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Are the Men of Iron superior in speed, strength. skill than space marines?

I believe that there is no fluff that really fleshes the Men of Iron out (assuming you're talking about the androids created during the Dark Age of Technology). All we can tell is that at some point they turned on humanity and though they were destroyed in the end, they put up enough of a fight to utterly destroy the empire of man at that time.

I speculate that they were weaker than astartes. I'm not sure exactly if the astartes were around yet however? I don't know how long after the thunder warriors were killed that they were created. I personally think there were no astartes during the dark age when they iron men were around. So basically I come to this conclusion: they are stronger than IG obviously because that was all the empire of man had back then, assumingly of course. But the astartes would likely roflstomp them

There's a Ciaphas Cain novel whose plot revolves around a corrupted STC producing Men of Iron (iirc). It's the only bit I've seen about it, I'll try to find the title of the novel for you later on today. Since Guards took care of it all, I assume they were more dangerous because they could be printed indefinatly by the STC than because they were absolute monsters.

Brother Thomas wrote:I speculate that they were weaker than astartes. I'm not sure exactly if the astartes were around yet however? I don't know how long after the thunder warriors were killed that they were created. I personally think there were no astartes during the dark age when they iron men were around. So basically I come to this conclusion: they are stronger than IG obviously because that was all the empire of man had back then, assumingly of course. But the astartes would likely roflstomp them

It happened before the wars of Unification, so before the Thunder Warriors. It took their creators, the Stone Men, and the forces of mankind to stop them.

Kovnik Obama wrote:There's a Ciaphas Cain novel whose plot revolves around a corrupted STC producing Men of Iron (iirc). It's the only bit I've seen about it, I'll try to find the title of the novel for you later on today. Since Guards took care of it all, I assume they were more dangerous because they could be printed indefinatly by the STC than because they were absolute monsters.

Gaunts Ghost - First and Only i think you mean, I haven't read a Ciaphas Cain book though, so could be wrong.

Kovnik Obama wrote:There's a Ciaphas Cain novel whose plot revolves around a corrupted STC producing Men of Iron (iirc). It's the only bit I've seen about it, I'll try to find the title of the novel for you later on today. Since Guards took care of it all, I assume they were more dangerous because they could be printed indefinatly by the STC than because they were absolute monsters.

Gaunts Ghost - First and Only i think you mean, I haven't read a Ciaphas Cain book though, so could be wrong.

Kovnik Obama wrote:

Kovnik Obama wrote:There's a Ciaphas Cain novel whose plot revolves around a corrupted STC producing Men of Iron (iirc). It's the only bit I've seen about it, I'll try to find the title of the novel for you later on today. Since Guards took care of it all, I assume they were more dangerous because they could be printed indefinatly by the STC than because they were absolute monsters.

Gaunts Ghost - First and Only i think you mean, I haven't read a Ciaphas Cain book though, so could be wrong.

Nah I think you are right actually, it would makes more sense since I don't remember having bought a ciaphas cain novel in a while!

yeah it was the Ghosts book, they had real trouble dealing with a few of them and pushed through, only to find thousands in stasis, so decided it needed to be destroyed.

As to were they stronger than astartes... I dont think so no, maybe comparable, they absolutely had more stamina (being machines) and were probably as tough if not tougher (they fought eldar and orks and what not to a stand still), I like that the new rulebook pretty much tells us that the Humans at there technoligical height, out fought the eldar.... take that space elves

Well, all I could say is that they had boots of lead, and they filled their victims full of dread.
Also, they might have somehow been turned to steel by some sort of magnetic field.
Not sure how that happened, but it did.

Other than that, I have no idea.

You might as well read the prequel trilogy for the DUNE series that deals with the crusade against the Machines. It's one of the many things from DUNE that GW took giant amounts of inspiration from. The trilogy didn't exist before WH40K, but the idea of the "Machine Crusade millenia before the current Imperium" is straight out of Dune.

Or you could not ever touch the travesties that frank herbert's son wrote to defecate all over his fathers legacy. dune began with dune, ended with chapterhouse, everything else is pure horse-gak that isn't worth the paper it's printed on. Dune was a masterpiece that, while idiosyncratic in it's style, was full of depth and character. His son's "continuation" was worse than the doodlings my six year old handed me to put on the fridge. "see that squiggly line there, that's the Butlerian Jihad, I mean, a pony".


EDIT: Nerd rage made grammar edit necessary

androcles138 wrote:Or you could not ever touch the travesties that frank herbert's son wrote to defecate all over his fathers legacy. dune began with dune, ended with chapterhouse, everything else is pure horse-gak that isn't worth the paper it's printed on. Dune was a masterpiece that, while idiosyncratic in it's style, was full of depth and character. His son's "continuation" was worse than the doodlings my six year old handed me to put on the fridge. "see that squiggly line there, that's the Butlerian Jihad, I mean, aa pony".

Uh mate, his son didn't create the Butlerian Jihad; he just elaborated on it (badly, I admit).
The Butlerian Jihad was way back in the first books.

Since we're derailing this thread for a father-son Herbert tirade, I have to concur with androcles138 but would go even futher and say that Daddy Herbert even went a little off the rails after God-Emperor.

See, I mentioned a God-Emperor so I guess we're back on a 40k thread!

fully aware. My main problem is this... if you can't maintain the quality of someone elses series, don't touch it. Let his legacy rest at what it was, and don't endanger it with the fact that you might not be able to do a good enough job continuing it.

The prequel books to dune ended up sounding like super sentai robo-friends of EVIL with a splash of starwars rather than anything like dune.

the continuation books directly contradicted the last few chapters of chapterhouse in such a blatant dickslap that it actually left a mushroom on my forhead. "nope, robots"? weak. Way weak.

Men of Iron would've been so much better backstory for an army of robot warriors than what we got with Necrons.