With the completion of the Aspiring Champion and Bearer of the Missile Launcher, I’m calling the first squad of my resurrected Iron Warriors  – started over a decade ago – finally completed. The squad originally only numbered 6 in total, as it was built as part of a force for Combat Patrol games back during a time when CSM could take a Special and a Heavy weapon in sub-10 squads. Unless we were house-ruling that? I can’t remember. They keep changing things like that, so I’m not going to get bent out of shape about the minutia of how many special and heavy weapons they can have. I’ll dump the three Execution Force Iron Warriors in here for now to bring them to nine, and split the Exes off into separate squads when I have all of the current stuff that needs to be finished after a decade done and start on into totally new squads. At that point, I’ll bump these guys to 10 or more as well.

At the suggestion of Dagger & Brush, I’ve began adding some cabling made from clips of guitar wire to some of their bases in an attempt to give them a bit more “pop” and 3-d interest. I haven’t been able to find my copper wire yet, though I may go back and add a few of those when I find them – and add some more guitar wire to additional models at the same time.

My first Iron Warriors Chaos Marine squad, finished and rebased onto Sector Imperialis 32mm bases. I’m now onto working on the second, close combat oriented squad. After I finish those, I can start on some brand new builds.

My Aspiring Champion, showing off a section of guitar wire added to represent power armour cabling as well as a few hazard stripes. When I started these models years ago, I’d intended to heavily chip and weather their armour and weapons as well as add rust and oil stains to their armour, but I quite like how they look now. Not quite clean, but not too grimy, either.

I’ve slowly been buying Forge World bits and accumulating them for years now. Lots of those bits and kits and models are Space Marine ones. I’ve also bought my fair share of parts from Anvil Industry, Kromlech, Maxmini, etc and more as well. (All awesome guys to deal with, by the way!) I originally started purchasing these many models and components for my nascent Iron Warriors Chaos Space Marines and Crimson Fists Space Marines armies. This started long before Forge World began riding the Horus Heresy money train, and the concept of “30k gaming” wasn’t yet a thing. I wanted MKIII Iron Armour in particular for kitbashing into my IW, and obviously Mark VI “Beakie” armour works for a RT-inspired marine force, some Mk IV and V to mix parts in seemed appropriate as well.

Now it’s 10 or more years later, and “30k” is now a thing – with a growing in-depth and generally well-written background. 40k is now a borderline-unplayable clusterfucked ruleset but still a first love, at least in terms of background, and I’m finally restarting on these old Iron Warriors – beginning by rebasing and completing the models I started in the mid-2000’s, paused and then came to a stop on again around 2009.

The question for me to ponder right now – much more for the Iron Warriors – is how do I build them? Do I build them as a 40k Chaos force, replete with a mix of chaos armour, scavenged modern and also heresy armour – or do I try to build them as two separate forces – 30k and 40k Iron Warriors. Though to be quite honest I don’t know if I’ll have the painting stamina and interest to build and paint a full army of the massive size that 30k seems to demand.

Unlike the three push-fit “starter kit” style Chaos Marines from Execution Force that made up my “proof of concept” models as far as rebasing my IW on the new Citadel bases, every other model of my Iron Warriors is.. well, they’re far from all something one could consider conversions, but they’re at least kitbashes from the CSM kits, Iron Warriors and Iron Hands metal upgrade parts, and of course loyalist marine parts. In this way, pretty much every model will be in some way unique. The Close Combat-oriented squad, which I’ll get to work on after I finish this “Tactical” style squad also features bionic CC parts poached from a variety of sources.

I’ll continue to kitbash my CSM Iron Warrior models from all of the previous sources of course, plus parts from the “Horus Heresy” models. The question is on how many do I leave in the “30k pristine” state – looking somewhat like these guys. Because let’s face it, those models linked look bloody awesome as well, without a hint of Chaos in their paint or mixed armour in their modelling. While I’m not averse to using sculpted parts with chaos stars on these guys, I’ll be avoiding the gribbly side of Chaos as much as possible for the Iron Warriors, so No Rogue Trader models, nor any Dark Vengeance-styled ones either.

What I (eventually) do with the Imperial Fists models and bits will be a much easier choice. I don’t want no yellow marines in my collection. People like Nerdfest have done some great models in the Imperial Fists livery, and I think they’re great, but still, no yellow Marine armies for me. (ok, maybe one squad integrated into the Crimson Fists, down the line.) The mantle of the hated foe of my Iron Warriors will be taken by both the Crimson Fists and the Black Templars, so pretty much all of the “Imperial Fists” upgrade parts I’ve gotten will be shared between those two venerable loyalist chapters.

I guess the other question is whether I drop all three of the Execution Force Iron Warriors into this squad, or whether I try to space them out over multiple (three?) “Tactical” CSM squads to avoid repetition of pose within each unit. Another question to ponder. Then again, I don’t even have a current army list (or anything like it) drawn up, since the last time I used these guys in their semi-painted state was in 3rd or 4th edition using a slightly-modified set of the Combat Patrol rules and based off the Index Astartes Iron Warriors list.

What are the current CSM rules? 6th Edition Codex plus the PDF errata?

Gah. I don’t look forward to writing up an army list for these guys.