Army Heraldry question

[Closet Skeleton]

Chaplain is not second in command of the Company - that would be the First Sergeant/Senior Veteran Sergeant of the Company who would take control should the captain be incapacitated during action. Chaplains are and must be outside the regular chain of command in order to fulfil their primary purpose of being a chaplain - let alone they will not be as fully trained in tactics as the company squad sergeants...

There are actually two places Chaplains occupy in the codex command hierarchy, companies and the Reclusiam. A Chaplain in a company may be from the Reclusiam but while he's in the company he's fully part of the company. Reclusiam chaplains are like you say busy being chaplains.

Chaplains lead Demi-companies, that's basically the very definition of a lieutenant and a lieutenant is a Captain's second in command while a sergeant is not unless the lieutenant is dead.

Space Marine lieutenants were a proper thing in first edition but their absence is probably a good thing to avoid hero spam.

Quite simply, a chaplains training leaves him poorly suited to advanced company level/support tactics unless he has neen around a long time.

You're using too much logic and not enough reading nonsense a codex writer thought was cool

As a side note, closet skeleton, all honor guard (not just Dante's) had gold helmets in third edition. However, Sometimes Dante was depicted with honor guard that were completely cold.

There's a red helmeted honour guard in the 3rd ed codex. Index Astartes has a gold helmet for everyone's honour guard according to the drawings but only shows the models for Dante's.

Which may not represent how any 3rd ed army was painted but I was just reporting what I could see in the pamphlet's colour section and didn't bother checking Index Astartes because I was already thumbing through 3 books and 3 pdfs.

Though Index Astartes still has a red helmeted company standard on foot as well as Dante with red helmeted Techmarine and Sanguinary Priest and those were only fieldable in Honour Guard squads.

So you're not wrong but it was very confusing.

[Leonaides]

Closet skeleton. I was referring to the daily life of a space marine. 4hrs sleep, up for live fire individual and squad based tactics in the morning. Eat lunch at midday then specialists go off to do their specialism training/duties in the afternoon while line marines in the companies practice company level tactics with armour support with their companies. So a chaplain will not be training in larger than squad level/small unit work with any given company most of the time but the senior squad sergeant will be training in those advanced tactics with the troops he would end up leading. And i suspect most of the time if the captain dies, the plan has gone very sideways and someone who knows those larger tactics and manouvres will be needed to come up with a new plan on the fly...

[Xenith]

Yes, but what heraldry does that chaplain that may or may not be leading the company, or counselling the most senior sergeant use?

 

Old rules used to allow you to permanently attach a chaplain to a command squad, what colour would his skull helmet be?

[Xenith]

As I understand it, the company champion is a member of the company, he's not taken from 1st company.

 

Thus, he should have a gold helmet (champion) but company marking (colored blood drop not skull) on the shoulder. Maybe a personal icon since he's kind of second in command just after the captain.

I think you'll like the look of my Champion, above

[Sentinalsam87]

Might help you to build a representative army. This is taking a specific fluff campaign and building your army to represent it. The most recent would be 1st or 2nd Company force taking part in the defense against the 13th Black Crusade, as featured in Angels Blade. Or you could run the same companies in the Shield of Baal Campaign. Or just look for some campaigns on the 40k wiki and build to represent that. I built my Flesh Tearers to represent the battle of Lysios in the Shield of Baal, and my 30k Blood Angels are built to represent some survivors just after Signus.

[Spikedhalo]

Might help you to build a representative army. This is taking a specific fluff campaign and building your army to represent it. The most recent would be 1st or 2nd Company force taking part in the defense against the 13th Black Crusade, as featured in Angels Blade. Or you could run the same companies in the Shield of Baal Campaign. Or just look for some campaigns on the 40k wiki and build to represent that. I built my Flesh Tearers to represent the battle of Lysios in the Shield of Baal, and my 30k Blood Angels are built to represent some survivors just after Signus.

 

Thanks for the good idea! I'm going to read that three books of Shield of Baal setting, and will hope to find some ideas there!