Wolves of the Aurora – Warhammer 40,000 Tournament Report

After a great showing at the Tacoma Open, it was time to iterate on my Space Wolves list a bit and see what I could tweak to make it play better, have less weaknesses, and give me more opportunities to tackle the specific eccentricities of the Pariah Nexus scenario packet.

Here’s the “old” list:

After playing 9 highly competitive games at the Tacoma Open, I also had a lot of things I hated about this list.

I hated that it couldn’t move through terrain outside the 435 point investment of Canis Rex. I hated that I only had one deep strike unit. I hated that my only viable overwatch target was Bjorn.

So I took those complaints and I iterated on my list keeping the parts that I loved the most and moving things around so that I could address some of those pain points.

It gets another deep strike unit (Jump Pack Intercessors), keeps the utility of the scouts, and picks up a few more individual activations from the prior version of the list.

And on a slightly vain note, it also keeps a big centerpiece vehicle for me to freehand all over.

There is actually one thing I would change about the list still – dropping Pelt of the Balewolf and upgrading a unit of Scouts to Wolf Scouts for cooler weapons – but I ran out of painting time so this is what we get.

I took this list to an RTT this past weekend to get some practice with it in preparation for worlds in November, and I got to play three fantastic games.

Round 1 vs. Joel’s Dark Angels

Joel is the local boogyman for the southern part of Washington State. He and I had a fantastically close game last month prior to the Tacoma Open where my Canis Rex tech in the mirror proved to be too much for his wolves to handle.

This time, he’s got Dark Angels, which is another faction I’m insanely interested in trying out.

His list is very similar to one I played against at the Tacoma Open, except instead of playing two Vindicators as the gun platforms he has Hellblasters and Eradicators at the expense of no Jump Pack Intercessors.

We were playing Take and Hold on Hammer and Anvil deployment.

I knew I needed to give him nothing for at least a full turn in order to win this game, so I wanted desperately to go second.

Joel won the attacker and defender roll off, and used his Scouts to screen off “my” objective.

I fanned out to do the same, and also stuck a unit in the middle. We both put our big tanks behind the piece of cover, and I put all my units in hiding whereas my relative lack of guns allowed Joel to deploy on the line.

Joel chose to take Assassinate and Engage on All Fronts as fixed secondaries and I went tactical.

I promptly won the roll for first, chose to start in Saga of the Warrior Borne because he had no characters to speak of, and we were off.

Round 1:

I drew Establish Locus and a free end of turn CP (Marked for Death).

I decided to try and cage in his top units with a set of Scouts, but Joel popped Overwatch and killed 3 of them. He also used the Watcher from his Hellblasters to only lose one of them to Hazardous.

I played insanely cagey with everything else, keeping my Land Raider very safe and completing a Locus in the center with Scouts.

Joel got his brace of CP from Azrael and moved up the board aggressively. He popped into Devastator Doctrine for the round and chose the bottom unit of Thunderwolf Cavalry as his Oaths of Moment target.

The Eradicator brick got out of the Repulsor and wounded my unit 11 times, which I only passed 2 saves from. Fortunately, Joel flubbed the damage rolls and I only lost 4.

This let them reactive move into his Scouts and onto the objective. Because of the way his Scouts were positioned, his Deathwing Knights needed a 9 inch charge to get over them and he failed the reroll, so his bikes charged in, failed to kill everything, and lost two bikes and all five Scouts in exchange.

Round 2:

I drew Behind Enemy Lines and Extend Battle Lines here, scoring 15 on Primary thanks to the middle and bottom objectives.

Bjorn moved up to outside melta range of his Eradicators and within 12 so that if he wanted to use Overwatch, it would cost two rather than one.

Ragnar and friends hopped out and advanced towards the top objective.

My Land Raider found a cheeky spot where only three shots from the Eradicators would have Line of Sight, so Joel waited to pop it for the unit of Thunderwolves that fell back. Fortunately, he did no damage here.

The Judiciar and Bladeguard Veterans got out around the Land Raider.

I put both deep striking units in the backfield, hoping to make a 9 inch charge to engage the Hellblasters.

Then, the Land Raider flamered down 4 Eradicators with help from Bjorn, and when I tried to charge them (with full rerolls from Logan), they hopped back into the Repulsor.

My Thunderwolves took out four Deathwing Knights, Bjorn finished off the last Bike, and Ragnar and co. killed two Knights on the top edge and then died down to the last man aside from Ragnar. I forgot to use Armour of Contempt here, which would have kept an Assault Intercessor alive, denying Joel that objective.

I unfortunately failed all my nine inch rerolls in the backlines, so none of the Hellblasters went down.

Joel fired back by bringing his Deathwings from the center to the bottom. The Hellblasters decided to hide for a turn, killing off the Jump Pack Intercessors. The Inner Circle Companions moved to handle Logan. I got a cheeky Heroic Intervention with the Judiciar unit, which killed a Deathwing Knight before they got to fight my Thunderwolves, and that let my characters in the unit remain alive thanks to rerolling a save (the Battle Leader) and rolling 6/7 4++ saves on the Wolf Lord. This also unlocked Saga of the Bear.

Round 3:

I drew Assassinate and No Prisoners, scored 15 on Primary again, and began the work of Death. I picked the Deathwing Knights in the bottom as my Oaths of Moment target.

Bjorn moved up and finished off the Eradicators that had hopped out the last turn, and the Land Raider moved back to make the Hellblasters have to come out VERY far to shoot at it.

All the remaining Deathwings died to a Thunderwolf charge (top) and a bunch of things just smacking them (bottom). Bjorn charged into the Repulsor and split attacks between it and the last Knight, leaving it on 6.

With very few units left, Joel scored 5 on Primary and then brought his Hellblasters out to play. They all took shots downrange at the Thunderwolf unit and the characters from the first unit, killing a lot more stuff than expected (this was another 2/11 saves situation to balance out the insane saves from the previous turn).

I got to finish off the Repulsor, but sadly not with a character so no Saga of the Beastslayer.

Round 4:

15 more Primary points, Containment and Secure No Man’s Land for secondaries, and a unit of Hellblasters as my Oaths target.

I contained with both the Bladeguard Veterans and Thunderwolf Cavalry at the top and bottom. The Land Raider and Bjorn moved up and blasted the Hellblaster unit down to just Azrael.

On Joel’s turn, the Callidus Assassin who’d been bouncing around the backfield charged into my Scouts on the home objective, killing them down to one model. The Inner Circle Companions in Assault Doctrine rolled a VERY good advance roll, which let them charge into the Land Raider.

Azrael had sat still and done nothing because of the overwatch threat on his 2 remaining health.

The Inner Circle Companions did about 8 damage to the Land Raider through Armour of Contempt.

Round 5:

I drew Area Denial and Sabotage, my top unit of Thunderwolves failed their battleshock test, but still prepped to charge into the Companions. I didn’t need their help though, because the Land Raider introduced them all to death by fire, and I ended my turn with only Azrael and the Callidus alive (Azrael rolled a 5 on the reactive move stratagem to get away from Bjorn).

Azrael failed his battleshock this turn, the Callidus finished off the lone scout, and Joel scored 5 on Primary to end the game decisively in my favor.

This felt like a game that I primarily won due to mobility. I was able to force key parts of the Dark Angels’ list back (the Inner Circle Companions, Hellblasters) for a couple turns, dictated the line of engagement, and was able to force the primary issue entirely in my favor. I also had enough ranged output to take out the Eradicators, and did a good job hiding from the Hellblasters until it was too late for them to impact the game.

Joel and I did some chatting after the game and we both think that the Eradicators package should probably turn into more Scouts and Jump Pack Intercessors to help with the scenario game. His list hits VERY hard, it needs to be able to go places without impedance.

Round 2 vs. Chris’ Death Guard

Those of you who have read my reports before will look at these pictures and think “those Death Guard models look very familiar”.

That would be because Chris is my sparring partner every week. He’d had to play a fellow hometown player in round 1 as well, so either way the hometown friends group would be killing each other off.

I’ve played against Chris’ iterations about 10 times since Tacoma and they each have gotten a little more lethal.

This time, we were playing the Ritual, still on Hammer and Anvil, which is perhaps my least favorite scenario.

I decided to reserve a unit of Scouts, put the Jump Packs and Logan into Deep Strike, and as usual put all the murder infantry in the Land Raider.

Chris chose to put all the Death Shrouds into Deep Strike, with the Lord of Virulence on one of them. Typhus also went into the warp, alongside a unit of Plaguebearers and Nurglings.

I lost the roll for attacker and defender, and from top to bottom Chris has a Bloat Drone, Plagueburst Crawler, Rhino with the 10 man Plague Marines and 2 Characters, a Plagueburst behind that, Mortarion and a Bloat Drone, and then the last Rhino with 5 Plague Marines.

My deployment is Thunderwolves top and bottom, Scouts top, and Bjorn and Land Raider central.

Once again I won the roll for first (terrible in this matchup) and we both chose Tactical Objectives. I started in Saga of the Bear, and Chris chose the -1 save contagion.

Round 1:

I drew Cleanse and Engage on All Fronts, both of which are completely untenable this turn. I could put the Land Raider on the center objective for 2 points, but it gives a unit of Plague Marines an 8 inch charge that I can’t use Overwatch on due to terrain, as well as two full barrages from Plagueburst Crawlers and all the shots Mortarion wants to put into it as well.

If only the guns connect, I’m in great shape. If the Plague Marines charge in, it’s probably dead as these ones have criticals on 5s and Lethal hits.

I opt to play chicken, using the Land Raider to make a new objective and putting down a stick to mark the maximum threat range of the Plagueburst Crawlers’ Entropy Cannons for my bottom Thunderwolves.

Chris draws Secure No Man’s Land and Containment here, and is able to complete both of them while only really putting a Bloat Drone in the middle. The Plague Marines in the top Rhino hop out and make an objective, and the Containment is done by the other Bloat Drone and the bottom Rhino.

He puts some shots into the Scouts, killing all but one, and the Wolves in the middle. I opt to use a reactive move here, as a 4+ on the dice will let me take the center objective, which is a ten point swing between primary and denying Secure No Man’s Land. I roll a one, and Chris ships the turn back over.

Round 2:

This time, I draw Engage on All Fronts and Behind Enemy Lines, which seem very doable. I score 5 on Primary.

Bjorn goes forth as my sacrificial lamb to the center. The Bladeguard Veterans get out and make another objective.

Logan goes ahead and drops in the top left and the Jump Pack Intercessors in the middle to maybe get a charge into Tallyman on the home objective.

Chris uses Rapid Ingress to put the unit of Death Shroud and Lord of Virulence into the center bottom left.

I make charges into the Bloat Drones, one Plagueburst Crawler, and the bottom Rhino and small unit of Plague Marines. I try to charge the Tallyman, but that fails, and I try to charge the top Rhino with Logan and that fails too.

Everything dies thanks to infinite rerolls from Logan, and I complete Saga of the Beastslayer with any one of a handful of characters.

Unfortunately, I’m now so far forward that I only get Engage on All Fronts for a small amount thanks to my one remaining Scout.

Chris’ turn goes a little weird. He draws Cleanse and Storm Hostile Objective, and scores 5 on Primary as well.

Mortarion and the remaining Plagueburst Crawler come into the middle right up next to Bjorn to take the objective back and ignore his half damage rule (yay Mortarion!).

Typhus drops in my home objective to Cleanse (dirty? rot? decay?) it and the other Deathshroud come down behind the Plagueburst Crawler to make a new objective.

Shooting takes Bjorn down and some Thunderwolves in the top unit.

Chris fails the charge with the Plague Marines into the top unit, and between Mortarion and Deathshroud on the bottom edge I’m down to 3 wolves and the characters in that unit as well.

Round 3:

I spend a CP to put the bottom unit of Thunderwolves into Saga of the Warrior Born so that they can fall back and spend a strat to charge.

I draw Recover Assets and Sabotage, and score 10 points on Primary.

Logan moves into a piece of deployment terrain to Sabotage it.

The Jump Pack Intercessors move to the back objective to threaten Tallyman, and the wolves on both sides circle.

I move the Land Raider to be able to see Typhus and within 12, and trail the Bladeguard Veterans back to fight him if needed.

The Land Raider does its thing and puts the Death Guard Chapter Master down during the shooting phase.

I managed to bait out an Overwatch so Chris is on zero CP, and this is huge because it means that my top unit of Thunderwolves can charge into just the Rhino, and then pile into the unit of Plague Marines with their fights first and ignore that. Because I do this, the precision enhanced Wolf Lord kills both characters in the Plague Marine unit and about half the unit besides. The Rhino doesn’t go down, but Mortarion and the Plagueburst Crawler do thanks to the Thunderwolves and Ragnar respectively, which allows the Thunderwolves in the bottom to consolidate into the new objective and deny it.

The Tallyman dies.

I absolutely had to get a picture of Ragnar right after soloing the Plagueburst Crawler. I love this dude.

At the end of that turn, I’m still working on a Sabotage, but I pitch Recover Assets

I also unlocked Saga of the Warrior Born.

On Chris’ turn, he scores 5 and gets No Prisoners and Area Denial.

The two remaining Deathshroud Units go into the bottom Thunderwolf unit, taking it down to the wound. He also puts his recently deep striked unit of Plaguebearers into the Bladeguard Veterans to deny me that objective. I kill half the unit, but they other half does block me there.

Chris pitches Area Denial, as his entire list probably cannot kill the Land Raider now.

Round 4:

It’s cleanup turn. I draw Bring it Down and Assassinate.

The Land Raider blows up the unit with the Lord of Virulence for Assassinate, and then Logan finishes off the Rhino, the Thunderwolves obliterate the remaining Plague Marines, and Ragnar whiffs pretty hard and his unit only kills two Deathshroud.

The remaining Plaguebearers die to the master-crafted power weapons of the Bladeguard Veterans.

At this point, Chris has a unit of Nurglings left, so we both draw our last few secondary objectives and discuss how we’d score them or not and then calculate the points from there.

This is a matchup that I’m increasingly comfortable with, and even though this is, I think, my worst scenario into this list, I like the way everything matches up into his list. I can pick a turn and kill 5 units and then he has to try and make the remaining stuff kill off my army which is very inefficient when everything has a 6+ Feel No Pain.

Chris would go on to win his third game and get third overall, which we were both extremely hyped about.

Round 3 vs. Jubilee’s Adepta Sororitas

This is now my fourth game against basically this list, and my experience is “you go first and you win”. Both lists are extremely fast, both lists can jail the other out of the primary, and both lists can trivially obliterate each other if we can get the lines.

For this game, I deployed my Land Raider extremely conservatively and put a unit of Thunderwolves into reserves. I didn’t want to give the Castigators the ability to line up on anything with more than one set of guns. Jubilee’s deployment looks extremely conservative as well, but Table Corners is just a really squashed deployment for that many Rhino chassis.

The scenario is Lynchpin.

Jubilee deployed first, stringing the infiltrator sisters across the center. My scouts got to be aggressive top left and bottom right.

I won the roll for first (huge this time) and we were off. I picked the Saga of the Bear.

I scout moved my Scouts up such that nothing with scout on the Sisters’ side could move.

I drew Area Denial and Bring it Down, which was a true shame because a turn 3 Bring it Down would be massive.

I moved my Land Raider into the nice hidden pocket to stage for the next turn, moved Bjorn into the center, and moved both units of Scouts up.

My Scouts on the top side shot 3 Dominions to death, the Land Raider and Bjorn obliterated the Novitiates with their flamers, and then Bjorn charged into the remaining 2 Dominions, and the Scouts on top and bottom charged into the Immolators on the edges of the deployment zones.

Bjorn, to the surprise of no one, obliterated the remaining two Dominions.

The Scouts, also to the surprise of no one, did one damage total. This did not matter though, as nothing could get through on the left side of the table and only one Castigator could get out on the right side. In the center, only one thing could get through as well, and that meant that I was likely going to get to alpha strike hard next turn.

Jubilee put every gun in the list into Bjorn, but with Armour of Contempt he survived on 4. The Triumph of St. Katherine charged into him as well, but again with Armour of Contempt he survived on 2.

For those of you thinking this was luck, he was saving on 2s most of the time and he actually took more damage than I was expecting.

Round 2:

I scored just the Lynchpin for primary and drew Marked for Death and Cleanse.

Bjorn failed his battleshock, and didn’t die when he fell back.

I put my reserved Thunderwolves down on the far bottom right side, unloaded the Land Raider, and then whiffed almost everything this turn.

Jubilee used Rapid Ingress to put Vahl on the top left corner.

Even with rerolling every charge and hit roll, I only killed the Triumph and some Dominions. I am 0/6 on rerollable 9 inch charges this event sadly. This turn absolutely could have been the utter destruction of two Immolators and two Castigators as well, but instead Jubilee gets another turn to shoot at me.

Fortunately, Jubilee draws a similarly bad set of secondaries, and though the Land Raider does go down, nothing else really does. I put the Jump Pack Intercessors on the bottom right objective, and even though Logan dies to flaming Seraphim, I’ve managed to maintain the jail and I think I’m going to be okay.

On the next turn, I kill everything on the table but Vahl, a unit of regular Battle Sisters, and 5 Dominions, as well as dominate the objectives. Jubilee takes some shots to kill Bjorn in revenge with Vahl, and then concedes as a unit of Thunderwolves will get to the Paragon Warsuits next turn, and the remaining Dominions cannot handle all the wolves, infantry, and characters on the table.

I went first, I won! I was surprised that the Scouts did all the lifting this game, but in this particular deployment zone it’s extremely possible for an all vehicle list to get very, very stuck.

After that first turn placement, the game was essentially over, even with an extremely underwhelming turn of the wolf.

With that, I happily took first place overall and got three very different games in with this iteration of the list!

Thoughts on the List

I have been absolutely loving this list, with nearly 10 games under my belt since I changed away from the Canis platform.

The key difference is really the land raider + infantry package vs. the Canis package. They play extremely differently.

Let’s start with the places that they are comfortable going.

On the left, there are a selection of pictures from the Land Raider games, on the right, a selection of pictures from the Canis Rex games.

They were all taken about turn 2 or 3, and the difference is stark. The Land Raider sits proudly in the middle of the table, dominating enemy infantry with the threat of Overwatch and being very tanky. On the other side of things, Canis Rex requires babying, waiting for the ideal targets for its guns to pop out of hiding, or alternatively just waiting for threats to die or become engaged.

Rex is surprisingly more fragile than the Land Raider, with a worse base save and no access to Armour of Contempt. It also cannot Overwatch at all and the Land Raider is incredibly good at threatening enemy infantry and medium Monsters/Vehicles. It should wound a Rhino 4-5 times on Overwatch, and if the Rhino has taken any damage at all that is a scary prospect.

Now, the Rex is much better at cracking tough enemy models at range, with a very good “big” gun and the ability to pop off much harder. It’s also much better at punching things, though I’ve found that to be a trap, and costs 1.5 times as many points.

Overall, I think the main differences in the list come down to the following.

Land Raider:

Pros:
– Much better at table location based scenario play due to Jump Pack Intercessors, more units, and the ability to breach
– Slightly killier in melee than the Thunderwolf version due to always D2 weapons and access to Ragnar
– Much better at dealing with screening infantry thanks to the flamer.
– More durable due to the 2+ save on the big tank.
– Land Raider actually blocks Line of Sight to the Thunderwolves.

Cons:
– No long range threats, opponents can deploy on the line (they shouldn’t, because they can still get trapped, but they can).
– No dedicated huge damage melee weapons
– Looks less cool

Rex:

Pros:
– Better tank cracker, able to do actions and contribute at full capacity via ranged.
– Also deals with terrain better than the Thunderwolves
– Looks awesome

Cons:
– Opponents can and will kill the Knight without extreme care
– Easily trapped into movement lanes due to triple thunderwolf composition without supporting infantry
– Gives up the ability to interact with the whole table as easily
– Can’t overwatch at all

Overall, I’m leaning towards keeping this version of the list going forwards. It feels like it has better play on the extremely action heavy Pariah Nexus scenarios, has a slightly better game plan into Death Guard and (maybe?) Sisters.

It’s also probably more nerf resistant due to playing only two units of Thunderwolves.

I’m playing with some ideas still, such as dropping the Judiciar (95 points), Bladeguard (180 points), and….something….to get a third unit of Thunderwolves in there. I could also just put in a max Thunderwolf unit with a Battle Leader, or maybe even a min unit of Thunderwolves with both characters. These are both situationally much killier than the Bladeguard, though it’s extremely target dependent.

I’m going to continue to play games with Space Wolves as my planned World Championship Army, but I’m also going to take a couple of weeks off them to give my sparring partner a break and play some Thousand Sons to get a feel for the faction and what they will be like to play against.