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Ok, a quick intro.

Loved 5th, loathed 6th (only played it 3 times in first month of release)...

already played 7th twice after much presuading from a mate. Not in love with it just yet but really liking the new objective system.

So, I have a ton of Space Marines, most of which are Blood Angels but I'll never need as many as I have so I'm reducing them down to around 3k pts. That leaves me with a lot of spare marines. (Most of which need stripping)

I only intend to play 1500pt games so I'm wondering how to go about building a new, fairly competitive list that will make use of some spares.

I have plenty of tactical and assault marines, lots of termies, bikes, speeders, most tank varients, plenty of dreads and a lot of the special characters.

I'd be happy to buy any special characters but not keen on any of the newer units/tanks. I don't mind what Chapter I go for but I already have Black Templars who are now in the codex.

So what 1500 pt list would you make?

Do you like drop pods, rhinos, or bike squads. MSU SM armies are extremely powerful in the maelstorm missions.

I also imagine you don't have any intention of getting new models (an allied imperial knight is a very popular addition to SM lists).

BTW are you guys playing where you discard impossible objectives?

You should look into a bike heavy marine list. Fun and competitive in my opinion, especially if you take the bikes as troops.

Marine legions is where it's at!

Ok thanks guys, I'll definitely look into a bike/rhino heavy force.

I only have 2 dreadpods but they'll be staying with the BAs. I'm quite up for getting a couple though if need be.

As for the Knight option, I not keen on that idea tbh. The models ok but I'm not really looking to spend that much more on 40k when I have so many other systems on the go.

@Zuul, Marine legions? Are we talking lots of foot soldiers or pre heresy stuff?

Also, I don't have Khan, I'm assuming he's the one if I'm going to go rapid response?

White Scars bikes is what Id do in your situation.

You don't... Join the guard!

If you decide to go with bikes then a khan on bike models would be a good purchase (even if you mix in some tactical squads in rhinos khan still gives everyone scout). Just makes sure if you go khan on bike you take some bikes to run him with. You don't actually have to buy the model. He is extremely easy to kitbash a model for and you can always run a successor chapter with a leader named "nahk" who just happens to have the same abilities as khan.

Another entirely valid way to run bike marines is a shield eternal chapter master on bike to protect a command squad (often khan and chapter master in the same list). The only bad thing is that most of the SM biker builds are centered around grav guns in the bike units. So you might have to buy a bunch of grav guns (FW sells them reasonably cheaply).

If you want to run just models you probably have then 6 units of 10 TAC marines in rhinos with either Ravenguard or White Scars (w/ khan) is very powerful right now. Ultramarines, Iron Hands, and some of the forgeworld chapter tactics also work well with rhino spam.

You can mix in drop pods into the above build to carry some ironclad dreads, etc. into most of the lists now. If you want to run full on drop pod lists though you will need 5-7 drop pods and put a bunch of ObjSec units in them. The chapter tactics that work. Salamanders, Imperial Fists, Iron Hands, Ultramarines, White Scars, and some of the forgeworld chapter tactics all work well in these builds.

Also if you already have a nicely painted blood angels force there is not real need to repaint (unless you want to). It is a pretty well accepted thing to just run any SM models as any SM codex you want.

Also Iron Hands are actually surprisingly effective with a shield eternal CM and a mix of rhinos, bikes, and dreads and TAC squads in pods.

The biggest thing in 7ed is to stay mobile and flexible. This is why MSU SM builds are so good because they are good at everything and can cover the entire board with units that can do their jobs. Try to stay away from footslogging marines around the board as they are too slow and too few in numbers to do this effectively.

Thanks guys for the pointers!

@ansacs, good shout on the kitbashing of Khan, or is that Nahk? I actually really like that idea as the big turn off of White Scars is, well the White bit! I really don't enjoy painting white so much so that even my priests in the BAs are mostly red!

I have about 3 tact squads and 3 assault squads who could easily be re-issued as tact marines and i have plenty of rhino chassis' hanging around so a mechanised force is more than likely now. I do love dreads (which is handy being a BA player ) so I may have to get a couple more pods for them.

As for running my BAs as a SM army the main reason for doing a new chapter is that a lot of the BAs need re-painting anyway as they were my first chapter and so a lot of the painting is pretty poor tbh. The better more recently painted BAs will remain as they are. So I figured if I'm going to repaint stuff, I may as well do a new colour!

Ok so I'm going to go through and see exactly whats what! Thanks again fellas!

NP. happy to help.

Being able to make up your own chapters, color schemes, and stories is one of the strengths of the 40K mythos.

I would also consider that the new BA codex is coming out soon and from the precedence set by SW and SM it is going to be extremely good.