The Angels of Judgement

[daveclark890]

So I have been into Space Marines for gods know how many years but I have never been able to paint an army of them, in the past few weeks I have read the Space Wolf codex, the Blood Angels codex and of course the Space Marine codex repeatedly in the hopes that something would inspire me, I have also been reading the Ragnar novels, the Blood Angels Omnibus and the Ultramarines Omnibus.

 

I love the Descent of Angels special rule for Blood Angels but dont want to do a Blood Angels army, I love Ultramarines but think they are too rigid to the great book so I have arrived at the point I currently find my self...

 

The birth of a new chapter...

 

The Angels of Judgement

 

I got the name from the text in C:SM on the page about assault marines. The idea that I have is to build an army using the rules for Blood Angels and create a new chapter that specialises in Jump Pack assaults.

 

The armour is UM blue with a wash of Ogryn Flesh, Weapons are black and metal, the army contains nothing but jump infantry.

 

I have an idea for some fluff... basically they are the sole surviving company of a chapter that was destroyed by the Tyranids... They escaped destruction because they had been away from the chapter fortress when the nids invaded. The Battle Barge contains 9 assault squads plus company command squad and 2 squads of Vanguard who had been on an errand for the chapter master.

 

Because the only escapees were the 8th company they only have assault equipment and Thunderhawks so have spent the time since their home worlds destruction honing the art of Thunderhawk low-level jumps as the primary tactic for their assaults, they pick targets and then jump on them in force, wipe them out and then move on to the next target.

 

Once I have the 3 units of assault marines and the libby I have painted up I will post some pics and over the next few days I will try to build some decent fluff.

 

Until then any comments and help will be much appreciated.

[Apothete]

Welcome to the Liber. We all feel the urge to scratch that itch or else we wouldn't be here.

 

I got the name from the text in C:SM on the page about assault marines. The idea that I have is to build an army using the rules for Blood Angels and create a new chapter that specialises in Jump Pack assaults.

 

Now, I may be a little odd, but doesn't basing a Chapter on the rules seem as if it might be slipping out of the correct order? The thing that makes Marines interesting isn't necessarily their perferred style of combat, so much as it is their character and the things that set them apart from the thousand other Chapters out there. Unless there's a really good reason, pretty much everyone is going to have jump packs and those who specialize in their use, so pegging the dial at eleven on numbers just doesn't give much flavor for your creation.

 

On top of that, there's implications for your choices that ought to be dealt with. If they deploy exclusively with jump infantry, then how does the Chapter feel about vehicles, or about situations where the packs can't be used (onboard ships, inside hab stacks, etc), or about the more static elements (Thunderfires, Devestators, heavy weapons in general), and so on, ad nauseum? If they don't rely on any sort of support elements, how do they deal with things like enemy armor, fortifications, strongholds, and other things that are resistent to bolter fire? What happened to lead them towards this kind of deployment, where did they get their expertise, does their homeworld have a cultural influence on their love of soaring through the air, who trained them and was that an element of their choice?

 

I have an idea for some fluff... basically they are the sole surviving company of a chapter that was destroyed by the Tyranids... They escaped destruction because they had been away from the chapter fortress when the nids invaded. The Battle Barge contains 9 assault squads plus company command squad and 2 squads of Vanguard who had been on an errand for the chapter master.

 

This is going to limit you more than a little bit for a number of reasons.

 

Firstly, the Tyranids don't show up in any appreciable form until near the end of M41 with the appearance of Hive Fleet Behemoth in the last two hundred and fifty years. That means your Marines are either extremely young and part of the Twenty Sixth Founding, which happened a mere twelve years before the first major sighting, or they're a more experienced Chapter that mysteriously got wiped out. The former is more likely but it denies your reasoning for having the remaining units be on their own.

 

Once that's been dealt with, you're going to need a hell of an excuse to have Vanguard and Assault squads enough to fill a Battle Barge off on an "errand." That's a sizable investment of resources and enough manpower to end a modest-sized war all on their own.

 

Because the only escapees were the 8th company they only have assault equipment and Thunderhawks so have spent the time since their home worlds destruction honing the art of Thunderhawk low-level jumps as the primary tactic for their assaults, they pick targets and then jump on them in force, wipe them out and then move on to the next target.

 

Why does this require wiping your Chapter out to numbers lower than what the Crimson Fists are facing? All you'd need to do is have them be trained by a Chapter like the Hawk Lords or one of the other aerial specialists, then you have the excuse necessary to use Thunderhawk insertions of assault troops.

 

Once I have the 3 units of assault marines and the libby I have painted up I will post some pics and over the next few days I will try to build some decent fluff.

 

The PC&A segment of the forum is more intended for things like modeling and painting, so you'll likely get more commentary and advice there than you would here.

[Espada Azul]

First off, welcome to Liber! I hope you know what you're getting into by posting here, ahaha.

 

Anyway, first off... I noticed that there's no mention at all of whether or not your Chapter has opted for reconstitution or going out in a blaze of glory. I am assuming it's the latter, but perhaps this is all still nebulous for you at this point.

 

If you do go for the slow reconstitution route, take I'll go on a limb here and assume that your Chapter, at least at first, is a Codex Chapter. While the remnants seem to be all Assault-focused, and this might definitely influence things as they try to recover, but in the end they'll still follow the dictates of the Codex (at least as much as the situation allows), which means you'll eventually see Battle Companies with Tacticals and Devastators alongside the Assault squads. Perhaps you could have it that, like the Blood Angels, all the post-reconstruction marines will have a preference for Assaults, but if the situation calls for a Tactical squad, then they'll be tacticals for the mission.

 

Also, before anyone else asks this, what are your Chapter's practices, its rituals and proclivities? Here in Liber we're more interested in the background of the Chapter than how it actually plays on the tabletop.

 

EDIT: Beaten to the punch by Apothete.

[Darrell]

I love Ultramarines but think they are too rigid to the great book

 

There is something I do not understand, so maybe you could give me a bit more insight into why you (and maybe others) feel this way.

 

A lot of people seem to feel that the Ultramarines are unlikable because of how much they adhere to the Codex Astartes. But, the Codex Astartes is a HUGE work that covers thousands of years of warfare and is no longer simply the work of Guilliman but has been added to by other authors. It covers multiple styles of combat, multiple theatres of war, multiple types of enemies. And, even the Primarch who first put the Codex to whatever it was put to, saw that there are times when he must break the rules he followed so strictly (Specifically referring here to when he attacked Alpharius by doing an unsupported drop behind enemy lines). The Codex allows for a vast amount of adaptation and, at a certain point, it stops being a work a soldier consults about how to fight and instead becomes a philosophical work that tells him why he fights.

 

But, okay, some people might not like that.

 

However, after saying that you feel the Ultramarines follow the Codex too closely, you tell us you want your Chapter to be all about jump packs and Thunderhawk drops. How does relying on one tactic, and one type of fighting, make your Chapter more diverse when the Codex Astartes allows for that style of fighting and every single other style as well? If you're looking more for painting and playing an army focused on jump packs, you could just play the 8th Company of a Codex adherent Chapter and that would work perfectly fine.

[CantonWC]

There is something I do not understand, so maybe you could give me a bit more insight into why you (and maybe others) feel this way.

 

A lot of people seem to feel that the Ultramarines are unlikable because of how much they adhere to the Codex Astartes. But, the Codex Astartes is a HUGE work that covers thousands of years of warfare and is no longer simply the work of Guilliman but has been added to by other authors. It covers multiple styles of combat, multiple theatres of war, multiple types of enemies. And, even the Primarch who first put the Codex to whatever it was put to, saw that there are times when he must break the rules he followed so strictly (Specifically referring here to when he attacked Alpharius by doing an unsupported drop behind enemy lines). The Codex allows for a vast amount of adaptation and, at a certain point, it stops being a work a soldier consults about how to fight and instead becomes a philosophical work that tells him why he fights.

 

Hey Darrell. Y'know, I think we touched upon this briefly in my own topic, but it always bothered me how GW chooses to write this particular bit of fluff. GW likes to use phrases like "rigidly adhere to the Codex," "it is unthinkable to deviate from the Codex," etc. Implying that the Codex is some static work and mindlessly adhering to it is bad. But if the Codex really is an all-encompassing work similar to say, the Art of War, and contains basic principles that will always apply to warfare, why would anyone want to deviate from it? Even if a SM Chapter just does exactly what the Codex says in any given situation, they would be okay 95% of the time, right? Chapters like the Black Templars and Space Wolves would be regarded as insane for disregarding even basic, common sense principles of warfare.

[daveclark890]

the rigid UM stuff is more table top than fluff, after all Ideus used a jump pack to try and blow the bridge!!

 

I plan on maybe using landspeeders when my army is bigger (again table top) but im sure that they would train in the use of jump pacs in many theatres of war, be it in a hive or ship to ship or descent into assault on an open battle field.

 

Thanks for the feed back and keep it coming!!