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Out of the bunch at my FLGS, I'm one of the few that paints a custom army rather then make a canon army. Mainly because, for me at least, I didn't have the paint to make the canon forces at the time of the painting. Ever since then, I kinda liked having a army that I could call 'my own' rather then being kinda anchored to what the fluff says about how this or that faction fights when I can make the fluff up for the army. So I was wondering how many on Dakkadakka played either a canon force or a custom force and, if you want, why?

Knights of Dorn!!!

At the moment, even if you DIY your own paint scheme and fluff, you are still better off playing one is the established armies just from a rules point of view. And as such, its canon, not fluff.

SJ

My army is a custom biker based army. I went this rout so that I could use either White Scars tactics or Ravenwing tactics with the same models.

I prefer custom armies for a few reasons.

1) They can do whatever you want within reason and still be fluffy. They can fight whomever and ally with whomever.

2). If you play marines you can use any rules you want without it being awkward. I dunno, putting Ultras down while using Blood Angel rules feels weird to me.

3) You get to write their history. I love writing 40k lore. It is such an interesting and surprisingly open setting.

 TheCustomLime wrote:
I prefer custom armies for a few reasons.

1) They can do whatever you want within reason and still be fluffy. They can fight whomever and ally with whomever.

2). If you play marines you can use any rules you want without it being awkward. I dunno, putting Ultras down while using Blood Angel rules feels weird to me.

3) You get to write their history. I love writing 40k lore. It is such an interesting and surprisingly open setting.

This guy hit everything I was going to say.

My Space Marines I made can be codex, Blood Angels, Dark Angels, and even Space Wolves if I really wanted to. So much freedom to choose to play how I like. I'm someone who gets bored WAY too quickly with a codex for how much they cost. DIY colored marines allow you a flexibility that I just couldn't pass up.

In fact even my Grey Knights aren't silver. They are white.

One of the main draws for me with this game is that it's about your dudes. You don't need to use named characters - which has turned me off of games with really cool settings or mechanics before, simply because I'd rather come up with my own background and force.

So yes. I most definitely run a custom army. Then again, with Guard, it's probably fluffier to do it that way!

I chose both. My Dark Angels I like to paint as normal, but my Daemons (specifically my Pink Horrors) I paint alternate colors.

I'm a big fan of "recreating" some sort of established company or force. I have Tanith, Pardus, UM, DA (Guardians of the Covenant), BT, Iron Warrios, Tau Enclave, 30K IH, etc. I like the army and its colors to mean something.

I get people wanting to DIY it, but to me, that just feels less authentic.... that being said, my CSM are DIY

I think it all falls to what I want included with my army. My Blood Angels have Captain Karlaen and will have Dante, so that's the 1st Captain and Chapter Master of the Blood Angels. I can't exactly call them the Red Devils now can I? My Ultramarines have Chaplain Cassius so they can't be Novamarines or some inspired DIY. My Eldar have Illic Nightspear so they're Alaitoc inspired,maven if not entirely Alitoc Craftworld. Even my Tyranids are a splinter of Hive Fleet Kraken and I restrict myself to more ground units than aerial. Including Tyrants.

But on the other hand, my Dark Eldar have no special characters, no Kabal lineage, no paint scheme yet either but I'm working on that. So they don't even have a name yet and are fully DIY. And I'm thinking about a green sort of Space Wolves. I don't really have a main force to call 'my own' creation and it sometimes seems like a part of the hobby I'm missing out on.

I love making custom armies with custom fluff. My Plague Marines are a custom warband. They all have names and background which gives so much more flavour to your army.

Custom. Harakoni 75th (desert camo airborne Guard), Knights of Bone (DA with more white/bone in the scheme), Craftworld Illanth (blue and silver Eldar with red accents), and the Kabal of the Sea Dragon (DE with scales and Sea Dragon cloaks appropriated from WHFB Dark Elves). Closest I get to a canon army is a small Blood Ravens detachment but that one's debatable.

My SM chapter is custom. They're called the Knights of Mortis, formally known as The Knights of Typhon. I've given them a whole backstory, including using restrictions on units I can use based on their fluff (No remaining suits of terminator armour, entire 1st company was destroyed so no Veteran squads)

My Chapter tactics were also chosen based on their fluff. They use the Iron Hands tactics to represent their unbreakable will, and the IWND special rule for my Chapter Master works well considering in my fluff, he basically got Darth Vader'd and is basically 90% Bionic, sealed inside his Artificer armour to preserve him.

I'm even starting a Tyranid army that was the Hive fleet that destroyed my SM home world.

If you played Necrons you could leave them unpainted and you get all three options, canon, custom, and unpainted! Unpainted Necrons look as good on the table as painted necrons

 TheCustomLime wrote:
I prefer custom armies for a few reasons.

1) They can do whatever you want within reason and still be fluffy. They can fight whomever and ally with whomever.

2). If you play marines you can use any rules you want without it being awkward. I dunno, putting Ultras down while using Blood Angel rules feels weird to me.

3) You get to write their history. I love writing 40k lore. It is such an interesting and surprisingly open setting.

2) I don't think playing SMs with different codices than they should is a problem. Even if the CSM is the default choice for Alpha Legion, a large amount of players use IA13 (or older iterations), SM+IG etc.

3) I partially agree; you're freer to violate pre-existing fluff, but you can still customise your company's fluff, unless you go for UMs or one of the other incredibly detailed Chapters.

I voted both, because I play Alpha Legion and IG Arkan Confederates. The Arkan Confederates have a fluff novel, but being IG I can go to town on fluff.

Both. Custom Army from a Canon faction.

Take my Space Wolves, for example. They are as much Space Wolves as any other, but have their own custom Wolf Lord and characters, their own heraldry and their own backstory. As all the Wolf Lords in M41 have been named, I just say they are from around M37, before their leader died and was replaced by a 'current' one.

Same for me BA and DA; 'official' factions with unique characters.

My Guard are completely custom, not a single thing about them (from models to fluff) is from GW.

I do 30k, so I'm kinda stuck to canon haha. However there's a great deal of room there to still come up with your own fluff, and even alternate colours for your force (IF mostly in black for example).

 Spinner wrote:
One of the main draws for me with this game is that it's about your dudes. You don't need to use named characters - which has turned me off of games with really cool settings or mechanics before, simply because I'd rather come up with my own background and force.

This.

Custom Canon


Deathwatch.

Because... all the upgrades and bling and doing what the heck I like. Allies and random data-slates galore. Proxy models and other funsies just because

I selected each. My own Dark Angels I love to paint as normal, however my personal Daemons I paint alternate colors.

For me, it's kinda both really.

I mean, I certainly would be playing Imperial Fists, except for the reason that I simply can't paint yellow. My test models came out looking horribly. The Crimson Fists have an easier color scheme, but I really dislike the whole ''dying chapter'' aspect of them, so that was a big-turn off.

So eventually simply made my own homebrew Successor Chapter, painted in an easy, simple color scheme, allowing me to sidestep the difficulty of painting yellow. I mean, I do get the appeal of playing a canon force. I would be probably be playing a canon chapter if I could actually paint yellow to any decent quality.

rryannn wrote:Knights of Dorn!!!

Since I'm horrible at painting, this picture should might as well should trumpets playing and rays of light showing how awesome those models are.

TheCustomLime wrote:I prefer custom armies for a few reasons.

1) They can do whatever you want within reason and still be fluffy. They can fight whomever and ally with whomever.

2). If you play marines you can use any rules you want without it being awkward. I dunno, putting Ultras down while using Blood Angel rules feels weird to me.

3) You get to write their history. I love writing 40k lore. It is such an interesting and surprisingly open setting.

As the others said before me, this is why I do what I do with my armies.

Lobukia wrote:I'm a big fan of "recreating" some sort of established company or force. I have Tanith, Pardus, UM, DA (Guardians of the Covenant), BT, Iron Warrios, Tau Enclave, 30K IH, etc. I like the army and its colors to mean something.

I get people wanting to DIY it, but to me, that just feels less authentic.... that being said, my CSM are DIY

I can get behind that. There are times I want to create either the Crimson Fists or the Black Templars because of the epic wars they've been in that I hope to recreate on the tabletop.

I personally run "pure" DA, as I love their fluff and the general look of all the models. The only thing I've done different is created a custom company master, still haven't decided what company I'll assign him to though.

The reason I can say that I don't always like custom chapters or such is that some people do it lazily or get too silly with it. As I've said before, some of us at our store really get into the battles. We discuss what the battle is taking place over, and why our armies are fighting, and when we issue a challenge we always have names for characters all the way down to the sergeants, etc.

I haven't played against many custom chapters, but more of them than not didn't have any type of thought what their chapter was like. I mean, even if you said "they're like the white scars" that'd be fine, but absolutely nothing. No imagination

The other reason that I don't like custom chapters is that one I played was absolute nonsense and was honestly a bit offensive. The legendary "Rainbow Marines". All of them painted a different color. All of them "kicked out of their chapters for being gay". Opponents exact wording.

 gnoise wrote:
Out of the bunch at my FLGS, I'm one of the few that paints a custom army rather then make a canon army. Mainly because, for me at least, I didn't have the paint to make the canon forces at the time of the painting. Ever since then, I kinda liked having a army that I could call 'my own' rather then being kinda anchored to what the fluff says about how this or that faction fights when I can make the fluff up for the army. So I was wondering how many on Dakkadakka played either a canon force or a custom force and, if you want, why?

There's nothing stopping you from creating your own custom Chapter, Craftworld, Tau Sept, Necron Dynasty, Ork Klan or whatever and using the rules for "canon" divisions of the same faction as "counts as" for those.

Like, if you wanna use the Chapter Tactics and ICs and rules for the Salamanders, but have a totally different story for your Space Marines, then paint them whatever color you want, provide them whatever background story you want, and use all the rules and points for Salamanders. Or Space Wolves, Ultramarines, Blood Angels or whatever Chapter you want. It's your models and your game, go nuts.

 TheCustomLime wrote:
I prefer custom armies for a few reasons.

1) They can do whatever you want within reason and still be fluffy. They can fight whomever and ally with whomever.

2). If you play marines you can use any rules you want without it being awkward. I dunno, putting Ultras down while using Blood Angel rules feels weird to me.

3) You get to write their history. I love writing 40k lore. It is such an interesting and surprisingly open setting.

This sums up everything I felt like saying.

As a TruCron player, there only are canon armies

Custom CSM. Not that I don't like the legions (We definitely have some allies in the World Eaters) but I like coming up with my own paint schemes. Overall my entire army is a warband full of members from various different backgrounds, and their heraldry represents them as such. This also helps me on the tabletop because it's very easy to tell the difference between squads when they're not even the same color, lol. I favor assault so it's not unheard of for a couple squads of marines to be assaulting the same unit or units close to eachother while a couple squads of cultists of various sizes are used as screens. I really wish vehicles could have different marks, and even my tanks are painted as if they did. I have a Khornate rhino and a Tzeentchian predator providing fire support for squads of various marks, so the entire army is pretty colorful.

Even when building a canon army, you can still be flexible and add some extras. I've used "counts-as" characters/models in my Crimson Fists and Chaos Daemons armies, in particular using Lysander (model and rules) as a upgraded Captain Cortez, and older Dragon Ogre models as daemon princes.

Personally, I play Necrons and Tyranids and I create my own background for them. The Varatekh Dynasty, with it's Phaeron Krovekt, are trying to reclaim the rest of their lost core worlds. And my Hive Fleet, well I dunno what I'm gonna call them yet, but I paint them their own scheme, same with my Necrons.

All mine are customised as it just makes them feel more personal to me and is more imaginative (for me anyway).