Primaris Company and my return....

[arizonajirt]

After a long 4 year break due to work and family commitments and having to sell off over 90% of all my models, terrain and such, I am slowing making a return to 40k. 

 

I no longer have any of my Raven guard outside of my Shrike model. I have been looking at the new shiny models of the Primaris marines. I came across the Necropolis Hawks and thought it would be fun to paint something different. 

 

now here is my issue, I have the new codex, but I cant seen to find any for of a company organization for Primaris chapters. Where can I find this? are the new units basically a swap in the standard battle company? I.E. Intercessors for  Tactical Marines, Hellblasters for Devistators, inceptors for assault marines, aggressors for terminators and reivers for scouts? is my understanding correct?

 

thanks in advance for  the help.

[Dracos]

Welcome back. I just returned to 40k last year after a decade away.

 

You pretty much have the gist of how the Primaris are pictured as working. The analogies are very loose however as the NuMarines perform very different than their OldMarine counterparts. Hellblasters are NOT great versus tanks or light infantry as opposed to Devastators with Lascannon or Heavy Bolters. Aggressors have copious amounts of firepower but lack Terminator flexibility or relative survivability. Intercessors are better ObSec but lack Tactical squad special or heavy weapon set ups.

 

Each Primaris unit performs a particular job and your army design should probably be chosen to reflect your playing style for highest fun quotient. If your looking for solid melee units you’ll have to wait and hope the next wave of Primaris models has something more to offer than Reivers or Aggressors.

 

PS: love the choice of Necropolis Hawks. Probably my favorite “canon” color scheme at the moment.

[Cordova]

Inquisitor Dracos has hit the nail on the head.

 

Really, until there are a few more roles in the Primaris range, you are better off with some old-style marines to fill the gaps.

 

Aggressors are ace against light-infantly and Hellblasters are one of my favourite units, but as a whole, they are slow and in my opinion, lacking anti-tank.

 

To cover that gap, you could paint up some regular Raven Guard Devastators to act as 'overseers' while the newly-blooded Primaris train? Then they can always be replaced once the Primaris inevitably get new units.

[Panzer]

To 'overseer' Primaris you'd take Chaplains fluff-wise, not Devastators. Their job is to shoot things. However you also don't need any fancy justification. Filling gaps so the company is actually battle ready is a perfectly valid in-universe reason as well. ;)

[Panzer]

Alright time for a proper and lengthy answer to OP.

 

 

 

now here is my issue, I have the new codex, but I cant seen to find any for of a company organization for Primaris chapters. Where can I find this? are the new units basically a swap in the standard battle company? I.E. Intercessors for  Tactical Marines, Hellblasters for Devistators, inceptors for assault marines, aggressors for terminators and reivers for scouts? is my understanding correct?

 

 

The roles of a Marine in a company are divided into:  Battleline,  Close Support, ​ Fire Support,  Veteran and  Command. This only loosely translates to the Troops, Fast Attack, Heavy Support, Elite and HQ FOC sections we have crunch-wise.

Now going with a more specific example but going with Ultramarines because they have more detailed informations in the Codex. The 2nd Company has a pool of 6 Battleline squads, 2 Close Support squads, 2 Fire Support squads and a number of specific Command units (1 Captain, 2 Lieutenants). Each squad consists of 10 Marines.

From those pools you assign specific roles to your Marines. For example Hellblaster, Aggressors, Devastators and Centurion Devastators all count as Fire Support squad. So you take your 2 Fire Support squads (20 Marines) available to that Company and assign them the roles of one or more of the units I've listed above. Like 1 Hellblaster squad of 10 + 3 Aggressor squad of 3 each, or 2 Hellblaster squads of 10, or 1 Hellblaster squad of 5 +1 Devastator squad of 5 + 3 Aggressor squads of 3 each and so on. 

 

Now for which roles Primaris units (and the others too) are divided in, you can find that in the Codex from page 68 on but here a quick summary for Primaris units.

Battleline: Intercessors

Close Support: Inceptors, Reivers

Fire Support: Hellblasters, Aggressors

Veterans: none (well Intercessors when you upgrade them via the Stratagem in the Indomitus Crusader specialist detachment I guess)

 

Noteable things are that Aggressors and Terminators don't share the same battlefield role since Terminators are all Veterans which come from the 1st Company, Aggressors are Fire Support which are part of the 2nd-5th and the 9th Company. Also Scouts are separate from the regular battlefield roles and belong to the 10th Company which is a purely Scout Company while Reivers are Close Support which are part of the 2nd-5th and the 8th Company.

They may seem similar but in-universe they are completely separate in function.

 

 

That being said, there aren't any detailed informations to pure Primaris companies/chapters and they are your models anyway so you could do what you want with them. I for example painted my Primaris Ancient as Veteran because I think the guy carrying my companies banner should be at least a veteran (and because all non-Primaris Ancients are Veterans) even tho in the Codexes they are never painted as Veterans.

[MithrilForge]

  Panzer...you fluff nazi!,  you think too much sometimes.

from a gaming perspective it would be smart to include some "Veteran" Dev squads  

 

To cover that gap, you could paint up some regular Raven Guard Devastators to act as 'overseers' Mentors while the newly-blooded Primaris train? Then they can always be replaced once the Primaris inevitably get new units.

 

Mithril.

 

p.s. awesome choice of army !,im sure Darren Latham would be proud to see his Fluff baby growing steadily into armies