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I understand that only the emperors children were allowed to bear the aquilla pre-heresy.

But what about similar markings? Like the winged skull?

Asking because i am starting up a pre-heresy styled army, but trying to not purchase the FW marines, so i would like to know if the other legions would have worn those types of icons.

Thanks, SoT

Read the books!
They're awesome anyway.
As far as I know, each Legion would have pretty much only their own symbols, plus some lightening bolts and eagles on the Primarch for good measure.
I could very well be wrong, though, as I haven't read the books for quite some time.

Veterans from the Unification Wars often wore the thunderbolt, as that was the Emperor's symbol at the time. The Aquila was worn by the Emperor's Children en mass, but other individuals could be granted the right to wear it as a reward for fidelity or courage. Various Legions seem to place different emphasis on symbology, but the winged skull seems fine for most Legions; just remember to be careful of which marks of armor you use as anything later than mark 5 would be technically inaccurate.

I think it has something to do with the emporers childrens strive for total perfection

Bromsy wrote:Veterans from the Unification Wars often wore the thunderbolt, as that was the Emperor's symbol at the time. The Aquila was worn by the Emperor's Children en mass, but other individuals could be granted the right to wear it as a reward for fidelity or courage. Various Legions seem to place different emphasis on symbology, but the winged skull seems fine for most Legions; just remember to be careful of which marks of armor you use as anything later than mark 5 would be technically inaccurate.

Indeed, the Emperor awarded the right to wear the Aquila to heroes of the Imperium. He then afforded this right to the entire Emperor's Children Legion for presumably the same reason.

I agree about mk5 (although even this was a brink-of-heresy armour), although most people seem to accept even mk6. Partly because of attempts (not entirely unsuccessful) to shoehorn bits and pieces from Rogue Trader into the Pre-Heresy setting, and people also being not aware with the now ancient Warhammer 40k compilation armour article just see the armour as being 'old'. I've fielded a pre-heresy army for getting on for a couple of years now, and have yet to hear a comment about the odd bit of mk6 armour. Although technically (and if one is to adhere strictly to the background) you are correct Bromsy and Mk 6 did not come in until the Heresy broke out.

A lot of the markings are the same (tactical squad/devastators/assault etc.) although these seem to take lower priority than the legion marking.

If I recommended one book, it would be the 'Horus Heresy: Collected Visions' omnibus, its packed full of pre-heresy artwork and I think inspired many people into getting into Pre-Heresy modelling/gaming.

Out of interest, what army are you planning on collecting SonofTerra?

Thanks for the reply's guys!

@ pacific: I was actually doing this partly because of reading the HH series (most of the books so far, but not the one you mentioned) and also because my little bro (even though he is 23 and bigger than me) showed interest in getting into playing after reading and loving a few of the books as well. As far as which army, well, i don't want to do one in particular but do a big mix of as many of the legions that interest me as i can.
So far i have modeled a few luna wolves, basing them off of the cover of one of the books, as well as a few emperors children. I also painted up a couple of my unused jump packers as world eaterss to see if i could handle doing white seeing how so many heresy era legions used that color. My goal is to have a force i can use in multiple codexes but mainly using the C:SM, from which the combat squads will be split between 2 legions. So the 5 man "assault" portion would be say luna wolves, while the 5 man shooty portion would be say the Iron Warriors.. I also want to model all of the special characters in the codex as characters from the novels (first to come to mind is using the sicarious body i got purely to use the helm for the luna wolves as Aetun? the captain of the ultramarines 19th company from the first heretic as well, sicarious)

I'm not sure what others think but i think the khorne berserker heads work quite well when the horns are shaved down.

Any input about ideas for the modelling, or whose background fluff would work well for specific characters, or even which legions would fit certain units the best would be much appreciated!

No problem mate. The book I was talking about pre-dates the HH book series by several years, its this one http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/catalog/productDetail.jsp?catId=cat440354a&prodId=prod842467

Basically it stemmed from a collectable card game that Fantasy Flight Games made, and I think is responsible for getting the entire pre-heresy niche of modelling (and ultimately the entire HH book series) kick started. The arguments about it being canon or not have largely disappeared now - if I had to recommend one essential purchase to anyone wanting to start making some pre-heresy models, it would be this book. The artwork is stunning, and I think it has been responsible for inspiring a huge number of pre-heresy projects. In short, its awesome

The khorne berserker heads are perfect with the bunny ears removed, and are actually a type of mk3 armour. Basically if you cherry pick components from the tactical box and chaos marine box its possible to get some good approximation of pre-heresy armour. You can get into an extremely high level of detail if you want to, but my basic advice would be:
- stick clear of mk7 heads
- don't use aquilla chest pieces (unless its for Emperor's Children)

Take a look at my blog (click on the picture in my signature) if you want some ideas for World Eaters, I've also linked to other guys blogs there who are doing different pre-heresy armies, or take a look at www.thegreatcrusade.co.uk, which is a forum dedicated to pre-heresy.

I like your idea of mixing squads though, as well as characters! If you get some models made up make sure you post some links

Those dont happen to be the world eaters in the gallery do they? If so i was actually admiring them the other day when looking for pics of pre-heresy stuff. After i get my coursework for school done (i hate university) which i am obviously procrastinating right now, i will have to have a better look at the blog.

I really want to do a primarch aswell, but its hard to have a good model to represent it using C:SM, the Space wolves codex however has 2 things i could see using: Arjac (thinking mortarion maybe with the Lantern being the shooting attack from his shield) or a tooled out wolf lord on a mount, but not modeling the mount b/c obviously the primarch would have superhuman speed as is.

They might well be, I uploaded pics of some of them to the gallery here.

I've just written an article on my blog about why the new Blood Angels codex is great for World Eaters (I will post it on Dakka sometime when it's been revised), although the SW codex seems to be popular for PH representation as well.

Primarchs are a difficult one. My personal plan for Angron, when I get round to it, is to use the Mephiston rules. Short of homebrew or other special rules, really he is the closest thing stats wise (and reading the background for him, he sure as hell ain't a normal marine!), you can use his psychic powers to represent his almost preternatural primarch abilities (although obviously be a bit choosy about them, not all of them could be explained as such). I was planning on using the Lord Zhufor Forgeworld model to represent him (he is a notch or two bigger than a standard terminator, and I think would be easy to bulk out).

Ok here is how i understand the issuing of the armour mks

Mk 1 Thunder pattern: Unification wars, this was unsealed basic not full plate semi powered armour, phased out by the start of the crusade

Mk2 Crusade pattern: The standard armour of the great crusade issued and manufactured from the start of the crusade until just before the Heresy.

Mk3 Iron pattern: Iron armour was a variant of mk2 with heavier plating to the front and less rear protection designed for boarding actions and simillar actions in cramped locales.

Mk4 Maximus pattern: designed to be the pinacle of armour technology used many rare components first issued some time after Ullanor not widely issued to all legions as full production and issuing was interrupted by the heresy, still in limited production in M41.

Mk5 Heresy pattern: During the Heresy mk 4 became to dificult to maintain and produce what with the big civil war and all so mk 5 was an inferior armour type that was easy to maintain and repair and most importantly was quick and relatively easy to manufacture.

Mk6 Corvus pattern: contrary to popular belief this armour was available during the Heresy and was first issued during the early days of the siege of terra. Probably designed and manufactured by the fabricator general in exile (locum kane?).

Mk 7: largely simillar to mk 6 but with more flexible knee joints, less exposed cabling and the snout shortened to fit in with newer armour varients better, I believe that this was also prototyped and was in very very limited use during the last days of the siege.


some of my information may be incorrect so feel free to chime in anyone this was all done from memory and i couldnt rememeber where i read most of it to check my facts 100%

Wait, I thought the winged skull was the symbol of the Imperial Guard given to it after it stopped being the Imperial Army.

Here's a damn fine series of articles on converting different marks of armors if that's the route you want to take.

http://www.mywargame.com/pre-heresy-model-and-painting-resources/

Wow, that is perfect! thank you