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Alright, Dakka, what can we do to produce an Iron Warriors army in 6th edition? Having an ever-growing collection of IW, I eagerly anticipated the advent of the CSM codex. However, the more I mull over the codex, the more I realize how screwed the IW are. Perhaps I am missing something?

The obvious focus of 6th ed. and the codex are champions. They have to issue and accept challenges. So, if you kit them out appropriately, e.g. claw/fist, they get expensive, but as they win, they have 1/18 chance to turn into spawn and 1/18 chance to become DP. So, overall 1/9, or more than 11% chance to become something else. For a legion that cuts out mutation and replaces it with bionics, while "trusting their gear and little else", the IW seem they would be very much opposed to such eventualities. Conversely, you can leave them bare and spend the points on other stuff, but they will almost automatically get killed in challenges then. This also does not make much sense, especially for a legion that is mechanically savvy and "trust their gear and little else".

Furthermore, there is no effective way to get artillery, as even the ally mechanics just means a huge dump in point since you have to pay for HQ and a troop choice before you get to the heavy choice.

I toyed with the idea of terminators in a land raider with a warpsmith or kitted out lord, but the land raider is expensive and we get no options like the loyalists.

A biker army with a bike lord with MoN may be workable, then take PM as troops and give them PGs and rhinos. I am also assembling 3 defilers for support and a version of artillery due to the battlecannons. But even this list does not scream "Iron Warriors" to me.

I also considered using codex SM to build a "spiky marines" army, having the flavor of IW, with access to techmarines and servitors, and land raider variants, but this seems somewhat silly, considering we have a brand new codex, which I awaited so long. I wish GW would give me a page of Iron Warrior rules instead of a small box of flavor text and a page of passably painted miniatures in the Iron Warrior garb.

Any ideas?

I feel you pain brother

I also was interested in a more mechanical less mutated chaos force somewhere between iron warriors and word bearers.

For artillery, taking a vet squad and a CCS is not really that expensive and they arent bad either. You can have 3 basilisks or 3 LRBTs, The problem is you cannot have one of each. Vendettas are very good but for me IW seem to get more out of a flame tank.

Warpsmiths are mutilators were nice thoughts but they just dont have the rules to back them up.

The new fiends are nice rulewise but dont have the IW tank feel I wanted either.

The champion of chaos rules are indeed crap. You lose out big tactically for the chance to get some minor unimportant buffs and a larger than acceptable chance to transform into somethign scary.

The way things seem to be going, it seems that SW and IG were meant to be together forever and for me SW best represent IW if you take out all the wolfyness BS.

I know it sounds silly, but why not try a 'Spikey' Space Wolf list?

Loads of named characters, tons of options for unnamed HQ building, Wolf Scouts are awesome infiltrating cultists/slave soldiers/mutants, fenris wolves can be modeled to be any kind of feral creature that will fit on the base. Long fangs give you an excellent havoc count as, and you still get access to most SM upgraded Land Raiders and the such.

Grey Hunters give you a way to keep that powerfist or power sword/axe hidden from challenges, and they also take up to two special weapons. Blood Claws can take a character that is absolutely amazing for challenges for his points, they keep the High S/T of marines and lose a point in WS/BS for volume of close combat attacks.

ontop of this all, Wolfguard can be handed off to squads to lead them, that could be a Terminator for every squad, of another special close combat weapon, or a ranged weapon as well.

Above all though, this give you access to Imperial Guard as Battle Brothers allies, meaning, take a cheap Lord Commissar(Count as Task Master etc) a cheap Penal Legion Squad, and tear into the IG Armory for Heavy Support and Fast Attack. At 2k, that is up to 6 Sentinels, or Valk/Vend, or Hound Tanks, up to 6 Bassies, or Leman Russ Tanks, maybe even some Hydras, all supporting a large core of Power Armored bodies.

I am planning to do something akin to this, and I was planning on using Defilers as count as Leman Russ, turn the claws into a third set of legs, maybe count as dozer blades. course I'll be taking the head off to give it a more, crewed appearance.


Hope this helps, if not, you could always stray away from the new daemon vehicle models and kit out the Defilers with appropriate bits to be stand ins. maybe even modify a valk to have some kind of belly gun for the fly over attacks and a nose mounted flamer or cannon to be a count as Helldrake.




Soooo Ninja'ed by the above post

Well what's your idea of a thematic Iron Warriors army?

Or you can rely on your modeling when you build the list.

Vindicators/Havocs for heavy support. Assault Servitors for spawn. Modified marine flyers or helltalons to replace the dragon. Mechano cultists and normal marines. The options are pretty much endless. Especially when you add allies like IG, Orks, or Daemons.

 Hulksmash wrote:
Or you can rely on your modeling when you build the list.

Vindicators/Havocs for heavy support. Assault Servitors for spawn. Modified marine flyers or helltalons to replace the dragon. Mechano cultists and normal marines. The options are pretty much endless. Especially when you add allies like IG, Orks, or Daemons.

Absolutely. Get creative.

Havocs are VERY Iron Warriors. Vindicators are VERY Iron Warriors.
I think tossing in IG Allies, you have yourself a Basilisk. Booya.

Sample list:

Lord
Power Weapon, Burning Brand, Bike, Mark of Nurgle
(Build this guy on a heavily armored bike to justify T6)

Squad of Bikes

Warpsmith

CSM squad x 10 with a heavy weapon and special weapon and Votlw
CSM squad x 10 with a heavy weapon and special weapon and Votlw
CSM squad x 10 with a heavy weapon and special weapon and Votlw
CSM squad x 10 with a heavy weapon and special weapon and Votlw
Get a Rhino for each of these, add a combi bolter, havoc launcher and/or combiweapon

Havocs
Havocs
Vindicator

command squad
veterans
basilisk


You get tons of stuff to convert. You get tons of scoring. You don't have any non-fluffy stuff. You get lets of armor saturation. You get a lot of anti tank. If you have points, get a Vendetta.

 Hulksmash wrote:
Or you can rely on your modeling when you build the list.

Vindicators/Havocs for heavy support. Assault Servitors for spawn. Modified marine flyers or helltalons to replace the dragon. Mechano cultists and normal marines. The options are pretty much endless. Especially when you add allies like IG, Orks, or Daemons.

am there but I am just getting the impression that using SW instead of CSM is a better host for my modeling.

having a battle brother with the guard helps. not having all the random mutations helps as well. I think I will change off between SW/IG and CSM/IG to craft the force I like, but so far it is looking like SW/IG delivers a much better feel.

To each their own. I don't feel like SW's provide what I'm looking for in an Iron Warrior army. Bear in mind as far as the "random mutations" that Iron Warriors do ascend to daemonhood. Their primarch did and so have others.

An easy way to handle the sergeants turning into spawn would be to model each sergeant with heavy bionics generally including servo-style backpacks and then model a similar model on a large base looking a little more random/actiony (hard to get the point across in print from my head). That way when a dude turns into a spawn he's just lost control of his bionics. It would also explain 99% of the boon table.

 Lucre wrote:
Well what's your idea of a thematic Iron Warriors army?

That's a fair question. One great thing about 40k is that we can all have our fluff interpretations of it, and do not have to accept a particular novel as gospel truth.

For me, Iron Warriors are bitter, paranoid, selfish, cruel, marginally insane mechanical geniuses with a penchant for siege warfare, heavy artillery, and carnage. So, lots of vehicles, dreads, tanks, bionics, high toughness, heavy armor, power weapons, lots of tank outfit options. To balance it out, no mutations, no daemons, no chaos boons, almost no psykers, no daemon allies.

That's why I feel the new codex kicked me in the teeth. Now it is all daemonic, chaos boons, challenges, mutations, daemonic/mechanical hybrids, marks, and icons. Obliterators are now daemons, talons are daemons, the new toys are all daemon engines. They should have called the codex "Marine Daemons" or "Daemonic Marines".

I agree that there still are a few tools available, albeit rather limited. Miniature conversions to use the rules make sense as well. In fact, I was thinking about some mechanical version of spawns, perhaps a mini-defiler of some sorts, or simply use my scarab bases from my necrons, as spawn IW-style. Perhaps a crazy combat drone of some sort would make sense.

One idea is to use the SM codex with Vulkan and Korsaro, to make a biker-heavy list with TL meltas. Alternatively, use Master of the Forge to get 6 Ironclads and Korsaro for biker troops. But, this is still not codex CSM.

I don't see why mutations and Spawning are unfluffy for IW - to me, Chaos mutation is just as likely to be mechanical as it is biological. Would a IW Havoc complain if he's blessed by Tzeentch and suddenly finds his arm has been replaced by an cybernetic autocannon? I can totally see an IW being turned into a mechanical Spawn - a nightmare jumble of mechanical limbs, sensors and weapons.

To be honest, you can even model mechanical spawn/DPs if you are REALLY good.

The spawn are pretty easy, you can use techmaries or warpsmith to make a ball of horrible mechalimibs just sprouting out of the marine.

BPs would be more difficult, but with enough bits(like say, a Defiler's metal skull head, a lot of pipes and wire) on a DP frame, you CAN make a massive robot daemon prince. The wings will be an issue, you'll probably want to instead convert in some sort of jetpack, possibly ebay a couple of stormtalon engines?

The Deamon engines are pretty easy to paint so they are all metallical dinobots, and ofcourse you can use the old dread as a hellbrute. Not sure what you can do about obliterators, I would suggest a heavily modified whirlwind launcher terminator.

All of these can be pretty difficult to make, but would look amazing.

There's a few glaring issues with the 'Iron Warriors don't do mutations/daemons.' First and foremost, Perturabo worked hard to become a Daemon Prince. Secondly, Iron Warriors have the largest number of Obliterators, which are infected with a Warp mutation. Then of course you have to consider the daemon engines, especially the Titans that the Iron Warriors employ. All Chaos Titans are daemonically possessed.

As far as writing a list, you can do a number of things. Where Imperial Fists build things, Iron Warriors knock them down. Maulerfiends and Terminators really represent the shock trooper aspect of the Iron Warriors. I mean, Maulerfiends have a rule called "Seige Crawler" after all. Then you can take Landraiders in with your Elite slots.

If you want to go a slower route, Iron Warriors do make use of slaves, so Iron Hands Straken might be useful as a Chaos Lord leading a pack of Guard. That'd get you access to an artillery battery and Techpriests to work on them. Also, consider taking Bastions rather than Aegis lines.

In the IW omnibus, they use Daemon engines and daemon weapons and even the War Smith becomes a Daemon Prince so it not fair to say IW abhor Chaos. You can just model your IW to look totally mechanical constructions that have enslaved Daemons to power themselves and see the Chaos Boom table as technology upgrades, a CSM lord kills some chump SM Sergent and use his soul to power his weapon to gain +S1.
Personally I think the main area were the IW and the Word Bearers lost out on his the lack of Chaos Undivided benefits but you can rationalizes that your CSM Lord is rather killy so Khrone granted him his mark, etc.

 DarkHound wrote:
There's a few glaring issues with the 'Iron Warriors don't do mutations/daemons.' First and foremost, Perturabo worked hard to become a Daemon Prince. Secondly, Iron Warriors have the largest number of Obliterators, which are infected with a Warp mutation. Then of course you have to consider the daemon engines, especially the Titans that the Iron Warriors employ. All Chaos Titans are daemonically possessed.
.

Oblitorators use to be the constructs of the dark mechanicus, who the iron warriors have a good relationship with.

Thank you, Dakka, for the good suggestions.

I agree that there is a daemon aspect for some IW, particularly in some of the novels, e.g. using daemonics/biomancy to birth new IWs, etc. I just do not want to play it this way, if possible. For me, IW is a legion that give s you the fluff option of being a truly free marine - one that is neither a lapdog to the blood emperor (boo! boo!) nor a slave to the chaos powers. That is why, it makes sense to me to stay mechanical and away from daemons. But yes, there are problems, e.g. obliterators.

This discussion has made me think about a different construct - an army around maxing out elites through terminators in dedicated landraiders. Each unit is easily 400 pts, and the list may not be very competitive under 6th edition, but it does boast armor saturation:

Warpsmith
2 DLs, 1 combi-melta/chainfist, champ with claw/chainfist, landraider with extra armor, dozer blade, dirge caster
2 DLs, 1 combi-melta/chainfist, champ with claw/chainfist, landraider with extra armor, dozer blade, dirge caster
2 DLs, 1 combi-melta/chainfist, champ with claw/chainfist, landraider with extra armor, dozer blade, dirge caster
defiler with TL las, scourge flail arm
defiler with TL las, scourge flail arm
defiler with TL las, scourge flail arm
Bikers or flyers to taste

Model several termi models with springs and cables sticking out, to be ready for the spawnage.

Perhaps use my grey-knight dreadknight for somebody promoted to daemon prince? Would that be too big? Maybe convert one of my dreads instead?

GW's given the Obliterators a bunch of origins. However, they specifically stated Warsmiths purposely infected some of their warriors with the Obliterator virus.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I wouldn't take Extra Armor or Dirgecasters on a Landraider. Speaking of, why the hell isn't a Landraider a Heavy Vehicle? Leman Russes got the rule (and it made them worse), yet the 50% larger Landraider doesn't?

Additionally, I would not pay 240 points for an AV12 vehicle. The Defiler is tough to justify at its base cost, let alone laden with accessories.

 Necrontyr40k wrote:
For me, IW is a legion that give s you the fluff option of being a truly free marine - one that is neither a lapdog to the blood emperor (boo! boo!) nor a slave to the chaos powers. That is why, it makes sense to me to stay mechanical and away from daemons. But yes, there are problems, e.g. obliterators.

to me Night Lords are the marines not bounded by any rule or yoke, super humans revalling in what it is to be powerful and master-less. They dont worship chaos, have a pure geneseed, they just do their own thing and that means giving the emperor the finger.

Warptalons just dont fit them for me.

 DarkHound wrote:

I wouldn't take Extra Armor or Dirgecasters on a Landraider. Speaking of, why the hell isn't a Landraider a Heavy Vehicle? Leman Russes got the rule (and it made them worse), yet the 50% larger Landraider doesn't?
.

Land Raiders are assault vehicles, making them Heavy would totally Nerf then into oblivion since you can only move 6'' and aren't able to move flat out. While the LRBT got worse, the other variants got a whole lot better.


I don't think you should limit yourself to only using certain models that fit your ideal of an IW Army would look like. To me IW are bitter pragmatists, they use anything to get an advantage, over the hated foe.

Using Cultist slaves as meat shields? Hell yeah!, captured Fore fiends (modeled as Artillery) Mauler Fiends (modeled as siege equipment)? Dam right! , Robotic Obilaterors that are stacked with guns?, Hell yeah!, giant Robot Dragons? A War Smith would be dying to use these! There is much more to the Iron Warriors than simple masters of siege warfare,

Personally I wouldn't run a WarpSmith, though the model is ace, a IW warrior band wouldn't follow the Dark Mechanicus, they have too much pride in being Space Marines and a Chaos Lord is far more effective and can be modeled to look awesome.

The dreadknight DP would look sick and is what a IW DP should look like. I may have to steal that idea if you don't mind!

 Exergy wrote:

to me Night Lords are the marines not bounded by any rule or yoke, super humans revalling in what it is to be powerful and master-less. They dont worship chaos, have a pure geneseed, they just do their own thing and that means giving the emperor the finger.

Warptalons just dont fit them for me.

Exactly. I sort of felt the same way about Night Lords in this book as OP did about Iron Warriors. Who knows, I might give the BA book a read and see if I can't justify using them for counts-as.

Of course, in terms of warp talons, you could always just say that they're just raptors with lightning claws using blinding grenades who stole a bunch of refractor fields from the Grey Knights, and the Grey Knights are angry about it

 Nakor The BlueRider wrote:

 DarkHound wrote:

I wouldn't take Extra Armor or Dirgecasters on a Landraider. Speaking of, why the hell isn't a Landraider a Heavy Vehicle? Leman Russes got the rule (and it made them worse), yet the 50% larger Landraider doesn't?

Land Raiders are assault vehicles, making them Heavy would totally Nerf then into oblivion since you can only move 6'' and aren't able to move flat out. While the LRBT got worse, the other variants got a whole lot better.

Ah, this is true. I was thinking exclusively in terms of shooting. A Landraider should be able to roll around shooting all its weapons. Hell, the Loyalists get to, and our Landraiders aren't even an older design. Double Hell, even the older Landraiders (the Forgeworld ones) can.

 DarkHound wrote:
Ah, this is true. I was thinking exclusively in terms of shooting. A Landraider should be able to roll around shooting all its weapons. Hell, the Loyalists get to, and our Landraiders aren't even an older design. Double Hell, even the older Landraiders (the Forgeworld ones) can.

Kelly tries to justify it by saying that the machine spirits of the Chaos Land Raiders are corrupted or replaced by daemons. Still, though, there should be some sort of benefit to being corrupted by Chaos.

You could do a chosen themed on with Abbadon as a counts as big bruiser of your own design or something more historical. Would certainly make your scoring units feel like bitter vets and give you access to heavy firepower scoring.

 Nakor The BlueRider wrote:


The dreadknight DP would look sick and is what a IW DP should look like. I may have to steal that idea if you don't mind!

By all means steal away! I want to see more IW on the tables, not less. The dreadknight is such a huge model that only the most TFG-infected player would complain about the lack of wings.

Regarding the AV12 defiler cost, I think battle experience will show they are being underestimated and will prove to justify their cost.

First, the AV12 is not that much of a limitation when most metas contain space elves with lance weapons. Second, the defiler now is a daemon, which means 5+ invulnerable on anything that goes through the armor. Third, "it will not die" means it absolutely has to be killed in one turn, or it may start regenerating. Fourth, it is possessed, which means it ignores stunned and shaken results on 2+. Fifth, ordnance is less limiting now, so we can move, fire the shell, fire the right arm on snap-fire, then charge. Individually, none of these is particularly exciting, but put together they make the defiler significantly better than before.

I would concede that the TL las may not make that much sense, but the scourge is definitely worth 25 pts. Its average reduction of 2 on the enemy WS means MEQ will now hit on 4+ and be hit on 3+, instead of the opposite. That is a BIG difference. It is also an extra CC weapon, which means +1 attack. If the claws get blown off, the scourge is still a S8 AP2 weapon, so it is almost as good as an extra claw.

DrDuckman wrote:
To be honest, you can even model mechanical spawn/DPs if you are REALLY good.

The spawn are pretty easy, you can use techmaries or warpsmith to make a ball of horrible mechalimibs just sprouting out of the marine.

BPs would be more difficult, but with enough bits(like say, a Defiler's metal skull head, a lot of pipes and wire) on a DP frame, you CAN make a massive robot daemon prince. The wings will be an issue, you'll probably want to instead convert in some sort of jetpack, possibly ebay a couple of stormtalon engines?

The Deamon engines are pretty easy to paint so they are all metallical dinobots, and ofcourse you can use the old dread as a hellbrute. Not sure what you can do about obliterators, I would suggest a heavily modified whirlwind launcher terminator.

All of these can be pretty difficult to make, but would look amazing.

I used the left over parts from my first DP and a Grey Knights Dreadknight to create my IW Prince. Where the Grey Knight would be I instead put the front half of the DP body and am currently using GS to make it look like he is growing out of the armour. I then added LOTS of spiky bits, the exhaust stacks from the DP kit, the Axe from the DP kit, put a gun on each arm, and a number of other things to get the look right. It looks great IMHO and definitely looks IW.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I also think you could turn Tau Battlesuits or IG Sentinels in to Obliterators with a little converting.

codemonkey wrote:

 Exergy wrote:

to me Night Lords are the marines not bounded by any rule or yoke, super humans revalling in what it is to be powerful and master-less. They dont worship chaos, have a pure geneseed, they just do their own thing and that means giving the emperor the finger.

Warptalons just dont fit them for me.

Exactly. I sort of felt the same way about Night Lords in this book as OP did about Iron Warriors. Who knows, I might give the BA book a read and see if I can't justify using them for counts-as.

Of course, in terms of warp talons, you could always just say that they're just raptors with lightning claws using blinding grenades who stole a bunch of refractor fields from the Grey Knights, and the Grey Knights are angry about it

when I first read the OP I started thinking "maybe you should check out the night lords", but then I had seconds thoughts. they have a fair amount of corruption and such in their fluff. daemonic possession, mutation (raptors, especially), a bit of khorne worship, use of sorcerers vs. librarians, etc. as a legion, they may not swear loyalty to any particular chaos power, but they're definitely not pure and clean

 varl wrote:

codemonkey wrote:

 Exergy wrote:

to me Night Lords are the marines not bounded by any rule or yoke, super humans revalling in what it is to be powerful and master-less. They dont worship chaos, have a pure geneseed, they just do their own thing and that means giving the emperor the finger.

Warptalons just dont fit them for me.

Exactly. I sort of felt the same way about Night Lords in this book as OP did about Iron Warriors. Who knows, I might give the BA book a read and see if I can't justify using them for counts-as.

Of course, in terms of warp talons, you could always just say that they're just raptors with lightning claws using blinding grenades who stole a bunch of refractor fields from the Grey Knights, and the Grey Knights are angry about it

when I first read the OP I started thinking "maybe you should check out the night lords", but then I had seconds thoughts. they have a fair amount of corruption and such in their fluff. daemonic possession, mutation (raptors, especially), a bit of khorne worship, use of sorcerers vs. librarians, etc. as a legion, they may not swear loyalty to any particular chaos power, but they're definitely not pure and clean

but raptors are not exclusively night lords. Night lords use terror in warfare, they dont all run around with jump packs.
being a sorcerer vs a librarian has more to do with not doing what the emperor says than being into chaos worship. Sorcerers minds are just open to all the possibilities instead of closing part of their minds to prevent the possibility of corruption.

night lords take pleasure in inflicting terror and being rulers, not in battle. They like being feared, the rape and pillage not for the delight in battle but for the fear that causes the next 5 planets to surrender without a fight.

depending on which flavor of the fluff you read, it sounds a bit like the night lords pioneered the raptors in their current state. having said that, though, I was just pointing out that the night lords freely harbor heavily corrupted individuals within their ranks (i.e., raptor cults). as for librarians vs. sorcerers, the emperor was pretty clear about his stance on space marine psykers: no librarians :p my point was more that sorcerers (as employed by the night lords and many other chaos space marine legions) have fewer constraints over how they tap into the warp then loyalist librarians do because they freely tap into the power that chaos presents them. sure, they may achieve similar end results, but a chaos sorcerer would think nothing of employing a blood sacrifice or bargaining with warp powers, whereas a loyalist librarian would never consider those options.

 varl wrote:
... whereas a loyalist librarian would never consider those options.

"There is no such thing as innocence; only degrees of guilt." Blood Raven Librarian

Iron Warriors with no mutations/daemons/daemonic possession? Keep on dreaming, read the IW books by Graham Mcneill. They have possessed marines, turn into daemon princes, have daemon engines, and some of them tend towards worship of specific gods, like Khorne.

Why are people obsessed with having diet coke evil? Just play SW and BA! They are partly evil.

 Meade wrote:

Why are people obsessed with having diet coke evil? Just play SW and BA! They are partly evil.

You missed my point. It is not about good or evil. It is about independence and freedom. No point to cut free from one evil (the blood emperor and his oppressive imperium) and go lick the boot of another (chaos gods).

Yeah, there are books talking about IW and their use of demons, but that's the thing about 40k - it is so big that there is plenty of room of everyone to have their own interpretation. Canonization of somebody's version is kind of silly, especially taking into account that GW contradicts itself all the time, almost certainly on purpose at that.

Also, I would not call invading, pillaging, and subjugating worlds for your own profit "diet coke evil".

Finally, SW and BA are most certainly evil. They are the SS of the Emperor-Fuhrer. If a world overthrows the local governor and declares independence, who is sent to "restore order and imperial justice"? Who was sent after the Thousand Sons for using warp energies "not the way the Emperor intended"? Just because they may be deluded about what they do or who they are does not make them any less evil.