MadMuzza wrote:Hey everyone,
Hi, I'll do my best to help!
First of all, one book I would recommend (
times one hundred!!!) if you don't have it:
Collected Visions, the Horus Heresy art book. It is a fount of information and inspiration for anyone starting a Pre-Heresy army - it features the art from the
CCG, the thing that started the whole Pre-heresy niche. I would make it your first stop before you buy anything else!
http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/catalog/productDetail.jsp?catId=cat440354a&prodId=prod842467
I was hoping that someone could help me with some information about the Imperial Fists in the Crusade era. I'm going to be putting together an Imperial Fist army based on the crusade era so I want to get as much information as possible. Well let’s start with the colour scheme, Imperial Fist were yellow but I have seen and been told that the helmets were red with a white line to represent the blood and the bone, is this true? On the subject of bones, were the Imperial Fists back then obsessed with bones as they are now or did that come along once Dorn died?
Yes as Grey Knight says the obsession with bone came after the Heresy, perhaps after Dorn's hand was discovered after his death (
IIRC, it was the only part remaining of his body?)
The really important thing to remember when conceptualising Pre-Heresy marines is that they don't have that 10,000 years of ritual and dogma which have become an inherent component of the
40k marine. As Dan Abnett wrote, the Legions have only existed for a short time, they don't know they will exist for the next hundred years let alone the next ten thousand! Ritual and worship of their equipment is not yet part of their lifestyle (it would have been the equivalent of a modern soldier bowing down to pray to a Sherman) and the marines are somewhat more pragmatic (certainly in the case of the IF, who as well all know, are
thinkers 
)
Regarding the 'pokeball' helmets, there is some confusion about it. On the one hand, the old
IA article had a picture of a PH marine with white/red helmet. On the other hand, the whole concept is meant to be Gulliman-inspired for veteran sergeants, and also all of the IF marines in
Collected Visions have pure yellow helmets. To be honest there was a lot less uniformity during the Crusade, and different colours could have existed. You can make an argument for either way, so I would go with whichever you prefer the look of.
Now I don’t know how true this is but I read that the Chaplain rank was created at the Council of Nikaea. If this is true did Chaplains back then paint their armour black, did they have the skull theme? I’m also not quite sure if the Imperial Fist had Librarians at the time of the Crusade; if my memory is correct I think it was the Deathguard who didn’t have any.
Yes Ironically the Word Bearers were the first Legion to introduce Chaplains, although other Legions did so as well (see the Dark Angel
HH books for instance). So again, not being specifically told otherwise, 'rule of cool' should take priority so go for it if you want to. My only hesitation would be that with IF, as they share the same colour post-heresy, it is significantly harder to present your army as being specifically pre-heresy. With stuff like Death Guard, Space Wolves, World Eaters it is immediately apparent, but IF and many of the other loyalist legions have the same problem. As such, you need to take every opportunity possible to paint or model stuff in a different way, especially if you want people to say, "hang on, those IF look strange. Wow, Pre-Heresy!" . To me, Chaplains immediately scream 'post-heresy'. Smiting the heathen, the favourite pastime of the 41st millennium chaplain, was not necessarily fashionable during the Great Crusade.
