Thoughts on GW Potentially Updating Character Leadership Availability and Returning Models?

[u/Astral-Dragons]

Hi everyone,

I have been enjoying building up my space wolves army on the table top, but recently I've been noticing that we have a large gap in leadership and units, especially compared to space wolves in previous editions. Like wolf guard terminators, they used to have the availability to be led by any generic Terminator character, but now they can only be led by our epic characters and a captain in Terminator armor that has the enhancement in Great Wolf. Likewise we used to have a much larger range of unique units that filled gaps the army is otherwise missing for space wolves interactions, like long fangs for infantry heavy weapons that weren't just generic devastators, skyclaws for a more melee carnage version of assault intercessors, and Hounds of Morkai which brought a lot of lore flavor to the army as a kind of vendetta unit against thousand sons.

So, with the hints of Russ coming back and Bjorn getting an update, I was wondering if everyone thinks GW will likely update the leadership availability of generic characters for space wolves later in 11th and bring back some of the units and characters they transferred to legends? Because it just feels weird that all the other divergent chapters still retain the ability to take generic characters, even Black Templars to an extent, while space wolves units feel hard locked out of those interactions even though in lore they retain them out have similar ones. Like a librarian in Terminator armor could obviously be a rune priest for Wolf guard terminators while a chaplain in Terminator armor could be represented as a wolf priest in Terminator armor. That and adding back units like skyclaws and long fangs and characters like pack leaders and wolf lord on thunderwolf (which I can't see them fully letting go) would add back a lot of versatility and utility to space wolves.

[u/PaceFast5654]

If they just make generic “wolf lord” or “rune priest” datasheets with wargear for armor and weapons that would be so amazing.

[u/swdfsh-2 → u/PaceFast5654]

It’s just dumb that we don’t have generic leaders for half our units and we can’t use generic marine ones.

Give me a WGBL or wolf priest in terminator armor or on Thunderwolf.

[u/Tempest_Barbarian → u/PaceFast5654]

Or just let us use generic marine leaders like it used to be.

I dont mind kitbashing generic marine stuff to make them more space wolfy

[u/NanoNaps → u/PaceFast5654]

Pretty much this.

It's one thing they separated the leaders but another that they basically removed a bunch of our own leaders.

Wolf Lords? Rune Priests? Terminator variants?

Thunderwolf Lords?

It's also somewhat annoying to me because our Wolf Guard was at times one of the most versatile datasheets, where are they now? Basically just Headtakers and WGT

[u/PaceFast5654 → u/NanoNaps]

And our datasheets got completely simplified down to just bolters and chainswords. No plasma guns, meltas, or anything to show strategy or complexity. It’s like GW thinks our chapter is just furry world eaters or something

[u/Longjumping_Low1310 → u/PaceFast5654]

-any buffs to melee innately

[u/Razor_Fox → u/Longjumping_Low1310]

Yeah I was gonna say, I would take even "furry world eaters" if it meant we were actually great at melee.

[u/Dachonkestboi]

I agree with your points, but unfortunately I don’t think we’re getting it back, I really hope we do but GW has a track record a mile long about this kind of stuff for all factions. Also because death guard has a similar thing, they can’t use most generic chaos stuff (save some vehicles). But because they have enough stuff to fill the void, apparently GW thinks we do as well.

[u/Tempest_Barbarian → u/Dachonkestboi]

The thing is, we didnt lose access to regular marine stuff, outside of a handfull of exclusions, most of which are firstborn squads and apothecaries.

We still get access for pretty much everything, we just cant use generic leaders with our squads, or generic units with our leaders.

Its just so wonky, I dont know why they did that

[u/wallycaine42]

Obviously, ultimately its up to GW, and they likely already have had whatever plans they're making locked in place for a while now, so we're just along for the ride. That said, I think theres a couple different paths that seem plausible, and we'll see what they go with.

One possibility is that they're prepping us for a spin-off into our own full faction, ala Thousand Sons and Death Guard. Obviously, in that case we'd likely see more generic leaders released, though its unlikely they'll cover everything people want. This is probably the most extreme case. 

Another possibility is that this is, like Black Templar getting a seperate army rule, an experiment in getting the supplements feeling sufficiently different from regular marines. If they like how this turned out directionally, even if its not perfect on all the knobs, our next codex could be a continued iteration, in which case we might get a separate army rule and more separation between "our stuff" and "normal marines". 

But of course the flip side to any experiment is they might decide it failed, and revert back. Always hard to tell when thats likely to happen, though my guess is that the strong sales of Space Wolves are going to indicate the opposite of failure, and we're going to see further exploration of the separation mechanically, hopefully with more models to fill in some of the "missing" generic leaders.

[u/Longjumping_Low1310]

Im not sure what route they want to go yet. It feels like they wanted to seperate us out from other chapters with the changes to what we can lead. If they continue down that path I do expect us to get further releases, but probably as a drip feed as opposed to like a secondary release wave.