Detachment Focus: Saga of the Hunter

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 Hunter Detachment from the Space Wolves.

The Space Wolves are legendary for the ferocity with which their warriors hunt down the foe, and in their new Codex this is showcased in the Saga of the Hunter Detachment. This incentivises you to bring huge, howling hordes of warriors to overwhelm the opposition, taking advantage of the newly strengthened Blood Claws and Grey Hunters to forge a fearsome force.

Changelog

• 2025-08-13 (Current): Updated with a new list and errata
• 2025-05-24: Initial Publication

Detachment Overview

This is a horde infantry Detachment for Space Wolves – it wants you to slam large units of Space Wolves Infantry into the enemy, and for there to hopefully not be much left once you’re done. That is, pretty much, the whole deal here – this is a very one-dimensional Detachment, and the weakest in the book as a consequence. It’s not even so much that there isn’t a somewhat decent plan here – it’s just that you can probably do the same thing better in the other Detachments, with more variety of how you support it. Nonetheless, this does do some unique stuff, so let’s dig in.

Detachment Rule: Pack’s Quarry

All Space Wolves Detachments have a two-part rule. The second part is a Saga, which gives you conditions to activate a more powerful version of the rule.

For Pack’s Quarry, each time a model in a SPACE WOLVES unit from your army makes a melee attack that targets an enemy unit, if that enemy unit is within Engagement Range of one or more other ADEPTUS ASTARTES units from your army, or if the attacking unit contains more models than that enemy unit, you get +1 to Hit rolls and +1 to Wound as well if your Saga is completed.

The Saga of the Hunter gives you a Quarry tally, which at the start of the first battle round is zero. Each time an ADEPTUS ASTARTES unit from your army fights, you get +1 to your Quarry tally for each enemy unit destroyed by those attacks. The Saga is completed when your Quarry tally is greater than the number in a table – 2 for Incursion, 3 for Strike Force.

The actual effect here is powerful – everyone loves buffs to Hit and Wound rolls – but be careful with who it applies to, it’s only actual SPACE WOLVES units that benefit, and not the generic ADEPTUS ASTARTES stuff you might have along for the ride. It also potentially incentivises you to over-commit to combats if you want to get the rule firing; efficient melee trading is about committing the least resources to a particular fight to win it, and this does the opposite.

Enhancements

Take care to note which of these enhancements can go on generic Marine characters and which are Space Wolves-only here – there’s two of each. Remember of course that the Space Wolves guys do still have the ADEPTUS ASTARTES keyword, so they’re not locked out of any of these.

• Swift Hunter (20pts): SPACE WOLVES models. Models in the bearer’s unit get Scouts 7”. Potentially funny to throw a pack of Blood Claws into someone’s face early on, or possibly some Wolf Guard Headtakers in an Impulsor. This is one of the truly unique draws here, so you should take it 100% of the time.
• Fenrisian Grit (15pts): ADEPTUS ASTARTES models. The bearer gets a 4+ Feel No Pain. Completely fine, and potentially neat on an Iron Priest so that even if they get caught out with their Lone Operative they still have a defence to fall back on. Also a good option on a bike Chaplain, as that provides a very durable model that can go out and hunt the foe early to activate the Saga.
• Wolf Master (5pts): SPACE WOLVES models. Pick a friendly Space Wolves unit within 9” of the bearer in your Command phase; that unit’s teeth and claws and Tyrnak and Fenrir weapons have the LETHAL HITS ability. If you haven’t memorised those, it’s the melee weapons on Fenrisian Wolves, Hunting Wolves, and Thunderwolf Cavalry, plus Logan’s extra attacks weapon representing his two wolves fighting. It’s cute that they remembered that, but is your random Wolf Guard Battle Leader really spending his time hyping up the Great Wolf’s pets? Anyway this enhancement is pretty awful; teeth and claws are just generic close combat weapon profiles everywhere but on Thunderwolf Cavalry and Logan, where they at least have AP-1. Given it’s in the book for 5pts you might just take it anyway, but it’ll be your last choice.
• Feral Rage (10pts): ADEPTUS ASTARTES models. The bearer’s melee weapons get +1 Attack, and an additional +1 Attack until the end of the turn every time the bearer ends a Charge move. Pretty good, and ironically probably funniest on a generic Space Marine Captain to pop out a Finest Hour with +5 Attacks.

Stratagems

Like with the Enhancements, some of these are generic to any Space Marines unit, while others only work on your Chapter-specific ones.

• Envelop and Ensnare (Strategic Ploy, 1 CP): Used in the Fight phase; targets one SPACE WOLVES unit (excluding MONSTERS or VEHICLES) that has not been selected to fight this phase. That unit gets 6” Pile-in and Consolidation moves, and each model doesn’t have to end closer to the closest enemy model, just the closest enemy unit. This is a great Stratagem in the right circumstances, giving you both more movement to work with but also much more flexibility in how you use it. Smart players will place units as speed bumps to protect their more valuable assets, relying on the restrictions of these moves to prevent you from going past; this Stratagem gives you much more leeway to just swing around wherever.
• Territorial Advantage (Strategic Ploy, 1CP): Fight phase, just after an enemy unit is destroyed by an ADEPTUS ASTARTES unit from your army. Pick one objective that your unit is within range of and sticky it. Sticky is always a good one to have in your back pocket, and this is handy for being able to throw out something to clear a unit off a midfield point and then force your opponent to commit to coming and actually taking it off you instead of just hanging back and shooting you off.
• Overwhelming Onslaught (Battle Tactic, 1CP): Fight phase, just after an enemy unit has selected its targets. You need to target either two ADEPTUS ASTARTES units or one SPACE WOLVES BEASTS unit within Engagement Range of that enemy unit. Until the end of the phase that enemy unit gets -1 to Hit rolls. -1 to Hit is a decent effect, but your opponent can play around this with the fairly simple tactical choice to not charge two of your units at once. Otherwise I guess you can pay a CP to make a unit of Fenrisian Wolves marginally harder to kill?
• Chosen Prey (Strategic Ploy, 1CP): Use in your Movement phase just after a SPACE WOLVES unit from your army Falls Back. That unit can shoot and declare a charge this turn. Straightforwardly useful ability, just remember that it only targets SPACE WOLVES.
• Bounding Advance (Strategic Ploy, 1CP): Your Movement phase or Charge phase; pick one SPACE WOLVES INFANTRY or BEASTS unit from your army that hasn’t moved or declared a charge this phase. Until the end of the phase, models in that unit can move through non-TITANIC models when making a Normal, Advance, Fall Back, or Charge move. Handy for getting through screens into something you REALLY want to attack.
• Marked for Destruction (Battle Tactic, 1CP): Use in your Shooting phase and select two ADEPTUS ASTARTES units (excluding BEASTS) from your army that have not been selected to shoot this phase. Select one enemy unit visible to both units; until the end of the phase, models in your units can only target that enemy unit (and only if it’s an eligible target), but they get re-roll 1s to Wound. It’s fine, but potentially sucking up two whole units’ entire shooting could be a big ask, and it’s possible that an opponent can pull models out of line of sight so that your second unit can’t shoot anything this phase.

Playing This Detachment

Slam Blood Claws into them. That’s it. That’s the tweet. That’s what this Detachment is for, and that’s how you’ll get the most value out of it – adding Swift Hunter to the mix to get lots of Blood Claws into the foe very quickly is one of the best things about it, and to get the value here, you just need to be absolutely relentless in rushing down the foe. Because you’re taking Blood Claws, you’ll want to take Ragnar with a unit of them.

On the other side of things, there’s a little room for Shooting here, with the Marked for Destruction Stratagem giving you a way to get some extra wound help against a bigger target. You’ll still need some shooting, so it’s a good ability to have in your back pocket.

Strengths

• Melee. You’ve got a solid Detachment buff here and you can overwhelm the foe with a speedy horde of units which can Advance and Charge.
• Easy Saga. The Saga of the Hunter is the easiest to complete of the bunch, requiring you just kill three enemy units in melee.
• Rewards you for Charging. This Detachment rewards high-momentum play and encourages you to just barrel forward and get dug in.

Weaknesses

• One-dimensional. Outside of the Marked for Destruction Stratagem, there’s not much else here to work with. You’re going to do one thing.
• Poor support for non-Wolves units. This Detachment has the least support for other Astartes units.
• Blood Claws. Blood Claws are neat, but they aren’t that good, and building a list around them isn’t going to work.

A Sample List

This isn’t the best way to play Space Wolves and if we’re being honest, it’s not even the fourth best. Saga of the Bold is a more viable option competitively; Blood Claws are neat but there just isn’t enough power in that unit to recommend building an entire army strategy around them. Still, if you want to run this it can be a lot of fun, and that matters.

小韩 Xiao Han’s List

小韩 Xiao Han took this list to a 3-2 record at the China Warhammer City Tournament in late July, losing twice to Death Guard but beating Knights and Chaos Daemons en route to a 24th place finish. Matching into Death Guard twice is generally a nightmare for melee horde lists, so it’s no shock they dropped both of those games.

Han's List - click to expand

This is more or less what I’d expect a melee horde army for Space Wolves to look like, running 18 Headtakers with a pair of Wolf Priests and a Battle leader attached to them, Ragnar with a unit of Blood Claws, two units of Wulfen, and two units of TWC giving the opponent a ton of wounds to chew through. That said, that’s also the issue – the lack of Transports means all of that is exposed early, and armies like Death Guard will have no problem blasting through three-wound models with bloat-drones. The ideas behind it are plenty sound, but the meta is currently a bit too tooled-up for killing 3W marine bodies for this to be super viable. That said, this is a great concept, likely something that can be tweaked into a 4-1 list.

Final Thoughts

This Detachment gets filed firmly into the bucket of it being clear what GW were going for, but it not quite getting there. If you want to run a themed list of an absolute horde of Blood Claws and Headtakers, you can very much do it here, but if you’re looking for the exciting competitive spice, maybe take a look at Saga of the Bold or Saga of the Beastslayer.

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