Iron Warriors First Blood

I finally got enough of my Iron Warriors finished for a game, well, a small game anyway.  I challenged my son to a game of 900 points.

My list (army pictured above)
Chaos Lord in Terminator Armor, and Mark of Nurgle
Squad of 6 Chaos Marines with a Melta-gun
Squad of 7 Chaos Marines with a Melta-gun, one upgraded to Aspiring Champion with Combi-Melta and Power fist
Land Raider
Defiler with Havoc Launcher
Aegis Defense Line with Quad-gun

Below you can see the Battle Field we set up at Aether Storm Games, a Game Store down the corner from my house.  Mike is the owner and a great guy, he always keeps an area open for us WH40k guys, regardless of what events he has going on.

 My son chose to take his Dark Eldar, this shocked me a bit as I fully expected him to field the Imperial Fists he has been working on.  He managed to put 8 Dark Lances into this small force.

I rolled my Warlord trait using the Command Traits table and got the Dust of a Thousand Worlds, giving my Warlord and any friendly unit within 12" the Move Through Cover special rule.

Rolling for the mission we got The Emperor's Will, with a single objective marker in each deployment zone.  and our deployment would be Dawn of War.

Rolling for board sides and first turn, I won the roll-off and began to deploy my forces, opting to take the first turn.  You will note that as a house rule, we deploy fortifications with our deployment, and in our deployment zones, we have found that this works well for our gaming group.

 I deploy my forces in a tight group on my right board side, then in shockingly, my Son deploys his forces directly opposite of me.  This would prove to be a huge error, he knows better, he will be crushed for this mistake...
Chucky (my son) fails to seize initiative, and I begin to open fire, focusing on the two ravagers.  The combined fire power of the Land Raider, Defiler, and Quad-gun destroys one, and immobilized the other.

Chucky responds by rushing forward with his two Raiders packed with Wyches.  He scoots his two Venoms on the other side of the board to gain a good field of fire on the unit behind the Aegis Defense line.
Shooting with his Dark Lances, he doesn't even scratch the paint on any of my Vehicles, the Venoms manage to kill a couple of Chaos Marines.  The Dark Eldar are proving to be quite ineffective.

In my turn, I decide I'm going to hit the Dark Eldar while they are weak,  my Lord bails out one side of the Land Raider, while the squad bails out the other, splitting up to hit more targets.
Shooting from the Land Raider and the Defiler drops both Raiders, and one of his squads of Wyches is pinned in the process!

The Chaos Lord charges and declares a challenge, killing the leader of the Wych Cult squad, they break and flee, the Lords heavy Terminator Armor prevents him from giving chase.

Not much for him to do in his turn, his fleeing squad rallies, but wont be much help, the pinned squad can't do anything this turn (we forgot that pinned units can snap-fire, but that would have been of little consequence anyway)
On the other side of the board, his Venoms continue to harass the squad behind the Aegis Defense line.
In my next turn, my lord re-engages the Wych Squad, my combined fire power destroys the other Wych squad that was pinned the previous turn, and also contained his Warlord, the Quad-gun also drops one of his Venoms.

  In my eagerness to utterly destroy the enemy, I almost lost sight of the primary objective.  Chucky attempts to take advantage of this and moves his lone surviving Venom forward taking up a position of cover, preparing to make a play for my Objective marker, behind the Aegis line.  His other squad the one that disembarked from the destroyed Venom moves back to control his home objective.
He had been attempting to lure me into a trap, keeping me busy with the Ravagers and Wyches while his Venom squads moved in on objectives, sneaky Dark Eldar...
His Venom opens fire and forces a moral check on my Marine squad guarding the Objective which they pass.

In my turn I decide they will pay for trying to take a fortification from the Iron Warriors, I open fire on the Venom and destroy it, forcing the squad inside to disembark.  My remaining fire power finishes off the squad.

Realizing he cannot win, Chucky decides to call the game.  5(1 for 1st Blood, 1 for killing the Warlord and 3 for having an objective)-3(the Dark Eldar held an Objective) an Iron Warriors victory.

A small game I know, but I think it gave me an idea of how to use some of my units in this army.  It's play style is going to be quite different from my Space Wolves force.  As for Chucky, I think he made a critical mistake in his deployment, by deploying right across from all of my fire power.

Over-all though a blast for both sides, next time he says he is bringing his Imperial Fists, I say "bring it"

I am soooo pumped, New Chaos, new DA all in one new 40K starter box

I don't care what I have to do, that new Hell Beast, Dread thingy is going into my IW army...

In fact, I think most of the above models with a little conversion work are going to make the cut.

Not to mention I'm gonna be putting some cultists in,
looks like I'm going to have some work to do...

More progress made, and an updated list.

Believe it or not, I am actually on schedule with the pace that I set myself with this project.  Well sort of, basically the schedule I have set myself is forcing me to call certain things finished even though I would like to spend a bit more time on it.  I may go back and do some final highlights, and maybe even weathering at a later time, but I am forcing myself to the next unit when the timer rings.  For example, I allowed 20 hours of paint time for the Defiler.  It actually turned out to be more of a beast than I thought, so I didn't really get to finish all of the highlighting on the metals.  Oh well, it is just going to have to be good enough.

Here is a list of what I have done so far,
The Defiler
10x Chaos Space Marines, with 2x Melta-guns and the Champion with Power Fist and Combi-Melta
(doesn't seem like much but it is quite a dent)
Here is WIP,
the Warsmith (Modeled primed and based, will be done by Sunday)
5x Chaos Space Marines with Bolters (Most of the colors blocked out, highlights and washes started, will be done tomorrow)
Next up,
2x Rhino Transports, (I am going to build both of these, so I can paint them at the same time.  I think this process will be much faster and make the two look uniform)

If I stay on schedule, I will have an army ready for some play to start using these guys on the battle field, albeit a very small force consisting of
Chaos Lord
10x Marine Squad
5x Marine Squad
Defiler

I did let my son talk me into one game with my Chaos army at 1000 points, but I hate using unpainted models, so I wont talk about the game, other than to say, I love the Defiler...

Well let us move on to some pictures,
First up here is a WIP of Boris the Besieger my Warsmith

 Next up we have my painted models arrayed all together, so you can start to get a feel for what the army will look like on the table top

 next a close up of one of my standard marines, nothing really special about him except that I think he is cool.

 Finally a picture of my Defiler after 20 hours of painting, he is just going to have to do for now...

After some discussion with my son Chucky and his buddy Joe, my list has changed once again.  I don't think it's particularly strong, but I think it even better captures the look and feel of the Iron Warriors.

Iron Warriors Ver.4
Warsmith with Terminator Armor, Power Lance, Combi-Bolter

10x Marines with 2x Meltaguns, Champion has Combi-MG and Power Fist
Rhino with Dozerblade and Havoc Launcher

10x Marines with 2x Plasmaguns, Champion has Plasma Pistol and Power Sword
Rhino with Dozerblade and Havoc Launcher

5x Marines

4x Chosen Terminators with 4x Combi-Plasma, one has a Chainfist (I haven't decided on the Power Weapon load out of the other 3 yet)
Landraider Transport

Defiler with Havoc Launcher

Vindicator

Aegis Defense line with Quad-gun

Hopefully this will be the final draft of the list, because I already have everything for this list, and soon I will be pretty far into building and painting and changes will be more of a set back time-line wise.  Though with my luck the new Codex will be out soon and that will force me to revamp the whole list...

Iron Warriors WIP, the Defiler

Hi all, just a few quick pictures of my Defiler, it is still very much a WIP but I feel is coming along nicely.

More to come very soon!!!