Mulling it over: 40k Combat Patrol

Life's been pretty hellishly busy lately with college, work, pregnant wife, and of course...3 year old.  What little time i have had for gaming iv spent either on Halo or Warmachine, so with a combat patrol tournament just 2 weeks away im well behind the curve.

Traditionally i like to get lots of practice with a force and fine tune it the way i want, but so far iv only played a measly 4 games with the force i drew up nearly a month ago.  Firstly for those who are wondering what a combat patrol tournament is, check out Adepticon's website for the rules:
http://www.adepticon.org/?page_id=680

Please if you dont know the restrictions in place for this go read them, they're quite extensive.


  One exception is we are playing 500 points instead of 400.  I also recently went looking for feedback on this years combat patrol tournie hosted by adepticon themselves, only to find it's this weekend, and they don't appear to be using the same exact rules.  They add in a 0-1 restriction for everything except troop choices, no monstrous creatures, and no vehicles with an armor facing of more then 11 that isn't a Dedicated transport none of which is in the pdf from them...

While the 400-500 point change is negotiable in it's effect, these other changes i think are actually quite important to making this tournament into what it's supposed to be.  Obviously the 0-1 would change my list quite a bit, but i know it would also make big changes to some of the other lists i've seen floating around my community.  The Monstrous creatures would effect at least one player who i've heard plans to spam 5 or something tomb spiders(and will be using all the exploits they have in 5th ed), and the armor facing invalidates things like IG Hydra's which i used last year in my IG list.

After playing in this tournie last year im not real psyched for it, the game was not meant to be played at this point level and while the restrictions attempt to make it work they end up being either ineffective or too restrictive(just ask a Nid player).  Many other players i've spoken with share that opinion and don't bother with this tournie, they feel like it's too much of a who can bring the most broken mini 'Ard boyz tournie.  I think ill give it another shot this year, but wouldn't be all that heart broken if i missed it.

So on to my current list:

Elite
Lone Wolf
Lone Wolf
Lone Wolf
(these guys are base line no upgrades, i love the unit's fluff and have wanted to use them for some time now.  Theyre not very killy without upgrades and are more liken to a tarpit unit really, it's a little spammy for my taste but i doubt they will be game changers)

Troops
5 Grey Hunters W/flamer
5 Grey Hunters W/flamer
(i need troops to capture and Space wolves have some of the best baseline troops.  They have some great options available to them like wulfen and wolf banners, but both need larger packs to really survive so im going with base line squads.)

Fast Attack
1 ThunderWolf Cavalry W/Frost Blade
(this guys a cruise missile of destruction...well he's supposed to be, so far he must have been hitting the pub a little hard before my battles...)
1 Land Speeder Typhoon W/Heavy Flamer
(i think the typhoon is going to be great, and if i were going to spam game winning units they would be a good start)

Heavy Support
5 Long Fangs W/4 Missile Launchers
(the rules for this tournie mean missile launchers are gravy train for what i can face, now if i can just get them to F'ing shoot....)

my 4 games went like this:
Game 1 Vs. Rob from http://www.warhammer39999.com/

Rob brought 3 Land speeder Storms, with 3 scout squads with powerfists and combi-melta's.  I was going first so he reserved it all.  My force pretty easily dismantled the first scout squad that came in, though they did ravage all 4 of my long fang ML's.  The other two fell in their own time, overall a bad matchup i think for Rob's army.

Game 2 Vs. Jeff's Orks

Jeff had a squad of grots, a squad of 6 lootas, and unit of nob bikers with painboy, power claw, banner thingy, the works basically.  We got dawn of war so only my grey hunters could deploy, he had 1st turn so he turbo-boosted his bikers to mid field.  My army moved on in the corner as far as they could, and the thunder wolf assaulted the bikers.  The Thunderwolf managed to miss 5 of 6 attacks..and didn't wound with the one that hit.  The bikers wounded him once and he of course fled the battle.  Jeff moved up the bikers and shot at my long fangs in the back, they killed 2 and the long fangs decided to flee the battle..........  i put gobs of wounds on the bikers and assaulted them with what i had left, the end result of all this ?  1 wound....i however failed most of my saves and we moved on.  End result i got tabled.

 I have mixed feelings about this battle, obviously the Nob biker squad is a notoriously troublesome unit and without a wargear limit in this years version of combat patrol they became viable, but good lord a couple of key areas could have really changed the outcome.  It's hard to troubleshoot the battle, because space marines failing LD checks all over isn't normal, a model with 6 str 6 power attacks should have done something, and with the number of wounds i put on those orcs more should have died even through a 4+ 4+ save.  I think in the end of the game i had done 3 wounds total to the unit.  Obviously dawn of war helped too...

Game 3 Vs. Charles Daemons

Charles brought 2 units of bloodcrushers, a unit of horrors, and a unit of daemonettes.  I'v faced charles a lot, and bloodcrushers really are a hard target in this tournie format but theyre not as bad as nob bikers.  In the end we Tied, i was able to wipe out 1 unit of Crushers, reduce the other to 2 models(of 4), and nearly wipe out the horrors.  An interesting note, AGAIN in this game my long fangs took 2 casualties on turn 1, and ran off the table without firing a shot.....  I managed to tie him as he was unable to deal with my Land speeder.

Game 4 Vs. Charles Daemons

This time Charles brought a unit of 6 fiends instead of 4 crushers, this game was much different...for one thing my long fangs actually got to shoot lol!!!  In the end i wiped out his army for the win.  The game was in essence what i wanted my army to do, the lone wolves engaged the enemy first after shooting and stayed with them until death took them.  Meanwhile my shooting elements dealt with the rest of the enemy that wasn't engaged.


So now the good stuff, what could i change to help the short comings of the list?  Right now i feel like i need a little more close support for these disgusting units like nob bikers and bloodcrushers.  I'm not 100% that i do need it though as my luck was pretty terrible on the two games i essentially lost so i want to be sure im not over reacting.

Option 1:
-lose a Lone Wolf
-change the Thunderwolf's frost blade to a power weapon
+give a power weapon to a lone wolf
+give mark of the wulfen to the other


This option loses a model, but makes the other 2 more killy.  The Wulfen is a somewhat random but possibly great model as it is both good at clearing crowds and with rending can cause unreliable armor pen/no Feel no pain attacks.  With their WS 5 the lone wolves are more apt to hit things with the power weapon, where the thunder wolf is only WS 4 and ST 5 already, giving him the +1 strength does help the attacks that do hit wound, but perhaps it isn't needed.

Option 2:
-lose a Lone Wolf
+give a power weapon to a lone wolf
+upgrade a flamer to a melta gun in a grey hunter pack


Again i lose a lone wolf, but i make another more killy.  I get an extra strength 8 shot at opponents in my face as well.

Option 3:
-lose a Lone Wolf
+Add another member to the long fangs armed with a Heavy Bolter


Sensing a trend on where i feel i could get points from =), in this example i trade a model for another model.  I'm not to sure on this one but having an extra 3 str 5 shots going out at long range would be generally useful(assuming they dont you know....run away on turn 1).

Option 4:
No change, chalk the bad battles up to bad luck and lack of practice...

What do you think, support an option or purpose another.