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Hello! I am a long time Space Marine fan, and the new dex has got me thinking it's time to start a new chapter. I've love the history of the Astral Claws, and the colour scheme is fantastic. I'm just trying to think of how it may be possible to add little details which help denote these guys as traitors. Nothing so obvious as a massive rack of severed heads on back packs ala full blown chaos, but subtle thing to show these guys have their own agenda, and don;t gave a jazz what the reast of the imperium thinks.

I do like that GW chose a very knightly looking chapter as the poster boys for going rogue, but i'm having trouble thinking how to make these shining knight a little... grimdark.

Any help greatly appeciated! anyone else have an Astral Claws army? id love to see some!

Too much gold plating on armour, Then you keep a demon weapon instead of handing it over to an inquisitor, Then a spike or two in the wrong place and your on your way to the dark god's realm

Probably keep them loyalist like but scratch out Aquila remove purity seals. have the occasional chaos graffiti or small mutations.

Just how 'chaosy' did they get before the end of the war? I would like to dirty them uo alot, so give the impression of constant engagements, maybe the occasional small trophy from the opposing loyalists. As i understand it, they didn't mutate or even worship chaos until they fled after most of their number was wiped out by loyalists? i may be wrong however.

Not very, they pretty much just obscured the aquilas towards the end. Your best bet might be to model some corpsetakers amongst the ranks, you can make them look fairly chaosy.

 Desubot wrote:
Probably keep them loyalist like but scratch out Aquila remove purity seals. have the occasional chaos graffiti or small mutations.

Brilliant.

Also: angry faces! bare helms are a sure sign of chaos (well, that and space wolves). Add some chaos markings tattooed on their face, or bloody finger painting over their heraldry, and poof!

Actually as above probably chuck in some spacewolf heads in there. chaos doesn't shave.

Im currently working on a astral claws termie with a flagellant head, they work.

How about hiding a few chaos symbols on the models?

Thanks for the tips guys! Any elaboration on the Corpsetakers? i'm not familiar with them. Any links on more reading for the Astral Claws or the Badab War would be appreciated too!

I plan to keep blood stains on blades, maybe the occasional chaos head (the top knots look pretty cool) although i want to avoid any explicit chaos iconography. I get the impresion their deffection was less chaos influenced, and more just their chapter master having his own idea of how the imperium should work. They fought against chaos on many occasions, so am i right in thinking the complete deffection to "the dark side" was more or less a last resort as they where about to get their asses handed to them by the imperial forces?

Scratched-out Aquilas etc. is a good way to say "renegade" without going full "Chaos", you could also consider graffiti on armour - not Chaos stars or whatever, but some boasts, kill tallies, that sort of thing - maybe even squad nicknames, for individual members.

(Because everyone knows that individualism is not tolerated by the Imperium!)

 Dark Apostle 666 wrote:
Scratched-out Aquilas etc. is a good way to say "renegade" without going full "Chaos", you could also consider graffiti on armour - not Chaos stars or whatever, but some boasts, kill tallies, that sort of thing - maybe even squad nicknames, for individual members.

(Because everyone knows that individualism is not tolerated by the Imperium!)

That's a pretty good way to look at it. I like the idea of kill tallies and squad/ character nicknames especially. Maybe fallen salamanders or other loyalist forces on larger bases too.

Astral Claws didn't really go full heretic in appearance till they changed their name and became a CSM warband.

I'd say just use aquila models sparingly and gouge out the few you have with a large X with a hobby knife, and remove purity seals like someone mentioned.

http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Badab_War#.UjN6L8bqlmM
http://warhammer40k.wikia.com/wiki/Astral_Claws

The badab war book is pretty great for fluff, but the rules are sadly pretty outdated now. Corpse takers were apothecaries who pinched the gene seed of fallen marines, friend and foe. Something of a nono to most chapters.

I will try to get a few pics of my astral claws/deathwing now that they are finished.