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I've been looking at the 3 main SM codexes and I've been struggling to see (from a purely unit view) why these 3 lists are separate, especially when compared to CSM.

Now for most units I can see fairly straight forward ways to merge units from BA and DA in to the main book (Sanguinary Guard into SM Honour Guard, Raven Knights into Vanguard) with chapter tactics for BA and DA. If each Chapter then gained a vehicle upgrade option (Baal engines, IH it won't die, Tank Hunter IF etc) the majority of things would fit without issues.

Only a few units don't really fit this but as we already have Crusader squads as a BT unique unit, Death Company (+ DC Dreads) and Deathwing Knights could easily be given the same status.

Then to deal with all the special characters you could instead have them as a one off upgrade option eg, an Ultramar Chief Librarian can be upgraded to Tigurius for X pts.

Now the only units I've hit a snag on are the 2 DA fliers as in SM already have viable units in their roles. So I was thinking, could those units be given to the Death Watch (Nephilim) and Grey Knights (Dark Talon) instead to help round them off?

This way round the main bulk of Marine forces get updates together and it opens up two slots so that other factions (orks etc) get updates sooner. I'm a casual SM player and while I appreciate the love GW gives those armies I'd rather they'd bring all of the main factions up to the same level. It kind of spoils the fun when you need to have a backup list, not for facing an OP army, but for pulling your punches against an under powered faction.

Now I've seen similar posts in the past and I've yet to really see a reason against the merger (GW not doing it aside) other then BA and DA players saying their armies are "special" but with out any arguments that wouldn't also apply to the other 7 SM chapter groups already in the main book getting their own books.

So what do people thing of a merge and re-distribution in the spirit of the above and if not why not (I'm open on this, just please keep the special snowflakes for other threads)

They did make and retcon in special snowflake units to try and justify codex status for the Dark Angels and the Blood Angels - in reality there are hundreds of equally "different" Chapters with their own special units - some them, First Founding.

Making a Couple of Codexes with Codex Compliant and non codex compliant Chapters would allow for lots of interesting units that can then be used for various Chaoters - so cavalry, sniper squads, etc.

ScarVet101 wrote:

<snip>, especially when compared to CSM <snip>

The Traitors reaped as they sowed.

Why stop there? Add in Space Wolves too.

The way I'd do it ...
Codex: Space Marines already has a unit type only useable by a single Chapter - the Black Templars squad of mixed Marines and Scouts. Add in Death Company for Blood Angels, and the Dark Angels' aeroplanes and Land Speeders.

Allow Blood Angels Predators to swap their main turret weapons for flamers or assault cannon.

Allow Dark Angels bike squads to take whatever Ravenwing get that makes them special; plasma guns? and allow Deathwing Terminator squads to take their own special weapons. Disallow Dark Angels detachments from including Vanguard Veterans.

Allow Space Wolves squads to equip their veteran sergeants with Terminator armour - that takes care of Wolf Guard squad leaders. Perhaps add a Wolf Guard squad entry that replaces Terminator, Terminator Assault, Vanguard and Sternguard Veterans, but to be honest, I think leaving those four squads as-is would be fine. Allow Thunderwolf mounts as an upgrade option for Space Wolves veteran squads.

Might as well stick Tyranid Hunters in as an option for Ultramarines.

Make their army-wide special rules (acute senses, black rage, etc) part of their Chapter Tactics.

Whether things like Frost Weapons need their own rules (or just count them as power weapons), or whether flamestorm or assault cannon predators, Nephilim jetfighters, Stormfang gunships, Centurions, heavy flamers, hand flamers, etc, should be restricted to some chapters or allowed to everyone is a matter of garnish, really.

The only downside, for me, is the book becomes awfully thick and expensive.

GW isn't going to abandon their plastic kits, and there's enough Chapter-specific iconography that repurposing them for other armies wouldn't work (and would be odd anyway).

They can still fit in the main Codex, especially if it went a bit thicker.

Dark Angels have:
Deathwing Terminators (just a Chapter trait)
Deathwing Knights (upgrade option for Terminators)
Deathwing Command Squad (ditto)
Ravenwing Bikers (upgrade option for Bikers)
Ravenwing Dark Talon
Ravenwing Nephilim
Ravenwing Darkshroud
Landspeeder Vengeance
Belial, Sammael, Asmodai, Ezekial, and Azrael

4 pages for the unique vehicles, 5 for the characters and 3 to cover the upgrade options, formations, and Chapter traits and you could squeeze them into 12 extra pages in the Space Marine book. Maybe 15 pages to include fluff.

Blood Angels have
Baal Predators
Furioso Dreadnoughts
Sanguinary Priests
Librarian Dreadnoughts
Death Company
Sanguinary Guard
Sanguinor
Seth
Astorath
Corbulo
Dante
Mephiston
Lemartes
Tycho

If you compressed the character write-ups to 2/page, you could probably fit them in a similar length.

The biggest argument against would be that it would make the Space Marine Codex even thicker.

In 2nd and 3rd edition, their books were supplemental to Codex Space Marines. You still needed a copy of the Space Marine Codex to use them, their own books just covered the differences and special units.

If 8th uses a warscroll approach, the question is mostly moot anyway.

I'd cut generic SM and only keep BA, DA, SW, GK with their own codex instead.

Or you could take the 30k approach, have one 'Space Marine Codex', and a stack of supplements with unique units/chapter traits tacked on to the end. Keep the units that are actually unique in the back and take the units that shouldn't be unique (why, exactly, are the Space Wolves the only Legion whose Tactical Squads have remembered how chainswords work?) and make them generic.

If 8th is anything like Age of Sigmar's Warscrolls, each unit will have Key Words. Like a Tactical Squad would say something like "Key Words: Imperium, Space Marine, Tactical Squad" and then the warscroll formations would say "May include 3-5 Tactical Squads". Then you would see a warscroll for Blood Angels: "Key Words: Imperium, Blood Angels, Space Marine, Assault Squad" and a warscroll would say something like "May take any Blood Angel Warscroll". Which means they would ONLY be able to take a warscroll with the keyword Blood Angels on it. Or, make it even more restrictive and say "Make only take Blood Angels, Assault Squad, Hero" which would be some character with all those keywords. I'm really, really hoping they use the Key Words mechanic for 8th. I've seen too many questions like "Does this Space Wolves unit count for this Blood Angels formation?"

Side note: I dislike how Age of Sigmar uses the term warscroll for a unit's attributes, and the term warscroll for a formation. A warscroll contains many other warscrolls, or just one. A bit confusing. I hope they stick to Data Sheet for a units attributes/stats/rules, and Formation for a grouping of Data Sheets.

In terms of current "special" units most could easily be added to standard SM units.

DA - Give terminators Plasma Cannons and Merge Standard and Assault units - covers all current standard Terminators (BA, DA and SW)

Raven Knights - Give Vanguard the option to take Bikes and upgrade to plasma talons. Why can't White Scars have elite bikers too?

Both Heavy Landspeeder could just be added as heavy supports (all marines have relics)

Terminator Command squads - an upgrade to the current SM command squad. Why wouldn't Iron Hands give their 1st Captain a suitable command squad?

Deathwing and Raven wing get worked into the chapter tactics and leave Deathwing knights as a special unit for those chapters.

Sanguinary Guard - give SM Honour Guards the option for jump packs & pistols and replace their bolters for Anglos Bolters

Furioso Dreadnought - add their weapon options into Ironclades and give Iron clades the option to upgrade to Venerables (merge current venerables back into normal dreadnoughts as an upgrade)

Allow all tactical squads to have heavy flammers

Give predators the option for Flamestorm cannon and Assault cannon turrets and Heavy Flamers Sponsons.

Add Sanguinary Priests into the Chaplain entry - make them a single unit for "Priests" and then chose a speciality.

Leave Death Company and Death Company Dreadnoughts as Special units.

Make all Special characters an upgrade to their class.

Give each legion blood line a special vehicle upgrade (covers Baal engines).

Then as I said that only leaves the 2 DA fliers.

In terms of kits, adding the Plasma Cannon to the standard terminator frame and adding a Command frame to the Assault terminator squad. He tanks are fine & the Heavy Land speeders are generic enough to not need changing in the most part. Finally, an upgrade sprue for bikers (like the chapter sprues would cover that.

Space Wolves would be a little tricker to merge but if you could work their fliers in and have thunderwolves as their special unit it would probably work too.

Because even being harsh in what unique units you think are worth keeping (for reference BA have at least 20 unique codex entries, 12 being characters) you would easily double the size of the Marine codex with all the unique units, rules, and upgrades.

I would like one of two things to happen (well actually only one, other is a special case).
If we go to AoS style war scrolls, this is a moot point because codex's cease to be.
If we keep codex's I think a way similar to 30k is best, one single astartes codex, and supplements for all the first founding chapters. I think a similar thing for Imperial Guard might be good too.

*Gasp* Don't lump my glorious and pure Dark angels into the same class as the filthy mutant heretics of Sanguinius brood. On a more serious note, yeah I think most differences could be covered by chapter tactics and a few pages of special units.

The DA and BA codex are only a separate codex because of legacy issues.

Back when they were first introduced we didn't have much in the way of these force organization changes stuff nor formations. Dark Angels were unique in that it was the only way to field an all-bike army at the time, or an all-terminator army. Unit choices were also a lot less back then, so the BA's Furioso Dreadnought, Death Company and Baal Predator were pretty unique (this was a time when some codexes didn't even have more than 2 choices for a single slot!). Death Company moreso, because they usually weren't "bought" in the normal sense like every other unit, but generated based on how many units you had or came with the Chaplain as his retinue (also Vanguard Vets didn't exist back then so elite-tiered assault troops were nonexistent outside of them).

Finally, Chapter Tactics didn't exist; all marines just had ATSKNF. That was it. BA and DA were unique in that BA had furious charge (or an equivalent thereof) and Fast Vehicles while DA had Stubborn.

Back in those times, if you tried jamming all of these exceptions in the back of a book, it'd make the codex triple the size of another one. Indeed BA and DA started out as a single "Angels of Death" codex (ironic innit? Considering that the current Angels of Death supplement is for all the other snowflakes) while regular marines had to bum it out with "Ultramarines".

But that was a bygone time. Fast forward to the present, Chapter Tactics evolved from Chapter Traits, a system originally designed for people to mix and match rules to create their own chapters. Instead now we have a set amount of traits for the original first founding legions (and one quirky tagalong). And with the new Angels of Death Codex, they get their own detachment rules as well. It doesn't help that over the years the base vanilla codex started incorporating things from the two Angels, such as Biker troops, elite assault squads, assault dreadnoughts and so forth. Even worse is when the vanilla dex's version is superior to the Angel version (White Scars bikers were better than Raven Wing Bikers for a long time before the current codex, and even now it's not that one is better than the other, but recognized that they serve different purposes) that it became pointless to use the Angels version, since the vanilla version came with other goodies on top of it.

And then came the final issue; equipment consistency. Since all three codexes are standalone books, what changed in one book didn't affect the other three, so ever since they became standalone codexes, we keep getting one of the three screwed over due to lagging behind the times and not getting an update. Unlike other reasons (where they wouldn't hurt or improve with a combined codex) this is one that would be solved if they were one codex again.

EDIT: Basically it would be less of a glaring issue if Chapter Tactics never existed and all Codex marines played the same. But now with so many exceptions and rules added, it's gotten to the point that, minus having unique units of their own, each of the first founding legions have just as much (if not more) comprehensive rules than the two supposed divergent chapters.