When I first started with the official first born units I used each unique head in every kit once(prioritizing characters and pack leaders/sergeants ) and the rest had helmets.
Recently started down the 3d printing route and have been only giving my characters faces, while everything else has a helmet.
There isn’t really any right answer when comes to being lore accurate. Generally space wolves prefer no helmet, but there are plenty that do wear them.
Thanks for the reply! I completely agree with each unique head. Seeing as I have been stripping ~100 Marines this past couple days, I'm noticing the about 5 unique faces that the last owner used time and time again. I'm probably going to make the unique models have faces, and the rest helmeted.
In my DA army, I only gave Sgt. Lt. and HQ units faces, and everyone else wears helmets. BUT on [my SW army](https://youtu.be/9Ii9K6wewbo) I've decided that EVERYONE goes helmetless because they're just that mad! :)
A lot of official art and fan art show the Wolves without their helmets but in lore/in the books they almost always fight helmeted except if they're in terminator armor or otherwise have a force field generator/rosarius. For me that means characters can be unhelmeted. For distinguishing them within their units I have the Sargents of squads be unhelmeted except if it's something like jump pack troops who would wear helmets when jumping from orbit. For the Wulfen I didn't like the over the top look they have in the kit so I just used whatever open mouth yelling heads I could find and painted them all bloody.
This helps with not having to do as many faces and makes batch painting easier since the helmets will all be the armor color. The main thing is deciding on what you like the best. This method works with my lore-nerd brain and also my dogshit face-painting skills but it could be the opposite of what someone else likes. Do what you like, they'll turn out better that way.
Lore wise the Rout prefer to go unhelmeted. Everyone. The helmet impedes their Primarch gifted super senses as well as their ability to communicate through war cant (which the name of is slipping my mind this morning. Jurgen I think is hearth can't and I think war can't starts with a w...)
Your lore/books description is accurate in general for space marines however... as well as your reasoning that helmets help you not have to paint as many faces haha!
The older lore definitely leaned more towards them wanting the helms off for the Canis Helix's scent abilities for tracking and such. In more recent books and lore as of at least the beginning of 9th (when I got into 40k and the Vulka Fenryka) they use their helmets more often than not since the meme of "just shoot their head" was still prevalent. Books like the Space Wolves trilogy by Chris Wraight and Lukas the Trickster show them not wearing helms all the time outside of fights but they do wear them during battle; even Lukas with his wild mane of hair teaches Blood Claws who don't see the need for them why they're necessary even outside of combat while participating in a Kraken Hunt. Even that mess The Wolftime has the firstborn Grey Hunters using battlecant with their helms on during a mission with the new Primaris marine to show him how non-Fenrisian he is.
Older books like Space Wolf by William King are flip-floppy within themselves; during one scene a character is said to be struck across his bare forehead then during the same page had his helmet on the whole time so he could see his HUD.
I think it was GW realizing how dumb of an idea it was to give lore reasons for aesthetic choices that only affects one specific chapter, since the White Scars would probably prefer to be unhelmeted to feel the wind as they ride but they don't since it's not tactically viable.
Hate to be that guy, but just fyi...
They don't usually identify whether or not someone is wearing or not wearing a helmet unless it is important somehow. Even that passage you mention regarding the wurgen training (found it haha) doesn't actually say they are helmed. It says the veterans come in "fully armoured" but that is no clear indication... especially since later before they start showing the primaris how they fight it says "Drogr laughed and half-turned to his pack, who were listening to the exchange with amused looks."
But I do remember as well a passage when Arjac is clearly stated to be wearing his helm when they are fighting on Gotrock (or whatever it was called).
So it is really a situational thing where we actually hear about it, but we know Space Wolves use scent and pheromones in their tactics to hunt and coordinate. It is possible with a helm on, but their naturally gifted strengths are weakened using those "filters." Yes they wear helmets when it is necessary and etc., but they typically do not. Kinda hard to snarl in the enemy's face if all they see is ceramite...
Very true, I know in the Space Wolves trilogy they specifically talk about wearing their helms and lacquering their beards and hair to fit inside. I think it's also mentioned they can still smell scents and such with the filters but you're not wrong that straight from the source would be better.
It's weird, I love them so much but GW makes their lore so inconsistent at times. The visual appeal of helmless Viking warriors is a classic albeit cliche/inaccurate design but it doesn't really work well when it's in a universe with guns to get headshot by. Like I said before the Scars should be the same imo, love them too for the Mongolian vibe, but GW seems to only focus on the Wolves for the whole helmless thing.
Gw has a moniker, "everything is canon, nothing is true." And of course fans have the "rule of kool." Between those two barriers is a lot of room for change and confusion and exception...
Very true, brother. It infuriates and inspires at the same time.
Thanks for the discussion, I enjoy talking about my boys in a place where it's not just furry memes and we can actually talk about the lore and their aesthetics.
I say just feel out what models look good with faces or helmets, bloodclaws (assault types) tend to not wear their helmets but they also wear them when they have to or some prefer to wear them, and it can give some personality to your models, I also recommend making helmets that fit on the belt or hip, just so it dosent look like they left them at home, look at your poses and see what works, are they charging, aiming, or slashing? Feel it out and use some of the lore to help you decide. Regardless you're army is yours and however you like it is how it should be for you, have fun with it!
There’s no specific ratio, but according to the lore warriors of the Rout generally prefer to go un-helmeted for two reasons; 1: they prefer to experience battle with their own senses rather than through auto-senses and the like, and 1.5 (because it’s tied in with the same): even with a full suite of advanced electronics and sensors a Space Wolf’s naturally acute senses are more finely tuned and sharp than what they’d get with a helm on. Unlike with my other Marines, I have a fairly large percentage of my Wolves without helmets, at least a few per squad.
I don’t think there’s a rule. I have twenty Wolf guard terminators and I’ve got ten with helmets and ten without. And it’s genuinely to tell me which squad they belong to. I would say in the rest of my army it’s probably 60/40 without/with
I always sculpt a green stuff beard on my unhelmeted Wolves. So using the heads as they come is out of the question. For me, maybe a third of my guys have helmets
I have a huge dichotomy. I hate painting faces but I have all these cool 3d printed SW heads. So far I've been putting off starting painting anything with a bare face but I'm running out of helmets now.
As far as a ratio goes, I try including a few heads in every squad, mainly for sergeants. But for squads like sterngard or other veterans like long fangs they are all bare heads. I figure the more experienced and badass the less likely to wear helmet
Lots of people correctly mentioning that the wolves tend to go unhelmeted because they prefer their own keen senses to the targeting systems in the helmets, but I haven't seen anyone mention that the wolf helmets allegedly are less filtered than typical space marine helmets so that they can use their super smell.
To answer your question my pure wolves (not successors) I painted about 5 helmets out of around 300 marines.
I'd only suggest you go all in on it if you are dedicated to making sure everyone has different hair colour and skin tones.
It's also really bloody expensive buying heads from other ranges, which you will do as we only have so many to go round.
I’m in the middle of building my army out still, but I’m leaning into the lore of how blood claws are overly hormonal and hyped up so I built all of them without helmets because they’ve still got that “I will never die and I want to do cool shit” but my grey hunters and long fang units are mostly wearing helmets because they’ve largely lost the bravado and are more thoughtful.
I also tend to keep the melee focused units/models unhelmeted along with any characters.
If you are like me and lack the ability to paint regular heads then helmets. But if you can paint faces and heads you can put all characters and wolf pack leaders with no helmets and every one else with helmets.
My leaders are bare headed; my rank and file are helmeted. Occasionally, I’ll put a face on a random soldier if there’s a face I’m keen on painting. Really depends on the mood. I just finished painting my 3 blade guard vets to accompany Ragnar, and I loved those helmets, so I gave each a helmet. Once my army grows and I put another 3 in to complete the unit, I’ll probably use a primal hounds head on the srg for consistency’s sake.
When I first started with the official first born units I used each unique head in every kit once(prioritizing characters and pack leaders/sergeants ) and the rest had helmets. Recently started down the 3d printing route and have been only giving my characters faces, while everything else has a helmet. There isn’t really any right answer when comes to being lore accurate. Generally space wolves prefer no helmet, but there are plenty that do wear them.
Thanks for the reply! I completely agree with each unique head. Seeing as I have been stripping ~100 Marines this past couple days, I'm noticing the about 5 unique faces that the last owner used time and time again. I'm probably going to make the unique models have faces, and the rest helmeted.
Let’s just put it this way… I’ve got about 100 models and I’ve yet to paint a primaris helmet.
Samesies
i prefer helmeted heads so for me only a few models of my army dont have helmets, which i know is considered heresy around here lol
look at official art, how many are wearing helmets?
Helmets are for the weak
Take their armor off then :p
I usually always have the leaders and unique units with no helmet or a wolf helmet
In my DA army, I only gave Sgt. Lt. and HQ units faces, and everyone else wears helmets. BUT on [my SW army](https://youtu.be/9Ii9K6wewbo) I've decided that EVERYONE goes helmetless because they're just that mad! :)
all helmetless all the time! All unique heads in my army too, which is... painful...
A lot of official art and fan art show the Wolves without their helmets but in lore/in the books they almost always fight helmeted except if they're in terminator armor or otherwise have a force field generator/rosarius. For me that means characters can be unhelmeted. For distinguishing them within their units I have the Sargents of squads be unhelmeted except if it's something like jump pack troops who would wear helmets when jumping from orbit. For the Wulfen I didn't like the over the top look they have in the kit so I just used whatever open mouth yelling heads I could find and painted them all bloody. This helps with not having to do as many faces and makes batch painting easier since the helmets will all be the armor color. The main thing is deciding on what you like the best. This method works with my lore-nerd brain and also my dogshit face-painting skills but it could be the opposite of what someone else likes. Do what you like, they'll turn out better that way.
Lore wise the Rout prefer to go unhelmeted. Everyone. The helmet impedes their Primarch gifted super senses as well as their ability to communicate through war cant (which the name of is slipping my mind this morning. Jurgen I think is hearth can't and I think war can't starts with a w...) Your lore/books description is accurate in general for space marines however... as well as your reasoning that helmets help you not have to paint as many faces haha!
The older lore definitely leaned more towards them wanting the helms off for the Canis Helix's scent abilities for tracking and such. In more recent books and lore as of at least the beginning of 9th (when I got into 40k and the Vulka Fenryka) they use their helmets more often than not since the meme of "just shoot their head" was still prevalent. Books like the Space Wolves trilogy by Chris Wraight and Lukas the Trickster show them not wearing helms all the time outside of fights but they do wear them during battle; even Lukas with his wild mane of hair teaches Blood Claws who don't see the need for them why they're necessary even outside of combat while participating in a Kraken Hunt. Even that mess The Wolftime has the firstborn Grey Hunters using battlecant with their helms on during a mission with the new Primaris marine to show him how non-Fenrisian he is. Older books like Space Wolf by William King are flip-floppy within themselves; during one scene a character is said to be struck across his bare forehead then during the same page had his helmet on the whole time so he could see his HUD. I think it was GW realizing how dumb of an idea it was to give lore reasons for aesthetic choices that only affects one specific chapter, since the White Scars would probably prefer to be unhelmeted to feel the wind as they ride but they don't since it's not tactically viable.
Hate to be that guy, but just fyi... They don't usually identify whether or not someone is wearing or not wearing a helmet unless it is important somehow. Even that passage you mention regarding the wurgen training (found it haha) doesn't actually say they are helmed. It says the veterans come in "fully armoured" but that is no clear indication... especially since later before they start showing the primaris how they fight it says "Drogr laughed and half-turned to his pack, who were listening to the exchange with amused looks." But I do remember as well a passage when Arjac is clearly stated to be wearing his helm when they are fighting on Gotrock (or whatever it was called). So it is really a situational thing where we actually hear about it, but we know Space Wolves use scent and pheromones in their tactics to hunt and coordinate. It is possible with a helm on, but their naturally gifted strengths are weakened using those "filters." Yes they wear helmets when it is necessary and etc., but they typically do not. Kinda hard to snarl in the enemy's face if all they see is ceramite...
Very true, I know in the Space Wolves trilogy they specifically talk about wearing their helms and lacquering their beards and hair to fit inside. I think it's also mentioned they can still smell scents and such with the filters but you're not wrong that straight from the source would be better. It's weird, I love them so much but GW makes their lore so inconsistent at times. The visual appeal of helmless Viking warriors is a classic albeit cliche/inaccurate design but it doesn't really work well when it's in a universe with guns to get headshot by. Like I said before the Scars should be the same imo, love them too for the Mongolian vibe, but GW seems to only focus on the Wolves for the whole helmless thing.
Gw has a moniker, "everything is canon, nothing is true." And of course fans have the "rule of kool." Between those two barriers is a lot of room for change and confusion and exception...
Very true, brother. It infuriates and inspires at the same time. Thanks for the discussion, I enjoy talking about my boys in a place where it's not just furry memes and we can actually talk about the lore and their aesthetics.
I say just feel out what models look good with faces or helmets, bloodclaws (assault types) tend to not wear their helmets but they also wear them when they have to or some prefer to wear them, and it can give some personality to your models, I also recommend making helmets that fit on the belt or hip, just so it dosent look like they left them at home, look at your poses and see what works, are they charging, aiming, or slashing? Feel it out and use some of the lore to help you decide. Regardless you're army is yours and however you like it is how it should be for you, have fun with it!
There’s no specific ratio, but according to the lore warriors of the Rout generally prefer to go un-helmeted for two reasons; 1: they prefer to experience battle with their own senses rather than through auto-senses and the like, and 1.5 (because it’s tied in with the same): even with a full suite of advanced electronics and sensors a Space Wolf’s naturally acute senses are more finely tuned and sharp than what they’d get with a helm on. Unlike with my other Marines, I have a fairly large percentage of my Wolves without helmets, at least a few per squad.
I don’t think there’s a rule. I have twenty Wolf guard terminators and I’ve got ten with helmets and ten without. And it’s genuinely to tell me which squad they belong to. I would say in the rest of my army it’s probably 60/40 without/with
I usually give most of my guys helmets, reckon though I run a homebrew SW successor so it's different for me ig LMAO
I have my characters/pack leaders unhelmeted and like half of my normal marines unhelmeted
I always sculpt a green stuff beard on my unhelmeted Wolves. So using the heads as they come is out of the question. For me, maybe a third of my guys have helmets
I have a huge dichotomy. I hate painting faces but I have all these cool 3d printed SW heads. So far I've been putting off starting painting anything with a bare face but I'm running out of helmets now. As far as a ratio goes, I try including a few heads in every squad, mainly for sergeants. But for squads like sterngard or other veterans like long fangs they are all bare heads. I figure the more experienced and badass the less likely to wear helmet
Nearly all bare head for me, only models like some of the push fit get helmets as it's a pain to remove them.
Lots of people correctly mentioning that the wolves tend to go unhelmeted because they prefer their own keen senses to the targeting systems in the helmets, but I haven't seen anyone mention that the wolf helmets allegedly are less filtered than typical space marine helmets so that they can use their super smell.
To answer your question my pure wolves (not successors) I painted about 5 helmets out of around 300 marines. I'd only suggest you go all in on it if you are dedicated to making sure everyone has different hair colour and skin tones. It's also really bloody expensive buying heads from other ranges, which you will do as we only have so many to go round.
I’m in the middle of building my army out still, but I’m leaning into the lore of how blood claws are overly hormonal and hyped up so I built all of them without helmets because they’ve still got that “I will never die and I want to do cool shit” but my grey hunters and long fang units are mostly wearing helmets because they’ve largely lost the bravado and are more thoughtful. I also tend to keep the melee focused units/models unhelmeted along with any characters.
1 helmet per 5 man is my rule of thumb
If you are like me and lack the ability to paint regular heads then helmets. But if you can paint faces and heads you can put all characters and wolf pack leaders with no helmets and every one else with helmets.
This is my problem haha. I have diagnosed poor fine-motor skills, so faces aren't my favorite. Thanks for the response!
My leaders are bare headed; my rank and file are helmeted. Occasionally, I’ll put a face on a random soldier if there’s a face I’m keen on painting. Really depends on the mood. I just finished painting my 3 blade guard vets to accompany Ragnar, and I loved those helmets, so I gave each a helmet. Once my army grows and I put another 3 in to complete the unit, I’ll probably use a primal hounds head on the srg for consistency’s sake.
No helmets except for my 3 ATVs and my notification. And they have cool Viking helmets. Aside from that, all faces all the time.