NEWS AND RUMOURS: Awooooooo!

The big news over the last week is official confirmation from Games Workshop that the Space Wolves will be released this October. I got an e-mail newsletter direct from GW yesterday with the following image:



The additions look characterful and rather nifty to me although I'm not too sure about the haircut!

The e-mail links to a blog entry on the GW website. I have reproduced the brief text below:

The Space Wolves are the most fierce and barbaric of all the Space Marine Chapters. Each Space Wolf is a noble and proud warrior, who has inherited the battle-lust and heroism of their ferocious forebear; yet their actions are tempered by cunning, just as their raw strength is augmented by power armour, boltgun and frost axe. They are the warriors of myth, the Sons of Fenris and of Leman Russ and in their wake legends are born.

This October, the enemies of the Imperium tremble at the coming of the Space Wolves. One of the most iconic and best-loved armies ever to grace the battlefields of Warhammer 40,000, the return of the Space Wolves has been eagerly awaited by hobbyists everywhere.

This stunning Grey Hunter is just one of the incredible new releases that will be arriving in a Hobby Centre near you in October! If you want to learn more about the new Space Wolves releases, check out White Dwarf Magazine for more information.

BDJV is running a rumours thread over on Warseer. The salient points are:

• The Space Wolf codex has been written by Phil Kelly.
• Lightning Claws are called Wolf Claws in the new codex, you can choose to either re-roll to hit or to wound.
• Canis Wolfborn is the new SW SC; He's riding a very big wolf in a not so weird way as that sounds. Let just say those bloodcrushers look like grots!!! Also Canis is power armoured and has 2 wolf claws. The wolf has some cybernetic bits on it. IIRC taking Canis also allows you to take two cav choices, 1 can be SW mounted on wolves, the other is just wolves.
• Njal Stormcaller returns to the Codex with a new model, holding a gnarled staff out before him.
• Bjorn the Fellhanded returns to the codex.
• All special characters have been resculpted.
• Wolf Scouts will remain the same and they also have the option be mounted in a Land Speeder Storm.
• There will be 2 main plastic kits, however 1 of them can be used to make pretty much every SW troop choice by combining the oooodles of spares on the sprues with normal vanilla marines kits (e.g. a box of devastators plus the extra from the sprues will make your Longfangs. IIRC there are around 30+ heads on the sprue!!! there may also be a special vehicle, but I'm not sure if it's a complete kit or if there will be an upgrade sprue to add to the existing kit.
• There's also a funky new way of kitting out your characters called Sagas, it is similar to the Vampiric Powers used by WFB Vampire Counts, but IMO much more fitting for SW, and very fluffy, in fact it is IMO one of the best ideas GW have had in ages. You choose "sagas" for your characters, perhaps someone with Saga of the monster killer (I made that name up by the way) may be better at killing monsters (high strength things) in some way, although there could be drawbacks to this as he may need to kill so many of such things per game to continue his saga......
• Space Wolves gain access to an Assault Cannon Land Raider variant.
• The current options for jump packs are going to change. BTW Jump Pack marines are called "Skyriders" in SW Codex.
• Plastic Wolfguard Terminators; they are ambidextrous, ie they will have right and left handed weapons options like Stormbolters.
• When asked about Pack/squad size, Brimstone says that Space Wolves will be even less Codex Astartes than they were before.

I'm quite excited about the Space Wolves codex, not because I want to collect the army but because it brings the prospect of a Blood Angels codex that much closer!