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I've decided to paint my Assault on Black Reach set, however I'm not sure about something. It seems as if the Space Marines, were supposed to be painted as Ultramarines. Myself, I'd like to paint them as Blood Angels. The main reason I say this, is because of the arrow on the right side of their shoulder. Would it be possible to paint them as Blood Angels?

Yes - the arrow is the Codex symbol for tactical squads

Yep. Ultramarines are just GW's poster children.

No, if you want to stick with fluff.

The upward arrow is only used by codex compliant chapters (e.g. Ultramarines).
DA have a sideway arrow with two points.
BA don't have any symbols, but instead have coloured helmets, e.g. red for Tacticals, blue for devastators, etc.

 Hanskrampf wrote:
No, if you want to stick with fluff.

The upward arrow is only used by codex compliant chapters (e.g. Ultramarines).
DA have a sideway arrow with two points.
BA don't have any symbols, but instead have coloured helmets, e.g. red for Tacticals, blue for devastators, etc.

So, in a sense should I just paint these with a chapter compliant with the codes, and wait to start my BA army?

It’s a minor fluff point that many people would miss. Even in codex chapters there is a lot of variation. I would not let that one point stop you from painting up some red marines.

 ThePhantom wrote:

 Hanskrampf wrote:
No, if you want to stick with fluff.

The upward arrow is only used by codex compliant chapters (e.g. Ultramarines).
DA have a sideway arrow with two points.
BA don't have any symbols, but instead have coloured helmets, e.g. red for Tacticals, blue for devastators, etc.

So, in a sense should I just paint these with a chapter compliant with the codes, and wait to start my BA army?

It's your army. No one is going to refuse to play against you, if you just paint them as Blood Angels. It has no effect for your games.
So if you want to start BA, paint them red.
If it's not bothering you, go ahead. If you want to stick 100% to the fluff but still use the Black Reach Marines, cut and file off the Tactical marking. Should be relatively easy.

 Hanskrampf wrote:

 ThePhantom wrote:

 Hanskrampf wrote:
No, if you want to stick with fluff.

The upward arrow is only used by codex compliant chapters (e.g. Ultramarines).
DA have a sideway arrow with two points.
BA don't have any symbols, but instead have coloured helmets, e.g. red for Tacticals, blue for devastators, etc.

So, in a sense should I just paint these with a chapter compliant with the codes, and wait to start my BA army?

It's your army. No one is going to refuse to play against you, if you just paint them as Blood Angels. It has no effect for your games.
So if you want to start BA, paint them red.
If it's not bothering you, go ahead. If you want to stick 100% to the fluff but still use the Black Reach Marines, cut and file off the Tactical marking. Should be relatively easy.

Okay, thanks for your help.

Dude, if I were you I would just paint them up as Blood Angels and have done with it. I certainly wouldn't think any less of you for it! Are all the marines completely snap-fit in the Black Reach set? I mean, would it be possible to customise them with the odd BA shoulder pad or bolter?

As a cheeky aside, are you intending to paint up the Orks in the set too? If not then PM me! I've been looking for an intact set of of BR Orks for ages!

If you adhere to the codex livery for blood angels, the left shoulder is the chapter icon (so, some version of the blood angels icon), and the right shoulder is the Company mark -- so for instance, skull for first company, yellow blood drop for second company, white blood drop for third company, etc. The squad marking actually goes on the right knee, and comprises different icons like crosses and skulls.

In practice, almost nobody does this. Even the parts that come in the boxes for Blood Angels don't really support this -- there are lots of shoulder pads with cool icons that come with kits like BA Tacticals and Death Company that are non-conforming to the codex (like the cup icons). In addition, the knee markings only work for Mk7 power armor. If you use pieces like BA Tac legs, you *can't* conform to the BA codex, because the model doesn't have space for you to put markings there.

What a lot of people do is take the opportunity to use the shoulder pads to distinctly separate their squads -- after all, if you have three squads all near each other, and the only thing that distinguishes them is a knee, as you stand behind them, it's hard to tell them apart. So use the double arrow marks (dark angels) for one squad, the single arrow marks (ultramarines) for another squad, and so forth.

Personally, I'm also not a fan of colored helmets -- I just think the blue/yellow helmets look goofy. I would hope that 38,000 years into the future, soldiers in fully enclosed battle armor have ways of telling who their squadmates are and telling squads apart from each other than reading the numbers inside their shoulder pads or symbols on their knees or colors of their helmets anyhow

At the end of the day, just call it a Blood Angels successor (or not), and do whatever makes you happy I assure you, nobody who plays the game will care one way or the other!

You can also just retcon the history for it, these tactical squads were armed by Marneus Calgar himself as a personal thank you for their work in defending the planet whogivesastuff

kb_lock wrote:
You can also just retcon the history for it, these tactical squads were armed by Marneus Calgar himself as a personal thank you for their work in defending the planet whogivesastuff

Exalted!

Just paint 'em however you want, that's what I plan on doing. The Orks are my primary army, just gonna make a small SM army, probably Black Templars or Grey Knights. Though a good set of scraping, sanding and filing tools wouldn't hurt.

At my old GW, one of the staff members used the AoBR captain as a BA sergeant. He just did some minor conversion work and the model looked perfect.

Don't let tiny things like that stop you. It's just plastic - chop it up, glue symbols over it, whatever you have to do to make it work.