One last question: "Counts as" or New Army

[MagickalMemories]

You are right... a guy with a bolter IS a guy with a bolter.

A SW Terminator, however, is DEFINITELY not a Blood Angel Termie. KWIM?
I think that's along the lines people are discussing.
Your SW Tac squad (Sgt with Power Weapon) proxies PERFECTLY FINE as a Tac squad for ANY other army.
When you start swapping around termies, jump packers, heavy weapons (unless identically armed)... it gets harder.

Like I said, though... If you can take the harassment, you're fine in a private game with me.

Can I make a suggestion?

Don't buy Space Wolves.
Wait. Don't freak out. Hear me out.

Buy generic SM's. Put SW bits on the IMPORTANT characters (HQ, Sgt's, etc), but none of the others. Paint them as Space Wolves.
Want to play as Blood Angels this week? No prob.
Pull out your Blood Angel successor chapter sgt's, HQ, etc. (painted in SW colors), remove the SW sgt's, HQ, etc., and play them as the different army. When you're done with that? Variant Armor Ultramarines. Bored of that? Wouldn't it be ironic for Dar Angels to wear Space Wolf colors? You'd probably tick on people on BOTH sides of the "fight." LOL
Get my drift? by only switching out the "main" models in the unit (which might include special weapon troopers), you can have a force to count as ANY SM force, while only adding about 25% more minis.

Just a thought.

Eric

[starslayer]

In most cases you cannot cross codex units. For example you could not take your version of Vulkan in a SW army, nor could you take any of the other chapters special characters in a "codex" army.

You want to have Pedro in a "codex" chapter, any codex chapter, be my guest. As soon as you move to a new codex, Sorry that rule just doesn't apply, though that model looks cool on your army

If you were playing SW figures, using SW iconography, then I'd have a problem with you continously proxying as a different chapter. Once or twice to see if you like those new rules better? no problem. But if you start to simply play them as X, then I wan't to see something. At least add in some changes to the markings to show that you are a divergent chapter

Not totally correct. It says so right in the Space Marine Codex. Take a look at page 127 in the box in right hand bottom corner.
" You can use the model & rules for a named characterto represent a mighty hero of a different chapter- for example, using Magneus Calgar as the Chapter Master of the Imperial Fists,or your a Chapter of your own design- you just need to come up with a different name."
Thats the basic Marine Codex, not Space Wolves or others. So you really couldnt cross other Space Marine Chapters, like using Death Comany with Space Wolf scouts,etc,etc.

[EVIL INC]

Too many people put too much emphasis on the extras. Things like wolf tails HAVE to be on space wolves and all ultra marines have to have the exact markings and all blood angels have to be red. To me, if you have to paint/model your army to suit someone else, you are losing out on a big part of the game. That is the "art", the imagination. You lose the ability to add your own flavor and personality to your army. That is why successor chapters are there. To allow you to use the rules for one of the ""main" chapters and yet use your own schemes and decorations. You like the movie the Road Warrior? Use dark angels rules or white scars rules and make your futuristic bikers. No one says they HAVE to wear robes or furs Put the spikes and chains on them.
I see someone used a variant of my earlier suggestion and said to use generic troopers and switch off the sarges and all. That is an idea but to tell the truth, so long as everything is wysiwyg, you are legally fine. Heck, you would even have a case against tourney runners. GW would not stop you from playing in any of their tourneys. At least they are painted. Have you seen the hello kitty marines? Or the Simpsons marines? How about the gaurd modeled on the American Civil war? How about the marine armies based on football teams? See what I mean? There are FAR worse "blasphemies" then haveing a blood angel successor chapter that is based on wolf iconography and there are no rules stopping people from using those armies.

[wookieegunner]

I don't think anyone is arguing with you Evil Inc. on custom chapters. The question is about an army painted as a specific Canon chapter being used as a different canon chapter. The original poster in no way asked about taking his custom wolves chapter and using it under a different rule set. He asked about his Space Wolf army painted as a Space Wolf army being used, and that does bring about an issue because GW's entire marketing campaign is "These Models painted this way have these abilities" and by changing those abilities it can cause an unfair advantage by unintentially conning your opponent into playing against a different set of rules (i.e. the canon rules instead of the count as rules), especially under the pressure of a tournament.

As a matter of fact, I can't find the rules for the Las Vegas GT, but I do remember prior to the Indy GT setup they are using now, GW did have a rule for their GTs that if you painted your army as a canon Space Marine Chapter you had to use the rules for that chapter (even down to using the Traits listed for that Chapter).

[EVIL INC]

If you can find a current GW rules set saying that and post it here, that would be great.
Who is saying that the pups in space are the only ones to use wolves as their totem? I would like to see a link to where GW said that. I find it amazing that so many people would rather play an opponant that does not have their army painted, not fully put together, not wysiwyg or painted up as pink hello kittens then play a blood angel successor chapter that uses wolves as their icon and whose symbol looks amazingly like that of the pups in space no matter how well painted/converted it is.

[JohnHwangBT]

@Brian: If you painted up everything in SW colors (using full SW bitz and "official" SW insignia, with SW Characters for all of your HQs), then playing "counts as" anything besides CSM (because they're obviously a good match Pre-Heresy HtH MEQs) is going to viewed with great suspicion. That is, if you're going to proxy an army of Space Wolves fighting like Blood Angels, and proxy weapon / wargear ("these bolter guys are actually BP&CCW"), I'm not going to be very happy about that.

However, if you just have generic grey marines with abstracted insignia and converted Characters as a DIY army, then no problem with the "counts as" BA, RG, SW, etc. as long as the weapons and wargear (i.e. bikes / JPs) match. Jervis plays grey marines (they're the basis for the official GW Relictor / Revlier models), and not having any specific bitz or insignia, that is his privilege. This is the typical approach for most grey marines players.

In my case, I have a grey marines army of my own that I have variously played as SM, BA, DA & BT over the years. Going forward, I'm going to be adding CSM and BA-specific models for when I play as those particular armies, with a generic grey marine core to play as vanilla SM. Similarly, I have a separate mech assault "crusader" Marine army in the works that will use a full load of Black Templar bitz; they won't be painted black so the army can play as CSM, BA, and (of course) BT.

[EVIL INC]

Please note that the Op intends to have everything wysiwyg so there would be no "these bolter guys are actually bp/ccw or anything of that nature.
The only thing is the models would have stuff like wold tails, skulls and icons would be a wolf head. A blood angel successor chapter that uses werewolves instead of vampires would be very fluffy. Much better in my opinion then a bare plastic metal army that has models without arms or heads. Also better in my opinion that an army based on something totally 40k unrelated like the Dallas Cowboys or hello kitty.

[JohnHwangBT]

If you can find a current GW rules set saying that and post it here, that would be great.

It's not in the rulebooks, but it has come up in GW GT rulespacks, under "counts as".

If have what is obviously an Ultramarine / Dark Angel army, you will be expected to play as one.

[EVIL INC]

So your saying that blood angel bolters have different rules from pups? The same for bolt pistols and all? Can you post where GW said this? I would like to see the stat differences on the weapons and armor.
Going by the same reasoning, armies painted up as the Dallas Cowboys have to play as the Dallas Cowboys. That means they will not fire any weapons and only attack in close combat. Armies painted up as the Simpsons will only drink beer, make fun of the opponent and all. I cant believe there are actually people who will refuse to play someone simply because they are using their space wolf models as blood angels (using wysiwyg and everything perfectly matching) and instead would rather play someone who does not have their army painted at all much less have it fully assembled.
Edit: Actually, I found the official ruling on the issue. If you have the English version of the big rulebook, you will see it at the top of page 2 in the box. It is called "The most Important Rule".

[JohnHwangBT]

No. I'm (and GW, and everybody else) is saying that a Dark Angels Tactical Marine has different rules (B&BP, Stubborn) than a Blood Angels Tactical Marine (Furious Charge) who has different rules from a Chaos Marine (B&BP&CCW, Ld9, Markable) which are all different from a generic Space Marine (ATSKNF, Combat Tactics). To that extent, all of those "Bolter Marines" *are* different, so looking different is differnt.

[govannon]

This all sounds very elitist to me. If you can't afford to buy a BA army then you can't play BA, even if you have a marine army with the right weapons and options. WOW...what happened to playing for fun?

[EVIL INC]

You may have misunderstood the OP. He was not asking if he could use mix the space wolf rules and the blood angel rules together in the same army. An opponent would have every right in the world to not let him do that.
He was only asking if he could use space wolf models as blood angel successors using the blood angel's rules. Doing this with everything being wysiwyg. There is nothing wrong with that at all. (I refer you once more to the official rule I provided). I would MUCH rather my opponent do that then pull out a rabble of unpainted models that are not fully assembled as apparantly many would rather them do.
Govannon, you hit spot on what the problem is. Some people have the funds to buy 2 or 3 or 6 identical armies and paint each of them a different color so that they can have all of their chapters have the "official" markings. To many of us normal people who work for a living, we don't have that kind of cash so we are forced to improvise by having our marine models serve double duty. The rich person gains an advantage if they can force their opponent's to have everything exactly marked as they are in the codex "Oh no, you cant use that as an ultramarine assault marine. It has 25 teeth showing on the chainsword while everyone knows the official ultramarine chainsword has only 23 teeth showing so it CANT be an official ultramarine model. You are banned from our tourney".

[Gaijin18]

Evil Inc,

I've run across afew gamers like that and have been tempted to field an epic army in regular 40k games.

As to the original question at hand, I would not see a problem at all with doing that. The color scheme/modeling doesn't matter so long as they meet the rules being used.

If not there wouldn't be many themed armies which would be boring as #$%%

[JohnHwangBT]

No, govannon & Evil - you guys misunderstand. Nobody appears to have problems with generic, non-Canon armies straddling multiple Codices as long as the weapons are right. If you have an army that is clearly, unquestionably modeled and painted exactly as a Canon army (Ultras, BA, DA, BT, or SW) then people are saying that such an army should ONLY be played as what it looks like. If that's an "elitist" view, oh well...

With respect to guys needing several armies, that would only be the case if each of those armies were specifically modeled and painted as Canon - the Dark Angels army in olive, with all of the dresses & winged sword bitz; the BA army in red, with all of the winged teardrop bitz; the BT army all in black with Tabards and chained weapons; etc. If the owner decided to paint his army as generic grey marines, then he could claim "successor" status to any of the above, and just need the army-specific model options for unique units.

[EVIL INC]

Which brings us back to the question at hand. The iconography and symbols are purely secondary. No one has issues with a player using the Dallas Cowboys (complete with helmets, shoulder pads and cheerleader models representing the death company) as an army theme and using blood angel rules for them. No one is having issues with bare plastic models that are not fully assembled and using blood angels rules for them. No one is even having issues with doller store plastic army men and half full coke cans as drop pods as blood angels. But when a person wants to use models that are painted grey and have wolf tails on them (all well painted/converted, flocked bases, the works), people are tossing a hissy fit because they look too much like another "cannon" chapter. Seems to make sense to me. This is a game of toy soldiers not the Holy Bible where you lose your soul if your stuff is not "perfectly cannon".
So long as the models are wysiwyg, painted to look nice and the army "list" is legal, you should be good to go. At least according to Games Workshop (and common sense). Again, I point you to Page two of the English version of the rulebook. Top of page in the box. The Most Important Rule.