Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Obviously, there are a ton of different Adeptus Astartes chapters.
They also have different rules, units, detachments etc.

So my question is, what are the main differences between all of the chapters? Other than fluff and aesthetic things.

Thanks.

They're all different for different reasons.

Except the ones that aren't.

Not really sure what you are asking. Its a very open ended question thats hard to answer. Can you clarify?

Sorry for the unclear question, but what I was asking is are there any rules that differ between all the Adeptus Astartes? Like what makes the Blood Angels different from the Dark Angels, or Grey Knights to Space Wolves. Not those combinations exactly, but what warrants a separate codex? Why can't they all be in the same codex?

Well, you see...

The Blue Land Raiders carry 12 guys.
The Red Land Raiders carry 10 guys but can go faster.
The Silver Land Raiders have psychic powers and carry 10 guys.
The Grey Land Raiders carry 10 guys but can take some different stuff.
The Dark Green or Bone Land Raiders carry 10 guys but you can have lots of the guys they carry in an army so it's k.

The Spiky Black Land Raider carries 10 guys, doesn't go faster, doesn't get psychic powers and doesn't get the best rule of the Land Raiders.

TLDR - the differences are exactly what point the design studio was at while writing codexes to be balanced.

What warrants a separate codex is whatever GW wants to sell. Marines sell, ergo some of the chapters get their own codex.

From a fluff/rules perspective, there isn't much reason to have all the variant codex chapters we have as they could all stand to be in one slightly bigger book, save the GK, who should be either in a bigger Inq book or on their own.

SixT4Pixels wrote:
Obviously, there are a ton of different Adeptus Astartes chapters.
They also have different rules, units, detachments etc.

So my question is, what are the main differences between all of the chapters? Other than fluff and aesthetic things.

Thanks.

95% of the differences are just weapon/option/FoC/USR swaps.

BA's get a 2+sv jump unit and Fast vehicles, SW's get Counterattack and some stat changes on a couple units and Puppyriders, DA's have a heavy emphasis on bikes and terminators (despite ostensibly being a heavily codex-adherent chapter), etc.

DA also has a hard-on for plasma weapons of all kinds.

 MechaEmperor7000 wrote:
DA also has a hard-on for plasma weapons of all kinds.

So they can kill the Fallen

Different chapter tactics and when different codex slightly different toys. DA has black knights and dark shroud, GK has dreadknight, BA fast vehicles, SW has wolfes. DA and GK miss some vanilla units, I don't know BA and SW.

CSM is different kind, they are twisted and weaker (tabletop) marines.

I do believe it would be because the greater majority of Chapters fall under Codex compliant so they use the Standard Codex, the DA, BA, and SW all deviate more than most chapters from the Codex Astartes thus get their own Codex even if the majority of it is a rehash of the same units.