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I'm building my first army and am playing firstborn marines. I'm planning on running lots of melee units, some bikes, and armor. It doesn't need to be competitive, but I do want it to be fun to play. I've built a few models, but I can't decide on what chapter to run them before I paint and buy the more specialized stuff. I'm stuck between Blood Angels successors or customized Black Templars. White Scars successors might not be a bad idea too but the extra attacks or Templar Vows sound like they'd be more fun. If it helps, I'm giving the army a 17th century eastern European theme. 20 marine Crusader Squad blobs with obsec sounds awesome, I just don't know how to kit them out. I like the idea of giving half of the squad bolters and the other half melee weapons so they can be decent in both shooting and melee. Or is it more playable to just run them as specialized melee or ranged squads? If they're more playable specialized, Blood Angels might be better. Death Company marines also sound like fun and they look amazing. Hope you guys can help.

Timmy_32498 wrote:
I'm building my first army and am playing firstborn marines. I'm planning on running lots of melee units, some bikes, and armor. It doesn't need to be competitive, but I do want it to be fun to play. I've built a few models, but I can't decide on what chapter to run them before I paint and buy the more specialized stuff. I'm stuck between Blood Angels successors or customized Black Templars. White Scars successors might not be a bad idea too but the extra attacks or Templar Vows sound like they'd be more fun. If it helps, I'm giving the army a 17th century eastern European theme. 20 marine Crusader Squad blobs with obsec sounds awesome, I just don't know how to kit them out. I like the idea of giving half of the squad bolters and the other half melee weapons so they can be decent in both shooting and melee. Or is it more playable to just run them as specialized melee or ranged squads? If they're more playable specialized, Blood Angels might be better. Death Company marines also sound like fun and they look amazing. Hope you guys can help.

I don't really think you can go wrong with whatever you choose here given you don't necessarily want a competitive list (obviously melee Imperial Fists would be silly but the 3 chapters you mentioned are all pretty cool). You could also do a Deathwing Terminator list. Consider scouting the local community for what gets played the least. A currently popular unit is Vanguard Veterans with storm shields, which probably means they are going to get hit by the nerf hammer come next Chapter Approved.

Doing split-duty squads seems okay at least, just remember to give them the Assault 3 boltgun so you can advance and shoot.

I would go for Blood Angels successors, it fits Eastern Europe very well IMO, I'm thinking of Elizabeth Bathory and Vlad the Impaler. Take a Chapter Master as a self-styled king of the Chapter's homeworld, give them a belief in the Emperor as a divine being unlike other chapters and an unwillingness to ally with most chapters on that account. You could go a million directions with the idea for Eastern Europe melee Marines, have fun.

Specialized squads are always better. Bolters give mediocre returns but plasma will make them at least decent. Specialized melee squads are cool in my opinion. Plus they aren’t half bad at melee. I would see handout using a soda csm as a drop pod proxy for your melee squads. Or consider assault marines with jump packs or whatever your non compliant chapter of choice equivalent is.


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Oh non competitive... I still recommend making half your power armor marines bolt gun boys and half them melee squads for casual play. I did that with my chaos space marine squads. I feel like You nailed one of the cooler themes for a space marine army though.

@OP:

What colour scheme would you enjoy painting for a long time? If you are new to painting stay the hell away from any kind of yellow as a main colour scheme. Black sounds simple but a model´s edges need then to be highlighted with grey which requires a TON of time and patience. Trust me, been there done that.

So what colour would be easy and fun? After being about 25 years in the hobby my answer would be this: Use a mix of green and brown colours to create a forest camo scheme. Why is this a good idea? Those colours work on a white as well as a black undercoat and they still look good. You only have to decide what kind of camo you want to employ. The easiest way is drybrushing as it is not as time-consuming as the following method which is to paint a real camo pattern on your models.
However if you tend to use your models mainly in cities you could also try to use a city camo pattern which would consist of shades of grey and white.

Next comes the choice of chapter. Remember that all chapters have successor chapters which have the same traits as the main chapter. So there is no problem having a green Blood Angel successor chapter. Though in that case I would make sure to show a link to the main chapter to paint specific details on the models in red to honour chapter tradition.

the gold standard melee firstborn unit youre gonna want to have a lot of is going to be the Vanguard Veteran for sure, current VV kit is going to come with a lot of what you need: storm shields, lightning claws, chainswords, the occasional thunder hammer maybe.

You should check out the lore for Fleshtearers. They're a Blood Angels successor, still loyalist, that reads like World Eaters. You could play them as SM or BA firstborn.

Always go custom Chapter! Choose the color scheme you like and the rules you like! Win/win.

 Insectum7 wrote:
Always go custom Chapter! Choose the color scheme you like and the rules you like! Win/win.

This is the correct answer. Or Space Sharks.

 Strg Alt wrote:
@OP:

What colour scheme would you enjoy painting for a long time? If you are new to painting stay the hell away from any kind of yellow as a main colour scheme. Black sounds simple but a model´s edges need then to be highlighted with grey which requires a TON of time and patience. Trust me, been there done that.

So what colour would be easy and fun? After being about 25 years in the hobby my answer would be this: Use a mix of green and brown colours to create a forest camo scheme. Why is this a good idea? Those colours work on a white as well as a black undercoat and they still look good. You only have to decide what kind of camo you want to employ. The easiest way is drybrushing as it is not as time-consuming as the following method which is to paint a real camo pattern on your models.
However if you tend to use your models mainly in cities you could also try to use a city camo pattern which would consist of shades of grey and white.

Next comes the choice of chapter. Remember that all chapters have successor chapters which have the same traits as the main chapter. So there is no problem having a green Blood Angel successor chapter. Though in that case I would make sure to show a link to the main chapter to paint specific details on the models in red to honour chapter tradition.

While I think paint scheme choice should definitely be a factor (don't want to be stuck painting something that's difficult or unappealing) I strongly disagree on the camo paint scheme. That type of painting can be hard to pull off without looking muddled.

Camouflage is supposed to make it harder to pick out details and outlines, on a miniature you want the opposite - to emphasize details since they're so small.

 ScarletRose wrote:

 Strg Alt wrote:
@OP:

What colour scheme would you enjoy painting for a long time? If you are new to painting stay the hell away from any kind of yellow as a main colour scheme. Black sounds simple but a model´s edges need then to be highlighted with grey which requires a TON of time and patience. Trust me, been there done that.

So what colour would be easy and fun? After being about 25 years in the hobby my answer would be this: Use a mix of green and brown colours to create a forest camo scheme. Why is this a good idea? Those colours work on a white as well as a black undercoat and they still look good. You only have to decide what kind of camo you want to employ. The easiest way is drybrushing as it is not as time-consuming as the following method which is to paint a real camo pattern on your models.
However if you tend to use your models mainly in cities you could also try to use a city camo pattern which would consist of shades of grey and white.

Next comes the choice of chapter. Remember that all chapters have successor chapters which have the same traits as the main chapter. So there is no problem having a green Blood Angel successor chapter. Though in that case I would make sure to show a link to the main chapter to paint specific details on the models in red to honour chapter tradition.

While I think paint scheme choice should definitely be a factor (don't want to be stuck painting something that's difficult or unappealing) I strongly disagree on the camo paint scheme. That type of painting can be hard to pull off without looking muddled.

Camouflage is supposed to make it harder to pick out details and outlines, on a miniature you want the opposite - to emphasize details since they're so small.

I totally second this, camo is hard to pull off. I even want to disagree on staying away from a bright color like yellow unless you really want Heavy Metal levels of even uniform color. Base white, two coats of yellow, and a thin brown wash and/or a recess wash* will do the job just fine. Although having said that darker colors are easier to work with until you get to the purples.

He's right about straight black though, that's a pain to get right.

On chapter selection; White Scars are one of the least popular loyalist chapters, and at least part of the reason is that they're kind of focused on mobility rather than melee and a lot of their strats are either oddly dual-purpose or do something very similar to a main Codex strat. It makes them flexible at the expense of overall buff-stacking potential. I happen to like that but I freely acknowledge that I'm a bit weird.

Chapter-wise, I am going to suggest "All Of Them".

In other words, Deathwatch. Cool and easy colour scheme (black, silver and red), and you get to have some fun painting individual chapter icons in whatever colours you like on the right shoulder pad. More melee options than any other chapter. You want Vanguard Veterans and Terminators as troops units with ObSec? You can have them via Proteus kill-teams and combat squadding. You want an entire army with power weapons, lightning claws and heavy thunder hammers? You can do that. You want Blood Angels, Flesh Tearers, Black Templars and Space Wolves all fighting together as brothers in a single squad? That is literally our defining feature. You can buy a box of Death Company, a box of Sanguinary Guard, a box of Dark Angels Company Veterans, a Space Wolves Pack box and a box of Black Templar Crusaders and mix and match them however you like, using all the coolest pieces, if you want. Just add a couple of Deathwatch upgrade sprues for their left shoulder pads.

And ignore those people claiming black is hard to paint. You absolutely do not need to edge highlight anything. Contrast paint or drybrushing are both perfectly valid methods for painting black power armour.

While DW are cool for doing "all the Chapters", they're very difficult to get right, especially for Firstborn only. For a first army specifically going only Firstborn melee? Blood Angels + Successors, BT or maybe Wolves but not DW.