New Wolves

Now while I love IG, if there is any other 40k that comes in second for me it is the sons of russ.  They are the only other sizable force that I have and I love taking them as allies with my IG or as an army on their own.  So today I'm taking a short break from IG to talk about the new space wolves, and mainly there much needed new flyer.

I'm sure many have already seen it and its stats.  Overall I like it, the look and the rules.  I also like that the wolves are getting their own special "frost" weapon to distinguish them, since I'm sure they lack graviton weapons, but don't quote me on that, as that seems to be the GW norm.  And I'm fine with that, grav weapons are cool and all, but I personally am happy with a special wolf only weapon.

Aesthetically speaking the flyer (stormfang/wolf) is beautifully ugly, it has the brute space wolf aesthetic that I like. And the rules for either are not that bad.  The Stormwolf is the transport flyer and its 35 less than a land raider with the same armor and HPs as a storm raven, including having ceramite plating and can hover.  It is a heavy support choice.  It has a 16 model transport capacity and is most importantly an assault vehicle.  It has a ramp up front for wolves to jump out of.  Its armed with two hellstrike missiles and can upgrade them to twin linked lascannons (it may come stock, but there are conflicting rumors), it has TL heavy bolter side sponsons, can upgrade to sky hammers for free, and TL multi meltas for 20.  Its last weapon is the new TL helfrost cannon, which has two fire modes.  The first is 24" S6 AP3, hellfrost, blast.  The second is the focused mode which is S8 AP1 heavy 1, hellfrost.  Hellfrost is basically if a model suffers an unsaved wound it must take a separate strength test for each wound, if it fails any it dies.  Remember that for characteristic tests a 6 is always a failure, so for models with S above 6 can still be killed by it.

The Storm fang is the gunship and it is pretty much the same, except it only has 6 transport capacity and the ramp is in the rear not the front, it also lacks assault vehicle.  It is fast attack though.  Weapons are the same except it has the hellfrost destructor instead of the cannon, and it is mounted in the hull.  Similar profile except the blast is a large blast and the focused mode gains lance.  The base cost is 5 pts more than the storm wolf.  Both also have power of the machine spirit.

Overall these look to be really good choice for the wolves.  The transport is going to be a strong competitor for the land raider and multiples of these will support a fast assaulting wolf list very well.  Importantly the wolves have a solid anti flyer options now.  I think the storm fang(transport) will be better as every weapon can be TL and since few flyers have above 12 armor, the lance on the storm wolf won't see much utility over the other, and the higher chance to hit is better.  With TL lascannons, hellfrost cannon, and skyhammer missiles or MMs, this thing will reliably pop a flyer a turn, or att eh very least do serious damage to it.

There is no mention of an assault from the skies rule similar to the valkyrie or stormraven, so you may have to go into hover for guys to disembark.  Will see if this holds true, but honestly your going to want to anyway to take advantage of the assault vehicle rule.  The gunship though will still be good in this role no doubt but it will really excel in the ground attack role, having lance and a large blast on top of other weapons.  This thing will do really well against tanks and infantry alike and I still see this as being popular, and a good choice for long fangs to catch a ride in.

I really like these and they are going to add a lot to the SWs aresenal and just look like a SW vehicle.  Other rumors are a new dreadnought/bjorn model, which is very exciting as I love the fluff of bjorn.  It will be really interesting to see how the whole SW codex turns out, but it is looking to be a solid codex that is not overpowered, which I like.

The down side is that it looks like it is going to be a while before the codex drops, with a schedule similar to orks.  I can't wait though.  Happy hunting!

GG