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Hi guys I am new to Warhammer 40k and started a Space Wolf army but I don't like their color scheme so a buddy of mine said I should make my own color scheme and fluff for a "successor chapter" I am thinking of going very CC with a black and red scheme can anyone help me think of a name and back story for this company ?

Thanks

Well...I hate to break it to you...but the Space Wolves have no Successor Chapters and can't have Successor Chapters. You could just say that they are part of one of the Space Wolf Great Companies. Red and Black does figure into a lot of the color schemes of the individual Great Companies. Just take it a step further and use one of those Great Company's color schemes across the entire marine and leave only the Pauldron in the standard Grey or Blue Grey of the Space Wolves.

They could be a successor of another chapter that deviates from the codex enough that they are closer to space wolves than codex marines

I am going to use the standard space wolf codex and models so there wont be any funny business like that.

You can invent a successor chapter for Space Wolves just fine. Officially they may not have any, lorewise their geneseed is supposedly too "unstable", but 40k has always been about making up your own stories as you play. If you stick to the codex rules, you'll be fine.

Some name suggestions:
Crimson Wolves
Wolves of the Night
Red Fangs

In some WD, iirc, there was an army from someone from the studio, using the space wolf book to represent a Chaos army with a wolf fetish. It was mostly space wolf models that were converted to look (more) chaotic. And it made sense, since space wolf regularly turn to chaos. Usually they join an existing warband, but some may decide to stick together, and they may shape their new warband to the image of the original chapter.

Personally, if I was to ever make a space marines army, it would be the claws of the underground. A mole-themed army, but using the space wolf book instead. They would get were-moles using mark of the wulfen, and mole-riders using the thunder cavalry rules, and so on.

They might not have successors but why not make it just a warband that has some autonomy? They're still part of the chapter, but maybe they are under someone else's command (perhaps to the chagrin of Grimnar et all). For example, a detachment that's part of an Imperial governor's retinue (think Varangian Guard) because of some loophole that lets them operate outside of the Wolves' normal way.

Could also be tension with other members because of it (could even give you a reason to play them in a game against normal Space Wolves. Sort of a rivalry). Now that sounds like, as GW would say, the start of a great narrative. You still get all the flavor of the Space Wolves but you can add your own touch to it.

Remember what some say: Space Wolves represent CSM than their actual codex!

 casvalremdeikun wrote:
Well...I hate to break it to you...but the Space Wolves have no Successor Chapters and can't have Successor Chapters.

You don't get to tell other players how to play. OP can make a successor chapter if he damn well wants to. He paid for his models, he can paint them in any color.

 j31c3n wrote:

 casvalremdeikun wrote:
Well...I hate to break it to you...but the Space Wolves have no Successor Chapters and can't have Successor Chapters.

You don't get to tell other players how to play. OP can make a successor chapter if he damn well wants to. He paid for his models, he can paint them in any color.

I don't think he's trying to tell others how to play. I'm sure he's just pointing out that the fluff says Space Wolves have no successors, and cannot have any.

Ragnarose wrote:
Hi guys I am new to Warhammer 40k and started a Space Wolf army but I don't like their color scheme so a buddy of mine said I should make my own color scheme and fluff for a "successor chapter" I am thinking of going very CC with a black and red scheme can anyone help me think of a name and back story for this company ?

Thanks

Fluff-wise, no. Space Wolves don't have successor chapters. However, you could call them one of the Great Companies.

Game-wise, paint them however the hell you want. Space Wolves don't have a monopoly on feral planets! There could be literally hundreds of ice world's out there that have been selected by any of the thousands of Space Marine chapters as their home base.

Have fun, and happy gaming!

You can come up with a justification for using the models and colour scheme you've chosen within the framework of the official setting.

Or you can just say "in my 40k, Space Wolves do have a Successor Chapter. here it is".
Both approaches have pros and cons. It's up to you.

since the space wolves geneseed is not suitable for creating new chapters, your chapter could be of a later founding where the admech decided to create a space wolves successor by mixing the unstable space wolves geneseed with the stable ultramarines geneseed. They could then be officially recognized by the ultramarines as a successor to them, while the space wolves don't recognize them in the slightest so your chapter wan'ts to prove it's self to their space wolves brothers.

The flaw in the Wolves' geneseed, the Canis Helix, requires Fenrisian hosts - so, if you want to create a Space Wolf successor chapter, you'll have to export some Fenrisians as well.

Actually, that might be interesting - a chapter raised from Uplifted Fenrisians who have been artificially moved past the tribal / medieval-age tech stage.

Actually, to all you people saying Space Wolves have no successors.... you'll note GW were actually somewhat careful about how they worded it in the current codex...

The Space Wolves were officially divided only once, creating the ill-fated Wolf Brothers Chapter.

So there's wiggle room for you to make "unofficial" successor chapters for Space Wolves if that's really what you want to do.

You also have a bit of wiggle room in the 13th company. The blank slate on the grand annulus...

It represents all of the Great Companies across history that have been destroyed in battle, lost on campaign or claimed by dishonour. Only a handful of outsiders know of its existence.

So you could make up a Space Wolf force from one of the lost companies.

If you care about the fluff as written, no.

If your creative, the 40k universe is a huge, diverse, strange place with lots of secrets and your could come up with your own explanation which would be cool.

If you don't care about the fluff dive in and go for it

I suggest playing Wolf Brothers, they are wolves with no official color scheme

Use the Wolf Brothers indeed.
There is a reason they have never been given an official colour scheme (well, probably).
They are also pretty damn awesome, being doomed and all.

 kronk wrote:

Ragnarose wrote:
Hi guys I am new to Warhammer 40k and started a Space Wolf army but I don't like their color scheme so a buddy of mine said I should make my own color scheme and fluff for a "successor chapter" I am thinking of going very CC with a black and red scheme can anyone help me think of a name and back story for this company ?

Thanks

Fluff-wise, no. Space Wolves don't have successor chapters. However, you could call them one of the Great Companies.

No known successors. And he doesn't have to even say his army are Space Wolves successors. He could be another chapter entirely that has similar divergences and uses the same rules. Or his chapter could be from the Cursed Founding. Maybe the Adeptus Mechanicus found a way to correct the flaw in SW geneseed but then they lost the flash drive so it only worked once. Maybe his chapter is a long-lost great company. Maybe the people of Fenris colonized another world and forgot to write it down. Maybe it just happened in 2999999.M41. The fluff is just there as an example, it's not meant to be taken as some kind of holy frickin' scripture. Behavior like this ("NO YOUR IDEA IS WRONG!") drives people away from this hobby. The whole point of playing this game is to make up cool stories about epic space magic battles with your friends, and every time someone tries to be the Fluff Police, it ruins that.

Or just decide to paint them a different color. There's no law saying that you have to follow the painting guide.

Here is an idea.

A millenia ago, a band of Space Wolves decided to separate themselves from the chapter. Finding a habitable planet on the edges of the Imperium of Man far from the Fenrisian home world. They took their families to this planet. Here, they started their own civilization. The beginnings of their own communities fighting to keep their homeworld from being effected by the societies that surround it.

 Psienesis wrote:
Or just decide to paint them a different color. There's no law saying that you have to follow the painting guide.

Yeah. Maybe they're Space Wolves on a night-time raid. Or seconded to a strange Deathwatch assignment. Or literally anything else.

Haven't read anything but OP forgive if repeating.

I did the same, mine are a black and light grey/blue with details, They are affectionately called the "space coyotes" but fluff wise, I just call them a great hunt comprised with packs from all great companies (for size and different pack markings)

 AndrewGPaul wrote:
You can come up with a justification for using the models and colour scheme you've chosen within the framework of the official setting.

Or you can just say "in my 40k, Space Wolves do have a Successor Chapter. here it is".
Both approaches have pros and cons. It's up to you.

Exactly, end of discussion. You can do whatever you want. You are the one to decide whether or not they're a Space Wolves successor chapter, and no one else. It's a game, after all... let's not take things too seriously. Play it however you want.

A few thoughts on how to have "canon-friendly" SW successors:

*They're made using tweaked geneseed from the cursed founding. Have fun deciding what their curse is!

*The warp is weird. These are the alternate timeline dopplegangers of another company that were created during a whacky warp jump.

*The wolves are one of the largest chapters thanks to their unwillingness to split up as per the Codex Astartes. Your guys could be a sub-sect of the company proper or a large force dispatched on a long-range mission and given both autonomy and sufficient wolf priests to recruit fresh blood into their forces from imperial worlds.

*My personal fluff for my Helwolves is that a force of 'wolves working in tandem with some other chapters against a massive Nurgle invasion were infected with a gene-virus that targets astartes organs and geneseed, killing its host. The wolf priests present were able to render a tiny portion of the wolves present immune to the disease's effects, but they're still carriers and thus unable to return to the Fang without destroying their chapter. Thus, they've taken up residence on Helheim where they recruit newbies, using quirks of the Nurgle virus to successfully bond them with geneseed despite the normal limitations of canis helix.

If you care about being fluff friendly, there's still plenty of leeway for a successor chapter.

After all, the Imperium suffered several lengthy periods of anarchy, where records were lost. You could always say the chapter was founded then.

Alternatively, you could always do the 13th Company. The old 3rd (or 4th, I forget) edition Eye of Terror campaign book had the rules on them (they even got cool werewolf dudes), and since they were in the warp for so long, their armor got all mismatched.

Finally, there was once a successor chapter, but they turned to chaos. You can play a loyalist faction of it.

in the end, don't let other people tell you how to play 40k. The universe is big enough, find an idea you like and run with it!

 Ond Angel wrote:

 j31c3n wrote:

 casvalremdeikun wrote:
Well...I hate to break it to you...but the Space Wolves have no Successor Chapters and can't have Successor Chapters.

You don't get to tell other players how to play. OP can make a successor chapter if he damn well wants to. He paid for his models, he can paint them in any color.

I don't think he's trying to tell others how to play. I'm sure he's just pointing out that the fluff says Space Wolves have no successors, and cannot have any.

It is a pretty big part of their fluff, at that. Magnus the Red got back at the Wolves for the Burning of Prospero by making sure that the Wolves could not form Successor Chapters. Up until that point, the only Successor suffered from rampant mutation, and the corrected samples of gene seed and the mastermind of their creation were destroyed by the Thousand Sons. I am not trying to tell him how to play or what he can or can't play, I am just saying that the fluff is pretty clear on this. By all means, he can make his own successor, but that doesn't change what the fluff says.

 casvalremdeikun wrote:

 Ond Angel wrote:

 j31c3n wrote:

 casvalremdeikun wrote:
Well...I hate to break it to you...but the Space Wolves have no Successor Chapters and can't have Successor Chapters.

You don't get to tell other players how to play. OP can make a successor chapter if he damn well wants to. He paid for his models, he can paint them in any color.

I don't think he's trying to tell others how to play. I'm sure he's just pointing out that the fluff says Space Wolves have no successors, and cannot have any.

It is a pretty big part of their fluff, at that. Magnus the Red got back at the Wolves for the Burning of Prospero by making sure that the Wolves could not form Successor Chapters. Up until that point, the only Successor suffered from rampant mutation, and the corrected samples of gene seed and the mastermind of their creation were destroyed by the Thousand Sons. I am not trying to tell him how to play or what he can or can't play, I am just saying that the fluff is pretty clear on this. By all means, he can make his own successor, but that doesn't change what the fluff says.

Fluff changes all the time. Space Marines used to be able to get shuriken catapults. Legions were originally called Chapters (or, more accurately, the terms were used somewhat haphazardly and interchangeable), and they used to go to war with each other over gem mines (seriously). Necrons used to be C'tan slaves. There used to be Squats and Beastmen and Lizardmen and Harlequins had characters called High Avatars. 40k used to be full of Ziggy Stardust references.

There's room in the fluff for exceptions (especially when it comes to stupid parts. Let's see, Magnus' great revenge is to prevent what earlier sources already made clear the Space Wolves didn't want to do, found successors?).

With the warp, long periods of anarchy and 10,000 years of history, I'd say there's room for his successor chapter.