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My Ultimate plan/ambition for my custom Chapter Space Marine Army is to have 3 armies, one for each of the three Chapters I've designed. One will be quite a shooty/balanced army, basically an Ultramarine successor chapter, one will be assault oriented, geared as a compromise (tactic-wise) between Raven Guard and White Scars, and the other shall be a tank heavy army, geared slightly (theme-wise) as a mix of Conan the Barbarian/Norse legends. Now this is a long-run kinda thing, and I'm pretty sure there's no problem with the rules, but until I can fight with an army of one colour scheme, the three colour schemes will be present in my force. I just wanna know if this would be acceptable from a fluff point of view. (Based on that, this may belong in the background section, but oh well). Example would be sternguard from the first army, assault squad from the second and a tank from the third. Would this really happen, because the Space Marines are my 'themed' armies, don't really care about tactics with them (that's my Eldar force, where fluff has little relevance), would three Chapters combine forces on a regular basis? And, yeah, I'll be using C:SM for each of them, I'm not mixing different MEQ armies.

I believe C:SM says specifically that different chapters fight alongside each other quite often in the bit about using special characters in a different chapter.

As long as all three are the same codex, go for it. You're not breaking any rules by just painting your guys in different colors. Personally I like Marine armies to be unified, but my Guard consists of Steel Legion, Cadians, and Catachans, so what do I know.

It would help your opponents keep track of units no end if, for example, all your assaulty unit are green and all your shooty units are white, etc.
I see no problem with it and nowhere does it state that all models have to be a uniform color. If they tell you this they are lying, just look at Eldar aspect warriors.

Although it depends on your list to how odd it would look, having a decent mix of colors would look fine but if you have 9 green units 9 white units and 1 random blue tac squad it may look a little wierd.

Requia wrote: in the bit about using special characters in a different chapter.

Thats not what it means, it says you can use the rules and stats for a special character to represent a similarly epic hero from your chapter, but not that thee hero has been loaned out.

There are loads of fluff reasons why a mix of chapters would fight together such as crusades or the defence of important worlds/systems/hive cities.

BluntmanDC wrote:

Requia wrote: in the bit about using special characters in a different chapter.

Thats not what it means, it says you can use the rules and stats for a special character to represent a similarly epic hero from your chapter, but not that thee hero has been loaned out.

Actually, it says both.

"This can represent the common occurrence of different space marine chapters fighting alongside one another"

It then goes on to say

"Alternatively, you can use the model and rules for a named character to represent a mighty hero of a different chapter"