Questions reguarding custom chapters

[NirvanaHonarius]

Hello, I'm a completely green modeler and painter but a long time fan of the fluff and the fiction. With a bit of courage and coercion from a friend, I've bought a Black Reach starter kit and I am keen on getting into playing the ubiquitous Space Marines but I have a few questions:

I felt the desire to design my own custom chapter, I want to use a heavy Egyptian theme thus I grabbed a Thousand Suns kit for the helmets and the tabards, will this be acceptable providing I scourge off the Chaos sigils?

I want a focus on a elite melee unit core based on either Assault Terminators or Dreadnoughts with heavy ranged support and I was recommended the Blood Angels codex by my local store, would there be any reason why I wouldn't want to follow this codex and instead use another?

I want to put an interesting spin on the lore of the chapter, I want them to have discovered that their biological heritage is soured by a potential link to the Thousands Sons but I don't want GWS knocking on the door at night, what are my boundaries in terms of what lore can I spin before I tread on a few toes? Once I get this down I'll be alot more confident on plotting the lore behind the chapter and hopefully I'll produce a chapter worthy of remembrance. :)

Finally, lorewise I want to put them on the outer remote rim of the galaxy, away from the core worlds. What areas could I use that exist or are suggested in lore that I could develop for my own use?

Here are the colour schemes I plan on using, any feedback would be appreciated particularly if these are already used or too common.

Scheme 1

Scheme 2

Scheme 3

Scheme 4

Looking forward to your wisdom.

Honarius :3

[JayeL]

Hi welcome on board, if you are going for a loyal chapter just remove the chaos insignia from any bits and use away at them.

 

As far as the Blood Angel codex is concerned would say go for it it would certainly fit with your theme.

 

The "fluff" behind your chapter is yours to do with as you wish, go wild, GW's not going to be knocking on your door for designing your own chapter. As long as you don't go mass producing miniatures or such using GWs IP then you will have no problems. GW encourage you to create your own chapter so go for it.

 

As for the colour schemes they all look a bit busy for my liking, I reckon after a squad or two with at least 3 colours on each figure it could get quite tedious. I would recommend going for a simpler scheme, one colour or two max and see how that works out.

 

Hope this helps,

 

John

[LardO'Blood]

Scheme 3 looks like your best bet, for simplicities sake. I suggest you give only sergeants white helmets, it will give your army a distinguishable rank system and will make it easier for a first time painter.

You can have a melee core with ranged support in all the codexes, though DA and BT can't do it as well. I suggest Space Wolves, they are a pretty simple chapter and are easy to use. They have very excellent close combat HQ choices and have Longfangs, the best infantry heavy weapon platform of any marine codex. Blood Angels could be good, but they don't have as much in way of long range support that the other chapters don't have. Even Codex: Space Marines is good, with cheaper assault terminators than SW and, IIRC, BA.

[Br0ther Rafen]

to start off, welcome to the B&C, and to Space Marines!

Now, back on topic, of the four colour schemes that you have provided, i think that the first scheme looks that best out of all of them.

I felt the desire to design my own custom chapter, I want to use a heavy Egyptian theme thus I grabbed a Thousand Suns kit for the helmets and the tabards, will this be acceptable providing I scourge off the Chaos sigils?

This is perfectly acceptable if you want them to represent non-Choas marines.

 

I want a focus on a elite melee unit core based on either Assault Terminators or Dreadnoughts with heavy ranged support and I was recommended the Blood Angels codex by my local store, would there be any reason why I wouldn't want to follow this codex and instead use another?

It depends on what type of army you want to create. If you want a very good all rounders codex, then "vanilla" (codex space marines) will suit you just fine. if you want an all in your face assualt based army, then Blood Angels or Space Wolves are both the way to go. There are some differences between the two, you might like to ask about them at your local GW. There are also codex's Dark Angels and Codex Black Templars, which both have their ups and downs despite their age. BT's are an excellent assualt army, but they suffer from an extremly expensive army list, and can have difficulty being used properly at low points levels (1500 poits and below). Dark Angels are more all-rounder like C:SM, but they have the very good ability of taking Terminators as Troops, and i think tht for the army list that you describe they might be a good army for what you are looking for. of course, Termies as Troops also means you'll likely have low numbers, which is annoying. i would recomend reading the codexs and see which one appeals to you the most, but i would recomend Space Wolves.

 

in terms of lore, or fluff as it is ore commonly called here, do whatever you want, it's your army. obviously, if you told everyone then ome people would find that a bit unbelievable, but really it doesn't matter if you want them to be thousand sons succesor or whatever.

 

Lastly, i think the Halo Stars possibly? not to sure, but if you look at the BRB (hardback rulbook) then you'll find what you are looking for.

 

Any other problems you have, just ask.

 

EDIT: double ninja'd, jeez

[LardO'Blood]

Forgot to mention this, but...I don't recommend Dark Angels for new players, almost everything they can do can be done better by the other codexes and Deathwing can be a pain to start. If you decide to head that way, be warned, we still use old wargear so the cyclone missile launchers are one shot, the stormshields are a 4+ invulnerable only in close combat and a few other annoying things...Of course, psychic hoods are the full table instead of 24" and smoke launchers downgrade everything to glancing instead of a 4+ cover save.

[Br0ther Rafen]

good point LardO'Blood, I probably shouldn't have mentioned it since you are just starting out.

Anyway, Wolves would be a good start for the army that you describe, and i recomend that you go and check the Space Wolf codex and see if it what you are looking for.

[averykess]

Just a word of caution on the color schemes: White is tricky to paint. It is easy to make grainy and unappealing. There are good tutorials on this board and on the web for white, so if you really want to use it, look those up!

[NirvanaHonarius]

Thanks alot guys, I really appreciate this advice and I'll definitely continue to develop the chapter now that I have these basic concerns covered. I will probably take Blood Angels codex purely for the Furiso Dreadnought as well as the Black Rage, I was thinking that perhaps I could use their warp touched heritage altering them in a fashion in lieu of the lapse of sanity from the Blood Angels genetic flaws.

 

I've also considered using Dark Elf Corsairs for their lizardskin cloaks which I'll affix to veteran and elite melee units, probably under the back pack to carry across the crocodile theme which I want to imply with melee units. I might also use the swords as decoration for veteran marines, I'd have to remove the dark elf hands somehow and make the hilt bare so I was wondering how I could do this as well.

 

Are there any heads that cover the eyes with a band or the like, or are there Thousand Sons terminators? I was hoping on giving my Mephiston-alike a unique look for a librarian to fit the appropriate hero status he is going to fill. Are there any gigantic lizard skulls or jaws from the lizardmen kits, I reckon one of those would be amazing mounted on the head or as a head of a Furiso Dreadnought. Also, I'll probably need to modify the Thousand Sons captains, I didn't expect them to be full metal but I can't have the Eye iconography so should I ditch using them or modify (the sword at least would have to be replaced).

 

Finally, what is the advantage of taking veteran marines as an elite choice, why would you not specialise and go Sternguard or Terminators and the like?

[onipunk]

Personally, as colour schemes go, I'd use some variation the T'au colour scheme, using Tausept Ochre to make a nice sandy colour for the Marines. All your other schemes look far too busy in my opinion, and it's often easier to make a nice unified army using a simple colour scheme than having multicoloured Marines.

[NirvanaHonarius]

What about this one

[Khorne Worny]

That scheme you just put on here and now imagening lizard skin cloak behind him and thousand sons head...yes I can see that looking to be a very nice style of SMs. Just wouldnt see the thousands sons blue and gold head bits working maybe change the colour to gold and dark brown?

[NirvanaHonarius]

I was thinking the brown on that colour scheme would go alright with the gold, and if I needed a deeper colour to contrast with the gold I could go to kemri brown.