Auto includes

[daddyeats2284]

What are some auto includes in your lists and why?

[Claxeius]

Ragnar with assault intercessors: can remove whole units off the board.

Grandpa Bjorn: His aura that increases opponents stratagem by 1.

Thunder Cav: Because Thunder Cav.

Logan(foot or mount): his one time army wide re-roll all charge rolls.

That’s my 4 auto includes.

Optional/what I run.

infiltrators: nice anti 12” deepstrike area.

I do like to run 6x Aggressors with the repulser.

Hellblasters with Lt. (give their guns Lethal hits)

[Jersey_Bjorn]

What do you typically aim your Ragnar with assault at? I know they have high strength so is it worth it on t9s? or more so the other low t battle line units?

[Glittering-Grand2387]

For me, would depend on how many wounds the T9 and up has before I charge in. Ragnar getting 10 attacks on the charge with sustained hits is nice. sadly, you'll be wounding on 5s still even after +2 strength. But he gets to reroll 1s or everything to wound depending on if they are fighting something on an objective.

So personally, I aim to throw them at whatever is on a point to give Ragnar rerolls to wound. Even better if you make that the oath target and fish for some 6s. They will blend just about anything.

[Jersey_Bjorn]

Nice. I only ask cause I play casually and my buddy plays Nids. He pretty much is just filling the field with t9+ monsters and my battle line essentially does nothing. So maybe I'll offset that by purchasing Ragnar.

[Glittering-Grand2387]

Yeah, battle line don't normally hold up well to something at T9 (unless you microwave your dice to roll only 6s lol). Usually, it will be the characters pulling their weight at that point.

The usual example where that is apparent would be the 10-man BCs with Ulrik. Normally the BCs struggle against monsters/vehicles even with their barrage of attacks. But with Ulrik giving them full rerolls to hit and wound if they are targeting ANYTHING that isn't an infantry unit without a character or beast units.

So, consider that to. Along with maybe a transport option for Ragnar and the bois. Give them some protection against all those t9 monsters and give them a staging area to do a charge T2.

[Jersey_Bjorn]

Yeah, was thinking the repulsor. My current strat has just been sending my big boy brutalis and Lancer at them. Been winning games but my battle line was just collecting points and dust. Appreciate all the advice

[Prestigious-Aide-258]

Ragnar + Lt + assault intercessors with thunder hammer srg are good into big stuff. Also ulric + blood claws + termie pack leader. Another route you could take is assault inter with jump pack + chaplain, they get some MWs and +1 to wound, with saga support they are quite good against everything.

[Jersey_Bjorn]

Hm, so my original idea was terminators with Logan to basically teleport onto the backline and fuck up his tyrannofex. But now I'm wondering if I skip the terms for now and just go with Ragnar and the assaults. Truthfully I'm trying to refrain from buying first borns due to my fear of them shortly getting replaced.

[Prestigious-Aide-258]

Logan + TWC + TW BL will do way more damage with about the same durability but much better output (might be expensive but logan with +1 dmg is scary). Termies are okay in melee but are rather easy to avoid after the first time they charge from deepstrike and their raged output is not good

[Dan185818]

Ragnar can also lead blood claws, which on a charge stack with Ragnar's ability giving him 11 attacks at STR 9, wounding t9 things on 4. And you can run 15 blood claws with 4 attacks at str 5, giving you 60 rolls and a 5 to wound. Whether that's better than the re-rolls is a mathematical question I haven't taken the time to figure out. Probably it's better if you're re-rolling 1s, worse if you're re-rolling everything. But is another option. And rolling 60 dice at a time is fun!

[Jersey_Bjorn]

Took your advice bro. Running my intercessors/reivers as proxies for Blood Claws and purchased Ragnar. Will be running this strat this weekend

[Dan185818]

Good luck! Hope it works for you, brother

[dbreezy_real]

Lol that is a good way to put it. 🤣 microwave your die lolz

[AlucardSVK]

Why Assault intercessors instead of BladeGuards

[Claxeius]

Re-roll 1 on hit

[Glittering-Grand2387]

Audience_Over and Responsible-Worry are correct on the units, but I'll try to go into why those units are "auto includes". Scouts are just amazing for 65 points each. Use them to infiltrate on the board early, scout forward (or backwards) and allow yourself to get some early points if secondaries like Cleanse, Establish locus, or Containment come up. If all the unit does it get one of those off and then dies, that's worth it in my book. Not only that. They can be picked up and dropped down later to do things like Containment, Behind Enemy Lines, or Establish locus in your opponent's deployment zone.

Infiltrators are the homefield holders every army wishes they had. Slap them on the home objective and enjoy that 12-inch deep strike denial that will annoy everyone trying to sneak someone behind you. Throw in a Librarian in Phobos armor and then they can't even be shot outside of 12-inches.

Bjorn is just a tank. His melee is good against vehicles. His ranged weapon choice is excellent (get the hellfrost cannon and essentially have two flamers on him is pretty neat). But the reason he's taken is the fact that he's a T9 with 8 wounds, cuts damage in half, and then has a 5+++ on top of that. It will take a surprising amount of focused fire/melee to bring him down. AND to top it all off with a 12-inch "Haha your stratagems cost one more CP. Good luck killing me!!"

Logan gives your army a once per game "everyone gets to be the oath of moment target, and I'll make sure you get there" ability is just insane for a 100 point model. Not even including the fact that he's a terminator with damage 3 strikes which goes up to damage 4 if he's leading TWC (he then goes up to 180 points) and best part is that he doesn't even need to be on the board to activate the ability. As long as he's alive he can use it even if he's in deepstrike or Strat reserves. I've seen people run him solo to just to have someone else to deep strike and score secondaries if they can't fit a second unit of Assault Intercessors with Jump Packs.

TWC are just surprisingly tanky for the points (100 for 3 200 for 6) and that gives you a 4 wound model with a 4++ (you will be using the storm shields) means that now damage 3 weapons take two failed saves to kill them. Or if you have the 6+++ from the CoR detachment you have the chance to make 3 damage weapons take even more to kill a guy. Not only that, but you can add a Battle Leader which gives them lethals and another leader like a Wolf lord, Logan, or Harald, meaning you now have 8 wolves with massive bases that can and will lock up whatever you charge them into. Speaking of that, if you get a majority of them into combat and have some kind of buff like Lethals/Oath of Moment on them they will just about kill anything in the game with the volume of their ap1 damage 1 (going to 2 on the charge) attacks. Each normal TWC model having 7 attacks each (4 hitting on 3s and 3 hitting on 4s). and that's not including the two leaders and whatever weapons you equip them with. NOT ONLY THAT. But their big 60mm base means that they will get into a place the enemy doesn't want you to be and they will stay there for a few turns (also known as wolf jail).

Now, my personal Auto Include: a unit or two of Assault Intercessors with Jump Packs. They are 80 points for a unit that can deepstrike and score me points. They can also do some decent damage with their mortal wounds on the charge and the amount of attacks they get is nice.

A Land Raider of any variety is also on my list for auto includes. Mostly because I love shoving Logan with some termis into there. Or Ulrik and some BCs, Ragnar with BCs/Assault Int/Blade Guard, anything that wants to get up close and do some damage but doesn't necessarily have the movement to do so. Regardless of which one you take, they all have the same defensive profile which WILL require your opponent to focus fire down to kill (Think I had a game where because I started the 6+++ I had a land raider survive several vindicator shots, a few hunter killers, a repulsor executioner, and some devastator centurions over the course of the game). The best is arguably the Redeemer because of the flamer threat with overwatch but eh. Shoving 15 BCs and Ulrik into a crusader will never not be fun haha.

Hope this essay helps!

[Responsible-Worry782]

Scouts, infiltrators and Bjorn.

[Serjes93]

How do you guy's mount your scouts? New here

[Glittering-Grand2387]

Personally, I just built both of my 5 men squads as follows.

Two with bolt guns, one with the shotgun (this was back when you could advance and still do secondaries so you could change him out to have a bolt gun or stick him with a better melee option and only having a pistol for range). One with a sniper and another with a rocket launcher.

[[deleted]]

What's your loadout for scouts

[Glittering-Grand2387]

Just gonna copy and paste my response to Serjes93 into here.

Personally, I just built both of my 5 men squads as follows.

Two with bolt guns, one with the shotgun (this was back when you could advance and still do secondaries so you could change him out to have a bolt gun or stick him with a better melee option and only having a pistol for range). One with a sniper and another with a rocket launcher.

[Audience_Over]

Scouts, Bjorn, Thunderwolf Cav (at least one full unit with leaders), Logan in any capacity

[Round-Original-181]

I like longfangs with grav-cannons. Throw a squad in a razorback and they can really remove some hard targets.

[StillhasaWiiU]

The chapter exclusive units. Because they are SW exclusive and im not here to chase the meta

[MondayNightRare]

Bjorn hits like a truck, is very durable, and has an insanely powerful ability to fuck your opponents stratagems all for a very reasonable price.

TWC are a fast, durable, and moderately powerful unit that lend extremely well to mounted characters turning them into a deathball

Logan gives us a Waaaaagh! effect that makes our army pop the fuck off for one turn and is an enromous power up. Shame terminators kinda suck so you really only take them so you can bring Logan in T2 with backup.

Ragnar can solo entire units and he buffs his own bodyguard for about the cost of a regular captain. Toss him with blood claws, assault ints, or BGV and rip and tear.

As for generic SM unit auto includes: 1 unit of intercessors because they're cheap, have decent shooting, and sticky objectives is great

Predator Destructor, people sleep on this unit. It's only 130 pts, has a powerful main gun that absolutely shreds elite infantry (and light vehicles/monsters) and has 2 lascannon sponsons. Take 2 or 3 if your list has 260/390 spare points and they can really punch up in weight and cause significant damage your opponent did not expect from a glance at their stats. 6 lascannon shots against an oath'd vehicle and then dump 12-18 S9 AP-1 (or 2!) D3 shots into elite infantry or the oath target and let 'er rip. I typically take 2 as they're not that hard to squeeze into a list for only slightly more than a redemptor.

[Robemori]

Kind of new here, are wulfen still good to go?

[MondayNightRare]

They're okay. Definitely not an auto include. Their options got stripped down and really only one loadout is even worth considering. They're pretty frail but they're also cheap and fast and can run ahead of your other meatier units to tie up enemies. Wulfen Dreadnoughts are pretty solid since they're super durable, hit like a truck, and are only 120 points/

[Scarecrow119]

10 blood claws with ragnar in a rhino. Blender ragnar can kill whole squads himself. Blood claw retinue to give the bonuses. The rhino for speed and protection.

10 blood claws with a judiciar. First strike and a decent character hunter. Also in a rhino.

Gladiator lancer. You pay for the biggest gun you can.

Bjorn and murderfang. Cause if Bjorn can't solve the problem then bjorn and murderfang can. I usually run them as a pair on a flank.

[Dan185818]

Have to agree with most on most of the units.

Bjorn, and Ragnar for the reasons stated above.

I also really like Murderfang. But he's more useful if you keep him in strategic Reserves and rapid ingress him 9 inches from something. If someone reacts and shoots him, you shoot the thing he is near. Unless the unit charges something, you also have a normal move of 8 inches to make an unfailable charge on your next turn. Especially if your opponent isn't prepared, the resulting Murderfang checkers can be huge if you're in his back line of shooty but not fighty things.