Bjorn the Fell-Handed- the Epic Destroyer or Glorified Point Sink?

     Hello readers! Today we are going to talk about Bjorn the Fell-Handed, his role in your army, strengths and tactics and whether or not he earns his 220 point ticket price.
     Im going to start out by saying if you came here for an unbiased opinion, I am going to try to give you one. But, for the sake of fairness and honesty, I need to disclose that Bjorn is my favorite character in WH40K, one of my top 3 favorite models, and my most used HQ- I may be a bit bias.
         Going straight into it- Bjorn is steeped in the legends and fluff of the SW chapter like no other character, Russ being the only exception. He was the first Lone Wolf, killed a Daemon Prince with his own claw and axe, became the first Great Wolf and is currently among the oldest living-ish characters in the entire Imperium. He might well have invented "badass". We may never know. Now how is the honored legend of the Chapter (and Imperium) portrayed on the table top? Hes an ornate, venerable Dreadnought with AV 13/12/10 WS/BS 6, 4 A I 3 stats and comes stock with and assault cannon, smoke launchers, and a searchlight. His melee weapon is a mastercrafted great wolf claw- Trueclaw with STR 10 AP2 shred and mastercrafted. This is a great place to start and you can already tell hes a beast in his own right. Additionally his special rules include Venerable, Ancient Tactician (+1 to seize the initiative), and Ward of the Primarch (5++ save) wow. His saga is Saga of Majesty (all friendly SWs in 12" reroll failed moral) So he buffs your army tactically by helping to steal the initiative on a 5+, nice to have albeit unreliable and situational, and he helps keep them on the front line when he uses his warlord trait and hes ridiculously durable as far a dreadnoughts go (SW venerables notwithstanding).More on this in a moment. His wargear options include upgrading his assault cannon to a plasma cannon or the new Helfrost Cannon for free or a twin-linked lascannon for 5 points. He may take a drop pod as a dedicated transport. This is  decent amount of solid options and though some are certainly better than others, Bjorn can be a real boon to your list no matter how you choose to equip him.
     Lets talk first about Bjorns combat prowess. Bjorns WS6 is huge, its basically Chapter-Master tier and add in his STR 10 AP 2 Shredding master crafted weapon with 5 attacks on the charge (or counter charge) he seems like he'd be a real juggernaut in cc right? He is but his initiative 3 makes some players doubt it. That needs to examined. 95% of all infantry are only going to be able to glance or pen Bjorns front armor of 13 with an unwieldy weapon. To put that in prospective, Powerfists can only glance him on 5s in most cases, Thats the long and short of it. There are a few units, Deathwing Knights for example, that can hit and hurt Bjorn before he can swing back but these units are few and far between and shouldn't make a SW player think Bjorns initiative is a liability. Against Helbrutes, Imperial knights, and other Dreadnoughts however, Bjorn is fighting last but even then his WS6, front armor 13, Venerable, and 5++ save will go a long way toward keeping him in the fight (well perhaps not against an Imperial Knight but that's comparing apples to bazookas).

     Lets do some math on Bjorns sheer durability and his combat ability, Shooting a melta gun at Bjorn with BS 4, in melta range, with Bjorns 5++ BEFORE venerable will only explode Bjorn 16% of the time on average. It would take 3-4 melta gun shots in melta range to push that up to 50% and 8 shots to put it in the reliable range of 80%. and even then we are talking-on average- 2.5 pens, .4 glances and 3 hull points removed to reliably  put the old man down. Add in venerable and that 80% explode rate goes back down to 13% ouch! Basically you have to strip HP on Bjorn as it would take 16 melta shots to put his explodes result into the 75% range (at which point hes statistically died 2.2 times from HP stripping). Now this math is never exact. The dice gods could just hate you one day- it happens. In cc against a Dreadnought or Helbrute who charged with 3 attacks, Bjorn will take 1.5 hits after his BS and after his 13 AV . After his 5++ .5 pens, .17 glances and your opponent will succeed in blowing him up 3% of the time after venerable. Bjorn will LIVE! (on average, nothing is absolute in a dice game) His initiative isn't that much of a detriment. However when Bjorn swings back against this walker he is hitting 3.33 times with his 5 attacks, pening 2.22 times BEFORE shred, glancing .5 times, removing 2.8 Hull points on average (again before shred) and exploding the bastard about 60% of the time. Bjorn is a solid cc Dread who will hold his own against just about anything. And just to throw this out there- those powerfists and hammers that can hurt Bjorn are often found on characters. Bjorn can challenge out those characters and allocate all his wounds to that character who, is likely,  his only threat.

    Shooting wise Bjorn is equally as valuable. With his assault cannon and BS of 6, Bjorn is getting on average 4/4 hits and forcing 3.3 wounds with rending against your typical MEQs that leads to 1-2 MEQ deaths! Against TEQs its around 1.2 via rending hits. Not too bad for a rounds shooting. The Helfrost cannon his hitting and killing MEQs .8% of the time, and TEQs .5 %  of the time on a focused fire. Dispersed really matters on number of hits but lets say it hits 3 models. Thats 2.5 MEQ deaths and .45 TEQ deaths. Again not bad. I feel the plasma cannon is inferior and the twinlinked lascannon is a waste. Bjorn has BS 6, he will barely use the twin linked if he does the gun still doesnt have the versatility of the Helfrost cannon.
     So a great value of Bjorn is his ability to both shoot and fight. Lets not forget his heavy flamer for hordes. He can serve a number of battle field rolls and does them all well. Additionally, Bjorn goes beyond himself and helps your army be more efficient by helping your Wolves pass moral (if hes your warlord) or seizing the initiative. These things DEFINITELY justify a 220 point tab to me but then Bjorn doesn't really cost 220 points does he? He still has a major flaw: hes slow.

     Bjorn has a hidden cost of needing a transport. You can leave him in the back field to shoot your enemies from afar but then you've paid 220 points for a firing platform. I think Bjorn best serves us dropping his heavy flamer on our enemies, shooting AND getting into cc. For this you will need to purchase a drop pod for him. That puts our Bjorn up to 255 points-not too bad and he still justifies that cost. But I think to better protect our living relic, Bjorn should be put into a Lucius Pattern drop pod from ForgeWorld (with the 40k approved stamp). This drop pod only costs 15 additional points over a standard drop pod but lands and counts as an open topped assault vehicle that Bjorn will NOT be forced to disembark from. That means just like any other open topped vehicle, an enemy will have to shoot through the AV12 pod with 3 hull points to get to Bjorn while Bjorn is free to shoot his weapons from the pod and safe until his next turn charge.
     Bjorn is a solid addition to a Space Wolf army, so much so that the fact I saw any negative comments about him all took me by surprise! Dont listen to the flak, Bjorn is an excellent contender for your HQ slot in any game above 1500 points (hell, I use him in 1000 point games LIKE A BOSS).
Give him a run and be pleasantly surprised when you see what a great character he is. Just like Ulrik, Bjorn needs more than a first glance.I included a lot of photos of my Bjorn model, I put a lot of time into him. As I've said he is my favorite.  Next up on my character examination series will be Ulrik the Slayer, the best 145 points you've ever spent on an HQ. Did you agree with my post? Did you not agree? Did I leave something out? Comment and tell me! Keep it clean and kind though. I hope you found this post useful, and thank you for reading!
                                                                                     Russ be with you!
                                                                                                      Jorvar