Horus Heresy: Iron Hands Test Models

As a break from all the Warzone stuff I have been doing lately, I have returned to the reassuringly expensive arms of Forge World. Regular readers will probably remember some time ago I was looking to start a Horus Heresy Iron Hands army, but got completely side tracked by other miniatures. Well as of today, the Iron Hands are officially on the march! My hope is that this mini project will help me paint en masse and of course finally score me a fully painted Horus Heresy army in the process...

There are a number of ways I could have gone about painting these figures, personal favourites include blue and turquoise highlights for the black. But I decided to take a altogether different approach to painting these guys, as I am looking for a more gritty realistic look as opposed to the sharp highlighting I normally do. As a result the figure above has had a single, very subtle amount of grey used as a liberal highlight (which was then washed with Nuln Oil). The plan is to have a simple base that lets the weathering and dusting bring out the 'character' of the unit.

Because the legion colours are predominantly black, I have decided to add a few colour breaks where possible. While I could easily add brass to the equation, I feel too much metallic and black will make the army look overly garish. So to counter this I decided to paint the pistol and ammo holsters a dark brown. This warm colour stands out but not in a way that makes the models look out of place.

What remains now is to shade and highlight the browns and of course brush the metal areas with a bright silver - this will be the basic model complete. After this it will be down completely to the chipping and weathering to bring the unit to life.

Thanks for reading,

DiStudios

The 14th Legion