Pre-Heresy Ultramarines

[alexious]

So I picked up a pack of the MK II Iron Armour marines from Forge World. I've decided to do a Pre-heresy Ultramarines army with them, and slowly build up the force over time. However, the biggest stumbling block is how to paint the shoulder pad rims. I want to do a force from one of the deeper companies, either something from the 600's or the 900's. My though would be to put the company number in the middle of the left shoulde rpad, and the squad number in the bottom left corner with the squad designation in the bottom right. In Visions of Darkness, the ultramarines all have gold shoulder rims or all blue shoulder pads. Any suggestions?

[Legatus]

Since the Ultramarines Legion had already been sub divided into Chapter during the Crusade, wouldn't the system to denote companies have been the same? The only additional Element you need is a mark for which Chapter the Company was from. I assume the Companies would then be numbered 1 through 10, i.e. "5th Chapter, 2nd Company" (yellow trims), "7th Chapter, 4th Company" (green trims), 12th Chapter, 4th Company (green trims).

[The Emperor's Champion]

250,000 Ultramarines in the Legion during the Great Crusade (according to Collected Visions)

 

I assume them to be split up as follows:

• 250 Chapters of 1000 Marines in the Legion
  
• 10 Companies of 100 Marines per Chapter
  
• 10 Squads of 10 Marines per Company
  

 

• XIII = Legion Number
  
• Roman numerals I-X are used for Squad numbers in the modern Chapter.
  
• Company numbers are noted by color of shoulder trims in the modern Companies, but even if all Ultramarines in the Great Crusade had gold/yellow shoulder pads, I'd imagine that somewhere on their armors they'd still wear their Company colors. Possibly the background of their left shoulder pads, or their knee pads.
  

 

I agree with Legatus that the Company numbers wouldn't go above 10, and would instead rely on Chapter and Company numbers together to sort out who is who when two "2nd Companies" are together.

1st Chapter, 1st Company: I-II

all the way up to

250th Chapter, 10th Company: CCL-X

 

I'm sure the Chapters each had a number, but I also imagine that the Chapters probably had titles that they went by instead of just their number.

 

For example:

• I imagine Commander Orar's Chapter might've been called the "Sons of Orar" and Orar's personal heraldry might've consisted of a lot of red and white with an Ω as the main symbol. Obviously they'd all be wearing a ton of blue with gold accents, but following their Commander's heraldry as an example, one of the shoulder pads of each Marine from that Chapter might be a direct predecessor to the heraldry and color scheme that the modern Sons Of Orar Chapter uses.
  
• Another Chapter might've been called the "Sons Of Guilliman" and used the predecessor heraldry to what the modern Sons Of Guilliman Chapter uses.
  In fact, many of the names of Successor Chapters actually just sound reminiscent of modern Company nicknames (For example, if the modern Ultramarines were to split into 10 Chapters, I'd expect the Chapters could be called the Warriors Of Ultramar, Guardians Of The Temple, Scourge, Defenders Of Ultramar, Fringe Wardens, and the Defenders of Caeserean.), so I'd expect that you could reverse engineer a lot of the Successor Chapter names into just being Chapter nicknames within the Legion.
  
• Obviously that doesn't work with all of the Primogenitor Chapters, since some of them are really bizarre when put in context with the normal Ultramarines. It'd be pretty weird to have a whole Chapter within the Ultramarines Legion called the "Mortifactors". But instead the Mortifactors could've started as the "Chapter Of Death" (mirroring how the modern 5th Company of the Ultramarines is known as the "Company Of Death") and used a lot of black trim and skulls on their regular Ultramarines armor.
  
• Other Chapters might've had names that were less direct predecessors to the independent modern Chapters they would become. Maybe the "The Nova" would become the Novamarines, "The Aurora" would become the Aurora Chapter, etc
  

 

If you were to assume that each of the Legion's Chapter was bigger than 1000 Marines, you could use it to explain how some of the Successor Chapters are related.

Say each Chapter was 3000 Marines (30 Companies each), for example; that would let you claim the Eagle Warriors, Doom Eagles and Silver Eagles all originally came from the same Legion-Chapter ("The Eagles of Macragge" perhaps?).

Say they were 2000 Marine Chapters, then you could say the Black Consuls and White Consuls both originally came from the Chapter known simply as "The Consuls".

 

 

 

 

 

That's just my $.04

[alexious]

I like the simplifying of the company/chapter inot chapter number and company, it definately would make it easier in terms of roman numerals to denote. Not that it is a direct Ultramarines reference, but the Luna Wolves clearly used company identification numbers above ten, at least in Horus Rising. It is most probably that the HH artwork has gold trim simply due to a lack of imagination on the part of the artists, since that is what is most often depicted. It's not like there is a huge amount of UM artwork within the set. As loathe as I am to, I'll have to take a second peak at Battle for the Abyss and see if it makes any mention. I also like the notion that the second founding chapters all adopted the chapter's nickname. I'll take a peak, and report back, maybe even have a demo model to show off by the end of the week (though that could be pushing things).

[Vodunius]

Company numbers might not even go as high as 10.

 

Collected Visions states that the generic astartes organisation was 1000 strong chapters/regiments etc each comprised of two battalions of five 100-man companies.

 

The original pre/mid-heresy organisation (WD126) was 3 battalions of 3 companies, the associated Ultramarine scheme (WD346) listed the company colours as "Battalion 1-3, Company 1-3" rather than 1-9.

 

Addendum: the original Ultramarine MkVII scheme used the right arm for the company colour - with the pad trims being either in the chapters secondary colour (white) or the same colour as the pad:

http://i143.photobucket.com/albums/r155/khromash/smurf3.jpg

 

I've actually considered using that but changing the trims to gold, and it looks pretty schweet, at least for first company:

http://i143.photobucket.com/albums/r155/khromash/HereicalUltramarine1stCompany2.jpg

[alexious]

Here is the acutal quote, "The structure of a Space Marine army varies slightly from Legion to Legion, but the core of all of them is the company of one hundred fighting men led by a captain. Companies are usually grouped inot battalions, normally five companies strong, and led by a lieutenant commander. Battalions are brigaded together in pairs, as a regiment of one thousand warriors. These are variously known as 'regiments', 'wings', 'chapters', or 'great companies'. A space marine with the rank of commander or in some cases lord commander leads each of these units" (HH Vol II 10). We know that the Ultramarines used the title Chapter Master - Marius Gage was one who fought at Calth. So the Ultramarines would still have 25 Chapter Masters, with 50 lieutenant commanders (maybe) and 250 captains deployed across the Ultima Sector and beyond.

 

Even the terminators are depicted as having gold shoulder pad trim in Visions of Darkness, and while I think a lot of the artwork is subjective in that there are instances of the studded shoulder pad being on the wrong side for one, I think it is fair to say that Marius Gage was probably the first chapter's Chapter Master and his men wore gold because of it.

 

Would love to see any more resources out there as well.