Warhammer 40K, Space Marines: What Chapter do I pick?




Oh boy, where to begin?

Even in the early days of Second Edition you had 4 flavours of power armoured super-humans, and that didn't even include Chaos! Dark Angels, Blood Angels and Space Puppies all lined up alongside the vanilla Marines.

These days you can literally have a different chapter every day for a fortnight. And Forgeworld keep churning out new ones on top of what we've got already... and Successor Chapters with home brew rules just compound the problem.

It's no wonder young neophytes are bashing their heads on their Start Collecting! kits and furiously scrabbling through lore to find one that fits.

The challenge here is deciding what character you like, along side what combat style you like, and then factor in a colour scheme. Most Space Marine chapters will give you 2 out of 3 things you'll like, leading to an almost paralyzing glut of choice and compromise.

You may like the tactics of the Blood Angels, but then not want to be collecting Space Vampires. You might like the independence of the Space Wolves, but then lament the lack of grav-guns and tanks. White Scars sound awesome, but then you hear the sighs about Hit and Run spam and beardy (cheesy) tactics. You like the idea of Ravenguard, but don't understand the rule set.

And, as always, you kind of want your own special snowflake chapter.

Which is harder, because there's no new chapters under the sun. Here's just a few of the ideas people have had over the years:

http://img3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20131016190733/warhammer40k/images/0/02/Shadow_Warriors_Space_Marine.jpg

http://images.dakkadakka.com/gallery/2014/1/27/578775_sm-Aztec,%20Bike,%20Captain,%20Home%20Brew.,%20Ruin,%20Space%20Marines,%20Temple,%20White%20Scars.jpeg

http://images.dakkadakka.com/gallery/2008/11/30/11287_mb-Cute,%20Happy,%20Pink,%20Space%20Marines.JPG

The crazy thing? Two out of the three of this have grounding in lore. Don't believe me? Look up Carcharadons Astra and Rainbow Warriors. If you look hard enough I'm sure you'll find clues to Daisy Marines as well.

I actually don't have a huge amount of advice for how to solve this problem. I've been struggling with this question myself for about 6 months now, as a single Tactical squad awaits construction and painting.

What I kind of recommend is taking the Plastic Grey Chapter of Mutable Tactics for your first few games, but the idea of endorsing not painting your miniatures seems counter-productive to being a teacher.

What is a good idea is to simply create your own Chapter. Make them Successors of an existing one, and damn the fluff about No Sons of Russ or unstable Salamander genes. Same rules as for any army apply here; buy what you like the look of and paint them in your favourite colour. The legendary deeds come later.

Now if I could follow my own advice and get my Marines painted, I'd be set...

Thanks for reading.

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