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I was wondering if anyone would have a problem with me creating my own small faction for 40k? Basically a small group of renegade space marines (not heretics), some imperial guard, and a small imperial knight force. I am primarily looking at this from the lore prospective. I want them to be loyal to the emperor, just not the Imperium.

Do you mean lore-wise, or creating actual different datasheets for the game? The first...go nuts, everyone does this. The second? You'll struggle to find people to play against if you're just making stuff up.

I do mean purely lore wise, and why would people turn down a friendly game over something made-up?

 JonathanCadbury wrote:
I was wondering if anyone would have a problem with me creating my own small faction for 40k? Basically a small group of renegade space marines (not heretics), some imperial guard, and a small imperial knight force. I am primarily looking at this from the lore prospective. I want them to be loyal to the emperor, just not the Imperium.

Renegade chapters like the Relictors (who use Chaos against Chaos) and the Soul Drinkers are good examples of renegades who are still pro Imperium.

Basically you just need to think of what they did wrong, and why they believe their right and will continue to try and serve the Imperium regardless.

 Elbows wrote:
Do you mean lore-wise, or creating actual different datasheets for the game? The first...go nuts, everyone does this. The second? You'll struggle to find people to play against if you're just making stuff up.

Pretty much this. If you're making your own rules, try to keep things balanced. Consider posting your creations in the Proposed Rules section of this forum for feedback. We can be hypercritical and get off-topic, but we still offer solid feedback sometimes. If you're just wanting to come up with your own lore, go for it. That's an expected part of 40k. There are even existing examples of non-heretical and "non-heretical" renegades out there in existing fluff if you want to look at those for inspiration or to use wholesale.

I will note that your basic premise of marines + guard + knights can be represented quite well by both conventional imperial marines + normal IG + normal knights OR by the Renegades legion trait from the CSM book + forgeworld renegade guard + renegade knights.

So unless there's something especially quirky that you want represented mechanically, the rules probably already exist to do what you're describing.



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 JonathanCadbury wrote:
I do mean purely lore wise, and why would people turn down a friendly game over something made-up?

Because homebrewed rules are often poorly balanced. It's one thing if you say you want to run loyalist marines with a reasonable, unofficial chapter tactic. It's another if you decide the hardships endured by your custom chapter have made them all so tough and self-reliant that they have a 2+ feel no pain. If we're just talking lore though, then it's a rare person who will turn you down just based on your fluff.

 JonathanCadbury wrote:
I do mean purely lore wise, and why would people turn down a friendly game over something made-up?

In many cases a long and storied history of playing against home brew disasters where their creators basically had special rule diarrhea al, over a sheet of A4.

If you can create something well balanced and correctly costed then you may find people willing to give it a go, but by the time you've convinced them that your creation isn't so heavily broken that it can indeed be correctly costed, and is correctly costed, it's probably just better to keep colouring within the lines and adapt the existing rules within your own personal lore.

I've essentially just painted my force similar to the black legion (black and gold), and then come up with some cool characters to use as leadership. But i'm not exactly sure where to go as far as the finalized creation of a faction. So really the only thing I have for the groups base is that they are still loyal to the emperor but dislike the Imperium due to it's corrupt nature.


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I should state that I have used the regular SM codex for my army.

 JonathanCadbury wrote:
I was wondering if anyone would have a problem with me creating my own small faction for 40k? Basically a small group of renegade space marines (not heretics), some imperial guard, and a small imperial knight force. I am primarily looking at this from the lore prospective. I want them to be loyal to the emperor, just not the Imperium.

Simple: A Chapter and a Regiment with a Knight on a Crusade in the void beyond actual normal Imperial Space. They're just out there for generations as a combined force. Imperium changed as time when on, maybe they left not many foundings after the Heresy.

Although I have looked at the dark angels codex as my army is sorta terminator heavy


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The idea of the space marines being out of contact with the imperium since the heresy sounds great! It would also explain all the cataphractii armour...