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The Space Wolves are a walking headscratcher in many ways, but besides the freeze rays and giant wolf-sleds, one thing I never quite figured out is how and why they give their initiates full on Power Armor while letting their veterans take it off.

Normally, a Scout fights to learn the Adeptus way of war, while gradually proving himself worthy to receive the Black Carapace implants needed to interface with Power Armor in the first place.

Did the Space Wolves hack their power armor that any Scout could use it? Did they tinker with the Carapace implants? Or is it the Canis Helix allows early usage? Or is it "a wizard did it?"

Well, scouts are veteran Space Wolves, often the last of their pack. Blood Claws are the recruits, but IIRC they recieve the Carapace before being sent out. The Wolves do things their own way, so it's not too surprising.

Its possible they just train their initiates way harder and longer to the point they become rookie marines with all the fixins.

its also more manly for the vets to fight without armor.

the wolves have there own unique rites IIRC.

Most Marines make it so the Scouts effectively have to earn their power armour.
Space Wolves just slap their newbs in them and tell them to have fun. I think one of the Ragnar books even features a Bloodclaw blowing his own head off with his bolt pistol because he was never actually instructed how to use a fire arm.

Yeah Space Wolves recruitment and training is basically grabbing a bunch of semi-feral barbarians and giving them 41st century armament.

Animus wrote:
Most Marines make it so the Scouts effectively have to earn their power armour.
Space Wolves just slap their newbs in them and tell them to have fun. I think one of the Ragnar books even features a Bloodclaw blowing his own head off with his bolt pistol because he was never actually instructed how to use a fire arm.

Coming from the same faction that has a grav sled pulled by wolves I am not surprised.

Allright here goes:

Wolf Scouts are for SW who have trouble getting along with their packs. They are moved to a less formal structure.

Initiates are Blood Claws can come in packs of 16, they don't even have a bolter yet just a pistol.

When they get a better they become Grey Hunters but by then they lost a couple of guys (hence the max of 10)

Grey Hunters are the bulk of the SW forces. Eventually some become Wolf Guards but the pack shrinks over the years and the rest become

Long Fangs (hence the max of 5 or 6) where the most experienced warriors are given the most devastating weapons.

When pack is almost wiped out the last of them usually becomes a Lone Wolf out of shame and is wandering about with a death wish hoping to rejoin his brothers.

This is not cast in stone but is the general idea of how SW function. Yes there are exceptions and all that.

Its because they operate differently from other chapters. Scouts are also meant to sneak around and provide intelligence, not something raving blood claws are really capable of doing. So they give them power armor and use them as shock troops instead. Veterans who can control their urges and are somewhat loners are the knew who become scouts.

Wolves don't deploy their initiates until their carapace matures, unlike the other chapters, because they have veteran scouts to do that part of the work and because immature space wolves are liable to enter hypermutation and turn into wulfen at any moment.

Space wolves. Well they do there own thing.

Space wolf training is pretty brutal, like the drop you off in wilderness to hike back to fang whilst the mutations take there toll and dodging the failed ones that mutated.

Space Wolves give WAY more training to their Initiates than most Chapters. In the Space Wolf Omnibus, Ragnar receives years of survival training, learns how to fight trolls (I seroiusly think that trolls are Chaos Daemons) and all manner of Fenrisian monstrosities (I seriously think that Fenris is a former Daemon World that was conquered by DAoT colonists, I mean they've got fething Krakens on them, for feth's sake!), and this is on top of the insane amounts of ballistics training (they have to be crackshots, like any other Chapter's Initiates, but pistol accuracy is much more emphasized than what I've read about other Chapters), they receive a metric asston of melee practice, but all of the Space Wolves were gloriously talented swordsmen/axemen/spearmen before becoming Space Wolves (that's literally how they were selected), so they really don't receive too much training in it (from what I read in the Omnibus, at least). Also, they get extensive training in hunting.

tl;dr: Space Wolf Initiates get significantly more training than standard Space Marine Initiates, and thus are entrusted with Power Armour.

I dont' think it's a matter of trust. I think its far more a case that the extra training takes up so much time that their black carapaces have matured before they're considered ready for real missions.

Training is less important to receiving Power Armor than the Black Carapace is... yet we know humans with no Carapace can and do use Power Armor. Inquisitors and Sororitas to name a few.

I'm curious where the 'Space Wolves train their recruits harder' claim comes from. Seems highly unlikely. If the source is a Space Wolf novel or codex you may be a victim of the 'my army is best' syndrome that pervades all GW and Black Library works.

In earlier versions of the Wolf codex Blood Claws were WS3, BS3 to reflect their n00bhood. Clearly you could argue that this has been retconned by more recent codices, but it captures the right spirit.

It's more a question of equipment and doctrine than training. Young Wolves have their heads full of heroic sagas and close combat. If you try to hold them back they will take it as a slight on their manhood, their honor, blah blah blah. Mature Wolves become Long Fangs or Scouts, where discretion and judgement are more important.

If you're gonna have those perishable young recruits fling themselves into melee you might as well give them armor protection, a pistol and a close combat weapon to give them the best possible chance of survival. Soooo... Power armor.

My two cents.

Warboss Gorhack wrote:
Training is less important to receiving Power Armor than the Black Carapace is... yet we know humans with no Carapace can and do use Power Armor. Inquisitors and Sororitas to name a few.

I'm curious where the 'Space Wolves train their recruits harder' claim comes from. Seems highly unlikely. If the source is a Space Wolf novel or codex you may be a victim of the 'my army is best' syndrome that pervades all GW and Black Library works.

In earlier versions of the Wolf codex Blood Claws were WS3, BS3 to reflect their n00bhood. Clearly you could argue that this has been retconned by more recent codices, but it captures the right spirit.

It's more a question of equipment and doctrine than training. Young Wolves have their heads full of heroic sagas and close combat. If you try to hold them back they will take it as a slight on their manhood, their honor, blah blah blah. Mature Wolves become Long Fangs or Scouts, where discretion and judgement are more important.

If you're gonna have those perishable young recruits fling themselves into melee you might as well give them armor protection, a pistol and a close combat weapon to give them the best possible chance of survival. Soooo... Power armor.

My two cents.

Space Wolves don't train their recruits harder, they train them longer. The Black Carapace is the primary reason Space Marine recruits start out in Carapace armour and not in Power Armour, the Space Wolves just so happen to train their recruits for an amount of time long enough for it to mature and allow for the Blood Claws to wear Power Armour.

Another important thing to remember is the Space Wolves are a very rich chapter who haven't seen their armoury constantly divided up for successor chapters.

This means they have a larger stock of things like Bikes, Jumppacks and PA to waste on the new guys. Scout armour is left to the specialists.

Warboss Gorhack wrote:
Training is less important to receiving Power Armor than the Black Carapace is... yet we know humans with no Carapace can and do use Power Armor. Inquisitors and Sororitas to name a few.

I'm curious where the 'Space Wolves train their recruits harder' claim comes from. Seems highly unlikely. If the source is a Space Wolf novel or codex you may be a victim of the 'my army is best' syndrome that pervades all GW and Black Library works.

In earlier versions of the Wolf codex Blood Claws were WS3, BS3 to reflect their n00bhood. Clearly you could argue that this has been retconned by more recent codices, but it captures the right spirit.

It's more a question of equipment and doctrine than training. Young Wolves have their heads full of heroic sagas and close combat. If you try to hold them back they will take it as a slight on their manhood, their honor, blah blah blah. Mature Wolves become Long Fangs or Scouts, where discretion and judgement are more important.

If you're gonna have those perishable young recruits fling themselves into melee you might as well give them armor protection, a pistol and a close combat weapon to give them the best possible chance of survival. Soooo... Power armor.

My two cents.

Without the Black Carapace, Sisters and Inquisitors (and any super wealthy henchmen) lack the full agility potential that the Power Armor would provide to Space Marines with the BC. Granted an Inquisitor is still I3 in carapace armor and a space marine is I4 in scout armor but that's the fluff bit behind it.

The extra long training might be related to how the Wolves operate more like a Legion than the Codex Astartes chapter structure. Having more total marines might mean you don't need to hurry the training as much as smaller chapters would.

I always figured that Blood Claws had WS/BS3 because of their rage and headstrong nature which makes them more reckless and aggressive than their older brethren who have had their rage tempered from age and experience.

Jefffar wrote:
Another important thing to remember is the Space Wolves are a very rich chapter who haven't seen their armoury constantly divided up for successor chapters.

This means they have a larger stock of things like Bikes, Jumppacks and PA to waste on the new guys. Scout armour is left to the specialists.

Well yeah they are too busy riding around on giant wolves to be losing too many jump packs or bikes

OK, you claim that Space Wolf initiate training is longer, not harder. Are you sure they just don't put their initiates in the field at all until they have the Carapace?

It's logical, but do you have a source? If so I'd like to see it.

Also, Fenris is not a particularly resource rich world. There's no industrial scale mining or extraction and no large scale farming beyond the Chapter itself. The natives are subsistence level dark age cultures. It's culturally rich, but otherwise... Not so much. Nothing like Ultramar, for example.

Still the point about not having to split their arsenals for Successors has merit. It's worth noting, however, that the parent chapter doesn't provide all the gear for a new chapter. The Mechanicum has that responsibility.

Read the Space Wolf omnibus. It goes into great detail of their training.

Warboss Gorhack wrote:
OK, you claim that Space Wolf initiate training is longer, not harder. Are you sure they just don't put their initiates in the field at all until they have the Carapace?

It's logical, but do you have a source? If so I'd like to see it.

Space Wolf Omnibus. Terribly written, but it definitely helps to expand upon Space Marine recruitment and training. I stopped reading it as soon as Ragnar got put into a Great Company, the writing just irritated the crap out of me.

Warboss Gorhack wrote:
OK, you claim that Space Wolf initiate training is longer, not harder. Are you sure they just don't put their initiates in the field at all until they have the Carapace?

Well they certainly don't let their initiates sit around on their arses for two years while the carapace matures.

So the basic reasons I'm seeing are:
-No successors=intact armory.
-Extended training sessions to safeguard against the Canis Helix.
-A macho culture contrasting with the asceticism of other chapters, where being first to fight matters more than fancy-schmancy stealth shenanigans.

What else is there?

Only that they're Special Snowflakes.

You do not need years of other training for the black carapace; while it is a literal mantle of responsibility/trust to most chapters, it is merely part of the process of becoming a marine to the wolves.

Wolf scouts are not loners and remnants in the wolves, they are merely a specialist like long-fangs/devastators, or veterans/wolfguard. It is just that they have moved on from the hot-blooded bloodclaws and tempered as grey hunters, but when time came for promotion they do not fit as long fangs and are not leadership qualified like wolfguard(grey hunters are already basically vets, the old rules for wolfguard splitting off to lead other units better represented their role in the wolves.

Remnants are lone-wolves and below full- squads anything else. Proper fluffy new-recruit wolves are 15 claws wittled down to 10 hunters. A great co that has units below those are never fresh units as the hunters are generally the same pack as the claws and all from the same recruiting. Wolf guard units can be a mixed pack, as can fangs, lone wolves are literally the last of their pack seeking a glorious death because the pack(unit) and brotherhood is everything to the wolves. Wolf Scouts are often from the same pack, but can be combined, and are always just the guys who had neither the patience of a fang nor leadership of a guard while also retaining the "feral senses" from conversion.

Remember also that the wolves are one of the few legions that can still convert humans post-puberty(most first foundings could up to a certain age, the few heresy-era "marines" that we are told were too old for proper conversion were in their mid-30s+)

No, Kel, the ability to convert humans into space marines post-puberty is not and has never been A Thing. Even during the Horus Heresy, the adult humans who were 'raised' were not -quite- Space Marines.

The brave heroes who 'die' and are chosen to becomes Wolves are fourteen years old at the most.

Fenris is just that vicious.

Trying to pretend otherwise is ignoring the grim darkness of the setting to make it more palatable to people who want 40k to be a standard heroic fantasy. Which it is not and has never been.

The waiting on the Black Carapace has nothing to do with training. It must be the last organ implanted for the process to work. Which means that they have to wait until they're at least sixteen before they can bond the carapace, assuming they start at the minimum age of ten. Then it has to mature, which depending on the source can be anything from six months to two years.

Exactly so. The space wolves do throw their recruits early into the main battle line, relative to other chapters, but they're late into the field as a whole;

an Imperial Fists neophyte would have spent a few years in carapace plate acting as a spotter for whirlwind rounds, providing sniper support, knifing sentries in the back and generally gaining actual battlefield experience, whilst during the same period a wolf neophte would be on fenris training in the ice of asaheim.

Note that the wolves do, however, throw said newly-raised marine into the fight earlier and bloodier - the comparison of 'newly minted astartes' is a Devastator line trooper (the 'first port of call' for normal astartes after the scouts) to a Bloodclaw who's less competent but nastier up close, having spent the last few hears learning to be a warrior instead of a soldier.

The Space Wolves give their initiates power armor because they are aggressive and battle hungry. They won't have the patience to pull off the stealth missions that scout armor is conducive too. To that, they give their older, wiser, and far more patient veterans access to scout armor since it suits their way of war for some of them. (i.e. the lone wolf type).
As to how they can do this, after the Heresy the Space Wolves only spawned one successor chapter (and we all know what happened to them) so they would have more suits of power armor than some chapters.

As far as I know, there's no evidence that the Space Wolves have any technology that lets them accelerate the period of organ development between the implantation of the other organs and the Black Carapace; they simply train their initiates differently and use them differently. Short some sort of rigorous statistical analysis between Chapters, I can certainly see both sides claiming their way is superior:

Standard Chapter: After the implantation of all other organs, the Marine is elevated to the scout company and engages in rigorous training and battlefield deployment. Thus, when his biological systems have matured and are ready for the implantation of the final organ, the marine is already well-versed in the arts of war.


Space Wolves: You will get shot to hell going out there without Power Armor on! We train our pups until they can put on the damn armor and then we send them into war fully protected. Sure, they are wet behind the ears, but the attrition rate of new Marines is much lower! Why spend years turning a man into a post-human warrior then send him to the battlefield with storm-trooper armor? It's a waste of geneseed! Now, once you've learned your way around a bolter, if you show an aptitude for stealth and the ability to avoid getting yourself shot up, then you can become a scout, but why let inexperienced marines lead covert missions where experience and training are so important?

"Listen up, guys. This is a vital mission to cut off the enemy supply routes and comms. The entire war effort depends on it, and we can't launch the main assault until it succeeds. Let's use the new recruits for it!"

 Furyou Miko wrote:
No, Kel, the ability to convert humans into space marines post-puberty is not and has never been A Thing. Even during the Horus Heresy, the adult humans who were 'raised' were not -quite- Space Marines.

The brave heroes who 'die' and are chosen to becomes Wolves are fourteen years old at the most.

Fenris is just that vicious.

Trying to pretend otherwise is ignoring the grim darkness of the setting to make it more palatable to people who want 40k to be a standard heroic fantasy. Which it is not and has never been.

The waiting on the Black Carapace has nothing to do with training. It must be the last organ implanted for the process to work. Which means that they have to wait until they're at least sixteen before they can bond the carapace, assuming they start at the minimum age of ten. Then it has to mature, which depending on the source can be anything from six months to two years.

No, they definitely can still be made, or at least while puberty is still active in their late teens/twenties. The Black Templars comics have six foot dudes with more muscles than Mike Tyson and sporting full facial and body hair being inducted as Space Marines. Plus IIRC Zahariel and Nemiel were in their late teens too when the were turned into Astartes.

Da Butcha wrote:

"Listen up, guys. This is a vital mission to cut off the enemy supply routes and comms. The entire war effort depends on it, and we can't launch the main assault until it succeeds. Let's use the new recruits for it!"

I agree with this so much, like just in general not even in the situation where they have to tame the voices inside first before being ready for that. The same is said for Tau fire warriors needing to squelch the fire in them before being ready to move up.

Da Butcha wrote:

"Listen up, guys. This is a vital mission to cut off the enemy supply routes and comms. The entire war effort depends on it, and we can't launch the main assault until it succeeds. Let's use the new recruits for it!"

that might be the one area that Space Wolves are actually more logical than standard Chapters.