Space Wolves army rules, detachment abilities, stratagems and lore for Warhammer 40k, with links to the full unit datasheet table.
The Space Wolves, known in their own dialect of Juvjk as the Vlka Fenryka or "Wolves of Fenris", are one of the original 20 First Founding Space Marine Chapters, and were once led by their famed primarch, Leman Russ. Originally the VI Legion of Astartes raised by the Emperor at the dawn of the Great Crusade, the Space Wolves are renowned for their anti-authoritarian ways and their embrace of their homeworld Fenris' savage barbarian culture as well as their extreme deviation from the Codex Astartes in the Chapter's organisation.
After the Horus Heresy and the resultant Second Founding reforms of the Adeptus Astartes, the Space Wolves Legion was divided into two Chapters: the new Space Wolves Chapter, which was not compliant with the dictates of the Codex Astartes and retained the name of its parent Space Marine Legion, and the second Chapter which took the name of the Wolf Brothers. The Wolf Brothers suffered from rampant mutation of their gene-seed not long after their Founding and were later disbanded.
Only recently in the Era Indomitus have new successors of the Space Wolves been raised; though many Space Wolves still have doubts about whether the Primaris Marines raised from the genetic material of Leman Russ are true sons of the primarch, the Great Wolf Logan Grimnar has accepted them into the fold as warriors worthy of the Wolf King's heritage.
Since the Imperium came into being, the Space Wolves have fought tooth and nail for the cause of the Emperor. Amongst the most famous of the Chapters of the Adeptus Astartes in the wider Imperium, their sagas are told from one end of the galaxy to the other. As headstrong as they are fierce, the Space Wolves excel at close-quarters fighting, their warriors vying keenly for glory on the field of battle. The Space Wolves live to fight, and death holds even less fear for them than their counterparts in other Chapters.
The legends of the Space Wolves Chapter are told on countless thousands of worlds, and like the greatest of their fellow First Founding kin, they hold so many battle-honours that it would take a battle-scribe an entire lifetime to commit them all to parchment. The manner in which such laurels are won and recounted amongst the Space Wolves is very different to how such things are achieved amongst other Chapters.
The Space Wolves are savage and proud, and they seek glory in all they do. Some, especially the Dark Angels, regard the Sons of Russ as braggarts and gloryhounds, finding their methods crude and their desire to make a name for themselves vainglorious. In truth, every Space Wolves battle-brother longs for his story -- his saga -- to be recounted by his kin long after he has fallen, and for his name to be spoken in the same breath as the primarch himself.
The Space Wolves deviate from the Codex Astartes and the essential nature of what it is to be a Space Marine about as far as is possible. Their genetic inheritance is at once a blessing and a curse, for although each Space Wolf is gifted of the transhuman senses of Russ himself, their enhanced physiologies can be overcome by the change and a dramatic and terrible mutation can manifest.
In organisation, the Chapter has never paid any regard to the dictates of Roboute Guilliman's Codex Astartes, stubbornly cleaving to the structure that saw it through the wars at the very dawn of the Age of the Imperium. In appearance, the Space Wolves are savage and wild, adorning their armour with a combination of finely-wrought talismans and skins, bones, and teeth taken as trophies from beasts they have slain in single combat. Even in their manners, the battle-brothers of the Space Wolves differ from most other Space Marines, for they are competitive and headstrong, and at once individualistic and fiercely loyal to their squad or "pack."
Since the days of the VIth Legion's inception on Terra, the Space Wolves have remained a Space Marine Legion apart from its fellows, its origins shrouded as it garnered a fearsome reputation for its warriors' prowess as a shock-assault force as well as tireless pursuers and a peerless hunter-killer force. Unexpected violence was the Legion's calling card, its campaigns unsubtle, but brutally swift.
Like their latter-day namesakes, the wolves of Old Earth, its warriors' assaults were calculated exercises in ferocity, aimed to tear and rend until the foe lay in ruins or was driven to its death. But it was with the restoration to the Legion of its primarch, Leman Russ, and its settling on the icy Death World of Fenris, one of the most perilous and strange of Mankind's ancient homes, that the VIth Legion's nature would find its apotheosis and the Space Wolves would truly be born.
Under its master and gene-sire Leman Russ, the Space Wolves Legion would reave a bloody path across the stars of the Great Crusade, but never stray far in truth from the shadow of the Emperor. For, unlike their brother Legions, the Space Wolves were kept under the tight control of the Imperial Court and unleashed at the Emperor's command as often to chastise those who would renege on their oaths of service to the Imperium as to destroy those who resisted the offer of Imperial Compliance upon the dark frontier.
This oft-served role as bloody-handed tool of punishment, coupled with the secret purposes to which the Legion had been used and the Space Wolves' rapidly increasing cultural idiosyncrasy, steadily drove a wedge between the VIth and the other Space Marine Legions as the solar decades of war ground on.
So it was by the closing years of the Great Crusade and the ascension of the Warmaster Horus to his lofty rank that the Space Wolves in many ways stood a Legion isolated and apart. With some of their brethren they maintained ties of comradeship and respect, however distantly, but with others there simmered mutual acrimony and distrust, and others still considered them no more than leashed monsters, set loose only to kill when needed -- something less than Human and in truth perhaps even less than Astartes.
Of such opinions or considerations the Space Wolves cared little; they knew well enough that they were not the builders of empire, nor were they the watchers on its walls, nor lock-step soldiers who cared for bright pageantry and meaningless contests for rank and perfection -- they were predators, thus they had been made, and woe betide any who fell into their jaws.
The Space Wolves are one of the greatest of the Chapters of the Adeptus Astartes, their name and honours known throughout the galaxy. As one of the original twenty Space Marine Legions, the Space Wolves were founded by the Emperor Himself over ten thousand standard years ago. The Legions were created to take part in the Great Crusade, the Emperor's reconquest of the galaxy that established the Imperium of Man as it is today.
Before the Great Crusade, Terra had endured thousands of years of isolation whilst impenetrable Warp Storms seethed and howled throughout the western part of the galaxy. This dark period of Human history was known as the Age of Strife. Even the Emperor was trapped upon Terra by the Warp's tumult, and could do little other than secure Humanity's birth planet and prepare His armies for the reconquest to come.
When Leman Russ took over the VI Legion, it adhered rigidly to the guidelines and dispositions laid down by the Principia Belicosa of the Imperium's High Command. This rule was clung to by the warriors of the Legion as an anchor against the disorder their own increasingly fractious character was sowing in their ranks. Enforced discipline was common and even executions in the field were not unknown in the VI Legion.
With the rediscovery of Leman Russ and the cultural influence of Fenris which he imprinted on the Legion, these factors rapidly fell by the wayside. The fury which lay within the Legion's heart was given form and discipline mastered by will, and this wellspring of savagery was channelled and directed in battle rather than left unfocused, providing a catharsis which purged the Legion of its self-destructive tendencies and unified it under the Wolf King's banner.
Both the Fenrisian way of warfare as adapted by Leman Russ and the natural tendencies of the Legion to want to close and get to grips with its foes at close quarters led to a rapid and shifting focus away from the generalist and combined arms approach advocated by the Principia Belicosa and towards tactics dependent on highly mobile shock infantry units, with heavier support elements maintained, but largely focussed in specialised detachments rather than as part of the general line of battle.
The Space Wolves were conditioned to hold a near-suicidal disregard for danger and trained to exploit this to the fullest on the battlefield, pitting their courage and might where it would be most effective; in the very teeth of the foe, overwhelming opponents by sheer speed and ferocity of attack, both in hand-to-hand combat and in brutal short-ranged fire fights.
As time went on, their tactical dispositions shifted to better accommodate this preference, leading to the creation of unique shock units such as the "Grey Slayers" and "Bloodied Claws," which gradually came to comprise the bulk of the core infantry of the Legion by the time of the Battle of Prospero.
By the late Great Crusade era, the Space Wolves Legion had strongly deviated from the Principia Belicosa's definition of the Legiones Astartes structure and organisation, although they could, if pressed, readily enunciate how each warrior would fit in such a structure should it be needed. At the macro level, the Legion consisted of thirteen "Great Companies" designated by their number in the order of battle, with each nominally composed of a theoretical 10,000 Astartes, though in practice attrition and casualty rates meant this was never more than a notional figure.
Below this strategic level, the Legion's host was now broken down into a shifting array of ad hoc formations either put together for a particular mission or beholden strongly to the personal authority of a particular company commander, and below them to a series of tributary sub-commanders, known variously as "Wolf Lord" (addressed as a "Jarl") or "Claw Leader" (addressed as a "Thegn"), regardless of their notional or accorded rank within the Imperium's standard order of battle. These warband-like forces -- while each was part of one of the overarching Great Companies which comprised the Legion -- were largely autonomous and heavily infantry-focused.
They often lacked certain specialised units and formations found in other Legions, and could range in size from between battalion to chapter strength in conventional terms, while below this, the more general terms of "pack" or "claw" became an accepted descriptor of any small tactical unit, be it a single squad of warriors or a small combined taskforce.
The Space Wolves are known for their fiercely anti-authoritarian behaviour. They strongly resist the central command structure of the Imperium, organising themselves into "packs" instead of the normal squads deployed by the Adeptus Astartes and continue to refuse the dictates of the Codex Astartes, the standardised guide to Space Marine tactics and organisation created by the Ultramarines' Primarch Roboute Guilliman.
The Space Wolves only accept some standard Imperial tactics that were considered useful for their own preferred style of warfare. As such, they have a reputation among the Imperial military for being as ill-disciplined as they are fearless. It is often said that the best way to get a Space Wolf to do something is to tell him not to do it.
Instead of organising into the squads dictated by the Codex Astartes, the Space Wolves form their battle-brothers into "packs." Each pack will generally be made up of Astartes who have fought together for some time and will work together as a pack of Fenrisian Wolves do on the hunt.
For the Space Wolves their finely honed, superhuman senses of smell and hearing are just as important to them as their keen eyesight. Packs will work together to sniff and sound out their foes, hunting their prey like the wolves of Fenris, identifying the locations of their comrades as much by their enhanced sense of smell as by any technological means.
The Space Wolves maintain four primary types of packs in the Chapter, including the Blood Claws, Grey Hunters, Long Fangs, and the Wolf Guard. There are also Wolf Scouts, who are an oddity among the Adeptus Astartes, as they are not neophytes but can be Veteran Astartes.
The forces of the Space Wolves have a very different approach to martial strategy from their brother Space Marines. There are several distinct types of squad, or Pack, in each Great Company, and each fulfills a different role in battle. As a Space Wolf progresses through his life, he may rise through the ranks until he is old and his fangs are long. If his bravery and might are without question, he will be asked to join the Wolf Guard, or even become a Wolf Lord himself. Most Space Wolves begin their careers as Blood Claws, hot-headed young warriors who cannot wait to prove themselves, charging in howling Packs at the front lines of the enemy in their efforts to garner personal glory. The Blood Claws are the shock troops of the Space Wolves and spearhead the majority of assaults. If they survive to become mature and capable warriors, they will be elevated to the ranks of the Grey Hunters, tempered by battle but nonetheless to give their lives in the name of honour. When the Space Wolves are truly mature, their hair grey and their canines pronounced, they are likely to be inducted into the Long Fangs, Veteran warriors who are disciplined and steady even in the heat of battle, and hence are entrusted with a Great Company's heavy weapons.
The bravest and strongest of the Space Wolves, after proving themselves in a feat of exceptional valour or martial prowess, may become Wolf Guards. The Wolf Guard either lead less experienced Packs of warriors into battle, or form a retinue for the mightiest warriors of the battleforce, the Wolf Lord.
Lore excerpt from Warhammer 40k Wiki on Fandom, available under CC BY-SA 3.0.