Price War: Broodlord vs Son's Sorcerer

This started with me trying to think of a good way to make a Space Wolf Wulfen model and I remembered the cool pose on the Tyranid Broodlord with his arms spread wide and nasty claws.  Unfortunately those arms are segmented and have only 4 fingers, so to use them in a rabid wulfen model would require some greenstuff and forgiveness of detail, but still a viable option.  Then, as I am easily distracted and drawn into new armies, I as thinking again how it'd be cool to have a big horde of Nids as well and how much i like the broodlord and all the monstrous creatures.  So then I glanced at the points values and...  Well, we all know the newer codexes give a lot more umph for a lot less points.  As chaos marines is one of my primary armies I am very familiar with how expensive the Thousand Son's Sorcerer is -- 60 pts before even giving him a spell, and I like to give him Gift of Chaos (have spawned quite a few enemy models into joining my cause, even Feugan himself! hahahahahaha-ha!).
Okay, where was I?
Oh yeah, price war.  So here we are.  "In this corner..."

Thousand Son's Sorcerer, without whom the Sons kinda go to crap.  He comes standard with a force weapon, which is nice (power weapon, potential for instant death) and a bolt pistol with Inferno Bolts (so one shot with AP3, which is nice but maybe you want to use a psychic shooting attack).  He is also fearless and has a 4+ invuln save (very nice).  But you still have to pay for his spell.  Stats:

WS	BS	S	T	W	I	A	Ld	Sv	Pts
4	4	4	4	1	4	2	10	3+/4+	60

"And in this corner..."

(He already looks tougher.)
Genestealer Broodlord, which is an upgrade you can add to your already deadly outflanking close-combat death unit.  In addition to his far superior stats (including three wounds rather than just one), he comes standard with two psychic powers (no additional cost), rending, fleet, infiltrate, and move through cover (along with his unit).  You can also upgrade him with some pretty inexpensive bioweapons.  His stats: 

WS	BS	S	T	W	I	A	Ld	Sv	Pts
7	0	5	5	3	7	4	10	4+	60

So what do you think?  Both cost a base of 60 points.  The sorcerer is going to end up costing 70 to 90, has a ranged attack, a more potent psychic power, ignores armor in close combat, and an invuln save.  The broodlord has no ranged attack but kills in close combat and rends there, has 2 lesser powers, and takes three wounds.  Really it's a close call on the value, but i'm thinking the three wounds tips the scale quite a bit.  I say the Broodlord wins this Price War!

Iron Wolf

So I was space wolf dreamin' yesterday and came up with a new list.  I saw that Iron Priests can ride thunderwolves and that got me thinking about how to maximize my wolfishness.  I'm usually not one to go for techmarines much, or many vehicles, but i figured it'd be a good change of flavor on my SWs...

(Scanned these pics from the codex, didn't turn out great...)

So anywhoo, my big thing about SWs is including lots of beasties.  I want space marines with attack dogs and riding giant monstrocities (which is one reason I'm disappointed that the Chaos SM list doesn't include more monsters, hellhounds, or cavalry -- give me a shot at writing that codex and we'll have a terrible force indeed!).  So the idea behind this list was to get lots of wolves in it and still balance out with my primary HQ choices and some anti-armor power.  So I left out some of my usual SW flavor favorites (scouts who can outflank like mad, lone wolf badass, and bloodclaws, kinda) and went with the list below.  It features 3 units of grey hunters, including escorts for the stormbringer Njal; my core wolfriders of Canis with 2 wolves as gear, joined to 3 straight-issued thunderwolf cav models, and with his pack of 6 fenrisian wolves running close by; the iron priest riding a monstrous cyberwolf and with a pack of 4 cyberwolves with him instead of servitors (gave him Saga of the Iron Wolf to make his repair rolls 4+, his thunderhammer strikes at S10 when on a TW, and 4 cyberwolves are T5 A3 Sv 4+, plus I5 and Ld7 with Canis on the table).  Then if i'm going to have a techmarine, I need something for him to fix to justify the 110 points for a single-wound guy (that's the embarrassing part), so I have 2 dreadnoughts, one close combat, one heavy firepower, and a predator, plus 2 razorbacks for more firepower and transporting the grey hunters.  A pretty nice list, i think!  (Now if I can only get the time and resources to customize such an awesome force and make them look hot!)  I also threw in some skyclaws for jumping into combat or taking out tanks, led by a wolf priest to keep them focused and rerolling to hit.

	IRON WOLF
HQ	Njal	245
(T)	Wolf Guard w. stormbolter, frostblade	41
T	Grey Hunters (7) plasmagun, wolf standard, wulfen	140
*	Drop Pod/Rhino	35
(T)	Wolf Guard w. p-wpn	28
T	Grey Hunters (5) flamer	75
*	Razorback	40
(T)	Wolf Guard w. p-fist	38
T	Grey Hunters (5) melta	80
*	Razorback	40
E	Iron Priest w. t-hammer, t-wolf mount, servo-arm, saga of ironwolf	110
	WS  BS    S     T   W    I        A    LD     SV
	4     4   5(10)   5   1   4(1)   3(4)    8      2+
	*cavalry, rending, repair 4+, arm (S8 I1 no save)
(E)	Cyberwolves (4) I5 Ld7	60
HQ	Canis Wolfborn w. 2 wolves	205
FA	Thunderwolf Cavalry (3)	150
(T)	Fenrisian Wolf Pack (6) w. Cyberwolf	56
E	Venerable Dreadnought w. assault cannon, DCCW and hvy flamer	175
E	Dreadnought w. 2L-autocannon/plasmacannon and ML	125
HVY	Predator w. 2L lascannon, side-sponson Hvy Bolters	130
HQ	Wolf Priest w. jump pack	125
FA	Skyclaws (5) melta	100
		1998

And now a cool wolfrider image from the codex to end this on...

Wolf Colors

On my bounce between armies and inspiration, I wanted to throw up the pics of the only two Space Wolves I have painted so far.  I went for a slightly different, more blue color scheme.  I love the color Shadow Grey, a very sinister blue-grey tone.  I used that as my base color and dry brushed Fenris Grey over it.  I like the overall color for my future SW force.  This was also one of my first attempts at serious dry brushing.  I think I generally have a nice raw talent for painting but lack the well-trained techniqueof most of my hobbyist peers. 

I've also considered running a squad of Space Wolves with my usual Crimson Fists in the role of Assault Marines on foot or even Vanguard Vets.  This would be a friendly allied wolf pack that joined in the fight along side their CF brothers, taking up the close combat specialist role in the force.  If I ran them as VVs I could also sport a lot of special weapons to really portray the wolves right.

Speaking of Space Wolves, me and my buddy Vinn (is that right?  can't see your proper name from this screen) were recently talking about Blood Claws vs. Grey Hunters.  I was always feeling obligated to take a big unit of BCs and pay the extra points for Lukas but...  Is it really worth the points?  In making my SW lists I always feel cramped for points anyway, and spending 155 on Lukas and buying a big unit of WS3 guys who will rage-charge without shooting their pistols...  Maybe I'm better off with just sticking to good old reliable Grey Hunters with their superior stats and discipline.  Though I do like Lukas, over priced or not...  Maybe I could just make a Razorback-sized pack of Blood Claws, like 5 plus Lukas, who are given special assignments befitting their smaller size and meaner nature.  Like, "Lukas, take your boys over that hill and take out those artillery pieces.  Or go rip that objective away from that little squad and await reinforcements."  Something like that.  Smaller spec ops role rather than charge down the middle and try to kill everyone with your unwieldy numbers and bad attitudes.  Hmmm, I kinda like that....

a word on bases

I just have to say...  I know a lot of people are all into dressing up the bases on their models, and i think that's awesome too, but me, myself, I barely find the time to paint the models; when given a sliver of time to either paint new models or simply dress up the bases of models already done, i have to go with painting new models.  the bases are my very last priority.  I know that's like spitting on some guys' mothers or something, but that's how it is.  I would rather have a whole squad of models with paint on them than one really nice guy walking on sand and rocks.  Period.
Nuff said.