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I am about to crack into my BaC boxes to start my Iron Warriors army.

I really like the look of MKIV armor, but don't find their helms to be very IW looking as far as aesthetic.

I'm building this army from a hobby stand point rather than a winning stand point, but want to remain somewhat lore/fluff friendly.

Would it be totally out of line with the IW background to use converted helmets for a 30K army?

I am thinking of having several different styles, but generally I wanted to add a rim around the top of the helm, to give it a profile more like the WWI Brodie helmet:



Something along the lines of this, but maybe have the rim actually riveted on to the helmet the same way MKIII should pads have an extra rim riveted to the top of them.

I figure, the IW are usually fighting from parallel trenches etc, so the style fits, and they are described as all being skilled craftsmen and artificers, so it would follow that they would modify their armor to suit their fighting conditions.

Thoughts?

Legions had some leeway regarding PA modifications, so I cannot see why not. have you looked into Mk II or Mk III armor? To me, MK IV is to wussy for IW ( and I think they were one of the few legions in the fluff who actively shunned it for being to weak for their style of war)

I do love MKIII but don't have the budget for any yet, sadly.

The actual armor suit looks fine to me, it's beefy and there's even some MKV-ish riveted shins and pauldrons, it's just that the helms seem not quite as brutal/spartan as they should for IW.

Thing is just before the Heresy, just post Ullanor, all of the legions were being re-equipped with MKIV in huge numbers, and a legion like the IVth would definitely have made use of it since they had the highest casualty rates among all the legions from regular duty.

Not sure about them shunning it though, would make sense, but in Angel Exterminatus they are referenced as using it in abundance, even their Olympian human auxilliaries wear helms fashioned in the style of MKIV armor as a tribute to the legion.

 More Dakka wrote:
I do love MKIII but don't have the budget for any yet, sadly.

The actual armor suit looks fine to me, it's beefy and there's even some MKV-ish riveted shins and pauldrons, it's just that the helms seem not quite as brutal/spartan as they should for IW.

Thing is just before the Heresy, just post Ullanor, all of the legions were being re-equipped with MKIV in huge numbers, and a legion like the IVth would definitely have made use of it since they had the highest casualty rates among all the legions from regular duty.

Not sure about them shunning it though, would make sense, but in Angel Exterminatus they are referenced as using it in abundance, even their Olympian human auxilliaries wear helms fashioned in the style of MKIV armor as a tribute to the legion.

true I suppose, though you've gotta remember that it was largely traitor legions who got it first (helps you) however, even though they had a ton, a lot of the "seige, boarding, and zones moralis" loving legions still used a metric ton of Mk III. but it's really a non issue. Have you looked into the IW upgrade heads?

Theres not any fluff support for it, but you could always try reinforcing the Mk IV with GS to show a specialty modified suit for the IH. I guess it would be similar to the Phalanx Warders of the Imperial Fists and how they have extra plate over them, also their helmets are up-armored.

You could even take some inspiration from the Mk V style helmets and reinforce the Forehead.

Yeah I like the FW helms a lot, I will probably incorporate something along those lines for the mouth grills. I also like the eye slits, which makes the grill look more like a beaver.

I'm going to try to make something more like their 40K CSM icon, but expand that brow guard a bit more to make it look like a Brodie or similar style:

If you do go the brodie style, make sure to make them just a little bit wider than the neck hole. As you could make it make sense by describing it as a modification designed to keep airburst fragmentation from getting to a weak point.

 Brennonjw wrote:
Legions had some leeway regarding PA modifications, so I cannot see why not. have you looked into Mk II or Mk III armor? To me, MK IV is to wussy for IW ( and I think they were one of the few legions in the fluff who actively shunned it for being to weak for their style of war)

I don't think that's in their fluff. In fact, in Extermination, there is an IW in MkIV armour. I imagine MkIV would fall under 'The legion made extensive use of...patterns selected foremost for reliability and ease of repair for mass deployment and reserve supply on protected campaigns'. As MkIV was one of the newest around that time, I imagine it was easy to maintain and get new parts for.

 ImAGeek wrote:

 Brennonjw wrote:
Legions had some leeway regarding PA modifications, so I cannot see why not. have you looked into Mk II or Mk III armor? To me, MK IV is to wussy for IW ( and I think they were one of the few legions in the fluff who actively shunned it for being to weak for their style of war)

I don't think that's in their fluff. In fact, in Extermination, there is an IW in MkIV armour. I imagine MkIV would fall under 'The legion made extensive use of...patterns selected foremost for reliability and ease of repair for mass deployment and reserve supply on protected campaigns'. As MkIV was one of the newest around that time, I imagine it was easy to maintain and get new parts for.

It was the newest, but IIRC a single suit took a massive amount of time and effort to repair and replace. That's why the Imperium jumped to MK VI instead of sticking with MK IV.

Well they also jumped to the Mk VI because after the Heresy most of the infrastructure that allowed easy repairs of the Mk IV at the time had been lost.

 ImAGeek wrote:
I imagine MkIV would fall under 'The legion made extensive use of...patterns selected foremost for reliability and ease of repair for mass deployment and reserve supply on protected campaigns'. As MkIV was one of the newest around that time, I imagine it was easy to maintain and get new parts for.

Actually the reason it all but disappeared from use is that it was the exact opposite:

"The Space Marine armourers had hardly got used to the new armour and many were as yet unable to maintain it properly let alone duplicate is as originally intended. With the Mark 4 newly in service the need for large numbers of spares had not been anticipated, so that suits quickly became unusable due to quite minor battle damage. It was soon found that the new and rather rare specialised materials used in the construction of the Mark 4 were unavailable locally and this increasingly became a problem as Chapters moved from battle-zone to battle-zone." ~ White Dwarf 129

Forge World appears to have them favouring MkII, although the "Iron Warrior MkII Helmet" set are clearly MkII/IV hybrids.

According to Extermination it was the armour that would become MkVI that Perturabo didn't like.

 Gashrog wrote:

"The Space Marine armourers had hardly got used to the new armour and many were as yet unable to maintain it properly let alone duplicate is as originally intended. With the Mark 4 newly in service the need for large numbers of spares had not been anticipated, so that suits quickly became unusable due to quite minor battle damage. It was soon found that the new and rather rare specialised materials used in the construction of the Mark 4 were unavailable locally and this increasingly became a problem as Chapters moved from battle-zone to battle-zone." ~ White Dwarf 129

Is that an older WD? Cause due to the fact that everyone and their mother seems to have their own special snowflake versions of the Mk IV on top of the standard Mk IV, it would seem that spares were not an issue.

A lot of the older lore about the heresy is outdated now, I don't think there's anything in current fluff about it being hard to maintain, and it seems very very widespread among the legions nowadays.

Either way, I don't think there's anything about the IW having an aversion to MkIV.

A lot of fluff has changed from back then, but in many cases things have changed and then changed back. IE: the traitor legions that turned on *Isstvan* V are the same now as they were in Space Marine 1st edition (1989) rather than as they were in *Istvaan* V in the 3.5 Chaos Codex.

That article was originally published in September 1990, it was however reprinted on the French GW site during 4th edition, and the most recent coverage of the same topic was Imperial Armour 10 which was basically a condensed paraphrasal of that original fluff, of which Mk4's write-up included: "Few chapters are able to produce or maintain Power Armour of this type in the current age."

Few of the legions had specific MkIV variants. Forge World's marketing department has bundles of Betrayal at Calth with resin upgrades but most of those are MkII/III, and Book 6 actually puts a boot to that idea fluffwise by stating the Iron Hands Techmarines are the only ones capable of pulling off the feat of combining MkIII & IV.

Imperial Fists (Phalanx, HQ Squad), Night Lords (in general), Salamanders (in general), Word Bearers (In general), Sons of Horus (their suits are refered to as Mk IV variants), Ultramarines (in general), Emperor's Children(in general), Thousand Sons(in general), the Blood Angels (in general) and the Alpha Legion (in general).

Over half of the Legions have their own Mk IV Power armor, so I wouldnt say that few have them.

 Gashrog wrote:
A lot of fluff has changed from back then, but in many cases things have changed and then changed back. IE: the traitor legions that turned on *Isstvan* V are the same now as they were in Space Marine 1st edition (1989) rather than as they were in *Istvaan* V in the 3.5 Chaos Codex.

That article was originally published in September 1990, it was however reprinted on the French GW site during 4th edition, and the most recent coverage of the same topic was Imperial Armour 10 which was basically a condensed paraphrasal of that original fluff, of which Mk4's write-up included: "Few chapters are able to produce or maintain Power Armour of this type in the current age."

Few of the legions had specific MkIV variants. Forge World's marketing department has bundles of Betrayal at Calth with resin upgrades but most of those are MkII/III, and Book 6 actually puts a boot to that idea fluffwise by stating the Iron Hands Techmarines are the only ones capable of pulling off the feat of combining MkIII & IV.

I feel like this is an important part of the sentence here, the current age being 10,000 years after a horrific civil war that probably destroyed a hell of a lot of infrastructure around the Galaxy. That doesn't mean it was hard to produce or maintain at the time of the great crusade/heresy.

 Gashrog wrote:


Book 6 actually puts a boot to that idea fluffwise by stating the Iron Hands Techmarines are the only ones capable of pulling off the feat of combining MkIII & IV.

Forgot to add that the Salamander Upgrades in themselves would beg to differ with what ever part of boo 6 that says that, as they have a Mk IV chest that clearly has bits of Mk III.