Imperial Fists Heresy Era Army

[5inistry01]

All I can say WOW!!!!! Makes me want to build an army with the old models. Hmmmm, maybe squats. ^_^

[StratoKhan]

This is all just too awesome. Your army is shaping up to be amazing, I am extremely impressed by the amount of work you've put into it.

 

I'm looking forward to seeing the Robot squad and the Whirlwind.

 

Have you decided how the army will be based?

[Azazal]

Looking very very cool. For the wrecked rhino for the dread, how about Word Bearer? The Fists being the staunch defenders of the Empire and the WBs being the sowers of the seed of chaos and all that. Plus a nice deep read would look cool next to the yellow, without being too distracting.

[Daeothar]

Thanks guys :P

@ Stratokhan: the army will be based in a similar fashion as my first dread, with white and blue tiles. I'm planning a display board with a courtyard/square bordered by a building with steps (where the dread is standing) and the tiles will be in an Aquila shape. This requires me to synchronise the basing of the entire army, as I need to create the board first and then add the bases, so they'll fir the patterns.

@ Azazal: Might be an idea. Did they fight on Terra as well? Can't remember. I know The World Eaters, Emperor's Children and Sons of Horus were there but I'll have to check...

Here's an example of the tilework:

For now, I have an updated picture of the Venerable Dreadnought, now with bannerpole:

And the last devastator, now with attached ML arm:

Then there's the other Heavy Support choice in the army: the Whirlwind. Like I said, I modeled it after the Epicast one, as that was the only Whirlwind official version available at the time. Unfortunatelye, they're now quite rare, so I had to scratchbuild mine. The support struts still need some work but the launcher itself is pretty much finished. It's got vents on the back and is completely removable, including its base, which replaces the roof hatch of the Rhino chassis when the launcher is in position. First the bare Rhino chassis:

And then the Whirlwind, completely kitted out with searchlight, extra armour and Krep-like driver/spotter:

Then the next entry in the list, the fast attack choices, which will be two identical Landspeeders with Multimelta. Here's the first, freshly stripped and re-assembled, complete with pinning of the engines and seats. The pilots are of course seperate at this stage for easier painting:

I have another one, which, after stripping the thick coat(s) of paint seemed to have been painted once before that, in yellow no less. Unfortunately though, the former owner has stripped the yellow coat off with a knife, so all surface detail was also completely shaved off. On top of that, the bannerpole and Multimelta were missing. So at first I decided to scratchbuild a copy of the other Multimelta:

Not too bad but I'm not too certain of the end result of the scraped speeder combined with the scratchbuilt MM, so I have already bought another one off eBay, which appears to be in great shape (and complete) and does not even require stripping.

More on that later though...

[Squiggoth]

Anyone in favour of a specific legion to be stepped on? I'm leaning towards something non-Iron Warriors, as that's been done to death already. World Eaters maybe?

 

I was thinking Thousand Sons ...... Not only because it's always a Good Thing when something is stomping around on anything related to Tzeentch, but also because a blue-and-yellow tank would provide a nice contrast against a yellow Dread.

Then I remembered that this is a Heresy-era army, so I guess the Thousand Sons are not yet wearing blue. <_<

Word Bearers were already moody red and covered in religious litany before the Heresy, right? Might look fine as well.

[StratoKhan]

Or the surely quite ubiquitous(at the Siege I mean) Sons of Horus? It depends how much you want the base to catch the eye. Their paler scheme would keep the focus firmly on the dread itself. Plus, a grey-green paintjob could be interesting.

 

About the tiling, that sounds like quite an endeavour, especially as a lot of those IFs seem to be slottabased. You're gonna have to cut round their feet. But a whole army based like your dread will look even more unique and eyecatching. Expect very high marks for painting&modelling if you bring these guys to a tourney.

[Daeothar]

The antagonising legion will be up for debate for some time, as I'm not quite hooked on one in particular yet. It has to be one that fought on Terra though. I was leaning towards World Eaters but their armour might be too close to the tiles I'm planning.

 

As for the tiling Stratokhan, all of the minis have their tabs removed and are selfsupporting (as in: they do not tip over and are balanced) to allow me to base them better and also because I paint my minis glued to a bottlecap and a slotta tab simply is in the way then.

 

Yes; I'm not quite looking forward to basing the lot of them, not to mention the display board but I've committed myself now... ;) I will be playing around with the base design a bit though, as I will also include some rubble and craters (need to make minefield templates for the Whirly too) and of course the steps on which the first dread is standing, turning into the granite floor of a ruined temple like structure. But that's all just in my head now though... :P

 

And here's to hoping they do well... :sweat:

[savage_heathen]

um, 4 words, 'your army is amazing!!!'

 

if thats all free hand im going to have 2 steel your hands for my painting, lol :down:

 

as for that tank, with pre heresy trator colours id go with the 1000 sons, as the red and whit looks cool. and i think the world eaters blue + white would clash with your floor to much.

 

since you wanted the runed tank why not add some other dead marines around the desplay bace to make it look asif there were some other people there.

 

please give us more updates!!

 

 

Ps. some one (whoever can do this) pleas pleas put this person in the hall of fame because they are truly mazing!!!!

[Daeothar]

Time for another smallish update. Nearly there with the assembly/conversion and then the entire lot can be painted. I'm actually looking forward to tackling the diverse paintjobs and schemes I will be able to do on these guys, especially the robots.

Firstly, I have added rivets to the shoulderpad rims of the Mk2 rocketlauncher marine, making his pads fit in with the other Mk2s in the army. Had I known of this technique at the start, I would have done up the second Mk2 marine in the tactical squad like this as well. As it is now, he's the only one with anarchronistic armour; his shoulderpads are those off the Red Scorpion sergeant... And I just remembered I haven't even posted that particular guy, so here he is, in über-macro camera brutal honesty:

The yellow is actually pretty smoothly layered but dang does it look messy in these pictures...

Well, quickly on to the promissed WIP rocketlauncher guy, now with studs:

Of course the opposite side's shoulderpad and glove are riveted as well.

Then on to the second take on the Whirlwind. I was not happy at all with the first struts holding the launcher up, so made a second one. Which I also discarded. This is the third and I'm now satisfied with its look. Also, the launcher now rotates on its mount; much more real:

I've also started using filler (white milliput) to smoothen the edges and hide the joins on the corners, which were kind of ugly. It needs a second take though, to tackle the last remaining gaps.

Then here, I've been a little creative with the first Landspeeder. Initially, I discovered I had pinned and glued the engine blocks on upside down! So I decided to take the speeder apart and re-assemble it. While doing so, I looked at the pile of bits that made up the second speeder, which I had rejected because it was too damaged to look good again and took another good look at the damaged pilot. His beaky helmet had probably been shaved down to kind of look like a Mk7 helmet (I can only guess at the motive behind his mutilation) but it looked really bad. I thought it would be a shame to discard the mini because of past harm and then came to a brilliant idea. I took my jewelers saw and went to work on him. I then took the torso of a sergeant from the Strike Force boxed set (basically a metal Mk7 version of the RTB01 marines. More detailed, metal and Mk7 (obviously). They still had the arm nubs to fit plastic arms though) and shaved the shoulders down a bit. Some testfitting and filing later, I had a new torso on the marine, with a bare head no less! I then took the arm I had had to cut off to fit the torso and pinned it, added a plastic Scout pistol and there he was. I'm pretty pleased with the end result, as I've both saved an otherwise pretty much doomed OOP mini and I've created a unique and cool result as well!

One more speeder is underway in the mail, which will complete this 1500 points army...

And then finally a shot of the entire maniple of robots:

From left to right: A Castellan with Stombolter, a Conqueror with Assaultcannon, the already known Crusader with Stormbolter, another Castellan, this one with Assaultcannon and the last one is a Cataphract with Stormbolter. I had to add an extention to the Cataphract's SB arm, as the one on the standard backpack was too short. More on them later.

That's it for now. Enjoy... :blush:

[StratoKhan]

Nice save for the Landspeeder. The pilot looks great, and it'll mean you have two distinct Landspeeders in the force. All the nice little touches are really adding up. I love the Robot Maniple, are they going to be in Fists colours by the way?

 

The Rhino is great, what really really makes it work for me is the Marine sticking out of the hatch.

 

As you've said, the MK2 Armoured Marine might look a bit messy, but for that kind of picture the paintjob holds up wonderfully in my opinion.

[Iago]

kudos on the good work mate!... keep those pic a coming.

[Pulse]

Stunning, i love the old models and you have painted them so well, what a credit you are! :turned:

 

I cant wait to see it all painted up and basking in its own glory! :)

[Master Toddius]

This thread makes me feel 17 again.

 

Love the output of work and the quality. The whirlwind is awesome!! Nicely done.

 

The battletech minis are a blast from the past too!!

[Daeothar]

The battletech minis are a blast from the past too!!

Actually; the robots are straight 40K minis, the licenced Battletech minis are way smaller, fitting on a 25mm base, as opposed to these guys on their 40mm bases. ;)

 

Thanks for all the praise so far; it's much appreciated. You'll all be glad to know they had their baptism of fire last night. The existing list of 1500 pts, of which you've seen all the elements here (bar one speeder which was proxied with a Necron Destroyer) against 1500 pts of Crafworld Eldar. The Fists held up remarkably well, leaving me with about 900 points left on the table, vs him, well, none at all...

 

That's right; first battle, glorious victory/slaughter. Those squeekies did not stand a chance despite some mistakes on both sides, mostly in deployment (I destroyed his infiltrating Scorpions in turn one and he wiped out my infiltrating scouts in the next turn). Unit of the match were the Devastators. Disappointing were the speeders (one powerful shot each; they're bound to miss; Murphy's law's a b!tch) and the Whirlwind; I expected more from that one. But maybe it's just a matter of getting used to them...

 

Anyhow; IF; one, bad guys; zero... :down: :wub:

[StratoKhan]

Hey daeothar, I seem to remember a bowie-knife like symbol on old scout shoulderpads, maybe you could use that on one of the little guys.

 

Good stuff with the win. It's sunny outside so I might actually get some painting done.

[Daeothar]

You are absolutely right; thanks for remembering that! I'll sure be using the knife design now... ^_^

[Brother Garrod]

this thread is a constant source of inspiration to those ( including myself ) who like incorporating older mini's into armies

very very well done

[Talyn]

i call him Bob! <_<

[Daeothar]

Actually, that's a Fury and the other one's an Eddy... :sweat:

[Daeothar]

Yes indeed; dredged from the depths of the Terran archives, this thread once again surfaces with new content. Some of the other moderators and myself went to Games Day Germany last weekend. And just for the heck of it (and to avoid the huge que at the front doors :) ) we decided to enter at least one mini a piece.

 

And so we did. As I'm busy working on my (mostly non-PA, so don't ask) entries for Games Day UK, I did not have the time to create a proper entry. Instead, I opted to finally make the Captain of this army WYSIWYG, which involved scratchbuilding an Iron Halo for him. And since 25mm bases for HQ choices are so 1990 these days, I decided to give him a more appropriate 40mm base as well. And since I had this thing lying around after a bitz buy, I also gave him a new backpack/cape. This one originally belonged to a 1991 Games Day only Space Marine Captain (meaning there's now one out there without his proper cape...). It's basically the same but has some skulls on the vents and really tiny skulls on the cape as well.

 

So, I used an undefined part out of my bitzbox for the diskshape and the clenched fist of an RTB01 marine, as well as some small diameter plastic rod for the rivets. The whole thing was then simply pinned with a piece of paperclip.

 

The end result is an effective Iron Halo, without distracting too much from the overall mini. Also, I added a small Fists symbol to his bolter.

 

The base was made to match the one on the first Dreadnought, complete with marble; blue and white, and a piece of fallen concrete, no doubt from some dome or other roof, hundreds of meters up. The (intentionally!) sketchy paint on the stucko of the wall piece is a bit of writing, with only the 'OR D' of the words 'IMPERATOR DEI' visible. I suppose, with the Imperial Fists' view of the (then still living) Emperor, Captain Siegmann would not mind standing on top of such a misguided expression of the ascending Imperial Cult, even during the defence of the Imperial Palace... :P

 

http://www.fierylions.nl/Pictures/ForumPictures/ImperialFistsHeresyEraSquad/CaptainNewBaseFront.jpg

 

http://www.fierylions.nl/Pictures/ForumPictures/ImperialFistsHeresyEraSquad/CaptainNewBaseRear.jpg

 

http://www.fierylions.nl/Pictures/ForumPictures/ImperialFistsHeresyEraSquad/CaptainNewBase.jpg

 

And yes; that's a heretic's skull, left there as a warning to others. The Legio Bolter and Chainsword had to get their practices from somewhere after all... :drool:

[Combat_Vet]

I can't tell you how happy I am to see new posts in this thread ;)

 

The army is amazing and I'm sure it will inspire many to build IF as well as bring the RT marines back in to style.

 

Keep the pics coming.

 

Better days,

[Obliterator]

Excellent work, I especially like what you done to the cape :P

 

LOOK OVER THERE, A PLASTIC STORMBIRD KIT!

 

 

 

 

* yoink * ;)

[BLARGAG!!!]

i wish that i could meet u so that i could shake your hand in person but :pantomimes shaking hands w someone:

since i live in the US i can't so i send u a virtual handshake for all of the amazing work u have done so far on this army.

kudos

[Master Toddius]

Ya, I'd say thats an upgrade.... Awesome base man. All the little details and the marble came out great. Should be happy with that :)

[StratoKhan]

Lovely. Great additions.