Raven Guard, White Scars, Iron Hands, Salamanders

>Raven Guard, White Scars, Iron Hands, Salamanders

How would you make these first founders more relevant to 40k lore?

I think the simplest option would could just be summarised with "give them more stuff to do in the current stories", maybe underlined a few times.

start by giving them unique units
then develop said units and their ramifications inside the chapter
finally give them personal agendas to pursue

Iron Hands would be EZ. Give them shit to do with the Mechanicus. Maybe Salamanders too because of dat craftsmanship aesthetic.

Make them more interesting in game so you ever see raven guard and salamanders armies, and don't see white scars and iron hands just because they have good chapter tactics.

give salamanders chapter tactics letting devastators and tactical marines take heavy flamers
+ special characters
+ salamanders parts kit

ravenguard, assault marines as troops
+ special characters
+ raven guard parts kit

White scars, bikers as troops
+ special characters
+ white scars parts kit

Iron hands, Dreadnoughts as troops
+ Special characters
+ make a new iron hands parts kit

3 of those chapters have missing primarchs, lets start with that

Give them more chapters could be a start.

All these chapters and successors combined dont even equal the dark angels in terms of numbers or impact, nevermind the Ultras. It just makes them seem less important to the universe. And when they do get some fluff, in relative terms their impact cant be as much as what the larger chapters can pull together such as the Tyranid invasions of Baal, Macragge, War of the Beast, etc...

Individually

White Scars
-Ramp up their anti dark eldar fluff
-Maybe they have the most knowledge in the Imperium of going into the webway (with still alot of risk)
-Special Librarians
-GOTTA GO FAST!

Sallys
-Special event looking for Vulkan's special macguffins
-Special Sally only relics

Raven Guard
-Lots of deep striking, scouts and work with imperial guard units
-Supposedly Raven Guard geneseed is deteriorating fast and they have to rely on terran stocks to replenish
-Maybe through mysterious circumstances their gene stocks are refreshed with decent amounts of stable geneseed in suspiciously regular interval

Iron Hands
-Hybrid Space Marine/Skittari units
-Lots of experimental vehicles
-Maybe make them the Adeptus Mech's Ordos Militant, almost everyone else has one, so why not go all in?

I can only named Shrike as a special character from contemporary 41k times.

Add special models for each

Vulkan had to fight off Dark Eldars which conducted many raids to Nocturne.

So more points to Salamanders absolute hate towards Dark Eldar, raids on Commoragh

There was Overfiend, which featured all three of these chapters dealing with the Ork spill-over from Octarius. It wasn't great, but it was okay.

>Give them more chapters could be a start.

I dunno, the Raven Guard and White Scars getting defeated by a genius Tau commander made them look even less relevant.

Especially if you consider the casualties ought to force these chapters into rebuilding mode for 100 years.

Revenge for Istvann campaign follow up to coming storm.

Shattered Crusader List when?

Salamander Land Raiders gorging out Melta Flamers, Iron Hands long range devestation and Raven Guard behind yo lines.

That's bullshit, clearly you have to be important first to then be given shit to do like a snowball running down a hill!

yeah the angels of death stuff was nice but nothing really great.

Have them become Ultramarines

Nice

Got a specific list you run with?

Raven Guard and White Scars featured heavily in the Damocles Crusade content that spanned a few years. They got more than enough of their share of spotlight.

The problem comes back to the fact that these four chapters didn't fight the Horus Heresy, while the others did. Give them something to do in the HH. Raven Guard guerrilla warfare, Salamanders equipping the other Legions with custom made gear, White Scars doing hit and runs, etc.

Also, the Drop Site Massacre was 10,000 years ago, stop treating the Salamanders as still under-strength and give them more successors.

>White Scars doing hit and runs, etc.

Slight nit pick but...

Khan and the Scars were at the Siege of Terra

More successors. Salamanders have two at most (and those are only rumored). And let them have heavy flamers, hand flamers and inferno pistols.

Give them books.

All you need to make these characters important is write about what they do.

The rest goes from there.

If you write a story about a white scar squad doing a deep strike rescure of a inquisitor, biking around a Space hulk, you'll get stuff based on it.

If you give the iron hands a badass techmarine to fight the necrons he'd end up a named character and hero unit.

Blah blah.

>bikers as troops

doesnt taking a captain/chapter master do that already?

No. usually just a CAD. got to mutch dreads anyway and lack the units for most formations.

i will try the castellan from gathering storm.

They're the jobber Chapters.

Just look at the Kauyon stuff.

I always thought a Space Marine video game where you only play in an attack bike might be an interesting idea...

Add in Ork bikes and Dark Eldar corsairs and you could have a bunch of campy fun.

>Just look at the Kauyon stuff.
Not their fault they fought the Tau, everyone jobs to them. If everyone didn't job to the Tau GW would lose a codex and the weeb crowd with it, in addition to approx. 1/4 to 1/2 of the cheese crowd.

>these four chapters didn't fight the Horus Heresy
Are...are you kidding?
Have some novels:
Scars
Path of Heaven
Meduson
Corax
TONS of short stories of the Shattered Legions fighting
Write-ups of them in HH4: Conquest and HH6: Retribution

Who cares.

Blood Angels, Dark Angels and Imperial Fists are the only decent loyalist founding chapters.

>Blood Angels, Dark Angels and Imperial Fists
Those are strange ways of spelling Ultramarines.

Likely not relevant to this thread, but I always liked the idea of running a single tac squad with mismatched Istvan survivors.

I always liked the idea that they were stuck in a warp jump for 9000 years or something.

Plus the spalsh of color with all the weird bits of mismatched armor is pretty cool with a GK army.

hahaha they are rarely useful but a blast to have bumbling around the battlefield.

>White scars, bikers as troops
You can do that if your HQ has a bike, I believe.

>Iron hands, Dreadnoughts as troops
I'm shitting my pants in fear RIGHT NOW

Fuckoff Ward. we don't want you here.

everyone forget the Khan.

iron hands and salamanders are relevant though, they were the first ones to fall to heresy and set the board for what defines true betrayal.

Have the Salamanders be the unifying force of the End Times. Once the legions of Chaos are defeated, preferably by Vulkan, the Salamanders will rebuild the Imperium into a more tolerant and open-minded beast. Thus, it will be better equipped to prosper.

Don't really care about the other chapters.

>Salamanders
>heresy

uwotm8?

I could have worded that better. Iron hands and Salamanders got rekt on isvtaan 4 by the heretics. The chapters themselves were not traitors.

I make their chapter masters and most famous captains lose to the Tau at their own specialties.

>BA

Overrated

>DA

Shit taste

>IF

Well at least you're 1/3, traitor scum. Your post is like if loyalists said Word Bearers were the only good traitor legion.

>Vulkan had to fight off Dark Eldars which conducted many raids to Nocturne.

Combine it with the fact that the Dark Eldar way of life is the fundamental antithesis of the Promethean Cult, and is basically its perfect foil, meaning that Salamanders hate literally every single thing about Dark Eldar with every fiber of their being, and still would even if the Dark Eldar were humans.

Isstvan V, not 4. V was the massacre, III was the purge.

>IF
>Good

>BA
>Overrated

Sorry, your walls broke on Terra, at least we were defending the gate.

>DA
>Loyal

What traitors did the Fists have? Other than the Wolves, the Emperor and Malcador showed them the most trust of all the legions

Uh, the Scars were one of only three loyalist legions to make it back to Terra in time for the Siege.

I agree with the calls to give the First Founding legions/chapters more successors and have them all do something together now and then. It doesn't mean much when you can't tell that, say, the Mantis Warriors came from the White Scars.

OF COURSE
WE SONS OF THE LION ARE THE MOST PIOUS AND LOYAL
(make him repent asmodai)

well

Ultramarines, Blood Angels (twice) and Imperial Fists have all been wiped out before, Dark Angels are secretive and Space Wolves are furries

so i guess some combination of secretive, half-dead furries

which pretty much covers everybody but White Scars

who we'll call the control in this dataset

>Ultramarines, Blood Angels (twice) and Imperial Fists have all been wiped out before

When have the Ultrasmurfs ever been wiped out? They lost their first company against Behemoth but thats it. Also stop with this furries shit, it's even worse than actual furries (who I never see post here btw)

>stop treating the Salamanders as still under-strength and give them more successors.

I think you're underestimating how instable gene-seed is generally.

The Ultramarines have the most successors because their gene-seed only goes wrong 10% of the time. The other legions turned into creature features because their DNA got fucked up; some like the Raven Guard made it worse for themselves but they all basically benefited from rediscovering their Primarchs. Even with all the resources of Terra and the Emperor, gene-seed wasn't ready to go into full production without them, but it had to, so it did. And the best of it only goes wrong 1 in 10 times; imagine what it's like for a Chapter with fucked-up geneseed that behaves unpredictably - never mind growing fangs or craving blood, and occasionally turning into a wolf or a full on ghoul, it just... doesn't work reliably.

If the Salamanders have a 30% work rate then they lose 7/10 aspirants, and that's a hell of a lot of gene-seed given that each successful marine grown is going to give back a maximum of 2 cultures to grow new gene-seed organs from. Seriously; start with a large multiple of 10 and draw it out for yourself.

100 becomes maximum 60 from two sets per existing marine using 200 aspirants; 60 becomes 40 using 120 aspirants, and so on and so on. Even with the Ultramarines that 10% rate is killer, long-term. It's a good thing space marines live a long time and are hard to kill. And that's assuming they could retrieve both sets of progenoids from every marine with no losses or wastage, which is unlikely.

well, decimation then

Macragge and Calth, if you really want to go way back

Even after Calth they still remained the largest legion

Ohhh, okay. Yeah, I totally misinterpreted that.

>There are only a handful of chapters that are actually noted for having "pure" geneseed
>Half of them are traitors and the other half still have mutations such as non-functioning organs
>Even with these, the purest of the pure, 999 out of every 1000 implanted subjects will die
>And this success rate is labeled as "absolute purest, best chance of success"

>stop treating the Salamanders as still under-strength and give them more successors.
I never did understand why they haven't given the Salamanders any confirmed successors. They don't have a real stated reason like the Yiffs. Just "They didn't have enough marines to make any second founders and then... just never made any *confirmed* successors for some reason."

Three of them were made for the sole purpose of being jobbers, don't ask for impossible things.

Shoot He Who Shall Not Be Named out past the Geller field while in transit, to start. Then I'd work out some story on my own, because every time GM tries to advance the story it sucks.

Huh, that art isn't half bad. Not a lot of weight to it and a little too clean and cartoony. In the strictesed sense if the words, not bad.

As it stands, if the original BA, IF, Ultras or DA get wiped out, they could be rebuilt. As happened already.

If any of those chapters (and space wolves I guess but they get enough fluff as is) suffer a debilitating defeat, they are effectively finished as chapters.

I would have White Scars organize Great Hunts with their successors. A fancy term for Crusade but usually for the expressed purpose of collecting the heads of infamous enemy leaders no matter where they are and how well guarded.

The Ironhands and their successors would be the de facto Mechanicus Space Marine element. Not in name but working often enough where its an awkward thing for everyone else to realize the power such a relationship brings.

The Salamanders really need more chapters. Maybe do a black templar thing where they have fortresses across the galaxy and at any one time there could be slightly more than legit chapter strength but no one is ever able to put two and two together.

The Raven Guard have an even shittier geneseed than the rest and they have to rely on their stocks from Earth. But who knows how much of that is left? The chapter should be searching for new geneseed or a cure for the predicament.

>Special Characters
God fucking no, we need less of these, not more. Special characters should be cool fluff choices and NEVER be better than a generic dude of the same cost.

Allow Iron Hands to field Dreadnought Sergeants for vet squads

>I can only named Shrike as a special character from contemporary 41k times.
Solaq, Korvydae...

>ravenguard, assault marines as troops
You can do this already if you take Korvydae as your Warlord. Although, this is less useful now than it was in 6th ed.