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An idea occurred to me and I wanted to ask if anyone else had done this before, I'm thinking they probably have. Has anyone done "alternate reality" armies? Some of the most obvious kinds of these armies I can think of are from realities in which:

The Blood Angels turned to Chaos

The Thousand Sons curbed their dabbling and remained loyal

The Fire Hawks don't become the Legion of the Damned, and instead become a loyalist "fire-based" chapter

etc.

From a painting and modeling perspective, yes. I've yet to seen anyone justify those projects thus, though. "Alternate reality" isn't really a necessity when there's so much room for custom chapters, counts-as armies, etc. that don't force you to actively break an already expansive and flexible universe - most folks just change the name, tweak the chapter symbol, and call it a day, instead.

It does create an opportunity to build some really cool armies I really wouldn't mind going up against loyalist thousand sons, if the guy had a cool story about them! About some splinter force that decided to remain loyal etc etc

Mostly people seem to just create custom chapters to fit what they like, like oadie said

 oadie wrote:
From a painting and modeling perspective, yes. I've yet to seen anyone justify those projects thus, though. "Alternate reality" isn't really a necessity when there's so much room for custom chapters, counts-as armies, etc. that don't force you to actively break an already expansive and flexible universe - most folks just change the name, tweak the chapter symbol, and call it a day, instead.

You seem to be quite offended by the idea of an alternate reality army, as if it somehow cheapens the established cannon. I am not sure why, as it is just an exercise in imagination, like the game we play already.

I quite like the idea personally, thought out of your examples, the only one that appeals is the loyalist Thousand Sons. Chaos Blood Angels will have happened anyway, though not on a chapter-level, of course. Unchanged Fire Hawks seem less interesting than Legion of the Damned in most ways, and you can always choose to just paint them up as Badab War-era Fire Hawks with a counts-as-Vulkan in charge of them anyway. How would anyone know they weren't Badab-era anyway, unless you told them?

I wonder what other alternative realities might be interesting...

Dark Eldar painted in Craftworld schemes, as if a Craftworld somehow fell into naughtiness again... still not so keen...

What might be more interesting is some fiction set in an alternate W40k where Horus did win and the original legions are now hunted and close to extinction. One in which, perhaps, the Emperor lost, but was not killed, and Horus uses him as a psychic battery for the Astronomicon still, and Cypher is trying to free him whilst the other Dark Angels did join with Chaos. Maybe Horus is even dead and Lion El'Johnson is the new leader of a Dark Imperium...

That kind of thing appeals.

The Dornian Heresy could be a good starting point for this.
Khornate Space Wolves, Nurgle Blood Angels, Tzeentch Raven Guard, Slaanesi White Scars.
Sons of Horus become the Black Templars and Sigismund of the Imperial Fists is Warmaster of Chaos. It's a good alternative story, and provides lots of good ideas. And that's just the SM side.
Orks that are actually very well organised and equipped?
Tau that are out for extermination, not integration?

Well, like Samuel said, the dornian heresy is a rather interesting read. Also sme ideas I had.

Necrons never getting turned into the mechanical things.

Eldar winning the war against crons.

Sanguiniess not dying at the horus heresy.

 Fifty wrote:

 oadie wrote:
From a painting and modeling perspective, yes. I've yet to seen anyone justify those projects thus, though. "Alternate reality" isn't really a necessity when there's so much room for custom chapters, counts-as armies, etc. that don't force you to actively break an already expansive and flexible universe - most folks just change the name, tweak the chapter symbol, and call it a day, instead.

You seem to be quite offended by the idea of an alternate reality army, as if it somehow cheapens the established cannon. I am not sure why, as it is just an exercise in imagination, like the game we play already.

Either you misinterpreted or I misrepresented the intent of that post. I wanted to suggest that the open-ended nature of the 40k universe is simply the reason why most people don't bother with "alternate reality" (they do something "new" with an identical flavor, instead - successor chapters are a popular out, for this) - they don't want to break canon when they can simply branch off from it. I've seen CSM armies that use BA models, but they were billed as corrupted successors/offshoots or entirely new "counts as" creations, not BA with their history rewritten. Adding to, not actively rewriting, is the usual route, regardless of whether you agree with the latter method. I had simply hoped to spell out the rationale for it.

Personally, I don't see any reason to go and rewrite the universe when you can easily append it, but it's not as if I'm offended by the idea - I simply find it unnecessary (and, at worst, inelegant).

It's not my glass of whiskey personally, but whatever floats your boat.

Then again, I'm also not a fluff oriented kind of person. I play particular armies for HOW they work, rather than the history. If the history is cool as well, then hell yeah. Oh, and looks. If it looks cool, I'm also game. That's 1 aspect where I never really grew up...

I painted my nids fluorescent green, as something different (Hive Fleet Luminosus, adding not rewriting), the space pups in my case are much darker (that's more common), and the Space Sharks I'm attempting to accrue at the moment will be red. Like, Blood angels, vivid, holy crap that's red red. Again though, I'm not a fluff guy. If you wanted to face me with an army like that (loyalist thousand sons!), I'd say go for it, Just wear a helmet to your GW shop, lest you take a tire-iron to the back of the head for thinking outside the box