Ah, well, I'm going to start using it in an Escalation thing with my mates. It starts off at 500 points and goes up in lots of 200 until we reach 1500. It's not like that would be a permanent thing (i'd want to expand, eventually, past that amount of points). But yeah, that's the dealio I guess.
I tend to want to play aggressively (Space Wolves), but I'm really not that good at getting to my opponent to actually do what Wolves do best. In a nutshell, I want to spread out and use things Space Wolves can't, just because the idea of it gets my hobby motivation going. I could use aircraft and things like thunderfire cannons or even go for bikes (I'd use White Scars rules/characters/etc), there are lots of possibilities. I'm not exactly sure what kind of play style I want with the Storm Wardens, but maybe something shocky, assaulty, maybe even shooty? I'm too indecisive. I'd like to think I'm rather flexible, though. Fluff wise, anything will work, be it psykers, dreadnaughts, drop pod/rhino centric assaults, melee assaults, heavy weaponry, whatever. But what motivated me to do something like the Storm Wardens was the fact that I wanted something foundationally different to the Wolves. The Storm Wardens are a Codex-Astartes compliant Chapter. When I was reading 'Betrayer' by Aaron Dembski-Bowden, Kharn is in a battle in which the commanding Ultramarines officer is yelling out to him over the crazy battle. The image of that Marine (Orfeo, I think he's called) was just badass. The contrast is just great. The way he was making his way through the fight, killing opponents like flies in a strict and methodical manner, the whole steady/straightforward/traditional/etc characteristics that the Ultramarines and other chapters have is just cool. I think you either hate it because you feel it's 'cookie cutter' in a way or love it because of that same reason. But yeah, this bloke is just a killer example of what I want to go for, but I don't want to simply go Ultramarines. I want some amount of 'originality' or uniqueness, so the Storm Wardens are a wicked idea, especially since they're like Ultramarines with a bit of Space Wolves to them, don't ya think?
I've babbled on a feth load, so let me try and narrow my post down to something useful, for all those trying to help.. I think I would like to use the Iron Hands tactics for the sake of being extra tough as feth. I want to have
HQs that revolve around taking the fight and challenge to the opponent, especially in seeking out their champions. Power swords, storm shields, thunder hammers and bolters - those are what I'd focus on the most for the sake of fluff, though I don't really care in being too strict about that. Storm Wardens love to use bigass 2h Power Swords and hammers and shields though, so
blokes like this are perfect. Those 4 will be awesome models to have in my army (pretty sure I'll buy those to begin with, the 2 with swords are fething perfect). Things like Black Templar Sword Brothers will be good to use for my army, too.
Real sorry for typing too much. I've let it all out in a burst. Cheers to anyone who can be bothered reading let alone helping me out.
Edit: Actually, there's more I could do. My mate was using these Grey Knight fellas that can jump around the battlefield with their teleporter backpack things - I like them. The inquisition are heavily involved with the Storm Wardens. I could easily make some fluff revolving around them giving some of this technology to the Wardens. How does that sound? Figuring out what I'd actually use is the harder part, though. As in would I just use the grey knight codex straight up or ally using the Ultramarine codex as my main?