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So I'm going through my old White Dwarfs looking for this and that and came across WD#97.

What's special about that? Well it largely details the chapter of the 'Ultra-Marines', who were created during the 3rd founding and only got chapter number 13 to replace one of the shamed traitor legions. Marneus Calgar is the chapter master but never leaves the house to do any fighting because he's been "badly mauled" and their chief librarian is the half-eldar Illyan Nastase.

Meanwhile the Crimson Fists were on the cover of the first games book and were the feature of the first 40K scenario offered in White Dwarf - Rynn's World.

So how did it come to be that the Ultra-marines were rewritten, most obviously to become a founding chapter, and get so much love from GW while the Crimson fists were demoted to the second founding and pushed largely into the background?

3rd edition i belive.


before that, it was the Crimson Fists that were on most artwork.

Grey Templar wrote:before that, it was the Crimson Fists that were on most artwork.

And should have stayed there

bigmek35 wrote:

Grey Templar wrote:before that, it was the Crimson Fists that were on most artwork.

And should have stayed there

If you don't like Crimson Fists you ain't no friend of mine.

Ultramarines had their own codex in 2nd ed, and it was used much like the current Space Marine one. It was Codex: Ultramarines, Codex: Space Wolves, and Codex; Angels of Death. I remember the old box art for the bikers had an Ultramarine on it, so I'm guessing it started around then. Ultras weren't the poster boys until near the end of 3rd ed, as Crimson Fists were on the cover of the Marine codex, and Black Templars were on the starter set/rulebook. 4th edition is really when the age of Ultramarines as we know it started.

back in the day a lot of the box art had varied chapters, I remember that the predator was black templars and the rhino was dark angels.

Around 4th ed everything went ultras.

Ultramarines were the "standard" marines from 2nd edition onwards. They were, IIRC, the first chapter to get their own codex (although really it codex: vanilla marines). There was still plenty of love for the angels both dark and blood and of course space puppies, but the plastic marine kits were all painted in the colours of the ultras on the cover art. In successive editions they became more and more so, with increasingly ridiculous fluff about how awesome they are.

There was some pretty funky stuff in the first edition. Half eldar, lol.

Ultramarines just creeped into favour, personally I believe its due to the writers just going 'Grox, Grox, XENO!' and choosing them, but I digress.

2nd ed definitely set them up. 3rd ed consolidated. 4th Cemented.

Obsidian wrote:2nd ed definitely set them up. 3rd ed consolidated. 4th Cemented.

5th build a giant fortress with death-lazors around the core, permanenting it forever?

AlmightyWalrus wrote:

Obsidian wrote:2nd ed definitely set them up. 3rd ed consolidated. 4th Cemented.

5th build a giant fortress with death-lazors around the core, permanenting it forever?

But you know, the Imperial Fists are good at breaking fortresses

And the templars are good at setting up new ones, and this metaphor has gone too far....

Nah the ultramarines won. Now everybody wants to be like them

Prior to the 2nd ed. Codex:Ultramarines (which actually appeared a good couple of years into 2nd ed.) all chapters were just Space Marines. Color schemes were the only difference, and everyone had the same kind of terminators and so on, you just put a lot of bikes in and painted it white and called it 'White Scars' if that's what you wanted to do, but no specific chapter had any innate abilities that gave them entirely different rules. The beginning of the end of game balance, and what we now know as Codex Creep was the Space Wolves codex, the 2nd Chapter to gain their own individual rules in 2nd ed. They were (and some things just stay that way) simply superior marines just for being space wolves. Then they did it again with Angels of Death (BA/DA). Before that first first Codex was released, nobody had any idea what 'codex creep' could become, and there were no real poster boys, just Marines in general. Pick a color you like and go with it.

Guitardian wrote:Then they did it again with Angels of Death (BA/DA).

Of course, Dark Angels were unequivocally the worst army, since they were just more expensive marines for no reason, opposite the Space Wolves.

Actually I totally hear you on that. C:AoD was pretty hard on the DA. I wasn't suggesting it just got better and better with each release, sorry. The BA were pretty good, not SW kind of good, but it was a step up from C:Ultra.

What I meant to get accross is that Space Marines stopped being just Space Marines with character added by the player according to taste, and started to become rules entities unto themselves in place of characterized by the player back with the release of the first Codex rulebooks. A LOT of us back then really didn't like this. Being the only chapter represented that was the proxy rulebook for all the other chapters, C:Ultra became the solid "core" marine book with the others being considered by many to be cheesy bastard-stepchildren of the old ways.

That is when the Ultramarines took over as the champions of all the Marine players who didn't like the way this new phenomenon of the creeping escalating rules looked like it was headed (and we were right!). The Ultramarines became the symbol of the last time when the rules were firm and standardized.