So You Want to Play Space Marines...

Horrible decision I must say. NOT! I love Space Marines, even though it's probably the most mainstream faction in the Warhammer 40K multiverse. I'm a Dark Angels player myself, and my best friend plays Blood Angels. So if you want to play Space Marines you probably already know that there are some choices you have to make. First is which Chapter do you want to play, and the second is what to have in that army. This post will deal with the first decision and touch on the second one as we go along with each army. READ AND BE INFORMED.
So with the Space Marines you have 9 different chapters. They vary in their color scheme, personality, tactic, and sanity level, but most importantly the color scheme. When you're trying to decide on which chapter you want to play as your first indicator should be their color. What is your favorite color? Of course this is complete bull crap as you should never just pick a chapter based on their colors! Well no, you should, I did, but then again I never really meant on playing, I just wanted to paint the models. So colors are important.

Second indicator should be tactic. This could be seen on how do you play FPS games. Do you like staying behind to snipe and watch the enemy dance to the tunes of classical music, charge the enemies with Iron Maiden playing in the background, or run around the map and dodging every bullet like a ninja and somehow show up to the back of your enemy and show them up with your awesome virtual ninja skills. These are important, very important, and somehow even more important then the color scheme.

All the rest sort of falls into the two categories so let's introduce the chapters.

Ultramarines

Hailing from the planet of Maccrage these blue smurfs are the cover boys for everything Space Marines these days. They are called Ultramarines because of the fact that their homeworld is in the Ultramar sector, and have nothing to do about their name implying they are super marines. This is, of course, GW bull crap and should be treated as such.

These guys are hated by most veteran players because they are overpowered and are in everything Space Marines. Needless to say this one is usually not good if you are a starter because the people in your local game store will diss you for using such chapter. BUT THIS SHOULDN'T STOP YOU!

Ultramarines are known to be devout followers of the Codex Astartes, their Primarch did write it after all. They are tactically 'balanced' so this might be a good army to start with if you're a new guy. Their blue because they have no regard for subtlety, not to say that they're not subtle, they're just...blue like smurfs.

Dark Angels

These guys are from Caliban, which got blasted apart by their own chapter, and now only this big piece of rock is left, which they call with much humor, "The Rock". Some of the members of this chapter turned Chaos during the Heresy and is now on top of the Dark Angels most wanted list. Dark Angels don't like this information to become known to the rest of the universe, as in they would wage a war with brother space marines to cover up the secret that some of their members turned bad. THEY DON'T EVEN TELL THEIR OWN MARINES ABOUT THIS INFORMATION.

Dark Angels are special from other chapters because their first and second companies are specialized companies. The Deathwing, first company, is fully composed of terminators and are solely formed to hunt down The Fallen. The second, Ravenwing, is made out of bikes and landspeeders. It's a fully mechanized company, and is awesome for hit and run tactics.

The rest of the army is pretty much a shooty army, with great weapon stats and horrible hand-to-hand stats. So if you like staying behind a wall and shooting off your enemy one by one, while your bikes and speeders wreak havoc into the enemy lines, this army's for you. It requires moderate skills to play this, but is also great for beginners.

Blood Angels

These Baalites are vampires. Like no joke, some of their successor chapters literally drink the blood of their enemies. Needless to say, they get pretty savage in times. Like so savage that they won't stop fighting until they die. This, my friends, is called the Black Rage.

Let me evolve on that. The Black Rage is a gene flaw, which was achieved after the Heresy, in which the victim feels like he was Sanguinius fighting the last battle against Horus. They will never stop fighting until they die. Take note, this is important. They are put in special companies called Death Company. They will be in the said company until they die, and needless to say ALL of them will die. Another flaw is the Red Thirst, it gives the victim visions of death and the urge to drink their opponent's blood. All members of the Death Company has the Red Thirst, but not all marines under the Red Thirst are in the Death Company.

These marines are the closes things you'll get to Khorne Berzerkers this side of the Heresy line. Their Assault Squads counts as troops in the FOC. They can deepstrike land raiders, though it may not be wise to do so. They are known for jet pack squads, and their Death Company marines. HACK AND SLASH, RIP AND TEAR, JAB AND THRUST, DEEP AND STRIKE, JET AND PACK, CHAIN AND SWORD. Notice how there's no defensive moves or any shields or any such defensive nonsense?

There will be more chapters when I finish this article...