Sunday Smackdown: T-Wolves

I have quite enjoyed Gmorts Sunday Smackdowns where he has pitted one hero against another in single combat.  As I was discussing if Thunderwolf Calvalry could beat Genestealers I thought I would put it to the test in an actual battle.  After all rolling a few dice helps to distract me from the work I should be doing!

In the Green corner, weighing in at 204 points we have twelve Genestealers with toxic sacs and rending claws.  Twice as many wounds as the cavalry and striking first they are going to need those rends to overwhelm the single Wolf Storm Shield.

In the Red corner, weighting in at 210 points we have three Thunderwolf Cavalry with mixed weapons for wound allocation tricks.  #1 was a Thunder Hammer, #2 a Storm Shield and #3 a Pistol. Thunderwolfs have four attacks each with Rending and strength five. They are striking second but with two wounds each it is difficult for the genestealers to take any out in the first round.

Math-hammer says it will be a fairly bloody battle taking about four rounds of combat and be too close to predict the winner.  If the wolves can kill some bugs with shooting it shifts the odds in their favour.

I mocked up ten battles.  The Wolves got the charge in all of them.  They managed to kill one stealer with shooting in half the battles.  Genestealers inflicted ~3 wounds in the first round.  Sometimes they were lucky and killed a T-wolf however this did not seem to change the cavalry's performance as they still killed 4-5 Genestealers in 9 of the battles. The second round was where the battle turned in most games with the Genestealers inflicting enough rends that the Shield-bearer died. Without the invulnerable save the Wolves went on to lose the battle of attrition. The longest battle was five round and was won by the Wolves. The shortest battle was eleven bugs killing all the Thunderwolves before they got to strike on the first round (eight failed saves out of 11 wounds).

Results: Ten Battles, Genestealers 6; T-wolves 4.

So the Hive Mind just pulled ahead.  In the four battles Wolves won they survived with a single model at one wound.  With striking first the bugs usually had at least three models left.  What I found with actually rolling the dice was that the T-Wolves were quite susceptible to results that had deviated from the statistical average (both up and down).  If I rolled a low number of wounds with a high number of rends (3 Wounds; 2 Rends or 7-4) the Wolves could not stack them all on the Shield.  Equally if I inflicted 10+ wounds the shear number of saves caused cavalry to die.

In a real battle both sides would have support from other units.  It is therefore unlikely they would ever face each other at full strength without support.  It was a fun exercise though to see how effective each unit can be. Twelve Xenomorphs is the minimum size brood I like to run.  Although I may increase that if I start to see more T-Wolves on the battle field.

Image Credits: Pictures from www.dakkadakka.com