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I've been away from the hobby for a bit and I'm curious as to what the rarely played Marine armies are out there. Loyalist wise? Traitors?

Are we speaking rules or background?

Rainbow Warriors come to mind.

Background and color scheme, I'd say most of the Badab Crusade guys (though the revisiting of the campaign may have changed that a little).

Any of the paintjobs that are harder to get really good (White Consuls and White Scars come to mind).

Don't see a lot of the metallic marine armies either (Doom Eagles, Silver Skulls, etc.)

Virtually any of the marines that don't have books, sublists, or special characters are rarer.

Ultras, DA, BA, Wolves and Templar are the big five, followed closely by Salamanders. Fists (both Imperial and Crimson) are slightly more common, followed by a few of the big successor chapters: Flesh Tearers, Angels of Redemption, etc.

I'm not sure I've ever seen more than one army of any Chapter not named above.

syr8766 wrote:Background and color scheme, I'd say most of the Badab Crusade guys (though the revisiting of the campaign may have changed that a little).

Even then, I haven't seen many - Executioners, Minotaurs, Lamenters, Mantis Legion, Space Sharks - although the Raptors are probably the most commonly seen of this era, what with the revamp they got during the Battle for Armageddon that changed them over to a nice green color scheme instead of the ghastly blue and yellow they used to wear.

syr8766 wrote:Any of the paintjobs that are harder to get really good (White Consuls and White Scars come to mind).

I don't know - White Consuls, maybe, but White Scars are pretty common.

syr8766 wrote:Don't see a lot of the metallic marine armies either (Doom Eagles, Silver Skulls, etc.)

Very true.

Mentor Legion is another Chapter that used to see more love, but is pretty rare, these days. Check out wh40k.lexicanum.com for a good listing of Chapters and info on color schemes, etc.

Angry Marines.

theHandofGork wrote:Angry Marines.

That's so cute.

Probably not what the guy had in mind when he painted that up...

Stelek wrote:That's so cute.

Probably not what the guy had in mind when he painted that up...

There's another picture of a marine in similar colors/scheme....but he has a oversized 'Power boot'. They freehanded 'Powerboot' on one side and 'Ceramite Enema' on the other. It was so full of win I cried.

That's so cute.

Probably not what the guy had in mind when he painted that up...

Dude, that's not photoshopped...

Back on topic.

http://warhammer40k.wikia.com/wiki/List_of_Space_Marine_Chapters

This might help you. I personally like the Steel Confessors, but that's just me.

And as far as Chaos goes? What's rare there. Word Bearers I hear.

For oringinal legions, yes. And Alpha Legion as well...

As far as rarity goes you have the 20 (18) founding legions and the rest.

As far as the founding loyalist chapters go, the ones with a codex are the most popular. Dark Angels, Blood Angels, Space Wolves along with Ultramarines who do not have a codex, but are the base line for the SM codex, then Salamanders, Crimson, and Imperial Fists, and Iron Hands. White Scars are around, but 4th edition hurt them. And IMO Raven Guard is the rarest.

For Chaos there are the big four: Thousand Sons, World Eaters, Death Guard and Emperor’s Children. Iron Warriors are still around from their 3rd edition glory, and the same goes for Word Bearers. I have not seen many Night Lords, or Alpha Legion armies.

As far as the non-founding legions it will have to be the Black Templars as the most common because they have a codex. Also popular are chapters that have had some fiction written about them like the Flesh Tearers and Soul Drinkers. Red Scorpions are around because they have FW models, but they are still very rare. After that they are all rare. Most people would rather make up there own chapters than choosing one of the obscure ones.

This would be a good question to ask over at the B&C. They live for this kind of stuff.

Blackmoor wrote:For Chaos there are the big four: Thousand Sons, World Eaters, Death Guard and Emperor’s Children. Iron Warriors are still around from their 3rd edition glory, and the same goes for Word Bearers. I have not seen many Night Lords, or Alpha Legion armies.

Tru dat for the Night Lords - because really, who wants those big fatty bat ears on their helmets?

No one, not even Night Lords.

Hey, I have Night Lords, bat helms and all!

I always like the Silver Skulls from a few years back. Again, a rare metallic scheme. With the fashion of NMM, i'm sure that they're unfairly overlooked. If anyone plays them and has pictures, I'd love to see them. It tried to paint a few and found it tough. Having said that I recently nailed a decent formula to paint gold.

Old School Minotaurs.

Yellow and Red spiral for the win!

Blackmoor wrote:Hey, I have Night Lords, bat helms and all!

I'm sorry.

Anti-Mag wrote:I always like the Silver Skulls from a few years back. Again, a rare metallic scheme. With the fashion of NMM, i'm sure that they're unfairly overlooked. If anyone plays them and has pictures, I'd love to see them. It tried to paint a few and found it tough. Having said that I recently nailed a decent formula to paint gold.

No Silver Skulls, but I do have Celestial Lions.

I've made my decision. I will be going with the Word Bearers. I've so many diabolical ideas but they will have to wait until after I have moved.

Word Bearers are great, but it might be worth noting that the new Marine codex will be released soon. Might be worth checking out before you embrace Chaos.

Liking the Lions Valhallan! Tried to work out the base colour but couldn't pin it down.

I do several layers. Black primer, followed by drybrushes of tin bitz, brassy brass (vallejo's brazen brass), shining gold. I then ink with thinned chestnut ink, then so a light drybrush of burnished gold then a lighter of mithril silver. Doing a squad at a time, it moves quite fast.

Of course, I'm out of chestnut, and I've moved to gryphonne sepia. We'll see how that works.

Valhallan42nd wrote:

Anti-Mag wrote:I always like the Silver Skulls from a few years back. Again, a rare metallic scheme. With the fashion of NMM, i'm sure that they're unfairly overlooked. If anyone plays them and has pictures, I'd love to see them. It tried to paint a few and found it tough. Having said that I recently nailed a decent formula to paint gold.

No Silver Skulls, but I do have Celestial Lions.

As far as popularity goes, the Celestial Lions are very popular for some reason especially since they have a somewhat obscure fluff from the Armageddon campaign. At one time I was thinking about doing them, and they show up a lot at Golden Demon contests.

Anyone play with Relictors?

Howard A Treesong wrote:Anyone play with Relictors?

I do.. but I go back and forth between them and my black dragons.

I'm working on some Thousand Sons with gold armour, and I'm pleased with how it's turning out. I want them to be all gold, so defining shoulder pads and sunken plates is a little tricky.

Still much easier than NMM though...

Anti-mag,

You could try a fine point dark brown paint pen to "black line" the plates, etc. You could also the new washes, like sepia or ogryn flesh; they seem to work well. Sepia gave my Lions a more antiqued look.

Yeah, I have the new washes. I quite like them; they seem much more subtle than before and they don't look completely different in the morning. On a few occassions I found that a wash looked great when it was wet, only for it to dry with the texture of a lunar landscape. The new washes seem to remedy this, although my experiments are still in their infancy.

On the whole I use washes in the final stage of painting a model, to tie all the colours together. A little like looking at a rainbow with sunglasses: the colours are different, but they are all linked. I found Gryphonne Sepia (what a weird spelling GW) helps me to link up my golden highlights.