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With 8th ed 40k coming out, I decided to start buying some orks for it, and I was thinking I would get the battle for Vedros box because I need a warboss. Back to the title of the post, the box comes with some space marines and I had the bright idea of keeping them and painting them up as a homebrew space marine chapter.

The name of the chapter is The Chameleons. I haven't settled on a fluff for them yet, but I want them to be a combination of raven guard and salamanders (my two favorite fluff chapters). The fluff idea I have at the moment is that they are a second founding chapter made in secret from a combination of raven guard and salamanders because those chapters were low on numbers and couldn't make many (or any) successor chapters on their own.

As far as color scheme, i was thinking earthy green power armour and dark beige shoulderpads.

Anyways, tell me what you think!

I'm not sure if that would be allowed. It would be very easy to tell that they used eachothers geneseed though as you would have guys with actual black skin and then super pasty white guys

I don't think that it would be too obvious. The Raptors don't have the pale skin of the Raven Guard, and I think I read somewhere that the Salamander's black skin is from how the gene-seed and the radiation on nocturne react, not something wrong with their gene-seed.

I'm not sure they'd mix highly mutable salamander seed with the more stable ravenguard gene stock.

Seems like your asking for some monstrous mutations.

Mixing geneseed is rare in the backstory. It's not something that happened during the second founding. It was a reorganization of the legions. Dividing them into chapters. No manipulation of the geneseed occurred. Only once in the backstory did they try it, the 21st founding. Any chapter from that founding have serious flaws. Growing bony spikes or exploding into flames kind of stuff.

If you want sneaky Salamanders simply use the geneseed and have the tactics come from your chapter's personality or homeworld. Mixing geneseed is one of the most common tropes people use when designing their own chapter, the other is making their marines super elite specialists. I would recommend avoiding both. Both make it harder to write a convincing backstory for your chapter.

IMHO you don't need special funky geneseed to have a varity in tactics etc. just look at some of the Ultramarine sucessors out there that do their own thing etc.

I'd have no problem with a homebrew chapter that was fluffed as "the Emperor's Ninja's are an Ultramarines sucessor chapter, they recruit from a small feral world, where combat favors stealth and ambush tactics. tactics the chapter has made it's own. to reflect this despite being an ultramarines sucessor I use raven guard chapter tactics" and I suspect few other people would take issues with that

I was totally thinking you were going to make Ork Marines and that would be EPIC.

The Relictors are believed to be a mix of Ultramarine and Dark Angels geneseed. So I'd say it's feasible.

My homebrew chapter is Imp Fist descent, but due to their location in the galaxy, they worked with BA alot, thus their red armor. I am still working on typing up all their fluff.

 Crimson Devil wrote:
Mixing geneseed is rare in the backstory. It's not something that happened during the second founding. It was a reorganization of the legions. Dividing them into chapters. No manipulation of the geneseed occurred. Only once in the backstory did they try it, the 21st founding. Any chapter from that founding have serious flaws. Growing bony spikes or exploding into flames kind of stuff.

Agreed. The Cursed Founding had many... problems.

 Crimson Devil wrote:
If you want sneaky Salamanders simply use the geneseed and have the tactics come from your chapter's personality or homeworld. Mixing geneseed is one of the most common tropes people use when designing their own chapter, the other is making their marines super elite specialists. I would recommend avoiding both. Both make it harder to write a convincing backstory for your chapter.

Pretty much. My own was Imperial Fists through the Executioners, but I ran them with Templar Tactics. The reason was more for fun than anything else, but I did set up a back story that involved them not mixing well with Psykers, which suited the Templar codex at the time and fits their Tactics still.

Alright, sorry to revive something already sort of dead, but i came up with another fluff idea that i think works far better.

The Chameleons were originally going to be a chapter made from Raven Guard gene seed, but at some point during their founding, Salamander gene seed got introduced. no one knows if it was an accident or an attempt at sabotage. the mixing of the two gene seeds caused a very odd mutation to appear in The Chameleons however. the mutations found in both chapter's melanochrome caused The Chameleons to have the ability to change the color of their skin by thinking about it. this mutation is where their name derives from, it resembling an ability of the earth reptile.

anyways, that's my new idea. not sure yet if i want them to be part of the cursed founding.

Sure. Why not? What color will you paint the skin of the helmet less ?

Well, considering it changes, probably whatever i want. i could probably do blotchy skin to make it look like it's halfway through changing, and i would probably keep it to earthier tones, so no neon pink skinned marines.