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I want to start a new army, as I am starting to get bored of just using black undercoat and a fine detail brush ( ), but I want to keep with the non-codex space marines idea (cos ultrasmurfs sre just overdone). I was thinking Dark Angels, and painting them like it says in the How to paint space marines book, drybrushing green and building up

are they a good army to paint and game with? If not, any better solutions?

Depends.

If you want to play regular Space Marines (I.e core of tactical squads supported by other units), then Dark Angels are not a brilliant choice. Their book has many pieces of equipment that are weaker than in the normal SM book, so you might as well just use that and keep the DA Fluff and colour scheme.

BUT

If you want to play an all Termiantor or all Bike list, Then DA are fantastic. Okay so you have to take a special charector (Belial for Deathwing terminators, Samael for Ravenwing bikers), but look at the pro's. All your units are either fearless or a vehicle, you get a fast moving and tough force, decent weaponry, and interesting Fluff. Unfortunaetly, you won't be able to paint the Green you were talking about if you use standard Death or Raven (Or DeathRaven) wing lists, but hey, that's what successor chapters are for.

By and large, the DA are not really weaker than then space marine list. Some of their items are not as good, and some are better; the real issue is that they are best played in specific builds, and are do not have the same variety of units as the regular space marines book, but they are by no means weak.

RxGhost wrote:By and large, the DA are not really weaker than then space marine list. Some of their items are not as good, and some are better; the real issue is that they are best played in specific builds, and are do not have the same variety of units as the regular space marines book, but they are by no means weak.

I suppose a better way of wording it would be that, unless you want scoring terminators, the Space Marine codex has more units, better equipment, cheaper units, better vehicles, better rules, and more Ultramarines.

Deathwing and Dualwing are the only viable builds. Just play codex Marines with Dark Angels models and colors if you'd like to.