It seems all the other First Founding chapters get their own "official" successors, except the White Scars and Salamanders. I think it would have been neat to see an official Mantis Warrior build with the time line being pre-Badab War, instead of one of the Ultramarine successors, like the Doom Eagles. As for the Salamanders lexicanum says there are none known but has two suspected. The Black Dragons could have been an interesting build, giving them Gene Seed Anomaly and something like Natural Weapons. Who's with me for official White Scar and Salamander successor builds in the next book?

If this is already been discussed, I was not aware and wasn't about to hunt through the pages to check, sorry.

I imagine we'll see some more new chapters in a later sourcebook, only makes sense - they'll sell the books easily.

But yeah, Salamanders make a lot of sense. But the White Scars have a reasonable number of successors it surprises me they didn't get one in the book.

First off, nobody really knows what to do with White Scars - and they never have, it seems. Their named successors are not fleshed out at all. At least there's a lot of cool stuff to work with with the Salamanders' Black Dragon successors.

Second, I've always thought Storm Wardens as a White Scars chapter made a lot of sense.

I could have completely done without the Novamarines. Sub in another White Scars thing, sure.

I definitely agree with Storm Wardens as a White Scars successor. There's a lot of similarities. Right down to the Lightning and Storm symbology. Not to mention a similar combat style.

Similar cultures, broadly speaking. (VERY broadly, but to a Eurasianist like me, the similarities are there in SPADES… How? Well, that might take essay upon essay, but I'd refer anyone to Christopher Beckwith's "Empires of the Silk Road" for a good start on why I say this.

Though I'll fully admit the Storm Wardens are different enough you could find similarities with half the chapters out there. Look! They've got close mechanicus ties and like tanks! Must be Iron Hands successors! Look, they're Codex followers, and most chapters come from UM stock. SMURF SUCCESSORS! They <3 Swords! Of COURSE they're Imperial Fist successors. Etc etc.

When I think of White Scars, I imagine biker-specialist (or other vehicles) Space Marines. If the particular mission didn't call for bikes, or they might even be a hindrance, would he be as effective? Would he be comfortable? As an aside, is there a good way to say he can start with one, without paying for it each mission? That's what White Scars do, isn't it? They fight from bikes. I guess they might just request, and being high enough Renown, they get it, but I don't know.

So that might be a bit of why White Scars seem to have been neglected.

The writeup for them in Deathwatch is much more in depth than just bikes. Indeed, the ability is almost agnostic of vehicles. It's more of a fighting philosophy than anything else. So in this a White Scar should be quite able to fight in a Deathwatch squad. Remember, even the White Scars send Tactical Squads out in Rhinos! They're all good at bikes, sure, but it's not the Be All End All of he White Scars.

Dulahan said:

This. No Chapter is going to limit themselves so greatly. If they did they would cease to exist in very short order. As it is, all Chapters are expected and expect their Marines to be able to take on most if not any direct combat role that you would find in the Chapter. There are exceptions of course, but those are the outliers rather than the rule.

DJSunhammer said:

And those exceptions are still likely to be specialized in a way that is functionally able to accomplish numerous roles.

Some may be able to, but you can't reasonably use a rhino or even a scout bike in the confined corridors of a ship or other similar environments. I don't understand why you are trying to make a generalization extremely specific either. Seems contradictory.

Part of the issue is that GW wrote WSes as "Mongols on bikes" without thinking through all the other roles, and not even the new crunch in FF really helps expand their fluff in useful ways.

Kshatriya said:

Yet even the two fluff books there is DOES.

In both cases yes, there is some Bike using. But BOTH books they show up in they mainly fight as basic tactical squads.

Poor White Scars huh. Always put in the corner. It's true that they haven't expanded on them as much as some other first founding legions, simply by virtue of never being one of the big pushed 4 and only really being in the Horus Heresy towards the end, ergo we don't have a Horus Heresy novel about them yet. But still, there is already a lot more to them than Mongols on Bikes if you read about it. They are a codex chapter for one so beyond dropping the devastators they really aren't more constrained than most other chapters, the fact that they specialise in fast attack just means that are even more focused on it than other forces.

If a successor possessed all of the same characters as their progenitor they wouldn't really be adding much to the background, although the Second founding chapters may well be (and this hasn't stopped many of the Ultramarine successors being covered in their own right).

Based on this, and a simplistic view of the White Scars successors could include, Goths in Drop pods, Huns with Jump Packs, Vandels in Rhino's, Franks in Tanks. I could go on, just demonstrating some very obvious options.

You could go other ways though, look at the bowmanship and Asian link, I always thought a Chinese styled heavily ranged force would be a good successor option, when the first Emperor unified China he was know primarily for their ranged weaponry.

As for Matt Ward I find it both amusing and fitting that he is the subject of such hatred. In the thread about 6th ed if any one didn't like the sound of something Matt Ward did it. We're one step away from blaming him for the crops failing and it raining all summer (it's raining all the time this summer).

As for power creep, the whole games been power creep from the start. I'm old enough to remember when there was one Inferno pistol in the whole game world, Dante had it. Now two whole armies can give it to any of their Sergents, Elites or Characters, let alone it being readily available in a couple of role play games. I remember When only Horus had a lightning claw with a bolter on the back, these days it's powerfist / lighting claw + gun is a standard type of characters weapon and whole swathes (in the Grey Knights case whole army) has arm mounted bolters to use melee weapons.

Power creep is basically inevitable, especially in Space Marines where their actual resource of different type and combinations of weapons are limited eventually they will have them all. If they ever do specific Iron Hands army list look out for the Tech-Marine Dreadnoughts. A previous thread was talking about techmarines in Terminator armour having Servo arms, eventually one chapter or another will have it, possible the Deathwing in the upcoming Dark Angels codex possible it'll be a forge world lesser know chapters character or possible even part of an Ad Mech list.

I don't consider power creep insidious if it's applied across the board. When it's not you have the inevitable "X is the optimum army, Y is okay, Z is unplayable," and if you play Z, well you just hope that GW invests time into a new codex or you're SOL.

Nothing wrong with losing time to time. Going into a game knowing with 99% certainty that you'll lose and can only win if your opponent is completely idiotic…that gets old and not fun.

Dulahan said:

I didn't say that the new books ONLY called them "mongols on bikes."

I DID say that the expansions beyond the original fluff didn't really go anywhere I considered interesting or surprising. Oh, they're savage and HOT-BLOODED? Heavens, I would not have expected that. That they mostly fight as tactical squads has little bearing to the distinct lack of chapter culture being expressed. They must have it, even if it's unknown, it would just be nice if it were written. I really want to like the White Scars but they feel very flat.