This weekend, a few of us in my regular gaming group, The Sunday Morning Fight Club, tried a game of Warhammer 40,000 10th Edition. We had points, the stock mission from the main rules, and the index rules at the time of the game. There are still a lot of clarifications we need, like, “what is a battleline troop?” and, “can you really reduce a damage to 0?” but we soldiered on, stumbling and fumbling along the way.
I brought my Space Wolves and I played against Eli and his combined Daemon force. I can’t speak for Eli, but I felt like we both brought a variety of units to see how they worked, interesting interactions, and some combos and tactics we were excited to try.
My thoughts on building a Space Wolf List:
I had a bit of a challenge with building my Space Wolf roster. I have lots of troops. I have lots of characters. However, I mostly own first born characters and I want to field Primaris troops, which prevents me from having characters join a similarly armored unit. It’s not that big of a deal but if I want to get the biggest bang out of a character’s special abilities, I need to make a few more character/unit combos. I don’t anticipate this being a problem with armies like Imperial Guard, or Orks, but with the variety of armor and war gear available to Marines, you have to be extra deliberate and make sure you have a proper pair. I used to have a Wolf Lord, Rune Priest and Wolf Priest all with jump packs supporting my army, but now I can only put those figures with Skyclaws or Vanguard Vets.
Rune Priests are gone and now we can only field Librarians. It’s a little loss of flavor, and it’s mechanically the same, but it’s sad to see something go generic. However, for the sake of streamlining data sheets and universal rules, it’s probably a good idea. For some reason, Librarians with jump packs are gone. Maybe that’s an oversight, but most of my space wizards relied on jump packs to scoot around the battlefield and do their thing. My White Scars are especially disappointed.
Wolf Priests are gone. They are a semi unique unit for the Wolf-boys because they were half chaplain and half apothecary. Now, Space Wolf players can have chaplains, but can not field Primaris Apothecaries. First born Apothecaries are only available in the generic Command Squad, and the Apothecary Biologis might be good for an Aggressor squad, but he doesn’t resurrect models like in days of old. The other restrictions on the army for the Champions of Russ Detachment are similar to previous editions of 40k and aren’t really a factor when it came to building a list.
Thoughts on Space Wolf Rules:
I’m not going to sugar coat it. Space Wolf Deeds are trash. Hot garbage. They aren’t good at all. While other Space Marine chapters get to start the game with special rules, Space Wolf players need to accomplish tasks to unlock their special abilities. It’s a fluff driven mechanic but it doesn’t work well and I only completed one deed in turn 5 of my game.
Saga of the Warrior Born requires you to kill a character with a character. That’s actually hard to do. With characters in units and units taking the hits, I never managed to get a character to land the killing blow on another character. Either the unit killed everyone first, the character only killed troops and not the character, or the opponent died from battle shock. It would be better if a unit containing a character killing another character could trigger this deed, but it’s a long-shot to pull off unless you take a lone operative and kill an opponent’s lone operative.
Saga of Majesty is the only deed I pulled off. I got Arjak into my opponent’s back field and on his home objective in turn 5 giving my army +1 OC. I had about 6 models left at that point. I might have been able to do it a turn earlier, but it was a moot point.
Saga of the Bear had a similar problem to Warrior Born as I could never get the damage just right at the end of a battle round. My wounded characters were either just above half wounds, or dead. I couldn’t land that magical sweet spot of half death at the end of a battle round. Special abilities being triggered on death (or half-life) kind of suck.
Saga of the Beast Slayer rewards you for killing monsters or vehicles with characters. Again, the problem is doing enough wounds with a CHARACTER. I found that my units finished of the monsters and not the character. If I attacked with the character first, I didn’t do enough wounds. If I attacked with the unit, they overkilled and the character didn’t get the killing blow. No joy.
Templars can just pick something. Blood Angels too. Dark Angels may have the best rule with the no battle shock rule, but Wolves have to get lucky, or half die. That’s no way for a Vlka Fenryka to play.
Also, the Space Marine index is more that 252 pages (in random order) and the Space Wolf index is 78 pages long. Trying to find the Blade Guard veteran OC value while scrolling through your phone is a PAIN. They are likely sorted in some sort of battle line that’s not indicated in the index. Data sheets in alphabetical order would have been much better and I hope the new version of the 40k App is more user friendly.
Thoughts on Game Play:
Warhammer 10th seems very familiar to anyone who has played 8th or 9th, especially if you played Tempest of War, and many rules are shared with Horus Heresy. Since we were just fumbling around with Primary and Secondary points, I don’t think it’s fair to give review of how the game scoring worked but it does seem straightforward enough and I like the 50-40-10 balance. The game flow felt fine and I don’t think the changes have really sped the game up any but since we were trying to find rules in the bloated indexes all game, we were naturally a little slower.
The Battle Shock tests turned out to be a big factor. I had previously wished that leadership played a bigger role in the game and I got my wish! I was surprised how many leadership tests I failed and then the amount of wounds I suffered. It played a significant role in our game. Plus, the Bloodthirster, Plaguebearers, and Sloppity Bilepiper were dishing out free mortal wounds across the battlefield. I suffered more wounds in battleshock and out of sequence mortal wounds that I did in the shooting and close combat phases.
The movement and shooting phases felt about the same as previous editions and the interactions with terrain didn’t really make many differences in our scrap.
The close combat phase was a grind. Eli described our hand-to-hand combat as, “pool noodles.” There were a few lopsided fights in mismatched scrimmages, but a unit of Thunderwolf Cavalry fought a Bloodthirster to a standstill most of game, only dying to post-combat mortal wounds.
The OC values of some things seem a bit off and will likely be finetuned in future updates. Wulfen scoring 0 kind of makes sense fluff wise, but with their high cost and low damage output, I doubt I will field them again.
Final Thoughts:
The Thunderwolf Cav were outstanding, Murderfang is magnificent, and Arjack in unit of terminators is great deathstar, but my Wolves are going into cold storage for the time being. I plan on bringing out my Salamanders for the next test drive. They are by far the largest army I own and I can play around with a mechanized tank list, an elite list, a deep strike with drop pod list or a foot-slogging list … I’ve got options for days.
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