The cybernetic lens has now been filled in. oops!

And now the final pair of my “Legacy” Iron Warriors. We have the original Aspiring Champion/unit leader, along with the Champion/Lord kitbashed from the original metal Iron Warriors Warsmith model, who is still actually available from GW.

The leader (at present) of the entire motley crew is this guy. As mentioned, the base model is the Iron Warriors Warsmith. The head was removed and replaced with one from the 2nd edition noise marines. The marine’s entire head and visage has become an Iron Skull, reflecting the chapter icon, with the Xenomorph-esque tongue tying in with the copper cabling found across these models. A Fleshmetal Exoskeleton under the current ruleset.

The left arm comes from an Assault Marine, capped with the metal 2e Iron Warriors Shoulder pad.

The backpack’s trophy spike comes from a 2e-era Chaos Terminator.

The right arm of the Warsmith was completely removed. It was replaced with a slightly-dodgy-by-today’s-standards rebuild, made of a Berserker arm and a glove, hand and Hammer from a Chronopia model. The guitar wire cabling was added to help sell it as a powered weapon – a Thunder Hammer of unique fabrication with a rather wicked looking rear spike. In-hand, the hammer and hazard-striped chestplate draw the eye away from the dodgy join. Thankfully, it doesn’t stand out nearly as much in-hand as it does in these photographs.

The breastplate and bionic legs on the original Aspiring Champion are from the Iron Hands upgrade pack, an excellent source of “official” bionics for any Astartes, and especially so for heavily-augmented Chapters and Legions such as the Iron Warriors. The rest of the model is pretty much stock, excepting the trophy spike that once again comes from a metal Chaos Terminator and the head, which is a Khorne Berserker head with some bionics cut from a SM helmet grafted onto the side. Damn, I missed that lens. I’ll have to paint that in now.

Like I said, the rest of him is pretty much stock. Well, arms, shoulderpads and backpack, anyway.

Since taking these photos, I’ve cleaned up the base edging and fixed the odd lens I’ve missed on these and the others in this series. Along with their “red dot” targeters on their weapons. Not that this helps you.

I took some group shots the other day alongside these. I might hold off posting them and take some new ones today to post tomorrow, now that I’ve touched these guys up. I also re-black-rimmed their bases and darkened the metallics on the bases slightly to help distinguish the metallic models from their metallic flooring, which was another thing I’d missed in my haste to complete them and excitement to photograph them.

Damn you, Enthusiasm!

For the penultimate post in this little series on my “Legacy” Iron Warriors, we have a pair of models rebuilt from what was a single model. Originally, Berserker legs, Iron Hands chest, Iron Warriors Head, along with the flamer, the attached arms and shoulders and the chaos backpack. When getting the model ready to complete, I noticed the somewhat unique Iron Hands chest was almost completely hidden from view by the flamer and the arms wielding it. I felt that was a shame, and broke apart the model, finding another marine’s worth of part-bitz to make the previous Iron Warrior into two, one with the flamer as before and one that would show off the IH chest plate.

I think the use of a BaC MKIV helmet adds a lot to this figure. It helps to tie him in much more with the Heresy, and with these Iron Warriors being Veterans of the Long War. It will also help to tie him and by virtue, the rest of his squad in with any subsequent Iron Warriors I build as they will include parts from close to a decade of intermittent Forge World orders, not to mention Calth and Prospero.

The crenellated shoulder pad is a metal Iron Hands one, with the IH badge filed off. The flamer is a metal chaos one, from that era when so many kits were simply plastic + metal add-ons. A shame the basic CSM kit is still the same one. Speaking of the same kit, the legs here are from the Khorne Berserkers.

Left shoulder is a plastic CSM pad, and the skull in it’s midst works as a second Chapter Icon, as does the one on his kneepad. It’s a relatively simple model, but I really do like it myself. I kept the charging pose, and the addition of the MKIV head (and pack) really works for me personally.

The other half of the original model has been elevated to an Aspiring Champion – unless I use these older, individually converted models as Chosen, in which case he’d be a Chosen Champion. A pair of running Assault Marine legs from the Blood Angels I got from Nerdfest had some glue residue left on the upper thigh which worked for me as subtle battle damage – slightly warped metal. Damaged but serviceable.

Both shoulder pads came from the MKIV Calth marines. The shoulder studs also work as a callback to the original RT marines, so I naturally went with the old-school combo of chapter badge right, studs left. I also added some guitar wire cabling to his power fist arm.

Hopefully the motion of the figure, plus the rigidity of the ammo belt link explains the orientation of the bolt pistol’s ammo belt. (Belt-fed pistols? /facepalm). I’ve also just noticed that brown spot on his left calf greave. Rest assured that he’s now safely back on my paint desk to have that touched up.

Today we have the next pair of my “Legacy” Iron Warriors – what these two have in common is the use of Necromunda Pit Slave arms as Close Combat Cybernetics. Much like their fellow reaching for the sky with his chainsaw arm in the very first set of finished close combat Iron Warriors.

Hammer guy is a pretty straightforward build. Being simply CSM parts with a SM left arm with bolt pistol and the nondescript SM breastplate that lacks any form of Aquila. And the Hammer-arm, of course.

I figure that the hydraulic hammer-arm can be used as a CC weapon, or in a pinch as a power weapon or even a Thunder Hammer. I guess I’ll just have to see how 8th pans out. The IV Legion badge is about as subtle as his hammer.

The IW badge is on his left shoulder this time. I’ve added some hazard stripes to his backpack. I just find I need to be a little bit careful with those on models’ backpacks as I don’t want them to look like Bees or Wasps! Surely that’s a different Space Marine Chapter!

His partner in causing chaos also features a lot of standard CSM parts – legs, torso and chainsword-wielding arm, along with one shoulder. The arm is again from the Necromunda Pit Slaves and his cybernetically-enhanced metal head comes from the Iron Hands kit. The backpack is from the 3rd edition SM kit, and finally, the left shoulder is a metal CSM pad from the 2nd-3rd Edition era. Being an Iron-painted skull, it serves as the Chapter Badge in this case.

The rear view really just shows the plastic SM Backpack. If anything, I think it helps to illustrate how well a mix of modern parts has always worked with the CSM kit when building Traitor and Renegade marines. The Long War would create a convoluted logistics situation between the 5 marks of post-thunder armour that was worn by the combatants during the Heresy, since-corrupted armour, Legion-made Artificer armour and that built by individual Astartes (especially in a chapter like the IW), armour fabricated in captured Forge Worlds and by their Dark Mechanicum allies – not to mention that taken as battlefield trophies/loot. Which makes me think. I should add some Imperial Fists (and successors) trophies in with my IW somewhere.

I like to think of this guy as having just recently had this huge claw installed. So the slightly odd pose represents him taking the time to admire his new limb through his many, many lenses, before using it to wrench the head off some unfortunate foe. The size of it looks like it could wrap itself pretty well around a head, or a Marine’s helmet..

Yesterday I finished adding the transfers to a batch of figures. The figures in this case were the last of my “Legacy” Iron Warriors – those being the set I converted over 10 years ago because I thought the IW looked good, and because I thought that basically weathered silver armour would be a fast army to paint. Little did I know…

Every one of the initial set of models was converted – using the parts available at the time. This meant bits from the plastic MK7 Space Marines kit circa 3rd edition, stuff from the (still current) Chaos Space Marines kit and the (even more sadly still current) Khorne Berserkers kit. I added in additional bits from the Metal shoulderpads that were available around 2nd-3rd edition and metal parts from what are now the Iron Warriors and Iron Hands Squad boxed sets, both of which are still sort-of available now as upgrade packs. But without the shoulder pads for the IW.

The circular saw arm comes from the same (Not-Orks) “Org” from that game I still can’t recall the name of, while the right shoulder is a metal one. His head is an Iron Warriors head with lots of cybernetic implants. The rest of him comes from the plastic kits of the day. As with many of the other models, I kept a link to the Legion with the IV added to his left shoulderpad.

His partner also features a mixture of parts. Torso and Head are from the metal Iron Warriors parts, though with the horns removed. I’m not huge on the whole “Iron Warriors as Space Vikings” thing.

Both arms and weapons are from the Khorne Berserker sprue, though the bolt pistol was added to the right hand and the angle was chained on the chainsword hand for a more open pose.

Once again, we’ve got one metal shoulderpad (got to be economical!) which is the Chaos star one. I could paint that central point in as a gem, though I’m not entirely sure if I should do so or just leave it. Red? Brass? Or just leave it as a large (iron) stud?

The left leg is from the Iron Hands kit, and the right is from an Assault Marine. I cut the IH leg pair in half so as to get two unique bionic leg sets from the one piece. I said economy, didn’t I? Finally, it’s backed up by a 2nd Edition-era plastic SM Backpack.

That’s it for now. See you in a couple of days for the next pair!