Riding the Cheese Wagon...

Alright, so admit it. At some point in every Codex Space Marine player's life they look at the other chapters and say, "I wish I could do that." They look at their Space Wolves or Blood Angles brothers and say, "Why can you have 5-Man squads with Melta guns in Razorback and I can't?" The look at 'Dev' Squads that can split fire with multiple Missile Launchers any say, "Hey, that's not fair"

And if you are lucky and decided to go with your own Space Marine Chapter and not a 'Codex' chapter, who is to say which Space Marine Chapter your army is a founding from... this week.

So I am at that point with my Codex Marines. So on Thursday night after debuting my Eldar on the gaming table and crushing my buddy Sean in a kill point mission to only get my skinny Eldar but handed to me in a Capture and Control mission, we did what we always do. We sat around after the games were done and shoot the bull about 40K. We talked rules, tactics, and what we could have done differently.

At some point though, he asked me if I was ever going to get back to my Marines. I started my Marines for a starter army to teach my boys how to play the game. Occasionally I get board with Tyranids and I would break out the Marines just for fun. So they have been sitting on the shelf looking at me wantingly to be painted and played. Now, I have no plans to give up my Eldar, I really want to have 1850 points built, painted, and play-tested for Adepticon this year. But I always have my next project in mind as I am working on the current one. This is why my 'Nids are only 10% painted.

But I was think about getting back to Marines after the Eldar are done, and I wanted to make a Blood Angels list. So my friend Sean was the first to offer up, "You know if you run you're own chapter you could be Blood Angels today and Space Wolves tomorrow and Codex Marines on Monday."

This brought a smile to my face. He's right! For the most part, A Rhino is a Rhino, Vindicator is a Vindicator, a Marine a Marine. Now each codex, BA and Wolves, have some units unique to them, but with some filing and a new paint job I really could make a Marine Army that could Go between Codex, BA, and Wolves. So I am going to do it!

I am going to Start my own Chapter, the Lightning Legion, who Started off as Codex marines when they lost a big part of their forces in a great battle with the Necrons. Along came two other successor chapters to the Blood Angels and Space Wolves to help out and they too also took brutal loses in the battle. Commanders killed, chapter masters mortally wounded. It was a mess. In order to win the battle and the war versus the Necrons, these three weakened chapters decided to combine their forces on the battle field and fight side by side, like a single chapter. This brave plan worked, the they were able to defeat the Necrons, together as one chapter. When the war was over, they had grown so accustomed to each other the the new command structure, they decided to stay a combined chapter. Hence, The Lightning Legion was born.

Game play-wise, you'd pick a codex for that game or tournament, but I plan to paint up this army and start interchanging which codex I am using.

I will report my progress here and show some of the custom models that will have to come from this so that I can have Thunderwolf cavalry next to models on the shelf with wings.

So, is this Cheese? Let me know gang!