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I'm making a new SM army, planning on running it as a SM:Codex army, no special crunch, but in terms of fluff and models, would it be possible for a chapter to be founded with multiple gene seeds? What I'm thinking is to have it specialized by each seed they used's specialty, such as assault marines being from the Blood Angels, bikers from white scars or dark angels, and terminators from the Imperial Fists/Iron Hands and so on. Now, I would play them as a regular astartes army, obviously I'm not trying to take the special abilities of each chapter in terms of the actual game, just use the models possibly for each different chapter. Sort of like a full fledged Death Watch chapter or something, but willingly created to be sent in to rain on Abbys parade or something. Would it be a big no no for me to run the different models all under one paint scheme?

The closest thing in fluff that works to this is the Honour Company (I think this is the right name) which is a series of UM successor Chapters which all defend the Eye of Terror. Units are seconded a la Deathwatch style, without the colour changing, but it is UM exclusive.

Therefore, I'm not sure how well your idea holds fluffwise.

Fluff wise space marines are a "graft" or a genetic chimera. IE human dna and 3rd party dna from a progenoid donor. The main issue for creating new marines is continually propagating the grafts on and on to new neophytes is being able to get enough progenoid glands from current marines.

Basically if you had a chapter with multiple germ lines (as you propose) it would be impossible to seize enough graft material generation to generation to propagate the new genetic chimeras. Because every time a space marine got blew into tiny pieces or crushed to pulp or eaten you lose a lot of progenitor glands. Marines that die in a nice controlled manner and can be harvested for their progenoids are great but you lose some by mutation and also a lot by neophyte failure.

The short answer is marine chapters of around 1000 are on the edge of collapse in terms of their germ line. If you reduced that to (say) 200 of each germ line it would quickly go extinct

That totally makes sense, I was actually just reading that aspect of them. Dang, I was really hoping to be able to throw out a cool build of different models. I guess I could just have klepto-relic robbers as a chapter who take what they can and repair it.

You dont have to dump on the idea.

I think the deathwatch style idea would do fine. You could also do renegade marines banded together still loyal to the emperor (they exist in fluff already I.E. chapters that resisted being "discontinued" {polite word for running off before the inquisition starting killing them all cos their geneseed was straying}) it's fairly common in chapter history for it to happen (the space wolves had a successor chapter that was "deleted") it would stand to reason they'd not get all of them and maybe the ones blamed the Lords of terra not the emperor himself I.E. a Grey area to expolit

That's a good idea, it allows me to build them to use the models I want to, without having to explain gene seed, and it would let me run White Scar or Dark Angel bikers, for example, since they aren't really growing through normal means. The Knights of Blood have shown how a renegade chapter can stand in defense of the Imperium. Thank you guys for the help, you're helping me build the idea up to something workable.

No.

You could however do a Deathwatch army like that (since the Deathwatch can be taken from all chapters), and you would even be able to use some of the cool models from the new Deathwatch Overkill game.
You could also build a strike force that is made up of several Chapters working together for a campaign.
A band of renegades hailing from different Chapters would also work well.

Don't let the fluff hold you back, build your models the way you think they look best. My grey knight interceptors are mainly sanguinary guard, and paladins are have the shields and robes from death wing termis. I've only ever had complements, and no one ever complains that they aren't "right". If the model is clearly what it is, and you aren't trying to get anything undue, no one should have a problem.

Different space marine chapters often work together in the same campaign.

If instead of running the collection as a 'chapter' and instead run it as an army on campaign the idea works perfectly well in fluff.

Besides which, as JamesY points out, it is your army so the most important thing is doing what YOU enjoy with it.

And if you don't feel like restricting yourself to pure loyalists many Chaos Space Marine (or Renegade) warbands steal geneseed from each other and loyalists. They're already so deep in trouble with mutation and battle losses that just getting new marines is more important than where exactly their geneseed hails from.

The HH6 book, Retribution talks about the Blackshields and the questionable sources of their overall geneseed. More specifically it mentions a force of Night Lords that were slaughtered and then harvested for geneseed. The idea alludes that a group called the Ashen Claw had been divided from the old XIX Legion before the Heresy and brutally destroyed the Traitorous Night Lord forces it found hiding in the Nostramo Sector.

These Ashen Claws are a part of the Terran born marine forces that were discarded by Corax when he took over the XIX legion. Several Nomad Predation Fleets were sent out with little to no support from their parent legion. Corax would not even contact these fleets in the aftermath of the drop site massacre.

That these Loyal elements would take advantage of geneseed as the spoil of war is a likely choice. The Carcharodon Astra, space sharks and other forces all share a similar background and likely would have original Raven Guard legion geneseed, but also Night Lord, World Eater and other possible geneseed used in specialized squads or teams. Keeping the original geneseed "pure" but still using the stolen geneseed to fill their ranks when the opportunity arose.

EldarArmy wrote:
You dont have to dump on the idea.

I think the deathwatch style idea would do fine. You could also do renegade marines banded together still loyal to the emperor (they exist in fluff already I.E. chapters that resisted being "discontinued" {polite word for running off before the inquisition starting killing them all cos their geneseed was straying}) it's fairly common in chapter history for it to happen (the space wolves had a successor chapter that was "deleted") it would stand to reason they'd not get all of them and maybe the ones blamed the Lords of terra not the emperor himself I.E. a Grey area to expolit

Another idea is something similar to death company with multiple chapters donating units for the service of an inquisitor or other important person such as a rogue trader.

It has happened.

Apparently, a lot of the chapters founded during the thirteenth, or 'cursed' founding used mixed or 'chimeric' geneseed. Despite this, the fourth being was extremely unsuccessful and referred to as 'cursed" for a reason, most of the chapters being involved having since died out or been purged. Those thst remain, if there are any are very quiet about it and there are many in the imperium that would rather they quietly disappear too.

Similarly, chaos factions have a nasty habit of raiding and stealing loyalist geneseed and using it if their own resources are limited or destroyed (hey, you gotta fight the false emperor any way you can, right?) . There are a lot of references in the forgeworld Horus heresy times etc of pretty much every legion devolving to this practice out of sheer desperation and necessity and need to replace their staggering casualties.

Now, all that considered, whilst chimeric geneseed itself is fine, I think the idea of using ba geneseed for assault squads, if geneseed for terminators and what not is a bit silly. It really doesn't work that way in terms of space marine recruitment, organisation or training. You don't get tailored packages of geneseed for assault marine 'lines', tactical 'lines' etc, especially considering the arcane,rituals some require (blood angels and space wolves come to mind immediately). You get geneseed and it's stuck into an aspirant. If they survive, they go through the ranks.

I don't nothing 'bout no geneseed. If you aren't looking to mix and match chapter tactics (or whatever, and do what you want, anyway), but want to mix different chapters iconography, the old Red Corsairs might work. They started as the Astral Claws, and their Chapter Master Huron led them into revolt and stated the Badab war. Other chapters joined, in, etc. What's interesting is after fleeing from the Imperium, those marines became the raiding Red Corsairs. Aligned with Chaos I'm sure they have rules somewhere. But, in the old days, they were portrayed as an amalgam of traitor marines from different chapters, They could have been portrayed by using the Space Marine codex (instead of Chaos). The Red Corsairs kept their original colors and markings, but X-ed out the Imperial Eagle. That always seemed line a cool idea, but I'm not sure it would translate well into an actual army. Bottom line, that's an example of mixed and matched marines.

You've all given me good insight and suggestions, I really dig the idea of a "crusade army" or a group brought together under the banner of someone powerful, like the inquisition. Someone suggested to use the fluff idea of them banded together for a common cause, maybe killing a certain daemon or something, I haven't decided, but to have a "main" chapter, and paint one of the pauldrons to the color of the "main" chapter, and have the rest match the scheme of the armies. I know that I can't take a chapter tactics if I use an "official" color scheme on my troops and then mix them, and don't intend to. I'm mostly about local playing and narrative, not much for competitive play. What do you think of the shoulder idea, to add a coherency to the army?

HCMistborn wrote:
You've all given me good insight and suggestions, I really dig the idea of a "crusade army" or a group brought together under the banner of someone powerful, like the inquisition. Someone suggested to use the fluff idea of them banded together for a common cause, maybe killing a certain daemon or something, I haven't decided, but to have a "main" chapter, and paint one of the pauldrons to the color of the "main" chapter, and have the rest match the scheme of the armies. I know that I can't take a chapter tactics if I use an "official" color scheme on my troops and then mix them, and don't intend to. I'm mostly about local playing and narrative, not much for competitive play. What do you think of the shoulder idea, to add a coherency to the army?

It would work. It is not uncommon for Imperial forces to take on campaign badges when operating together for a long time. If the different Space Marine forces work closely together for a long time it is not unthinkable they would all repaint one of their pauldrons for the duration of the campaign to show respect and allegiance to one another or something like that. You could make it work fluffwise without much problems.

I remember reading an article back in the day that talked about geneseed. Basically, every chapter is required to tithe a little geneseed to the Inquisition for testing for purity and "other" stuff.

All the Space Wolf geneseed tests out as "within normal parameters", much to the disbelief of the Inquisition, and they assume the Wolves are sending in fake stuff.

Ultramarine geneseed is the purest and most stable. It's the least likely to mutate and is the line most used when they found a new chapter. In order to slow mutations of other chapters the Inquisition sometimes sends some Ultramarine seed back to the other chapters to try to hybridize out some of their mutations.

While mentioning the Red Corsairs, it's worth mentioning that the Astral Claws were stealing progenoid glands from fallen allies and enemies during the Badab War. The Corpsetaker Apothecary units are the squads tasked with doing that.

Sure, it's not viable long-term. But it doesn't need to be. The Astral Claws only did it to survive a war of extermination

Another option is to just have your force be one Chapter that recruits from a culturally-diverse recruiting area, or has another reason for you including Blood Angels, Dark Angels, etc, models in one force. A friend used to have a Marine army using different Chapter's Marine models; he said it was because they traded gifts with other Chapters they fought alongside, and incorporated those items into the armour of some of their Marines.

They tried didn't worked out to well
http://warhammer40k.wikia.com/wiki/Cursed_21st_Founding

EldarArmy wrote:
Fluff wise space marines are a "graft" or a genetic chimera. IE human dna and 3rd party dna from a progenoid donor. The main issue for creating new marines is continually propagating the grafts on and on to new neophytes is being able to get enough progenoid glands from current marines.

Basically if you had a chapter with multiple germ lines (as you propose) it would be impossible to seize enough graft material generation to generation to propagate the new genetic chimeras. Because every time a space marine got blew into tiny pieces or crushed to pulp or eaten you lose a lot of progenitor glands. Marines that die in a nice controlled manner and can be harvested for their progenoids are great but you lose some by mutation and also a lot by neophyte failure.

The short answer is marine chapters of around 1000 are on the edge of collapse in terms of their germ line. If you reduced that to (say) 200 of each germ line it would quickly go extinct

Not neccessarily. Remember marines don't HAVE to be in combat all the time. There's cases of devastated chapters retiring from active combat duty to rebuild their forces.

Also chapters can be given glands from the central warehouse so to speak. They give certain amount of those there to be used later. No reason they couldn't be used to rebuild chapter after horrible losses.

Crimson fists for example are currently rebuilding.

The easiest fluff for-the-Emperor reason to justify this army is to just have it be a crusade. With a particularily micro managing chapter master in overall command training and eqquipment of each task force could easily be compromised of the most fit units from diffrent chapters. Such crusades could easily last 100 of years with fresh recruits being supplied as time (and marines) passes.

I'm ultimately running a IF army, and was thinking about painting them as DW, do you think that will become a big issue if the rumored DW codex does come out? Should I paint them as IF just in case?

Always follow the rule of cool with painting.

tneva82 wrote:

EldarArmy wrote:
Fluff wise space marines are a "graft" or a genetic chimera. IE human dna and 3rd party dna from a progenoid donor. The main issue for creating new marines is continually propagating the grafts on and on to new neophytes is being able to get enough progenoid glands from current marines.

Basically if you had a chapter with multiple germ lines (as you propose) it would be impossible to seize enough graft material generation to generation to propagate the new genetic chimeras. Because every time a space marine got blew into tiny pieces or crushed to pulp or eaten you lose a lot of progenitor glands. Marines that die in a nice controlled manner and can be harvested for their progenoids are great but you lose some by mutation and also a lot by neophyte failure.

The short answer is marine chapters of around 1000 are on the edge of collapse in terms of their germ line. If you reduced that to (say) 200 of each germ line it would quickly go extinct

Not neccessarily. Remember marines don't HAVE to be in combat all the time. There's cases of devastated chapters retiring from active combat duty to rebuild their forces.

Also chapters can be given glands from the central warehouse so to speak. They give certain amount of those there to be used later. No reason they couldn't be used to rebuild chapter after horrible losses.

Crimson fists for example are currently rebuilding.

You're right, except that if they're immortal from aging then a "resting" chapter would have to suicide themselves to get more bods :/ which wouldn't be on the cards even I 40k lore lol

But anyway good point: I was speaking from a perspective of in isolation. But it's important to know the progenoid glands can't be made any more they have to be harvested.

Ultramarine geneseed is the purest and most stable. It's the least likely to mutate

Some other points while Ultra Marines /currently/ have the lowest mutation it doesn't mean they are future proof. IE they aren't especially resistant to mutation just statistically fortunate to date.

All the Space Wolf geneseed tests out as "within normal parameters", much to the disbelief of the Inquisition, and they assume the Wolves are sending in fake

Lastly, as someone brought it up, Space Wolves geneseed is fine. It's the HOST humans of Fenris who aren't normal humans. "There are no Wolves on Fenris" is the clue there :^)

 cuda1179 wrote:
I remember reading an article back in the day that talked about geneseed. Basically, every chapter is required to tithe a little geneseed to the Inquisition for testing for purity and "other" stuff.

All the Space Wolf geneseed tests out as "within normal parameters", much to the disbelief of the Inquisition, and they assume the Wolves are sending in fake stuff.

Ultramarine geneseed is the purest and most stable. It's the least likely to mutate and is the line most used when they found a new chapter. In order to slow mutations of other chapters the Inquisition sometimes sends some Ultramarine seed back to the other chapters to try to hybridize out some of their mutations.

The ferasian population are ment to be part wolf genetically. Or modified settlers to survive on the planet iirf
So the gene seed works fine with the ferasians. But in non ferasians it has rather bad side effects.

Also though even they can fall victim to the geneseed if there bot able to control it. Its stable but specialised.

EldarArmy wrote:
You're right, except that if they're immortal from aging then a "resting" chapter would have to suicide themselves to get more bods :/ which wouldn't be on the cards even I 40k lore lol

Well, the Chapter will also keep stores of geneseed for a bad day if it's only possible (ie they don't usually lose too many marines in battle). The tithe to Mars is after all only 5% - anything extra they can build up is stored if not used to make new marines immediately. I remember one WD short (or Compendium?) where an Inquisitor investigates the Silver Skulls Chapter and asks what's behind the heaviest blast door in the deepest bunker. "Our geneseed stores, the future of the Chapter" says the escort. "Even if completely wiped out we will rise again".

And ofc, the setup is a new aspirant who survives his implantation process grows two sets of progenoid glands. One is recovered from him after five years when it's mature, the other takes five years more and can also be recovered if really necessary even if ritual and custom dictates it should stay in the marine until he dies. So depending on how many fresh scouts they have there's a batch of glands maturing right now, and if they're really desperate they can also harvest the second set from living marines. It's shameful and many Chapters might outright refuse to do so but it is possible.

EldarArmy wrote:
You're right, except that if they're immortal from aging then a "resting" chapter would have to suicide themselves to get more bods :/ which wouldn't be on the cards even I 40k lore lol

Ummm...No? You can take the parts from living space marine. That's PREFERRED method. Apotecharies just take them from dead ones to prevent them from going to waste. But since that's not fool proof(what with battlefield and all. Body might disintegrate, apotechary himself might die, the parts could get damaged etc).