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Okay Dakkanauts, I have an opinion question that you might be able to help me sort out. I have some Chaos Terminators, the Chosen from DV, a whole gob-full of Cultists, and enough bits to make a bike squad and at least a squad and a half of CSM.

I am having a bit of a crisis deciding on the paint job though.

I have these three thoughts:

1. Iron Warriors
2. Alpha Legion
3. Thousand Sons

What are the advantages/disadvantages of these three legions?
Are there any or is it just a color scheme now?
Why would you pick one over the other?

Thanks for noticing.

There are no rules to differentiate iron warriors and alpha legion; it's pretty much a case of selecting units/upgrades that you think fits the legions theme then applying tactics that match the legion.

The iron warriors might use in your face, hard hitting units with plenty of chain fists and melta to bust open enemy strong points at close range with brute force, where as alpha legion might use faster units to pick off isolated enemies before withdrawing before the enemy can strike back.

Thousand Sons are a little different; their legion members were all transformed into either automatons or powerful psykers long ago and these options are reflected in the codex.

It's worth remembering that the legions are pretty splintered in the 40k era, broken down in to warbands lead by champions and it is not uncommon for champions of different legions to form up warbands together. This is especially true for the cult legions; world eaters, emperor's children and thousand sons who often work in a mercenary (or just tag along) role.

Leading on from this, perhaps you don't need to make as much of a decision as you think? The obvious thing is to paint the Thousand Son units as Thousand Sons, but have the bulk of your warband (i.e. the non-1k sons units) from either iron warriors or alpha legion depending on your preference.

In my opinion Alpha legion and Thousand sons could work well together as they are both blue but their details/trimming are painted in different colour which will maintain a fairly uniform appearance while making it easy to differentiate the units at a glance. That said I'm sure you can make thousand sons/iron warriors, or even all three legion schemes mixed together in the army, work too.

Iron Warriors ! Hazard stripes for the Hazard Stripe god!!

Seriously these guys are badass with their safety warnings everywhere, love em to death

At the end of the day its a fluff choice and not too relevant to gameplay. You will find Thousand Sons units are pretty lackluster in game and generally considered a bad unit (because they are) but hey you just don't take them and there is no difference to playing any of the 3 except your paint scheme.

I immediately respect someone with Iron Warriors though =) I feel like there is a little brotherhood among us, Iron Warriors players always dig other bro's

I think I will go with Iron Warriors then. I have an old Warsmith figure and that will allow me to use him and will give a reason for the "industrial" look of the cultists. Why are they wearing leather aprons? Probably because they just laid down their tools and picked up a heavy stubber.