Hello! I’m back and today I am here to report on my first two-day event since October of 2021. I have been theory crafting a lot of wolves lists in my time away from playing as I adjusted to fatherhood. I was very excited to finally be able to get back out in the field with my team and mix it up with the other top players around my region. This article will detail my thoughts about the list I ran, the match-ups I had and the changes I would make going forward.

Star Phantoms - click to expand

How the list works

The first question people ask is ‘why star phantoms?’ and “because I can” is typically the answer as there is no real reason outside of the fact that I like the name.  The list is designed to compete on Goonhammer Open terrain layouts; if you have not played on that layout before they have 8 ruins, 2 forests, and the middle is open. This provides a lot of staging areas for combat armies however there is a large space you will need to cross to get to the enemy. I decided on a core of 3 Impulsors with three units of 4 veterans because these are durable, extremely hard-hitting units which can swing a game for me when I need it. They also provide knight-killing potential, which I was worried about going into this event. The 2 characters on Thunderwolves was a flair choice that I wanted to take so they could keep up with the impulsors and also bounce around between staging areas to give off buffs where needed. Plus, if they needed to enter combat they were just threatening enough to get the job done. Two units of infiltrators is basically a must going forward as marines, gsc, and guard are everywhere. As a defensive wolves player I want to project threat and keep people away from zones of the table; these units always find value and have multiple different roles depending on the list I am paired into.

The wolfguard with combi-melta and power axe was a late addition to the list – after having a couple list discussions with Jaime Paris we came up with this as an extremely cheap trading unit. The unit comes in at 115 points and should allow you to trade up into almost anything but especially marines. The unit is just dangerous enough that people must respect it which in the end is all you want.  Yes the unit is extremely fragile as it has no storm shields however in this meta if someone can see you, you are dead either way with 2 wound T4 bodies.

The Longfangs kitted with triple lascannons and a missile launcher was another really cheap way to get some heavy hitting (but not reliable) long range shooting into the list.  I need units to hold my backfield from people trying to come in and score Behind enemy lines anyways, I need units to sit on objectives so this unit felt like a perfect fit especially with the terrain we were using.  I would always be able to find angles on units wanting to sit on the mid objectives.  Using a wolfguard terminator pack leader was a neat way to add some durability and combat to the unit for very few points.  These longfangs are actually really strong if someone wants to walk over and touch them as they have a powerfist pack leader and a thunder hammer wolfguard.

The list is built to take banners, oaths and shock tactics or warrior pride.  I try to avoid taking pride where I can as it is very rare you will score 15 on it unless your opponent is giving you his army turn 1, even then you typically are not launching more than 1 unit at them as only 1 unit can be in the assault doctrine at a time unless you want to blow all your CP immediately (do not do this).  You want to mostly move up into ruins using your 3 sources of fight last to deter people from coming over and fighting you early on, you commit 1 unit of wolfguard a turn for flipping an objective and if you need multiple chargers you use an impulsor or a cyberwolf as back up.  Hold onto the bladeguard in those impulsors as long as you can, increasing the likelihood your guys survive the entire game and do what they are there to do.

Day 1

Round 1: Lawrence Hill’s Aeldari

Lawrence's List - click to expand

Mission: Recover the relics

My Secondaries: Warrior Pride, Banners, Oaths

Opp Secondaries: Warp Ritual, Behind enemy lines, Banners

Lawrence made an early mistake of putting most of his units in reserves allowing me to constantly target his scorpions with fight lasts to force them away from me while I pushed out onto the board and secured my secondaries.  The game went pretty smoothly for me as my infiltrators mostly just zoned out the board beyond the middle of the table, I knew behind enemy lines would not happen so I knew I was going to win by a minimum of 12 points.  I got pretty lucky rolling very hot on my librarian denying 3 warp rituals in the first 3 turns by rolling 10/10/12 which definitely helped secure an even larger margin of victory.

After the game we talked about what he could have done differently and just deploying almost everything except 1 unit of dire avengers would have probably made me play this game at a much different pace.  Lawrence as always was a pleasure to play against, 3 years ago to the date he was also my first round opponent at this event.

Final score: 94-34 wolves

Round 2: vs. Eathan Novak’s Chaos Knights

Ethan's List - click to expand

Mission: Tear down their icons

My Secondaries: Bring it down, Banners, Oaths

Opp Secondaries: Ruthless Tyranny, Assasinate, Grind them down

This list is really dangerous to me if I am unable to dictate the pace of the game; if Ethan starts pushing his nearly unkillable combat knight at me and forces me to try to deal with it while he brings up his smaller combat knights this will be a very tough game to play, the combat is super dangerous here, he has a moderate amount of shooting to keep me honest.  His game plan was pretty clear when he took assassinate and grind, he is going to be coming to me to get in on my characters and nuke me.  My game plan has to revolve around killing his knights or I lose so Bring it down and Oaths are just auto-takes.

He went first, I managed to hide every model I have so he had no way to shoot me and made the decision to move his combat knight up to a closer ruin getting ready for turn 2.  Going second is really dumb as marines since I now just auto score 15 on oaths, I am able to sit back and wait for him to come to me and weaken some of his knights before they get to me, I put some troops out infront of his knight to slow him down for another turn.

Turns 2/3 and 4 saw me in combat with his large knight trying to kill it before it killed my entire army, finally on turn 4 I was able to bring it down and 3 other knights in a combat phase which ended up sealing the win for me, this games score does not really show how close it was.  If I did not kill that knight that phase the game was basically over for me.  This just in, knights do not enjoy 12 bladeguard vets hitting them in combat.

Final score: 80-64 wolves

Round 3: vs. Morgan Smerek’s Ultramarines

Morgan's List - Click to Expand

Mission: Data-scry Salvage

My Secondaries: Warrior Pride, Banners, Oaths

Opp Secondaries: Codex Warfare, Oaths, We march for Macragge

Morgan is a teammate of Ethan’s (who I just played), so I assumed he would have knowledge on how my list worked and what to look out for.  Morgan is one of the best players from the province of Saskatchewan and travels all around the west to events.  I know this is going to be a difficult game to get to 3-0.  The mission was a hold 2/3 more with the entire middle of the table open, this was a mistake on my behalf with terrain deployment, I unfortunately have not had much experience using player placed terrain before so these things were bound to happen at some point.  Tough game for me if Morgan decides to deoploy his castle in the bottom side of the table and shove to the open objective basically forcing my hand or I will lose on primary.

I took banners as its a guaranteed 10 points here, oaths as it was really one of my only options worst case going second I score 6, and Warrior pride as I knew this mission I would need to get onto his gunline and remove them before he kills me.  I could have taken shock tactics but I felt he could just not move out to any of the objectives except one and deny me this almost all game.  He wins if he does this and it forces me to make very risky decisions now.  I hate being forced into playing someone else’s game, that is not winning 40k play.

We rolled off and I ‘won’ the roll meaning I was only going to score 6 for oaths this game.  Luckily I had hedged my bets and deployed both units of infiltrators trailing off from the middle objectives incase I were to go first which would allow me to plant a banner, make the objective mine via sticky objectives and now force Morgan to do something about it.  If I go second it is fine to lose the squad as I will just score 15 on oaths anyways. Deploying like this allowed me to immediately score 3 on the tertiary and put on the pressure making Morgan have to respond.  Luckily for me he rapid redeployed and moved away from me and deployed in 2 castles behind 2 different ruins, I knew his plan was now not correct (in my opinion) and he would not shove out to the bottom middle objective to try to hold more and constantly shoot me off my top left objective.

In Morgan’s first turn he zoomed a speeder out to get his oaths points and focus fired a unit of infils on one of the objectives he then threw out the other speeder to secure that same objective keeping me to a 4 on primary for turn 2.

Turn 2 I shot both his speeders off with my fangs and charged his heavy intercessors in his castle to try to clear the screen for my turn 3 go turn, I had also shoved an impulsor mid to make sure I am not held to only 6 oaths points, I assumed he had the shooting to remove it but not also the Bladeguard inside of it.  My unit of Wolf Guard walked in and killed all but 1 intercessor, that is 115 points removing almost 230.  Perfect target for me to look to trade up into with my vets.  turn 2 he removed my vets easily and started to fire at my 2 impulsors which were now 10 inches away from his lines.   He managed to easily drop my impulsor in the mdidle of the table with 2 contemptors but failed to take out the Bladeguard which is just what I needed.

Turn 3 and 4 saw Morgan being pushed back and constantly trying to fall back away from me to shoot me while using Guilliman to fight me off of him.  turn 4 my vets went in and were able to put Guilliman down for good.  The game was only a 2 point lead for me at this point, Morgan was constantly scoring his secondaries and up until now I was only able to hold him even on primary, I was ahead strictly due to my tertiary play so far.  From here on I managed to jump into his back lines and start to remove most of his obsec units allowing me to pull away late.

Final Score: 90-78 Wolves 

Day 2

Round 4: vs. Alexander Buchan’s Astra Militarum

Alexander's List - Click to Expand

Mission: Tide of Conviction

My Secondaries: Shock tactics, Banners, Oaths

Opp Secondaries: Inflexible Command, Retrieve Battlefield Data, Behind Enemy Lines

Alex is another teammate of the previous two opponents I had just beaten so I knew they would have created some sort of game plan the night before for this game – much like I had with my team.  My plan was to create staging areas near the enemy territory objectives so I could get my army into those ruins and then jump out turn after turn to score shock tactics, oaths and threaten his home objective/ remove tanks.  Alex had no combat in his list meaning once I arrive en-masse I am there for good.  I did not really expect him to take BEL as (in my opinion) it is really not a good secondary vs my list.  You can’t drop in I have too many screens and he only has 3 sentinels to get 2 turns of scoring.  The terrain deployment went how I wanted it mostly, I had a couple solid places to hide models and jump out to attack him freely.  I lost the roll off to go second meaning he really can’t stop me from scoring 15 there, already a good start for me.

Turns 1 and 2 saw my fangs roll slightly under and alex spike a couple 6s to just save his tank commander from dying turn 1 which was big for saving his game allowing him to score inflexible.  If the tank commander had died he had no one in range of the single russ left on the far left which would be a crippling blow early as he would have to attempt to shift models to get back into range.  I got up and staged properly, he got 3 sentinels into my deployment turn 1 and charged my long fangs, of which the long fangs punched 2 of them to death.  allowing him to score early BEL points and tie up a strong shooting unit for 1 more turn.

As turn 3 rolled around my entire army was staged and ready to jump out at him if I needed to however if I sit where I am I can continue to max my secondaries and keep him from scoring much on the tertiary while I score extremely well on it.  I had previously wrapped a tank turn 2 and he used the desperate breakout stratagem to get away from it, turn 3 rolled around and he had a chimera near his home objective with 2 guard squads around it allowing me to fight into both guard squads and consolidate into the tank and wrap it up with my army.  I spent 25 minutes doing this fine movement and combat to make sure it occured just like I had hoped it would.  When Alex’s turn started he showed me that the desperate breakout stratagem is not once a game and it was as many times as you have CP for.  Crippling blow to my plans and game.  I knew that at some point my being away from high level competitive play would hurt me but I had hoped to mitigate it by double and triple checking all my movements and planning, unfortunately this time I mixed up desperate breakout with Insane Bravery.  I had thought they were both once a game stratagems and instead of stopping to check before I did all this movement I made the critical error of proceeding.  My game right there was over, really terrible feeling losing like that when I had the game firmly in control if I just don’t do that and keep firing off 1 unit a turn until turn 4 when he has no units left to stop me from sitting on his home objective.

There was no way to go back nor was I going to ask Alex to reset everything.  It was my mistake, I have to now own that and try to find ways to score points for the next games.  After that Alex was able to shoot most of my units off the table turn 4 and advance into my deployment zone securing the win in the later turns.  1 mistake at the top tables is all it takes to lose especially vs Guard these days.

Final score: 65-92 Guard

Round 5: vs. Brenden Chrustie’s Black Templars

Brenden's List - Click to Expand

Mission: Death and Zeal

My Secondaries: Warrior Pride, Banners, Oaths

Opp Secondaries: Shock tactics, Banners, Oaths

Death and zeal space wolves vs templars is a really spicy matchup that can have a lot of back and forth.  The nature of our secondary picks and the mission meant that whoever ‘lost’ the roll off basically wins the game.  I hate to say something like that but Brenden is a very good player locally, he has won a lot of events.  I am a very good player, I have played my faction for 5+ years consistently and won many things with them.  This means we both know how this mission is going to go, he is actually one of my neighbors we have played many times in the past.  We both knew whoever lost that roll with our secondaries won the game by 9 points.

Brenden ‘lost’ the roll off.  We shook hands and said good game, at which point I had to make every possible risky plan to try and shift the final out come.  I launched vets at him turn 1 in an attempt to kill 1 unit of his Eradicators (he combat squaded them) and tossed a cyberwolf into his terms in order to get pride turn 1 (I would normally never do this but I now know I need every single point possible).  The vets bounced, Brenden made an incredible amount of 5++ saves and he only lost a single Eradicator which was unfortunate for my over all game plan of eliminating his shooting early to keep my impulsors alive as long as possible.  Not all is lost I scored pride turn 1, I got 3 banners up and I was in position to score max on oaths.

Brenden mostly just hid and tossed 1 unit out a turn he tried to flip my top left objective but unfortunately for him my dice were as good as his were and I spiked 6 6’s to keep a single infiltrator alive on 1 wound to secure the objective and deny him shock tactics.  If I needed a strong start this was it.

the next couple turns he continued to score oaths while I could not and he managed to start scoring shock due to me constantly having to try to survive mid and him taking it from me.  turn 4 I made the only real play I could which was launch my entire army at his terminator brick in an attempt to swing the game and secure the final 2 turns of hold/hold more and get some oaths points back.  after my vets and bladeguard swung into his terms he lost all of them which was the start I needed.  The game was close now and I could see I was pulling it back, maybe slightly too late but I was trying as many things as I could to get the win.  Brenden took all his characters and went into my lines, all my infantry models died leaving 2 characters which then killed all his characters back, what a wild turn of events.  Unfortunately he also managed to sneak a vet squad past me into my back field which was the real end for me as I could not kill them fast enough to get my hold more on the final turn.  We both played the game very hard, brenden made the plays he should make in his position, I tried to make the plays I needed to make but the odds are pretty low.  In the end the score was exactly as I had thought it would end up like.  A loss by 9.

Final score: 80-91

Round 6: vs. Sean Clancy’s Thousand Sons

Sean's List - Click to Expand

Mission: Secure Missing Artefacts

My Secondaries: Warrior Pride, Banners, Oaths

Opp Secondaries: Warp Ritual, Banner, Sorcerous Prowess

Sean is a teammate of mine. We had both gone 0-2 on day 2 so it was a good way to end the event as we got a chill game where we did not need a clock and just rolled dice and had some fun.  His list can be very dangerous to marines as he has a massive amount of -2 and -3 AP shooting, he can teleport around to get angles on things and he can output an incredible amount of mortal wounds pretty safely.  Warp ritual is basically a given for him as he can pop out cast it (and use his cabal points) without me being able to deny it, then use warp time to pop back behind a wall to safety again.  In my opinion you should do that in the opposite way making warp time undeniable and just knowing that you have 5 turns to get 3 casts off, you can afford to have 2 denied randomly but what you can’t afford is for someone to deny warp time and now have your caster sitting out in the open.

My game plan was to launch a unit of vets at one of his large terminator squads to kill them and basically cut off 1 side of the table from threat of shooting me.  If I can kill 10 terminators early I will basically be allowed to dictate the game going forward, Sean screened them with flamers as well as he could but I found a way in turn 2 and removed 9 of his ten terminators with 5 vets.  The game at this point was me pushing into his ruins and staging for later pushes while I ensure I am scoring my secondaries.  Sean did not give up he made a nice teleport move into my back field and stole my priority objective for a turn but it was too little too late at that point and the game ended with me dominating the table and removing all of his terminators.

Final score: 91-82

Final placing: 8/52

Overall finishing 8th with a 4-2 record for me after taking over a year off 40k still feels like mostly a failure, I was not at all happy with the over all results.  After having a couple days with this though I am happy with the decisions I made in the games to try to shift my current situation in order to win the games, I feel that this is a good starting point for my return to the competitive game.  This is a game that requires a ton of reps and experience, my game 4 was a clear indication of why this holds true.  I think going in my goal of 5-1/6-0 was probably miss placed and I almost certainly put too much pressure on myself to get there.

Going forward I mostly liked how the list performed, I was in every single game I played.  My list projected a ton of threat and made secondaries pretty difficult for my opponents, no game felt like it was a loss showing up to the table with wolves.  I do not want to make too many changes as the core and idea behind the list worked, the pilot just had some error.  What I would look at is investing in a couple more units that could open up behind enemy lines for me as there are quite a few games where I just do not want to take oaths, so adding in some tornados, sky-claws or suppressors would help open up other options in the secondary game.

Closing thoughts

I have missed this game greatly at the competitive level.  The time I have had off I have mostly been managing my team, recruiting new members and coaching the members I do have which is one of my main passions (community and team building), but to be able to get out there and prove I still have it is something I have been looking forward to doing for a while now.  Life with a new son can be pretty tough to navigate with trying to compete at this game, I put a lot of pressure on myself to succeed if I am taking time away from my son who I miss greatly when I am not at home.  I am still working on this new dynamic in my life.  I am very proud of the team for pulling off another great event and Logan (who is my rules judge for GHO events) who took the event down for Northern Front and got his first GT+ win after 10+ years of working towards this.  Until next time keep seeking that saga!

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