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I am an Eldar player. Have been since I started, and always wanted to play them.

I want to branch out, and logically playing Space Marines makes sense, since i can build at least 5 armies for the price of 2 and a half. Now the question is which Space Marine chapter is the best to start with?

Please give supporting arguments since I only really know the C:SM codex in terms of marines.

IMO I would go for Salamanders. I love them, they can easily look awesome, they're fluff is cool, they have Vulkan. Awesome.
also... please, please, please, no one say Blood Angels.

What is Salamanders?

Make up your own chapter, that way you can play any codex you like.
Or you could choose chapter based on the models? Blood Angels or Space Wolves? What ever gets your juices flowing.

phyrephly wrote:What is Salamanders?

Militant blacksmiths, basically. They use a lot of flamers, meltas and thunder hammers, and manufacture a lot of artificer armour and master-crafted weaponry. They're also one of the chapters which doesn't act like jerks, actually associating with the humans under their protection and not just watching them suffer to see who's worth turning into a space marine.

Nixon wrote:Make up your own chapter, that way you can play any codex you like.
Or you could choose chapter based on the models? Blood Angels or Space Wolves? What ever gets your juices flowing.

I will probably start my own chapter, that way i can play multiple "armies" which all share models. Space Wolves looked very interesting to me. Vanilla Marines also look very good. But correct me if I am wrong, Space Wolves don't really have that may models in common with other space marine chapters?

Salamanders are a chapter of Space Marines who supposedly live on the planet of Nocturne. The Salamander's gene seed apparently reacts with the radio-activity on Nocturne which makes their skin pitch black. They're chapter master or as they call him "The Master of the Forge", is Vulkan He'Stan. If i remember correctly, He'Stan doesn't actually stay with his marines, but actually searches the galaxy for "artefacts". If your interested on game rules, He'Stan makes all the combimeltas and Melta weapons in his army be twinlinked, since The Salamanders are kinda obsessed with fire. Their fluff says their gene seed makes them slow, so choosing units like Assault marines would be contradicting their fluff.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Sorry i didn't want to make that sound like I'm trying to correct Alex Holker, just was writing a comment at the same time as he was.

I'm doing the same thing as you man, and at the moment i'm leaning towards either the Salamanders or Raven Guard. Salamanders for the mentioned reasons and Raven guard because i like the fluff and they're relatively easy to paint.

Just do like every other sell out space marine player does. Never bother painting your models so you're not stuck with one chapter. Then you too can codex hop to the latest flavor of the month as soon as it's released.

Dont listen to SumYungGui he speaks of evil things.

Space Wolves are very different from others chapters and there models look very different, but you could kit bash them with any other space marine box out there.

I have a unit of Grey hunters that are Veterans in a "Forest Wolves" Army Im building for my Gaming Club

Evil? Certainly is. Dare you to say with a straight face that it doesn't happen though. A lot.

Well I don't play space marines...but my friend does...so sorry Bramnero gotta say bloodangels

Well, theres:
Ultramarines- good special characters, but a tad overrated and nooby.
Salamanders- nice special character, but not much in the way of fluff.
White scars- Biker gang, but special character model has no bike.
Raven guard- nice special character, pose is . basically SM ninjas. Nice fluff.
Imperial fists- Special character hunts titans, but tedious to paint.
Black templars- Extra special rules, but old codex. No new toys.
Blood angels- Extra special rules and characters, but no new toys. Not much in the way of shooty stuff.
Space wolves- exra special rules and characters, but no new toys.
Dark angels- special rules, but no new toys, codex is old.
Vanilla- create your own fluff, no special characters, but can count as a Dark angel/Blood angel/Black templar/Space wolves successor chapter.

Mattieau wrote:I'm doing the same thing as you man, and at the moment i'm leaning towards either the Salamanders or Raven Guard. Salamanders for the mentioned reasons and Raven guard because i like the fluff and they're relatively easy to paint.

Raven guard FTW!!!! look at the FW releases too- pretty good!

I was in the same situation until recently. I have played eldar since 2nd edition. The increasing lameness of the codexes led me to want to try marines.
I tried DA... I won a n objective game, but only because I was sneaky. I also only had two models left at the end of that game. Unfortunately with DA you will find that everything is a bit over-costed compared to the rest of the marines.
After a couple games with DA, I decided to try codex marines. I had a bunch of fun with mixing and matching the special characters. Khan was fun as I got to outflank my whole army a couple times. Vulkan was fun and a bit more competitive. He makes combi-meltas and multi-meltas much more killy. And I tried a couple more of the dudes in the codex.
More recently I got a BA army and that is where the money is at for me. They are fast and aggressive(which was how I liked to play eldar). And every one of your units can have furious charge. (which is one of my favorite usrs) It's kind of like fielding an army of harlequins except they cost less and you actually get real mobility with jump packs. Most of their vehicles are fast as well so it's an easy transition rules wise. In fact, that kind of gives me an idea of a counts as harlequins army using the BA 'dex...

Bramnero wrote:They're chapter master or as they call him "The Master of the Forge", is Vulkan He'Stan.

Tu'shan is their chapter master. He'stan is just some captain-like guy.

DarknessEternal wrote:

Bramnero wrote:They're chapter master or as they call him "The Master of the Forge", is Vulkan He'Stan.

Tu'shan is their chapter master. He'stan is just some captain-like guy.

He'Stan used to be the captain of 4th company. He know has the position of "Forgefather" which is basicly the most honored position of the chapter. The job of the forgefather is to find 9 lost relics of the chapter that were hidden by their Primarch Vulkan. The forgefather carries Vulkan's name, and uses any rescourses of the chapter to recover the artifacts

It is said when the Salamanders recover all of the artifacts (Vulkan already wears 3 in game; Spear of Vulkan, Gauntlet of the Forge and Kesare's Mantle) that their Primarch will return.

Bramnero wrote:Salamanders are a chapter of Space Marines who supposedly live on the planet of Nocturne. The Salamander's gene seed apparently reacts with the radio-activity on Nocturne which makes their skin pitch black. They're chapter master or as they call him "The Master of the Forge", is Vulkan He'Stan. If i remember correctly, He'Stan doesn't actually stay with his marines, but actually searches the galaxy for "artefacts". If your interested on game rules, He'Stan makes all the flamers and Melta weapons in his army be twinlinked, since The Salamanders are kinda obsessed with fire. Their fluff says their gene seed makes them slow, so choosing units like Assault marines would be contradicting their fluff.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Sorry i didn't want to make that sound like I'm trying to correct Alex Holker, just was writing a comment at the same time as he was.

Vulkan He'Stan isn't their chapter master. Their Chapter Master is Tu'Shan. Vulkan He'Stan is the Forgefather, who seeks out Vulkans (as in, their primarch Vulkan) 9 artifacts around the galaxy (3 of which he wields - the Spear of Vulkan, Kesares Mantle and the Gauntlet of the Forge). The Salamanders are one of the more interesting 'Codex' chapters, mainly because they don't follow the codex. They're just not different enough to warrant a divergent Codex.

Salamanders do follow the codex to some degree.

SumYungGui wrote:Just do like every other sell out space marine player does. Never bother painting your models so you're not stuck with one chapter. Then you too can codex hop to the latest flavor of the month as soon as it's released.

Dude, try not to slap us loyal-to-our-chapters SM players in the face there. Gawd knows some of us get enough unnecessary flak for it anyway.

To the OP:

It really depends on what you want to do! Let me try to categorise this:

Shooty:

Vanilla Marines (any chapter)
Salamanders
Space Wolves (to an extent)

Fighty:

Blood Angels
Black Templars
Space Wolves (to an extent, though not as good as the above two)
Raven Guard

If you can answer that question, you should have a narrower list to pick from.

Vanilla does the following really well and has several viable variations to these. There special characters are pretty meh except for vulcan. The codex has the most dud entries of the three new ones but can still make some terrifying lists when built for optimization and is my favorite dex.
-Full mech
-Vulcan with Raiders and TH/SS termies
-Vulcan with pods
-Biker army

SW does the following really well with even more viable variations. They have some of the most solid HQ's in the game and very few duds in the codex and lots of very unique units as far as SM armies go. This is probably 40k's best beginner army.
-Full mech
-Hybrid mech
-Terminator army
-TWC army
-Razor/missile spam

Blood angels does the following well but pay a lot for everything they do and are very elite. They do a lot that regular SM do but better at a very steep price so you end up with a much smaller army. However if you want to run jump pack marines this is the dex to go with and is the only army currently that can take a storm raven transport.
-Descent of angels drop army
-Hybrid mech

-Loki- wrote:

Bramnero wrote:Salamanders are a chapter of Space Marines who supposedly live on the planet of Nocturne. The Salamander's gene seed apparently reacts with the radio-activity on Nocturne which makes their skin pitch black. They're chapter master or as they call him "The Master of the Forge", is Vulkan He'Stan. If i remember correctly, He'Stan doesn't actually stay with his marines, but actually searches the galaxy for "artefacts". If your interested on game rules, He'Stan makes all the flamers and Melta weapons in his army be twinlinked, since The Salamanders are kinda obsessed with fire. Their fluff says their gene seed makes them slow, so choosing units like Assault marines would be contradicting their fluff.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Sorry i didn't want to make that sound like I'm trying to correct Alex Holker, just was writing a comment at the same time as he was.

Vulkan He'Stan isn't their chapter master. Their Chapter Master is Tu'Shan. Vulkan He'Stan is the Forgefather, who seeks out Vulkans (as in, their primarch Vulkan) 9 artifacts around the galaxy (3 of which he wields - the Spear of Vulkan, Kesares Mantle and the Gauntlet of the Forge). The Salamanders are one of the more interesting 'Codex' chapters, mainly because they don't follow the codex. They're just not different enough to warrant a divergent Codex.

My bad.

I have really been trying to NOT play Blood Angels, but that seems about what I want from an army. I am currently running FULL mech eldar 1500 pts (7 grav tanks). But I have no CC elements in my army.

Which of the fighty armies does best?

Phyre, the answer to that question can be arrived at with one question, and it will always be accurate for the foreseeable future: Which codex is the newest Space Marine codex?

phyrephly wrote:I have really been trying to NOT play Blood Angels, but that seems about what I want from an army. I am currently running FULL mech eldar 1500 pts (7 grav tanks). But I have no CC elements in my army.

Which of the fighty armies does best?

Blood angels are the fast CC marine army. SW looks like they should be heavily CC according to their fluff but the end up being really good at shooting and decent in CC because of counter charge there only major CC units are thunder wolf cavalry which work best mixed with mech hybrid and their hero's. Vanilla only has two units that can CC the biker command squad and TH/SS terminators both are very expensive and must be supported by a non CC army.

With near army wide FNP and furious charge, assault marines as troops, decent of angels, FNP granting units, army wide fast vehicles and the storm raven blood angels seem to be the super fast CC army your looking for. I think they will be less powerful when real CC armies get released and pay far too much for tanks but for now they are awesome and the only way to go if you want CC marines unless you want to play super outdated black templars which can do CC too.

SumYungGui wrote:Phyre, the answer to that question can be arrived at with one question, and it will always be accurate for the foreseeable future: Which codex is the newest Space Marine codex?

Oh look, another Bandwagon opinion.

Actually, most people think that each marine codex has it's great points and bad points, with the difference between them in terms of playing ability being nowhere near as huge as certain people make out. Certainly I've had no trouble beating BA with my CSM, despite it not being a competitive list, and CSM are supposed to be the least effective MEQ list bar Necrons.
Not that I believe that's true. I like CSM, you see.

SumYungGui wrote:Phyre, the answer to that question can be arrived at with one question, and it will always be accurate for the foreseeable future: Which codex is the newest Space Marine codex?

This guy clearly hasn't updated his army for fifth edition if he thinks blood angles are the most powerful MEQ dex. To be fast and good at CC, two things marines are not known for, blood angles pay a pretty heavy premium for what they can do.

The reason regular SM and SW are so scary is because they can saturate every FOC with armored units that can threaten everything in the game from a huge distance and both can field a decent counter attack unit if the other side gets too close. Blood angles are scary the turn they hit you but if they loose their momentum they have a much harder time recovering than SM and SW.

But I guess if your army is built for 3rd/4th edition or filled with random stuff all the new dexs look crazy and you may think the one with the most new rules is the craziest of them all. Im not saying blood angles are weak compared to SM/SW just that they are much more focused on CC and get alot of buffs to help them with it but the drawbacks make them surprisingly balanced.

So if you want to collect very fast CC MEQ go blood angels and don't worry about what army other people want you to play because by the time you purchase, build and paint a full marine army some other dex will be the hot new dex everyone cries about and blood angles will be seen for what they are. A MEQ army that trades utility and shooting ability for speed and CC ability.

I didn't play third or fourth edition so it's quite literally impossible for my army to have been 'built for 3rd/4th edition'.

Good try though, A+ for effort!

As opposed to you, my lad, who gains a C for unoriginal and hackneyed statements.
Perhaps you'd care to actually watch some battles involving the armies you've so casually trashed?

So you come in in 5th edition and cant compete with the baseline of 5th ed armies? MEQ is about as basic and strait forward as 40k gets. The defense rests.