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were they powerful...

sorry i know im making alot of threads, its just i have so many questions of this fascinating lore.....

the Men of Iron was what allowed the imperium to conquer alot of galaxy during the age of technology.... what made them stop

were they more powerful then astartes.....what did they look like

They were fully-sentient robots that mankind had created to serve them in all ways. Then, the Cylons... er, I mean, the Men of Iron, rebelled and nearly destroyed humanity.

They were a bunch of billionaire playboy philanthropists who were turned into steel by a magnetic field. They may or may not have had boots of lead.

I think it happened on a Sabbath.


Seriously though, there isn't much info on them. They were the reason why the IoM has a deep seated mistrust in AIs. They totally weren't inspired by the Butlerian Jihad either. No really, they weren't, I swear.

First click on Google search.Then type in:Men of Iron.Scroll down.Click,lexicanum,men of iron.Read.

Da krimson barun wrote:
First click on Google search.Then type in:Men of Iron.Scroll down.Click,lexicanum,men of iron.Read.

As I said, not much info other then "They were robots who went sky net on humanity's ass"

They are a flimsy, unexplained fluff excuse for discontinuing the robot range (and their clumsy but awesome rules).
I expect robots to make a come back soon though since GW would get at least 4 new kits out of it, virtually no one has them and they kicked all kinds of ass. And they were used by every Imperial force.

Evil robots.

Warhammer 40,000 is an amalgamation of every sci-fi trope and story over the last 50 years.

The Men of Iron are the Cylons from Battlestar Galactica, and the "origin story" of Battlestar Galactica all rolled into a pre-Imperial event of Mankind's past. Also a convenient way to explain why Humanity in M40 does not use AI.

I thought the men of iron story was a play off of Frank Herberts Dune books.

 Kojiro wrote:
They are a flimsy, unexplained fluff excuse for discontinuing the robot range (and their clumsy but awesome rules).

Robot rules, you say? I'd like to hear more.

 Kojiro wrote:
I expect robots to make a come back soon though since GW would get at least 4 new kits out of it,

Actually, it seems that FW is handling that.

Well, I know the rules are in white dwarf 104.

Thing is, I'm not sure if I'm allowed to post the copy I've found here, due to the copyright stuff. Sure it's like 20 years old, but still.

Reading through the rules though, I can see why they scrapped it.

 FirePainter wrote:
I thought the men of iron story was a play off of Frank Herberts Dune books.

Yes, I think so, it even happens over 10,000 years in the past from Dune.

 Kojiro wrote:
They are a flimsy, unexplained fluff excuse for discontinuing the robot range (and their clumsy but awesome rules).
I expect robots to make a come back soon though since GW would get at least 4 new kits out of it, virtually no one has them and they kicked all kinds of ass. And they were used by every Imperial force.

That's a bit off. To be more accurate, change "discontinuing the robot range and their clumsy but awesome rules" to "having such clumsy but awesome rules for the old discontinued robot range."

The Imperium's hate of AI was the fluff reason why robots had such "clumsy but awesome" rules in the first place. It was because those robots you could field on the table top had no AI, so they had to follow a "clumsy" system of preprogrammed commands, instead.

The actual fluff reason why you don't see many robots in the 40th millennium now is because most of the Legio Cybernetica sided with Horus, although it's explicitly stated some loyalist ones still exist and still work for the IoM today.

Forge World actually produces playable robots for the Horus Heresy. They're the same robots as the originals for the most part (with a little redesign here and there for whatever reason) although their rules are a lot more streamlined (but you can still see traces of the clumsiness and unreliability due to their lack of a true AI. ...with a certain warlord trait it's possible to actually get one's AI to awaken and it to basically gain sentience, upon which hilarity ensues)

 Troike wrote:
Robot rules, you say? I'd like to hear more.

There were really two parts to the rules- the construction and the programming.

The construction was identical almost to the dreadnought construction rules- you could buy all the stats and create your own bot with WS 8 and M 9 and 10 attacks if you wanted to. Though stats were exponentially more expensive and no matter what, a lascannon (2d6 wounds!) could drop one so such point sinks were very, very ill advised. But that was really just tweaking on the 'standards' like the Castellan remake below.

The programming was the fun bit. You had a large grid and a stack of yes/no questions on little squares with direction arrows. Stuff like 'Enemy in Charge Range? And then two arrows leading to either another question or a proscribed action (shoot/charge/flee etc). So you had this grid of defined behaviour and if not thought out properly the robots could act exceedingly clumsily. They could also take damage which would alter/destroy certain commands making them liable to no longer ID friend or foe or changing their programming to stuff like 'Is there a unit (any unit)closer to the objective than me? KILL IT'. It was the price you paid for units that could ignore small arms and were utterly fearless (back when Fear and Terror were a thing). In all honesty it was time consuming and more tedious than you'd really want to do too much but it had it's moments.These rules are in the Compendium if memory serves. Not the best rules by any stretch but the fact they could backfire was awesome.

That said, there's no reason they couldn't be done far, far more elegantly. I think a good portion of why they were scrapped was because of the 'terror from beyond' type threats. Robots are explicitly mentioned as being an Inquisitorial favourite due to their incorruptibility and if you're looking at a literally wall of tyranids automated guns that won't fear, will target precisely (and quickly) conserving ammo are a fantastic defense (as well as having no biomass). Robots sanitize things- it doesn't matter if they die. It's also worth noting that they were supposed to share components with dreadnoughts before dreadnoughts became relics of lost technology.

 Troike wrote:
Actually, it seems that FW is handling that.

Well, good to see my cynicism wasn't unfounded

were Men of Iron more powerful then astartes

There's no comparing the two, since the Men of Iron predate the creation of the Space Marines by many thousands of years.

They featured in one of the Gaunt's Ghosts novels I know. They found a hundred or so along with a STC that made them, but they were chaos corrupted.

The "Men of Iron" are a holdover form the 80's when GW was developing the 40k universe where they took liberally from Dune. They were machines, both military and other, that fought our wars then rose up against us in what now is a sci-fi cliche'. However we beat them by some unknown means and to date there is a sever mistrust and indeed ban on true A.I.

In truth it is a plot device to explain why robots are just not commonplace in the setting.

As to the "men of iron" themselves one of the Gaunt's ghost novel finds a STC production of them and finds them to be chaos corrupted. It is speculated that A.I., since it is sentient, can be corrupted by chaos like any other and perhaps is the reason they rebelled though we don't know for sure. (EDIT: Ninja'd by Ma55ter_fett)

The Kaban machine from the HH novel Mechanicus is also an example of an A.I. being corrupted by chaos.

Daemons can (and, in reality, do) exist as code, and can infect even soulless machines.

I mean, everyone's heard of a "mailer daemon error" right?

 buddha wrote:
The "Men of Iron" are a holdover form the 80's when GW was developing the 40k universe where they took liberally from Dune. They were machines, both military and other, that fought our wars then rose up against us in what now is a sci-fi cliche'. However we beat them by some unknown means and to date there is a sever mistrust and indeed ban on true A.I.

In truth it is a plot device to explain why robots are just not commonplace in the setting.

As to the "men of iron" themselves one of the Gaunt's ghost novel finds a STC production of them and finds them to be chaos corrupted. It is speculated that A.I., since it is sentient, can be corrupted by chaos like any other and perhaps is the reason they rebelled though we don't know for sure. (EDIT: Ninja'd by Ma55ter_fett)

The Kaban machine from the HH novel Mechanicus is also an example of an A.I. being corrupted by chaos.

Excellent.... now then if you excuse me I have a legion of necrons to deploy as corrupted by chaos robots of old that are totally not necrons.

 Troike wrote:

 Kojiro wrote:
They are a flimsy, unexplained fluff excuse for discontinuing the robot range (and their clumsy but awesome rules).

Robot rules, you say? I'd like to hear more.

They're called 3E necrons

I came across an interesting post about the Men of Iron when I looked into it a while ago. It contains a lot of info and a fair bit of speculation too. However, it does cover the topic very thoroughly, so is worth a read if you are interested.

http://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/warhammer-40k-the-men-of-iron.201870/

Light King-- It's funny it seems like you have the exact same interests in the background as I do

They were fully sentient contructs from the DAoT. Placed in charge of the purging wars that were underway at that time, driving back the Orks and Eldar. Probably also interfaced with the STCs in giant automated factories.

They created a total inversion of the current Imperium-- one where human labor and suffering was basically unnecessary. Poorly understood events know known as a giving way of "men of stone' to 'men of iron' under the service of the 'golden ones' resulted in a war that makes current battles in 40k seem like a heated argument.

Think about a fear of the dark, or a fear of heights. A totally natural, understandable fear. The Men of Iron wrecked mankinds' butthole so hard that people in the 41st millenium have the same instinctive fear of any piece of technology. I think it is one of the cooler plot devices in the background.

The aftermath of the men of iron debacle is also one of the main reasons Mars is as jacked up as it is. Combine that with the damage the HH caused, and not just blast damage but deep systemic chaos infected file and crazed possessed machine damage the dark mechanicus did before they took off.

The spoiler below has language and elements that are NSFW.

 FirePainter wrote:
I thought the men of iron story was a play off of Frank Herberts Dune books.

Exactly right. The war with the Ironmen is basically the Butlerian Jihad.

And there are plenty of robots in Forge World.

 Psienesis wrote:
Warhammer 40,000 is an amalgamation of every sci-fi trope and story over the last 50 years.

The Men of Iron are the Cylons from Battlestar Galactica, and the "origin story" of Battlestar Galactica all rolled into a pre-Imperial event of Mankind's past. Also a convenient way to explain why Humanity in M40 does not use AI.

The Cylons themselves likely also pull from some older works the name of fail me. But ever since humans have conceived of such ideas as machines or golems in general, the ideas of rebellion of such entities would soon follow in the stories. Also, the Men in Iron are likely part of the reason why the Admech are so touchy about hoarding information on the 'totally not AI's' machine spirits.