Dark Angels - Supermen in Black

My new Warhammer 40k army is going to be a Dark Angel army. Not a modern, hand-wringing, angst-ridden Dark Angel army desperately hunting for a few renegades, though. Mine will be a loud, proud and dangerous black-armoured force of pre-heresy marines and their human dupes. I have played 40k a few times, but never built up a proper army (well, I did once but I ended up selling it again) so this time I need a plan.

I was browsing the old 'Rogue Trader' edition of the rules a while back and spotted the page of colour schemes for marines, which included a Dark Angel in black, rather than dark green, power armour. This reminded me that the original Chaos codex had rules for Cypher which allowed him to be a part of either a Chaos force or a loyal Imperial Guard force, together with a bodyguard of Fallen veterans. I just wanted to extend that bodyguard to be a whole army.

To try to keep some sort of control over this article, I have used Fallen to refer to the renegades who are still dressed in black power armour to this day. I have used Dark Angel to refer to the legion at the time of the Horus Heresy. And I have used Unforgiven to refer to the marine chapters which were created from the Dark Angel legion.

The force is fitted to the chaos list - millennia in the warp and the exposure to malign influences have turned them to chaos. The majority of my Fallen won't worship Khorne, Slaanesh, Tzeentch and Nurgle directly; they will worship the Emperor of Man as a proxy for the others and see themselves as true Space Marines. I decided that the force would be matched to either the Black Legion (if I want to use the various marks of chaos) or the Alpha Legion (if I want cultists to bulk out the numbers). These are marines who have lived through more battles than any mortal man; they have been fighting since the dark days of the heresy itself.

They spend much of their time in the warp, drifting on a space hulk named the Blade of Destiny. They fight unending battles against other forces within the Eye of Terror, forever honing their skills. On occasion, their psykers receive messages from Cypher requiring their presence in mortal space. When this happens, they find that other Fallen are drawn to them, swelling their numbers.

My intention is to create a complete force of Fallen marines in pre-heresy colours. I want them to look less like a Chaos force and more like an Imperial Space Marine force until the point when they summon demons. With this in mind, I will try to tone down the worst excesses of mutation for choices such as Obliterators and Possessed Marines. I would like other players to look at the army and think Space Marine rather than Chaos.

The army should be capable of being played without any special rules, just as the Chaos Space Marine codex describes it. I have no doubt that I will create some characters as my army grows, but they are likely to be constructed using the normal rules for lords and lieutenants rather than being outside the rules.

Postscript - now that the new Dark Angel codex and plastics have come out, I will be making a few changes to the army to allow me to play it effectively under either codex. Which means that I will be able to add some land speeders, a land raider crusader and some assault cannons. And the new plastic sprues are rather excellent, plenty of parts to spread over many many figures.

Postscript 2 - the new Chaos codex has led to me rearranging a few things on these pages; dreads are now elite, berzerkers are troops, etc.