This past week I finally finished off another three Iron Warriors. Both rebasing them on the new Sector Imperialis 32mm bases from their old 25mm ones and actually completing their paint – started well over a decade ago. Yes, I paint slow, but they’ve also spent a goodly time put away in boxes before I decided to revive the project last year.

Two of these models feature arm replacements. The “champion” has a Necromunda Pit Slave chainsaw arm, along with a 90’s-era metal Iron Warriors Shoulderpad. The central warrior has a Melta Gun arm that’s taken from a manufacturer of not-40k miniatures, again from the 1990s. It came from one of their Not-Orks, later renamed “Org” and changed to a not-at-all-Ork-based organised crime kind of faction after GW sent them one of their nasty lawyer letters. Because GW owns the concept of Orcs in space. Apparently. They had a game which from memory actually had decent rules. If I ever remember their name, I’ll edit it in. Anyway, the Melta Gun arm looked great, and it found its way onto one of my Iron Warriors, a squad with a large number of obvious cybernetic implants and limb replacements. Once again, I’ve added “IV” decals to the models, to represent their still-present pride in being members of the IV Legion.

Again, aside from mechanical parts from Necromunda models and the Org arm, the models are built with a mixture of parts from modern loyalist marines, modern chaos marines, metal 2nd & 3rd edition-era chaos shoulder pads, Iron Warriors metal parts and Iron Hands metal parts. The central model’s head and torso come from the ’90s metal chaos marine biker conversion parts.

The third Iron Warrior comes with a not-so-subtle message for any who he may encounter. The chainsword’s hazard stripes look terrible when blown up to this size, but at their actual size they look completely fine.

I’ve got another five of this squad on my paint desk at present to complete, along with another four including a Warsmith in the cabinet waiting to be moved out. Following that I have an old Forge World Castraferrum Dreadnought and Vindicator to find and fix up – both purchased many years ago before the FW kit was replaced with the Citadel kit. Then I can move onto newer purchases, newer models and newer plans for my Iron Warriors.

Iron Within! Iron Without!

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.