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Part One: Birth of an army New edition, new army - not a novel concept I know, but this is the first time I've been bitten by the hype bug for quite a while. This project came about for a number of reasons, I can’t quite place which was the overwhelming significant one. I’ve been a hobby-lifelong Iron Hands player. At the moment I technically possess 3: my original 40k-era army from 3rd through 7th editions; my 30K era Shattered Survivors army; and my current Primaris 40K era force. Although I’m proud of the last two – both painted using FW’s metallic IH scheme – I came to a realisation in May / June that whilst the models individually look nice, when put on the tabletop they look a bit… uninteresting. So although I wanted to stick with Iron Hands, I wanted an army which looked appealing on a shelf and on the tabletop. Sticking with my beloved 10th Legion, I then hit another bump. I didn’t want to do any of the known IH successors. A variety of reasons, mostly due to the paint schemes and restrictive existing lore. I contemplated having a go at the Reclaimers chapter, of Ciaphas Cain fame, but decided against it – for the same reasons – there isn’t much lore, and (having gotten as far as painting a test model) I wasn’t overly keen on the grey and yellow paint scheme. Obviously I’d have to improvise! Apologist. Yes, he’s to blame! In all seriousness, his blogs, forum posts and Instagram work all inspired me to take the plunge – I’ve toyed with creating my own army, world, lore – this seemed like the prime opportunity. Combined with the fact that I've unintentionally become my gaming group's DM / GM / Loremaster and general organiser, this seemed like the perfect opportunity to take the plunge and start something completely new. (With apologies to GW...) I toyed around with a few colour schemes at first. Although I wasn’t keen on the grey and yellow of the reclaimers test, I did quite like the grey - I just had to alternate and experiment. I liked the blue and the orange-red, but realised that they'd be both be a nightmare to paint a full army of marines with. I very sincerely take my hat off to anyone who paints an entire army of marines orange. Why grey? I liked the idea that as a relatively new-born chapter (more on that later), the army wore forge-fresh armour, given a simple coat of grey to protect the metal. So I'd settled on grey - but I felt it needed something a little more - bearing in mind why I'd started this project in the first place. Turquoise! Only, due to a total brain-fart and completely forgetting how colours work, it ended up more of dark blue colour. Regardless, I quite liked the effect. Reminded me a lot of the marine helmet on the front cover of the 8th edition rule book. I decided that I wanted a coloured stripe along the top of the helmet, again to break up the colours. I toyed with red and a faded yellow / bone colour. Although I liked the red, I felt that it didn't really work. It may return in the future though... Colours decided, it was then onto the markings. I knew that they were going to be an Iron Hands successor. I also knew that, like their parent legion, the Wardens would be organised into clans, rather than Codex Astartes approved companies - more on this later. Conveniently, I have a large amount of surplus FW 30K era clan markings. Perhaps a bit lazy, but I felt it worked well enough. This happy chap, Captain Medlock, was the first HQ choice I threw together for the force. Made from an ETB Intercessor and a host of spare bits, he started out life as my colour scheme test-model. As an Iron Hands successor, and a young one at that, I wanted the chapter to be fairly 'no frills' affair, with limited decoration. The various targetting gear on his backpack is my way of representing the captain's in-game buff ability, and more importantly, help make him look a little bit less like a common squad leader. This was also a first for me - I'd made a character model for a new army and it wasn't some kind of techmarine / Iron Father. I'll admit, even I was shocked by that... For something thrown together from spare parts and scrap, I'm happy with him - but, I can't help feel that he doesn't look enough like a captain. He may well recieve a demotion to lieutenant, should I ever get around to building a replacement. Anyway, I think that's enough for one post. Next time I'll expand a little on the lore, the campaign setting, and the other units that have been added to the army. Cheers! Thanks for looking. (Here's hoping that for once I can actually keep up my promise to update a blog / WIP thread...)