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.

I'm very new to WH40K so you'll have to excuse me if this is a dumb question with an obvious answer.

Why don't more people do this? It seems the overwhelming majority go with Ultramarines, Dark Angels, Space Wolves or Blood Angels.

It seems the rules for doing so are provided and there's also (if I remember right) "thousands" of chapters spread across the Galaxy. Seems way more creative and fun but not very popular ...?

There just isn't much reason to.

And people who've been around a while are well aware the next time the paradigm shifts, the 'custom <chapter/whatever>' rules might just vanish again.

Plus by and large, its a net loss, especially for people who buy into special characters. The various posterboys have a lot of those.

----
Though I'm not particularly convinced its a matter of 'overwhelming majority.' Its just easier to talk about rules in terms of whichever chapter. Talking about your custom chapter just confuses discussion; they're a lot like talking about dreams- other people honestly don't care, and most of the meaning doesn't carry over.

I thought about it, but I really wanted to play a space wolves army after reading the Black Library books.

If I do it again, it'll be a custom chapter, some of the recent white dwarf articles, and twitter posts from Black Library authors are really inspiring in that regard.

Voss wrote:
There just isn't much reason to.

And people who've been around a while are well aware the next time the paradigm shifts, the 'custom <chapter/whatever>' rules might just vanish again.

Plus by and large, its a net loss, especially for people who buy into special characters. The various posterboys have a lot of those.

----
Though I'm not particularly convinced its a matter of 'overwhelming majority.' Its just easier to talk about rules in terms of whichever chapter. Talking about your custom chapter just confuses discussion; they're a lot like talking about dreams- other people honestly don't care, and most of the meaning doesn't carry over.

Vanish again? So they have appeared and disappeared before?

I'd be much more worried about various other ways GW may obsolete your army than the paint job and name to be honest. Worst case situation, surely nobody would object to playing anyone who says, "this is my custom chapter, the rules for them are exactly the same as <whatever stock chapter>". In other words, they're blood angels (or whatever) in all but name and colour scheme?

(... and by the way, this special model is their primarch, "Boboute Duilliman"... edit: okay, maybe not primarch as there's only a few of them, but you get my point, some other special character in all but name...)


....

PieInTheSky wrote:

Voss wrote:
There just isn't much reason to.

And people who've been around a while are well aware the next time the paradigm shifts, the 'custom <chapter/whatever>' rules might just vanish again.

Plus by and large, its a net loss, especially for people who buy into special characters. The various posterboys have a lot of those.

----
Though I'm not particularly convinced its a matter of 'overwhelming majority.' Its just easier to talk about rules in terms of whichever chapter. Talking about your custom chapter just confuses discussion; they're a lot like talking about dreams- other people honestly don't care, and most of the meaning doesn't carry over.

Vanish again? So they have appeared and disappeared before?

I'd be much more worried about various other ways GW may obsolete your army than the paint job and name to be honest. Worst case situation, surely nobody would object to playing anyone who says, "this is my custom chapter, the rules for them are exactly the same as <whatever stock chapter>". In other words, they're blood angels (or whatever) in all but name and colour scheme?

There was custom chapter rules years ago, but were pretty well broken and hard to balance. (I think 5th edition?).

Folks have made custom chapters for years, having custom chapter rules isn't a perquisite for that. It wasn't until 7th edition that there was even specific rules for chapters like Iron Hands, Salamanders and such as we know them now. I think folks are just drawn to existing chapters due to the established lore, and it's something folks recognize. Rules don't play into it that much.

There's custom chapter rules in 9th if I remember right ... ? I only skimmed through the rules but I seem to remember something about selecting special rules for chapters that were not in some predefined list of common chapters.

PieInTheSky wrote:
There's custom chapter rules in 9th if I remember right ... ? I only skimmed through the rules but I seem to remember something about selecting special rules for chapters that were not in some predefined list of common chapters.

There are.

I made my own custom chapter for pure aesthetics and fluff reasons. Ruleswise and towards other players I'm a Blood Angel player.

It's just easier than to say "I got my homebrew chapter, but for all intents and purposes they are Blood Angels". I just assumed a lot of people do the same.

Now that I think of it, within my local group I'm the only one with a custom chapter. Another guy is undecided, yet. Maybe it is less common than I thought.

Custom chapters don't get unique units, unique characters, or a whole bunch of the stratagems/relics that the First Founding Chapters get (a successor chapter gets bits and pieces, but way less). The custom sub-faction rules get way more play in non-SM factions where you're giving up one stratagem and occasionally one named character to get more flexibility in your sub-faction rule.

Do it for the aesthetic you want while not being encumbered by rules making your army bad. Nobody should be punished for choosing an official color scheme but here we are.

PieInTheSky wrote:
I'd be much more worried about various other ways GW may obsolete your army than the paint job and name to be honest. Worst case situation, surely nobody would object to playing anyone who says, "this is my custom chapter, the rules for them are exactly the same as <whatever stock chapter>". In other words, they're blood angels (or whatever) in all but name and colour scheme?

(... and by the way, this special model is their primarch, "Boboute Duilliman"... edit: okay, maybe not primarch as there's only a few of them, but you get my point, some other special character in all but name...)

Sure. In which case, you aren't playing a 'custom chapter' you're playing ultramarines or blood angels or whatever and just painted them differently (or didn't paint them at all). Back in the long long ago, various chapters had published camo patterns and specific environment paint schemes (desert, winter, etc).

When talking about them on a game forum, there's zero difference between that and the 'actual chapter.' If you're playing green not-Ultramarines, you're still asking about ultramarine rules and planning around ultramarine tactics. In rules and tactics forums, other people are just going to skip over your explanation that they're actually 'Viridian Knights' and blah, blah exposition. Or they'll just be annoyed and skip the post entirely. More positive responses will probably come from painting and fiction subforums.

PieInTheSky wrote:

Voss wrote:
There just isn't much reason to.

And people who've been around a while are well aware the next time the paradigm shifts, the 'custom <chapter/whatever>' rules might just vanish again.

Plus by and large, its a net loss, especially for people who buy into special characters. The various posterboys have a lot of those.

----
Though I'm not particularly convinced its a matter of 'overwhelming majority.' Its just easier to talk about rules in terms of whichever chapter. Talking about your custom chapter just confuses discussion; they're a lot like talking about dreams- other people honestly don't care, and most of the meaning doesn't carry over.

Vanish again? So they have appeared and disappeared before?

I'd be much more worried about various other ways GW may obsolete your army than the paint job and name to be honest. Worst case situation, surely nobody would object to playing anyone who says, "this is my custom chapter, the rules for them are exactly the same as <whatever stock chapter>". In other words, they're blood angels (or whatever) in all but name and colour scheme?

(... and by the way, this special model is their primarch, "Boboute Duilliman"... edit: okay, maybe not primarch as there's only a few of them, but you get my point, some other special character in all but name...)


....

Well, sometimes their custom rules lead you into building models/forces in ways that become invalid later.
For ex; my own "generic" Doom Eagles force now has too many squads of jumppack assault marines for the current "rule of 3" environment. Wich is a bit inconvenient.

I created two custom SM chapter during 4th. In addition, I made sure to compose my collection of models in such a way that I could also use those chapters as ONE of the big four.

Biggest challenge for a custom chapter is to paint your chapter logo on top of your pauldrons. Took me a lot of time and patience to do so.

Custom Chapters:

Grave Diggers
- Logo: Tombstone
- Able to upgrade Tac Sgt. to Apothecaries
- not allowed to field any Allies
- can be also used as Dark Angels


Nuclear Rampagers
- Logo: Atomic Mushroom Cloud
- Able to field advanced Techmarines
- fewer Elite, Assault & Support slots
- can be also used as Blood Angels


40K Album
https://ibb.co/album/41vTnG

A lot of people like the fluff for existing Chapters, so tend to go with those. Others like the rules, so stick with that.

For my Primaris army I invented my own Chapter (Iron Paladins), but they're still using the White Scar rules (advance + charge is easy to remember!).

I do it so that I can use the paint scheme I like along with the rules/theme I like. If you tie yourself to a certain chapter's rules, there's a chance they get mashed over. That said, the generic/UM rules are the ones I've gone with since forever, with the exception of 4th edition which had enough of it's own custom chapter traits to do something compelling with them.

I basically play Ultramarines in white.

Maybe I'm wrong on this ... but I'm pretty sure you can use whatever army list you want (stock marines, space wolves, etc...) and then paint them however you want and call them the "blah blah blah successor chapter"

 Insectum7 wrote:
I basically play Ultramarines in white.

And I'm playing White Scars in black. It's weird.

Truth be told, if GW hadn't've ballsed up the Outrider rules, I might be playing Ravenwing.

 Mezmorki wrote:
Maybe I'm wrong on this ... but I'm pretty sure you can use whatever army list you want (stock marines, space wolves, etc...) and then paint them however you want and call them the "blah blah blah successor chapter"

Yeah. My Eldar are a custom paint scheme.
I will play them as whatever craftworld I see fit rules wise.

I dont see a reason why a marine player should be any different.
Paint what you want and use the rules for whatever. To non marines player one marine power armour dude is the same as the other 98 in your codex...

Obviously if you instead those blakc bikers are in fact thunderwolf cav and your force is space wolves that would be a bit imersion breaking for me personaly. But if its just those red marines are actually using the rules form the blue marines; who cares?

The only time it would ever causes problems if you have your whole force painted the same colour but then one half of them is blood angels and one half of them is iron hands rules coz that's the bets way to run the units you have and ayou are also runing a bunch of proxies on top which might annoy your oponent whose brought your bog stanrd not try hard list..

I did create my own chapter. Originally, it was supposed to be a Raptors kill team of just scouts and Shadowspear and the cheaper ETB Primaris boxes. However, I decided to build a whole army of Primaris as I really enjoy painting them. Since I was going all Primaris and stealth and snipers aren't really my thing much I decided to make my own chapter. I couldn't really decide on a successor chapter, so I just left them unknown. The initial idea being that the chapter had evidence that they may be 2nd Legion (one of the redacted Legions) and felt it best to not pursue who their Primarch believing ignorance and the possibility of it not being heretical geneseed the best course of action.

Besides, after the Devastation of Baal, the newly minted chapter became very cautious after essentially being spit in the face from some Blood Angels and their successors whom they fought and bled for. My chapter, the Avenging Eagles, simply doesn't have the history for me to determine which chapter they are most like to bother with any supplement. My personal play style is most closely matched to the Blood Angels, while as gray shields the marines would have been most closely trained as Ultramarines and their paint scheme and being a Phobos armor focused chapter also lends them to be very much like Raven Guard.

I mostly haven't had the desire to pick up one or more space marine supplements. With the second 8th C:SM I certainly didn't need more power for this army. Currently, I can't game. I am not even sure I want to bother with the current C:SM. I am thinking of having my Primaris army sit out 9th while I focus more on playing my CSM and GSC armies.

I am certainly glad I did invent my own chapter. Each game of Kill Team and 40k they play unfolds the Avenging Eagles story a little more. It's a lot of rpg-like fun to see how chapter master gain his position by firing the killing shot to a Tyranid Dimachaeron on Baal, to giving my Repulsors Blood Angels honors for fighting in those same battles, to being lured into a trap by GSC aligned IG. With Primaris space marines it feels like a completely fresh start with even less baggage of being a successor given the shared start of all Primaris.

PieInTheSky wrote:
I'm very new to WH40K so you'll have to excuse me if this is a dumb question with an obvious answer.

Why don't more people do this? It seems the overwhelming majority go with Ultramarines, Dark Angels, Space Wolves or Blood Angels.

It seems the rules for doing so are provided and there's also (if I remember right) "thousands" of chapters spread across the Galaxy. Seems way more creative and fun but not very popular ...?

It was ever thus. I think the core of it is that the big 4 chapters get the vast majority of exposure in terms of background, appearances in photos and battle reports and so on. Choosing a less well known chapter takes some extra effort combing through the background or coming up with something unique and interesting that is going to engage you as much as the extremely well developed official chapters.There is also a disincentive to playing more minor chapters as you technically miss out on special characters, faction specific units, relics and stratagems etc, although in practice I've never run into an opponent who objects to playing a custom faction as a counts as proxy for a major one.

Having said that I think there is a decent amount of popularity for custom factions, especially with more experienced hobbyists. I actually prefer it, both so I can come up with something original that I "own" in terms of background, but it is also beneficial to not be locked into a certain official sub-faction's rules in terms of future proofing.

overall creating your chapter or variation of a faction can be very fun. However, it can be very time comsuming if you want to write out lore and create a bunch of things.

Like others have said, the easiest is just to be a successor chapter. Of course, you have knobheads that will vehemently oppose you at your LFGS, but in general, most people would be happy to accept you as successor chapter to blah blah blah.

now if you want to go down a separate path, you can, but it's a time consuming process and will face opposition when you are actually playing. literally everyone out there loves seeing homebrews, but it's definitely a different story when it comes to actually fielding them.

My advice for fielding homebrews is you can write up all the lore you want and say they are whatever off the field, but when it comes to fielding, pick the closest chapter in terms of concept that has fleshed out rules and use that or slight variations.

PieInTheSky wrote:
Why don't more people do this? It seems the overwhelming majority go with Ultramarines, Dark Angels, Space Wolves or Blood Angels

It's simple. I'm not creative enough.

My marines would have ended up a shade of blue regardless, and I really like the Ultramarines lore and appearance so there ya go

I lean more towards custom chapters as, well, I'm not sure why. I just always have to do something different.

My Guard army is predominantly Red and Grey, and consists of various models from different regiments. I excuse it as "the hive cities on their world act semi autonomously, and each buys gear for their PDF and Guardsmen from different Forgeworlds")

I do have Catachans, painted in mostly Catachan colors, but their Knives are all black.

My 30k Ultramarines are silver and blue rather than gold and blue.

I'll likely do my own custom chapter too, I've got a scheme planned out and everything.

There used to be no real difference between a named chapter, and a home-made chapter, unless you specifically add a special character. And even then, most people would not care if you used the rules on a home brew chapter. However beginning in the 6th edition, they made you assign your chapter to a specific progeny so that your home made chapter has to be a successor chapter and use their own rules. I have not seen the rules lately, but I am sure that they have morphed further from there.

For me personally, I have Crimson Fists and a home made chapter that I am still fleshing out. I want the home brew chapter to be more or less of a wild card so that in a pinch they can be turn-coat renegade marines ala badab war style when my mood suits me, or if I need an army that can go either way during group play.

Army building for me is largely based on story. So, Custom Chapter was for me. This was in 6th and 7th Edition. While being a "Successor" was required, that was more about the traditions and fighting style that they inherited than anything more specific than that. Coloring was also part of it.

I guess it depends where you play, not sure about custom rules outside of friendly matches, but plenty of people come up with original chapter paint schemes and conversions. I've done my own in the past, and a few my recent side-gig clients have created their own primaris chapters they wanted custom artwork of.
As others have stated usually using counts-as existing/successor dexes rules.
There's a whole fan project a community is running re-imaging the original legions/primarchs/heresy story line.

If anyone else remembers white dwarf held a 'design your own marine chapter' contest back in the early 00s; paint up a 5-man squad, write up a comprehensive chapter background brief and some other requisites. In hindsight GW probably did that to crowdsource ideas for the recent editions.

In much older editions I believe even special characters were said to be capable of being used in custom chapters as they were intended to be a example of an exemplary individual that could actually be quite common.

Plus, in somd editions the special chatacters were only allowed by the opponents permission, keeping them out of TAC lists. That made custom chapters less painful, rules-wuse as well.

I invented my own chapter, mostly because I like the whole concept of your miniatures being "your guys" and I wanted to make up my own colour scheme. Rules and Fluff are secondary to having cool looking minis for me.

This might not apply to everyone by I myself found it useful that existing chapters have tutorials on how to paint them. I'm not a great painter so figuring out how to turn the color scheme I see in my head into a real thing is pretty daunting.

I don't think I've ever painted up an army as one of the standard GW ones. The best thing about warhammer is making your own army and fluff and adding that into the universe.

The hardest thing to do is freehanding your own emblems, so pick something easy!