Picking an Army.. Space Marines

Hey there. This is just a follow up on Picking an army. This has to deal with Space Marines because A) I know about them as I play them and B) Space marines are so diverse that they pretty much cover all aspects of the game (all 4 elements, many play styles etc). This can still be of some help for picking an army in general but this may be of more help for those who are new to Space Marines.

So lets say you want to be space marines well what now? Ok well first you have to take a step back and look at all the space marines out there. For purposes of ease I mean the codices. So we have: Codex Space Marines, Black Templars, Space Wolves, Blood Angels, Dark Angels and Daemonhunters. I include Daemonhunters because of the grey knights.

Firstly unless your really set on space wolves/ are able to find a codex or are able to get your hands on the codex I would suggest avoiding them for now. I only say this because yea you could use another codex and if you do i would suggest the Black Templar codex to run them with for now if you want to build a force of them. But a new codex for them is somewhere in the release schedule.

Also Greyknights are different in that here highly specialized with unique war gear. They play like a water army with great fire ability. I wont touch on them here really but in a future post I will.

So aside from that we are left with the other codicies. So if your not driven to any one codex due to looks or fluff then it falls to there play styles. So do you want to shoot or assault more? Now the nice thing is the Codex Space Marines can do both so that codex is always an option.

If you want to assault more then shoot I would suggest looking at the Blood Angels, Black Templars or Space Wolves (if you can get the codex). Yes they have shooting units but there strengths are in the assault. They all play differently too so this further breaks down assaulting into how you like to assault. I wont go into detail but I will give a blurb on each. If you like the idea of space vikings with hot headed units as well as grizzled veteran then you may like Space Wolves. If you like the idea of an eternal crusade of super knights that have a champion as well as who move forward when they take casualties then you may want to look at Black Templars. If you like the idea of a noble chapter that goes into a berserk fury with a super assault squad and assault marines as troops then you may want to go Blood Angels.

Alright so if assault isn't your style then you may want to look at Dark Angels (ill talk about codex space marines later). Dark Angels can do the assault and do it well but they are more about the shooting in my opinion. Dark Angel armies are really 3 separate armies that can be fused together. You have Battle company, Ravenwing and Deathwing. All 3 really need to make use of shooting to be effective. You can still have an assault driven list but the difference here is that assault with them is usually the last step to victory.

Ok so remember that codex space marines can do both as it is the codex for all other chapters. So that means this codex is essentially good for everyone interested in space marines that do not have there heart set on a specific chapter. Now special characters aside you can tool out your army to be good at assaulting or shooting by selecting specific units. Note however that while they can do assaulting this codex is a little hard pressed to do it as well as the assault oriented codices.

So that's pretty much the codices in a nutshell. Notice how I didn't touch on war gear. I did that on purpose because while war gear is important when you build your lists it should not factor into choosing an army. Yes storm shields work differently for codex space marines but that should not decide the codex for you. Every codex is viable so you need to pick ultimately what you feel you'll like the most. Having a strong list will come in time.

Welp hope that helps. Until next time.