Legion Specific Cosmetic Upgrades

[Spiral]

Hey All,

 

With the Burning of Prospero box, I've finally taken the plunge and decided to actually start my Thousand Sons. I've got 2 B@C and 1 BoP and I'm planning to pick up Shoulder Pads and the Armour Upgrades pieces but I have a question for veterans: How much is too much? Do you like to spread it around liberally? Or do you prefer to save it for special squads like veterans and command squads? I'm mostly wondering because I don't want to loose the sleek look of the MKIV, but I do want to use the sweet sweet legion specific bits. 

[Supe robot gangster #1]

All the sons upgrades are MK IV anyways! I've upgraded all my guys, and used the Aechaen upgrades on veterans and some of my higher ranking officers. It's really up to how you want to do it though, there really is no right or wrong way to do it!

[m_r_parker]

As always - it depends on what you like, and what the aesthetics look like. Thousand Sons do have a couple of different options, so you do have some wiggle room.

 

For my Word Bearers I made a conscious decision that for each ten guys I would use 5 upgrade heads and 5 torsos, splitting the heads and torsos meaning that every marine would have at least one upgrade piece on it. I'd sprinkle in a bit more for the more specialist legionnaires, and for the majority of the bolter guys I focussed on not giving them torsos as the arms and bolsters would cover the majority of the details.

 

If I were doing a 30k Sons force I'd probably use the Achean pattern helms for the rank and file (I know they're supposed to be for vets, but the uniformity of them is brilliant for rank and file), and use the other MkIV upgrade heads for sergeants and the like. I'd still keep torsos around 1 in 2, and while everyone gets the regular upgrade shoulder pads I'd also sprinkle in some of the Achean pattern ones to the guys getting the torsos. I think that would look great.

 

Damn, now I'm looking at those Achean shoulder pads and thinking they might be good to go on the new Thousand Sons plastics for a more 31k aesthetic.

[The Nephilim]

For my Word Bearers I made a conscious decision that for each ten guys I would use 5 upgrade heads and 5 torsos, splitting the heads and torsos meaning that every marine would have at least one upgrade piece on it. I'd sprinkle in a bit more for the more specialist legionnaires, and for the majority of the bolter guys I focussed on not giving them torsos as the arms and bolsters would cover the majority of the details.

You are a brilliant, evil genius.

[Son of Carnelian]

I say drown 'em in the bling. Like this gentleman.

[depthcharge12]

Only bling bling I've really done are these terminators and a few bits and bobs here and there across the army:

 

http://i911.photobucket.com/albums/ac316/treacyjohn2/9DF50324-13DC-4AB2-82F8-8B238509FB43_zps53pg8gpp.jpg

 

I just think that the veteran units should stand out and reflect their legion, not so much all the newbie tactical dudes. There are some really well done upgrades for all squads in an army, but you have to be consistent, and it gets expensive pretty quickly.

 

For other squads and tactical vets, I just do different poses or use close combat arms to make each legionary unique.

[Lord Blackwood]

Bling is good work within your budget and what will make you pleased with your models. 

[Xenith]

None, really.

 

Legions were beginning to receive mk4 at the start of the heresy, and at the outbreak would have little time to ornament it.

 

Likewise the loyalists were in mk2, sparse mk4, some in brand new mk6 and new mk7. Mk5-7 should have no ornamentatuon, really, as yhey were either a battlefield mod, or pressed into constant battle immediately.

 

I guess mk2 stuff would have had time to be ornamented, but even then not much.

 

Look at a 40k mk4 or mk6 marine, or Terminator. Heresy guys shouldn't be more decked out than those wearing millennia old suits of relic armour.

 

Just my thoughts.

[Jackalwolf]

I always go full on Legion personalisation. Considering there are a total of 2,000,000 marines roughly in a galaxy full of trillions of souls, I can't see how if a Legion wants to add some details (which would be hell easy to do since the hard part is the technical aspect of power armor) they wouldn't be able to.

 

So whatever you preffer really, sometimes I find myself in the odd conundrum that I don't use enough "normal" mark torsos and the fact is that these basic sculpts are awesome too.

 

But all my wolves will have their custom torso and shoulder pad plus helmets whenever they get released, and all my Emperor's Children are kitted with helmets and torsos if the unit wears mkiv.

[Jackalwolf]

P.S. In your particular case too, the sons had an attached forge planet for themselves and were one of the smallest legions, so you have all the reasons to go as crazy as you want on personalisation if that's your vibe.

[Joe]

Realistically, there was rather a lot of personalisation by the legionnaires; ranging from painted armour and engravings to unique armour pieces to that chapter specifically (look at the chapter upgrades, for example). And that's not including the looting that went on as resources became increasingly scarce over the course of the Heresy.

 

Keep in mind each legion had a distinct identity and this often reflected in their armour, especially as the Terran born legionnaires died out or became the minority; the Sons of Horus covered themselves in Cthonian gang symbols, the Dark Angels gradually incorporated more and more Calibanite customs and iconography, the Night Lords were... well, the Night Lords.

 

At the end of the day it's down to your personal tastes. I've always felt that plain Space Marines were boring in 30k.

[The Nephilim]

None, really.

 

Legions were beginning to receive mk4 at the start of the heresy, and at the outbreak would have little time to ornament it.

 

Likewise the loyalists were in mk2, sparse mk4, some in brand new mk6 and new mk7. Mk5-7 should have no ornamentatuon, really, as yhey were either a battlefield mod, or pressed into constant battle immediately.

 

I guess mk2 stuff would have had time to be ornamented, but even then not much.

 

Look at a 40k mk4 or mk6 marine, or Terminator. Heresy guys shouldn't be more decked out than those wearing millennia old suits of relic armour.

 

Just my thoughts.

It honestly depends on the legion, because Path of Heaven suggests otherwise for the Emperor's Children. And Path of Heaven takes place just before the White Scars are able to make it to Terra.

[DuskRaider]

The way I see it is, you want variety. Have some with upgraded helms, some with upgraded torsos, some with both and some with none. It'll add more character to the overall force. You also have the added benefit of the new 40K Thousand Sons kits, which besides the power cells and perhaps helms are pretty much void of any Chaos influence.

 

For my Word Bearers, I did a lot of mixing and matching between the FW upgrades, the basic B@C bits, and 40K Chaos Marine / Raptor bits, as mine are pretty corrupted. However, with my BoP box, I went minimal with the corruption. The Sergeants have the FW torsos and that's about it, I wanted my Lascannon Marines to be pretty clean and my Breachers have Shields with Chaos symbols, chains and whatnot on them while their armour is pretty standard.

 

My Death Guard, on the other hand, are an amalgamation of different armour marks on each Marine. There are very few pure armour sets because I wanted to convey a sense of a protracted campaign which required many field repairs. The FW kits are relegated mainly to just Veterans, even my Sergeants are Destroyer bodies with Breacher helms and Mk. III pauldrons.

[Ascanius]

My (variant) 30K Iron Hands nearly all have upgrades; I bought the Forge World Iron Hands Taskforce bundle for Betrayal at Calth which includes heads, torsos, and shoulderpads for all 30 Tactical Marines in the box, plus a set of Cataphractii shoulderpads and a transfer sheet to hit the free shipping mark.

 

I say "nearly" for two reasons:

 

a) One of each of the sets of helmet upgrades is a bare head, which I won't use.

b) I originally intended to also get Burning of Prospero and split the upgrades up between the two boxes, and only decided against doing that after I'd built two Tacticals using 1 standard MkIV torso and 2 standard heads. One of them is a sergeant with a crested helm, and the other has a targeting augmetic and was used on a Tactical carrying a missile launcher, though, so it's not that bad.

 

Although the Iron Hands heads and torsos are based on the MkIII armour, I think they look really good and fit with my collection's background as an Expeditionary fleet force that has spent a long time beyond the boundaries of the nascent Imperium, travelling with a Mechanicum contingent hoping to locate far-flung Forge Worlds.

 

I might have preferred to use the upgrade parts with MkIII plastic models if I'd had the choice, just for consistency, but Burning of Prospero wasn't announced for a couple of months after I'd already bought the bundle, and it would have been a lot more expensive to buy the second boardgame at local Australian prices, rather than get the first at the true exchange rate from the UK as part of the taskforce.

 

All of which is to say: I think the upgrade parts look really good, but whether or not you go whole hog depends on how much you want your force to look different from standard Tacticals in that mark of armour.

[Demonl]

I use a mixture of Sons of Horus, White Scars, Emperor's Children, Death Guard and Ultramarines upgrade helmet packs for my Luna Wolves. I also use some of the regular helmets too, mostly it is the mkII that have the fancy helmets.Transfers for the shoulders and regular chest pieces.

[1000 Sons]

I would use a lot of the new 40k fancy Sons bits. Big hats and bling everywhere.

[WickedWeed]

You're more than welcome to check out my Thousand sons, I'll be posting pictures of the new ones I've done.
It's all been fairly cheap (Compared to general FW prices), and I managed to use shoulders and heads on the BaC marines to create my vet/tactical marines.

[Corswain]

I spread it out across the "regular" troops and go pretty heavy on specials. Has a good balance for what I like.

[Spiral]

So the decision I've come to is to use the new Rubric Marine Box, the Forge World Upgrades, and the Stygian upgrades from Kromlech and I'm going to mix things up. Fairly plain for the MK3 marines, sparse upgrades for the MK4 and for units like my Veterans and Command Squad, I'm going to go for the fences and make them almost entirely non-standard. And also use some of the heads on my Terminators to make them a little less generic. I'm going to use transfers for the non-shoulder markings though, because the idea of freehanding all that script is...daunting.

[WickedWeed]

So the decision I've come to is to use the new Rubric Marine Box, the Forge World Upgrades, and the Stygian upgrades from Kromlech and I'm going to mix things up. Fairly plain for the MK3 marines, sparse upgrades for the MK4 and for units like my Veterans and Command Squad, I'm going to go for the fences and make them almost entirely non-standard. And also use some of the heads on my Terminators to make them a little less generic. I'm going to use transfers for the non-shoulder markings though, because the idea of freehanding all that script is...daunting.

Sounds expensive! But I think it's going to make them look unique with the combinations you've mentioned.

What color scheme are you going to with those flashy parts? Especially thinking about the white in contrast to going with gold trims ?

[Spiral]

It's a long term project, but I have a line on a friend who has T.Suns shoulders that he won't be using, so I can save some cash by picking up stuff from him. I'm thinking for my Tactical Units (Tacticals, Tactical Support Squads) I'm going to trim the shoulders in White, with Gold for the other squads. For the face plates I'll probably mix the colours, but the filigree will be all gold. I've also been considering a White/Bronze colour scheme for my weapons rather than the black and silver...but if I do that I may just to all the shoulder pads in Gold, to avoid looking too bright. 

[WickedWeed]

It's a long term project, but I have a line on a friend who has T.Suns shoulders that he won't be using, so I can save some cash by picking up stuff from him. I'm thinking for my Tactical Units (Tacticals, Tactical Support Squads) I'm going to trim the shoulders in White, with Gold for the other squads. For the face plates I'll probably mix the colours, but the filigree will be all gold. I've also been considering a White/Bronze colour scheme for my weapons rather than the black and silver...but if I do that I may just to all the shoulder pads in Gold, to avoid looking too bright. 

Sounds good! I've been running something similair.

About the weapons, I think the white really make them pop! Maybe just look out of the balance of white and gold with weapon and shoulders if you wanted a bit more mellow?

Also i used lead and brass for my guns which I think works great, so white and bronze should be good I think.