The Wolftime – Spring Clean Challenge 2025

Ragnar, lord of the Blackmanes Great Company breathed deep of the thinning air as he left the halls of the upper levels of The Aett, the mighty fortress known to outsiders as The Fang,  and entered the embarkation platforms where his warriors had assembled, to show their readiness and offer respects to the Master of The Rout, before departing Fenris to lend their might to The Allfathers wars….

So, as this years Spring Clean Challenge comes to a close I felt it worth posting one last update as to where this project currently stands:

• Finished building the contents of the Space Wolf army box!
• Built a **whole** bunch of Dreadnoughts of various classes as you really can go to town on them.
• Ahead of the army box release kitbashed together a fresh pair of Rune Priests and some Primaris-scaled Grey Hunters.
• Used the leftovers from the army box (and some other bitz) to Wolf-up some Heavy Intercessors.
• And built a third Pack of Grey Hunters out of Assault Intercessors (see further down for details on those).

Now, one thing I am holding off on is list building as having read the new Codex I am convinced that there will be both points adjustments and an FAQ pretty close to release (if not on Day One) as I spy some omitted details and things that could do with clarification. We will see though….

Like I said, I finished off building the contents of the Space Wolf army box this past week with the Grey Hunters and the Blood Claws. Some interesting choices in how things have been cut up on the sprue, but overall any issues with the build are more than off-set by just how dynamic the two packs end up looking.

I’m looking forward to getting at least a couple more of each, Claws because I really want to have at least a couple at 20-strong and the Hunters to mix in to builds of Sternguard and Support squads. And whilst the sprues may not give you as many extra bits at the end as the previous Wolf kits, you do still end up with a bunch of parts. So much so that I was able to add some Fenrisian flair to some Heavy Intercessors (I really dig the idea of Gravis being favoured by Long Fangs) and, using a bunch of Assault Intercessor bodies I had spare, built a whole fresh pack of Grey Hunters.

Now, whilst with the Heavy Intercessors I did file down the aquila on the chest of one of them to match the aesthetic GW have opted for, for the Grey Hunters they are completely stock Assault Intercessor bodies that I’ve used bits from the Grey Hunter & Blood Claw kits to give some flair. Now I *did* need to dip in and make use of a spare chainsword and three bolters from older Space Wolf kits, but could probably gotten around that.

If you’ve been following this project though, thank you. I’ve really enjoyed the focus having this noodling around in my brain has given me, and I hope I’ve given you some ideas for builds & kitbashes of your own.

Now, let’s see if I can get this lot all painted up…..

The Old Wolf stalked through the massed ranks of the Blackmanes, casting a stern eye over the eager packs of Blood Claws, so prideful at being able to see their first true battles at last, nodding approvingly at the restraint of the Grey Hunters, battlefury tempered by experience, and exchanging banter amongst the packs of Long Fangs & Wolf Guard, reminisces of battlefields long past, before finally arriving back at the head of the formation and the two warriors who would lead this host into the stars.

“Well, Jarl Ragnar,” spoke Logan Grimnir, Great Wolf and High King of Fenris, “the Blackmanes seem more than ready to sail the Sea of Stars once more. But what of their Lord?”
The Young Wolf bared his teeth in what to outsiders would be a terrifying snarl, but amongst the scions of Russ was a rueful smile “Aye, my liege. Cawl’s Rubicon has healed my body and The Slayer’s ministrations have helped calm my mind. There will be a reckoning with The Beast Thrakka, but when & where the Wyrde will decide.” Ragnar brought an armoured fist up to his chest “You have my oath Old Wolf, the Blackmanes and their Jarl stand ready to fight alongside the servants of The Allfather in defence of The Imperium, no matter the foe.”
Logan eyed the youngest of commanders steadily, before accepting the oath that had been offered up. He then turned to the second of the two warriors, and even in his Terminator plate he had to tilt upward to address the venerable Dreadnought and the legend interred within “And you Ancient One? Still determined to accompany this pup?”
A garble of static erupted from the vox-speakers built into his chassis as Bjorn the Fell-Handed chuckled at Grimnir’s tone “Aye young Logan” the old warrior pointedly said, “I would see if our brother here has truly reigned in his more temperament humours. And I would see the wider galaxy again,” the dreadnought’s tone turned contemplative, “the intelligence that the Legion-breaker provided troubles me. I sense… something we are all missing.”

The two Wolf Lords, the Old and the Young, eyed one another at this pronouncement by the oldest of their kin. “If any of us have earnt the right to follow their instincts, then it is you old friend” said Logan “so I proclaim any doubts satisfied!”, his voice rising as he addressed the assembled warriors “Ragnar, called Blackmane, Jarl of the Blackmanes Great Company. Long have you waited as the other Great Companies have departed Fenris whilst your own Company rebuilt and fortified itself with the tools provided by the All-Fathers Avenging Son. I now release you! Go forth amongst the stars, bring hope to His children, and remind mankinds foes to fear your howls! VYKKA FENRYKA!”
The answering battle cry from hundreds of post-human throats shook the muster-hall and with a gesture from their Lord, The Blackmanes pivoted and began marching towards their assigned transports and vessels, the small fleet that would carry them to battlefields across the galaxy…..

For the longest time I had held including anything heavier than Terminators in my Space Wolves collection, but then I saw the resin Space Wolf Relic Contemptor from Forge World and had to nab one to paint up for 40k. My enthusiasm for this specific version was increased when I read a bit of lore describing how, despite having a larger than normal number of Dreadnoughts than other Chapters, the Space Wolves as a whole consider their Contemptors to be ill-omened, prone to burning out their occupants or finding them in situations where even their formidable armour could not see them thru. This intriqued me so I head-canoned it that Ragnar had personally petitioned The Great Wolf and his council to have some of these chassis released to his Great Company.

I figured that given his propensity for high-risk orbital drops, and the large percentage of Blood Claws in the Great Company, Ragnar would offer mortally wounded or crippled members of this younger cadre a place piloting a Contemptor in the full knowledge that the darker wyrd attached to these suits would drive the young warriors to meet their doom in a time & place of their choosing, writing a far more glorious ending to their sagas.

And for the longest time (like 3 whole editions of the game) this was enough for me…..

Amusingly my first experience with the Space Wolf Venerable Dreadnought kit was a rescue, a mini I picked up in an EBay lot that had been a little abused it’s safe to say. So much so that honestly all I could do was kit it out with the Great Frost Axe and Blizzard Shield combo, which at least meant I could use it as either a SW Ven Dread or a Wulfen Dreadnought as both can get that loadout. But I still felt something was missing….

So three and a bit years later I picked up another kit to build as The Oldest Boi himself, the man, the meme, Bjorn The Fell-Handed. And honestly it was a great build. The only thing lacking is a banner as we stan on this page for this classic piece of artwork for Bjorn. Thankfully I have some STL files for a 3d print of his banner, I just need to get it printed (a friend should be sorting that for me when they get their setup back up & running).

After this, well, mistakes may have been made.
The Space Wolf Dread kit leaves you with a *lot* of extra parts after whatever you have built, really just needing a body and one arm. So I went looking for even more bitz and managed to build the *other* character Dreadnought in the Wolves, ravening wrecking ball Murderfang (using an arm from the Blood Angels Dreadnought kit), and one other Wulfen Dreadnought with axe & powerclaw (in this case using a CC arm from the Ironclad Dread, magna-grapple from the BA kit, and legs from the standard Marine Ven Dread on two of the rock-crushing feet from the SW kit). It’s actually been kinda fun, finding ways to make all these Casterfarrum Dreads look different when they share the same base kit. Top tip? with the Wolves swapping which side their feet go on can change the momentum of the model, likewise angling the torso & arms.

And then I remembered I had a spare plastic Contemptor kit from the Age of Darkness box…..

So fun thing: I figured early on in 10th Edition 40k that I’d be proxying my previously painted Contemptor as a baseline SW Ven Dreadnought, given GW chose to send Contemptors in 40k to Legends this edition (pour one out for all those lovely HH kits). But the Sons of Fenris have oh-so-many options for their Dreadnoughts. Given the ill-omen withwhich they hold the Contemptor chassis, what would the odds be that the pilot of one might fall to the Curse Of The Wulfen? We know from the Golden Bannana Boys that the Contemptor lends itself well to carrying over-sized weapons, so I figured I’d try and make an especially dynamically posed Wulfen Dread, running and in full swing.
And honestly? This went together *really* well. Now I *did* have to order another Contemptor as the retail version has an extra sprue of weapons including a second CC fist whilst the kit in the AOD box only has one. However, those forarms take the Great Frost Axe and Blizzard Shield-equipped hands very well. The only thing I had to do was use a flying stem as a bit of extra support between the hand and the forearm, and use some trimmed down fingers from the kit as mechanical gubbins inside the hollow shoulders that were now exposed. Well, that and draping the Dread in Wolfy accouterments, most obviously trimming down a spare of Murderfangs talons to fit over the chest. Standing on the base with a generous amount if poly-cement under the main foot and a smidge on the trailing foot, it’s pretty stable.

Which brings us to the Primaris Dreads.

So my first Redemptor I built before the variety of after-market upgrade kits hit the market, so was done purely using existing plastics. Since then I’ve built a second Redemptor using the Greytide Studios upgrade kit, modded an already-built Ballistus (note to self, never do that again), and a Brutalis that I opted to kit out as a Wulfen, just for fun rather than anything in game. And I was genuinely surprised by how well it came together. The biggest issue was the posing as that is a lot of weight, even in plastic, to have a single point of contact to the base. So I figured a beefy pin that went through the foot and into the lower leg of the Dread would help a lot with this, and rather than using wire I reached again for a flaying base shaft. With the foot held in place I initially just drilled a hole though the base and marked the bottom of the foot with the head of the drillbit before drilling through the foot and into the lower leg. I then used a hobby knife to widen the holes in both sections, partly to ensure that the holes had a slight bevel to them that matched the taper of the flight rod, until there was a snug fit. And lordy it’s done a good job.

And it’s safe to say I’ve gone a bit Dreadnought-crazy as of late. Under the new Codex the Space Wolves have access to up to 20 Dreadnoughts in a single force (more if using Legends, less if using **boring** points 😛 ). I have 11, and fully intend to have the max number each of Space Marine Dreadnoughts, Space Wolf Venerable Dreadnoughts and Wulfen Dreadnoughts available for giggles….

So. This week was a bit of a blinder for kicking off with some stonkingly good reveals of more stuff coming for the new Space Wolf range refresh. And somewhat on-brand for me, the announcement of Logan, Arjak and the Wolf Guard Termies (and Njal I guess) came mere hours after I finished building a pack of 5 WGT’s to accompany Logan & Arjak in making Heretics & Xenos very, very unhappy.

Ah well. Looking on the upside this means I’ll have a decent compliment of Wolves on both sides of the Rubicon Primaris to pick from….

Well, I wasn’t expecting to get a golden but-tut-ting for this project at this stage! But I suppose in that case I should answer/respond to @gerr & @brennon’s comments about stuff I already have painted.

When I picked this army back up at the tail-end of 7th Edition I’d been quite keen on using Army Painter’s coloured primers then base coats and wash to get quick, tabletop ready forces. Infinity was my testbed for this as I painted pretty much every faction bar the artichokes using variants of the approach and I really appreciated how it could get good looking results fairly quickly.

So, the basic Space Wolf scheme for this army is as follows:
Primer – Army Painter Wolf Grey.
Common Base Coats – AP Wolf Grey, GW Mephiston Red, Averland Sunset, Cadian Fleshtone, Corax Grey, Retributer Gold, Balthazar Gold, Boltgun Metal.
Wash – Aggrax Earthshade.
Bases – Stirland Battlemire, AP Fur Brown (to be fair, these I need to go back over and spruce up with tufts & washes), paint rim with XV-88.

And that’s across the board – Everything painted so far has had that same, basic approach applied, even the Wolf Priest in his black armour was primed in Wolf Grey, then painted using a mix of Abbaddon Black tinted with Wolf Grey to bring it above “pure” black.

Wolf Scouts:
Yep, well spotted by the boys as these are a mashup of the old plastic Space Marine Scouts kit with arms, heads & bits donated from the Chaos Marauder Horsemen kit (an *excellent* source for any SW player), as well as parts from boht the 3rd Ed SW upgrade sprue and the current (soon to be departed) Grey Hunter/Blood Claw kit, to make a bunch of gnarly, grim-looking stealth specialists.

Contemptor Dreadnought:
This is in fact the old, fully resin Space Wolf Contemptor Dreadnought that was available up until the current plastic Contemptor was released (the torso is still available but the shoulders & legs – as with the other Legion-specific Contemptors – did so much to carry on the flavour of the torso), planned to be used using the basic Contemptor Dread rules (or the Legends Relic Contemptor if the opponent is OK with it). I tried to paint this one up to look quite dark & gritty as the lore for the Space Wolves did used to note that whilst they have a higher number of Dreadnaughts than most other Chapters, they consider the Contemptor-chassis to be cursed, or to have “a fell wyrd” to it, going through occupants almost as quickly as the Redemptor chassis does. So I figured that Ragnar petitioned to have one assigned to his Great Company and offers it to young warriors, Blood Claws who were mortally wounded at the start of their career and would perhaps welcome a chance to attain glory in battle in spite of the cost.
I *do* have a SW Veteran Dread with Axe & Shield and Bjorn in their box-naught forms to get painted up though. I need to nab a thirds so I can have a Murderfang available as well. Plus kitbashed Brutalis and Redemptors in the wings (I personally hope they don;t do a Redemptor Bjorn as I liek the idea he’d be wary of new-fangled technology (bearing in mind that the Wolves frown on Jump Packs and teleportation for being “not as Russ intended” war to be fought…).

Back when I was getting back into the GW side of the hobby I struck upon the idea of returning to my first love, the very first army I collected for 40k, the Space Wolves!

More specifically, I had no interest in things like the Thunderwolf Cavalry (just not my vibe) and the Wulfen (mainly the models – I have ideas for them however…) and instead wanted to take things back to basics. In particular Bill Kings 3-part short story that accompanied the original Space Wolf articles in White Dwarf that introduced the Chapter as we know them today, which depicted Ragnar Blackmane leading his Great Company in a massed Drop Pod Assault.

So I started building. And digging out minis & squads that I had built over 3rd through 5th editions of 40k.
And
So
Much
Kitbashing
Because when it comes to building Space Wolves there is one simple rule: *any* Space Marine kit can become a Space Wolf with not a lot of effort. Especially if you make judicious use of the many plastic kits in the range 😉

And I did, building what I’ve worked out to be some 4000-odd points of Space Wolves, nearly entirely infantry with the intent to deploy via Drop Pods. Even kitbashed together a Ragnar Blackmane using Krom Dragongaze as a basis (ironically finished painting him a week or two before his Primaris update was announced 😀 ).

Unsurprisingly though (especially if anyone has seen my other projects) I only managed to get a small fraction painted to what I would call a tabletop standard, although nearly all of it has been primed, and in that time.

I’ve still been building though as I find it incredibly relaxing just to mess around with kits and see what I can do to add some Fenrisian flair to the regular Space Marine range, especially the Primaris kits we have been getting.

With the announcement this week of the upcoming (and honestly long needed) range refresh, and the announcement of the Spring Clean Challenge 2025, I figured I should probably try to get my ass in gear to have at least part of this army suitable to hit the tabletop.

Now, I make no guarantees at being able to have even a painted model done by the end of the Spring Clean Challenge. Instead I want to take folks through my processes on kitbashing and converting up a bunch of worryingly cheerful post-human killing machines.