Warhammer 40K: Space Marines Should Be Chapter WYSIWYG
For the first time in 30 years – GW has rules for any flavor of Imperial Marines. We should finally kill off Chapter counts-as.
I’m sure you’ve all been there. Here’s a couple of cases to consider:
You roll up to a table and pull out your army, ready to play. The opposing marine army is on the field, it’s looking great and then they pull some odd special rules or moves. You inquire what happened and you get something along the lines of: “These are my homebrew chapter – The Brothers of Septimus, and they use Blood Angels rules.”
It’s really no big deal. The Brothers of Septimus are blue, but whatever. It’s a big universe.
A couple of week’s later you meet up again and The Brothers of Septimus now have Ultramarine decals – and use Ultras rules (they recently got a rules buff). Two months later the minis are unchanged but are now counts-as Iron Hands. Hmmmm.
Hello New Space Marine Codex
In the olden times, this attitude was common, and with the limited amount of Chapters with rules, people experimented with rules all the time. But the brand new Marine codex has done something new in the 30-year history of 40K. You now have a fully encompassing set of rules for ANY type of marines chapter you can dream up.
All the 1st Founding chapters either have their own codex or a specific Chapter Tactics. The Successor Rules now let you mix and match for any direct Successor chapter, or homebrew you can dream up. All with real rules.
So can we finally end the “counts as” for chapters? If you go through the trouble of painting up your army as Imperial Fists, with full chapter regalia, decals, and the works – then fight for Dorn! Be proud.
If you are little more rules-centric of a player, the new codex lets you make up your own chapter and use the Successor system to find the perfect rules for you.
I hope we see the end of players painting up one chapter and using it as a different one. I think that the big problem you get with that is player confusion. It is really easy to forget or mix up rules when your eyes are seeing Blood Angels for example, but the rules are Raven Guard.
But it’s 2019, and with the latest GW rules, everyone should be good to go.
~Where do you sit on chapter counts as, and where would you draw the line?
