Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Space Marine Chapters - How Can I Choose?

Sorry for the lull in posting, one of my friends recently had a huge family crisis and I spent my time worrying about him and doing what I can to help.

Onto today's topic, I've been going back and forth on what chapter I want to make my Space Marines, leaning heavily towards Salamanders due to my liking of the fluff and the sheer effectiveness of Vulkan's chapter tactics. However, I've also been drawn to the Imperial Fists, mostly because Captain Lysander is a scary awesome character, along with Ultramarines for sheer SMurfiness, Raven Guard for practicality of black armor and tons of other reasons.

However, I've also been pushed away from painting an entire army for various reasons, such as Salamanders being overplayed, yellow being a pain the butt to paint, Ultramarines for sheer SMurfiness and Raven Guard for a relatively boring paint scheme.

It hit me today; why not do all of them? I would paint a squad or two in differing schemes depending on how fitting they are to that role, such as having Imperial Fist Devastators, Raven Guard Assault Squads, Salamander Termies, Ultramarine Scouts and a Tactical squad with equipment suiting each chapter).

How would I make this all work together? Well, that's the title. The entire army is fighting together at the Battle for Armageddon. Normally, different chapters will avoid working together due to a sense of pride or honor, but under extenuating circumstances multiple chapters will fight together. I would make each squad come together as an army through the use of basing; trying to go for a muddy, semi-urban, warzone that will look consistent on all infantry and vehicles.

Another plus that I just thought of is that it allows me paint chapter specific models and use them without any fret, meaning I can use Lysander, Vulkan or Sicarius at my whim; the idea is that they just happen to be at the frontline with all the other chapters present.

What do you guys think and how do you feel about this? Unfluffy, fluffy? A cheesy attempt to use Dorn/Shrike in the same list? This is probably just an idea that won't be fulfilled (I hate a hodge-podge looking army and unless the basing is fabulously successful, the idea will be nix'd.)

Squirrel_Fish

4 comments:

  1. Change the color of your text, it's to hard to read.

    I personally think mixing so many chapters is only good in theory. What you might want to try to do is come up with your own chapter that uses similar color schemes and maybe changes slightly between unit types. You're going to be using the Space Marine codex anyway and there's nothing wrong with counts-as to use the characters you want. In fact it's encouraged.

    Another possibility is to make your own chapter with a color scheme that you like and then do successor chapters that have color schemes close to other chapters. This would allow you to change the scheme enough, but keep everything tied together and it wouldn't be against the fluff. First founding chapters and their successors fight along side each other all the time.

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  2. Ditto on changing the color of the text. Dark grey on black is obnoxious and I had to select it all to be able to read it. :-)

    As to the idea... it's not bad but you're going to have some definite issues getting everything to look cohesive. As a fellow Eldar player, you should know that doing everything is wildly different colors is probably the easiest way to look hodge podge... Aspect Warriors in "proper" coloration still need their banner or accent colors in a form that ties into the rest of your force, lest they look divergent.

    What I'd suggest is maybe doing a Deathwatch force. Paint them in the base chapter colors, but do a unified shoulder pad and blazon. Something that can tie all those different color schemes together a little more than jst how they're based. Or if not Deathwatch, there's always other =I= forces or even a Great Crusade.

    Cheers!

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  3. There are a number of ways you can approach this. First, I suppose you should ask yourself how much fluff matters to you. Case in point, your initial choice of Salamanders was based heavily on their history and overall character so I imagine it does carry some weight. Related to that is recognizing that Space Marines are practically religious fanatics - the effect of this is that certain Chapters really do hate eachother, even if they fight "for the same side" - Space Wolves and Dark Angels are an example.

    I wouldn't worry about not being able to field special characters because they aren't of your chapter. Even the 5th edition codex states that, although its special characters are predominantly Ultramarine, you are free to - nay, encouraged to - create names for your own characters and consider them equivalents. Ultimately 40K is a hobby game - you're free to collect and paint miniatures as you see fit, and field them as you see fit. Take some time to develop your own Chapter and decide how you want it to look and feel. Then just go from there.

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  4. Thanks for the suggestions guys.

    I decided that a singular, uniform army will end up looking loads better than multiple armies.

    So in the end, I think I'll end up doing only one chapter and just making a bunch of counts-as characters to represent those other characters I want to use.

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