Thoughts on collecting "the" 40k army.

So I'm at a crossroads in my mini wargaming journey, again. The inevitable and all too consuming internal discussion on the next army to be collected. As the rest of the red sticks will tell you, this is a common thing with me. However this time I'm trying to do something different. I don't want to just write out a list, build it, then maybe think about painting it. I'll probably paint a unit here or there but they won't get done until some tourney comes around the corner and then I'll rush to get them done and half ass it.

I'm looking for something more of what I like to think of as a legacy army. What I mean by that is not that I think it will be so great as to people all over the world will sing it's praises but rather an army that will stick with me for years and years to come. All too often when it comes for me to decide what new army to make I think first of what don't the rest of my friends have at the moment, and what isn't the new flavor of the month as far as the greater 40k community is concerned. Well I've been doing that for the greater part of almost 15 years in this hobby and what I've gotten from it is a bitz collection of half attempts to build an army and fond memories of armies I either wish I had finished or hadn't sold off.

So what do I think makes the criteria of a legacy army? Well for me it's more with what the army list as a whole has to offer, more than the models themselves. I like most of the GW 40k range as it is so trying to settle on an army based on which models I like won't get me far. So, the list/codex I feel needs to be multi dimensional. Something that if I wanted could be a heavy shooting, heavy assault, static defense, or a rapid offense and still be somewhat viable. Thankfully for me this cuts out a fair amount of codexes. IG, Tau, Tyranids, Necrons, Orks, Chaos Demons to me, don't fit this idea. While good armies, I feel they have set styles of fighting that I want to avoid. Second on my list of things I want is something with a good amount of plastic miniatures (for cost and conversion sake) and that is well supported by GW, so codexes Witchhunters, Deamonhunters, and Dark Eldar need not apply. So what it's boiling down to is either Space Marines, Eldar, or Chaos Space Marines. Thankfully I have a test model for each of them for a paint scheme I like since I one point during that last two years I was planning on doing a list of them. I think in the near future I'll post some pictures of them and my ideas behind why I might make them my legacy army. Now the hard part to narrow down the choice even more.