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Been wondering about colours of Veteran Sergeants helmets in a BA army. Do they stay the same colour as the unit or are they gold to mark veteran status. Can't see in the codex which one is correct.

IIRC, it's the colors of the shoulder pads that changes for the sergeants of all the BA's

In Blood Angels, a black shoulder pad denotes sergeantcy, a good helmet is veterancy, so black pads, gold helmet for a vet sarge.

Sarges have two stripes, on on either side of the main helmet stripe. Vets have their main stripe alternate colors, similer to hazard striping. Here are some examples from my collection.



But if you want to designate your vet sarges in something a little more modern then the RT fashions, you probably don't want to listen to me...

I love the MK. VI armor look.

Allow me to help.

Gold Helmets are Honor Guard marines, only the members of an Officer's Honor Guard receive the honor of having a golden helm.

Red helmets are tactical squads, this includes any and all members of a tactical squad, including the sergeant.

Yellow helmets denote assault marines, to include marines who utilize jump packs, bikes, attack bikes, and land speeders. This is true for all members of an assault unit, including sergeants.

Blue helmets are worn by devastator squad marines, be they the marines carrying the heavy weapons in the squad, the sergeant, or the additional marines carrying standard bolt guns.

Lastly, as was noted earlier, Sergeants, and Veteran Sergeants as well, paint the interior of their shoulder pads black to denote their rank as a squad leader. Being a veteran does not mean that they have earned the right to wear a gold helm, and even if they have served in an honor guard previously, if they are re-assigned to a squad as a squad leader, they repaint their helmet to denote what their squad's function is: Tactical, Assault, or Devastator.

Hopefully that answered your question.

Take it easy.

-Red__Thirst-

 Red__Thirst wrote:

Gold Helmets are Honor Guard marines, only the members of an Officer's Honor Guard receive the honor of having a golden helm.

Prior to the current codex that was true. Now it's standard for power armoured veterans, since it applies to both honour guard and veteran squads it's unclear if it would be worn by sergeants.

Back in 2nd edition Blood Angels didn't even distinguish between Sergeants and Squad Leaders* both had identical armour markings, they were distinguished only by the colour of the banners: black for sergeants and red for squad leaders*, when 3rd edition came along and they abolished combat squads and squad leaders they re-purposed the banners as black for veteran sergeants and red for regular sergeants. That's the only difference I know of.

* most senior marine in a 10-man squad after the sergeant, leads the other combat squad when the battle squad splits.

In the current codex, Honour Guard have all gold power armour and all Veterans (Vanguard, Sternguard, etc.) have gold helmets.

 Ghaz wrote:
In the current codex, Honour Guard have all gold power armour and all Veterans (Vanguard, Sternguard, etc.) have gold helmets.

Though not stated in the book the all-gold Honour Guard squad is Dante's Honour Guard (Sanguinary Guard prototype) from the wd/pdf codex, it's not universal because the new 2nd company standard bearer on the subsequent page is red with a gold helmet.