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Made in us
Flashy Flashgitz





So i am wanting to start up a marine army. I have played vanilla marines a few times before, but i have now decided i want to start a space marine army! I am not sure what army to take really because im not sure which army can change the most and promise to be the most fun. This is including chaos space marines as well. So i would like to hopefully start a discussion to help me pick what type of space marine army i should play!

thanks all that help

-Dave
   
Made in us
Gore-Soaked Lunatic Witchhunter







Is this your first army overall, or just your first Space Marine army?

In either case, a brief overview:

Vanilla/Blood Angels: These two will be bundled together because there's actually a lot of overlap. Most of the list is composed of units that are versatile, but can't hold their own against specialists in any field; Assault Marines are cool and choppy, but they lose to most specialist assault units, likewise Devastators have a lot of guns, but can't outshoot most specialist shooting units, et cetera. Your strengths lie in two areas: durability, everyone's T4/3+ at minimum, meaning you can take a lot of fire; and versatility, every unit is at least halfway competent in assault and shooting, which means even if you're facing down a horde of Hormagaunts your Assault Marines will (hopefully) be able to flamer them to death, or your Devastators will be able to charge and stomp a unit of Fire Warriors in close combat, the list as a whole has a decent mix of assaulty and shooty units. Blood Angels tweak the model a bit by having some specialized assaulty units and being even tougher, so you're on a more even footing with more assault-oriented armies and can take a bit more of a punch assuming you're using that sort of build, but they can't do shooty armies quite as well.

Dark Angels: This Codex is a bit behind the times, so it's mostly worth noting for it's two distinct competitive units: the Ravenwing, who can field an absurd volume of Land Speeders and have teleport homers on their bikes, and the Deathwing, who are Terminator units that you can take as Troops and who have a rule that makes their Reserves roles more reliable. People sometimes swear by Deathwing, but I've found the two work well in concert; the Teleport Homers and Deathwing Assault mean you get your Terminators where you want them when you want them with meltaguns/plasmaguns/flamers as backup from the bikes.

Space Wolves: These guys are very heavily optimized towards assault (especially since Long Fangs are no longer BS5), I'm less familiar with them than with the others, but as far as I know they tend towards either a drop pod based build or a swarm of large numbers of angry power armored space viking bodies.

These two aren't technically Space Marines, but they're also composed of power armored people, so I might as well mention them:

Grey Knights: These guys are scarily elite; your basic guys may have S5 Assault 2 guns and force weapons, but they're 20pts each (plus another 20pts for the S5 on the guns). Grey Knights rely almost entirely on being able to pit your entire force against a smaller portion of the enemy, you'll seldom win a straight-up open-field slaughterfest, and you'll never win a war of attrition. Unless you take Coteaz and field an army entirely composed of Guardsman-equivalents, but that's boring and dumb.

Chaos Marines: Basically similar to vanilla Marines, except for the addition of Cult Marines and Daemon Engines. Cult Marines are fancy specialist units that can do a lot of different things depending on the unit, and Daemon Engines tend to be powerful close combat monsters with some ability at shooting; overall, CSM tend to focus on short-ranged firepower and assault more than other Space Marine armies.



The biggest piece of advice you need going into a Space Marine army is that your force is a jack of all trades, but a master of none. You will never outshoot Tau, or Guard, or Necrons. You will never out-assault Orks, or Tyranids, or Daemons. You will, however, always out-assault Tau, or Guard, or Necrons. You will always outshoot Orks, or Tyranids, or Daemons. Use this to your advantage.

Balanced Game: Noun. A game in which all options and choices are worth using.
Homebrew oldhammer project: https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/790996.page#10896267
Meridian: Necromunda-based 40k skirmish: https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/795374.page 
   
Made in eu
Regular Dakkanaut





Why dont you tell us what you like?

Bikes? Tanks? Assault marines? Terminators?

Usually when you build an army you have a general idea. Lets say Bikes. Then you get as many bikes as you like.
Then fill up the holes with other units, maybe some long range fire power, some anti tank and some assault units.

When you know what you want to have in your army, then you can start looking for wich codex gives you the best options.

I would recomend that you stay away from Dark angels and Black templars as their codexes are bit old.
   
Made in us
Regular Dakkanaut




Saint Louis Mo

Stay away from DA?? Or just wait a couple months and play your DA as vanilla marines and then kick ass when the new dex comes out in Dec or Jan. From the look of things regular DA are going to benefit a lot from plasma!!!

Go with what you think you will enjoy the most. Some of the specific vanilla chapters can be fun to play I personally like the White Scars bike army.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2012/10/18 13:24:13



 
   
Made in gb
Long-Range Land Speeder Pilot






UK

Im waiting to get the new codex before unleashing my DA's. But I don't see the harm in making your own chapter up using normal marines, and working a list that suits your playing style.

My own chapoter, The Broken Swords. Almost a full company.

1500

Check out my painting page on Facebook. Wartable Painting. 
   
Made in us
Dakka Veteran





Right now, I'm building up a Dark Angels' army, but I'm using the Vanilla Codex until the update.

I turn and ask:

Whats your favorite color?

Blue: Vanilla Ultramarines
Dark Green: Dark Angels
Light Green: Salamanders
Red: Blood Angels
White: White Scars

I like to say I have two armies: Necrons, and Imperium.....
 
   
Made in us
Flashy Flashgitz





Excellent this is great! thanks guys! okay so thing i like.... first of im not really a fan of bikes. They just do not seem right to me and that is something i have always thought so not them! what i do like is having an army that doesn't suck at anything, like said above. (although they dont exactly excel) that being said orks where my first army. i love em. but i need an army that fields fewer models cause i like that play style more. I love vindicators i really like terminators as well. i like how chaos space marines you can give marks to make them have t5 or CHOOSE to give them ccw or make them fearless. lots of options i see. I have recently started like drop ponds. because one, i love the idea of it and two play style i see tons and tons of potential for them. i really like the sterngaurd for vanilla marines as well do to all the options. I know gray wolfs are probably one of the best armies atm. but i really do not see me playing them. Dark angels i know are getting a new codex in a month or so but if half of there army ideas are bikers... then i wont like them. I want something i can change around a lot. I apologize for being all over the place with this... but im really trying to get my ideas together on what path to choose with this. again all inputs are great!!

-dave
   
Made in us
Neophyte Undergoing Surgeries






Mesa, AZ

The vanilla Dex has a lot of nice ideas for a non-specialized force. I would start there. I used it (well several of them) to create my custom chapter.

The major point I would like to make, though, is ensure you enjoy whichever army you decide to create. If you like playing them you will enjoy the game all the more.
   
Made in us
Flashy Flashgitz





So i am thinking i will start to strip and paint a few of my old space marine models and start them up as salamanders. i think i will enjoy playing vulkan and i can still switch to anything in the dex really. Also avoids being called smurfs
   
 
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