Army Reborn: Space Wolves

In late 2006 to early 2007, right before my second trip to Iraq, I had the pleasure of playing with a local gamer, Tom Schadle. Some of you guys might know Tom from a few years back, he moderated some boards at Bolter and Chainsword and painted mini's. Auctually he was a pretty prolific painter with over 13 Golden Daemons and a Slayer Sword to his name. Tom and I played bunches of his Black Templars against my Imperial Guard until one day he suggested that we each start a new army, he chose Sisters of Battle and I went with Space Wolves. For Christmas 2006 is gave me the simple, and very old school, space wolf below. This space wolf and all his brothers have sat in an army transport for the last 4 years, until this week.

When I returned from Iraq we had lost contact and never seemed able to get gaming started again. I left the army, worked in a high stress job in health care and he went on to do other things as well. Regrettably, life takes is course, whether we want it to or not. Now fast forward to today, I opened a moving box from our latest cross country and industry changing move, when I found my old Space Wolf army. Quite frankly they are horribly painted, and I have already stripped the entire army and re-primered them in a darker than normal grey. Pictures of all of that in due time, I promise. For today I'm struggling with the list I'm going to build.

I have two basic ideas that I am putting into the list: meat and potatoes. That's it, a very simple list that brings tons of pain in the Space Wolf way - right in your face. I have narrowed it down to two separate lists and here they are:

Option One:

1 Pack of the following:
++ 8 Grey Hunters 1/melta and standard
++ Wolf Guard w/ combi melta and powerfist
++ Njal the Stormcaller
++ Rhino

3 Packs of the following:
++ 9 Grey Hunters 1/melta and standard
++ Wolf Guard w/ combi melta and powerfist
++ Rhino

2 Packs of the following:
++ 6 Longfangs 5/missile launchers
++ Razorback Lascannon Twinlinked plasma

1 Pack of the following:
++ 4 Wolf Guard w/ combi melta and power sword
++ Rune Priest
++ Razorback w/ heavy bolters

My basic idea is the grey hunters close with and destroy the enemy while long fangs provide long range fire support. The second rune priest stays near the long fangs to provide counter assault if anything tries to get in close with them ans also provide a second HQ choice, for one because I agree with SandWyrm about the utility of dual HQ choices, and secondly if some special missions require HQ to seize the objective, like at Adepticon this year.

Option two:

1 Pack of the following:
++ 7 Grey Hunters 1/melta and standard
++ Wolf Guard w/ combi melta and powerfist
++ Njal the Stormcaller
++ Rhino

1 Pack of the following:
++ 7 Grey Hunters 1/melta and standard
++ Wolf Guard w/ combi melta and power sword
++ Rune Priest
++ Rhino

3 Packs of the following:
++ 8 Grey Hunters 1/melta and standard
++ Wolf Guard w/ combi melta and powerfist
++ Rhino

2 Packs of the following:
++ 6 Longfangs 5/missile launchers
++ Razorback Lascannon Twinlinked plasma

In the second configuration the packs are smaller by one guy each, so all packs are 9 dudes, but the second Rune Priest has a full squad with him instead of the Wolf Guard fire-and-forget squad. The Long Fangs will have to fend for themselves but with 5 squads of Grey Hunters rushing the enemy lines, I don't know if they will have any thing to toss in the back field.

Any thoughts or suggestions would be greatly appreciated as I haven't played this army in 4 years and I am starting from scratch. All the dudemen, 40 Grey Hunters, are primered so there is still time to change things around before the paint starts flying.

Cheers,

Tallarn