Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

I have been toying around with the idea in my head of building an Ultramarine army and reading through the codex I am not seeing anything special about them. I mean come on, these are Ultramarines, the most notable army out of all the space marine armies. Did I miss something in the codex, is there something special to the Ultramarines? Can someone help me out here. Thank you for any help you can give me.

Combat tactics are special to that book. as are the Characters like Calgar and the like.

They are notable for their blandness. Their major points of interest are 1st company tyranid hunters and their special characters (calgar, cassius, tigirus, chronus & telion)

Essentially you can use anything. Whereas tonnes of assault marines and land speeders are out of fluff for salamanders anything goes for ultramarines.

That's kind of the whole point of Ultramarines. They're meant to be the standard Marine that all other Marines are compared to. However, Combat Tactics is a great rule once you learn how to use it to your advantage. If you want to have a special captain in Terminator armor with a TH/SS named "Captain Lysandros" or something more subtle, you're allowed to though.

Synister_Intent wrote:I have been toying around with the idea in my head of building an Ultramarine army and reading through the codex I am not seeing anything special about them. I mean come on, these are Ultramarines, the most notable army out of all the space marine armies. Did I miss something in the codex, is there something special to the Ultramarines? Can someone help me out here. Thank you for any help you can give me.

Half of the special characters in the Space Marine Codex are Ultramarines. They have more named characters than any other Chapter of Space Marines.

Not sure what else you want.

Can an Ultramarine army be competitive?

Certainly.

Yeah they're still very competitive. Pretty much any army can be if you know what you're doing. C:SM have the advantage of being good at everything, but the disadvantage of not being great at anything. It's the whole Jack of All Trades cliche.

A few good starters for making competitive Ultras; tanks and mech infantry. Lots of anti-mech firepower, and TH/SS Termies. A list with those elements can be very competitive.

Well I just bought Calgar and honor guard because I want to field him, he is a BAMF imo.

Calgar is a badass, but he's very expensive and I wouldn't field him outside of 2000+ point games.

I always found cato sicarius to be a good ultra smurf HQ

TBH nothing defines an ultra marine army save for how you paint them.

Sternguard do very well, If you're starting out, Sicarius is an excellent named character. Some drop pods and dreadnoughts mixed in...

I'd make a simple list to start: a few Sternguard sqauds, pair of tactical squads in some sort of DT, a couple dreads (maybe in pods), a moderate HQ, should come out to 1500 points. Flavor to taste after that. Don't forget combat squading and combat tactics and have at it.

Its not optimized or tourney ready, but it should be pretty solid, fairly flexible, and hit hard.

Brother SRM wrote:Calgar is a badass, but he's very expensive and I wouldn't field him outside of 2000+ point games.

i used Calgar once and only once.I don't see what he's meant to be good at. I used him in an Apocalypse game in which he ran up got assaulted by gaunts and was stuck there for the rest of the game(well,until a miscalculated vortex grenade of mine bounced on him ) im also going to add that his model is really ugly (why would you where all that armor and then not even bother putting a helmet on?)

flyingsquirrels wrote:
i used Calgar once and only once.I don't see what he's meant to be good at. I used him in an Apocalypse game in which he ran up got assaulted by gaunts and was stuck there for the rest of the game(well,until a miscalculated vortex grenade of mine bounced on him ) im also going to add that his model is really ugly (why would you where all that armor and then not even bother putting a helmet on?)

You say that like helmetless Space Marines is a new thing. If you don't like it, just give him a Terminator head. He makes your entire army choose to pass or fail morale tests whenever, has a whole mess of powerfist attacks, and a special stormbolter just for the sake of it. He should be IDing characters or elite multiwound models, or beating the crap out of MCs. He's not meant to kill a horde of gaunts. You can't really say you don't know what he's good at it when you've only used him once, and even then against something he's wasted on. He's not like the world's best character or anything, but he's a fun choice for big games.