Honour Guard - Notable Space Marine Honour Guards: Blood Angels Honour Guard - A Blood Angels captain is often accompanied to battle by a dedicated squad of elite Astartes bodyguards known as an honour guard. The members of this honour guard are chosen only from a company's most experienced warriors. Indeed many are Veterans seconded from the Chapter's famous 1st Company. Each honour guard is therefore a canny and deadly warrior in his own right, for a Captain is ever to be found in the very heart of the fighting and, where he goes, his honour guard is duty bound to follow. Naturally, an honour guardian's years of service will have sharpened more than his combat skills. Some will have seen more battles than the Captain they accompany, and possess a wealth of tactical insights. It is not unusual therefore for an honour guard to form the core of a Captain's inner sanctum of advisors, lending their accumulated wisdom and experience to his weighty decisions. The specific armament and specialities of a Blood Angels honour guard's members can vary greatly according to the temperament and tactical preference of their officer. A commander who prefers to spearhead his strike force's attacks might well choose seasoned Assault Marines to form his bodyguard, or battle-brothers practiced with close-range special weapons, such as Flamers or Plasma Guns. Older and wiser officers instead select their honour guards to help create a visible anchor-point on the battlefield. Such officers go to war accompanied by their company's Standard Bearer and Champion, forming an easily identifiable and adaptable rallying point around which the battle inevitably focuses. A particularly respected officer can even call upon one of the Chapter's novitiate Sanguinary Priests to serve in his honour guard and bestow the benediction of his Blood Chalice upon the squad and all the other Blood Angels who fight alongside him.Blood Angels Sanguinary Guard - The Sanguinary Guard is comprised of the most elite Astartes of the Blood Angels and all of their Successor Chapters in the Sanguinary Brotherhood. The lineage of the Sanguinary Guard can be traced back to the dark days of the Horus Heresy, when they served as the Primarch Sanguinius' elite bodyguard. Sanguinary Guard are proven in mind, body and spirit to uphold the values of their famed Primarch Sanguinius to an extent that no other can. They are essentially the Blood Angels' elite version of a Chapter honour guard. Unlike the Chapter's other Veterans, the Sanguinary Guards do not select wargear according to their expertise. Instead they fight with the weapons traditional to their honoured position -- wrist-mounted Angelus Pattern Bolters and master-crafted Power Weapons in the form of a polearm known as a Glaive Encarmine. Each guardian's golden armour is a relic of the Chapter, one of a handful of surviving suits from the time of the Great Crusade, whose secrets of manufacture have long since been lost to the Imperium. There are few more revered relics in the whole of the Chapter's Armoury, for they are a tangible reminder of the golden age of not only the Blood Angels Legion, but of the Imperium as a whole. To join the ranks of the Sanguinary Guard is no mere battlefield assignment, nor even an honour. Rather it is to enter a brotherhood of mortals-become-gods, to continue a legend ten thousand standard years old.Space Wolves Wolf Guard - The Wolf Guard are the most elite Veterans of the Space Wolves Space Marine Chapter, comparable to a Codex Astartes-compliant Chapter's Sternguard Veterans. They are the bravest warriors of each of the Chapter's Great Companies, hand-selected by their Great Company's Wolf Lord to serve as his chosen protectors and the vanguard of his forces. Each battle-brother that serves in this elite unit has earned their place by some exceptional feat of arms that marked them out amongst their brethren, for a Wolf Guard is chosen based on his heroic deeds, rather than his age or time served with the Chapter. Therefore, the Wolf Guard maintains a mix of hot-blooded young warriors and stalwart Veterans amongst its ranks. Each Wolf Lord favours his chosen warriors with gifts such as antique weapons, ornate Artificer Armour of ancient origin and patterns, and, most precious of all, rare and venerated suits of Terminator Armour. In battle, the members of the Wolf Guard are assigned to lead other units or form a bodyguard to protect their Wolf Lord.Ultramarines Honour Guard - Each honour guard of the Ultramarines is a veteran of countless campaigns. He has faced nearly every enemy the galaxy has to throw at the defenders of Mankind and he knows no fear. The warrior has been selected, and has agreed, to become a Champion of the Chapter based on his glorious career. In battle, the Ultramarines Honour Guard forms a retinue that accompanies the Chapter Master, providing him with a degree of protection that no other force could match. Each member of the Honour Guard bears weapons that are in themselves amongst the most precious relics of the Chapter, and his armour is the finest Artificer-wrought war plate dating from the Chapter's earliest days during the Great Crusade. Though their martial skills are without equal, this is not the only reason the honour guards take to the field. So experienced is each honour guard that a single word of counsel from them can turn the tide of battle, and even the Chapter Master knows to heed their words. Perhaps the most sacred of an honour guard's duties is to carry and protect the Ultramarines Chapter banner, bearing it aloft so that all may take heart from its colours. At times an individual Ultramarines honour guard will take the Apocryphon Oath and undergo a secondment to the Chamber Militant of the Ordo Xenos, known as the Deathwatch. This is a momentous occasion, for it signifies that the honour guard is present as a champion and representative of his entire Chapter. The oath he takes rests not simply on his own honour, but on that of every Ultramarines battle-brother. Grave bonds of honour and duty link the Ultramarines with the Deathwatch, and have done so since the earliest days of the Conclave of Orphite IV. The Ultramarines and the Deathwatch have fought alongside one another in numerous battles, and in so doing forged unbreakable bonds of kinship. There are times when an Ultramarines honour guard will take the Apocryphon Oath when the Deathwatch finds itself facing a foe which its leaders known to be a figure of special hatred for the Ultramarines, such as the Tyranids, and consider themselves honour bound to inform the Chapter. On discovering that some ancient enemy of the Chapter is abroad, the Ultramarines might despatch a strike force to fight alongside the Deathwatch, but if no such force is available, a single honour guard is despatched to join the Deathwatch and represent his entire Chapter in the battle ahead. His is the duty and the honour of fighting the final confrontation and striking the last, killing blow, for the glory of the Ultramarines and all their kin.