Arrogance as a Virtue - The Chronicles of the Marines Exemplar

1500 Point Marines Exemplar Army, ready for battle

The Marines Exemplar are going strong!   One of the most rewarding Hobby projects i have had in a long time, i can't stop painting units for them!

I guess i've always been a huge fan of Space Marines and with that, 2nd and 3rd founding chapters in particular.

The best part of collecting these guys has been thinking up my own background for them as the army takes shape, all from the original picture i saw in the 6th edition 40k Rulebook when it first came out!



As the army has grown and after a few games with the original army list struggling to find its feet, i've semi-abandoned or finely tuned parts of the army in favor of new or different units.  The Tactical squads in the army are a case in point, at first i was arming them with an anti infantry and an anti tank weapon (heavy or special) and then arming the sergeants with power weapons and combi weapons out of habit from 5th edition.  After playing against an all terminator force and a Unified Chaos Marine/Daemon army, it became clear that the power weapons were sinking points that weren't really achieving anything.

Marines Exemplar Sternguard Squad.

After two games using Pedro Kantor as my HQ, i realised he wasn't quite able to buff regular marines to the steroid-level he had in 5th, his ability hadn't changed, but the focus of warfare clearly had.  It's not that Assault is bad in 6th edition per se (though it is certainly more harsh), it's just that you can't really get away with half-assing your loadouts on units any more.   Also, i was trying to utilise a lot of units that demanded cover to operate with any degree of safety, and often this meant they would crowd into ruins, even if they were in an inopportune battlefield location.  I watched as my poor servants of the Imperium were blown to bits before being able to bring their guns to bear on the foe.  With 6th edition Games Workshop have finally made every army deadly.  Power armour simply does not allow you the room to make mistakes that it used to.  But i really like that.

Brother Ferok, 1st Company Scion of the Marines Exemplar

With a little bit of tweaking, i dropped the Sternguard altogether, as once i began to optimize the loadout on my Tactical Marines and beefed up my Devastator squad, i just didn't need another unit to sit around in ruins waiting for the enemy to come to them.  I've already posted about my Modified "Punisher" pattern Attack Bikes, their inclusion in the force made a huge difference.

Two individual units for 55 points each.  Their addition presented a new Threat angle, highly maneuverable and durable enough to avoid being annihilated without concentrated firepower.  Much like my beloved 55 point units of 5 scouts, with a focus on dealing damage rather than claiming objectives.

So Pedro had to go, and in his place came Brother Ferok, a Terminator Captain with the Shield Eternal, he happily tanked wounds, marching at the forefront of the Terminator squad and passing off anything vaguely scary with "look out sir rolls", i quite liked him for the couple of games i played him, but he never got in combat, and for the sheer amount of points invested in him i just thought i'd prefer a really cheap HQ and allocate the spare points into other units.

Captain Golboron, Marines Exemplar

So steps up Captain Golboron, Captain of the 3rd Company Marines Exemplar, armed with nought but his mighty Relic Bolter, the Primarch's Wrath.  For sheer utility i could have gone cheaper and just taken a bare-bones Librarian.  But that just didn't seem particularly like the Marines Exemplar to me, Librarians in their Chapter Organisation would be far more likely to operate as advisors to Superior Officers.  So with this decision i decided Captain Golboron, Master of the Arsenal, would be fairly Siege-centric, his prowess in battle far less reliant on smashing heads and more in terms of actually leading the army and commanding his troops.  I kind of like how this is at odds with the general aesthetic i've worked up for the Marines Exemplar.  Almost as if his calm presence allows them to all individually search for their own personal glory.

I finally acquired an Aegis Defence Line, so my forces no longer had to worry whether there would be cover for them to do their holy work.  And after all the gip flyers have given me recently i also included an Icarus Lascannon.  I intend to stand Golboron next to it so if any Heldrakes think about flying onto the table he can blast them out of the sky before they have a chance to pose a threat, i'm still considering a Quad-gun in it's place, but i also like the idea of a Bolter-armed Devastator piloting the Lascannon and pairing it with their tankhunter skill.  And it's cheaper.  More thrift to spend on troops!

Marines Exemplar Centurion Devastators

With all these points i had been saving across the army re-shuffle, i decided to look at my heavy hitters.  The Terminator squad, as glorious as they are, felt slightly at odds with the army, and most of my games have been at the 1500 points level lately rather than the 1750 i am accustomed to.  There just wasn't room for them.  They felt like a solid choice for scaling the army up, but for now i needed more damage output.  And lumbering into their place were the new boys on the block, the Centurions, or more specifically the Centurion Devastators.

See, before i decided to move the army around i was starting to wonder if it was the Chapter Tactics that weren't working for me, and whether i should look at using Salamanders or Iron Hands Chapter tactics in their stead.  But after a bit of thought i remembered how when i picked up the new Codex and excitedly scanned the Chapter Tactics to make my choice, the Imperial Fists stuck out for me as so characterful and also full of potential, but that was what i had done wrong.  It wasn't the Chapter Tactics that were at fault, it was my application of them piecemeal.

Marines Exemplar Centurion Devastator

Until that point i had only used them to net me a couple more hits for my Heavy Bolter Devastators and the odd extra Boltgun shot landing on target.  No, i'd have to build to theme here to get what i wanted from the army, and then adjust the support to fit the framework.  This clearly meant loading up on Heavy Support instead of Elites like i had been.  Out came the superfluous Dreadnought and the Terminators, and in went the Centurion Devastators.

Originally i had planned to arm these beasts all with Grav Cannons as i thought they would simply annihilate anything they managed to draw a bead on, but then i looked at them with the Imperial Fists Chapter Tactics in mind, sure the tankhunter did nothing for them (due to the Grav-amp already granting them re-rolls) but then i remembered the Omni-scope,  i wouldn't arm the whole squad with Lascannons (i could get a Devastator to do the same job with an extra shot.) but if i just armed the Sergeant with an Omni-scope and Lascannons, he could Split fire from the beginning of the game and reach out and touch targets with his near-guaranteed hit as well as his re-roll to Penetrate, brilliant!  And once the regular squad members had a chance to bring their Grav-guns to bear he could still do the same thing where needed, really opening up the options for the unit and suddenly making them a lot more worthy of their hefty points-pricetag.

Of course, this is all theory as they are yet to hit a battlefield.

But I'll let you know how it goes! 


P.S.  As a side note, i am also doing a Painting log over on Warseer to help inspire me as i go along and to concentrate on the progress overall, so feel free to check it out!  There's less text and more pictures in general!