Mulling it over: 'Ard Boyz list

So first off here is the exact result of our 'Ard Boyz, huge grats to Jeff and his Orks!  He had played exactly one game with Orks before stepping into 'Ard Boyz.

1st:  Cole (Space Wolves):  60
2nd: Dan (IG):                     57
3rd: Ron(IG):                       50
4th: Tim(Eldar):                   48
5th: Jeff(Orks!):                   39
6th: Chris B(Dark Eldar):     38
7th: Andy(SM):                    33
8th: Drew(Chaos):              27
9th: Chris M(IG):                 25
10th: Tyson(Dark Angels):  22
11th: Danny(Chaos):          19
12th: Jeb(Tau):                   4




So i have been mulling over some possible changes to my list.


current list:


Logan Grimnar
Njal StormCaller
Rune Priest
Wolf Priest

5 Man Terminator Wolf Guard
4 Man terminator Wolf Guard (Njal's Bodyguard)
6 Man Power Armored Wolf Guard, 1 Termie
5 Man Power Armored Wolf Guard (Rune Priests Bodyguard)
8 Man Grey Hunter unit (W/WG)

5 Man Wolf Scouts (W/WG)
5 Man Wolf Scouts

6 Man Long Fangs (W/WG, 5 Multi Melta)
6 Man Long fangs (W/WG, 3 Missiles, 2 Heavy Bolters)


Njal --> Rune Priest with Terminator Armor, chooser, Combi/melta/plasma


Njal is a great character for use in normal games, he has the fun storm ability and the equipment and abilities to be useful against most every army.  The thing that gets me about him is that he is what i would call an "all rounder" that being he has the ability to be useful in every game, but its only against certain armies that he will be truly worth his exceedingly high point cost of 270.  Now all rounders are a good thing in most cases, but when they cost that much and are 1 model with only 2 wounds and no eternal warrior you may want to rethink it.  He will be truly amazing against psyker heavy lists, which i admit are popular on the internet.


-Blood Angels seem to have a lot of lists built around their librarians.
-Eldrad lists seem quite common elsewhere, just not here in Anchorage.
-Tyranid Lists are in many cases packed full of psyker's, Zoans, Tervigons, Tyrants, ect.
-Space Wolves often have multiple Rune Priests, like me =)


so the point is he offers a very solid defense against those units and abilities that are often the cornerstone of the above armies...of course he has to be within 24 inches of the psyker and he has to be alive still...  Normal Rune priests still offer good defense as well, a 4+ instead of a 3+.  So it's not like removing Njal means im defenseless but given the power of most psychic abilities its a worthwhile bonus to get the 3+.


It's also worth noting that he has all the psychic abilities.  The funny thing here is that it's not so much that he can choose some of the other less commonly used abilities, its that it allows me to bring two models with both Living Lightning and Jaws of the World Wolf. If Njal is replaced by a Rune Priest, i can't give both Rune Priests the same two spells so one of them will lose one of these two spells.


 LL is the all rounder spell, it provides a very solid skill that affect nearly anything you want, and in my army of close range fighters having an Unlimited range assault d6 AutoCannon that hits on 2's is pretty helpful.


Jaws is a foe specific spell, against Tyranids running lots of expensive low Ini Monsters its amazing.  Against very hard to wound/kill models its also amazing, for instance even if the mob will only fail on a 6(all models fail on a 6 despite a high Ini value) it can be better to make your opponent roll and hope for the 6.  Fateweaver is a good example of this, rolling it off between useing LL and Jaws, your more likely to kill him first with Jaws then LL having two Jaws available increases your ability to remove nasty things 100%.  It also allows you to snipe, so if that huge ork mob has a pain boy, just run the line on through to hit him and hope he fails his test....problem solved.  On the flip side, against Mech armies its pretty useless, against high Ini armies or even marine ini armies it's effectiveness goes down a ton.




Lastly is Njal's storm, easily his highest profile ability.  The problem is it doesn't seem to do a whole lot honestly....  Njal is drop poding in, and GW FAQ says he doesn't get it that turn, so 1 turn wasted by default.  GW FAQ says if im going second the first two results on the storm table have no effect....  After that you have some decent abilities, but they are often either out of range or simply ineffective.  Bottom line if this were the only reason to keep him, i wouldn't have typed all this.




Long Fangs W/3 Missile Launchers, 2 Heavy Bolters, 1 Melta gun ---> 5 Man Wolf Guard Terminators w/ 2 Storm Shiels, 2 Combi-Melta's, Power Fist, Thunder Hammer, wolf claws, Cyclone Missile Launcher.


So the second long fang unit has a few purposes.  It's there for Logan and wolf priest to swap too if i faced a horde list, that would mean they drop pod down and let fly 3 Frag missiles, 2 Heavy Bolters, storm bolter and bolt pistol into a horde mob hopefully decimating it, and one combi-melta into something else.


The other purpose is against an opponent who reserves it all, they can deploy with the initial wave of pods and get into a good fire position, being the only true long range fire power in my army.


The problem is that if either of those situations is not true, they're a rather ineffective unit.  Yes i gave the squad leader a melta gun, so that he and the WG with combi melta can blast something when the unit comes down later in the game, but then they need to sit still to fire and at that point who knows what will be left.


The Terminator unit is essentially a copy of my current 5 man unit, except it has a Thunder hammer instead of a chainfist, and a Cyclone missile launcher instead of a Heavy flamer.  This gives me a little of that long ranged love the long fangs had, but mobile and ready to go the turn it pods in.  Not to mention they are a supreme threat in assault, and are harder to kill in Terminator armor, oh and their scoring.  This also means the WG with combi-melta will be reassigned out, probably to the wolf scouts without one or he can be cannibalized into something else.


Overall this change i think is good, but the problem is it relies upon me changing Njal out as well for points.... I considered changing the wolf priest out instead, but his Fearless is pretty important to logan being ready to move on turn 2 and not pinned/broken whatever.


What do you think?