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I've been wanting to work on a pre-Heresy army for a while now, the models ForgeWorld have been putting out are beautiful. I also need a change of pace from the chaos warband I've been working on; there is only so much pink and purple you can paint without starting to burn out. I decided to go with Iron Warriors because I like how different they are to the other legions and particularly their role as siege experts. I'm starting the collection with a squad of five Mk3 Iron Armoured guys with heavy weapons and some mechanical parts and an apothecary in Mk4 armour.

I haven't started painting any of the resign-y goodness just yet, I've been working on a spare 40K tactical marine to nail down my paint scheme. I've really been inspired by retrovertigo here on dakka (who hasn't seemed to be around much lately, sadly) and this warseer thread (so much pretty, and also using some of the same upgrades as I am).

Here's my test tactical marine:











I'm pretty happy with the paint scheme. The hazard stripes are a bit dodgy, but I know what I did wrong with them so I know what I need to do differently. I'm using liquid mask for the chipping on the stripes, I think I went a bit overboard in some places but I like the way it looks in the places I managed to restrain myself. As for basing, I'm thinking about doing a ruined fortress, possibly a sandstone one to contrast with the dark grey armour. All that's still in the planning stage though.

That's all I've got at this stage, any and all feedback is appreciated.

Looks ok so far but maybe a little bit to metallic. It could need some different colors like the belt or some more picked out trimings. Or try to darken the shadow areas more and highlight him on the ligher areas to get a larger color range in your metals.
And the hazard stiped could be a little bit thinner. If you use thinner black and yellow bars the stripes effect yould be better. You don't need to go totally flimsy but maybe try to get two additional stripes on the area.

And there are mold lines all over the model. This is just a test model but it distracts me.

I'd suggest using a fineliner pen to do the scroll text too, keeps it skinny.

It looks great so far buddy. I like the hazard striping the most myself, always been a huge fan.

Do you plan to add some rivets to the helmet to make it a MkV heresy helmet?

 btldoomhammer wrote:
Looks ok so far but maybe a little bit to metallic. It could need some different colors like the belt or some more picked out trimings. Or try to darken the shadow areas more and highlight him on the ligher areas to get a larger color range in your metals.
And the hazard stiped could be a little bit thinner. If you use thinner black and yellow bars the stripes effect yould be better. You don't need to go totally flimsy but maybe try to get two additional stripes on the area.

And there are mold lines all over the model. This is just a test model but it distracts me.

Thanks for the feedback. You're right about the armour being a bit flat. I didn't want to add too much to it because Iron Warriors don't really go in for decoration, but I think I'll need to break it up. The Iron armour has a bit more detail on it (loads of rivets and most of the armour pieces have raised edges), so I'll be able to pick all of that out. And I'll probably try doing some bits brighter silver rather than metallic grey.

 JohnnyHell wrote:
I'd suggest using a fineliner pen to do the scroll text too, keeps it skinny.

Thanks for the tip. I probably won't have any purity seals on the rest of the guys, but I'll definitely keep that in mind for any I do in the future.

 IdentifyZero wrote:
It looks great so far buddy. I like the hazard striping the most myself, always been a huge fan.

Do you plan to add some rivets to the helmet to make it a MkV heresy helmet?

Thanks! The stripes were fun to do. At this stage I'm not going to make any changes to the test model, it was just practise. But the rest of the guys are in MkIII Iron armour.

Always enjoy seeing Iron Warriors gain a new member.

Just a couple of tips -

1. Never enough chevron/ hazard stripes ;-)
2. Agrax Earthshade is your friend - if your wanting a dirty/muted look its the way to go. I give my warriors a decent coating of this after the base coat.
3. For a slightly rusty look
- basecoat in a dark brown ( I use bestial brown, or whatever the equivalent is).
- do blotches/ spots of orange ( Jokaero Orange works well)
- drybrush with boltgun metal.
- Wash with Earthshade.
(for shameless self promotion, have a look at my gallery, I've got a couple photos of what it looks like.)

keep up the good work.

Thanks for the Agrax Earthshade tip - I really like the effect it gives on the armour.

I've finished the first heavy weapon model.











I tried to have a bit more contrast between light and shade in the armour, I think I did an alright job with it. I'm not super happy with the plasma cannon, but I need to leave it for now or I'll be fiddling forever. Those hazard stripes on the backpack were fiddly as , I kinda wish I'd done them smaller but I don't know if I'd be able to. I also didn't notice most of the mould slippage on this model until I'd painted all the details

As I'm painting this army to be a display force, I'm going to be basing them as part of a scenery piece. I've got a floorplan in place and I've got the base ready, but I haven't done any more than that. I'll be posting some pictures when I've done a bit more and have something to show.

With the deeper shadows and washed armor it looks much better.
The problem with the plasma cannon is probably because it just looks the same as the rest of the model and doesn't stick out. Maybe you could try some OSL effects on those green energy coils to addd additional details.

I never worked with small masking tape but it might be a good idea for those hazard stripes to get a clean layout and edge. You might wanto to consider trying this.

Thanks

I actually used masking tape to do the stripes on this model. I had a bit of a hard time keeping it sitting flat against the surface, though. It would peel or move slightly, and the stripes would get wonky.

The mold lines on the first model really irk me, but it seems you got it under control for the rocket launcher dude. Just remember to use your hobby knife to clean off those pesky little mold lines.

Very cool. Iron Armour really suits the Legion

Agreed. Iron armour is the best armour for this legion. Maybe a little bit of clean up on your hazard stripes but good over all

Thanks for the feedback, everyone. Hopefully those darn hazard stripes will get easier as I go.

I haven't done much painting of these guys at all, but I have been playing around with the display board I'm building for them. The plan is to have them standing behind a stone wall and firing out. I started with a rough diagram of what I wanted, then transferred it to a piece of foam core and cut it out (I swear I took pictures of this part, but can't find them for the life of me). Then I cut some holes into the foam core for the bases to sit in - partially to keep them in place and partially to disguise them a little more.





I used a hot wire cutter (which was so much fun) to cut some polystyrene into bricks, stacked a few of them together then glued the stack to the base of my plasma cannon guy; making sure to line them up with where the wall will be in the display board. I used the hot wire cutter to cut a semi-circle around the base and glued the offcut to the display board so that the two parts line up.







This was the trickiest base, as it is the only one which will include part of the wall. All the others are either standing behind it, or on it. Here's a bonus shot of plasma cannon guy hiding in his cover:



I then stacked up the rest of the wall according to my original sketch. Don't mind the couple of Warmchine fellows, I just grabbed what I had to my desk to work out spacing and such.



I've still got a lot of gap filling and neatening to go, but I'm happy with it so far. I've just been making this all up as I go along, so any tips or suggestions would be very much appreciated.

As for the minis themselves, the heavy bolter guy you can see in the last picture is nearly done. I'm just striping the vents on his backpack. I've also started on the next mini, but I've still got a bit of sculpting to do before I can get painting.

Good start whart sort of details will go on the ruins? things like posters or markings, battle damage etc?

A promising start. The idea to overlap the base with the wallpiece is a really cool idea.

Do you have a theme in mind? Because when i think of Iron Warriors old machinery, pipes and rusted metal come to mind. But i think that those massive stones might look to crude next to those.
What you could do is mask those stones with smaller ones (maybe some plasticard squares glued to the front) and add some cracked stones to round it all up. Additionally you could add some metal girders sticking out of the wall or bent and broken metal plates bolted onto the wall. Something like a wall - two or more layers of stones thick and reinforced with metal. Then add pipes, gangways and broken machinery.

Plastic straws or ribbed cabeling could be used for pipes. And you could cut up the manufactorum kit from GW for additional details, ruins and machinery.
http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/catalog/productDetail.jsp?catId=cat440312a&prodId=prod1095507
And there is probably some fine metal mesh out there that can be made into gangways or fences.