Detachment Focus: Saga of the Beastslayer (Updated August 13, 2025)

In our Detachment Focus series we take a deep dive into an army’s Detachments, covering what’s in them, how they play, and how they’ll fit into the broader meta and your games. In this Detachment Focus we’re looking at the Saga of the Beastslayer Detachment from the Space Wolves.

Sometimes, you really just want to kill stuff. That’s (presumably) especially true if you’re an axe-wielding space barbarian. Great news – now there’s a Detachment designed for just that purpose: Saga of the Beastslayer.

Changelog:

• 2025-08-13: Updated with errata and a new list
• 2025-05-24: Initial publication

Detachment Overview

Saga of the Beastslayer is really, really good at killing stuff. The Detachment Rule means that almost any target is fair game, and the Stratagems further enhance your capability to do a murder. Secondary themes of decent mid-table mobility tricks and support for Thunderwolf Cavalry mean that the Detachment isn’t just a one-dimensional stat check, instead able to adapt to foes’ attempts to fight back, and close out games in style. Any time the meta is heavy with vehicles and knights, this Detachment will be a powerful option.

In case you hadn’t inferred this yet – this Detachment is very, very good, easily the most out-of-the-box competitive in the Space Wolves Codex Supplement. It’s also the one with the least restrictions on regular Astartes units benefitting from the rules, so if you’ve got a mostly Space Marines collection with a few Space Wolves units, this is where to start.

Detachment Rule: Legendary Slayers

In Saga of the Beastslayer, all of your Adeptus Astartes units have Lethal Hits when targeting a Character, Monster or Vehicle unit.

At the start of the battle, you count up the number of units from your opponent’s army with one or more of those keywords, half it and round up to create your Beastslayer target. Once you have destroyed a number of units with those keywords equal to or greater than your target, your units have Lethal Hits into everything.

This is an extremely good Detachment rule. The Saga is probably the hardest of the three to complete, but you don’t massively care, because in general the things you really want Lethal Hits into – targets you’ll wound on a 5+ – are the things you have it against all the time, and against some armies (e.g. Knights and Chaos Knights), you’ll barely care about completing it. Even most horde lists will be vulnerable, as armies like Green Tide or Host of Ascension tend to have CHARACTERS attached to all their key units.

The fact that this effect also isn’t locked to Space Wolves units only means that this is the easiest Detachment to pick up and start jamming together whatever Marine stuff you have, because this is one of those rules that just makes everything better in plenty of circumstances that matter. Lethal Hits also has natural synergy with Oath of Moment too, as you can fish for lethals if required when trying to fell a big target.

No great complexity here, but exceptionally high power level.

Enhancements

The enhancements in this Detachment are a mixed bag, and it’s relatively common to see a competitive army run without any of them.

• Wolf-Touched (15pts): Allows a Space Wolves Character to Lead a Wulfen INFANTRY unit, and gives them +2” movement so they can keep up. Definite interest here, especially as having a Character embedded will ensure the Wulfen always have OC like a real unit. This seems most likely to benefit a Battle Leader with some storm shield Wulfen, but a Wolf Priest with regular Wulfen also creates a shockingly nasty counterpunch unit and has a built-in ability to give them +1 OC.
• Hunter’s Guile (20pts): This lets you redeploy or pull to Strategic Reserves up to three Wulfen, Blood Claw or ThunderCav units. It’s not amazing, but it can be helpful if you’re already using all of your Strategic Reserves points allotment for a unit of Wolf Guard Terminators you’re planning to drop in on the first turn with Logan Grimnar.
• Elder’s Guidance (20pts): Provides a once-per-game +1AP buff to Blood Claws in the Fight phase. Cute, and I guess in theory this is the Detachment where Ragnar isn’t mandatory with them, be if you’re taking Blood Claws you’re going to be taking Ragnar with them.
• Helm of the Beastslayer (15pts): Gives the bearer’s unit -1AP to incoming attacks from Monster, Vehicle and Character units. This is the good stuff, and it’s available to any Adeptus Astartes model, so I’d expect to jam this onto a big block of Aggressors, Heavy Intercessors or honestly maybe even regular Terminators.

Stratagems

Saga of the Beastslayer has access to a decent set of Stratagems while still being a bit less CP-reliant than other Detachments. This means you can potentially afford to skip out on Bjorn the Fell-Handed… though you probably want to bring him anyways.

• Unbridled Ferocity (Battle Tactic, 1 CP): Used in the Fight phase  to give a SPACE WOLVES unit+1 to Wound in melee. This is theoretically a non-combo with the Detachment rule, but in practice just lets you ensure you’re getting big hits in, so it’s very welcome. Even when you have Lethal hits to punch up, this doubles your output into targets you’re wounding on a 6+ and that can make a huge difference.
• Shock Cavalry (Strategic Ploy, 1 CP): Used in the Movement Phase or Charge Phase, this lets Thunderwolf Cavalry move through models, enemy Engagement Range or terrain sections under 4”. This makes them very hard to move block with their new 12” speed, and can help smooth out awkward charges as well. The 4″ terrain rule here ends up being a nothingburger unfortunately, as most events tend to run walls that are 4″ tall or more.
• Pinning Fire (Strategic Ploy, 1 CP): This lets one of your Astartes units pick a Character, Vehicle, or Monster unit they hit in the Shooting phase to become suppressed. While that unit is supressed, subtract 2” from the target’s Movement characteristic and Charge rolls until your next shooting phase. This isn’t always going to come up, but when a perfect target presents itself it’s going to be extremely real, and the ease of applying it when needed makes it a great utility tool. Especially fun into C’tan or Deathshroud with an attached character.
• Thunderous Pursuit (Strategic Ploy, 1 CP): This gives you a reactive move of d6” for any Astartes unit, or a flat 6” for Space Wolves Infantry or Thunderwolf Cavalry when an enemy unit finishes a Normal, Advance, or Fall Back move within 9″ of your unit. This effect is always good, and the fact that it gives you the option to fish for a weaker one on a non-Wolves unit when you really need it is just gravy.
• Impetuosity (Strategic Ploy, 1 CP): This is used in your opponent’s Shooting phase, right after they pick a target. Pick one of your Wulfen INFANTRY or Blood Claws units they picked as a target of that shooting and after they’re done shooting, if you lost a model from the attacks, you can make an Impetuous (surge) move of up to D6″, having to end as close as possible to the closest enemy unit. This is fine to have in the tank, but the timing on when you use it – when targeted and not when you lose a model – really sucks, and blunts its effectiveness. It’s better as a threat of a thing you could do than an actual thing you want to be using.
• Coordinated Strike (Strategic Ploy, 1CP): Lets you pull a Space Wolves unit wholly within 9” of a Battlefield Edge into Strategic Reserves at the end of your opponent’s turn. Nice, though slightly less good than this effect normally is simply due to there not being many cheap units with OC, though what you may end up doing with this is re-setting a solo Logan.

Playing This Detachment

We’re going to shock you here: You’re going to want to kill stuff. The standard Space Wolf play is to get your units in position then do horrendous things to the foe when they approach, and this Detachment is that to the max, able to scythe through all comers. All you need to do is make sure you’re calculating your killing power correctly on a given turn; you don’t have that much in the way of defensive tricks once committed (outside a few movement tools), so you do need to make sure you’re landing the kills you swing for. Luckily, that’s extremely achievable with massed Lethal Hits, especially once you remember that Oaths of Moment helps you punch up when Lethals are on. Extreme violence followed by a return to the Fang for medals and mjod.

Notably, what this Detachment lacks is the ability to Advance and Charge, which means it’s playing a different game to Stormlance Task Force and Gladius armies. Thunderwolf Cavalry are still a key part of your strategy – 3 damage swings on the charge are very good – but your focus will be less on putting opponents in wolf jail and more on controlling the board with fast units like TWC and Wulfen to flank opponents and cause problems. Competitive Beastslayer lists tend to run large units of Wolf Guard Terminators led by Arjac and capable of dropping in on the first turn with Grimnar’s ability as an incredibly nasty surprise – one that can then make a 6″ reactive move as needed in your opponent’s turn.

Strengths

• Incredible Violence. Your specialty here is punching up into bigger targets with an army that was already good at punching things, particularly smaller units. The Detachment ability is equally good on vehicles and tanks.
• Great mobility tools. Five of your six Stratagems and two of your Enhancements are dedicated to movement and reserves tricks, giving you a massive amount of tactical flexibility.
• Strong support for a wide range of Marine units. Your Detachment rule benefits all ASTARTES units and half of your stratagems will as well.

Weaknesses

• Limited defensive Stratagems. You lose Armour of Contempt here and while that’s not the end of the world it is going to hurt a bit.
• A few dud Enhancements. You can honestly take or leave these.
• Offensive buffs. What’s here is great, but there could be more. Unbridled Ferocity doesn’t quite mesh with the Detachment rule.

A Sample List

Hunter Nichols’ List

Hunter took this list to a 5-0-1, fifth place finish at the 2025 Lone Star Open, beating Custodes, GSC, Marines, Aeldari, T’au, and Space Wolves along the way.

Hunter's List - Click to Expand

There’s a little bit of everything here, with a solid mix of melee and ranged damage, all of it more than capable of dealing with knights or vehicle-heavy Death Guard lists. The Infiltrators here hold your home objective and screen out nasty threats while securing a forward path for your Wulfen and Thunderwolves. When you take them in units of 3, Thunderwolves become less about wolf jail and more about having a strategic unit that can tear apart key threats. On average they’ll dump 6 damage into a knight with just their wolf weapons on the charge and you can double that by using the Unbridled Ferocity stratagem to give them +1 to wound. Here Ragnar joins the Headtakers and can ride with them in the Repulsor Executioner, while Arjac joins the Wolf Guard Terminators and Grimnar runs solo, on the table as a disruption piece and able to use his ability to bring a unit in from Strategic Reserves early.

Final Thoughts

Saga of the Beastslayer presents the ultimate gift to those Space Wolves players wanting to embrace violence and score points on their opponents’ corpses: A solid Detachment rule coupled with just enough stratagem shenanigans to keep your opponents on their toes leaves you wanting very little. The Detachment rule not being restricted to solely Space Wolves units is also a welcome difference from Saga of the Hunter and Saga of the Bold. Now go forth and write yourself a saga worthy of Bjorn!

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