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Okay so to add to the title/give it some more depth as to what I am asking:

I'm a Space Wolves player for starters. I dream/aspire to have all 13 great companies someday. Even if GW goes down the path it has. I'm still working on my first company, my main one that'll probably always be my go to company which is that of Logan Grimnar himself. Naturally I understand what I'll need for him which is a lot of Wolf Guard, Dreds and Long Fangs along with Ulrik, Bjorn, Njal and Arjac which I more or less have. Well okay I have Arjac...gonna work on getting Njal and Ulrik along with Bjorn somewhere down the road...anyway back to point!

I plan on starting a Bran Redmaw Company soon. Mainly after I've fully made a model for him and The Redmaw. Well okay mainly The Redmaw. After that most likely Ragnar followed by a dedication to The 13th Company then the others etc.

Back to the title. I've seen some companies of other marines. A friend of mine at my FLGS has 3 full companies of Dark Angels. So I just want to know will/should I be ready to order a lot more packs of marines and such to paint up in accordance to each company? Or will I be able to simply roll with my standard guys and simply run em just being called under a different company etc. I want to know what's the best route to go with making more then one company of marines(Great Company in the Wolves case).

Well I'm going through sort of the same thing with my Sons of Medusa Mageara Clan. The Clan consists of 3 Companies the first two sort of operate independently of one another, with the 3rd and Scout Companies filling the 1st and 2nd as needed.

As it stands I have my 1st Company nearly sorted out, just need a couple more Elites to make them truly "veterans" then the 2nd Company will be mostly standard units with basic loadouts, while the 3rd will be like tanks and such. To make my Scout Company I'm thinking just grab a few boxes of Scouts and call it good.

As far as Space Wolves go you are pretty free to do whatever you like, since most SW Companies are pretty independent. I'd check the Wiki pages and see what they have to say. Look up Codex Astartes and that should give you a pretty good idea of what a whole Company would look like. Mind you you'll never need that many models so perhaps you can pare it down to playable essentials?

Personally, I'd buy and bulk and then use various bitz and painting to distinguish between the various companies. There's also various bitz you can buy, though they can be pricey. For example, Ragnar has a unique shoulder pad for his company available as a bitz pack from GW.

What I have been doing is building each company to thier full FOC [ignoring HQ, you can never have enough or you can use them as Wolf Guard].
This can give you easly a 100+ models for each Company.
Then you theam each Company to the Wolf Lord.
Logan: 6 Packs of Wolf Guard
Ragnar: At least 2 Packs of Blood Claws or Everything in Drop Pods.

Well, since you're doing Space Wolves, the first thing I would do is look into what each of the Great Companies includes. For example, until you start doing the Great Wolf's Company, you won't have to worry about Dreads.

Then, you're going to want to look into what each Company fields. From what I am led to understand, Ragnar's Company is the second-largest at 200 Marines, though an upper limit to the total number of Space Wolves is not known.

Each Great Company also has its own badge, so you might want to dedicate a "standard bearer" model to bear the banner into battle (this also will help clearly identify the Great Company depicted).

In game you can do what you like, provided the type of each squad is clear. If you are trying to be true to the fluff, then each Great company has its own heraldry and insignia that are apparent on each member of the company. Whether thats shoulder pad trimming, iconography, kneepad colours or whatever. The codex should have a nice comprehensive section on the colours and insignia for each company.