(Pictured from left to right: Space Wolf, Spectral Warrior, Iron Griffon, and Mortifactor Space Marines.)

Good day fellow Hivers and people who like sci-fi, warhammer, and everything related to tabletop wargaming. Recently I dusted off my Warhammer 40,000 miniatures and I started learning how to play the game - 3 editions in between where I did not play.

In some cases, I am just as much of a newbie as the some of the people who have just started playing even though I have many dozens of games, perhaps even hundreds of games under my belt.

One of my main loves in this game are Space Marines as pictured above.Their awesome looking armor and their concepts in the lore really attracted me to them as a whole.

It was only later that I focussed on one particular group of Space Marines - the Space Wolves Chapter.

So what exactly are Space Marines?

I am not here to quote the lore of the game or even give you official explanations, I am just here to talk about the whole hobby. I also find that sometimes people do not understand fully what there miniatures represent!

In a nutshell, Space Marines are a super elite faction of genetically modified super human soldiers.

There is a lot more to it than that, but I am going to leave that for another post.

The beauty of Warhammer 40,000 lore however, despite certain people complaining about it, is that the story, narritive and cannon often has contradictory information.

Instead of being a problem like that would be for most works of fiction, the 40k universe is set in a grim dark future where the administration of humanity does not even itself know how many worlds they have in their empire, never mind the multitude of other details.

The books, even the first person accounts of events are merely written from their persepctive and the pieces of lore written in the narrator style are basically unreliable information.

Some of the Codexes (Armybooks) are written from the perspective of an outsider come to view or study another faction and therefore everything they say are not necessarily true!

When it comes to Space Marines it was accepted that there are, more or less, around about 1000 Space Marine Chapters. A Space Marine Chapter is a single autonomous force that usually resides on a homeworld and fights in the warfronts near that world but they are sometimes very far from home as well.

There are many named Chapters, some of which bear the heraldry of the Legions of 10,000 years ago and others who are called second-founding Chapters who trace their lineage to one of those Legions as a breakaway Chapter and finally there are Chapters who do not even know where their roots are from.

10,000 years in a grimdark setting where technology has become mystical - is a long time indeed! Even on Earth historical accounts can become muddled even after a single generation and anything more than a few hundred years and we struggle with certain facts.

For the hobbyist this means that you can collect a force of Space Marines with specific army colors and have specific rules for that army. Or you can play those specific rules, but with an alternative color scheme if you don't like the first founding Chapter colors. Or you can just MAKE UP a Chapter color scheme AND theme and play them as any existing ruleset.

I actually know a few people who paint their armies in a non-specific manner so they can decide to play them as any of the other specific Space Marine Armies!

The Imperium of Man make their homes on an uncountable amount of worlds, each with their own cultures and climates. Some worlds may seem like a theme style on Earth we know of, others are completely fictional. You can base your Marines around this.

Let's look at some of mine:

I started by collecting Space Wolves, Space Marine Wolf Vikings... in a nutshell. I also have the monistic Dark Angels and the crusading Black Templars as well as some others.

Sometimes I would paint up a single miniature as below:

The Mortifactors Chapter

These guys are a Chapter that exists in the lore but have no specific army rules, though they are meant to bear the gene-seed of the Ultramarines, they are nothing like the Ultramarines!

They come from a planet that is in eternal darkness and basically, the populace is dark skinned, and have a massive fascination with bones.

They are like headhunter tribes who have been given superhuman physiology and have a dour, pragmatic fascination with Death.

I think this arrow is too chunky. I might repaint that. An arrow like this shows that he is a Tactical squad Marine.

They have a two tone color scheme with black and bleached bone.

Probably the thing I am the proudest of when painting this miniature is the skull for their Chapter Symbol. I painted this by hand!

Note: I would LOVE to build and paint an entire Chapter of these guys! In the books they are just awesome.

Their Chapter Master is a massive Space Marine with armor covered in bones on every surface with his hair kept as long grey dreadlocks and skin a dark drown color. He weilds a massive power weapon in the shape of a Scythe!

Usually in Space Marines, power weapons are weapons with an energy field built in that allows them to cut through anything and are mostly found in the shape of Swords and Axes and sometimes Maces and Spears.

But the Mortifactors Chapter Master covered in BONES has a bloody huge Scythe! Thus a massive superhuman Grim Reaper! And he is one of the "Good Guys"! Haha!

As I collect and paint, the first step is to build a squad of these with a Sergeant that looks the part. A Chaplain that is also known in this Chapter as a "Spiritwalker" who is able to do Astral Projection (Also something unique to them), and maybe modelling that Chapter Master, since he is just so damn cool!

Until next time!

Cheers!
@zakludick

Hive South Africa