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I’ve never played a space marine army before, only guard and renegades, so what are things I need to know? Also what’s the difference between Primaris and regular?

For the second: Special and heavy weapon options vs an extra attack and better basic guns.

As for what you need to know... that's a big question. A lot of it depends on what kind of army you want (loyalists can basically build towards anything, but can also be built 'wrong').

I was thinking of doing black templars

DeathKorp_Rider wrote:
I was thinking of doing black templars

Black Templars are often infantry heavy, though there are competitive builds that go big on Dreadnaughts. They're quite fast for infantry and hit quite hard. They tend to favour taking a lot of characters to buff their close combat even further.

Generally Primaris have fewer options than Firstborn, though some armies - including Black Templars - do have Primaris units with a good number of loadout options. The BT rules match up with their fluff quite nicely, so you can build quite lore-accurate armies without sacrificing too much power.

BT have some of the best-looking Primaris kits as well. Loadouts can be a bit weird but I've been tempted many times by the Primaris Sword Bretheren.

On a lore perspective BT give you the chance to use oldmarines and being lore accurate at the same time.

Land raider Crusader is a must in a BT army and it is a unit supported by stratagems.

Last, BT abhor the witches, so no Librarians allowed.

DeathKorp_Rider wrote:
I’ve never played a space marine army before, only guard and renegades, so what are things I need to know? Also what’s the difference between Primaris and regular?

Primaris squads tend to be very focused on a specific role or job, whereas fristborn have a more generalist unit that can be configured to cover those roles. for example, the primaris have "all plasma" and "all melta" squads, but firstborn just have plasmas and melta weapons added to other squads. they're not better or worse, per se, just more focused or multipurpose.

their are a few other differences, for example fast melee infanty are firstborn only (van vets and assault squads), but generally you just mix and match between the two as needed (lore wise, the chapters have both a number of veterans firstborn still left over, and many are still actively recruiting firstborn to ustilise the larges stocks of firstborn equipment they have, so its lore compliant to do so).