the new space wolves dex, not bad, but...

[wolflold]

I like the new space wolves codex, lots of updates, units got better or cheaper, im not complaining. However, its kind of sad that the wolf scouts and long fangs are the way of the dodo .

Scouts no longer have "behind enemy lines" which makes them like normal scouts, but with ws/bs 4 and the option for special weapons. They still take up an elite slot. The way they are now, its just a waste of points. They're even more expensive than grey hunters...

Long fangs lost their split fire where you could choose which weapons shot where, now its just the usr split fire...so no more 2 heavy bolters on Infantry and 3 lascannons on tanks

Thats the only thing i think is "bad" in this codex and people no longer going to use them. Where they realy that op? To bad the most iconic units lost their mojo.

[Mr.Pickelz]

Long Fangs were too good with the lowering of their price point between the 3rd ed. and 5th ed. books, the 5xMissile Launcher that can split shots was a bit over the top in terms of damage potential. And for a while I personally saw every list (Tournament and Casual alike) have at least 2 squads of Long Fangs, and heard chatter that they were the must have unit from the book. This with Blood Claws goin up in price, plus Grey Hunters getting the CCW+Bolter+Bolt Pistol, meant that SW's easily fell into the shooting/gun-line style of play. Not to mention riflemen dreadnoughts. (a dreadnought with a Twin-Linked Autocannon on each arm) It seems this book is getting the Space Wolves back to a "In Your Face" style, but time will tell.

[Cap'nSmurfs]

Long Fangs were too much an obvious "must take", which led to abominations like the army I played a couple of times: Space Wolves gunned up to the nines in a Fortress of Redemption.

[Chumbalaya]

That's basically what you can expect with all the new Codices since Orks. Reducing options, cutting back on flavorful and interesting rules and an overall homogenization of the army.

[JimmyWolf]

I do dislike the loss of both their special rules, but with the removal of assaulting from Outflank, I only used Scouts as Snipers anyway. If they get camo cloaks, as rumoured, then better for me anyway.

The Long Fangs Split fire actually doesn't matter to me somewhat, as I never really liked the missile launcher spam on principle and took a Lascannon with 4 heavy bolters normally. More or less same cost, and cut through Orks like butter

The biggest thing that people seem to dislike are the new psychic powers. Jaws got possibly the biggest nerf of the whole codex, while the rest are fairly meh. The Shrouded cover save, which at 1 warp charge point is cheaper than Invisibility, and Murderous Hurricane are ok though, and if you had a unit of Long Fangs with a Rune Priest with Divination as well as that cover save, you'd have a nasty unit. But you'd need to be damn lucky.

Overall, I like the new codex, but it has to be said that the Space Wolves units, though not the chapter as a whole, have lost things that gave them that little bit of extra character. I'd like say that's because Phill Kelly wrote the last one on his own, and he loves giving things extra rules for the sake of character, but given that the whole design team works on codexes now, he'd have helped write this one too.

[Tommie Soule]

Wolf guard can't be split off anymore, but having so many*hq*options combined with multiple force org gives for an interesting substitute.*

[vonDietdrich]

I think the Blood Angels-style "roll to see if you get a USR at deployment" army rule is the reason why Scouts got changed. Was it thought through? ..probably not.

If anything, the new Space Wolves release solidifies them as a shooting army rather than an assault/close quarters one. Long Fangs made an impression to a lot of people that Wolves were a shooty army with the old codex, but they really weren't. They had a lot of solid CC and outflank options (until 6th came along and made assault and outflank useless because you'd get shot up before you got anywhere). That's around the time that Long Fang spam became popular, as Space Wolves didn't have any other answer to the nerf on melee combat and the prevalence of tanks. Space Wolves aren't going to be an assault army again, because in the core rules, assault sucks.

The Stormfang is easily one of the best shooting platforms in the Imperium because Helfrost is great for killing infantry models with strong saves (which seem to be everywhere, these days), and it has all the other benefits of a flying gun platform with some transport capacity besides.

Logan's sled is random and gratuitous and has no discernible function besides being a bullet magnet.

A Dreadnought with a storm shield is nice.. but a dread with a helfrost cannon is better. In fact, helfrost is just better, period. Obviously, trying to run nothing but helfrost is a bad idea, but the only real threat most armies have difficulty with is infantry with great saves, especially if they're multi-wound. Goodbye, Terminators and Obliterators. Goodbye, HQ choices and Paladins and Eldar and Imperial Guardsmen. Even against high Strength models, it still performs well in the wounding arithmetic. If you drop three Helfrost templates on a group of Terminators in one turn, there's a pretty good chance that they'll all fail one of their 'save or die's and you earn back all the points you spent on the guns. It's cheese, but if cheese is the direction that they're gonna take the 'special themed' armies, I suppose I'm not really surprised.

Psychic powers in 7th are very fiddly, improbable, and require you to run extra 'battery' psykers just so your main guys can get their mojo off reliably. They're a huge point sink, and it really sucks to spend a few hundred points on psykers and then watch as they spend an entire phase doing nothing because of bad rolls or an opponent with a large DtW pool who shuts you out completely. I no longer run Psykers except a token fellow to keep a couple DtW dice handy. So, yeah, SW psychic powers got nerfed, which to me is a resounding 'meh'. They don't have the ability to crank out enough Psychic Levels to compete in the big leagues anyway. Easier to kill heretics with ice bullets.

In short, Space Wolves will want to load up on guns, vehicles/drop pods/troops, hope for outflank and generally try to play Blood Angels Orthodonistry (that's how I'm going to be playing mine, anyway). Their big advantage now is immediate board control: instead of having to run for objectives, they can just appear at them by combining outflank and drop pods with centerfield deployment and a strong firebase. Then you just blast away and let your Grey Hunters eat charges with their Counterattack.

tl;dr:

Space Wolves survived GW's Codex Roulette in large part because they now have increased strategic options in the form of Cunning of the Wolf. Cunning of the Wolf means that you can now Outflank dedicated transport troop vehicles with IC on a 4+, which adds a completely new dimension to gameplay for Wolves that's not there for any other Imperium faction (besides, to an extent, Blood Angels as I mentioned). Helfrost is extreme anti-infantry cheese, but it's going to be popular because its rules are so strong. Expect it to be the new Long Fangs as far as codex reputation goes.

Anyone want to take bets on what the Blood Angels are going to get for special guns? Bloodfire Cannons? Hellburst Launchers? Angelscourge Flamethrowers? Heh.

[AlexRae]

Space Wolves seem to be geared towards heroic characters killing things in combat, specifically challenges. Unfortunately they have lost a number of the things that helped them do this; Eternal Warrior kept them alive, Wolf Tooth Necklace meant they were hitting nastier things than them on 3s still. They do have some nice touches now with combat bonuses in Challenges and access to 're-roll to hit' wargear. However the loss of Saga of the Bear is a big blow.

Thunderwolves have been much improved, as have all of the dreadnoughts. The new Flyers are very powerful and competitively priced. So are Bjorn, Ulrik and Harald. The Blood Claws are now great deckchair units at their reduced cost. Slap a flamer in the unit and they are quite scary to actually charge, whilst having more resilience than Cultists/Grots/Guard.

Obviously everyone knows the 'Fast Attack Drop Pod' is going to be a big deal, with people looking to stick the nastiest of nasty in there from Grav Centurions with Tigurius/Sevrin Loth, to Mephiston and attached IC buddies.

Many units got the shaft. Wolf Guard in Power Armour in pods are now too expensive to make work with 10pt combi weapons. Sternguard do it way better. Wolf Guard Pack Leaders in Grey Hunters got people excited, but realise you have to pay 20pts just to get that 3rd Melta weapon in the unit and you soon go off the idea. Long Fangs are now dramatically inferior to Imperial Fists devastators. One shot is not enough to do much with the new Vehicle damage charts. Wolf Scouts.... may as well not be in the book. Same goes for Rune Priests unfortunately. Tempestas is a mediocre power discipline. May be worth taking for cheap Summoning of Daemons (MALEFICARUM!). Wolf Lords are kinda stuck between being slightly better but way more expensive Captains, and being a poor man's Chapter Master. Other Chapters may have better tacticians, that can be reflected in their superior Chapter Tactics... But I would have liked to have seen Wolf Lords be Chapter Master level in terms of power to reflect their heroism. Happily would pay 120pts for CM stats and no Orbital Bombardment. That extra wound!

The book is definitely 'good'. It isnt as good as the Vanilla marine book which has superior 'Chapter Tactics', Combat Squads and better support units. I feel they got some of the points costings wrong still even with the reductions, the nerfs were too severe.

My favourite thing though is the Ven Dread with Shield and Axe. Great threat unit.

[Cap'nSmurfs]

I think I agree with the two above. It looks like a good codex to me; more importantly, it looks like a pretty fun codex. Standouts, personally, are the Shield and Axe Venerable (extra attack for a shield bash? Be still, my heart!), the Lone Wolf, Bjorn, and, as ever, Grey Hunters. Take the CCWs, realise you don't need a LD check for Counter-Attack anymore, and stand proud as your reputation as King of the Midfield remains intact.

The point of most of the HQs, the Wolf Lord especially, is to tool them up with a big, hitty weapon and throw him headfirst into the biggest, meanest thing on the board. He might not always win, but he'll go down swinging like an enormous space-Viking hardcase. On this, the Black Death axe would be my pick of the relics, most of which are both useful and very reasonably priced. It's only 5 pts. more than a Frost Axe for the opportunity to decisively swing an unfavourable combat favour in the second phase.

Having toiled for ages trying to get Space Marines with power swords to actually wound anything, ever, I like Frost Blades.

Another interesting thing is the formidable psychic defence a Rune Priest can offer. You get Adamantium Will as standard with your Rune Weapon, so that's a 5+ Deny minimum. Yes, you have to pay for a Psychic Hood, but if you do, you can create a nice 12" bubble of decent Witch Denial. Njall is especially good at this with his extra Mastery Level and one/turn Deny reroll.

Wolf Guard Terminators are a little odd; basic they're cheaper than other Imperial terminators, but you start giving them interesting weapons and they end up more expensive quite quickly. You can at least Deep Strike now, but the only way of getting a Locator Beacon that I can see is on a Drop Pod. They're interesting, anyway.

Bjorn is great. Always one of my favourite characters. Tough as old boot leather and his BS6 can really make a Helfrost Cannon work for you; shank a tank a turn!

[khambatta]

I'm quite annoyed we can't put a Wolf Guard with a Cyclone Launcher into a pack of Long Fangs any more.

Here's something: An Iron Priest still takes up an foc slot, unlike a Techmarine, but I don't see any limit on the number of Servitor squads they can take. So if you've got no space left for Long Fangs, you can still pack the field with Gun Servitors. Hardly earth-shaking, but it could be useful.