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Would Betrayal at Calth be a good starting point? You get a good amount of stuff for the money, but not super melee oriented. Would this still be a viable start?

It would still be a good start, you get plenty of blokes and you could use the terminators as red butchers if you like. You could always look on eBay for extra arms and close combat weapons to make the tactical marines a bit more close-combat oriented.

Actually it works fine since it comes with sheathed swords for every marine, thus pistol and close combat weapons. Thus you get true grit marines. WE in 30k still used heavy weapons and ranged weapons unlike what they have been shoehorned into in 40k.

Their ROW works well. Having to take the additional third troop choice works well with the army canon. Massed infantry assaults, supported by, really, whatever you want.

For 30k they fight with the same options as the other Legions. Butchers and Rampagers are great assault unts, but can be points expensive.

Kharn is worth the points, even with the Gorechild upgrade.

Ah so they can take a boltgun, pistol and CCW and just switch when they want?

Also cant find any rule saying they need a 3rd mandatory troop slot in their FO

It's in their rite of war. Which is optional.

Is that in the FW betrayal book?

It's in book 2, Massacre. The WE rules are spread across the first two books.

Their compiled rules are in the Legions red book, which is getting an update (probably including some minor tweaks to WE) in the very near future. It'll probably be on sale at the Weekender event this weekend, and then available to the public shortly thereafter.

Also note that book 6, Retribution (also to be available this weekend) will have new generic rites for all legions and at least 1 new rite for every existing legion.

I personally go with chainaxes and bolt pistols. Just seems right, but fluff wise they use both patrols and guns.

Ah ok I see it, well for now I wont have enough troop choices to use that right as I've only got the calth set, so 2 units of 15 marines, contemptor, praetor and the chaplain guy.

Can I just confirm, as I cant find the rule, can I equip them with bolter, bolt pistol, additional CCW all at once?

Indeed you can, that's how I'm equipping my guys

Cool thanks, and speaking of loadouts would pairs of lightning claws be decent on cataphactii termies? I have the calth ones and not sure how to equip them.

They would be good against power armour guys with the re-rolls to wound, AP 3 and +1 attack due to having 2 specialist weapons but they would struggle against anything with a 2+ save.

Having a few lightning claws in each squad is nice.

I wouldn't take pure lightning claws (as you'll get your teeth kicked in fighting another terminator unit) but when fighting power armoured opponents, a few dudes with lighting claws can often gut a squad badly, and can then be taken as casualties rather than models who haven't attacked yet.

Plus, there's always the chance they'll kill one or more guys with unwieldy weapons (like power fists or power axes) before they attack.