Building Better Allies in Blocks

Working through small ally contingents for use with my Space Wolves has led me to thinking about a system of putting together ally forces in a concept of building blocks. The concept of building blocks follows a simple format that creates a single ‘base block’ being your primary detachment. The’ base block’ starts at a bare bones 1,000 point list with no frills and no gimmicks, just wholesale pain at discount prices. To this base block we add detachments of allies that are preformatted into ‘task blocks’ depending on the situation. These ‘task blocks’ fall into three categories: offensive, defensive and operational. In my system ‘task blocks’ only requirement is to be less than 750 points, this gives you a package at the most common point value of 1,750 points.

Space Wolves and the Aegis Defense Line

Where, oh where to begin. Its been a month or so since my last blog post and there are bunches of things floating around in this little skull full of mush that sits atop my neck. Needless to say I won’t be going into them all today. One thing I would like to talk about is fortifications. Now, ill be the first to admit, when I first saw the fortifications I scoffed at them. Who needs these silly little things I asked, pure rubbish. Then I ran head long into the difficulties of trying anything mechanized in 6^th edition and contemplated a different solution.

Adapt or Die - its pretty simple!

Space Wolves: Second Look at Speeders

When your codex contains arguably some of the best troop and heavy support choices in the game, its easy to overlook things in the rest of the book. My Space Wolf list had been very meat, Grey Hunters, and potatoes, Long Fangs, in the past – to the exclusion of everything else. I wasn’t using anything except those two choices, the only difference in my lists would be whether or not I substituted in three drop pods to get the assault forces in there even faster. Then, as if by fate, I found three old speeders in a box I was sorting through the other day.

Photo Credit: Space Wolves Grey Blog

Army List: 1850 Space Wolves Toughts

I am continuing to get in games testing this list and practicing with it. Recently I have switched from being a 'rhino rush and beat your face list', to a more subdued 'take the midfield and challenge you to take it back list'. I know allot of people roll with Wolf Guard Battleleaders and other hand to hand thing-a-ma-jiggers in their lists but I roll with the double Rune Priest. Against Grey Knights, Eldar and Tyranids (no catalyst for you!) the 4+ negate psychic is murder.

Wolves take to the rout!

Grey Hunter Squad Composition

Recently I have been taking a hard look at the Space Wolf army I am rebuilding, what I am seeing in the local gaming scene and what I see with what other people post online. So I gotta ask a question here, what are we doing? The armies I see on the Internet and in the tournaments are all running 5 and 6 man Grey Hunter spam in razor backs. Some guys are running twin linked assault cannons, hoping for that magical '6' so they get rending, and others are running a lascannon twin linked plasma combo for some odd reason. Either way - I don't get it!

Space Wolves: Army List 1850

Awhile back I brought my old Space Wolf army out of cold storage and started bouncing around some army list ideas. After some great suggestions, some thinking, some testing and some drinking - I have arrived at what I am going to affectionately call a 'mini star' list. The point of the mini star is to be able to go toe to toe with a great many things and overwhelm with redundancy and power. This is not a 'Death Star' that can wade in where angels fear to tread and punch you in the face. A mini star still requires a good bit of finesse and patience for proper execution and while this list will forgive a few minor mistakes, major mistakes will have catastrophic consequences.

Grey Hunters at Magnir's Crag - Games Workshop

Game Time: SPOCON army list progress

When I put together my list for SPOCON, the annual local geekery convention with 40k tournament thrown in, I thought the majority of my army was done. What a horribly wrong assumption that turned out to be! After reviewing my army list and laying out the mini's I came to the dramatic realization that I have a bunch of work to do in order to get this force ready to my standards prior to the tournament in a month.

Imperial Guard Army List: SPOCON

SPOCON is an annual shindig here in the Inland Northwest much like other annual conventions held around the country. It’s a SCI-FI / Fantasy event featuring gaming, comics, quest speakers, a writing contest and other accoutrements of general geekdom. Of course there will be a tournament for 40k players featuring an ‘Adepticon’ style unique missions and game play married to a NOVA style scoring system for overall champion with points for painting, sportsman ship and gaming.

Badges, every gamer loves badges.

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.

Reader E-mail: IG Army List Question

Tallarn, I posted an army list over on (a forum to remain nameless) that's been collecting mothballs, and was wondering if you could take a look at it and add some input. Fair warning- it's a little long. Here's the copy/paste from (forum of Erudite intellect that can't muster one reply in 14 days...):

Game Time: Speed Vs. Survivability

Roland over at Kirb your enthusiasm posted an interesting article last month about 1850 Point IG Armored Company lists using the current IG codex and offered several different ways to build such a list. Given my penchant for mechanized warfare, the Imperial Guard and tanks in general - I was intrigued to say the least. My only problem would come in pairing them down to the 1500 point level, but being as stingy as I am, I didn't think it would be a problem.

Game Time: 1500pts

Small tourney at the LGS this weekend, probably 6-10 players, 3 rounds of 1,500 points. Most of the guys run pretty normal armies except for one Nidzilla (brutal army with multiple T6+, W4+ and SV 2+) and a truck heavy Nobz army. So im not going to design something just to take out the Nids because the 'Mech Wolf" and 'Footslogger IG' will eat my cookies. So im going for a balanced list to try and bring some pain to their front door.