Codex: Space Wolves Errata and Preview

[WrathOfTheLion]

I mean, I thought that would be obvious  , but the packs are howling all over.

 

It's a tide-you-over FAQ, it's temporal by definition. It has at most a two-month shelf life, possibly even only a few weeks depending on release schedule, so by the time anyone has even bought something and got it all painted up, it's all back to square one anyways.

Edited October 6, 2020 by WrathOfTheLion

[One Two Wolf]

I think that gee dubs' plan is really all rather obvious at this point, if I may speculate - I did say a while back I had a theory about their rules writing, here it is.

 

The consolidation into a single big book with supplements for armies with unique model kits (TWC, sanguinary guard etc) and shared rules for all is a basic requirement of efficiency from rules and manufacturing perspectives. The endless faq's, mistakes, erratas, this book no that book wait it's last years FAQ oh no there's a new one wait does that book do my army too no it's just these armies not your army whose knights what now can I have another useless book purchase please wait its faq'd I'll just ask peeps on the Internet where is AoS can't go on forever - so, this is a move to do two things:

 

1. Put Astartes back together as one army with basically only different characters to distinguish different chapters, pick CT to taste (with unique strats and a few unique kits in the supplments I guess, but share the rest around)

 

2. But in doing that the rules better be good or it's a total bust - so 8th the writers dumped every possible thing they could come up with over a cup o tea and a bikkie onto the menu and waited to see how it played out. What drove people nuts? What were really fun interactions? What was successful? They know there were too many unique rules for anyone but a savant to know all the armies, too many ways for rules to interact clumsily and it was most certainly NOT the streamlined reimagined 40k that 8th seemed to start off as. Deliberately, we were the community test environment, so to speak, to get through chaff to the rules that work.

 

9th has given wolves every unit almost, and given our traits to any homebrew that wants them, the only unique elements are characters and a few units/model kits. This goes for everyone with a supplement and only characters for everyone else. Why are grey knights in a totally separate book? Because they done share any kits with space marines*. Models come first for gee dubs, not rules.

 

If you cast your mind back to 2nd edition (I had my first models in the early 90's, first box set was 2nd, thanks dad) then this is the same thing as what I saw in front of my exploding young brain to choose from - Astartes are Astartes, feel free to paint them however you want, but they are space marines and that's that. Oh, yours are blue? Cool, mine are red. That dude's are yellow. Old mate has still got a bolter and a chainsword though. Roll some dice.

 

While this means a bit less unique stuffery for all it means marines are going to be easier to play against for everyone else including other marines, one FAQ will probably do for every marine army in this WHOLE edition, and space marines will be Gullimans project in thinking, list building and on the table - not just in words. They will follow the codex; aside from the very few fully established weirdos like us.

 

I applaud this development, I hope I am right and that 40k is losing some of the we-got-carried-away and forgot where we came from element of tournament inspired min-max-moaning in favour of space marines fight space aliens and this cuss is damn good fun because I feel the same as I did when I was nine years old and that cussing rules, because noone is cussing about the rules.

 

Up the wolves.

 

*space to argue this point, but, is there really? More to the point, while this rules reset has been going on, they causally introduced a whole plethora of true scale models for us to get used to...

Edited October 6, 2020 by One Two Wolf

[StrangerOrders]

People can have remarkably different stances and I respect that.

 

But its really weird for me to find folks that want everything to be boiled down to Halo with chainsaws in the Space Viking subthread.

 

Its sort of like being a vegan who likes to hangout at a butchershop.

 

By my token, Im hoping for more distinct wolf models and more flavor, hopefully with a bent towards more viking and less wolf (although please spare us from the Primaris discovering 30k leather skullcaps).

 

Also, and I do respect old players, we arent in the rogue trader days. This is a setting not only going on two generations removed but also literally hundreds of books and effort put into the setting.

 

I am a fan of the rout, the sometimes perplexing scions of Leman Russ who have a lovely amount of love and thought put into them. Hopefully the new supplement gives tools for those that want to play vanilla marines with a slightly more aggressive bent, but I feel like there are alot of bloodlines that already facilitate that more. 

[One Two Wolf]

You see though, this kind of return to basics actually enables new models. How in the heck are they supposed to plan or prioritise designing and making new models for dozens of different armies in just ONE faction? Forget about it. Why if every marine army is unique would wolves get new models now and not fists? Or whomever? There is a production line for space marines, and much smaller bespoke lines of kits for a few outliers, lending designers and players space for genuine creativity, riffing on their theme of choice.

 

Dudes that weigh more than a ton in powered armoured suits riding giant wolves that can rip tanks open with their teeth after running halfway across the board is pretty jolly bespoke, in this context.

 

And to bring primarchs back they need to give themselves some breathing space.

[WrathOfTheLion]

The consolidation move is one out of practicality I think. Keeping track of multiple FAQs attempting to patch different codexes like they did in 8E wasn't maintainable I think.

 

In general, I think they're adopting the Horus Heresy way of doing things, where all legions are based off of the core Legionnes Astartes army list, and some subset of the vast array of models and units in that get you 'most of the way' to expressing the faction, which combined with characters and special units provides strong character for the faction.

Edited October 6, 2020 by WrathOfTheLion

[StrangerOrders]

Quite simple, you define what is enough.

 

I dont approve of the AoS model of an ever-increasing number of armies with piteously little variety within them while producing a baffling number of general Stormcast stuff to the point that trying to puzzle out how Stormhost works seems like something the Ecclesiarch came up with. So I in turn do not approve of trying to consolidate marines into a vanilla stream (while keeping the number of releases) and producing an ever-increasing number of minor armies while major factions like Eldar wither on the vine.

 

I approve of the model of establishing a core set for a given faction, such as marines and then switching the focus to allowing unique subfactions to grow an gain more character. Where I sense that we will see a disconnect is that you see the Wolves, DAngels and BAngels sub-ranges as a mistake, while I see it as not going far enough.

 

I do not need an ever-increasing number of armies or a swarm of universal Primaris releases, what I do want to see is more things for chapter-specific releases and to see other factions follow suit. There is room for the principle Craftworlds to grow and for us to explore the gap between different Tau Septs now that they are finally facing the problems of scale in the setting.

 

But, I am first and foremost a 30k player, so I obviously do see alot of value in elaborating on specific factions over producing baseline units and minor factions at a faster rate than the setting can keep up (the entire Vanguard range for example is largely being ignored by BL and I cant really blame them that well while the DA have had a core book and two novels to properly establish their handful of units into the 30k setting). 

Edited October 6, 2020 by StrangerOrders

[One Two Wolf]

I see the unique kits as an awesome thing, forgive me for not being clearer! But there's a natural limit I understand, and I appreciate (sympathise with?) the need to keep under some sort of codified control.

[StrangerOrders]

I see the unique kits as an awesome thing, forgive me for not being clearer! But there's a natural limit I understand, and I appreciate (sympathise with?) the need to keep under some sort of codified control.

I apologize if my tone came across on the strong side, I do tend to get passionate around the concept of consolidation lol.

 

I think my issue is more that I sort of see it as a multi-faceted issue and not one that I can perhaps articulate as well as I would like but I will try.

 

Were we a sub-faction of any other faction, I think I'd be more sympathetic to the argument but the issue is that the Astartes themselves have a problem with a constant deluge of models and that is something we are envied for.

 

But I sort of see it as a cancer to have the most models, because I both invest myself heavily in the lore and dislike the constant flow of 'toss X out the window now' that has come to define the last edition. Not that I think everything needs to be equal but I think the game is in a better state when its a matter of competing preferences of playstyle rather than 'X is now the doom unit, everything else is invalid'.

 

My problem with the Primaris range is in part that the constant deluge of vanilla releases has created this grotesquely swollen list which has grown so fast that the lore can't keep up and feels like an arms-race rather than 'oh, that looks cool'.

 

Elaborating on subfactions, I feel, is the healthiest stopgap to this. It gives the rest of the Marines a chance to breath, GW a chance to get their :cuss together and a happy update if this month its 'here are the 2-3 SW kit' and then it cycles back to us a few years down the line with a general release maybe every few years. Functionally what the pre-Primaris model sort of was at its best. 

 

Gameplay aside, it also gave time for these new kits to grow in the lore and for them to develop a distinct place in the structure of the chapters and setting. The Primaris have come so violently and quickly in their waves that there is actually no rhyme or reason to alot of their stuff insetting which actually irks me.

 

What to hear the funniest example?

 

The Judiciar's fancy clock thing? The closest thing that we have to an explanation on it is that Guilliman somehow ground up a particular star fortress and somehow every chapter in the Galaxy got a crate. 

 

The Vanguards have more or less gone years without appearing anywhere, in no small part due to them functionally being an independent army shoved into an infamously rigid framework.

 

That's obviously not a problem to folks that don't care for the setting and I don't fault them, but it sort of hurts my ability to really care if that makes sense?

 

Compare that to one of our older kits, Blood Claws, there is so much time put into them that its actually kind of crazy. Some of their best books, such as the Lukas novel, actually make them this really kind of sad pinnacle of how toxic the Wolves have become and that they got there through purely well-intentioned reasons. That the Wolves arent dying a slow death because of some dramatic curse or Magnus but because Russ's Saga system has grown so far out of hand that its getting Blood Claws killed faster than the Chapter can sustain. It takes the silly haircut viking Troop and makes them this really cathartic example of young soldiers overfed on tall-tales throwing themselves into the meatgrinder faster than their commanders can replace them. That's fantastic to me.

 

Now, obviously that stuff probably had some rolling their eyes and wondering why I brought that up, but for me it takes that sort of emotional investment to be willing to drop a pretty hefty premium price on my plastic crack and it pulls money out of my wallet much more easily than the latest meta.

 

So, I would like to see us get maybe 2 Primaris Wolf Kits and have that be the end of it. I'd like to see as many as each of the nine bloodlines get the same over the coming decade with little to no vanilla releases, I'd like the see the other major factions get the same treatment and for no entirely new armies to come.

 

That is just me though and I think that one of the main reasons GW keeps 30k around is because frequent buyers with my mindset are easily to catch and drain with that product than with 40k while the fondness for having a wider collection of differing but highly competitive armies is more easily exploited with 40k.

 

At the end of the day we all have a potent plastic addiction though and you do have to hand it to them for finding a multi-game strategy for catching and bleeding as many types of buyers as possible.

 

Hope that made sense

[One Two Wolf]

It does make sense, I agree with a good deal of it and it's good to have such a focused and decent exchange.

 

Up the wolves.

[Arentius]

So based off Honour or Death for Canis..": This model is eligible to perform a Heroic Intervention if it is within 6" horizontally and 5" vertically of any enemy unit, instead of 3" horizontally and 5" vertically." did TWC finally figure out how to walk up stairs?

[Gherrick]

So based off Honour or Death for Canis..": This model is eligible to perform a Heroic Intervention if it is within 6" horizontally and 5" vertically of any enemy unit, instead of 3" horizontally and 5" vertically." did TWC finally figure out how to walk up stairs?

Every unit can now reach the second floor of buildings, hence the change to 5" vertical. Kinda helps against the silliness of melee-only units only able to shake their fists at folks just a bit out of reach...or when there wasn't actual room for an enemy model to fit next to a model on the second level, making those models unassailable.

[Karhedron]

Winners

Characters, TWC, Wulfen dreads, Stormfangs

Not sure I would put the Stormfang in the winners category. It got quite a price hike compared to the MFM and lost access to the true quad-multimelta loadout. It still weighs in around the same price point of the Stormraven so I guess it is correctly pointed but I would not say it has come out better than it was.

[Dark Shepherd]

 

Winners

Characters, TWC, Wulfen dreads, Stormfangs

Not sure I would put the Stormfang in the winners category. It got quite a price hike compared to the MFM and lost access to the true quad-multimelta loadout. It still weighs in around the same price point of the Stormraven so I guess it is correctly pointed but I would not say it has come out better than it was.

Yeah upon reflection while they got some weapons boosts their points did rocket and most of their weapons are d3 which is swingy

 

Guaranterd damage though of melta arrays and Helfrost Destructor especially though are good

[TiguriusX]

 

 

Winners

Characters, TWC, Wulfen dreads, Stormfangs

Not sure I would put the Stormfang in the winners category. It got quite a price hike compared to the MFM and lost access to the true quad-multimelta loadout. It still weighs in around the same price point of the Stormraven so I guess it is correctly pointed but I would not say it has come out better than it was.

Yeah upon reflection while they got some weapons boosts their points did rocket and most of their weapons are d3 which is swingy

 

Guaranterd damage though of melta arrays and Helfrost Destructor especially though are good

 

 

We also lost stormstrike (+1 to hit/wound/damage for helfrost destructor) and revenge of the machine spirit (auto explode) 

 

Both of those were required to make the stormfang useful in competitive games...without it the only reason I add the stormfang is b/c I am stubborn and curious

 

But I own 2 of the freaking models and stubborn/curious is part of my DNA so I'll report how it performs at some point in 9th.  

[Gherrick]

I just noticed this: Harold Deathwolf does not have a belt of russ. Granted, it's redundant (and inferior mechanically) to the storm shield, but I hope in the actual supplement he gets a relic shield like the primaris captain gets. It seems a bit wrong to not have a belt of russ on a captain, but I'm not against removing unnecessary wargear, either. Then again, giving Harold a 4+ save vs MW might be a bit too much, lol.

Edited October 8, 2020 by Gherrick

[Ragnar69]

Tabletop Tactics (playtesters) mentioned in their Codex review that BA/SW/DA feel kind of bland...for now. But everything should be fine soon. So let's geht hyped for our supplement ;)

[TheUnlikelyGamer84]

I just noticed this: Harold Deathwolf does not have a belt of russ. Granted, it's redundant (and inferior mechanically) to the storm shield, but I hope in the actual supplement he gets a relic shield like the primaris captain gets. It seems a bit wrong to not have a belt of russ on a captain, but I'm not against removing unnecessary wargear, either. Then again, giving Harold a 4+ save vs MW might be a bit too much, lol.

 

He has damage reduction ability though. I know there is a points difference but I’d take Harald any day over the Indomitus shield Capt.

Edited October 8, 2020 by TheUnlikelyGamer84

[Gherrick]

 

I just noticed this: Harold Deathwolf does not have a belt of russ. Granted, it's redundant (and inferior mechanically) to the storm shield, but I hope in the actual supplement he gets a relic shield like the primaris captain gets. It seems a bit wrong to not have a belt of russ on a captain, but I'm not against removing unnecessary wargear, either. Then again, giving Harold a 4+ save vs MW might be a bit too much, lol.

He has damage reduction ability though. I know there is a points difference but I’d take Harald any day over the Indomitus shield Capt.

Oh, I would as well. I was just thinking that since all captains normally get a belt of russ/iron halo, those also previously equipped with a storm shield should probably get upgraded to a relic shield. I kinda miss harold's cloak making him immune to flamer weapons...now that they are making a comeback.

[Wispy]

immunity to flamer weapons was so situational Edited October 9, 2020 by Wispy

[TheUnlikelyGamer84]

 

 

 

I just noticed this: Harold Deathwolf does not have a belt of russ. Granted, it's redundant (and inferior mechanically) to the storm shield, but I hope in the actual supplement he gets a relic shield like the primaris captain gets. It seems a bit wrong to not have a belt of russ on a captain, but I'm not against removing unnecessary wargear, either. Then again, giving Harold a 4+ save vs MW might be a bit too much, lol.

He has damage reduction ability though. I know there is a points difference but I’d take Harald any day over the Indomitus shield Capt.

Oh, I would as well. I was just thinking that since all captains normally get a belt of russ/iron halo, those also previously equipped with a storm shield should probably get upgraded to a relic shield. I kinda miss harold's cloak making him immune to flamer weapons...now that they are making a comeback.

What addition was that? I’ve only been playing space wolves since the end of 7th. Prior to that I was an Ork player. I think I would like that now that flamers will make more of an appearance. 12” range makes things like trucks of burna boys gangster for burney drive bys.

Edited October 9, 2020 by TheUnlikelyGamer84

[Bryan Blaire]

immunity to flamer weapons was so situational

:lol: Yep, any situation where he was attacked with a Flamer weapon... :lol:

[Triszin]

Does Lukas only have a ld debuff on allies..no longer effecting enemies

[Dark Shepherd]

Does Lukas only have a ld debuff on allies..no longer effecting enemies

So it seems

But thats 3' and his reroll to hit for Blood Claws is 6':) which is going to wreck face with a unit with a couple of power fists

He has 6 attacks on the charge, hitting on 2's rr misses as his aura appears to apply to himself. 1-3s miss against him, S5 AP-2 rerolling wounds in melee too. And he still has the last laugh ability

 

For 80 points he is a monster.

Worth building around IMO

Edited October 9, 2020 by Dark Shepherd

[Triszin]

I'm thinking about making a v2 model of him.

My old one looks.. ok.

 

I'm thinking of a new build with shrike as a base.

 

And mis match the armor primaris plating

[CaptainStabby]

So... Yeah. Index is index, it's going away in a month.

 

Wulfen probably needed a bit of a nerf, will be interesting to see how it shakes out in the actual codex.

 

My current Wolf army build is hit pretty hard by this relic wise, as I suspect are most folks.

 

Im genuinely sad I never got to run a Judiciar with the Armor of Russ for double freezyness because it would have been hilarious.

 

The "SW as Greymarines" swing back and forth over the years frustrates me as well, but it kinda is what it is. From a game and product design perspective we cant expect to have everything a codex chapter does while also being unique and different, thats really not a reasonable ask.

 

That said... saying in 2e that Marines were just different colors is objectively incorrect. The non codex chapters were noticeably different mechanically, with our codex being the biggest swing in variation from the baseline.

Edited October 9, 2020 by CaptainStabby