Tuesday, January 26, 2010

The Warp Storm Breaks..



From the one of the decks of the ship The Might of Russ a lone Wolf Priest looked on at the planet as shuttles carrying supplies ferried back and forth. Their work had been done here they had been sent to clear the planet of any threats and pave way for Imperial subjects to settle on this and many other countless planets. But this planet seemed to be one of the most Pyrrhic victories of all, in the final assault against the planet's defenses the chapter's wolf lord fell in battle along with his most trusted wolf guard. It had been a grievous blow top the chapter, but it had enabled them to win the war and bring the Emperor's light to this world..

The hiss of the automatic door broke the priest's attention for a second as a thrall strode into the room carrying a data slate. "Pardon to disturb you mi lord, but news from Terra has arrived..." the thrall droned "it seems as if the warp storm over Din Kaldir has subsided, all communications with the planet have resulted in nothing..". Before the thrall could talk the priest lifted a hand never taking his eyes off the planet below "When do we depart?" the thrall scrambled through his data slate "As soon as possible mi lord, we are part of the crusade to re-take the planet from any enemies of the Imperium. Various chapters and regiments will join the push to liberate this planet and find out what happened to the former residents...".

The wolf priest waved away the thrall and heard the hiss of the door as he left, the ship seemed to be moving away slowly away from the planet. No doubt the ship was making way towards a safe distance before it opened a navigation course through the warp. "At what cost is the name Din Kaldir" the Wolf Priest mused to himself as the ship engaged it's jump through the warp and everything went dark.



Well this is my mini-introduction for my Space Wolves for a store campaign I will be taking part of beginning next week. It will boast over twenty players and has an equal mix of both Imperium vs Xenos factions. I am quite happy how fast I assembled the Space Wolves though I still have a few touch ups to work on. I am also working on magnetizing my rhinos to make them razorbacks or predators if I feel the need to field any.

Looking over the rules for the campaign they are pretty straight forward, there are some grey areas that needed to be ironed out or fixed before the official start. But other than that should be a good excuse to get a few games in with a force that is very different to what I usually field.

Behind enemy lines.. Space Wolf Scouts

After I clipped all the things needed for my Space Wolf force it took me a couple of days to try and conceive of an army.. Like I have said before I am not the greatest tactician in the group although I will claim myself to be one of the luckiest!

So instead of just sitting down being idle reading the codex and coming up with a coherent strategy I decided to simply build units based on whats available. Then when it comes time for battle pick and choose which units would fit best points wise and go.

The first unit to be done are the Wolf Scouts, I picked six wolf scouts because I converted up five that came in the battle force and by chance I happened to find a sixth metal scout! The box sets I used for the conversions are the Warhammer Fantasy Marauders, Space Marine Scouts and Space Wolves box, add in some green stuff and done!





Armed with two plasma pistols and a melta gun the scouts can (hopefully) come behind the enemy board edge and destroy any artillery/stationary units. Well at least that is the plan.. all else fails they are only 130 points of my army list, lets hope they don't get themselves killed! With the new Space Wolves FAQ released by Games Workshop I can also give the unit some added stopping power by attaching a cheap-ish Wolf Guard to lead the pack.

Sunday, January 3, 2010

The beginnings of a saga...

So like any miniature gamer I have been distracted by another project. It all began when Cash announced that the Game Room was throwing a campaign together using the Planetary Empires tile set in February. Seeing that both Jon and Cash wanted to use Orks for the campaign I wanted something a little bit different... I went for Space Wolves!

Now I should say that I am not just jumping on the band wagon, I never really was one to go for the "good guys" in any game I play (I prefer morally gray armies), the wolves were among one of the three Space Marine armies I ever liked ( Dark Angels and Sons of Medusa being the other two). Their savage nature, close combat abilities and distinctive/personalized armor make for something interesting.

As a bonus my brother has also a great love for anything Space Wolves, having remnants from his old army (or pieces of it rather) it is an army we both can use when the mood strikes us. So with my Christmas bonus in hand I went to the store and bought myself a few things to start up my force.

-Space Marine Battalion (which contains: 15 tactical space marines, 5 assault marines, 5 scouts and a rhino).
-Space Wolf Box x2 (20 marines)
-Fantasy Chaos Marauder Box

along with some odds and ends
- 10 marines
- 2 long Fangs
- Wolf Scout, Wolf Guard/Marine x2 one with power fist another with power sword
- Space Wolves Drednought
- 2-3 salvageable Rhinos/Predators/Etc


All and all I think I have quite a good set up plenty of bits to use for conversions and a decent sized army while i'm at it. It won't be easy especially with the vehicles since I will have to kit bash or scrounge a lot to get the rhinos looking respectable but it should be fun.

It took me a couple of hours between washing and clipping everything out of the sprues but with some tea and the Twilight Zone marathon playing all night long I managed to clip and sort everything I purchased.

The next logical thing to do would be to build an army list, now for me list building is quite personal and requires testing. I have to warn that I don't build lists to be optimal as some people do. I hate number crunching and sapping the fun out of the game for the other guy. List building for myself is something more organic if I can call it that.

I find units that I am comfortable with and I make them work one way or another through trial and error. Slowly making small tweaks in the list till I find a good combination of things to make a solid army list. Now for the campaign I want to make roughly three different types of forces. Not that it gains my any other benefit other than it's just something I thought would be cool. Roughly the three forces are veterans, aspirants and recon/mechanized, we shall see how things turn out but for now I am out of here. Till next time!