The venerable dreadnought has the honour of being the only piece I've ordered from Forge World. And I bought it despite the fact that it was entirely not feral, fanged, crazed or otherwise Space Wolfy. It was just too good a model.

I chose the plasma cannon as its weapon, but I'm not quite sure why. It's deathly expensive, and I'd probably say that the new rules for Plasma Cannons are actually worse off when you have BS 5. Maybe I just chose it for the look — it's undisputeably one of the most bestial plasma cannons out there. And it absolutely dwarfs the plasma cannons on the sponsons of the Leman Russ Demolisher to the point where it makes me weep a bit to think that in game terms, they spit out the same stuff. In fact, it's probably big enough to compete with the Executioner plasma cannon in the new IG codex. Too bad mine's not Heavy 3.

There isn't much to say about the claw, except that it was a bit of a pain to put together and position. It also has a paint chip just off the edge of the photo. Standard fare though.

To make things easier (and more fun!) I've kept the Venny in four pieces: you can see the legs with the torso mount and pin for rotating around — there may be arguable game advantages to have a torso that can actually spin around (ie. when the poor bugger's immobilized). I also never glued his arms in place, so they could be pulled off for Weapon Destroyed! results or exchanged for other arms (which I definitely don't have).

Space Wolves, like many armies, had a few aces up their sleeves. And my beloved Wolf Scouts were definitely one of them. They were the first scouts to get a game-changing version of infiltration. And unlike vanilla Space Marine scouts, these ones were armed to the teeth.

Playing against Wolf Scouts was like ... losing a Slap Bet. And it often played out in one of two ways. You see, some players had no idea what it really meant to “Operate Behind Enemy Lines.” I'd tell them about it, leave the scouts on the side of the table, but when they came on, what followed was something like this:

The second scenario was that they knew it was coming — perhaps they had seen it coming before — and they would over-prepare for it. But their knowledge of what the scouts could do didn't lessen the blow:

To the Teeth!

What made them sting so much was their armaments. The squad could take an assortment of power weapons and plasma pistols to destroy devestator squads, or they could field a meltagun and equip meltabombs to dispatch tanks pounding away at my Grey Hunters or Blood Claws. Just awesome.

Yet another vicious kick to the squad was the ability to field a Wolf Guard Pack Leader to lead them. The Space Wolves armoury allowed them to field a punishing variety of equipment ... or just a power fist. And that was often enough.

Finally, I'd painted up a couple that had snipers, but I never used them. The way that Space Wolves utilize scouts just wasn't jiving with snipers. But perhaps the 5th edition codex will change that.