Kinstryfe

Imho there are two(ish) standout options. One is going with another Imperium army; sisters, Custodes, or mechanicus; as it can be used effectively piecemeal with your current Imperium armies. The other is Harlequins, as there isn't really anything else like them and you seem to like them. Do you want to paint crazy colors and patterns? I would get some harlies. Want to paint more muted schemes or quicker paint jobs? Consider an add-on to your imperial forces.

I've said it before and stand by it: be careful what we wish for. The proliferation of 3rd party guard parts out there that are completely in the clear because every guard regiment (except possibly Cadians) are such generic history mashups makes it clear that if we get a revamp of guardsmen in plastic they will not be any of the historical regiments we know and love. Tanks I can see, abhumans I could maybe see (though ratlings fall prey to the same generic fantasy problem that a lot of WHFB did), but actual guardsmen will either be a brand new regiment that GW can claim full protections on or a similar wildly different visual rework of an existing regiment. That said, I feel like with the fall of Cadia it's only a matter of time until we get a new regiment to be the POV regiment in GW fluff. Since it does only need 3 kits, I could see it coming at any lull in the production schedule.

I think any attempt to make players "make due with what they have and try to work thru it" is the reason my flgs and Facebook feeds are full of people trying to sell or trade their Marine armies. This is a hobby, and something to the effect of "gee too bad you painted your toy soldiers red instead of black" will, in my experience, cause more people to quit the hobby or the army rather than it will cause them to dig in their heels and try to fight an uphill battle. And we can be mad at bandwagon jumpers, but my buddy with his long-term Iron Hands army needs occasional reminding that since in his last tournament he played black metal Ultramarines, he can't really be mad at blue Hands. The thing that really bugs me though is that any attempt to tie rules in with colours is only going to lead to me seeing more bare plastic down at the shop. The strongest, most flexible condition for an army shouldn't be bare plastic. Bare plastic? Can be any Space Marine army. Undercoated black or white? Any army. I paint it yellow? Imperial Fists or any Successor. Add little black and white cheques? Common Marine decoration, could still be any of those. Add a red heart? Bam, they're Lamenters. Blood Angels codex but without the special characters or relics, but with one forgeworld character with no model. That's the dumb part, that color and livery equals rules. And that's not even taking into the fact that the fluff is ever changing. I feel for the guy out there with a lovely obscure Chapter he picked off a poster who gets their primogenitor revealed as a Chapter he isn't fond of. It all seems like GW has gone away from the philosophy of "your guys" and into "do as we say".

Yeah, whomever was making that argument is nuts. Unless a model gets damaged, it's going to have virtually no affect on "value", especially as once it's built and painted most models basically have only a tiny fraction of their starting cost in value to begin with. Funnily though, I'm in the middle of stripping a decade and a half old Space Marine Company to bring it up to my current style, and even though I anticipate losing some bits and models as I opt not to reuse certain old pieces, let's look at the breakdown. 6x Tactical Squad Box = $270 4x Assault Squad Box = $180 4x Devastator Squad Box = $200 1x Command Squad Box = $35 Total @GW Retail = $685 My Costs to Strip Bottle of Purple Stuff = ~$20 Two big tubs to work in = $5 Scrub Brush = $5 8 Hours estimated time @ fair value = $120 Total estimated cost to strip = $150 Granted, this is before both factoring in buying stuff at a 20% discount or the 9 Rhinos that will follow, but it seems like even if I only use half the stuff I'm stripping, I'm coming out way ahead on the process. So basically, whoever thinks stripping is a worse option than just buying a whole new army has probably fallen prey to the fairly unethical words of someone trying to sell them a new army...

On a point that's been made, the Legions were comprised of many Chapters as a command division. An argument could be made that the first founding of Chapters was in fact concurrent with the Legion formation and growth, as that was when the Chapter as a unit came into being. The Second Founding then was the dissolution of the Legions and codification of primarily extent Chapters as their own entities. In effect, to use the line of reasoning as it's been used, the Blood Angels Chapter did in fact exist. Many Blood Angels Chapters existed. As of the Second Founding only one Chapter of Blood Angels remained; which would have been extant previously; and many Blood Angels Chapters are dissolved and reformed as Successor Chapters. The dissolution of the status and command structure of the Legion doesn't affect the fact that Chapters already existed. Second Founding Chapters are effectively new entities because they are removed from the command chain of any other chapters; the singular Chapter which is left continues with the extant, but highly truncated, chain of command.

I have a hard time imagining too that any Astartes would be happy about being spun off into a new Chapter. A lot of them didn't like it when the Second Founding occurred specifically because to an Astartes their Chapter is usually central to their identity. Maybe a Captain being spun off as a Chapter Master could see some sort of honor in it if his personal heraldry was used, but imagine the scenario. You're nearly 800 years old and a highly respected Captain of the 3rd Company of the Emperor's Crusaders. You have helped shape the character of the Chapter with no fewer than 6 other Captains having learned under your command in the past 400 years, not to mention hundreds of green recruits of all stripes. You aspire to more, as most Astartes, and the First Captain is getting up there in years, being nearly 1200 years old. Word comes thru that you are to be reassigned, not to the vaunted heights of the First Company, but to a newly found Chapter. Everything that has identified you for the better part of a millennium, every man you call brother, will be removed from you save a small handful. Your legacy to the Emperor's Crusaders is nil. And unlike the dauntless brothers of the Deathwatch who serve a higher purpose and return to strengthen the Chapter with their knowledge, for you there will be no return. You will serve, as any Astartes would, but you will wear colours and panoply not your own but those without valor or accolade. Perhaps they are doing what is right. You can help shape a new brotherhood of Astartes, but at the cost of everything you have held dear...

As you said, a lot of what you want can be waved away by good fluff for your Chapter, so pretty much any primogenitor Chapter can be justified. The one sort of problem I see is that Drop Pods largely transport 1 wound models, so your portal idea may be tough to pull off without adding some firstborn to your army. On conversion ideas, you may be able to play up the sergeants are minor psykers angle by modeling some of their weaponry as psychic effects. Flaming or spell effect weapons as power weapons, shooting a gout of flame from their hand as a combi-flamer, clear resin shield effect as a storm shield, etc. It could visually convey that these are cool psychic effects without needing rules that don't currently exist. Salamanders successors with fire and rock manipulation effects could look especially cool.

I believe it was stated recently (the White Dwarf article maybe?) that the Dark Angels are accepting primaris into the Deathwing, but only in Gravis armour. So I'd imagine it would be kosher to have veteran Intercessors, Aggressors, and maybe Inceptors in the 1st company at the moment; though aside from the stratagem for Intercessors it would be just a paint scheme at the moment rather than anything reflected in actual rules. More than likely we'll get more Gravis or similar units to fill the roles of current veterans.

Haven't done it with contrast, but I've painted a variety of golds with a silver undercoat and thin layers of sepia ink wash and yellow glaze/wash. Contrast should work, just with less control over the outcome.

The best I've been able to make sense of thirty years of fluff about the warp is that it's essentially full of giant blobby Venn diagrams representing abstract concepts that coalesce into something resembling sentience. The more of a similar emotional or symbolic shadow they absorb, the stronger they are. I really like the occasionally but not often enough used concept that there are many sentiences in the warp, it's just that for survival most of the smaller ones ally with or serve one of the larger entities. Just like Drach'nyen is "the first murder and the end of (human) empires), so to would other warp entities be born of a concept of symbolic action, and I like to think that the big 4 we see are the result of countless absorbtions, mergers, and acquisitions of various warp sentiences into the big powers. In the same way I love the ancient fluff that there are independent movers and shakers who fulfil their own niche and try to remain both independent of and off the radar of the larger gods, and that some may be weak enough so as to only manifest a few daemons at a time in real space compared to the endless legions of the Four. In effect I think the warp is home to countless "gods", it's just that the majority of them are weaker than even a greater daemon of the Four, jockeying for power that they will likely never possess. It's Game of Thrones with sentient maelstroms of emotional energy, except basically everyone except Khorne, Tzeentch, Nurgle, and Slaanesh tend to die.

Not that I think any fictional character deserves anything, on account of being fictional and all, but I'd love to see GW start using character releases as an opportunity to release more minor characters in general. Here's a new Drukhari character sprue, it can be assembled in a bunch of different ways, including this particular way to make Drukhari Special Character. Things like that. Like the generic Dark Apostle kit we got recently could have had an alternate head and arm/pad to make Erebus. It would be super easy to spread the love around to different factions that way just by making everything generic double as something specific. That said, I would love any special character for Harlequins with bonus points if they tie into the Ynnari. Also I suppose Malakim Photos because if the new rules mean painting my marines yellow mean I lose access to every named character and relic they may as well make a model for the one subpar character I can use in their place.

Currently trying to figure out how to field a viable 1st company and you just solved it for me. Great idea.

For some factions that are less long lived than Astartes though, this pretty much has to be the understood norm. I'm partly positive that with a couple exceptions like Creed and Yarick the guard characters pretty much have to be just historic snapshots or archetypes. There's also at least one faction, the T'au, and to a lesser extent the Tyranids that make suspendion of disbelief a required part of the hobby. My Ultramarines are a heresy era company that, in my homebrew fluff for them, will eventually become the Preators of Orpheus. By all logic of the setting, it would be absolutely impossible for my army to ever face T'au, or Tyranids, or Sisters of Battle even, but this is obviously something that gets ignored for the sake of just playing the game. There's a willing disconnect that those who follow the lore and also play the game need to have to keep them separated enough that they won't render each other impossible.

Thinking about it more, I feel like they could avoid the perception that there's no risk by even killing off characters that are barely in the lore that don't even have models. Even a little blurb like "Even though they grudgingly create new Primaris Astartes in limited numbers, the *insert second founding Chapter that we know about from the lore. Let's say Mortifactors because they're fun.* no longer allow their brothers to attempt to cross the Rubicon Primaris, after losing their Chapter Master Mortifactor-Name and 7 of their Captains as they attempted to cross. The resulting lack of leadership has led to a significant increase in battle losses as they adjust to their new chain of command." It would at least acknowledge that things are dangerous in the setting instead of just stating it and doing nothing with it. Heck, make a running commentary across new codex releases of a particular Chapter with a new named Chapter Master every time they're mentioned...

Really, if a named unique character has a model and unique rules, there's really nothing to be gained by killing them off. The number of people who will go buy a new model because they killed that character off is likely insignificant, whereas the people who won't but it because they were killed off is likely larger. So right at the start, it's likely a bad business decision. There's also nothing stopping them from introducing new characters anyway. While it could be neat to kill Calgar and replace him with a new Primaris Chapter Master there's no reason they couldn't keep Calgar and just make a new character for an Ultramarines successor Chapter. Honestly I wish named characters were just archetypes so that the lore wouldn't be beholden to the tabletop. Marneus Calgar could die and the new Master Narneus Dalgar could take over with no change in rules.