40k Buying Guide: Building a better Iron Hand

The most important rule when creating your Iron Hands chapter is think about making individualist models. All Irons Hands are going through various stages of removing weak the flesh from their bodies. Units like Scouts should have the most flesh while veterans should have the less. The great part is it allows you to use all bits you get and easily create more Space Marines than you will ever need.

Sticking with GW you should next go take a look at Necrons. The great thing here is since the Necron update you have so many more kit-bashing options than before. You also can take full advantage the dual kits to make great Iron Hands conversions.

First thing is stay away from the Necron Warrior bits, they are cheap, but over played and the scale just doesn't work well with Space Marines. The duel kits of Lychguard/Praetorians and Deathmarks/Immortals is where it's at. Don't be afraid to slice and dice you were way through the multifarious kits.

If you are looking for outside of the GW,  you will find primarily two companies providing the 1 to 1 conversions for all your Iron Hand needs.

Anvil Industry & Puppets War

Let us start with Anvil

They produce a set of three "Bionic Legs" for less than $2 bucks a leg.  The back side of the legs are better than the front with more mechanical apparatus shown. Still, 12 legs under $20 bucks is a great bargain to get started on the road to a world without flesh.

Anvil also produces a fine line of "Bionic Arms" As you can see below.

Once again this is a great deal with a set of right and left arms for under $6. You can spend under $20 for 30 individual parts. Anvil also offers a multi-pose set for pistols and dynamic posing, found under "Exo-Lord Multi-pose Bionic Arms" Once again, this is all about mix and matching; Iron Hands works best when you buy a little from every supplier.

Next we move on to Puppets War where they produce the most detailed Iron Hands set you can get. Under "Mechanical Implants and Weapons" you see the variety of pieces. 

This set for around $10 bucks, offers cross-section of components, with the highlight being the chainsword and power weapon. Most important, you get a torso, still the biggest drawback is having no way to pick out individual parts, which makes this set best used for specific or special models you want to design. When compared to Anvil, Puppets War modeling process is less clunky and is a much closer representation to what GW imagines Iron Hands to look like. Either way, all the sets are winners and I suggest picking up a bit from both.

That leads me to my last point about buying and creating a unique Iron Hands army. Don't forget Orks, with the proper Ork bits you can do wonders. Luckily, every gaming group has that one Ork player and more often than not they're willing to spare some bits. If you don't have a friendly Ork player the GW Ork Nobz kit is a fantastic fertile ground for Iron Hand parts because of the larger scale.

If you want to go really unique here is another suggestion, and it comes from a company I highly recommend: Kromlech. Kromlech is the best Ork bits provider on the planet and some of there conversion bits make fine Iron Hands add-ons.

My favorite being the "Mechanical CCW Arms" Set

As you can see these are some great bits for either Iron Hands, Techmarines, or Servitors. Kromlech also provides Mechancial Gun Arms and Mechanical Legs for some real exotic kit-bashing. The prices are not as good as the other two makers especially if you use Kromlech online Ebay store.

All in all, you can spend less than $100 and get enough bits to supply a sizable Iron Hands force. Better yet, you will have each Space Marine looking different, and that is something everyone will enjoy to see.

If you know of any other bits or kits from around the net please feel free to link them in the Facebook page for this post. 

Thanks to an intrepid reader he discovered another set of bits I totally missed!

MaxMini makes a collection called Bionic Bits set! The Set contains.

This set contains:
- 2 pair of arms (2 left arms, 2 right arms)
- 2 pair of legs (2 left legs, 2 right legs)
- 2 heads
- 6 hands (2 x left, 2 x right, 2 x servo hand)

for $8.18 a pretty great deal!