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Is it possible to play an army with its own codex and ignore the chapter traits?  For instance, if I wanted to play Black Templar, could I play them straight codex or do I have to use the righteous zeal, kill them all, abhor the witch, et al when I play?  I guess it's not a big deal one way or the other, but I would like to know just to clarify.

I'm looking to get started with 40k.  I've always had a bit of a fascination with it and so I'm going to play a small game (500pt) with a proxy army with a friend to see how I like it.  If I do and decide to take the plunge and buy my own minis, I was leaning towards space marines.  I know they're cliched and everyone plays them, but they look cool and are easy to paint.  In any case, I'm having trouble picking which chapter to go with.  I was leaning towards the Imperial Fists, but I'm kind of curious about how the chapter traits work.

Yes, you can always use any paint scheme to represent basic vanilla space marines out of the Space Marine codex.

Even if you end up playing in some tournament that requires you to use the traits/codex of a specific chapter you can always just call your army something slightly different, like "The Dark Templars" and go on using the Space Marine codex rules.

One thing I always want to point out to everyone (and drive home) is that the color of paint on your models does not determine the rules you use. If you play marines, paint your models however you like and then use whatever space marine rule set or chapter codex you want. It doesn't matter. Just make sure you let your opponent know which rule set you are using when you start the game.

The UK Grand Tournament says otherwise (pg 6 of the PDF, eighth bullet point under the heading 'Additionally').

I like the way that they state: "If you decide to use the 'counts as' rule, then there are three very important things to keep in mind."

Then they promptly follow it with four rules.....

Sal

Well if you plan on going to the UK GT, then I suppose you will need to use codex black marines if you're marines are black or codex green marines if your marines are green. However, other than that, you should be good to go. So don't worry too much about it as long as you are not in the major tournament scene (and judging from your original post, it doesn't appear that you are).

Good catch though Ghaz, I was unaware that they put in that clause. Is it that way for US GT's too?

No.

This has nothing to do with the rules, but I should mention that if you're new to miniature painting as a whole (and not just 40K), Imp Fists may not be the best choice, as yellow can be a real pain to paint.