Ultramarines Hate?

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**GreyHamster**

Veteran Sergeant wrote:
Paradigm wrote:
People don't look deep enough, and assume that because they are the paragons of the codex astartes, they are therefore the 'best'. What a lot of people don't realise is that this is as much a curse as a blessing, as if they encounter something not part of that doctrine, they are out of their depth. For example, in the Heresy they took a beating at Calth as they simply did not know how to fight other Marines.

The y are also a monument to the failure of the Imperium. In same the system as a whole is almost the antithesis of what the Emperor wanted, the codex has become a dogmatic doctrine. When Gulliman wrote it he wanted it to be a guideline, not a religion, and would despair at what it has become.
This is actually about 100% incorrect, so I would suggest disregarding it.

Calth happened before the publishing of the Codex. However, even if it hadn't been, it would have been irrelevant. The Ultramarines took a beating at Calth because they had no reason to suspect a treacherous sneak attack from fellow Space Marines. But anyone who has read Know No Fear and the older IA:WB article knows that the Ultramarines, once they recovered from the initial shock, pasted the Word Bearers.

The Tyranids also didn't appear in the Codex, and yet the Ultramarines basically were the principal effort in stopping two entire Hive Fleets so far.

The Codex Astartes get woefully misrepresented by fans, and it's not entirely their fault because some of these ideas are spread by goofballs who don't know what they're doing like Graham McNeill, lol. The original references to the Codex Astartes as being restrictive talk about the organizational and recruiting directives being strict. As in 10 companies of 100 guys, with a guideline for how to recruit and when to perform implantations, etc. When the original fluff talks about the tactics and strategy portion of the codex, the language talks about it being thousands of pages with advice on how to fight wars on basically any terrain, any environment, and against any kind of enemy. It's not some kind of idiotic "If A, then B" instruction manual for dummies like it occasionally gets written to be by people who don't know what they're talking about.

Case in point, in 2nd Edition, army commanders had a Strategy Rating, from 1-6. Only two characters had a 6. The Dark Angels Chapter Master, and Calgar, CM of the UM. Calgar was defined as one of the greatest tacticians in the Imperium. I mean, if the Ultramarines were hardcore followers of the Codex, but following the Codex was a bad thing, and yet the Ultramarines Chapter Master is one of the greatest tacticians alive, imagine how bad everyone else must be.

Yeah, pretty much this. Frankly, the fact that the Ultramarines weren't killed by one hell of a backstab from supposedly allied forces is a testament to their strength. They were in the middle of packing up to go to war, and the Word Bearers had everything perfectly set up to do massive damage from the start. The Ultramarines started with their Primarch space-defenestrated, their orbital weapons grid seized, their entire C&C network destroyed, their fleet powered down, their companies isolated, and facing two enemies they'd never previously engaged in combat (Marines and daemons). They still found the victory.