Creating a custom space marine chapter

This is something I wanted to do way back when I was playing 3rd edition in the mid 90s (before some of you were born, before most of us had mobile phones and the internet was very S L O W). However, my skills at painting and converting back then were quite poor. They were probably not much worse than they are now, but I at least feel like I’ve improved now, after a 20 year break!

So I’m currently in the process of creating a new chapter. This has been made easier with the release of the new 8th edition Space Marine codex, but it still isn’t easy to do it well. The hardest part of creating a custom chapter is making everything fit together… the backstory (fitting with the 40k lore), the chapter tactics and theme (including paint scheme). I don’t claim to have been able to do this well, and no doubt those who are in the know about the 40k universe would have lots of criticisms of my creation and it’s backstory.

I may post the backstory at a later date. But for now I’ll say that I’ve gone with an theme inspired by ancient Greek history. The chapter’s name is the Leukon Knights, which loosely translated means Bright/white Knights. It is a successor chapter of the Imperial Fists and as such takes their chapter tactics.

The chapter is codex compliant and sticks fairly closely to codex heraldry and markings. The main colour scheme is white with distinguishing coloured accents, and some ancient Greek bling here and there. The chapter icon is a Lamda (the first Greek letter in the word leukon) which will be familiar to anyone who has seen spartan shields. This is framed by a wreath.

So here’s the first couple of pics..