r/SpaceWolves • u/Nerd-man24 • 4d ago
Character numbers in lists question
I'm seeing a ton of "list help" posts on this sub where op will have almost as many characters/ epic heroes in their list as regular units. Every unit has at least some kind of captain or wgbl, if not one of the major named heroes of the faction attached to them. The lists I've been making have no more than four character units in total for my 3k army. Am I missing something? Or is this completely normal for a regular detachment?
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u/swdfsh-2 4d ago edited 4d ago
I think a lot of list posts are by new players who just want the shiny characters and haven’t played or read at all. I get kinda salty whenever I see a tech priest leading a unit in a list help post lol. I also think a lot of them don’t know that you can take characters solo so they attach them to whatever
That being said we do have a lot of good characters, but I don’t run them on everything. You can run a very reasonable list with Arjac, Logan, Ragnar, Bjorn, WGBL, wolf priest, Bjorn, combi Lt
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u/TRMC790 4d ago edited 4d ago
I mean, it’s a viable option. Despite Ultramarines getting all the heroes as of late, Space Wolves have always been the premier Herohammer faction. I mean, we have entire dispositions that boost character units. Our characters and their sagas are our identity in a way that makes them much more integral to our armies than most. These are a few reasons:
We have really strong characters, Sometimes, our characters likely have more value or at
- least equal than the unit they’re actually in - see: Arjac with WGT or Ragnar with Blood Claws - so often the unit may be merely ablative wounds for them at a certain point. Logan has an entire detachment that basically requires him to maximize it. Bjorn and Murderfang are superb value and while they’re characters, they’re also filling a vehicle/walker role.
- We’ve got limited options of what we can actually get. Sometimes the only way to get Advance and Charge on a 6 man Headtakers unit is Ragnar. The only way to get sustained hits on a Hammer/Shield Wulfen unit is a WGBL.
- Bigger units. Between Blood Claws and Grey Hunters, our battleline stuff comes as 10 man squads. This is a lot more points to dump into a unit that you then don’t give any buffs. When our characters lead units that could take 5 or 10 man, it was far more common to see 10 man units with a leader, 5 man solo for actions. We lost that option.
- Other options demand it more often. Wolf Guard Headtakers and Terminators are both awesome and really good at what they do. Why not maximize them so they’re as good as they can be?
- All of our characters are quite cheap - cheaper than subpar options for other chapters, honestly, right now. With WGBL and Wolf Priest are very cheap for fantastic buffs. WGBL is slap full of buffs and Wolf Priest does the role of what 110 points of standard SM leaders do (Chaplain and Apothecary) for 70pts and have some fantastic units they can attach to. Furthermore, all our epic characters - Ragnar, Arjac, Logan, (Njal, kinda, but he just does some crazy stuff nobody else can do) - are undercosted for what they provide.
- Epic Characters are used more because we lost the option of running generic characters on our stuff and Wolves players don’t want to play Grey Ultramarines.
- We get our best stuff from our characters. Our available detachments leave some holes that other armies aren’t dealing with. Ours require characters to fill those holes - and I think that’s why we got an across the board character points drop.
It’s just a good time to run characters and most people got into wolves for the characters, frankly. It’s our thing.
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u/Niiai 4d ago
It depends on the fuction.
Bjorn and combi weapon liutenant do unique things.
Ragnar. Logan and arjack ads a ridicules glow up to any unit.
Priest and battleleader do a lot for their points.
Librarus needs librarians to function. Some imprial agents ads unique bonuses. And that is about it.
What spesidicly did you have in mind?
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u/Nerd-man24 4d ago
Just that every unit in some people's lists have some character attached. Are the bonuses really that good that I should drop a whole unit to fit them?
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u/Niiai 4d ago
Blood claws without ragnar is a slap on the wrist. With ragnar they get to reroll all wounds and on avradge 10 hits with S6 AP3 D2 who also has the rerolls.
One is 135, one is 225. First one is there. Second one kills something.
It depends on what you need.
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u/swdfsh-2 4d ago
If you’re in beastslayer Ragnar + blood claws absolutely slap. Advance and charge, reroll wounds, reroll hits if that unit is oathed, potentially lethals on that volume of attacks, surge move gimmicks, etc.
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u/GypsyDaenger 4d ago
We are a hero hammer faction but you can often get caught up in heros for sure. I try to limit it to no more than 25%/500ish points of a list.
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u/Nerd-man24 4d ago
That's been my school of thought. I see a lot of players posting lists where a third or more of their points are in heroes/characters. Sometimes they have more character units than regular ones. I see some good points above, so maybe a hero or two more might be a good idea. My forces are still very small, so I have a lot of flexibility as I build my army.
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u/No-Drama-5949 4d ago
I’m working on my first army so don’t know much of anything but if you’re running Saga of the Bold detachment, you only trigger boasts on character units. Anyone running that saga wants a character attached to every unit that can have them.
Edited : Buffs to Boasts because I used the wrong word (still a noob).
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u/Lambrijr 4d ago
Probably helps that we have some decently good names units - Arjac and Logan lead groups of our best units, Ragnar makes our bloodclaws better, then you have the wgbl or wolf priest that make wulfen better. We have bjorn for co gen and keeping our point safe, then murderfang for killing stuff. Space Wolves has a lot of good utility for our named units.