There's not much difference in overall difficulty in the hulks, however there can be quite a bit of variance on a per mission basis.
You normally end up running mulitple hulks simultaneously just so you can go off and level up your squads when you hit a very hard mission in one of the hulks that you can't currently get through.

With that in mind, there's no particular reason to pick one hulk over another.

As for chapters, then SW are slightly harder to use than the others from my experience.
The -5% CTH on ranged and +5% melee CTH doesn't make much practical difference, and their special perk of Frost Weapons is pretty pointless in use. Due to the Frost Weapons, they mostly just lack some of the extra features of the other chapters.

They're ironically also worse at melee than the IF due to the IF's toughness bonus.
They're not bad to use, they just lack flavour and the other chapters have much more interesting stuff.

The easiest way to get started on campaigns is to tackle several hulks simutaneously, switching back and forth to do th easier early missions and leaving the harder ones for when your squads have gained better stats, and you yourself a better understanding of the game.

You can always abort a mission and try again wtih a different approach, or try another one instead, so don't be too stubborn and try to go head-first through every bulkhead you encounter.


I'd consider the Ultramarines as the most accessible chapter, as they're really good at shooting lots of GS, and get a Librarian, but the Blood Angels will work, too - might even be better if you want to familiarize yourself with the game, as they offer more options, and have an even more powerful one-man-army (the Librarian) to bail you out.

Space Wolves can generally be considered the "challenge mode" of the game, while the Imperial Fists and Salamanders both have their peculiarities that are probaby better tackled with some experience under your belt, but shouldn't be as prohibitve an obstacle to getting started as the Space Wolves' simply being worse than other chapters early in the game.

I personally would reckon Ultramarines and Imperial Fists to be the 'easier' chapters to play as. Blood Angels and Salamanders would probably be close behind. While Space Wolves would be the most difficult to play as.

SPace wolves should get a little love.

Have to agree with the above posters: Space Wolves are the hardest, since their chapter bonuses are pretty non-helpful. I would not start with them, certainly. Ultra Marines are easiest as their chapter bonuses are helpful in the areas you will usually emphasize most. I am currently playing the Salamanders and having a lot of fun; the double heavies might make them a good introduction for a new player. At least once you understand the importance of fire for denial.

Definetly seems like the space wolves need some kind of buff to help them in the early game. Just because melee is a far less viable tatic. Ultramarines seem to be the best performers as ranged bias works so much better. but i cant bring myself to play them........ self proud smurfs.

Its hard getting into the ultra marines just because they have been the poster child for so long. They are the sqaures of space marines.

Thanks everyone. I didn't even realize I could jump between hulks like that. I guess I'll save Space Wolves for the last chapter I try.

Originally posted by Maebus:

Its hard getting into the ultra marines just because they have been the poster child for so long. They are the sqaures of space marines.

Anyone playing UM have an opinion on Cyclones?

S!

No wonder missions felt tough, started out as Space Wolves. Sure my nordic ancestry has something to do with it ;)

Originally posted by wicked lester:

Originally posted by Maebus:

Its hard getting into the ultra marines just because they have been the poster child for so long. They are the sqaures of space marines.

Anyone playing UM have an opinion on Cyclones?

Stormbolters are useful and have unlimited reloads. ;)

Krak missiles are fairly pointless , as your high-BS terminators will chew up Broodlords and 2HP-GS in short order anyways, Frag missilles are nice for room-clearing, but having a heavy without an expiration date due to limited ammunition is the greatest benefit of that weapon, or rather, of the stormbolter it's paired with.

I have to go with the earlier post with the "due to my nordic ancestry" -part.. But yes, only actually tried out wolves thus far..

I still found myself fairly easily chewing through missions one-by-one, but indeed I had to find anew the usefulness of the flamer, and I actually only use one melee-oriented terminator (currently lvl 7, running around with his 4/5 melee/toughness attributes and hammer+shield with poison immunity). The two other main squad, space wolf, "melee"-terminators, (...) are very heavily stormbolter-oriented. Infact I think both still have melee attributes at 2..

So there's technically nothing to be afraid of difficulty-wise with the space wolves, I firmly believe it's simply a matter of a different style of play and approach to handling situations. I much look forward to messing around with Blood Angels or Imperial Fists, to try out a few proper ranged terminators to go along with the lone melee.

Anyway basically a built-in indicator for mission difficulty is the roman-number shown for each mission along with the difficulty text, that's pretty blunt. But it does indicate fairly well whether you're in for a fast runthrough, or a number of mission aborts before you get it right. (I suppose that becomes fairly mundane with the fact that you're able to swap between hulks, but anyway).

I find the "Beachhead" mission from the "Sins of Damnation" campain very easy.
All you have to do is kill 40 Genestealers. You don't need to move a lot, risk of losing Terminators is minor and you can make a ton XPs