Jorin Helm-splitter

At the moment I'm running 12 headtakers. I've also been experimenting with a unit of 6 headtakers with shields lead by a Wolf Priest. I've only ran them once, but they did pretty well in that game.

I've been running a lot of headtakers in my lists, and I've stopped trying to compare the two loadouts. At this point they're practically different data sheets in my mind. The dual wielding headtakers are more of a one-use point & click unit. If having a cheap trade unit appeals to you, they're pretty good at it, although in my limited experience they really need advance and charge. I think that there is more of a debate between headtakers with shields and bladeguard than there is between the two loadouts. For what it's worth I've been running 3 units of headtakers in my most of my lists and I'm running 2 units with shields, and one with paired weapons.

I think you're trying to fill a round hole with square peg if I'm being honest. Lethal hits will help you wound vehicles but like TiguriusX pointed out your list is light on AP, so they will have a pretty good shot of making the saves. You also wouldn't benefit much from the stratagems 4 of them are locked to space wolf units, and 1 of the 2 you could use is the reactive move that was mentioned above, but for that one you would roll a d6 instead of moving 6. To be fair the space wolf book probably needs to be the worst at running a "codex" style list, but GW definitely made it not play nice with vanilla book in a lot of ways. Another point that I feel is important to bring up is that space wolves can't run apothecaries, and I wouldn't be surprised if at the actual release we lose access to more stuff possibly even intercessors (we've never been able to take tacticals and with new GH & BC I could see us losing access to their replacement). For what it's worth I think we'll keep access to them but it's hard to recommend them until the actual release. I like the theme you're going for but primaris are a collection of specialists, and it just feels like this list is over tuned to kill battleline. I'd probably dop a unit of hellblasters, and a Lt. for 3 units of eradicators, or if having 100 guys on the dot is important 2 units of Eradicators and a unit of company heroes. It would still very much be on the fluffy side of things, but it'd have some options for vehicles.

Honestly, I just never considered them for actions. They are already useful I just have to keep that in mind. I'm really curious to see what we lose access to moving forward because I could see us losing access to more units, but I could also see some units no longer being battleline for us as an option as well. As far at 11th is concerned, I think battle line being able to do actions and shoot is a possibility, they can do it in in incursion games with the new set of mission cards, and that may be a test.

@DanPesci - I don't think 10-man marine troop squads being looked down on is a problem of this edition. I don't know if it's ever been viewed favorably from a competitive viewpoint. For what it's worth I do wonder if 10-man squads are going to be the norm in 11th. The grey hunter & blood claw kits don't really look like they're designed to be 10-man squads from a modeling perspective, and it wouldn't shock me if they move towards what you get in the box is the unit or half of it. I do want to add that in my game the blood claws & grey hunters felt fine, but not having sticky objectives hurt, and I didn't want to use them for actions because of how expensive the unit was. I did use Saga of the Hunter which did benefit both.

When I look up weights, I tend to find speculation based on info from roleplaying books which I don't believe are cannon. If I'm being honest, I don't really think that infiltrating space marines make any sense (phobos included). It's just fun to speculate on how GW will justify whatever they decide to do.

@ProtI think that is a fair concern to have. I liked the Saga style rules for warlord abilities, but it's rough when it's a conditional buff for your whole army. I don't see myself using Saga of the Hunter much because you really need to lean into space wolf units hard, and I feel like I would end up running the same list over and over again. It's just after running it, I have to admit it was stronger than I gave it credit for. I'm probably going to try and make one of our detachments work but, if I could give GW feedback it would be to use conditional rules like these for enhancements not detachment rules.

I would add that with power armor it feels like the marine would need serfs to help equip it. I also think the weight of the power armor may be drawback if you're trying to infiltrate a base, not only would you be more likely to leave tracks, but there may be sections where the floors might not be designed to handle that much weight.

If you feel like it's a good option, you should try it. I played my first game with new supplement, and I picked the detachment that I thought was the worst (saga of the hunter). I had fun with it, it's fairly easy to complete and the conditions for getting the bonus were met more than I would've expected. I still don't think the detachment is for me, but it's better than I gave it credit for.

I like the Raven Guard primaris upgrade sprue a lot better than the space wolf one. It would add some interesting bits that I think would look good with the new space wolf units without being over the top. The drawback to both is they really don't have shoulder pads which would feel right for termies, which really feel like they should be in this project. That said I know that there are rumors that space marines are going to get another wave of characters this edition, and I would wait to see if they get better sprues alongside it (the blood angel & dark angel upgrade packs are awesome). It also wouldn't surprise me to see a wolf upgrade sprue alongside the codex release.

I'm hoping that Hounds of Morkai were excluded because they plan to update Reivers. They've never really worked, and the vanguard class in space marine 2 is in my mind a great way to fix the class. Some sort of rule that gives devastating wounds on the charge, and allowing the squad to take some melta guns would work a lot better on the tabletop than trying to make leadership debuffs work on squad with basic weapons. To me it looks like for blood claws they took the assault intercessor points and took off 10% because you have to take them in 10s. Which seems pretty fair IMO, so either they're worried about the volume of attacks GH can have with our detachments, or they were comparing them more to heavy intercessors/sternguard. I tend to think that their point cost will drop, and for what it's worth I don't really feel that since I started my wolves in 5th edition that blood claws have really had their time in the sun.

It's actually really frustrating that you can't take a 5-man grey hunter squad. The loadout for the unit is good, OC3 would be interesting on a 5-man squad. That said the models are awesome and I'll run them because of it lol.

I agree with Karhedron that the pattern was already there it was just more extreme with us. I do think that they should have had a generic rune priest and terminator WGBL with this release instead of Njal and Arjac because of this. I also expect more changes when they reach the full release. I could see some vanilla units picking up the space wolf key word in a space wolves' detachment, and I could see us losing access to some/all of the chaplain models now that we actually have a Wolf Priest model. Hopefully we go back to having our own codex again.

Yeah, he does look like a lot of fun with blood claws. I have a 1000 point game set up this weekend against emperors children, and I plan on running 3x3 headtakers because it's going to be a infantry heavy matchup. So it'll be fun to contrast how the 3 squads do (edit: each squad will have a different character). I really feel that we should start a unit of the week series when we hit the full release date. Cause I feel like there will be a lot to talk about, and I want to see exactly what we have access too before I get carried away .

Yeah, I think the WGBL probably is a better choice than Ragnar for dual weapons. I'm bit a rusty and am going to get a lot of value out of advance and charge on the squad, but I think you have view them as a trade piece because they aren't particularly durable. Saving points and having good buffs helps in that regard. One thing I noticed about the quarry about is that the headtakers get to pick a new quarry when the old one is eliminated. They don't have to be the ones to destroy that unit. I think picking a unit that you know your opponent needs to be aggressive with, may be better than actually trying to pick the headtaker's target at the start of the game.