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Hi all & welcome to this new army blog for my 40k sons of Perturabo,

Having not gotten too far yet, with 15 marines completed to date, I suppose this felt like a decent point to kick off the blog (and whilst I say they're finished, I can now think of half a dozen extra things to do!)

Always having liked the iron warriors since 3rd edition (still my fave Chaos codex) I wanted to do something a bit different with this force as I wanted to avoid a case of oh so much silver! & didn't want it all to get a bit samey after a while. After all I've always preferred the Forgworld 'grittier' style of painting over the traditional 'eavy metal style anyway. So after having had a re-read of Ian McNeil's Storm of Iron and another look at Christian Byrne's (from a very old White Dward, can't remember the issue but I urge you to Google his |Chaos armies, they're awesome!) Iron Warriors I had my inspiration.

The starting point was the idea that this warband is now likely several years into whichever latest siege they're conducting. So they're gonna be grimey. Very grimey, and altogether a bit grimdark whilst keeping to the brutal utilitarian theme of the Iron Warriors. Minimise the horns, mutations, etc. (not ideal when traipsing through razor wire I guess) and dial up the cybernetics & heavy armour. I also wanted to try my hand at a few painting effects (OSL, Verdigris & some weathering powders) as a way of differentiating the army and because, honestly, I hoped they'd look cool.

Anyway, without further ado, squad 1 (also, & quickly, apologies for the camera work, really not my forte):



A few various bits went into building these guys, nothing too ambitious yet though - they're mainly made up of Mark III Space Marines (the kit is almost perfect for the Iron Warriors aesthetic I was after) mixed in with this were some FW Iron Warriors & Iron Hands bits, SM Devastators, the old Havocs and some smaller third-party bits (drum mags, servo arms etc.)

Some close ups of the aspiring champion, equipped with combi-plasma and servo arm:





Some shots of squads 2 & 3:





So I'm pretty happy with the results in terms of the painting to date, however, since 'finishing' them a list of 'oh, crap, actually I need to do XYZ''s has appeared and at the moment I'm thinking
- The sources of the OSL need some gloss varnish
- I really should drill out the gun barrels (never done this before, tips anyone?)
- Get with the times and move them to the newfangled 32mm bases, for this I'm pretty much just thinking of tacking the existing bases on top of the new 32m ones (probably cut/file the height of the existing ones down first) then with a bit of putty, sand and paint make up the difference around the edges. Sounds simple enough. . . .

At the moment though the current project is to try and crack on and finish the next squad which will be some havocs toting lascannons, will be posting some updates on these shortly,

Cheers!

Love the look of these guys so far! Definitely gritty and dirty like the Iron Warriors should be...

For the bases a few places actually sell adaptors for it which saves on the hassle

Nice job! They look gritty alright. It's interesting to see 'messy' painting style that still looks good. The champion looks great in particular.

Also, shmvo: I didn't know about adapters, great tip!

Thanks for the thoughts guys and sorry for the late reply, certainly intended on another update sooner than this, nevertheless there are quite a few different projects on the go I'll delve into

Also on the subject of base adapters that is a good shout and would be almost certainly easier, however, I think I might persevere in my own 'modifications' as A) I love making bases as complex and in depth as possible, why stop now? and B) doing a degree of 'stacking' will bring my older sculpt marines in line with all of the newer types of marines out there who all seem to have had a growth spurt in the last couple of years (I'm looking at you Primaris and the new CSM sculpts!) - besides Iron Warriors are already bitter enough, without being the shortest marines around. . .

So on to some pics, first up my Lascannon Havocs who are, I'm hoping only a day or 2 away from being complete:









When I was building these I really wanted to get across the idea that these were true veterans of the long war, beyond that of the CSM squads some of who may be newer initiates to the iron warriors. To do so I builteach havoc's lascannon to be unique and adorned with additional sights, grips and trophies. Also whilst individualising each Havoc's weapon I used the same Iron Warriors upgrade helmet to also enforce the idea that these Havocs belong to the same inner fraternity within the grand company, possibly ancient members of the Stor-Bezashk from the horus heresy, though now entirely corrupted and adorned with trophies taken from fallen foes. I'm also going to try my hand at adding some freehand design to the helmets to continue to add to this idea

These look amazing. The verdigris is subtle yet effective. I also like the dirt on their boots. It looks very immersive, like they've been plowing through trenches for weeks.

I'm looking forward to your future updates.

Well, this gotta be the most bitter gritty bunch on Dakkadakka,

Well done.

Second part of the update then, some more ambitious and far less completed projects I'm working on at the moment,

First up is my Daemon Prince, who fluffwise at least is the ascended Warsmith and leader of my Iron Warriors grand battalion,

He's made from so many components from different kits I'm not even going to attempt to name them all though I would say the core body parts came from 2 OOP miniatures - the 54mm Inquisitor Tyrus and the older metal Daemon Prince. Like my other chaos space marines my guiding light was the older iron warriors fluff and their approach to Chaos in general made getting the Daemon Prince right (in my mind at least) a challenge (keeping true to the mention of Iron Warriors cutting off mutations, not 'worshipping' chaos per se are a bit of an issue when it comes to being a Daemon Prince. . .)

So my choices needed to be both large enough, and fully armoured as I didn't want my Iron Warriors daemon prince strolling around in just a loincloth. . .





As I love the little, especially odd miniatures, GW comes up with I'd always wanted to include Asrael's helmet bearer somewhere in the army, and given the obscenely big base I gleefully constructed for this guy I figured here was the opportunity. So now after being suitably chaos'ified the helmet bearer sports the Daemon Prince's hammer, which whilst in game terms means absolutely nothing, I thought it looked pretty cool.

A few more shots from different angles:







And finally a shot of the Prince next to a CSM for scale:



So far as you can see only I've only painted the base colours and a few silver highlights on the model - the painting has actually come to a bit of a grinding halt on this one whilst I figure out how to paint the fleshmetal areas - I'm aiming for a liquid metal type effect which also stands out from the regular silver armour sufficiently - I've got a few test pieces I'm working on at the moment and once I'm happy with it I'll crack on with painting the rest of it which might take some time. . .

WOW.
That is one hell of a DP.

To complete this rather lengthy update I present my squad of 3 predator tanks, also very much a work in progress,

Much like the Havocs and Daemon Prince, I intended to make these look suitably ancient and Iron Warriors-esque - I especially remember a small piece of fluff in the 3.5ed Chaos Codex describing chaos predators to the effect as 'barely recognisable to their imperial counterparts after 10 millennia in the warp' - this was the look I was after, with of course, a dose of trench fighting practicality,

Speaking of practicality, to build these I mostly scavenged a couple of broken and very dusty predator and razorback models from my youth, I also managed to snag one of very old OOP predators with the dome turret from eBay (love dipping back into OOP mini's and mixing them in with the newer ones, and from a CSM fluff perspective actually makes sense). Added to this I absolutely decimated my bits box for as much stowage as possible, just to add to the realism that these tanks haven't just been sitting around a parade ground,

Anyways, enough talk, some pics:







And some individual shots of each tank:







The last picture is probably my favourite right now as I'm quite happy with how the extra armour on the turret and sides came out,

Also worth mentioning are the racks of missiles attached to each turret which in game terms count as a havoc launcher. When I scratch built these I was trying to go for something a bit more menacing and spikey than the tubular type havoc launchers GW makes. I took some inspiration from the Hailfire Droids and their racks of missiles from Star Wars as I imagined this would be quite similar to how my predators would operate, firing off hails of missiles as they advanced. AKA pretty cool cocktail sticks.

Soooo much to do yet on these, the next part really is to magnetize the lascannons on the sponsons which I wasn't going to do originally but have since changed my mind as in game terms the lascannons does make them pretty expensive for what they do (especially when one gets inevitably popped and you lose killshot)

Also on the to do list is bases (very controversial I know!) but I figured the tanks fit pretty perfectly on flyer bases, which as everything is measured to the hull shouldn't interfere too much with the rules but also lets me tie them in nicely with the rest of the army and gives me the excuse to make some more cool bases

OK, so that's finally it for the updates, I'm going to aim for another update on the weekend - hopefully of some completed havocs!

Nice update! The tanks look great, and you've added lots of interesting details. One of them has even caught some barbed wire 'on the go'. Adding bases will allow for even more trench fighting accessories, which sounds good to me. I look forward to seeing more of them, and more of Mr Daemon Prince as well!