Thread title is pretty self-explanatory. I want to see what you fine FFG fella like and dislike!

My personal favorite is probably the Raptors. I like how they act in a pretty realistic fashion. Snipers and terror tactics are great fun. Carcharodons are a close second; they weird combination of savage tactics, completely silent fighting, and incredible formality is very odd. Dark Angels are cool, but only because I like Cypher, the Ravenwing, and robes.

Least favourite is the Space Wolves. They get away with too much, and should be taught a real lesson one of these days. Their aesthetic is silly and they're basically heretics by now.

I'd say kind of have to split it up a bit because the FFG writting (they also seem to separate themselves enough to be considered individually to a degree) and the GW (I consider BL to be an extension of GW in the case of fluff) writting don't always mesh so It'll have to be best and worst from the two perspectives individualy.

GW worst: Ultramarines and Raven guard. Now I have heard that the UM novels are actually infinetly better than GW but I haven't read those so for the moment I'm simply going by what of GW's writting I have read and it's attrocius. The UM are portrayed as the best in everything and without any form of personallity. This is what one would say is the ultimate way of trying to sell the chapter on people because it's incredibly easy and since the younger audiance yet has to develop a critical thinking or a sense of taste it's downright cheap and what's worse is that I've seen fan writting and to a degree FFG writting that manages to actually make the UM interesting but without diminishing anything. In other words they are meant to be a shell which you can use as your own chapter to which I have to say sorry I allready rites of battle I can make my own multilayerd one in under 5 minutes. As for the raven guard it has more to do with the fact that from what I understand the BL's work is canon as long as they don't contradict main sources and as such George Mann manges to get away with his crap. He introduces such things as a the point that says that the raven guard relies on faith in their mission when anyone with half a brain knows that a guerilla army is better off relying on paranoia than blind faith due to the nature of such tactics and a religon that's at best a cross between the space wolves and white scars but without any of the dignity. I could go on but I think I've made my point.

GW best: Carcharadons, yes they were designed by FW but it still counts and the carcharadons are a treat. They are shown to be regal but savage, methodical but brutal and with a dark history that still manages to makes sense in a way that it's dark and grim but makes sense (by 40k standards). Well also LotD partially because they are a good concept to begin with and I like the novel (even if they were essentially a sideshow in it). Second is RG because in FFG writting they don't have the George Mann lunacy.

FFG worst: any and all of the unaessesary UM chapters. I get why you need to have the UM in the books (in fact FFG does a good job with them) I get why you would have two chapters that represents two different sides of the chapter (like the carcharadons and raptors are the different sides of the raven guard) I get why you would have UM chapters who manages to have something that stands out about them (like mortifactors or silver skulls) but why swarm the book with those that fullfill none of these criterias like novamarines and marines errants when you could have added chapters with at least some actuall substance?

I couldn't say I dislike any chapters but I very fond of Blood Angels (love the base melee abilities with a ranged specialization) and Space Wolves (space vikings are awesome).

Space Sharks up, Black Templars down.

Also I'd like some more information on the Vorpal Swords Chapter, which will probably never happen.

I'm hard pressed tp pick a favourite, but I do like the black templars (as umpteenthousand points worth of miniatures will attest to). I actually started that army way back in 2ed when they were just an alternate paint scheme with a chapter symbol even a beginner dared try painting.

Least favourite is, I'm sorry, the space wolves. While almost all chapters and space marines in general have strong undertones of christian monastic and knightly orders the space wolves go all out viking. It just doesent mix very well with the space marine theme (as I understand it) in general. I probably doesn't help that being swedish, I find the stereotypical viking thing more hilarious than cool.

As cliche as it is, the Dark Angels are sill one of my favorite chapters. They were my first, and I started playing before there was any cannon story. I still have a squad of Black Terminators with red & gold trim.

Least favorite, especially in the RPG would have to be the aforementioned Successor "clones" of the Ultramarines, and the Imperial Fists. As a gamer that likes to play characters and not statistics, I hate the +10 WP thing. I see so many IF Librarians for that stupid bonus, it's ridiculous. Great, you get +10 WP, your chapter specific powers are also the most boring ones they've printed, so nobody ever takes any.

Wish they'd provide a little more for the Raven Guard too, of all the first founding chapters I think they got the least love in the book.

Being someone who likes to have each individual character power balanced (which I think DW needs a whole bunch of help in), I have a hard time with this question. Our game group has house rules for each of the chapters that were left behind power-wise. Yes, i know, I am supposed to play this game for the roleplaying factor like all the elite players, but we have found that there are chapters that people will just not play, and cool chapters with great back-story.

Answering this question out of lore only, I am a big fan of Raven Guard, Raptors, and Carcharodons (find a theme there?), also Red Scorpions, . Overall, I like each of the chapters for their own reasons. There isn't one chapter I just do not like, though I have a sour taste in my mouth about how weak Space Wolves were until they Errataed them.

Favorite: Dark Angels. I enjoy the Gregorian monk and robe thing and the angel-winged sword motifs. The Fallen thing is meh, and I don't put a lot of stock in there. But it is pretty unique among the Chapters.

Least: Iron Hands. Something I just don't really like about raging bionic marines…

As a side note, the UM's roman/greek display is kinda cool, but their cannon isn't as cool to me as others, even the Space Wolves. The Space Sharks and freaking awesome though.

Favorite chapter : Ultramarines the only chapter to really try to conduct the Emperor dream.

Least wanted : Dark Angel, they are good looking but all this noise abouit fallen…. It is boring… really boring… Zzzzzzzzz….

But to be true I like the chapters even if some are closer to my heart than some, but I've no real hate or dislike for any.

My favorite are the Ultramarines, because they are open to more interpretation than most other Chapters whose character is dictated by an overarching 'gimick' (Blood Angels are bloodthirsty! Space Wolves are vikings! etc).

For least favorite, there are a bunch of lame Chapters with one or two references scattered throughout a quarter-century of fluff; to keep it simple, I'll just go with the original Lame Chapter from the very first 40K rulebook: the Rainbow Warriors…

Adeptus-B said:

It could be said that the Ultramarines are Romans!

Then again, most of the First Founding blokes suffer from that. Space vikings, space mongols, space tragic vampires, space angry robots, etc. Dark Angels and Salamaders are the only ones that really break from that, and even then the Salamanders have their whole pyromaniac schtick. Astartes suffer from all basically being "big dudes in power armour," so they kinda need those gimmicks.

Blood Angels cultural reference is both Greco/Roman and biblical. Dark Angels are based on the knight culture from the dark ages, and again, a healthy amount of biblical references. There are also references to secret societies in the Dark Angels. The Dark Angels don't break from anything in respect to cultural references and I'm sure there is something the Salamanders are based on, but I can't think of anything off the top of my head.

Most Marine Chapters are based upon a martial archetype. This is, in and of itself not necessarily a bad thing, in my view. I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with the Space Wolves being Vikings in Space, or the Ultramarines being Romans in Space. It annoys some people, but it';s not a problem for me.

To go back to the OP's point, in common with a few others here, I also dislike the Dark Angels. Specifically, I dislike their angst-ridden, overblown 10,000 year guilt trip, and their inconsistent development. They don't hang together well for me as a Chapter. At times in their history they've been Native Americans in Space and at others Space Templars. The martial archetypes applied to them are all over the place, their secrecy and intrigues are pointless and endless. So much of the writing that surrounds them come across as wangst rather than true, powerful drama. To a degree this criticism arises as a result of the multiple authors who have worked on them over the years, but other chapters have come off far better from this same process. When I've raised these points before, others have argued that the inconsistencies are inevitable for a chapter with a 10,000 years history, which is a fair point. But I still don't like them. The Dark Templars do "Space Knights" much better, and the Relictors do "Marines with a hidden agenda" better.

Their miniatures are really nice, though.

As for my favourite chapter, I have a few homebrew chapters bubbling away that I'm fond of, if only because I've been painting their armies for the past 15 years. (I paint veeeery slowly.) Canon chapters I like include the Fire Hawks (because they're such arrogant scumbags), the Lamenters and the Star Phantoms. In fact, the excellent write ups contained for all chapters involved in the Badab War, as set out in the books by Alan Bligh sold me on a lot of the Chapters involved in that conflict, an excellent example of how a good write-up can make a chapter come alive for even a jaded old fan like me.

If I had to pick a Legion/Chapter I've always really liked, it would have to be the Death Guard. Ever since I first saw their write-up in Lost and the Damned, I've loved them. (I spent ages painting up a loyalist successor chapter which bore DG geneseed before I realised what a terrible old cliche that was!) I like their pre-heresy colour scheme, their toughness, their love of brutal attritional warfare. I'm very excited about the new Forgeworld book which will cover them (and three other legions) in detail.

Lightbringer said:

Absolutely true, and the Ultramarines do have a strong Greco-Roman influence, but that doesn't infringe on their individual personalities. To put it in Deathwatch terms, an Ultramarine could logically have any of the standard Demeanors, but there are combinations with other Chapters (a Gregarious Dark Angel, a Studious Space Wolf, a Hot Blooded Iron Hand, etc) which, while not technically 'against the rules', are certainly antithetical to the descriptions of those Chapters. That's similar to the reason why I usually played humans in D&D: I like having my roleplaying options wide open, even if that means sacrificing some superficially 'colorful' cosmetic details.

As you can tell from my sig my favorite chapter is the Black Templars, next would have to be the Emperor's Warbringers.

Least favorite - Ultramarines (but see below), Space Wolves.

@fredrikslicer: I really liked the first UM trilogy. It individualized and gave the characters personalities and made them interesting.

My favourites include the Imperial Fists for just never backing down, the Legion of the Damned for being so loyal and badass that even an extended vacation in the warp cannot corrupt them from the Emperor's duty and finally my all time favourite the Iron Snakes for their use of shield and spear infantry fighting, lots of apothecaries and a strong brotherhood in their squads.

Least favouites include the Blood Angels for not getting over their primarch's death, the Dark Angels for not getting over their near-heresy, and the Grey Knights for constantly having to be more OP than everything else. Ever. (Blame matt ward for that last one).

Favourite? I've got to pick???? Uh…Salamanders are pretty cool. The whole 'we are the hit men of the High Lords' shtick the Minotaurs have going is awesome, what with their large supplies of Termie armour. But generally I prefer the Great Crusade legions who eventually turned traitor - Thousand Sons, Emperor's Children, and obviously the Alpha Legion. Least? Ultras. Fluff and everyone else depicts them as these great noble and completely looked up to heroes, overlooking all their failures and grim-dark potential. Or at least the new fluff written by our friendly neighbourhood fan-boy Ward - the Ultramarines books are good, and if you want to see well done Ultras read the Dornian Heresy Alternate Universe version of them. So I guess my least favourite is probably the Imperial Fists - I just don't ever really remember them, or regard them as that interesting. Dorn always strikes me as the worst sort of idiot, and their strange masochistic tendencies don't really make them sound manly so much as nucking futs.

Reading Fall of Damnos provided a good insight into good Ultramarines fluff. There's a clash in the Chapter between those who are arrogant yet magnetically charismatic (Cato Sicarius), and more tempered minds like Tigurius. You can see what the short bits of fluff write ups are trying to convey, and it's well done in Fall of Damnos.

I'm going to have to split mine out. Of the first founding Chapters, all of the Siege of Terra chapters are my favourites, just from a model standpoint the White, Yellow and Red are standout colours great on small models at a distance (not so good for stealth but that's far from the point). And of them it's the Imperial Fists are my favourite, they have a huge amount of history without being obsessed (sure the UM's fired on them, they got over it. An ancient rivalry with a Chaos legion but still hate all traitors equally. A spiritual turning point without it being a 10000 year Emo fest) a speciality without being a one trick pony. Plus when they split for the second founding each of their successors got an almost equal billing, often surpassing other first founding chapters.

Worst chapter though, and at it's core it's a apparently a common problem with the Dark Angels, is the Angels of Absolution. It's a nice colour scheme, but what gets me is that there's this Dark Angel obsession that we all know about (fine whatevs) and the AoA have got over that which leaves them with…. Well nothing really, I've not seen write up that mentions anything other than they kind of aren't as bothered about the fallen as other Unforgiven.

I forgot to mention in the worst chapter ever : The Blood Raven!!!!!!

This chapter should have been wipe out for their lack of loyalty and their heavy tendencies to worship chaos gods….

The games are fine but my god this chapter is lame. Sry for all fans…

And in the favorite side I can add Iron Handsd ( because I'm a former great cyberpunk/Shadowrun player and GM), Carcharodon because I like the hunting way of life in the vast darkness far from imperial core.

Just a quick note here: FW did not "create" the Carcharadons. The Space Sharks have been around since the (original) Rogue Trader era.

Ultramarine are my favorite. Have been from the beginning and I've remained loyal to them ever since.

Full-length stories about Space Marines do them no justice; once you get to know the character and see the character in action, everything else is a broken record. Short stories do a better job of relating the uniqueness of any particular Marine.

Least favorite is the Rainbow Marines. Sadly, originally, they "spawned" the Ultramarines.

Angry Marines are clearly the best. http://1dchan.org/wiki/Angry_Marines

But if I'm stuck with canon, Black Templars all the way, because they get things DONE, righteously and with no mucking about. Plus they only get angrier when you shoot at them.

Least favorite is the Ultramarines, talk about a vanilla group of super soldiers overflowing with "Mary-Sue-ism" and lacking any sort of interesting character flaws. Plus their armor is a lame color.