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With the release of the new Space Marine codex, I have been spurred to come up with a home brew chapter. The Black Templars are my favorite chapter, and I've been collecting their bits for a long while. Imperial Fists are also high on my list. So I am looking to build a force using Black Templar bitz that will allow me to play both Black Templars and Imperial Fists.

I am a huge fan of Game of Thrones, and one of my favorite characters in the book is Oberyn Martell, the Vyper of Dorn, also known as The Red Vyper. I already have a desert Imperial Guard force I have dubbed the Sand Snakes. So now, I want to expand on that and create a Imperial Fists successor chapter named "The Vypers of Dorn." It just happens to reflect another piece of fiction I love while working well in the 40k universe. It lets you know immediately what their lineage is, and as successors to Imperial Fists, it allows me to use either IF or BT tactics.

I'm imagining their chapter as having a non-standard structure that can be deployed in a couple of ways.
The Imperial Fist half of the force has a high number of sternguard veterans where their special ammunition represents various poisons. (Run a counts as Pedro to unlock as troops)
They will also have a couple of bike units unlocked by a bike captain or chapter master to represent desert maneuver warfare.
Beyond that some tactical squads to take advantage of bolter drill.
Add in a couple of thunderfire cannons to represent their ability to fortify any position and provide a base of fire.
Sternguard and tacticals come down in drop pods. So bikes and cannons prep the target for the drop pod assault.

The other half of the chapter is assault heavy and would use Templar tactics. This would be a heavier assault element containing land raiders packed with assault terminators and supported by large crusader squads. They deploy in force and hammer through the enemy.

The idea being that they can respond with a deadly accurate poisoned strike or a butal hammer blow that flattens the enemy.. But why would a chapter evolve to have such different methods with-in itself and still remain a single chapter?

The entire chapter is fanatically loyal to the Emperor and absolutely brutal towards xenos, heretics, and anyone else who threatens the Imperium. So much so that they are carefully watched by the Inquisition and have nearly been declared renegades on several occasions where their fanatacism caused them to butally overstep their bounds.

I'm also looking for some good suggestions for color schemes. I love the Templars classic Black, White, and Red color scheme, but don't want to stick with that as then they will just look like templars. I want to keep the red as an accent color. and like black as a base, but black doesn't make sense for a desert chapter.

I'm thinking of a Scorpion Green base color, red and orange secondary and black accents, but that might look like a christmas tree on acid.

Hard to imagine a single Chapter with such disparate combat philosophies.

Other than the fact that I don't love the Black Templars, you've got decent fluff there.

I like the idea, and the name is great.

The fluff is good, and leaves you the opportunity to flesh it out if you wanted to. Nothing wrong with keeping it broad though.

I think it can work to have two distinct combat philosophies. They could echo the snake they take their name from. The more stand-offish, support elements (Imperial Fists esque) are the coiled Vyper, and the assault side (Black Templars) are the striking vyper.

Think of it more like the two combat philosophies the Tau have. Kauyon and Mont'Ka. One is all about aggressive attacks at important targets, the other is about lying in wait/ biding your time and setting up ambushes, before striking.

There is no reason an SM chapter couldnt have similar philosophies, and thus have units that specialise in one or the other. These two can also be mixed together if you ever wanted to ally them.
Maybe mark the BT side slightly different to the IF side.

I like it! Definitely a cool way to explain the different tactics in the same chapter. Good stuff.