The Wolftime

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.