Memory Lane - The Iron Lords

Librarian Furioso Dreadnought

Honour Guard Standard Bearer

The Iron Lords were a long-time project of mine, i played with them as my main 40k army for about 3 years, going through a combination of guises, from 5th Edition marines through to Blood Angels, i had a lot of success with them and won several Best Painted army trophies with them as well as a 2nd Place Generalship trophy.

The last 40k tournament i visited i used them in their Blood Angels Incarnation, and i had been painting them up until the night before the tournament (believe it or not, a first for me!)  and i didn't really get many practice games in with them, the weird thing was, i realised i didn't really like the army much.



I tend to be a fan of shooty armies, more specifically, i like an army that packs a bit of a punch at range, and then delivers a killing blow in close combat.

With Blood Angels i just never really found my feet, i know they are a great army, i've played against them enough times to fret whenever i see them over the other side of the table, but i decided, for now, they are not for me. 

I tried an army centered around priests as, at the time, i found the whole Feel no Pain thing pretty exciting, but i think i went too gimmicky, i sold out.

my counts-as Gabriel Seth

I went with what people told me was good and not what i really wanted to see on the table, not entirely, the lynchpin of the army was my version of Gabriel Seth, a monster wearing a Hockey Mask with an Eviscerator (shown left) everyone said Gabriel Seth was rubbish, yet when i played games with him, i thought he was awesome, and i had several games where he somehow managed to trash 500 points worth of stuff on his own.

But after taking them to the tournament and performing hideously i thought it was time to chuck them in, i put them up on Ebay and they now belong to a very nice chap in Germany i believe, i enjoyed painting them a lot, and when i started the project the main idea for me was to take an "Official" Chapter (The Iron Lords are one of the featured colour schemes in the Space Marine Codex) and build upon the theme ,

My counts-as Corbulo

I took snippets of information and fleshed them out to whatever was in my liking at the time, It was quite refreshing, not a bog standard "Oh a new codex is out, better try and use it" thing, when Blood Angels came out, i painted up new and obvious models for anything exclusively from the codex, and it was fun to try and think up what they might look like in my colour scheme and what possible background reason i would include them from, My Gabriel Seth for example was "Captain Elderon" of the Assault Company, a grim beast of a marine who's tactical acumen fell second to his martial skill, his combat detachments constantly followed by an extra allocation of Apothecaries to oversee the Assault Marines under his control who followed his blood thirsty lead.

A custom Devastator marine

I have a terrible feeling i will always be a Marine player for 40k, if it doesn't at least have "And They Shall Know no Fear", a 3+ save and a Boltgun, i don't see much use for it in an army.

I also converted up some Oversized Field Mortars for a squad of Devastators (See pic on right) on the battlefield they counted as a squad with 4 missile launchers, but that way i wasn't just taking a squad of 4 missile launchers because they are cheap in a Blood Angels army, i thought of some unique quirk of character i could give the Squad to make them more interesting.  And i worked a treat

Veteran Sergeant

Also, i would be entirely remiss not to mention the fact that i had an Iron Lords thread over on Warseer that i attempted to update regularly, a lot of people would comment and give me feedback (Astraeos wherever you are, your steadfast advice was always appreciated, as well as many others.)

I think online in the gaming community there is a lot of potential to be either a "Watcher" sifting through threads and articles to gain inspiration but that is all and "Trolls" (well we all know what those are, in both senses of the word) but those people that commented on my progress were very helpful, so if you are looking to gain an extra bit of "oomph" with some painting i would definitely recommend taking pictures of your models, no matter how horrible you might think you paint (or good for that matter), the feedback i've received in the past has improved my skills tenfold in addition to my practice with the brush.