he is fully basecoated, washes applied and some highlights already added. Progress is really flying with him.

Thanks for reading/looking! As always please feel free to leave comments, questions or just general ramblings.

Curse of the Varnishing - Frosting

Original cloak, before varnishing.

Putting a layer of varnish over your finished model, the last and final step that should ensure your models paintwork is guard against little knocks and scrapes, while not affecting the colours of you have painstakingly applied to the model over the hours, days, weeks previous. Or, at least, that is how it is supposed to be. Sometimes these things have a habit of not always following the script, as I found to my horror a couple of nights ago.

Having completed my most recent model (latest post here) and after adding layers of snow flock to finish the base, it was time to varnish the model so it could be finally put to use at my local gaming club.

While waiting for the absolute perfect conditions to occur before spraying is probably the best advice, I do have an impatient tendency to just get models complete. Up until now I had never had any negative experiences with spraying in similar conditions to those used the other day. Even using a couple of test models first, everything appeared to be fine, so I moved on to the main event, placed the model down and passed the front side of the model with matt varnish spray, leaving this to dry before twirling the model round and completing the back.

Cloak after 'frosting'

Having left the varnish to dry for an hour or so, I returned to the model to find that the front of the model was perfect, but the cloak of the marine (pictured) and a couple of other little areas had frosted over. Having never had the problem before what could I do to rescue the situation?

I really did not fancy stripping the model down and starting from scratch for what would amount to less than 5% of the model being affected. Maybe I could paint over the affected areas? Maybe a could hope my salty tears could repair the damage? As in most situations in life nowadays, if you don't know what to do, someone on the internet will know for you. So after a quick search I found Pit of the Oni frosting article, which gave me some hope of salvaging what had happened.

Cloak after gloss varnish

Cloak after matt varnish

As soon as I could I picked up some Vallejo paint on gloss varnish and some Vallejo paint on matt varnish to see whether the frosting could be reversed or at the very least minimised.

Starting with the gloss varnish, I put a thin layer of varnish over all affected areas and left it to dry.
Once that was dry I then added a coat of matt varnish as I did not want the wolf cloak to be quite that shiny. The results can be seen in the pictures.

I feel that the frosted parts of the marine, while being quite a way off from where they were before varnishing, are now back to a level where I am happy with them. The frosting has by and large been cleared up and did not need too much work to get around it. I'd prefer not to use this technique again and avoid frosting my models in the first place, but if any frosting does occur I would not hesitate in using it.

If any of you guys have any other techniques for clearing up frosting from varnishing or have any questions, please feel free to leave a comment or drop me an email.

Battle Report - Space Wolves vs Necrons

Another week, another battle against those ever-living robots. Again the points value was set at 2,000pts with a standard annihilation match set up. This battle was to settle the draw from last time out, one army was to take it all.

I am not 100% sure, but my Necron friend had something similar to the following list:

Imotekh the Stormlord
Necron Destroyer Lord

C'Tan Shard
Lychguard x 5 with Cryptek

Warriors x 5 with Cryptek (4 units)
Warriors x 6 (attached to Imotekh)

Destroyers x 5 (2 units)
Monolith

For my Space Wolves I fielded the following list:

Ragnar Blackmane
Rune Priest, Runic Armour, Jaws of the World Wolf, Murderous Hurricane
Wolf Priest, Runic Armour

Lone Wolf, TDA, Thunderhammer, Storm Shield, Fen Wolf

Grey Hunters x 8 men, Standard, Melta Gun, Rhino, Wolf Guard with Frost Blade (Ragnar Attached)
Grey Hunters x 8 men, Standard, Melta Gun, Drop Pod, Wolf Guard Arjac Rockfist
Grey Hunters x 8 men, Standard, Melta Gun, Rhino, Wolf Guard with Wolf Claw (Wolf Priest Attached)
Grey Hunters x 5 men, Standard, Plasma Gun, Plasma Pistol, Razorback, Wolf Guard with Powerfist

Land Speeder x 2, Heavy Bolter, Multimelta

Long Fangs x 6, 3 x Missile Launchers, 2 x Lascannnon, Wolf Guard TDA with Cyclone missile launcher (Rune Priest attached)
Long Fangs x 6, 5 x Heavy Bolter

From the deployment it looked as if the Space Wolves were outnumbered and, given they were going second, were about to take a lot of firepower if the Necrons could see through the night generated by the Stormlord. Imotekhs lightning attack came to full force in this battle, operating for 5 of the 6 turns and laying waste to both a Rhino, Razorback and a Land Speeder, while also taking out three members of the Heavy Bolter Long Fangs squad. By the start of turn two the Space Wolves were looking at footslogging across the board to meet the Necron forces, while the C'Tan shard was sitting comfortably 10" from Ragnar and his recently evicted squad of Grey Hunters.

In addition to losing all transports and one Land Speeder, the other Land Speeder was prevented from moving or shooting for a turn, and Arjacs drop pod had come down in a decent position, but his hammer throw, melta gun shot and seven rapid fire boltgun shots failed to leave a single mark on the warriors they were closest to. The entire squad bar Arjac then fell, leaving the man mountain on his own against an army of Necrons. Things were about to get interesting.

After their initial successes the Necrons were finally met by the Wolves going into the second and third turns of the game. The Long Fang squad with Rune Priest took a couple of wounds from the C'Tan. From here on in this report while focus on what each of the heroes of the Space Wolves contributed to the battle.

Lone Wolf

Footslogging this beast across the battle field would never be an easy task, but when the Necron Destroyer Lord turbo boosted to within 8" of him in the first turn, the slingshot was set to get him moving. Having seen the Lord lose one wound to Plasma fire from a nearby Grey Hunter squad, the Lone Wolf and his Fenrisian Wolf launched into assault knowing two wounds was enough for victory. Having seen his pet cut down, the Lone Wolf obliterated the Lord, causing 3 unsaveable wounds from a possible three. Consolidation saw him move toward the halfway point of the board, and close enough to reach a squad of Warriors and a Cryptek in his following turn.

This battle lasted a little longer, with 4 assualt phases passing until the Lone Wolf was again victorious, causing the Warriors and Cryptek to break and run. It was then a simple case for the Lone Wolf to babysit the fleeing mob until they ran off the board.

Arjac Rockfist

Probably the man of the match. Having seen his Grey Hunter squad cut down, in consecutive turns he took down 3 squads of Warriors with Crypteks after throwing his hammer at them and utilising both the Necron and Space Wolves assualt phases to wipe all clean from the battlefield.

After he had finished with the Warriors he moved onto the squad of Lychguard that had moved toward him. Throwing his hammer at them, the attack was bounced back on to himself, which he duly saved using his own Storm Shield. In the first round of combat Arjac knocked down three Lychguard and the Cryptek, seeing them duly pass their leadership test to remain in combat. In the next round one Lychguard returned, but the three were smashed apart, but did cause a wound on Arjac.

Following on from this Arjac then completed his final assault on the last remaining Necron squad, containing Imotekh and his collection of Warriors. With the help of the Wolf Priest this squad was also massacred, clearing the table of all Necrons in the process.

Wolf Priest

With a kill tally slightly shorter than that of Arjac, the Wolf Priest and his squad of Grey Hunters saw off the resurrected Necron Destroyer Lord for the last time before taking down 4 Destroyers from one squad. With this the Monolith stepped in and wiped out all the Grey Hunters and Wolf Guard accompanying the Wolf Priest. Not to be deterred the Priest then finished the remaining Destroyer from the other squad before launching a joint final assault against Imotekh and his Warriors, which saw the Stormlord defeated.

Ragnar Blackmane

Ragnar, his Grey Hunter squad and Wolf Guard had the sole responsibility of taking down the two toughest units the Necrons had. This wasn't the initial plan, he would've been much more suited to butchering the Warriors, Lychguard and Imotekh, but the drop pod scatter and Rhino destruction put pay to that plan.

Instead Ragnar set his sights on the wounded, but still potentially dangerous, C'Tan. With the Shard being down to two wounds, Ragnar launched his assault, gaining three bonus attacks for the charge giving him 8 attacks at initiative 6 and strength 6. These attacks alone were enough to slay the former deity, with the explosion of the dying creature causing a wound on the young Wolf Lord.

Next up Ragnar led his remaining squad toward the Monolith and having them open up their melta fire on it, resulting in an explosive ending to its slow movement across the field.

So there you have it, the four key players in the Space Wolves victory over the Necrons. For conclusions I would say that mech really does not like going up against the Necron firepower, especially the lightly armoured units against Imotekh lightning attack. However, Space Wolves in close combat against Necrons is still a no contest, as can be seen be the sheer amount of uncontested combats fought. Having said that, at the start of my second turn I did not think I stood much chance of victory and its only down to the luck of the individuals mentioned above that the tide was turned back against the Necrons.