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Hey mates. Was playing a game with my Black Templars using BA rules, and for some reason a spectator got all annoyed and starting spouting that there should be a rule against SM players from doing that. Now, I'm not a fluff Nazi, but I still fail to see why that gets so many players upset. People can complain all they want but like in this case, I will contonue to point out that there is no rule stating that I Cannot Do That. Plus I have played in tournaments where they have allowed that, just as long as you have the Army List, the models and the accurate units which isn't hard to do for Space Marines.

With that being said, how does this apply to you and your gaming store/group? When it comes to games and tournaments, is there a rule prohibiting you from doing anything along those lines or is it acceptable just as long as your opponent is aware? Never understood why so many people get annoyed about it, but I'm asking because I am debating on going either Black Templars or a current/made up Chapter that has little background so o could possibly avoid this issue.

You are very much allowed to use whatever CT you want. What does it matter if your guys are painted red/blue/yellow with purple hearts.

I personally have an army painted up as UM, but since I have only remembered the Doctrines about 1 time in the last 4 games I decided to move over to WS. No one has commented yet (I generally play at the local GW)

I see zero problem with it, I do it all the time and have never had anyone have an issue. It's often joked that I'm fielding the Scarlet Scars, Crimson Hands or Blood Fists


I have around 20,000 points of painted space marines, they are painted red because I like red. I have various models from specific chapters (special characters, unique units and the like) they are all painted in the same red scheme. They started off as blood angels back in the early 90's but have developed over the years so I use them as whichever chapter I fancy when organising a game.
I have spent alot of money on my collection and taken alot of time painting it up, if someone had the gall to complain that my perfectly WYSIWYG force were the wrong colour and so offended their sense of fluff in some way I may politely tell them that it's my decision to enjoy the hobby in the way I see fit, they are welcome to find a new opponent.

One of the joys of owning and playing spacemarines is that you never need to get bored with the army's play style, there are so many different chapter tactics and different codex's to explore in a rules sense that no two armies ever need to be the same, indeed mine never are except in tournaments.

I did once come up with a fluff reason for the way my models can adapt to the various different chapter rules, it went something along the lines that a combined force drawn from many chapters of spacemarines were lost on a planet for a few centuries and by the time they were returned to the imperium they had fully integrated and learnt each other techniques. If it make s your opponents feel better I'm sure you can come up with something, its a wide galaxy out there anything could happen ;-)

On the one hand it's a game of toy soldiers, so who cares?
On the other, a lot of the appeal of this game is the story and background. I play Imperial Fists, it never occurred to me to use another chapter's special rules. Just like when I play Bolt Action with my Afrika Korps, I wouldn't try to use British special rules.

Who cares if you use the rules for red marines while using your blue marines?

As long as you've got clear WYSIWYG then it does not matter in the slightest.

I don't see an issue. If you're an IF successor (and not as radical as the Templars) why not use IF chapter tactics? I'd even expand it out to fringe things. For example, maybe this narrative has my Marine chapter launching a fast strike force. So why not use White Scars tactics to represent that for this game? Then when we are defending a bunker, use IF tactics to represent that. It's all abstract concepts.

I might raise my eyebrows a bit at a UM army using IF tactics, but really the tactics are so basic that they can easily fluffwise be specific tactical doctrine (as laid down in the Codex Astartes, naturally) that is being adopted for this conflict. Black Templar tactics are a little odd, so are some of the FW ones that may not be generic. But even something like Raven Guard can be fluffwise a particular stealthy Captain (maybe he was really amazing as a Scout or something) using his expertise for a particular mission. It's all about the narrative and how you want to spin it for a particular game.

It is a minor WYSWYG issue. You see one thing (BT) and get another (BA). So a purist might complain.

But all the wargear and models should be accurate, so there is not a leg to stand on there.

I’ve written lists I intended to play with other CTs, but never actually got them to the table. I felt a little bad writing up a WS list, and having everyone painted blue. But a large number of armies in my area are unpainted plastic. Why should I be punished for painting mine? If I was a member of the grey legion, I could field them how I wanted.

I wrote up a little fluff bit and modeled my bike captain with a WS helmet, to show that he had ridden with the Scars and learned from them.

It matters a little bit. Background and story are an important part of the game and recreating it can be one of life's little pleasures. Sticking with one set of tactics and using it to build and develop the story behind your army can be infinitely more satisfying than unending alchemical efforts to find the perfect mix of rules. My army, for example, is Crimson Fists and I'll be damned if I play them as anything else; that would be an insult to their legacy of heroism.

That being said, I wouldn't begrudge someone who tried out different tactics. I might give him some good-natured flak over it, but I wouldn't refuse to play against him or anything.

I do get very confused when I play against a SM chapter painted one way (a founding chapter with rules, I don't mean a custom chapter) and played as another for powergaming purposes.

This often gets compounded because if someone's doing, say, a Salamanders army playing as Iron Hands because IH are more competitive and the Salamanders free rules for no reason weren't good enough...they also tend to throw in a couple other chapters for good measure (an allied detachment of green salamander iconography White Scars over here, maybe some green "Salawolf Cavalry", etc...)

If you wanna do the powergamey mix-n-match game with SM, I highly recommend going with a custom chapter of some sort and doing at least something (even little stickers on the bases you can just remove later) to denote squads with different CTs so your opponents dont get confused.

The only time I have absolutely no problem with it is someone whose subfaction gets totally screwed by old rules. I have no problem at all with BA or BT swapping out for non-crap rules, if I had that kind of opportunity with my orks I'd definitely do it.

There is 0 problem with it...we are talking about the same exact models here. If anyone has a "fluff" argument give them one back...You are a successor chapter.

There is no other army in the game where the color of models would have any bearing on the rules they use. Nobody's going to complain about my black and red Tyranids using the Hive Fleet Leviathan detachment, the color of your space marines really shouldn't matter. Yea some fluff purists might get annoyed, but if it bothers them that much, they should play with someone else. Nobody should care about what happens in a game they aren't a part of.

 obithius wrote:
On the one hand it's a game of toy soldiers, so who cares?
On the other, a lot of the appeal of this game is the story and background. I play Imperial Fists, it never occurred to me to use another chapter's special rules. Just like when I play Bolt Action with my Afrika Korps, I wouldn't try to use British special rules.

I think I'm with you on this. At first, I thought I didn't care, but then when I imagined someone using Emperor's Children models as Khorne Daemonkin, I immediately realised the problem.
The SM codex does, however, specify that you can use any chapter tactics you want (although mainly if you use a custom or second founding chapter).

I think the OP could get round this conundrum (and please all parties) by saying that their marines are a daughter chapter of the Blood Angels, they split from the BA because of a tactical dispute, and therefore they use tactics similar to the Black Templars.
OP gets to use the rules they want and fluff lovers get a nice story to mull over.

I suppose I could use a similar argument to suggest that some Emperor's Children have forsaken Slaanesh and moved over to worshipping Khorne...

 KharnsRightHand wrote:
There is no other army in the game where the color of models would have any bearing on the rules they use. Nobody's going to complain about my black and red Tyranids using the Hive Fleet Leviathan detachment, the color of your space marines really shouldn't matter. Yea some fluff purists might get annoyed, but if it bothers them that much, they should play with someone else. Nobody should care about what happens in a game they aren't a part of.

It's mostly a clarity issue. The Black Templars (or any other base marine chapter) scheme implies that models will work and act a specific way. If, as I frequently see happen, a person's models are painted up as having one set of special rules, and in actuality they are a gamed-up combination of many other chapters, that can get very confusing.

One particular opponent I remember had a whole army painted up as Salamanders, but for rules he had a White Scars gladius, a Skyhammer formation with UM rules so he could get the re-rolls, and an Iron Hands allied detachment so he could field the big bad smashdude character with the crazy IH wargear.

This squad of green dudes with bolters worked totally differently from that squad of green dudes with bolters worked differently than that squad of green dudes with bolters, and NONE of them had the set of rules you were supposed to use for green dudes in the first place... it all got incredibly irritating, especially around turn 3 of the game where there was a "shell game" moment where I asked which squad was the bolter half of the UM skyhammer devs (the ones I could tie down because they didn't have hit and run), I charged those guys, and then he said "oh wait those guys were the WS that got out of that rhino last turn so I'm going to hit and run."

That's a pain in the butt. So is generic space marine bikers counting as Ravenwing Knights, so is standard TH/SS termies being the flail deathwing guys, so is a basic unmarked dread alongside another identical dread playing as a basic one being the fancy FT character dread. There is a point where min-maxing for whatever the best space marine rules are in the current meta/the army I'm currently playing gets irritating.

Add me to the "technically not wrong" but "not necessarily in the spirit of the game" crowd.

So, no big deal.

the_scotsman wrote:

 KharnsRightHand wrote:
There is no other army in the game where the color of models would have any bearing on the rules they use. Nobody's going to complain about my black and red Tyranids using the Hive Fleet Leviathan detachment, the color of your space marines really shouldn't matter. Yea some fluff purists might get annoyed, but if it bothers them that much, they should play with someone else. Nobody should care about what happens in a game they aren't a part of.

It's mostly a clarity issue. The Black Templars (or any other base marine chapter) scheme implies that models will work and act a specific way. If, as I frequently see happen, a person's models are painted up as having one set of special rules, and in actuality they are a gamed-up combination of many other chapters, that can get very confusing.

One particular opponent I remember had a whole army painted up as Salamanders, but for rules he had a White Scars gladius, a Skyhammer formation with UM rules so he could get the re-rolls, and an Iron Hands allied detachment so he could field the big bad smashdude character with the crazy IH wargear.

This squad of green dudes with bolters worked totally differently from that squad of green dudes with bolters worked differently than that squad of green dudes with bolters, and NONE of them had the set of rules you were supposed to use for green dudes in the first place... it all got incredibly irritating, especially around turn 3 of the game where there was a "shell game" moment where I asked which squad was the bolter half of the UM skyhammer devs (the ones I could tie down because they didn't have hit and run), I charged those guys, and then he said "oh wait those guys were the WS that got out of that rhino last turn so I'm going to hit and run."

That's a pain in the butt. So is generic space marine bikers counting as Ravenwing Knights, so is standard TH/SS termies being the flail deathwing guys, so is a basic unmarked dread alongside another identical dread playing as a basic one being the fancy FT character dread. There is a point where min-maxing for whatever the best space marine rules are in the current meta/the army I'm currently playing gets irritating.

Ah, see, I didn't realize you could have more than 1 Chapter Tactic in an army. I'd agree in that case it'd be really confusing to play against, but if they're painted Black Templars and before the game you say you're playing with Blood Angels rules across the board, that's a lot easier to remember. Still not something a spectator should be getting upset about.

the_scotsman wrote:


One particular opponent I remember had a whole army painted up as Salamanders, but for rules he had a White Scars gladius, a Skyhammer formation with UM rules so he could get the re-rolls, and an Iron Hands allied detachment so he could field the big bad smashdude character with the crazy IH wargear.


That's a pain in the butt. So is generic space marine bikers counting as Ravenwing Knights, so is standard TH/SS termies being the flail deathwing guys, so is a basic unmarked dread alongside another identical dread playing as a basic one being the fancy FT character dread. There is a point where min-maxing for whatever the best space marine rules are in the current meta/the army I'm currently playing gets irritating.

All those examples are different from the OP.

Allies all painted exactly the same is not WYSIWYG. It's one step away from cheating (also, I'm sure there will be times when certain squads switch chapter tactics in the middle of a game). Might as well say that those marines are actually guard.

Generic SM bikes don't look like Knights. a TH isn't a flail and so forth.

That kinda stuff I would not be OK with. You want to use your Blood Angles as Black Templars? Sure I don't care. You want to use you Salamanders as White Scars? Fine. Don't be proxying everything though, it gets really confusing.

the_scotsman wrote:

 KharnsRightHand wrote:
There is no other army in the game where the color of models would have any bearing on the rules they use. Nobody's going to complain about my black and red Tyranids using the Hive Fleet Leviathan detachment, the color of your space marines really shouldn't matter. Yea some fluff purists might get annoyed, but if it bothers them that much, they should play with someone else. Nobody should care about what happens in a game they aren't a part of.

It's mostly a clarity issue. The Black Templars (or any other base marine chapter) scheme implies that models will work and act a specific way. If, as I frequently see happen, a person's models are painted up as having one set of special rules, and in actuality they are a gamed-up combination of many other chapters, that can get very confusing.

One particular opponent I remember had a whole army painted up as Salamanders, but for rules he had a White Scars gladius, a Skyhammer formation with UM rules so he could get the re-rolls, and an Iron Hands allied detachment so he could field the big bad smashdude character with the crazy IH wargear.

This squad of green dudes with bolters worked totally differently from that squad of green dudes with bolters worked differently than that squad of green dudes with bolters, and NONE of them had the set of rules you were supposed to use for green dudes in the first place... it all got incredibly irritating, especially around turn 3 of the game where there was a "shell game" moment where I asked which squad was the bolter half of the UM skyhammer devs (the ones I could tie down because they didn't have hit and run), I charged those guys, and then he said "oh wait those guys were the WS that got out of that rhino last turn so I'm going to hit and run."

That's a pain in the butt. So is generic space marine bikers counting as Ravenwing Knights, so is standard TH/SS termies being the flail deathwing guys, so is a basic unmarked dread alongside another identical dread playing as a basic one being the fancy FT character dread. There is a point where min-maxing for whatever the best space marine rules are in the current meta/the army I'm currently playing gets irritating.

Absolutely this, x1000.

I've found it far more common that Loyalist players will just play the CT's roulette for whatever gives them the best chance at just "winning", and screw the background entirely.
As a Chaos player, it's even more galling, since we don't even get anything remotely close to give added character & diversity to our own Legions.

The worst ones I've ever seen, were those who tried to count their Vanilla Marines as GK's, back in 5th edition.
Enjoy keeping that clusterfeth strait as to who has what gear!

As long as you have a visual way of identifying at a glance which units are from which detachment, I don't care.
I'd sure LIKE to see Salamander painted models using Salamander tactics, but I don't mind if you don't.

If you use like three different CTs in your list, make sure I can differentiate. A mark of colour on the base of the model, a different shoulder trim, a different coloured bolter/shoulder pad/purity seal - as long as I can tell what your CT is without you telling or prompting, I wouldn't have an issue.

 Ironwolf45 wrote:
a spectator got all annoyed and starting spouting that there should be a rule against SM players from doing that.

There should be a rule that if a spectator opens his mouth about a game he is not involved with, you can put a body part of your choice in said mouth.

STFU and walk away, neckbeard.

The example given though isn't exactly a ruthless cheesy powergaming move. It's using one of the more mediocre SM rulesets to play models painted as another rather mediocre one. It isn't like he's using Ultramarines or White Scars rules for his Blood Angels because he wants to win with them.

Personally, I'm building a small Blood Angels successor Chapter right now. I have the SM Codex and just got Angels of Death but I don't yet have the BA Codex. I'll run them as Raven Guard in a few smallish games as I get them built up before using the normal rules. Does this make me a fething heretic? Maybe, sure... I couldn't care less about the opinions of someone who would throw a fit over something like that.

That is true, the example given was BT as BA. So I guess my question would be: Were you using BA specific stuff? Were you using the actual models for those rules, and if not, how were you representing them with Black Templangels?

I'm not saying I have any kind of problem with it across the board. If you wanted to use Blood Angels rules and you said something like "All guys in Jump Packs are all Death Company" and the rest of the army was fairly basic, or if you took stuff you wanted to use from BA (say, a furioso dread) and took that real model and painted it up as a BT, then that'd be fine.

If you said "all guys in jump packs are DC, this standard dread with MM is a fragioso, this Ironclad is a libby dread, this laspred is a baal pred...." etc etc etc across the whole army, that'd be approaching the line for me. If it was occasional, AND really consistent, I'd be OK.

As soon as you had either two detachments painted matching colors representing different factions, or similar proxies of distinct units (say, two assault squads, one of which was DC, one of which was standard Assault Marines or Sang Guard, both modeled and painted identically) that's where I'd have a problem.

I don't know if I'll ever fully understand the problem with using different chapter tactics. To me, space marines is space marines. We get to paint our models how we want. Just because I paint up white scars colors shouldn't mean I am suddenly only allowed to play white scars tactics with that force. But any objections should really be able to be suppressed with "successor chapter," even though it shouldn't even have to go that far. All it should be is "I'm playing space marines, X chapter tactics." I get that there are special characters for each chapter, so only use those when you're actually playing those tactics, but otherwise it's a space marines army regardless.

But Jak! These black templars are using blood angel rules, which are not chapter tactics in the C:SM!

The models are space marines, the models are (likely) WYSIWYG. Even WYSIWYG I'm willing to play around with if it's still clear enough who is supposed to have what in a casual game.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

the_scotsman wrote:
That is true, the example given was BT as BA. So I guess my question would be: Were you using BA specific stuff? Were you using the actual models for those rules, and if not, how were you representing them with Black Templangels?

I'm not saying I have any kind of problem with it across the board. If you wanted to use Blood Angels rules and you said something like "All guys in Jump Packs are all Death Company" and the rest of the army was fairly basic, or if you took stuff you wanted to use from BA (say, a furioso dread) and took that real model and painted it up as a BT, then that'd be fine.

If you said "all guys in jump packs are DC, this standard dread with MM is a fragioso, this Ironclad is a libby dread, this laspred is a baal pred...." etc etc etc across the whole army, that'd be approaching the line for me. If it was occasional, AND really consistent, I'd be OK.

As soon as you had either two detachments painted matching colors representing different factions, or similar proxies of distinct units (say, two assault squads, one of which was DC, one of which was standard Assault Marines or Sang Guard, both modeled and painted identically) that's where I'd have a problem.

I mostly agree with this too. As long as stuff doesn't get too confusing or out of hand and I don't have the feeling you're trying to pull one over on me.

My general rule of thumb is I’d like to have to keep track of 3 or less counts-as, non-WYSWYG things before I get irritated. More then that and I find myself having to ask what’s what, or double-check everything. Or get blindsided because I forgot what something was.

And things should be consistent. “All MLs are really Grav Cannons” is fine. "This squad's MLs are LC, and in this squad, they are GCs” is not OK. Too much potential for shell games and confusion.

For allies, there should be a clear way to distinguish who’s who. Different base rims, or shoulder trim colors, something. The difference between tactical squads is subtle, but it’s there.

But on topic, “Everyone is using XX chapter tactic” is a single, simple thing to keep track of. And as long as I don’t need to track a half dozen other odd things about your army, not one I have a problem with.

WYSIWYG is far more important to me than what chapter tactics your yellow/blue/red marines get.

 Griddlelol wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:


One particular opponent I remember had a whole army painted up as Salamanders, but for rules he had a White Scars gladius, a Skyhammer formation with UM rules so he could get the re-rolls, and an Iron Hands allied detachment so he could field the big bad smashdude character with the crazy IH wargear.


That's a pain in the butt. So is generic space marine bikers counting as Ravenwing Knights, so is standard TH/SS termies being the flail deathwing guys, so is a basic unmarked dread alongside another identical dread playing as a basic one being the fancy FT character dread. There is a point where min-maxing for whatever the best space marine rules are in the current meta/the army I'm currently playing gets irritating.

All those examples are different from the OP.

Allies all painted exactly the same is not WYSIWYG. It's one step away from cheating (also, I'm sure there will be times when certain squads switch chapter tactics in the middle of a game). Might as well say that those marines are actually guard.

Generic SM bikes don't look like Knights. a TH isn't a flail and so forth.

That kinda stuff I would not be OK with. You want to use your Blood Angles as Black Templars? Sure I don't care. You want to use you Salamanders as White Scars? Fine. Don't be proxying everything though, it gets really confusing.

What wrong with horse Bikers and a Flail being a Thunder Hammer?

It's not WYSIWYG. I dislike playing games where I have to remember what my opponent told me his models are, rather than just looking at them and instantly seeing what I expect to see. I'm going to forget, or I'm going to constantly have to ask.

Even worse when they're not painted, might as well just put down cardboard counters with a short description written on them.

I don't expect everyone to buy every model, but at least try to convert it or something, or I'm probably never going to play you again.

There's nothing in the rules against it. I've got no problem with other people doing it, as long as it's made clear when we present our armies to each other.

However, whenever I start considering playing my Imperial Fists as anything but, I can' help but feel a little bit... dirty. Like I'm betraying them or something. Luckily, I found the Marauders, a White Scars successor chapter that are yellow, so it allowed me to have some bikes I can play guilt free as White Scars when I feel like something different.

If you've got no such compunction, all the power to you, good sir! Tbh, if I was to start my army anew, I would probably create my own chapter to sidestep such qualms.

 kronk wrote:

 Ironwolf45 wrote:
a spectator got all annoyed and starting spouting that there should be a rule against SM players from doing that.

There should be a rule that if a spectator opens his mouth about a game he is not involved with, you can put a body part of your choice in said mouth.

STFU and walk away, neckbeard.

This statement all day every day. Spectators in general kind of bother me during games.

That being said, you should absolutely play them as you see fit. I would try to keep to the same CT in regular games though so your regular opponents then kind of know going into it that you're a "Blood Angels" players.

I'd run my Dark Angels as classic space marines for a while since I was more heavy into the "Greenwing" as compared to the Raven/Deathwing and could almost make a more fluffy list out of the SM rules than out of Greenwing DA rules.

A friend of mine ran his Raven Guard as Blood Angels for a while because a jump pack Raven Guard army made more sense to him.

As long as I know what you're playing it's fine.

Oh, and as long as YOU know what you're playing ofc. I'd be somewhat upset at shooting or assaulting a squad and you remembering what it is only after the fact if it changes things. Like wasting bolter shots on that assault squad you only remember is supposed to be Death Company (FNP) after I've shot at them.