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I really hope this is the right forum.

Last month, I purchased a fair amount of Space Wolves from my FLGS. The majority of SW figures were already put together. As part of the package I bought, I received a SW Battlforce as well that only had the scouts assembled. The Battlforce comes with a couple of Space Wolves Packs which can be modeled into Blood Claws, Grey Hunters, Wolf Guard, and Lone Wolves.

I'm currently running an inventory of my SW and I'm kind of at a loss for how to differentiate between the different units. Is there a typical assembly method to make visually keeping track of which is which for my opponents? I'm also trying to put together something that will be easy for my wife to remember. This is her army, after all.

I'm leaning towards going with the following:

Without helmets (with BP + CCW) = Blood Claws
With bolters and/or helmets (prefer helmets) = Grey Hunters
Wolf Helms = Wolf Guard

Is this a standard? DO people do it more with colors? What do people typical do to designate Long Fangs?

If it's not in the right forum, please feel free to move it.
I'm not 100% sure

Usually the colours on the shoulder pads are a differentiating feature. I also tend to favour more wolf furs and extra knives and bits and pieces on my Wolf Guard and Long Fangs. Many of my Wolf Guard I've given greenstuff wolf fur capes and such.

Long Fangs have heavy weapons so that sets them apart.

Grey Hunters I tend to pose less dynamically and have bolters, making them look more like a steadfast core troop.

Blood Claws I try and pose more dynamically, and obviously they have pistols and close combat weapons (I use axes from dwarf sets instead of chainswords). Some of my Blood claws are mash-ups with Khorne Berserkers, who have some good "charging in" poses.

One idea I was toying with was having swappable shoulder pads on many of my models so I can run them as either Grey Hunters, Blood Claws or Wolf Guard, so I could run a Logan army or a berserker army or a grey hunter army without having to paint a ton of extra models. Never got around to doing that though and I'm not really sure how I would do it, I think it's a bit too fiddly for magnets.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:Usually the colours on the shoulder pads are a differentiating feature. I also tend to favour more wolf furs and extra knives and bits and pieces on my Wolf Guard and Long Fangs. Many of my Wolf Guard I've given greenstuff wolf fur capes and such.

Long Fangs have heavy weapons so that sets them apart.

Grey Hunters I tend to pose less dynamically and have bolters, making them look more like a steadfast core troop.

Blood Claws I try and pose more dynamically, and obviously they have pistols and close combat weapons (I use axes from dwarf sets instead of chainswords). Some of my Blood claws are mash-ups with Khorne Berserkers, who have some good "charging in" poses.

One idea I was toying with was having swappable shoulder pads on many of my models so I can run them as either Grey Hunters, Blood Claws or Wolf Guard, so I could run a Logan army or a berserker army or a grey hunter army without having to paint a ton of extra models. Never got around to doing that though and I'm not really sure how I would do it, I think it's a bit too fiddly for magnets.

Using my system above and the preassembled plastic models, I currently have the following:

9 Blood Claws
31 Grey Hunters
4 Wolf Guard, and
2 models that I think work well as Wolf Guard Battle Leaders (epic beards and wielding either a thunderhammer or power axe).

I think the shoulders would be another great visual clue. I'm still a bit away from painting, but it's a great idea to incorporate when I do.

Just give everyone without special equipment bolt pistol + chainsword so you can run them as either Blood Claws or Grey Hunters - whatever suits your fancy. With Lone Wolves and Wolf Guard, you'll probably want to give them their own special equipment, but that will differentiate them enough. A few extra wolfy bitz would help though.

In terms of fluff, different coloured shoulder pads are the way to go. I use a different scheme for my Wolves though, so they're totally interchangeable.

Yeah, shoulder pad designs have been the differentiating feature between squads ever since I've been collecting way back in 2nd edition.

I tend to prefer helmeted Space Wolves, and go no helmets only for squad leaders and the odd wolf guard. I'm a fan of big hairy dudes with long beards, but it seems a bit impractical for a Space Marine to have a beard that is bigger than his helmet so I reserve it for the grizzled old veterans. I have had a big long beard in the past and know how much of a pain it is when you're dealing with chemicals because face masks don't work

I have Blood Claws run without helmets, Grey hunters are a more standard pose with Bolters, and Wolf Guard have both shoulder pads painted the same.

My goal is to have to proxy as few units as possible, even with friendly games.

I still need to put together the majority of my Battleforce. Before I even touch that, and without vehicles, and going based on WYSIWYG, I'm right around 2900 before any necklaces, marks, etc.

My wife can field a 2000 point army before she even has a full grasp of the game.

For my space wolves army, i mixed 2 Space Wolves packs with 2 tac marines squad, the Grey Hunter are the result of the mix (making them adorned but not so much), the Long Fangs and Wolf Guard is done almost with only the SW Pack Bitz (wich make them more adorned). I plan to make a Big Unit of Blood Claws very soon, they will be bland tac marines+assault marines, with very litle pieces from the wolf pack (some chainswords and pistols).


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Oh, and all my wolves use no helmet. I just like them that way, and use a "fluffy" explanation to it: Power Armor sensors are great for other marines, but for the wolves the natural augmented senses are better, and the helmet even limit the use of those senses...

I wonder if the SW Pack sprues that come with Battleforce contain the same exact contents as a regular SW Pack box. I haven't really begun to dig around in the SW world to find out.

I think one of my biggest issues with be magnetizing some figures to be my Lone Wolves, since they have so many options. I need to go look in the tactics section and do some 'net reading to find out more about that.

I appreciate the responses from everyone. It sounds like a combination of what I'm doing and shoulder pads is a good way to go. I do need to change the heads on one of my Grey Hunters to be one of the helmetless heads so that I can have a round 10 Blood Claws.

I'm using heads similar to this one for my Wolf Guard Battle Leaders.

Umm the ones in your army are GHs and the ones on the shelf are BCs?

jmurph wrote:Umm the ones in your army are GHs and the ones on the shelf are BCs?

That's awesome...


But back to the topic:

Typical SW schemes are as follows:
Grey Hunters --- Red/Black Shoulder pads
Blood Claws ---- Red/Yellow Shoulder Pads
Long Fangs ---- Black/White Shoulder Pads
Wolf Scouts ---- Black/Blue Shoulder Pads
Wolf Guard ----- Black/Yellow Shoulder Pads
Thunderwolves ---- n/a (I chose Liche Purple, royal feel)
HQ ---- n/a

Now, these can all be modified to fit personal taste and preference, adding designs and such, using only 1 color rather than 2, etc.

Other than that, another subtle way to differentiate your unit types would be to pain the bevels of the bases the miniature is on. I'd personally use a similar scheme to the shoulder pads I listed above, but again that's preference.

Good Luck dude

The Space Wolves pack is formed by 2 different sprues, and the kit come with 2 of each. The Battleforce come with 4 of each of the same sprues.

For my blood claws I decided to shave / file off the shoulder pad rims -

Thunder wolves are wolf guard so should use their colors. If your doing a true space wolf fluff army you should follow the color patterns listed in a post above or refer to your codex as it is listed there specifically. It is there right shoulder pad that shows this. Sometimes they have a knee pad in the colors. Lone wolves do not seem to be used often so do t focus on making a bunch of those magnitizd IMO either. If you don't care about fluff then make your colors w/e color and make your own background... But they can't be called space wolves lol they would have to be a successor chapter an there are not many out there. Also remember no curvy lines for the shoulders.

I am doing a space wolf army these days but the paint job is more like that off the battle of the fang cover. I don't like the blueish space wolf grey colours and prefer the heresy era paint job.
I don't think there has ever been a successor chapter to the wolves bar that disastrous wolf brothers incident.

After posting this thread, I started reading through the codex. Previously, I was so caught up in simply looking at the stats that I didn't bother reading the fluff. I felt really stupid when I saw the color descriptions in the unit listing. After doing so, I'm actually switching from Blood Angels to Space Wolves as my primary army.

As my wife doesn't really care which army she plays, I'll let her play the GK I have...she will like them more, as there's less units to keep up with.

I will definitely use the shoulders to differentiate between the models, in addition to modeling the BC as not having helmets.

I actually like the fluff of the Blood Claws and will likely run a small unit of 5 with a Wolf Guard attached to it in friendly games.

Thanks again for the input and suggestions.