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Jungle Juice Jungle Juice: April 2007
by Patrick Eibel
I am an Imperial Guard player and have recently started to put together a Space Marine army. I am using Codex: Space Marines for the basis. I don't really like the mind set of most SM players using Tactical Squads for everything, so I decided to put together an all-Scout army (with a few exceptions).Thanks for your e-mail, Chris. The army idea is an interesting one. Kenton did a similar idea once, which he called his First and Ten because he used Scouts and Terminators from the First and Tenth companies of the Chapter. I like the idea of representing a newly- formed chapter, and so I will focus on the background story for their creation. Getting Started
As a new chapter, it is unlikely that there would be any Terminators (we’ll deal with the Dreadnought later), so the Command Squad will be in power armor. They should be given Infiltrate as their Veteran skill to keep with the theme of the rest of the army. I would also give them a Company Standard to help the Scout squads with Morale rolls. I also would include an Apothecary for the survivability of the unit, since it is your only one with the 3+ armor save. Tool them up for assault (meltaguns, flamers, or plasma guns over heavy weapons, specialists with power weapons), and use them as a counterstrike unit to keep the enemy off your shooty Scout squads. Finally, let’s address the name of the chapter. The idea of using lightly-armored troops to stealth forward and harass the enemy from cover is very similar to guerrilla warfare. The word guerrilla comes from the Spanish for “small war.” While this information really has nothing to do with the name, I think it makes a good starting point and so I want to use the word “warriors” in the chapter name. The second part of the name should evoke a sense of what the army is about – stealth. Stealth Warriors, however, is not a good army name as it sounds like the translation of the army’s name from another language (which is always an option). I could go the animal route and look for an animal that is stealthy (chameleons, tigers, any other cats), but I prefer Shadow Warriors because it adds an air of mystery and will allow for any changes the army should go through (Chris may decide to advance the story of his chapter and add more power armor guys at some point, thus changing their tactics). Modeling and Colors
To play up the shadow aspect of the name, the color scheme should be dark and muted. I suggest Shadow Gray for the cloth parts of the Scout armor and Chaos Black for the carapace, boots and gloves. For the shoulder pads, I would use Warlock Purple with a black throwing star (shuriken) on a white background to tie in with the obvious allusion to ninjas (the ultimate in stealth warriors). Army Selection
Limiting the choices your army can take from their codex is one of the easiest ways to establish a theme to build your army around. In this case, by limiting the Troop choice to Scout Squads, we were forced to address several questions that established the “fluff” of the army. Why are there only Scouts available? Where did the non-Scout Marines come from? What other choices from Codex: Space Marines would make sense in this type of army? The key thing to remember when undertaking this kind of exercise is to keep playability in mind. Having a highly themed army that always loses because it is too limited to compete against regular armies will not be a whole lot of fun. Hopefully, we have mitigated the limitations of only using Scout squads by supporting them with tanks, the Dreadnought, and a tooled-up Command Squad. Maybe Chris will let us know how he does, should he decide to follow our advice. If you would like me to develop some
ideas for you, check the introduction page
of this series for the e-mail address.
Related Pages
Posted April 2007.
Used with permission.
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