Space Marines have been one of the most Iconic parts of Warhammer 40,000 for more than 30 years. They have come a long way and I am glad to see one big thing: Their diversity is now a staple and part of the game instead of just having a "main" Space Marine faction and then a few other sub factions that only some really invested nerds know of.
Athough the "boys in blue", the "poster boys" and otherwise known as "Ultrasmurfs" seem to still be the first thing that appears when you search for "Space Marines" it is heartening to see that most of the other First Founding Chapters at least are getting some early hits on the search and are readily available and supported by Games Workshop.
Although Ultramarines are meant to be the vanilla army, they are actually not really all that standard. Ironically.
There exists something called the Codex Astartes, a book about how Space Marines - the Adeptus Astartes should form their organization, how they should fight and what tactics they should use.
This book was written by none other than the Primarch Roboute Guilliman.
There are however a few characterful things about the Ultramarines even in the lore that sets them apart from other Space Marines.
While most Space Marines control a single world, the Ultramarines, whose gene-father was actually the best administrator/governor of all the Primarchs, control a whole system of planets.
Their neophytes come from many worlds and many worlds send them tithings of resources, weapons and fuel. The Chapter themselves are able to administrate this as though they were Imperial Governors.
This is unusual. Most of the time a Space Marine Chapter will control one world, sometimes not even that. They might still pass on the duty of administration to some mortal servant of the Imperium.
But this is still only the tip of the iceberg, have a look at the following picture...
It is said that there are over a thousand loyal chapters of Space Marines in the Galaxy.
What does that mean? Well, the Emperor created Legions of Space Marines. During the Horus Heresy, Primarch Horus fell to Chaos and around half the Legions declared for Horus/Chaos and a civil war of good and evil erupted.
In the Aftermath Roboute Guilliman wrote the Codex Astartes and proposed that the Legions are split up into 1000 man Chapters and that no single person have the power of a Space Marine Legion under their command.
Thus not only did the Space Marines split up and cover more ground, but they made sure to remain autonomous of the Imperium's administation.
Not all Legions wanted to split up and this nearly caused a second civil war, and some Chapters have found sneaky ways to work around this rule... but more about this later.
What we have in the 41st Millenium is the following:
Legion 1 - Dark Angels - loyal and come with their own unique rules.
Legion 5 - White Scars - loyal and come with their own unique rules.
Legion 6 - Space Wolves - loyal and come with their own unique rules.
Legion 7 - Imperial Fists - loyal and come with their own rules.
Legion 9 - Blood Angels - loyal and come with their own unique rules.
Legion 10 - Iron Hands - loyal and come with their own unique rules.
Legion 13 - Ultramarines - loyal and come with more or less the basis of rules.
Legion 18 - Salamanders - loyal and come with their own unique rules.
Legion 19 - Raven Guard - loyal and come with their own rules.
These are called the First Founding Chapters. When a Chapter split up, one Chapter wouls keep the heraldry and homeworld of the Chapter and the rest would form into Second Founding Chapters.
Second Founding Chapters have different colors and heraldry and can be played, counting as their First Founding Chapter.
Usually it is clear who is a Second Founding of whom. The Angels of Absolution are a Dark Angels Second Founding, while the Angels Encarmine are for the Blood Angels.
Similarly the Fire Drakes may be for Salamanders or the Sons of Medusa are for the Iron Hands and this would make sense if you know that the homeworld of the Iron Hands is called Medusa!
Some... are not so easy to know - the Mortifactors are an Ultramarine Second Founding Chapter... but they are VERY different!
Beyond all this, there are Chapters of Space Marines whose heritage is unclear. It is even possible that there were loyal Space Marines who were from the Traitor Legions but they did not fall to Chaos and in the aftermath were given different heraldry and a cover story.
Apparently the Ultramarines took in most of these scattered Legions and they were then formed into new second founding Chapters. So perhaps the Mortifactors are a Second Founding of the Ultramarines in name only and they might have one or more Traitor Primarchs as their gene-fathers but this was checked and purified, but their habits and specializations might make them more akin to the Death Guard mixed with some Thousand Sons.
This makes it very interesting!
Lastly, it might sound silly to have the mighty Space Marine Legions fractured into small bands, but a Chapter of Space Marines looks like this...
If you consider that there are a thousand forces more or less like this... that is a lot of Space Marines!
Added to what is shown here would be Spaceships, fighter and aerial support and lots of mortals that support the Space Marines.
When the Space Marines make planetfall their ships are not empty but full of Imperial Navy soldiers, fully equipped to wage war in person should there be boarders while the Space Marines are on the planet below.
I feel that the above picture is also missing some tanks, armor and artillery that should be at their disposal. This was also a 3rd or 4th Edition vision of that a Chapter looks like. Now with Primaris Marines and all their new units a Chapter of 1000 Space Marines might look very different!
Well... I did Iron Hands yesterday and now that I have given a better baseline we can start looking into specific Chapters of Space Marines!
Until next time...
8/365 Hobby Posts done
