Iron hands without Bionics? How to theme them?

[wilks]

Hello everyone,

 

Unfortunately I have been having nothing but trouble trying to choose a legion for the heresy.

 

I have painted numerous legions and had decided to settle for Iron Warriors, having painted my BAC force as them, only to end up stripping them all as I just wasn't feeling them, I had made a mistake.

 

 I have always like Iron Hands. I love absolutely everything about them except bionics. Not in the fluff sense thats fine to me, but I do not like modelling them with bionics as I find most of them clunky looking and they look more detrimental to the marine then useful. This being what has stopped me from going with them.

 

So with that in mind does anyone know of a theme I could go with or some way to make them stand out as Iron Hands other then just black painted marines? I just want some way to distinguish them as Iron hands, which is no easy task without including bionics that I can think of. 

 

Also has anyone tried to convert the new Space wolf Iron priest into a tech marine? or seen any examples of people doing it? 

 

I guess I could always go for one of the other loyalist legions if need be but I feel I am an Iron hand at heart. Or whatever my mechanical heart replacement organ is. 

 

Any and all help is much appreciated.

 

Thank you all.

[Soldier of Dorn]

Paint various limbs silver along with the black armor. Boom, elegant looking bionics. There you go.

[Grand Master Belial]

Iron hands are like the Crimson Fists. They have at least one silver hand, but I can easily see two because the Primarch had two silver fists and they are emulating him.

 

I have not read too many books about the Iron Hands during the HH era. What little I did read about them, they were not into bionics at this point. It was the later 40k Iron Hands that were bent on the bionics. So you can feasibly let them go as they are without modeling bionics.

 

As suggested, you could paint more areas silver to suggest bionics but I like the terminator movie suggestion. They do have bionics and being master-crafted, they are small enough to fit inside a normal suit of armor. If they were to take off the armor, then they would look like Arny with metal limbs and broken skin.

[Brother-Chaplain Kage]

Is it Iron Hands specifically, or the X Legion? You could go back to the early days before Manus was found when they were the still the Storm Walkers and still used the same brutal tactics, but without all that silly "flesh is weak" stuff.

[The Unseen]

If you don't like the look of the bionics, its easy enough to just paint one of their hands silver, and have them wear normal armor. Nothing says that they wouldn't design the bionics to fit under power armor as normal after all.

[powwow]

Personally I would just do then without bionics and headcanon it as they have bionics but thats no excuse for dropping protection so they still wear armour over the bionics.

[Luna707]

These are some pretty awesome hands without bionics by BeatTheBeat:

 

http://www.bolterandchainsword.com/topic/317928-ours-is-the-shadow-of-war-legio-x-the-iron-hands/ 

 

You could emphasize the grimmer and more nihilistic side of the legion with a darker scheme like the above or careful posing. You could even portray them thematically as you would World Eaters with blood and tons of melee weapons to show maybe a dip into ferocity after Ferrus' death. I myself choose to model my IH showing more of their hatred at the outset of betrayal as opposed to their favoring of bionics (I have those thrown in there too however). I don't believe the Xth legion is stuck in the bionic niche, I think with some imagination you could open them up thematically to a ton of cool stuff!

[Calas Typhon]

Bionics were favoured in the Legion, but not to the excess of what we see after Ferrus' death from what I gather. But its clear to me that pre heresy they were a lot more flesh and bone than Iron and cog.

 

As people have said above, all remove their shield hand upon induction and ascending to Astartes, however that seems to be the "only" Bionic they are given (other than anything that may be included from neophyte +). I was planning to do something similar where I would use little to no Bionics and call them a new formation of recent inductees brought in as the strike on Isstvan had begun under a clan with little to no information.

 

 

Also just because they have armour, it does not mean they do not have any bionics if you say they have.

[NoLats_McGee]

Some of the Iron Hands upgrade torsos and heads from Forge World have no bionics and instead focus on cog-teeth armour trim and chainmail loincloths. I even made a collage for you!

 

 

http://i.imgur.com/NlfGGiA.jpg

 

You could easily use these parts to create some hands without bionics everywhere. There's much more to them than just their cyborg cosplaying - these parts really sum up the brutal, 'techno-barbarian' clan culture of Medusa. 

 

I use bionics on my Iron Hands, and I like them, but I also think they look silly if they're used too heavily. I prefer to mostly use the torsos and parts as shown above, with obvious bionics only in a few of the squad's marines. 

[ROBOcaster]

You don't need bionics to be a member of the Iron Xth. In the Iron Xth its more about your mettle than your metal.

Here's my Iron hands minimal bionics, and to not look liked they were just primed black I use vallejo metallic black as a basecoat for the armor.

http://i.imgur.com/LWwxvVKh.jpg?1

[ElectricPaladin]

Another thing to keep in mind is that not wearing armor over your bionics is actually pretty stupid. Power armor is heavy enough to grant a 3+ save because it carries some of its own weight. There's no realistic way to anchor a bionic limb such that it can do that, so it can't possibly be as well armored. So most bionics wouldn't be visibility when the Astartes is in armor.

[Memento Of Prospero]

but without all that silly "flesh is weak" stuff.

 

Hey you! THEM BE FIGHTIN' WORDS

 

YOu can also make actual combat efficient bionics, like how they did the Garro leg.

[Lockark]

Paint various limbs silver along with the black armor. Boom, elegant looking bionics. There you go.

 

This is what I would do also personally. The bionics are under the armour, but because they are proud of them they paint the armour over the bionics silver to advertise how much they love their robo-arms. Every Iron Hand player I've met done this, and it makes sense.

 

I do like the anvil bionic arms for my iron warriors, but I use them more for the fact they are useful for getting just the right pose on your heroes since you can pose the arms. I don't use them for my basic bolter dudes since the armour would cover most bassic bionics I assume.

[wilks]

Wow thanks for all the great answers everyone it's much appreciated, thanks for all the examples and pics too, It has been a huge help. There is plenty to think about that I hadn't even considered.

 

I guess I was still stuck thinking more of their 40k incarnation then the 30k legion force, which as has been said, was a much more varied force. I do like the painting the armour silver idea too, advertising there bionics in a subtle way. and spreading a few of those FW torsos around couldn't hurt. I think maybe spreading a few skitarii transfers around too might be quite good as they have a similar theme and patterns, to break up the black armour colour a little, as I will be using the BAC models and the Maximus armour has less areas to add silver trim to then the mk II and III armour patterns.

[Arkangilos]

Also, most of the obvious bionics are probably battlefield repair ones. There are bionics in fluff that resemble regular body parts.

[Frater Cornelius]

Also, wouldn't Bionics be covered by the Power Armour anyway? Seens more logical that leaving them hanging out and show to everybody. If you do not want to modek Bionics you can leave it rather vague altogether. One suspects that it is beneath their armour, though no one knows for sure.

[ROBOcaster]

However you decide to paint them is up to, represent our legion with pride, welcome to the Iron Xth Brother!

[Charlo]

Guyyyyys you're making me Handsy again.

 

My stomach is making the rumblies.

 

That only hands can satisfy.

 

10/10 (see what I did there?) if anyone gets that reference.

 

But yeah, Xth are more than bionics!

[Legionary Pallas]

Also, most of the obvious bionics are probably battlefield repair ones. There are bionics in fluff that resemble regular body parts.

This. If your guy has a pegleg bionic then it's one that has been recently installed, on the battlefield, when the battle's over he can get a proper one with better mobility and strength that fits under his armour.

[Arkangilos]

Guyyyyys you're making me Handsy again.

 

My stomach is making the rumblies.

 

That only hands can satisfy.

 

10/10 (see what I did there?) if anyone gets that reference.

 

But yeah, Xth are more than bionics!

Kaaaaaaaaarl!

 

 

Anyways, I look forward to seeing the stuff!

[Cadmus Tyro]

Welcome to the Xth. I have a vague recollection from 'massacre', that the prevalence of bionics in the legion (prior to our fathers murder) was due to a desire to get back into action as quickly as possible. Rather than wait for a vat grown biological replacement.

 

After his death, the mantra "the flesh is weak" devolved into a more literal interpretation. One which manus tried to avoid I believe.

 

Hope that helps?

[Big Bad Squig]

Yeah, bionics could always be hidden beneath armour or inside the body itself; with a distinctive enough scheme and enough chain/cog bits, you don't really need bionics - I can only count three on my non-Forgeworld models.

 

Oh, and...

 

My stomach is making the rumblies.

That only hands can satisfy.

 

 

 

http://i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/000/994/268/399.jpg