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When building a Legion army one of the most important questions is what armour mark to use. We know that all legions had every armour mark, but they tend to have more of some marks, than others. But on what is this preference based? On the availability of the Mark to a certain legion or on its combat characterstics?
Right now the distribution looks like that (based on the FW upgrade sets):
Dark Angels - Mk II
Emperors Children - Mk IV
Iron Warriors - Mk II
White Scars - Mk II
Space Wolves - Mk III
Imperial Fists - Mk III
Night Lords - Mk IV
Blood Angels - Mk IV
Iron Hands - Mk III
World Eaters- MK II
Ultramarines - Mk IV
Death Guard - Mk III
Thousand Sons -Mk IV
Sons of Horus - Mk IV
Word Bearers - Mk IV
Salamaders - Mk III
Raven Guard - Mk VI (seems like no favor for older marks)
Alpha Legion - Mk IV

Personally, I find this kind of categorizing completely ridiculous. You say yourself that every legion had (nearly) every mark of armor. Your individual army shouldn't be a perfect representation of the median of its legion, with every marine in the same armor mark, as defined by its legion. I would hope it would have a bit more character to it than having every marine in the same armor.

Perhaps that one Imperial Fist devastator received a Palatine-style helm as a gift from an Emperor's Children marine he fought alongside in years past.

Perhaps that squad of traitor White Scars got the better of a Raven Guard unit and are now using their Mark VI.

Perhaps your Death Guard defend an ancient forge world that supplies them with the best Mark II armor the galaxy has ever seen.

Maybe it's just me reading into how FW goes out of their way in their writing to make every option and every possibility plausible for all legions, but it's just disheartening when everyone does their legion in the "right armor" because, "that's what they're supposed to wear."

In the novel about Murder they say something along the lines of that the Mk III helmet part they find has to be Blood Angels, as Emperors Children only used Mk IV and above at that point.

Yeah, there are some that are identified more with certain marks than others, but the only official thing coming from FW is that you're free to use what you want.

For instance, my WE were inspired by this artwork from Betrayal. WE look great in Mk.4.



Then I put my sergeants in Mk.2 to represent that they're grizzled vets leading a bunch of young bucks.

jareddm wrote:
Personally, I find this kind of categorizing completely ridiculous. You say yourself that every legion had (nearly) every mark of armor. Your individual army shouldn't be a perfect representation of the median of its legion, with every marine in the same armor mark, as defined by its legion. I would hope it would have a bit more character to it than having every marine in the same armor.

Perhaps that one Imperial Fist devastator received a Palatine-style helm as a gift from an Emperor's Children marine he fought alongside in years past.

Perhaps that squad of traitor White Scars got the better of a Raven Guard unit and are now using their Mark VI.

Perhaps your Death Guard defend an ancient forge world that supplies them with the best Mark II armor the galaxy has ever seen.

Maybe it's just me reading into how FW goes out of their way in their writing to make every option and every possibility plausible for all legions, but it's just disheartening when everyone does their legion in the "right armor" because, "that's what they're supposed to wear."

That may be, but different marks have different strenghts, like Mk III having more frontal protection and being better at boarding operations, thus being liked by IF. Nobody is saying that an army must completely be equiped with the same armour (my TS veterans wear Mk III), it's more like sticking to a certain stylistic and theme.

the II and XI used MkI armor. They didnt last long in the void of space, more like the space marine guinea pigs of the old armor.

And in The First Heretic novel a Raven Guard Captain on Istvann V is described as wearing Mk III armour and a blue command cloak, so this is a prime example of how every legion had every armour (except the prototype MK VI).

Also, as the Heresy dragged on the legions would get much more muddled in terms of what marks they were wearing.

You have companies being folded into each other to compensate for loses etc.

They also start to cannibalize comrades' and enemies' suits just to keep in the fight, hence where MKV comes from. So on top of having different marks in different armies and even in different squads you'll start to see Frankensteined MKV suits that incorporate parts from different marks on the same marine.

 Decay wrote:
And in The First Heretic novel a Raven Guard Captain on Istvann V is described as wearing Mk III armour and a blue command cloak, so this is a prime example of how every legion had every armour (except the prototype MK VI).

And even then, I would argue that there were a couple of different types of Mark VI being tested across the legions. Sure the one that the Raven Guard had was the one that made it to full production, but with a little greenstuff, it shouldn't be difficult to pass off Mark VI as one of the other, older armor prototypes.

I plan on having my EC and DG in MkIV and MkIII... for now. Depends if they do other marks in plastic (Probably just 2, possibly 5)

In addition to MK I-VI, Fists/Scar/BAngels had access to the new MK VII (the 40K common type) during the defence of Terra. Using your 40K models for battles set during this period is not out of place. I anticipate that they will have at least a few models in MKVII when they finally make the book for the Battle of Terra, though there might still be a couple of aesthetic differences to sell more.new FW models

Iron warriors would be more in mkiii. Because of how successful they were in the early days, they were amongst the first in line for new equipment. Mkii is definitely the best look for them though.

Well, I consider Mk III to be the best HH armour and find it the best looking. But at the same time FW pushes every legion to a certain mark and it would be nice to know tha reason. Ok, the TS upgrade packs are Mk IV because BaC came out at that time, but I wouldlike to see upgrade packs for Mk III (as it's now also in plastic) and, eventualy, Mk II. Still the preference for certain marks must be somehow explained if the fluff.

 hordrak wrote:
Well, I consider Mk III to be the best HH armour and find it the best looking. But at the same time FW pushes every legion to a certain mark and it would be nice to know tha reason. Ok, the TS upgrade packs are Mk IV because BaC came out at that time, but I wouldlike to see upgrade packs for Mk III (as it's now also in plastic) and, eventualy, Mk II. Still the preference for certain marks must be somehow explained if the fluff.

FW stylizes their legion profiles as Imperial records, all of which are crusade era. When we look at what armor marks were favored by different legions we're actually looking at what they used during the GC leading into the HH.

I do agree with you on MKIII, it's my fav too, but you know I did my first IW with MKIV and with some extra modeling details they look convincingly HH-era IW. Still got MKIII for my Havocs and going to get some of the new plastic MKIII to mix up my squads, because IW are always getting killed and replaced etc.

 hordrak wrote:
Ok, the TS upgrade packs are Mk IV because BaC came out at that time, but I wouldlike to see upgrade packs for Mk III (as it's now also in plastic) and, eventualy, Mk II. Still the preference for certain marks must be somehow explained if the fluff.

Both of the TS helmet* upgrade packs are MkIV because that's their iconic mark - the classic RT chaos marines were MkII/III for the Death Guard, MkVI for the Emperor's Children, MkV/VI hybrid for the World Eaters and MkIV for the Thousand Son. Jes Goodwin's concept sketch for the latter had a note saying the MkIV was because of their late entry into the Heresy which no longer makes sense (if it ever did), it now likely comes from their close relationship with the Forge World of Zhao-Akkad.

* the craptacular FW torso's are probably barely disguised MkVII as a nod to the current godawful 40k Thousand Sons..

 Gashrog wrote:

 hordrak wrote:
Ok, the TS upgrade packs are Mk IV because BaC came out at that time, but I wouldlike to see upgrade packs for Mk III (as it's now also in plastic) and, eventualy, Mk II. Still the preference for certain marks must be somehow explained if the fluff.

Both of the TS helmet* upgrade packs are MkIV because that's their iconic mark - the classic RT chaos marines were MkII/III for the Death Guard, MkVI for the Emperor's Children, MkV/VI hybrid for the World Eaters and MkIV for the Thousand Son. Jes Goodwin's concept sketch for the latter had a note saying the MkIV was because of their late entry into the Heresy which no longer makes sense (if it ever did), it now likely comes from their close relationship with the Forge World of Zhao-Akkad.

* the craptacular FW torso's are probably barely disguised MkVII as a nod to the current godawful 40k Thousand Sons..

Being a smaller legion there ability to have more makes sense in a over all percentage.

Half of my EC are in MkIII armor. If you look in my gallery you'll see a very early color test model I did (not directly posting it, it's not a good paint job), but it does show how nicely the MkIII can be blinged up with gold trim on the armor plates. Perfect for my EC.