J Stove here writing for Spikey Bits, with an editorial for all our demonic and furry friends today…
Are we witnessing an assault renaissance?
Quick question- What’s as fast on his feet as a harlequin, harder to murder than a terminator, and has a batting average of 9000 with a S10 thunder hammer?
Is it Captain Lysander on PCP? No! It’s the wulfen!
By now we’ve all seen the rules- If you haven’t, here’s the rundown. Fat as hell werewolf freaks with the most halloween-as-hell choice of power weapons that we’ve seen since the Black Mace, with S5, 2 wounds, FNP, and enough special rules to make a warmachine player go crying to Privateer Press for new stat cards.
And the worst part? They’re best friends with the pound puppies. If you weren’t tired enough of one of the wackiest freight train melee lists in 40k already, (Space vikings riding cyborg alien wolves?) then get ready to hate it a whole lot more when these barefoot hippy backwoods murder werewolves show up swinging thunder hammers and firing predator shoulder cannons.
But this editorial isn’t about how cool the wulfen are…
It’s about wild internet speculation about the future of the 40k assault phase.
Let’s take a look at the last few years of 40k… Not even going back that far. We’ll start at the start of 6e, with Codex Chaos Space Marines.
6e was a shooty edition, even for the bad guy marines, with hated marine melter models like the flying chicken with the AP3 template, the always consistent obliterators, and the new dinobot in town with his spooky triple plasma cannon.
And then, there were some punchy gems buried under mostly garbage. Spawns got amazing, but possessed are laughable. The maulerfiend is awesome, but Khorne berzerkers are a tragedy. The lightning claw jump pack guys? Cool idea, but expensive and their deep strike gimmick is a joke. The codex wasn’t CSM, it was cultists and megazords. Take 50 points of disposable humans, and drop the other 1800 into an episode of Power Rangers.
Now, as a chaos marine player, I can complain all day about how badly that codex aged…
Not the point.
The point is, things went shooty and by all accounts it was looking like they would stay shooty.
Taudar was a thing. Knights showed up to give a huge 2 shot battle cannon to imperial players to keep them from getting alpha striked by a turn 1 shooting phase. The tyranids, an army that’s supposed to be about teeth and claws, was instead about brainleech devourers. The eldar got a monstrous creature with huge guns that could float around on his little prancy toes avoiding fights forever, and we started seeing D weapons pop up.
The gun show would never end.
But there was a light at the end of the tunnel for the assault faithful.
The shield eternal chapter master, (or the gorgon chain one, if you’re a real badass) showed up with his 10 best friends on bikes and hammered his way into being unkillable.
The demon codex aged really well, and still puts fast, lethal, and cheap armies on the table that swoop in and punch.
Codex Evil Red Guys made possessed marines at least playable, and gave chaos access to the much desired divination.
Then, we turned a corner.
All of a sudden, we started seeing real assault armies in 7e.
REAL ASSAULT ARMIES.
Marine formations with charge-on-drop deepstrike.
Pound puppy space wolves lists.
The Khorne Demonkin, that made possessed actually good, gave us fat new bloodthirsters, and actually rewarded you for running straight into your opponent’s guns to get shot in the face like you were inevitably going to do anyway.
And now we have the wulfen.
It feels like, after 2 editions of getting punished with fruity glitter shooting dominance from xenos filth, we’re finally starting to see some answers in the punching phase.
And it’s not just about big beefy guys that run in and punch. It’s about punchface guys that actually do cool stuff.
If you look at old melee specialists in 6e, and compare them to shooting specialists in 6e, they were boring and uninspired.
Take for example, a khorne berzerker or an assault marine. Just another jerk with a chainsword. Oh what, you’ve got like 2 special rules? How exciting. Get your sorry ass back in the rhino, call me when you’re ready to do something cool.
Now, look at a tau battlesuit. These guys got guns for days, they have synergy with marker lights, they have jetpacks to keep them out of trouble.
Then, look at centurions with their cool grav guns that can glance the hell out of a land raider and wreck it. Look at knights. Then look at more knights. 2 wasn’t enough, so GW made more and gave them a second codex. Compare the design work that went into shooty stuff in 6e to the design work that went into punchy stuff in 6e, and you’re going to see that as a general rule, shooty stuff always had more things going on.
Well, that was until now.
Because it looks like punchy is coming back.
We saw it coming over the horizon with the cool rules for KDK that gave you free models for actually running the army into a meat grinder. We saw it a little more with marine units that got deep strike assault perks in special snowflake formations.
And we’re seeing a ton of it now in the Wulfen, a bunch of teenage werewolf dudes wearing predator outfits and swinging sledgehammers at your head.
So I ask you, the punchy faithful, assault fans of 40k…
Have we turned the corner? Is it safe to talk about fight club? Is the day of the boring jerk with a bolt pistol and chainsword over, and are we now going to witness the golden hour of the badass assault unit again?
Find out next saturday, when your local space wolf player glues together his new toys!
Checkout more articles on the Enigmatic JStove, and his Hobby Musings.
About the Author: Jack Stover
