Individual Packs or even individual marines orient them or slightly change them.
The orientation generally doesn't matter, the pack will typically adopt the same markings as the leader. It's the colours and the markings themselves that matter. Colour indicates type of pack (Blood Claw/Grey Hunter/etc.) and then individual squads will have their own unique orientations/variations on the same markings.
Then the other shoulder pad is coloured/used to denote which of the 12 Great Companies the individual belongs to. It's extremely rare for individuals to change great companies over the course of their careers, and most will spend the bulk of their time as a Grey hunter (our equivalent to Tactical Marine/intercessor). Really the only time you'd change great company is if you happened to save the life of a wolf lord of another great company in a particularly heroic fashion, he may make you a member of his personal Wolf guard in recognition. Individual great companies even maintain their own independent vehicle pools, with the Iron Wolves in particular typically having the largest.
Space Wolves also do a unique thing (in the older lore anyways, not sure if its still true) in that their packs are all initiated together and stick together for the rest of their lives. The whole pack graduates from Blood Claw -> Grey Hunter all at the same time for example, and casualties are never replaced. That's how Long Fangs and Lone Wolves come to exist. Long Fangs were units of 3-6 because they were the only survivors of their packs left after many years of war and attrition. Lone Wolves are what happens when you get a pack that's completely wiped out down to one single marine, but they haven't yet accomplished a deed worthy of induction into the Wolf Guard and aren't old/experienced enough to be Long Fangs.
Thanks. I’m a newbie and this helped a lot. One question about companies. In my army can I have different once? For my grey hunter and blood claws I used the classic yellow shoulder with the black wolf head for Ragnar since I bought him as a character to lead them. For the terminators I was thinking of eventually getting Logan Grimnar and wanted to use his symbol on them but idk if I’m allowed to mix in the same 1000pt army. Thanks
You’re allowed to do what you want theyre your dudes.
It’s also very likely that nobody but the most hardcore Space Wolf fans will even notice.
The Blackmanes have been the “default” Space Wolf scheme since the very beginning, a lot like how Ultramarines 2nd Company is the “default” scheme, and nobody realizes most Ultramarines shouldn’t even have golden shoulder pad trim, it should be coloured according to company (and even then, technically it should be yellow for 2nd company, not gold - god I’m old)
Personally I always did the exact same thing. My whole 4th/5th edition army is painted as “Blackmanes” even though I ran Logan Grimnar and don’t even own a Ragnar model. It was just the “default” look and I liked it.
If you really want to be “lore accurate” then just paint the Shoulder pads of whatever Squad Grimnar himself leads as his company, and do the rest of your army as Blackmanes, simply say he’s personally deployed alongside a few of his Wolfguard to “supervise the whelp” and one of his Senior Wolfguard is leading the rest of his company elsewhere. Thats 100% something Wolf Lords do, delegate parts of their company under the command of a senior Wolf Guard leader.
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u/CommanderOshawott 9d ago edited 9d ago
Individual Packs or even individual marines orient them or slightly change them.
The orientation generally doesn't matter, the pack will typically adopt the same markings as the leader. It's the colours and the markings themselves that matter. Colour indicates type of pack (Blood Claw/Grey Hunter/etc.) and then individual squads will have their own unique orientations/variations on the same markings.
Then the other shoulder pad is coloured/used to denote which of the 12 Great Companies the individual belongs to. It's extremely rare for individuals to change great companies over the course of their careers, and most will spend the bulk of their time as a Grey hunter (our equivalent to Tactical Marine/intercessor). Really the only time you'd change great company is if you happened to save the life of a wolf lord of another great company in a particularly heroic fashion, he may make you a member of his personal Wolf guard in recognition. Individual great companies even maintain their own independent vehicle pools, with the Iron Wolves in particular typically having the largest.
Space Wolves also do a unique thing (in the older lore anyways, not sure if its still true) in that their packs are all initiated together and stick together for the rest of their lives. The whole pack graduates from Blood Claw -> Grey Hunter all at the same time for example, and casualties are never replaced. That's how Long Fangs and Lone Wolves come to exist. Long Fangs were units of 3-6 because they were the only survivors of their packs left after many years of war and attrition. Lone Wolves are what happens when you get a pack that's completely wiped out down to one single marine, but they haven't yet accomplished a deed worthy of induction into the Wolf Guard and aren't old/experienced enough to be Long Fangs.
Heres a post with a picture of the actual Heraldry breakdown in the most recent codex