if we are trying to justify the chosen chapters for Eternal Crusade... List should've been as follows: Ultramarines, Black Templars, Raven Guard, White Scars, and Salamanders... With this list, you accommodate the largest chapters by specific type and likelihood of response and you cover all forms of combat from ideal Codex Astartes Tactics, crusader-melee tactics, High-Mobility/Infiltration, Biker Tactics, and Flamer/Burnout tactics.
Black Templars were apparently removed by GW in favor of 1st Founding Chapters, White Scars have low population outside of min/max tabletop players and their excessive use of biker units goes against the infantry-centric focus of the game, flamers aren't exclusive and anyone that reduces the Salamanders to a one track chapter needs to be smacked with the Book of Five Spheres, dev team included. Ultramarines are mandatory.
I would've liked to see the Raven Guard, but in all honesty Imperial Fists are mandatory for this kind of game. They're siege warfare experts, and Eternal Crusade is going to feature a lot of siege warfare.
The reality is that with the customization they will be giving up later on we will probably be able to do out of pain schemes and such. If not be able to use prebuilt paint schemes for other sub chapters. There has been more than one occasion in the lore where several chapters have gotten together to fight large scale wars for the fate of whole systems. For example any campaign involving Warboss Ghazkull Thraka.
Well, like I said, it was just to justify the various styles of play... But, I can somewhat see why the present chapters were chosen. Hoping at least for the Opportunity to see skin packs to come in to allow players to look like a whole different chapter. Salamanders are not being belittled by my comment, but their homeworld, aptitudes with flamer and melta-tech, and their affinity for preservation of the peoples of the Imperium is all they really have going for them. Still, these 5 chapters I recommended will cover every aspect of infantry-based combat... If not White Scars, then I would say a toss up for Dark Angels, Iron Hands, Blood Angels, Space Wolves, or Imp. Fists (in order of most likely to respond to least likely and relevance). RavenWing/DeathWing, Bionics, Melee/Bloodlust, Melee/Specialist, and Bolter Drills/Siegecraft.
1. Those chosen chapters have biggest fan groups. 2. Those chosen chapters have biggest amount of novels released (Salamanders have that too). So its easy to see why those were chosen And about skins and recolouring - probably not in the near future after release. Maybe in 2017
There's an old quote from the devs that mentioned the possibility of releasing limited amounts of later founding chapter models/skins and perhaps a unique class to make a small clan later on.
And it took all of those space marine chapters to push Ghazghkull and his WAAAGH! off Armageddon Both times The situation on Arkhona now has Chaos and even the Eldar involved, making a similar enough situation to warrant the deployment of multiple chapters in my opinion And with Warboss Skarrblitz being a former nob of Ghazghkull, you best believe you need all of those chapters
As far as I know Arkhona is in Wolf territory, and thus it's only logical for the Wolves to be here...<.<
I think it's pretty hard to argue against any of the chapters GW did choose (we chose Imperial Fists by vote, so no passing the buck on that one). Without going down the list point by point, none of their choices were unreasonable. It's not like we got Relictors Minotaurs Exorcists Angels Sanguine Mentors That would be a questionable direction to take any 40k game.
