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Hey All,

I just picked up the Chaos Space Marines Codex and I am drooling over it. I would like to start collecting and building an army with room for a bit of everything, i.e. the option to throw in some Rubric Marines, Plague Marines, Noise Marines, Fallen, etc. I am more into playing for fun that being competitive.

As to picking a legion, the Black Legion seems to fit this kitchen sink approach, although I am not thrilled with their black and gold color scheme. Are there any other legions that have canonically have a wide variety of units? Any one where I can have Berzerkers fighting alongside Daemonettes? Thanks in advance for the ideas.

Wordbearers work with daemons (in fluff) and while they're not known for berserkers, I can see some extremely zealous marines treading the red path.

The Red Corsairs are another mixed warband of mostly Renegades of different chapters United under one banner.


Lastly, Fabius Bile had his own Consorrium of former apothecaries as a sort of retinue, with a former World Eater, Emperors Children, Iron Warrior, Worsbearer, and in the 2nd book a Death Guard all form a warband led by Fabius.

The Black Legion books are narrated by a former Thousand Son who led a warband of mixed legionaries before joining Black Legion.

Basically you can forge whatever narrative you want.

If you want to embrace all the gods and cult troops, then Black Legion is arguably the most suitable legion you could choose. Black Legion have notable examples of Abbadon recruiting various chaos marines from other legions into the Black Legion, where they were formerly fighting as scattered warbands. So there's nothing to stop you having any cult troops under the Black Legion banner.

That being said, Word Bearers embrace all of the chaos gods as a pantheon, use the daemons as cannon fodder, and there are examples in the fluff of Word Bearers who stray particularly close to the favour of one god over others. The most typical example is assault-oriented troops straying to the worship of Khorne over the other gods, but there are references in the fluff to Word Bearers being swayed by other gods. A champion swordsman striving for perfection, for example might fall particularly under the sway of Slaanesh, whilst it would be easy for a Sorcerer to fall under the influence of Tzeentch. Nurgle/Plague Marines would be a little harder to justify as a good Dark Apostle is supposed to keep the warband away from worshipping one god over the others, but it's your army, so you should play it the way you want.

Another thing you could do is simply take multiple detachments in your army as a kind of combined force - similar to the Isstvan conflict in which various legions were fighting side by side, you're doing the same thing just on a smaller scale and a few years into the future. A typical game of Warhammer 40,000 is expected to represent a small part of a large overall battle, and that's why you see the named characters and/or super heavy vehicles, because obviously the most attention will be given to where the most exciting fighting is happening. It's easy to imagine more troops from both armies fighting it out in the void on either side of the table.

I would suggest painting whatever colour scheme you like rather than feeling bound by the official schemes for a legion. This is kind of suggested in the codex. (I did happen to choose a predominantly black scheme for my CSM army which I play as Black Legion, but that is just because I like black with neon highlights...)

A large number of the Black Legion are warbands that joined en masse from somewhere else.

Some of them paint their whole armor black, some just burn off their old insignias, some just scar their old armor up.

If you wanted, you could pick a color scheme you like, loyalist or heretic, and just paint one shoulder pad black (where the chapter symbol would be) to signify their new allegiance.

Well; Black legion for obvious reasons.

Other than that, Alpha legion, disguising as whatever they need.
Also likely to exploit other csm for their gains.

Word bearers certainly bring in the devotion to see beeing butchernailed as a elevation since it brings them closer to Khorne.

Iron warriors do tend to dislike their more devoted peers.

Night lords are in it for the murder spree it seems.

You're not limited to painting the BL black. Paint 'em whatever color you like. Oh, and after you spend pts on a smattering of everything you won't have many pts to invest in generic BL guys anyways....

Thanks for the advice. I think I will go with Black Legion. I have seen some interesting pictures of paint schemes online that I would like to try (black with neon highlights sounds cool). Thanks again.

So there is no requirement to have your army painted a particular way for the keyword business? I ask because I'm looking at getting back in for the first time in a decade (GSC) and I like the paint scheme of one gene sect but I'm not sure about which gene sect I like the rules for.

 legionaires wrote:
So there is no requirement to have your army painted a particular way for the keyword business? I ask because I'm looking at getting back in for the first time in a decade (GSC) and I like the paint scheme of one gene sect but I'm not sure about which gene sect I like the rules for.

In that case i would reccomend a neutral paint sheme.

 legionaires wrote:
So there is no requirement to have your army painted a particular way for the keyword business? I ask because I'm looking at getting back in for the first time in a decade (GSC) and I like the paint scheme of one gene sect but I'm not sure about which gene sect I like the rules for.

General rules are that paint doesn't matter. The exception to this is GW tournaments in Nottingham (and I guess if they do any elsewhere). In that case if your Space Marines are painting up as say Ultramarines, they are Ultramarines. They can't be blue Ravenguard.

Going to be honest though, GSC "schemes" are not well defined anyway, unless the Codex has a lot on them, and I wouldn't expect most people to go "aha - orange trousers=rusted claw".

What you could do is go really fluffy, especially if you're only playing for fun, and get many different warbands of heretic Astartes: splinter groups, exiled ones from their legions, what is left of heretic chapters. The possibilities for it are massive.

Choose a fitting setting, write a small amount of story for all the different warbands and why they're there. This would let you have rubrics alongside berserkers alongside summoned daemonettes from the slaanesh guys alongside plague marines alongside whatever you want, without having to go for big standard black legion. This would also let you paint your army in many different ways, maybe even have different colours in each unit- a band of heretic Astartes rather than a legion.




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Basically: don't bind yourself to a legion. If you're playing for fun, choose legion rules to fit the army and make your own warband/heretic chapter.

I agree with idea of just painting for army in the colors you like. You can always pick the legion rules you like regardless of your warband's origin. Be it one of the original Horus Revolution legions, one of the loyalists ones that turned during those times or anytime later. One of the most seductive lures to Chaos is the fact that marines have the freedom to use their might as they wish and follow their own desires. There is no easier way to reflect this on the tabletop than with your own color scheme.

I chose to paint my Chaos Space Marines in Black Legion colors because I both like the color scheme and I like the background of them. But if you don't like any of the default color schemes of CSM definitely don't use them. It is your warband, paint them in the colors you like. Nearly all players will be happy you have paint on them at all and won't have any issue with it.

I do a fun thing with my Black Legion where most of the armour is classic Black Legion colours, but one arm and shoulder are in the marine's "original" or "god" colours. Gives the army a unified approach while still showing how all the forces of Chaos will follow Abaddon to glory and vengeance!

I personally really like the black and gold theme and that's big reason i picked Black Legion. I think also you should stick to the theme meant for them in order to keep tradition strong. You could make a custom legion though right?

 Stormatious wrote:
I personally really like the black and gold theme and that's big reason i picked Black Legion. I think also you should stick to the theme meant for them in order to keep tradition strong. You could make a custom legion though right?

Well not a custom legion but a custom warband. It is semantics, but a legion in (Space Marine terms) was 10,000 marines in which there were 20 legions. Two legions were purged and of the remaing, half turned traitor and the other half stayed loyal. Afterward, the loyalists, mostly, decided to break apart their legions into chapters of about 1000 marines. The traitors did no such thing, but without strong leadership to keep/force them together, most traitor legions started to break apart into individual warbands. The allegiance of these warbands depends on the legion they were part of as well as the warband itself. The size of these warbands vary greatly based mostly off the strength and/or charisma of their warlord.

As a Space Wolf player I'd say...Dark Angels.

Personally I can't stand how GW forces other legion specalisms' into the Black Legion: Berserkers painted black and gold, but with a red and gold helmet; Noise Marines painted black and gold, but with a pink helmet.

 Saturmorn Carvilli wrote:

 Stormatious wrote:
I personally really like the black and gold theme and that's big reason i picked Black Legion. I think also you should stick to the theme meant for them in order to keep tradition strong. You could make a custom legion though right?

Well not a custom legion but a custom warband. It is semantics, but a legion in (Space Marine terms) was 10,000 marines in which there were 20 legions. Two legions were purged and of the remaing, half turned traitor and the other half stayed loyal. Afterward, the loyalists, mostly, decided to break apart their legions into chapters of about 1000 marines. The traitors did no such thing, but without strong leadership to keep/force them together, most traitor legions started to break apart into individual warbands. The allegiance of these warbands depends on the legion they were part of as well as the warband itself. The size of these warbands vary greatly based mostly off the strength and/or charisma of their warlord.

Pre-Heresy Space Marine Legions were typically 80,000-190,000 SM strong, usually made up of "Chapters" of 1000 Marines.

I would personally wait a couple of months before you buy any power armor.

March is likely to be a CSM release with at least some new minis. Possibly a new troops kit in the style of Blackstone Fortress.

Fluff wise, Black Legion are your go to. But you aren't after that.

Alternatively create a newly founded bunch of Renegade Astartes who embrace all the Pantheon?

 Lord Clinto wrote:


Pre-Heresy Space Marine Legions were typically 80,000-190,000 SM strong, usually made up of "Chapters" of 1000 Marines.

Thanks for the correction. I knew is was a ridiculously small number in terms of a galactic scope. Those numbers still not large enough to have much of an effect, but a good deal better than 10,000.

 Wolf_in_Human_Shape wrote:
I would personally wait a couple of months before you buy any power armor.

March is likely to be a CSM release with at least some new minis. Possibly a new troops kit in the style of Blackstone Fortress.

I hope so. I have been waiting for two years to further expand my troops waiting for better models. Not that it has hurt them on the tabletop, The opposite in fact. I still want to run three 10 man CSM squads instead of the two squads and at least one squad of cultists. I also could really use Havocs, but I am not willing to get the current ones.

I am a little concerned they will be like Primaris in that they can't make use of old transports, have less weapon options, etc. I hope not, but who knows with GW.

I would advise you to select a different army if you actually want to be competitive. Also, avoid Slaaneshi daemons like the plague, they are trash.

That being said, you'll want several legions to draw from, depending on your list.

Lately I seem to run a Thousand Sons battalion with 3 HQ and cultists.

Alpha Legion is generally considered to be strong within the current meta.

I often run World Eaters alongside my Thousand Sons as it provides solid hand to hand and allows me to largely dictate how the psychic phase plays out.

You will also want to invest in some daemons.

I use two factions, Abaddon with Black Legion and my Psyker Huron Blackheart for the Red Corsairs. That way I got some black Legions with a re-roll missed hits while 6'' away from Abaddon and Re-Roll missed hit rolls of 1 while 6'' away from Huron.
Nice color scheme on the table with Black/Gold and Red/Gold...But the main reason to have two was to have a little variety in my Army. I only play solo and collect so no rules stop me, but I do try to stay within the boundaries of the rule according to the Codex.