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Hi,

I am completely new to 40k as I have always played Fantasy. A few months back I got the dark vengeance box set and decided to play with Dark Angels. I have now decided that I prefer Chaos, I want to expand my army outside the box set. I have a few ideas of what i want but I need help with a few things. Everyone keeps asking me what chapter I am going to use, I have the codex and there are loads to choose from which has left me a little confused. What are chapters? Also If I decide to go with a particular chapter does that mean I can only use certain types of units? Also does the mark that i use have to correspond with my chosen chapter? For example if I choose the mark of khorne, will I have to choose a chapter that is Khorne based?

I have also been told that chapters have their own colours, does this mean I have to paint all my units including cultists that colour?

Stupid questions I know but I don't want to start painting my miniatures and realise I have done it all wrong.

Thanks for your help

chapters and chapter colors mean nothing... they look nice and add background fluff to your army.... you are only limited by yourself, the FOC, and the points system

A chapter, is a group of space marines (Of chaos space marines) who band together under similar ideals, and the same genetic's (Space marines all use the genes of one of the 20 original space marines, to enhance themselves)

You can either pick a chapter that is allready established, or simply make your own, with it's own colour scheme's.

Chaos also has the unique thing of having certain cults. They are

Khorne berzerkers. (Khorne meleeoholics)
Plague marines. (Nurgle-infested marines)
Noise marines (Slaanesh, noise weapon wielding marines)
Thousand Suns (Tzeentchian sorcerous marines)

But, you can paint any unit's in any style you choose, if you create your own chapter. A chapter might be dedicated to a single god, or many god's, so you can paint your army how you like. But, for dedicated to god's units, it's best to stick to -

Khorne - Tones of red
Nurgle - Tones of rot, so green, black, sickly yellow's, pale whites.
Slaanesh - Purples, pink's, Fleshtones, e.x
Tzeentch - Blues.

Otherwise, it's up to you You can have Nurgle cultists and Khorne cultists, Tzeentch lord's, and Slaanesh marines.

The only limitation, is a character dedicated to one god, cannot join a unit from another god. So no Tzeentch sorceror's, with Khorne berzerkers, for instance

Khorne berzerkers. (Khorne meleeoholics) - kinda pointless these days
Plague marines. (Nurgle-infested marines) - The better choice
Noise marines (Slaanesh, noise weapon/cover save negating) -1 trick ponies
Thousand Suns (Tzeentchian sorcerous marines) - not good enough

But, you can paint any unit's in any style you choose, if you create your own chapter. A chapter might be dedicated to a single god, or many god's, so you can paint your army how you like. But, for dedicated to god's units, it's best to stick to -

Khorne - Tones of red
Nurgle - Tones of rot, so green, black, sickly yellow's, pale whites.
Slaanesh - Purples, pink's, Fleshtones, e.x
Tzeentch - Blues.

Personally I went black legion/night lord troops and painted the elites the specific colours for effect.

did kinda leave me with 50 figures I'll rarely use outside of apocalypse games,,,, Your choice,

Another way to think of 40k is a sand box...YOUR sand box...Games Workshop has established the box for you to play in...it's up to you HOW you want to play

and I'll give you an example of how you can play...let's say you want to play with an already established chapter because for this example it's just easier to pick the Black Legion

The Black Legion is GW's established go to Chaos Legion your "vanilla" chaos legion so to speak and in established fluff or..background they have access to everything

a Black legion Khornate marine would be Black and then maybe a splash of red with bolt pistol/axe
a Black legion Noise Marine would be black and then some pink and a sonic weapon
a Black legion Plague Marine would be black and green
Black legion thousand son would be black and blue

all in one army..of course you don't have to pick the Black Legion you could call them The Senior Citizen Marine retirement Brigade and model them all with Power Canes and Wheelchairs with Hammer of Wrath if you so choose!

Out in the 40k universe there's even a Beach Party Necron army...point is..be as serious or silly as you want and rule number one is to have fun

Some people like to play a specific legion (or chapter) for fluff reasons, or just because yjey think the army looks cool. For example, someone planning on running tons of cultists might decide to play and Alpha Legion Army, adoption the Alpha Legion colour scheme across their force because in their background it says that they make wide use of cultists. That same player may wish to include some Plague Marines or Khorn Berzerkers in his army, and so paint them using the Alpha Legion colours using the stock models, or may choose to convert or "kitbash" a squad together to fit more in line with the background of their army. All this is perfectly acceptable.

If you want to make your own warband, you can do whatever you like. You can paint them whichever colours you want (though certain colours are much harder to paint than others - white and yellow spring to mind imediately), and include whichever units you want. This is also fine.

Personally, I play a black legion army with an emphasis on Slaanesh.I paint all of my regular marines in the black and gold, and do things like tassels and topknots in pink/purple. I do also have a couple units of plague marines and berzerkers which I have painted in greens and reds respctively, with no real tie in in colour to the marines. I do this for simplicity sake when gaming, so that my opponant can take one look at my army and see that squad A are regular marines, Squad B are plague marines, and Squad C are Khorne Berzerkers without having to bend over and check them out for markings, and can easily tell which is which during the game.

We don't have chapters over here at Chaos, we still run with terribly old fashioned legions. 9 to choose from, colouring is fairly open to interpretation (Within reason, for example the Black Legion looks best when painted black). While it's not fluffy you don't really need to concern yourself with what 'goes' with what in the background and you might as well do what everyone here says, load up on Nurgle everything and ally in some Tzeench daemons, fluff be damned!