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Hi guys,

I'm sure this question has been asked before--but I couldn't find much in my searching around. I'm new to playing any kind of Space Marines army, so please bear with me. I recently got a Space Wolves pack of 10 dudes. The box says I can assemble 10 Grey Hunters, Blood Claws, or Wolf Guard. Looking at the codex, the models look quite similar, more or less...maybe aside from the fact that all the Blood Claws have red hair. My question is this: can I just paint them all up to be Grey Hunters without them looking proxied? (l prefer playing wysiwyg as much as possible) Or can I field them as any of those three units I want? Sorry for the noob question, guys. Thanks

The most important thing is their loadout, as blood claws only have a bolt pistol and chainsword, whilst the grey hunters have a boltgun and bolt pistol (if you dont give them a CCW).

Otherwise, you can paint them pretty much however you want. If you want to be fluffy then you need to be mindful of the colours used for the pack markings that is about it.

If you want to be more fluffy, then you would also paint their hair in specific ways too. Grey hunters being grey, blood claws being everything else.

Only real difference between them cosmetically is what colour you paint the shoulder pads.

Blood Claws - Yellow/Red
Grey Hunters - Red/Black
Wolf guard - Black/yellow

Just build them as Grey Hunters, you cant go wrong that way. Either with just Boltguns or with Boltgun/Chainsword combo, depending on what you want them for. Look at pics of Grey Hunter to find the exact design they have painted with the black and red.

Winter wrote:
If you want to be more fluffy, then you would also paint their hair in specific ways too. Grey hunters being grey, blood claws being everything else.

Actually, grey would be long fangs, since long fangs are the oldest. GW paints their blood claws mostly with red hair, I imagine just to make them look more "fiery". Long fangs have the grey hair because they're old, Grey Hunters are usually a mix, brown hair, blonde hair, black hair, etc.

But that's just how GW does it, it doesn't really matter in the end as long as there's some distinguishing features.

I had a similar question when I started with wolves. In terms of play, if you model bolt pistol and chainsword you can play as either GH, WG or BC but it's worth noting that to use WG with these basic weapons kinda defeats the object. If you model bolt guns then you're not going to be able to play as BC.

I'm terms of painting. I like to differentiate my GH by using helmets, as apposed to the bare headed BC. My WG have all wolf helmets but I understand that's not practical for everyone. As previously stated, grey hunters are not called so because of their hair lol. I would recommend avoiding painting everyone with red hair. It's a bit cliché and generally not to my liking. In keeping with Viking theme make sure to include some blondes. Also, bear in mind color schemes are there to guide you, not limit. I personally find that red and yellow clash nastily so to avoid having Big Macs for shoulder pads I went blue and black for my shoulders (bearing in mind that my wolves are purple.) Hope this helps.

Model-wise, they're all identical. The kit is designed so that you can make anything that's a Space Wolf in power armor (so yes, you can make Long Fangs out of them, skyclaws, even rune priests, wolf priests and WGBL or Wolf Lords with it).

Also, in case you're wondering: If you build a model from that kit with a bolt pistol and a chainsword, it can effectively function as either a Wolf Guard with no equipment, a Grey Hunter who exchanged his bolt gun for a CCW, or a Blood Claw. It doesn't matter what you paint it, you just need to let your opponent know beforehand.

EDIT: Also, if you're intending to use Skyclaws, just note that the boxset advertised on GW's website is literally half the contents of a Grey Hunters box with a sprue of Jump Packs and some old special weapons. You can get much better value if you buy a box of Grey Hunters and then buy two sets of Jump Packs from the Bitz section, as that would cost around 57-58 bucks USD for a squad of 10, as opposed to the 74-75 for two boxes of Skyclaws. Same thing goes for the Long Fangs; if you can bum some heavy weapons off of a friend who has a devastator sprue, it's a lot cheaper to just buy a box of grey hunters as the bodies in that box is identical to the Grey Hunters.