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Hi there!

I'm pretty much brand new to the hobby (well, I'm back after a casual fling with Warhammer Fantasy 5th Edition back in my teens and now I've been drawn in by 40k). I've already cobbled together a sizeable pile of marines which I've started to paint up as Imperial Fists. In painting these and thinking about their background I've bumped into a few conundrums when it comes to lore and just how "canon" I have to be when working with a canon chapter.

This mostly comes down to the ten companies of the Fists and their captains. I have three captain models: a converted phobos captain (I took the vanguard box lieutenant and gave him a promotion), a primaris captain (generic sword and rifle dude) and Tor Garadon. I've gathered that in 9th I can only run with one of these at a time, anyway, but I really need some help establishing my narrative for them and, perhaps, in choosing a company (or companies?) for my army.

First off, for my two as of yet unnamed captains, are there any guidelines to how this works with canon characters? I gather that the ten companies each have 1 captain and most of these are already named. Do my captains *have* to be one of these ten company captains (obviously chosen from those that don't already have a model)? Are there captains that sit outside of this framework?

My first instinct was to create a kind of "ghost company", an 11th unofficial company cobbled together on the fly from marines drawn from the codex companies (most of my models are vanguard/stealthy types so this could fit with the idea). My two custom captains would share leadership of this "ghost company" and have a close alliance with the 3rd company, hence Tor Garadon's occasional presence in the force. I'd probably paint most of my models with a red trim to suggest that the 3rd provides most of the troops for this ghost company. Is this remotely viable or will it get me funny looks from lore scholars?

Alternatively I'd heard things about the Codex Astartes being loosened for the launch of the Primaris marines- perhaps this could provide the flexibility I need? Are there new companies for the primaris?

Is there an alternative to the above that I'm not considering? Or am I simply overthinking this? I find the lore and design of the Fists very appealing but I also want that little bit of freedom to have my own named captains with their own background and I want my army to have its own story. I just don't want to go all the way to making them a successor (not least because this would rule out using Tor, and his model is fantastic).

One friend has suggested a successor chapter that shares the name/colour scheme of their parent chapter? Is this worth considering? Rules wise I'd, of course, just be playing Fists. It feels like a successor of this nature wouldn't exist but maybe I'm missing something?

Thanks for any help and input you can provide! I hope this isn't a completely redundant topic to raise a discussion around but I haven't found much talk around it elsewhere. Also, I hope I put this in the right place- I'm not too used to forums!

Many thanks!

Do as you like, blame it on The Rift

DarkNumbers wrote:
Hi there!

I'm pretty much brand new to the hobby (well, I'm back after a casual fling with Warhammer Fantasy 5th Edition back in my teens and now I've been drawn in by 40k). I've already cobbled together a sizeable pile of marines which I've started to paint up as Imperial Fists. In painting these and thinking about their background I've bumped into a few conundrums when it comes to lore and just how "canon" I have to be when working with a canon chapter.

This mostly comes down to the ten companies of the Fists and their captains. I have three captain models: a converted phobos captain (I took the vanguard box lieutenant and gave him a promotion), a primaris captain (generic sword and rifle dude) and Tor Garadon. I've gathered that in 9th I can only run with one of these at a time, anyway, but I really need some help establishing my narrative for them and, perhaps, in choosing a company (or companies?) for my army.

First off, for my two as of yet unnamed captains, are there any guidelines to how this works with canon characters? I gather that the ten companies each have 1 captain and most of these are already named. Do my captains *have* to be one of these ten company captains (obviously chosen from those that don't already have a model)? Are there captains that sit outside of this framework?

My first instinct was to create a kind of "ghost company", an 11th unofficial company cobbled together on the fly from marines drawn from the codex companies (most of my models are vanguard/stealthy types so this could fit with the idea). My two custom captains would share leadership of this "ghost company" and have a close alliance with the 3rd company, hence Tor Garadon's occasional presence in the force. I'd probably paint most of my models with a red trim to suggest that the 3rd provides most of the troops for this ghost company. Is this remotely viable or will it get me funny looks from lore scholars?

Alternatively I'd heard things about the Codex Astartes being loosened for the launch of the Primaris marines- perhaps this could provide the flexibility I need? Are there new companies for the primaris?

Is there an alternative to the above that I'm not considering? Or am I simply overthinking this? I find the lore and design of the Fists very appealing but I also want that little bit of freedom to have my own named captains with their own background and I want my army to have its own story. I just don't want to go all the way to making them a successor (not least because this would rule out using Tor, and his model is fantastic).

One friend has suggested a successor chapter that shares the name/colour scheme of their parent chapter? Is this worth considering? Rules wise I'd, of course, just be playing Fists. It feels like a successor of this nature wouldn't exist but maybe I'm missing something?

Thanks for any help and input you can provide! I hope this isn't a completely redundant topic to raise a discussion around but I haven't found much talk around it elsewhere. Also, I hope I put this in the right place- I'm not too used to forums!

Many thanks!

Welcome!

In regards to how canon you "have" to be? You don't. First and foremost, they're your models, and if you want to do something that others might find lore breaking, you have no obligation to change what you're doing. You think something looks cool? Embrace it! You think that a lore piece affects your own personal enjoyment? Ignore it!

But, you can still be interested in what the "canon" is, so I'll help on that!
Regarding the Company Captains - in most Chapters, there's the 10 Captains, from each Battle Company, and you could use the Captain profile to represent the Chapter Master too while you're at it. However, I think there's definitely a precedent that you could have a model use the Captain profile, but re-fluff them as something else. So, perhaps the Chapter Champion might use a Captain's profile, to represent their better combat skills over a Company Champion. Or, there's some debate/discussion over what the new Primaris Vanguard company is - basically, it's an extra 100 Marines who only wear Phobos armour who are explicitly reserved in the 10th Company for recon and stealth missions, and they may or may not have their own dedicated Captain. This definitely gels with your idea of a "ghost" company, essentially as an addition to the 10th, who temporarily take on 3rd Company colours as they're working with them for the duration of this campaign.

So, while there's no actual 11th Company for the Imperial Fists, there's essentially a double strength 10th Company, which is full of stealthy Primaris Marines who join onto other companies on an ad-hoc basis. As for two Captains leading, it's certainly not impossible. Now, the Imperial Fist supplement might list of all the current named Captains, but perhaps your battles are being set after the "canon" was written! Or, just ignore as convenient!

TL;DR your "ghost company" idea is technically already canon, and there's plenty of workaround for multiple "captain" datasheets (they might represent non-Captains in terms of rank, but use the Captain datasheet for simplicity) - and most importantly, the lore is there as a framework for your ideas, not a mold to fill.

First, Welcome to Dakka and the Space Marines.

While there is “official” lore, that’s just a baseline to start with.

You can set your army at different points in the timeline. Maybe your force is from 50+ years after the start of the indominus crusade, where a lot of the named characters from the codex were killed, and you are the next generation of warriors raised to fill the ranks. Maybe you were a company declared lost in the warp, only to emerge later?

There are very few “set” points in the lore, and a lot of grey space to build your own. And most people don’t even know the bits outside their own faction, or even within them. Off the top of my head, I could only name 5 of the Ultramarine captains, and two of the names I remember are dead in the current timeline. If you told me <your guy> was captain of the IF’s 4th company, I’d just assume you were right and roll with it. Even on the outside chance I know who the cannon captain was, I’d still not bat an eye at you taking your army and adding your own spin to it.

The whole 1 captain in the army thing was a rumor from the upcoming codex, and might not happen, from a rules POV.

Another option for keeping your lore straight is to have multiple models representing the same character. It’s still Captain <YourGuy>, but sometimes he’s geared for infiltration in phobos armor, other times in standard battleplate for general combat. This is easier if you do helmets and/or headswaps to keep them the same. Or use the same heraldry, trinkets/accessories, or other bits to tie the models together.

Take what I say with a grain of salt. I’ve got 11 captains painted, and 4 more in the primed pile...
(and that’s just for my Ultras)

As mentioned by the others, the lore shouldn't stand in the way of you fielding whatever units you want to (or in the case of Matched Play, whatever the points/detachments will allow).
If you need to wrangle the lore a bit to make the models fit the ideas in your head - so be it!

The "ten companies" thing comes from waaaaay back before Primaris were even a twinkle in the designers' eyes, and things have been... "muddied" somewhat since in the name of allowing players to diversify a bit. For instance, it's mentioned at times that companies are in constant flux and can frequently be under-strength - sometimes even over-strength - thanks to things like attrition, problematic records-keeping with strike forces being deployed halfway across the galaxy, and fresh recruitment.
In that vein, I don't recall anything outright stating the "normal" size for a Primaris company. There's also examples given of Primaris units joining existing companies, as well as forming companies of their own.
Lastly, there are loads of examples of multiple companies working together in a given warzone, and a normal game can often be meant to represent a smaller part of a larger conflict - so you should have no trouble justifying units from different companies being in the same army, for instance multiple Captains.

I wanted to call this out in particular:

I've gathered that in 9th I can only run with one of these at a time, anyway

This just isn't true, even in Matched Play most detachments (and certainly the core ones) give you 2 or 3 HQ slots to play with and you can make them ALL Captains if you want. There is a tournament "rule of three" that limits you to a maximum of 3 units from the same datasheet - but even then, there are multiple different Captain datasheets that would functionally let you take about a dozen in an army big enough, if you wanted.
The REAL question is, given the number of great HQ options Marines have, is can you justify the redundancy of taking multiple Captains over Lieutenants, Librarians or otherwise instead...

Thanks for all of your detailed and helpful replies! Really useful and I'm very pleased to hear how flexible the lore is. I'll be giving it some thought and probably run with the idea of some sort of ghost company as previously discussed (my army will have a second detachment of Deathwatch so I can imagine a sort of "spec ops" vibe running through the force feeling right). Something about spec ops fortress breakers/defenders seems fun to me!

The double strength vanguard company is particularly interesting! I'll probably work that in, somehow. I'm glad they borrow the trim from other companies as I don't particularly love the trim-less design of the old fashioned 10th. I do have some sternguard, too, so there'll be some white-trim 1st company dudes in there and I'd like to carry that elite vibe through the force.

Regarding the captain limitation- apologies! I don't mean to spread misinformation. I was running off of reports of the new "Company Command" rule (I believe it's a screenshot leak? I can provide a link if you're interested but I don't know if this forum has linking rules?) limiting captains to 1 per detachment and lieutenants to 2. Even if that information is accurate, I guess you could just take additional detachments if you really wanted more captains, but then we run into your astute point about redundancy. I could definitely be tempted by the phobos librarian soon (love the model)! I have a custom lieutenant I'm working on so that should add some variety, too.

Haha! I completely understand regarding owning too many captains. I've seen reports of the captain with heavy bolt rifle and I'm immediately thinking I may have a fourth soon (well, fifth if you count my Deathwatch terminator captain).

Love the idea of running two models as the same dude in different armour. I already have two of my captain's head for that exact purpose I've got his head magnetised in case I need to change it.

Thanks again for the friendly and helpful responses!

DarkNumbers wrote:
Regarding the captain limitation- apologies! I don't mean to spread misinformation. I was running off of reports of the new "Company Command" rule (I believe it's a screenshot leak? I can provide a link if you're interested but I don't know if this forum has linking rules?) limiting captains to 1 per detachment and lieutenants to 2. Even if that information is accurate, I guess you could just take additional detachments if you really wanted more captains, but then we run into your astute point about redundancy. I could definitely be tempted by the phobos librarian soon (love the model)! I have a custom lieutenant I'm working on so that should add some variety, too.

No need to apologise! I was under the impression someone had misled YOU and was fully ready to fight your corner.
I looked up that leak and it sure looks valid, plus it seems like a reasonable balance change to somewhat fight the ridiculous amount of rerolls Marines get right now... but again, that's just in terms of putting together an army for a specific battle. No reason not to have multiple in your collection to choose from.

For what it's worth, I'm growing a Fists army myself and I've already painted a Gravis Captain and Tor Garadon before putting any yellow on a single Intercessor, sooooo I feel you...!

Ahh, hehe! That's cool- thanks

Yeah, it seems a sensible change. Didn't stop me from cursing them for scuppering my vanguard, battle-line and fire-support captains plan, hehe. Still, probably would have been a bad idea to field that many captains, tactically, anyway. Absolutely! I'm happy to have some options to choose from!

Awesome! Good to meet another IF collector! It was always going to be them or the Raven Guard for me (I like the spec-ops feel) and as I plan to field them next to the black armoured Deathwatch I figured Raven Guard would look a little lost next to them. Plus I love the almost dwarvish "this rock is my rock and I will die on it if necessary" feel of the Fists.

Thanks to everyone's input I've settled on a pretty solid idea moving forward- I'm going to treat this "Ghost Company" as a kind of lost-and-found for Imperial Fist heroes, initially formed by a captain who returned from the warp to find his position taken and no other open spots within the Codex Astartes organisational structure. He spent time hopping from company to company, helping where needed and eventually formed an elite squad consisting of just himself and a handful of other champions who returned unexpectedly from MIA status to find their old positions occupied. This team of ex-captains, lieutenants, librarians, chaplains and such ended up taking on kill team style missions as a unit.

Later, as it became necessary to take on larger scale operations, the group formed a kind of pseudo-company and began requisitioning troops from the ten Codex compliant companies on detached duty. This was begrudgingly tolerated by more stringent members of the chapter and the group earned this special dispensation through their many victories, proving their worth. In particular, they earned the respect of the 3rd and Tor Garadon, who began taking on missions alongside this new "Ghost Company". Over time, various squads from across the chapter developed a shared sense of comradeship with the "Ghost Captain", becoming favourite choices for re-deployment with his "company". (Despite the theme of drawing squads from all ten companies, I quite like the idea of a bond forming between the squads most regularly called upon).

This all fits rather perfectly for me, even giving multiple meanings to the title "Ghost Company" as it focuses on spec-ops, is led by heroes who could be described as "ghosts" and, officially, it doesn't exist. I may drop the idea of also labelling it the 11th as you never know if GW may canonise their own 11th company concept. Besides, it probably sounds too official for what this is. The only niggle is that I plan to use a lot of Primaris and they are a relatively recent development (whilst marines have been going missing for thousands of years), so I may throw in the idea that most permanent members of the Ghost Company go through the Rubicon process as a kind of right of passage.

Altogether this gives me a core group of characters that I can customise to my liking, even giving them awesome stories for how they got lost and found their way back (lost in the warp being a good default starting point). Then I can just grow the army around them, representing the many squads from across the chapter that have developed a loyalty to the Ghost Company, returning regularly on detached duty.

I also quite like the idea of using the reserve companies- they would be more likely to lend troops in this way, I imagine. Some have pretty cool trim colours, too (purple and grey seem swish choices alongside yellow).

Sorry, kinda thinking out loud at this point but I thought you may like to see how your responses inspired some ideas Pretty excited for the lore of my army now!

DarkNumbers

A little side note. for the lore players your about 4 editions to late.
back in 3rd-5th edition (especially 3rd/4th and some codexes in 5th) there were dedicated themed army builds with restrictions that gave strong benefits to your army if you played them in accordance to lore.

the 3.5 chaos codex to this day has never been surpassed as the best example of how to play the traitor legions in accordance to the lore while also being effective on the table.

The 4th ed marine codex had a trait system with the known chapters having fixed attributes comparable to the chaos dex, but it also allowed players to create their own unique chapters by taking positive and negative traits....,like say building a bike themed marine army with apothecary sgts.

eldar had craftworld lists, orks had clan lists and so on.

the current incarnation of 40K is pretty vanilla by comparison. it allows you to build a force without the positives or negatives of how a marine chapter would act in the lore. with about the only thing different being a few stratagems you can use for their specific chapter that differentiate them. some have a rule here are there that also make them stand out a little like the salamanders "mastercrafted" re-roll special rule.

Our group still plays 5th ed with some house rules brought in from the compatible editions(3rd-7th) to make 5th better, which also allows the use of any codex from those editions to fight each other. it leads to some fun times and silly things on the table when the lore takes you. but then we are all long time players and really enjoy the lore and how it effects the gameplay.

you don't need special bonuses to play a theme army. presumably he's doing it for a fun internal story rather then how many bonuses he can stack

With Chaos chapters I'm running with the assumption that since they don't run with the Codex Astartes they can not only expand chapters beyond the typical 1000 Marines but due to their inherent nature as Chaos its not unusual to see the legions and renegade chapters branch off from their mother chapters and establish independence. They would bargain with Fabulous Bill for gene seed, harvest off dead marines and in general use daemonic tech to alter humans into astartes and thus build an entire chapter from a single company, or even a small warband of a few squads. After all these dudes rule over entire planets and have been going steady for 12,000 years so they could take things slowly and resourcefully while they build from scratch.

The things that seem like obstacles to you wasn’t really in your way.

The special company that you’re describing is just how normal companies work. A chapter only has four battle companies that can be the core of strike forces. They each get maybe twelve squads attached to them from the other companies. That includes the extra captains.

Including the chapter master the chapter has eleven captains, but only four battle companies. With the attachments a battle company could commonly have three captains, that’s commonly. There could be three captains, four or more lieutenants, three chaplains. It’s a lot of heroes. There are 27 librarians in some ordinary chapters it’s highly variable, but it would be normal to have six librarians of high and low ranks in a strike force.

They make these strike forces from the battle companies plus other squads and captains and they can stay together for decades on campaign. Also all of them can switch to phobia armor before a battle.

The ghost company seems a lot like all normal companies in every chapter. The purpose of the background on companies is to describe what your army probably looks like. There’s no other reason for it to exist, it’s not something that gets in your way and we have to get around it somehow.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Btw Garadon has suits of Phobos and Tacticus armor available for him to wear, unless there’s something unusual with him.

Azathothsdream wrote:
With Chaos chapters I'm running with the assumption that since they don't run with the Codex Astartes they can not only expand chapters beyond the typical 1000 Marines but due to their inherent nature as Chaos its not unusual to see the legions and renegade chapters branch off from their mother chapters and establish independence. They would bargain with Fabulous Bill for gene seed, harvest off dead marines and in general use daemonic tech to alter humans into astartes and thus build an entire chapter from a single company, or even a small warband of a few squads. After all these dudes rule over entire planets and have been going steady for 12,000 years so they could take things slowly and resourcefully while they build from scratch.

This isn't just assumption... basically everything you've said here is backed up by fluff in one or more of the Chaos Marine Codexes over time. With perhaps one exception - you don't generally see Chaos Marines referred to as 'Chapters', though technically that'd be the case where entire Chapters have turned traitor (eg the Astral Claws).

In regards to warbands establishing independence, not only do you have specific bands identified such as the Cleaved or the Crimson Slaughter, but pretty much the entire Night Lords and World Eater legions split into different warbands of various size.

Thanks for the additional input! Sorry for the delay. Busy few days.

Interesting to hear that company make-up is so flexible by default. Although I'm guessing these borrowed troops come exclusively from reserve companies?

I've already managed to get fairly invested in this Ghost Company idea so I may still run with it. It does seem that there's an opening for some sort of system where returned marines, once thought lost, are redeployed until openings appear within the conventional companies. Is there any lore on how this is normally handled?

Good to hear I could basically use any helmeted Primaris Captain as Tor. Still, I like the idea of my captains having their own names and histories

DarkNumbers wrote:
It does seem that there's an opening for some sort of system where returned marines, once thought lost, are redeployed until openings appear within the conventional companies. Is there any lore on how this is normally handled?

I'm afraid they're not exactly standard cases, but... both cases I am aware of involve high-ranking members being reinstated pretty much immediately to their former rank.
Imperial Fists Captain Lysander is one, he underwent a whole array of tests to ensure his purity given he'd been captured and tortured for a long time... but once those tests were over he became Captain of the 1st Company again.
The other case? ...oh, only an Ultramarine, Roboute Guilliman, maybe you've heard of him.

Oops miss post

Hey! Sorry for the late response. Hectic couple weeks.

Haha, I have heard of old Guilliman. His pesky codex is what started all of this!

I've put my army in the army list forum if you're interested in seeing it:

https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/0/791854.page#10920510

I'm currently wringing my hands over how to arm my Intercessors and Hellblasters, hehe.

DarkNumbers wrote:
Thanks for the additional input! Sorry for the delay. Busy few days.

Interesting to hear that company make-up is so flexible by default. Although I'm guessing these borrowed troops come exclusively from reserve companies?

I've already managed to get fairly invested in this Ghost Company idea so I may still run with it. It does seem that there's an opening for some sort of system where returned marines, once thought lost, are redeployed until openings appear within the conventional companies. Is there any lore on how this is normally handled?

When a marine or ten are MIA from a company for 20 years, they don’t stop being part of that company. Conceivably if they came back at the rare time that a company is at a complete complement the second company could be at 110 marines for a while. That’s fine, there’s no cop monitoring them constantly, and it wouldn’t be permanent.

I really like your idea of grizzled veterans trying to reintegrate and getting to use the survival skills they picked up in wild space. Every battle space marines fight they do in a special strike force. Strike Force Ghost, Strike Force Revenant, The Ghost Crusade, these would all make sense.

Yeah, technically all marine squads fighting a battle are “borrowed.” The chapter appoints an officer to be the Force Commander. It could be a battle company captain, but it could also be the chapter master, it could be a senior librarian or chaplain like when the Howling Gryphons’ chief librarian commanded three companies in some book, one of the souls drinkers one I think. It could be a special officer like the salamanders Forge Father He’stan, who doesn’t have a company, or one of the Ultramarine Tetrarchs, who govern planets and aren’t company commanders either. If you have a long lost captain and someone took over his company, that doesn’t mean he loses his rank of captain, and he’s a perfectly fine candidate to be appointed as a force commander or staff officer of a strike force.

All the marines in a strike force come from the normal companies. Your long lost captain could have his old company in his strike force, with the current captain. He could have a dozen other squads with their officers in his strike force too.

Think about the first company. It doesn’t usually go to battle as one unit. The company chaplain, apothecary, and captain are there to decide who gets into the company, which combination of marines and their skills makes a good squad. When they need to send 15 veterans to one task force and 40 to another, they have to decide which squads and officers go to which strike force. Obviously the captain, lieutenants and sergeants also lead those veteran contingents in battle when they get to the strike force.

Yes, usually a strike force is battle company captain as force commander with his battle company plus some other assets. They built them that way, for simplicity. What if there are two battle companies in the strike force? What if there’s a battle company that’s at 62 marines, and there are 160 more marines from other companies including one complete reserve company? In all of those cases someone is the force commander for that campaign.

Something to consider if you only run one captain at a time is that the two unnamed ones are the same guy; he is just deploying with a different loadout. Captains would be masters of a wide variety of weapons & armour types.