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After the heresy was done and dusted and the legions were split into chapters then into the second founding chapters.

Does anyone know at what point they switched from the mkIII legion armour into the later stuff. Was new armour issued to the legions during the heresy and then afterwards the next armour design?

Is it at all possible that the astartes Would keep their earlier armour until death and only the newer recruits would be put into the newer armour?

The reason I ask is because I like the mkIII armour on forge world and would love a squad to put on display but want them to be in brazen claws colours (which are a second founding chapter) Would it be plausible that a squad of iron hands that were split and moved into the brazen claws chapter to keep their legion armour and spray on new colours? I know it shouldnt really matter if they are going on display but it would be nice to get my nerd on if someone asks.

There was no "switch" the way you describe it. armor create was very much a rolling process and there were way more patterns of armor than the 8 marks that we hear about. There were dozens of different prototypes being used across the legions. New armor was constantly being created and given to new marines. This was going on all through the Great Crusade and the Heresy. Hell, Mk VI armor was already being handed out to the Raven Guards by 007.M31.

I would not be surprised if the vast, vast majority of marines died in the armor they were originally issued, or at least parts of the armor they were originally issued. And even then, that armor would most likely be repaired and passed on to another marine as well. It would be hundreds, if not thousands of years for Mk VII armor to become as common as it is in M41.

If you're looking to make a squad of brazen claws, circa 2nd founding, I see no reason at all that they couldn't be in Mk III.

jareddm wrote:
There was no "switch" the way you describe it. armor create was very much a rolling process and there were way more patterns of armor than the 8 marks that we hear about. There were dozens of different prototypes being used across the legions. New armor was constantly being created and given to new marines. This was going on all through the Great Crusade and the Heresy. Hell, Mk VI armor was already being handed out to the Raven Guards by 007.M31.

I would not be surprised if the vast, vast majority of marines died in the armor they were originally issued, or at least parts of the armor they were originally issued. And even then, that armor would most likely be repaired and passed on to another marine as well. It would be hundreds, if not thousands of years for Mk VII armor to become as common as it is in M41.

If you're looking to make a squad of brazen claws, circa 2nd founding, I see no reason at all that they couldn't be in Mk III.

Thanks,

I never thought about the 10000 years separating the heresy, and us now. With the older armour being passed down for as long as possible until unrepairable. Especially considering the imperiums habbit for preserving relics, with older objects holding more worth than newer stuff.

The Mk. 7 wase gradually phased in after the heresy as noted above. Gradually the older Marks became rare and rarer as they became irreperably damaged, entire chapters were destroyed or they were just plain lost. The older stuff never quite went out of use because the Imperium has a (mostly justified) fetish for old technology, power armor isn't exactly cheap and they are by and large every bit as good as newer marks. So it is also rare for a chapter to have almost or entirely no pre Mk. 7 armor.

Actually if you go by the original WD129/RT Compilation armour fluff article (which you really should, since it's the most comprehensive treatment of the subject and the more modern sources - Imperial Armour 10 and Deathwatch - are pretty much truncated paraphrasals of it) there was a lot of replacement going on during there Heresy: Mk4 'Maximus' armour was so named because it was the then pinnacle of armour technology - at the time the Heresy erupted the Legions were about half complete in replacing their older armour, however when the Heresy erupted the Legions had trouble maintaining and repairing Mk4: "suits quickly became unusable due to quite minor battle damage", the article ended by saying by the time the Legions were broken the armour used was mostly marks 6 and 7.

Mark 3 however is a special case, it was never intended as a replacement to Mark 2 as it was a specialist suit designed for specific operations ~ that specialization trumps the more advanced 'general use' suits and as such it is still used by many modern chapters. So you can get away with doing a full squad in any timeframe. (the example Fire Hawks - a 21st founding chapter - squad in Imperial Armour 9 for example has three marines out of five having full suits - minus backpack - of Mk3)

 Gashrog wrote:
Actually if you go by the original WD129/RT Compilation armour fluff article (which you really should, since it's the most comprehensive treatment of the subject and the more modern sources - Imperial Armour 10 and Deathwatch - are pretty much truncated paraphrasals of it) there was a lot of replacement going on during there Heresy: Mk4 'Maximus' armour was so named because it was the then pinnacle of armour technology - at the time the Heresy erupted the Legions were about half complete in replacing their older armour, however when the Heresy erupted the Legions had trouble maintaining and repairing Mk4: "suits quickly became unusable due to quite minor battle damage", the article ended by saying by the time the Legions were broken the armour used was mostly marks 6 and 7.

Mark 3 however is a special case, it was never intended as a replacement to Mark 2 as it was a specialist suit designed for specific operations ~ that specialization trumps the more advanced 'general use' suits and as such it is still used by many modern chapters. So you can get away with doing a full squad in any timeframe. (the example Fire Hawks - a 21st founding chapter - squad in Imperial Armour 9 for example has three marines out of five having almost full suits - minus backpack - of Mk3)

Also, the Ultramarines Second Company is absolutely LITTERED with artificer and older marks of armor, IIRC there's like four or five guys with MK III helmets, two or three with MK IV, and a bunch of GC and HH era bolters, MK III breastplate, MK II greaves, etc.

So I could quite happily field a squad of "veterans" and have them all wearing different pieces of armour (i like uniformity though but the idea could be interesting on a nice modelled squad of vets)

 Gashrog wrote:
Actually if you go by the original WD129/RT Compilation armour fluff article (which you really should, since it's the most comprehensive treatment of the subject and the more modern sources - Imperial Armour 10 and Deathwatch - are pretty much truncated paraphrasals of it) there was a lot of replacement going on during there Heresy: Mk4 'Maximus' armour was so named because it was the then pinnacle of armour technology - at the time the Heresy erupted the Legions were about half complete in replacing their older armour, however when the Heresy erupted the Legions had trouble maintaining and repairing Mk4: "suits quickly became unusable due to quite minor battle damage", the article ended by saying by the time the Legions were broken the armour used was mostly marks 6 and 7.

Mark 3 however is a special case, it was never intended as a replacement to Mark 2 as it was a specialist suit designed for specific operations ~ that specialization trumps the more advanced 'general use' suits and as such it is still used by many modern chapters. So you can get away with doing a full squad in any timeframe. (the example Fire Hawks - a 21st founding chapter - squad in Imperial Armour 9 for example has three marines out of five having full suits - minus backpack - of Mk3)

Agreed on the article. I still refer back to that. There is one piece of that fluff that seems to have been discarded though - mark 2 and 3 suits should have fixed forward facing helmets, as the neural interface hardware wasn't advanced enough to enable the wearer to be able to turn the helmet. I've never seen anyone model this...

 farmersboy wrote:

Agreed on the article. I still refer back to that. There is one piece of that fluff that seems to have been discarded though - mark 2 and 3 suits should have fixed forward facing helmets, as the neural interface hardware wasn't advanced enough to enable the wearer to be able to turn the helmet. I've never seen anyone model this...

It seems in more recent fluff that the Mk II and III originally had that issue, butwhen later suits were designed, the older ones were modified with some of the newer tech so they could turn their heads. Also why we see a wider variety of helmet designs, especially for the Mk III.

... that makes absolutely no sense, though.

For a start, the neural interface gear for Astartes armour is in the chest.

The immobile head thing appears to have been ignored from the get-go, the art in the article itself showed them with normal looking helmets and the original Mk2 miniature had his head turned to look over his shoulder. The plastic armed Mk2 & Mk3 that came out in 1993 did clearly have immobile helmets but they were clearly different in design from the art in the original article.

Mk6 fluff has changed more, but it still slots into the framework of the article: it was now a variant of Mk4 undergoing field tests prior to the Heresy tentatively dubbed Mk5, but wasn't approved for full production until after true Mk5 so became Mk6. Which I think makes more sense than as a beta-test of Mk7. This even explains the typo in the original article where Mk5 was called Corvus o.O

I just had a look at the Wiki page for power armour, and what a mess that is - it contradicts itself in numerous places, and someone has brought in that WD129 article and edited it badly (since when was MK 2 armour made up of microscopic circular armoured rings? It's made of loops of armour, not microscopic ones...ridiculous.)

They've also missed the point of auto-senses, and as for auto-reactive shoulder pads having reactive armour - where did that come from? The whole point behind the shoulders being 'auto-reactive' is that they change position according to the position of the arm and the head, i.e. the shoulder pad, sorry, pauldron, remains high to protect the head when looking straight ahead, but moves down and possibly back and forth when the wearer turns his head to the left or right.

These are supposed to be state-of-the-art suits of advanced armour that are, due to the Black Carapace, literally an extension of the marines body, not some steampunk clunking piece of tat that has such primitive features as servo motors and head-up displays...

 TheCustomLime wrote:
The Mk. 7 wase gradually phased in after the heresy as noted above. Gradually the older Marks became rare and rarer as they became irreperably damaged, entire chapters were destroyed or they were just plain lost. The older stuff never quite went out of use because the Imperium has a (mostly justified) fetish for old technology, power armor isn't exactly cheap and they are by and large every bit as good as newer marks. So it is also rare for a chapter to have almost or entirely no pre Mk. 7 armor.

even brand spanking new chapters made in the last 1000 years still have some pre Mk7 armor