With the new Chaos codex, I'm moving my army project from the basically completed (until I feel like it) Valhallans over to my much neglected Iron Warriors. I've got tons of them done already, which are shown in a number of my battle reports. I'll be posting pictures of them before too long (even if it's just old ones) but for now, some new stuff! I just finished the Rhino for my Berserkers to ride around in:
I figure they don't care much about vehicle maintenance. Next up: Cultists maybe!
More color blocking! These guys have so many damn fiddly bits, and since I need to make them look diverse they're a lot more work than my Valhallans. Next up: washes, highlights, and skin tones!
I've got a foot horde of 20 Marines, plus 40 more cultists and the remainder of three Dark Vengeance sets. I do, however, have a Land Raider that's almost entirely on sprue that I want to start up. I'm a bit spoiled for choice! I also have a plan to do up a Dark Apostle from one of my power maul Chosen to stick with the cultists though.
I got the new codex yesterday, along with the magic cards and the new Sorcerer. As my first Finecast model, he went together remarkably well and the model was almost flawless!
I also did a ton of work on my cultists; they're nearing completion, so expect pictures soon.
*Grumbles at Dark Apostle in non Word Bearer colors...*
Awesome work, SRM! Love the Apostle conversion, what head did you use? Is it from DV?
Digging the cultists, can't wait. If I do have one criticism, the flesh looks a little, layer-y, I guess? A little blending, or at least more subtle layering would be cool to see, IMHO. Not that it's bad though, great stuff!
I was tempted to paint up some Word Bearers (especially after The First Heretic and Know No Fear) but I'd rather add to my Iron Warriors warband than paint a bunch of red power armor and essentially start a new army!
As for how I converted the Dark Apostle, it's the Chosen champion with a mace from the Dark Vengeance set. I figured he looked too cool to just be a dude with a mace in a squad somewhere, so I cut off the front of his head and shaved down the helmet he holds in his hand, then put it on the cut up face. His hand is a Chaos Marine hand with the fingers cut off and repositioned, and the book is a Dark Angels piece. The backpack's from the old metal Chaos Lords and the mace head is from the Chaos Space Marine squad box.
Also, I know what you mean about the layering. It could stand to be a little more subtle, but I cut a few corners on these guys since they took so much effort to paint!
Finished painting the Dark Apostle! I also made a bit of a change on the model; I didn't like the look of the gribbly thing on his shoulder, so I shaved it off and freehanded an Iron Warriors icon on it:
I don't like him as much as the Dark Apostle, but I finished up the new Sorcerer. Tried NMM on the sword, but I'm not terribly good at blending and don't have an airbrush! The freehand Iron Warriors insignia looks too cartoonish for my tastes too. Came out alright though:
looking good srm. really dig your dark apostle though he should be in word bearers colors keep it up man makes me wanna dig out my billion word bearers and rework on them
Very True I started taking them to an escalation league and so far I'm 1-1-1 not too shabby for a non competitive list that i brought.
For your iron warriors i think you need a vindicator cause that's super fluffy and very kick ass but that's my two cents. at any rate looking forward to more goodness coming out from here.
Lol. Okay fair enough. unless you defend and play planet strike then you have enough heavy support slots. Any progress oh i did some work on the Word Bearers will post pics up today so you can check them out if you want.
Really like the combi-plasma conversion. The Dark Apostle looks really nice, not a great fan of the Chosen champion but i like the way you changed it. Where did you get his head from as i know he holds it normally?
That's exactly where I got it from! I shaved down his hand and cut out the back, then cut the face off the champion. After going through so many single-piece metal Guardsmen with my Valhallans, doing an extensive conversion was really cathartic.
It's pretty simple! I do a black basecoat, Boltgun Metal over everything followed by Nuln Oil wash over everything. I then drybrush Boltgun Metal over the model again, followed by a Runefang Steel highlight. The gold is Shining Gold with an Agrax Earthshade wash and Auric Armor Gold highlights, with a tiny bit of Runefang Steel at the very tip if it's a point. The caution stripes are Averland Sunset with Flash Gitz Yellow highlights.
I know it's kind of a hodgepodge of new and old paints, but I know there's equivalent paints for all of the old ones in there.
Still looking great i'd never thought about incopertaing the chosen into squads as leaders, good idea. You planning on adding any flyers/demons/demon engines? Some would fit the Iron Warriors look
I'm not a huge fan of the Heldrake, but I've got two Hellbrutes lying around, and I do like the look of the Forge and Mauler fiends. Just a shame they're competing for space with my Vindicators!
Thank you! It's been a little while since I've painted more of these guys since I've been so busy playing them! I am planning on adding a Land Raider, Forgefiend, and more Cultists to the army though. I've got heaps of DV Cultists lying around, and Iron Warriors Land Raider doors for that eventuality.
As for subscribing, there's a little button at the bottom left of the page!
Brother SRM wrote: Thank you! It's been a little while since I've painted more of these guys since I've been so busy playing them! I am planning on adding a Land Raider, Forgefiend, and more Cultists to the army though. I've got heaps of DV Cultists lying around, and Iron Warriors Land Raider doors for that eventuality.
As for subscribing, there's a little button at the bottom left of the page!
Looking through the (relatively) new Chaos codex, one unit really caught my eye: Plague Marines. They're tough as hell, and I want to use them in my army. However, Iron Warriors aren't really fans of mutation, Chaos powers, magic, and so on. To remedy this, I was able to procure a ton of Iron Hands bits and put together a cyborg counts-as Plague Marine squad, with a Techmarine as the champion:
Their extensive bionics will explain their higher toughness, tolerance for pain, and lower initiative. They might look a little loyalist now, but in time they'll be as defiled and sinister as anything else in my army!
The whole squad's got some good progress on em, this is generally the level they're at now:
I chose purple since it would contrast nicely with the yellow and gold that will be on the models; I feel like it'll keep looking a little odd until I've got one or both of those colors in.
It took a solid week of painting, but I finished my Techno-Plague Marines! I really hope you guys like caution stripes, because you're about to get a faceload.
That purple is a fantastic contrasting color. Along with the green plasma glow you have really set your iron warriors apart from all the others out there. I'll have to steal that idea for my servo skull army
Miss Dee wrote: Love em and fantastic use of Iron Hands parts. for transport have you thought oh using watch parts ?? as well as on the marines?
Thank you! I haven't thought of using watch parts really, since I'm not a fan of the aesthetic of "gears in random places that don't really do anything" that you see in a lot of steampunk stuff. I think a teched-up Rhino would be pretty cool though, if I ever feel like building/painting yet another Rhino though
Theophony wrote: That purple is a fantastic contrasting color. Along with the green plasma glow you have really set your iron warriors apart from all the others out there. I'll have to steal that idea for my servo skull army
Thank you! While caution stripes are all well and good, I like excuses to put more color in an army, and purple isn't something you see very often.
It's super easy! I paint the bionics pretty much the same as everything else - Leadbelcher, Nuln Oil, Leadbelcher drybrushed on, then a drybrush of Runefang Steel before a Leviathan Purple wash. I thought about doing another Runefang Steel drybrush after the fact, but I wanted the purple to really show up.
Dude, this is seriously one of my favorite examples of IW, you have imo got the perfect balance for them being chaos and still solid and clean-ish as in, not as deformed or tentacly as other bands :-) the colour choices for the spot colours is spot on! (see what i did there) all in all, great looking force!
Thank you! That's the aesthetic I was aiming for. I was actually a little worried that they'd end up looking too much like loyalist Marines, but my fears were for nothing it seems.
I prefer them being bad loyalists, as they never sold out to the man (Horus). Instead they just wanted to take on the emperor and his lackies. Mine were going to have been a splinter group that gave up on the dream and decided to make their way as mercenaries.
Theophony wrote: I prefer them being bad loyalists, as they never sold out to the man (Horus). Instead they just wanted to take on the emperor and his lackies. Mine were going to have been a splinter group that gave up on the dream and decided to make their way as mercenaries.
Well, they're definitely not loyalists, but Iron Warriors are basically serving Chaos because they share the same hated enemy, not because they want the gifts of the gods or what have you.
alabamaheretic wrote: pretty slick man, looks good love your take on plague marines...are you going to be doing cult troops count as for the rest of the army?
Thank you! I have plans for Noise Marines using some Forgeworld Heresy or Iron armor dudes, using Volkite weapons as counts-as sonic weapons, and the Apothecary as the banner bearer for FnP. Just waiting for Forgeworld to make Iron Warriors shoulderpads for Horus Heresy.
I did Khorne Berserkers as well, but they're pretty straightforward, since Iron Warriors do use Khorne Berserkers:
Storm of Iron is why I have Khorne Berserkers in the army! It mentioned that Iron Warriors don't really follow the Chaos gods, but some of them do fall to Khorne in the assault companies.
Well, there are some Khorne Berserkers earlier in this thread! I have some Obliterators primed and assembled I might do for this army soon; I need to do something with OSL this month so it'd be a good opportunity.
Finished up my first Obliterator - these are from some third party sculptor in Russia, but he also sells recasts on his eBay store so I won't be linking it in this thread. Search "Daemon Warrior" and hope you get lucky I suppose! This figure was really fun to paint, and I've got two more lined up for when I feel like I need a break from cartoon blues and golds.
Thanks for the comments guys! I have two more Obliterators to do (one more has a plasma cannon arm like that, the other has your typical random allotment of guns) and after that I'll likely do some cultists, since they've been doubling as a Necromunda gang.
Aside from that, there's this one piece of John Blanche artwork from White Dwarf 266 that really inspires me:
I'm thinking if I could convert up some Marines like those, where they look almost barbaric, but with more caution stripes. I really like that look, and might think to go with it if I add more Marines. I also have plans for some counts-as Noise Marines, but let's wait on Forgeworld to make some sweet Iron Warriors first...
The Iron Warrior shoulder pads are a bit dull, but everything else Forgeworld has put out has been drop dead gorgeous. I think I'll wait and see where things go - worst case, I get some MK2 armor and Volkite weapons and make counts-as Noise Marines with hose.
The Dark Vengeance CSM might be worth a look. I've built a couple by replacing their heads with those from the WHFB Chaos Warrior box and filing down the more organic shoulder pads. Reducing Terminator pads down works quite well, as do the regular CSM ones with the extra trim around the edge.
This is by no means a unique conversion, but I thought I post a couple of (bad, apologies) pictures of mine just to illustrate the idea.
Spoiler:
Thanks for posting that Blanche art, it's awesome. Kind of makes me want to rake through my bits box and get a squad of these guys built.
Your conversions aren't bad at all! They're actually pretty slick to tell you the truth. I've painted a couple DV chosen for the army (namely the lightning claw guy, the bolter dude, and converted the chosen champion to a Dark Apostle) but converting some of them into jus standard Chaos Marines sounds like a good idea. I don't exactly need that many guys with special close combat weapons anyhow. The ones I painted are probably back a page or two. Anyway, the mix of Chaos Warrior, Dark Vengeance, and Chaos Space Marine bits makes for some pretty cool models, so I'll look into that when I add more to the army!
My DV Chaos Space Marines are sitting in a box gathering dust.. I sort of gave up painting CSMs once I realized I could never settle on a colour scheme xD
Brother SRM wrote: Your conversions aren't bad at all! They're actually pretty slick to tell you the truth.
Thanks man. FWIW I wasn't fishing about the conversions I was more talking about the picture quality, the lighting in my house is pretty poor and i don't have a light box.
Had a check over the chaos warrior heads, there are loads of different horned helmet options in there, there's also a few other good ones. Some of the Chaos Knights might be worth a look.
Was thinking about the art itself. I think rather than DV the Khorne Berzerker legs mixed with CSM parts and Warrior Helms might work better. The Berzerker legs really look like the illustration that you posted IMHO.
So I've had a pair of Obliterators sitting on my desk for 7 months now, just waiting to be painted. While waiting for washes to dry on my Cadians today, I did some work on these Obliterators. Before I knew it, I'd finished both of them! Unfortunately it seems I changed golds between them, as they don't quite match the older Obliterator. Well, winds of Chaos and all that.
They're actually by some third party sculptor I can't find. They were sold by a dude on eBay who sells tons of Forgeworld recasts so I won't link him here in the thread, but he had these and I grabbed them because I really liked them. Whoever sculpted them originally used lots of actual GW parts which helped them keep the aesthetic though - the plasma cannons are from the 2nd ed plastic Orks I think, and the guy with the mess of guns are all obvious GW bits too.
And now for some Cultists! These were hastily kitbashed some time ago and I gave them a pretty simple paintjob, sticking to just a basic wash + highlight for most parts of them. After painting all the crisp, clean retro stuff it's liberating to paint something dirty and rusty.
Niice! I kinda strayed away from the tradional mad max type cultists. I painted mine as i did my chosen bright red and gold to show their Khorne pride.
Those sound neat! I personally like the muddy, grubby cultist look, since these guys aren't exactly professional soldiers. They're scum and they should look like it!
Then again, if these cultists were painted like my Iron Warriors, they'd have silver and gold trousers
So I checked my painting progress document, and I've had this guy assembled for almost two years now! Despite the crazy amount of detail on him, he painted up really quickly.
Long time no post! I've been bouncing from project to project lately, wrapping up my retro Cadians and getting some work in on my retro Ultras (who are now bigger than my Iron Warriors!) so I thought I'd even the score a little bit with some Chaos reinforcements:
The doors are from Forgeworld (and I've had them forever) and the tracks are from Blood and Skulls. They were a pain to shave down to fit, but I'm super happy with how they turned out.
Well, the only way to get better is to just get to painting! Spending just an hour a night on this stuff will get you more painted models and better skills in no time. I've painted close to 160 models this year alone, and anybody can do that if they just apply themselves and find a little time.
But you should totally put together some Iron Warriors! They're my favorite Chaos Legion without a doubt.
Brother SRM wrote: Well, the only way to get better is to just get to painting! Spending just an hour a night on this stuff will get you more painted models and better skills in no time. I've painted close to 160 models this year alone, and anybody can do that if they just apply themselves and find a little time.
But you should totally put together some Iron Warriors! They're my favorite Chaos Legion without a doubt.
Chaos would be fun to put together I think, Iron Warriors even more so because they make all the good stuffz (daemon-machine hybrid tanks? Yes please!), although I believe my bitzbox doesn't have enough goodies in it yet to really get the 'chaos' look right
I'm still tinkering on my Death Ravens custom Chapter as well, and I also have some Orks lying around, so I guess it's time to start organizing my time a bit better
I like Iron Warriors because I don't have to paint them super Chaos-y; they're kind of the "get things done" legion and they don't dress up too much. I like the no-nonsense approach and the lack of giant tentacles and extra mouths and such. Those are factors that really drew me to the army.
I like to keep my vehicles mostly free of spikes and the like, since while they can look cool they just all snap off in my experience. I probably should have done some more caution stripes up top though!