The Space Wolves are careening into 10th Edition with a brand new codex and a whole host of new miniatures. The first of these are arriving as the Space Wolves Army Set, featuring a limited-edition version of the codex and 28 brand new sculpts. In this article, Keewa and Cronch are taking a look at the models in the set – check out our other coverage for some in-depth analysis of the new codex rules. Our thanks to Games Workshop for providing the army set to us for review.
The Contents
On top of the very premium-feeling codex and useful datacards, this box is absolutely crammed with plastic. Grey Hunters and Blood Claws both feature, with a ten-man squad of each present here, as well as a brand new Wolf Priest sculpt. Alongside that, there are a couple of new units: The Wolf Guard Battle Leader, a kind of Captain equivalent, and a three-man unit of Wolf Guard Headtakers. These feel kind of like Fenris’ answer to Bladeguard Veterans, but unlike their universal brethren, these guys are accompanied by a unit of three Hunting Wolves.
Interestingly, none of these are described as Primaris units. Instead, they represent a glow-up of some of the old core units for the Space Wolves, with every marine roughly Primaris-sized but integrating various marks of armour and helmets across the squads. This mixed aesthetic with a variety of silhouettes helps to convey the vibe of the Fenrisian units clearly – pack-bonded brothers who retain fiercely independent personalities.
Accompanying the miniatures is a well-stocked transfer sheet, with pack and saga markings for a variety of different forces, as well as a dedicated section for vehicle markings. It’s worth noting, though, that there are no Wolfspear markings on this sheet – I imagine that might be disappointing for some players who were hoping for a more reliable source of transfers.
Wolf Priest
Cronch: The new Wolf Priest sculpt is a delight. He’s striding forward with a great sense of purpose. I particularly like how his cloak goes together – it all slots together around the backpack attachment point, then the pads with the front parts slide in from the front. What that means is you can fully assemble him for priming, but leave these bits unglued so that you can take them off to paint the inside of the cloak later.
He’s also got a nice choice of heads, and a couple of different hand options (including a wicked-looking ritual blade) to customise him to your preferences. I couldn’t resist going for the traditional dog-faced hooded helmet, and I imagine a lot of people will be the same.
keewa: I bet 99% of people who put this guy together are going to have the fun skull-n-hood head option, and I can’t blame them, it is very cool and super flavourful, so too is the leather coat thingy.
Wolf Guard Battle Leader
Cronch: Some slightly more frustrating assembly here, as his cloak is attached to the back half of his torso and I was not prepared to dive into that particular circle of subassembly hell. In the end it was no real bother, I just did not glue him to a base until I’d painted the inside of his cape. The rest of the mini goes together well, with a choice of weapons and the option to exchange the shield for a pistol if wanted. I just left a few parts in subassemblies – the front hanging part of his cloak, his shield, and his backpack.
keewa: I like this guy, he’s very dynamic with his cloak whipping in the wind. Ordinarily I’d complain about a model being this stuffed with details, but since he’s a character and you only need to paint one of him, I can forgive a lot. My subassembly plan was shield and head separate – everything else glued into place from the start.
I painted the armour the same on all of these Space Wolves. Starting from a black primer, I first built up a white preshade on the shoulder pads and some knees, before tinting them red or yellow as appropriate with Baal Red/Imperial Fists contrast paints through the airbrush. I masked the pads off with Humbrol Liquid Mask (more on that later), then recoated the model with a black. From there I built up layers of Russ Grey, Fenrisian Grey, and a 50/50 mix of Fenrisian/Ulthuan Grey, spraying with intention to build up directional lighting.
The mask was removed, the armour was glossed, and the models were washed all over with a thinned mix of Payne’s Grey oil paint, which, after drying overnight, was pulled back off of the flat surfaces with some spirits on a sponge. After more drying time, they were coated with layers of AMMO by Mig matt varnish to get the final surface finish.
Wolf Guard Headtakers and Hunting Wolves
Cronch: These guys are fantastically characterful. The Headtakers themselves all look supremely confident in their ability – these are Wolves that have proved themselves, tempered their ferocity, and mastered the art of battle. There are build options for either a power weapon and shield or dual-wielding power weapons, but the shields look so good that I was never going to choose anything else.
keewa: The shields are the clear choice for sure, I love the round pseudo-Celtic-cross shape. The poses are great, you can really tell that these guys are truly deadly elites that mean business. The sculpts are complicated, sure, but painting them never feels like a pain in the arse.
My recipe for the grey-blue power armour of the Space Wolves goes like this:
- Airbrush prime with Molotow Petrol.
- Everything but the deepest recesses was covered with Army Painter Air – Iron Wolf, applied with the airbrush.
- Sprayed from a 45 degree angle with Army Painter Air – Wolf Grey
- Sprayed from directly above with ProAcryl Grey Blue
- Once all the other details were basecoated and the decals applied, the whole miniature was gloss varnished before being shaded with a Payne’s Grey oil pin wash applied carefully into the recesses to provide some very nice blacklining and panel separation with limited effort. Once the white spirit had evaporated away, I wiped the excess oil away from the flat panels with some make-up sponges.
- Once the oil was cured, the whole thing got a coat of ultra-matte varnish before the edges were highlighted with various paints: Army Painter Air – Storm Wolf, Scalecolor Artist Sky Blue, with ProAcryl White Blue on the sharpest edges and corners.
Cronch: There’s a lot of fur on these minis. Given that I’d spent a lot of time batch painting the armour of the entire box, I needed to cut some corners on the smaller details – for the marines’ furs that meant an initial coat of Cygor Brown, followed up by drybrushed highlights of Mournfang Brown, Steel Legion Drab, and Karak Stone. I’m pretty happy with the result for the amount of effort, and that’s the ultimate calculation of army painting.
For the Hunting Wolves, I started from a black basecoat and drybrushed up Mournfang Brown and Steel Legion Drab, spending extra time on the lower legs and muzzle that I wanted to eventually be lighter. I used thinned Black Templar to put a darker band down the spine, then did a final drybrush of Karak Stone. I picked out the eyes and the couple of metal details, and that was it.
Blood Claws
Cronch: These guys are posed so aggressively! A huge amount of the unit is in really high-momentum running/charging poses, which I love – even though they don’t initially look too different, they’re easy to tell apart from the Grey Hunters at a glance thanks to this.
The Blood Claws armour was painted as described above, and then details were filled in mostly with contrast and a single highlight, and metallics with a coat or two plus a light wash. In a lot of cases, this meant I was putting contrast over parts that had been sprayed with the blue-grey, or at least caught some overspray. Honestly, this wound up fine, I was mostly using stronger brown colours, and where I wasn’t (e.g. the red for the weapons) the accidental gradients ended up looking quite cool.
I knew the freehand would be a high-impact part of these models. I opted for using Pro-Acryl colours for this, as they come out of the pot thin and flowing well, but retain good coverage. For the Blood Claws’ red markings I used Red Oxide, and on the Grey Hunters I used Coal Black.
I mentioned the Humbrol mask would come up again – well, it mostly functioned well, but either due to my application or…some other reason that isn’t my fault (yeah right) it ended up pulling a lot of the grey off of shoulder pad rims. This was frustrating, but ultimately my solution was to paint them in the same aged gold as the Wolf Guard units. This might not be technically correct, but they’re my dudes. Maybe they’ve been on a campaign with Ragnar Blackmane and singled out with this mark of honour for their service.
One thing worth noting – there are a lot of bare heads in these sets! I was painting to a deadline and feel like rushing them has left them a bit lower quality than I’d normally aim for, so I’ll be taking my time with the rest of the squads. If you like painting skin though, you’re going to be in heaven.
keewa: Both for the Blood Claws and Grey Hunters, the lack of options is pretty disappointing; the only choice you have is which power weapon and pistol the sergeant can take – everyone else has a chainsword and a bolt pistol, no exceptions. There aren’t any special or heavy weapons, which to me is a glaring oversight, but as far as it goes that’s a relatively minor grumble.
Grey Hunters
Cronch: I think this might be my favourite unit in the set. Most of them are single-handing their bolt carbines alongside chainswords in really powerful poses, and the sprues contain a lot of subtly Space Wolf themed helmets, which I really enjoy. They went together like a dream – all of the arms, heads, backpacks, pads and accessories on the Grey Hunters and Blood Claws are interchangeable, which makes building them and getting different poses a dream. It is worth dry-fitting parts, especially arms, to make sure that you’re not accidentally putting them into weird poses, but otherwise they go together well.
There’s a sure fire way to cover up the sins of speedpainting (aka mess) and that is weathering. I went around all of the models with a mix of Fenrisian and Ulthuan Grey, dotting in chips, and then coming back to partly fill them with Rhinox Hide to add some dimension to them. I do this last so that I can add chips tactically over rough edges, any transfer issues, wayward flecks of colour, and so on.
All of my models were based in a simple Games Workshop house style. Bases were painted Mournfang Brown after texturing, with rocks picked out in Dawnstone and gently washed Agrax. The whole base was drybrushed Balor Brown followed by Ushabti Bone, then I added some small tufts from Gamers Grass. Finally, I painted the rims black, then added light patchy snow in the form of Valhallan Blizzard. In my opinion this kind of half-coverage often looks more effective than really overloading your bases with snow, not to mention making it cheaper.
Final Thoughts
Cronch: I’ve always been Space Wolf curious, ever since I saw them facing off against a horde of Tyranids in one of the earliest issues of White Dwarf I remember reading. Back in those days, it was five-man squads of metal sculpts, which I still love, but these modern Wolves are the ones that have finally convinced me to pull the trigger on painting some up. A great release, I can’t wait for the next wave!
keewa: I honestly never really considered collecting Space Wolves before this latest wave of releases was announced – the awesome new model of Logan Grimnar in particular really caught my eye, and once I’d spent some time with these guys it clicked, and now I’m hooked. I can’t wait for the next slate of releases!
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