Organization XIII Infiltration

Verified Timeline

Lore & Background

Space Marines were first introduced in Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader (1987) by Rick Priestley, which was the first edition of the tabletop game. The book Realm of Chaos: The Lost and the Damned (Rick Priestley and Bryan Ansell, 1990) was the first book from Games Workshop to give a backstory for the Space Marines. It introduced the original 20 Space Marine Legions as well as their Primarchs. It also first described the Horus Heresy, the civil war of the 30th millennium in which nine of the Legions converted to the worship of the Chaos Gods and rebelled against the Emperor. Two of the original 20 Legions and their respective Primarchs are not named and are described as "redacted" from the records of the Imperium. Rick Priestley explained that this was to illustrate the Imperium's practice of erasing embarrassing or incriminating events and figures from Imperial records (damnatio memoriae). Priestley also stated: "To me the background to 40K was always intended to be ironic. [...] The fact that the Space Marines were lauded as heroes within Games Workshop always amused me, because they’re brutal, but they’re also completely self-deceiving. The whole idea of the Emperor is that you don’t know whether he’s alive or dead. The whole Imperium might be running on superstition. There’s no guarantee that the Emperor is anything other than a corpse with a residual mental ability to direct spacecraft."

In Their Own Story

The archetypal Space Marines in game lore and miniature variety don protective exosuits known as Power Armour. Bob Naismith created the initial design of these Space Marines for the first edition, with the helmet having a gas mask with an airtube connected to the snout, and this was used for a pre-Rogue Trader limited release model, and later re-released in 1991. However designers at Games Workshop felt that this concept was too banal and derivative, and they made a conscious decision to give the Space Marine, and Warhammer 40,000 in general, a "medieval-in-space" aesthetic, so the exosuit was redesigned to resemble medieval plate armour. The helmet was modified to resemble a medieval hounskull helmet with prominent conical snouts, popularly known as the "beaky" helmet (in-universe it is called Mark VI Corvus Power Armour). Jes Goodwin redesigned the Power Armour for the second edition (1993), where the helmet's beak was replaced by a flat grill, and the chestplate features a winged skull (known in lore as Mark VII Aquila Power Armour); this armour design would be continue to be used for the third through to the seventh editions. With the eighth edition (2017), Games Workshop introduced the Primaris Space Marine models with a new type of Power Armour (known in lore as Mark X Power Armour). The Primaris Marines are taller and have a new helmet design compared to existing Marines in earlier types of Power Armour (retroactively known as the 'Firstborn'). Space Marine Terminators first appeared in 1989 for the spin-off board game Space Hulk and were eventually included in army lists for the battlefield Warhammer 40,000 game. Compared to regular Marines in Power Armour, Terminators don a bulkier kind of armour that provides heavier protection and carry stronger weapons (some of which are incorporated as part of the Terminator suit), making Terminators particularly suited to close quarter battle environments such as boarding enemy spaceships.

Reader's Guide

In Warhammer 40,000, as far as non-hero infantry go, Space Marines are rather powerful and have a high point cost. A Space Marine Intercessor is worth 20 points, whereas a normal human soldier is worth only 4 points. Consequently, an army based on Space Marines will be relatively small compared to, say, a Tyranid army of equal strength. This means that a player can assemble a functional army for relatively little money and effort. In terms of playing style, a Space Marine army neither excels nor fails at any particular tactic, though certain Chapters do have variant rules (e.g. the Salamanders specialise in flamethrowers). Individual units are typically not strongly specialised and can roughly substitute in other roles, meaning most mistakes and setbacks are easy to compensate for. Their tough armour and generally unspecialised weaponry means that they do not have to be manoeuvred as carefully as units of other armies (such as the powerful but frail Aeldari). These qualities make them ideal for beginners, and may help them succeed more often in their early gameplay stages. In Kill Team, much like in Warhammer 40,000, Space Marine teams tend to be small teams of powerful warriors. For instance, a Space Marine team will consist of six warriors, whereas an Imperial Guard team will consist of 10 to 14 warriors. In The Horus Heresy, Space Marines are the most widely featured faction, with the original 18 Space Marine Legions represented in a great variety of standard Legion units (accessible to virtually everyone), supplemented by unique specialty Legion rules and units. In comparison to Warhammer 40,000, Horus Heresy-era units tend to be larger, to represent the epic extent of the conflict. Players are also required to declare their allegiance, whether they are loyal to the Emperor of Mankind (Loyalist), to the Warmaster Horus (Traitor), or occasionally, something else (Blackshields + Shattered Legions). In Space Hulk, Space Marines in Terminator armour move through narrow corridors fending off attacks by alien monsters known as "genestealers". Genestealers are faster and stronger than Space Marines but limited to melee attacks only, whereas the Space Marines possess both ranged and melee weapons. In Legions Imperialis, Space Marines are one of two playable factions. They may be painted as either loyalist or traitor. This is at a 6-millimeter scale. This force may be supplemented with titan legions.

Did You Know?

• Space Marines were first introduced in Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader (1987) by Rick Priestley.
• The book Realm of Chaos: The Lost and the Damned (1990) introduced the original 20 Space Marine Legions and their Primarchs, and first described the Horus Heresy.
• Two of the original 20 Legions and their Primarchs are not named and are described as 'redacted' from Imperial records, illustrating damnatio memoriae.
• The 'beaky' helmet (Mark VI Corvus Power Armour) was designed to resemble a medieval hounskull helmet.
• Space Marine Terminators first appeared in 1989 for the spin-off board game Space Hulk.