Imperial fist History part one the founding

The Great Crusade

Founding

Great Crusade-era Imperial Fist space marine.

The Imperial Fists were formed on Terra, where the they earned their first battle honour, 'Roma.' The Legion had the benefit of being united with their Primarch shortly after their formation, while their character had yet to take shape and as much as 70% of their ranks were still aspirants. As result, the Imperial Fists and Rogal Dorn developed as servants of the Imperium together, forming an unbreakable bond based upon the common desires for self-discipline and total commitment to order found in Dorn's temperament and the gene-seed of the Legion.^2a

Doctrine and Record

The general disposition of the Imperial Fists was to embrace their military role in the Great Crusade and eschew the civil responsibilities of governing worlds for recruitment and other purposes. For example, after being granted recruitment rights on Necromunda following a major victory against the Orks, the Legion situated itself as guests rather than masters. On the subject of the Legion's relationship with recruitment worlds, Dorn is famously recorded as saying "I want recruits not vassals."^2a Such an attitude was in contrasts to other Primarchs, such as Perturabo of the Iron Warriors, who took every opportunity to garrison worlds, claim their tithes and develop a personal empire.
In prosecuting the Great Crusade, the Imperial Fists acted as the strategic reserve of the Emperor's forces and served as his personal Praetorians. As a strategic reserve force, the Legion rapidly deployed between battlefields, characteristically employing siege and defensive warfare as the situation required, specialising in each. As siege specialists, the Legion functioned as an assault formation, surgically applying force where and when it was required to shatter enemy defenses, often deciding the outcome of campaigns. As defensive specialists, the Legion was commonly tasked to defend strategic positions and defeat enemy breakthroughs.^{2a 2d} In fact, Horus once remarked to Dorn that "if I ever laid assault to a bastion possessed by you... then the war would last for all eternity, the best in attack matched by the best in defence."¹⁰ The Legion also possessed special skills in urban warfare. ^2a
The Imperial Fists were so effective in their role during the Great Crusade that the Legion accumulated a record second only to that of the Luna Wolves.¹⁰ As a proud testament to their accomplishments, battle honours were displayed for kilometres in a gallery aboard the Phalanx.⁷ however, the Imperial Fists' record also included developing hostile relationships with other Legions. Most notably, the Imperial Fists maintained a bitter rivalry with the Iron Warriors, which was largely the result of both Legions sharing similar combat specializations.³⁰ Less known was the strong mutual hatred between the Imperial Fists and Alpha Legion, who clashed on more than one occasion prior to the Horus Heresy, though the nature of these clashes is unknown.³¹
After the successful conclusion of the Ullanor Crusade, the Emperor returned to Terra, ordering the Imperial Fists with him where they were tasked to fortify the Imperial Palace.<sup>10

The above is taken directly from the Warhammer 40k lexicanum.com I have not written it but I find it to be a great source for all thing 40K info wise so I wanted to share it.</sup>    

Inspiration in odd places

I just read 40k-flashback-space-wolves-2nd-edition on bell of lost souls and as some one that did not start playing until after this codex came out I got out of it very little old school nostalgia. But I did see something that really excited me

Look at what they are fighting on. Really look at it. The bottom pic is 100% hand crafted and just asking to be rebuilt by as many of us as possible. The top pieces of Gothic ruins may be scratch built as well and at worst I can find a way to do them also. There are some real gems in these older books even if you are not a fan of the old models and the old way of painting that was popular back then. 
 

Skaven Slaves

I have had the fantasy starter box siting around for a wile now and thought it was about time I did something with all the rats in there. I personally don't have any intention of playing skaven. But my brother in law has a nice army going for them and is in need of LOTS of slaves. But he is big on keeping the feel of an army going and his rules for slaves are no shields and no armor so the clan rats box only yields a few slaves and he just does not need more clan rats at this point. So I got my clippers and hobby knife out and started hacking away

this is what you start with 

 this is what you get after hacking away for a bit to remove shields and any armor plates

and this is what i ended up with. When i finish the rest of them I will be giving this to my brother in law to paint up and use for his army and that should put a  nice dent in his need for slaves.

 

Aduptus Custodies

I started these guys when i had herd that Gray knights was coming as i felt that gray knights would be the closest we will ever get on the table top to Aduptus Custodies and i have all wise wanted an Aduptus Custodies force ever seance i read white dwarf issue 300 where dave taylor's wonder full army was shone off. But  then gray knights hit the shelves and were picked up by so meany people and proclaimed to be the new cheesy army by much of the net. So they got shelved for a wile. Now that people have learned how to counter them for the most part i don't think i will have as much guilt running them. Time will only tell... any way hear is what i have done so far 

Each has custom shoulder  made shoulder pads that i made a mold of and in the next post i do on this army i will show you all how that was done as best as i can. resin is both a wonderful thing and also a pain to work with at times.  

Imperial Fists

This is my sternguard squad they get used in conjunction with lysander in a landraider most of the time so that they can pop out and blast what should be an unsuspecting target that was just shot out of there transport by something long range such as a predator tank. if the longer range of other squads fail this one has 2 meltas to do the job. when this happens most of the time i can't wipe out the squad I am attacking with shooting. But I can charge with lysander the sternguard and also the bike squad that is meant to be close by. Its worked well for me so far

Terrain 101

This is my single most handy tool. well besides my hobby knife.....

it works as a thick sturdy ruler and lets me quickly check angles on what ever i am making.

This one is a slightly nicer one i got from home depo but i only got that because i have been into wood working more recently and for what we are doing something like 12-inch-combination-square-set from harbor freight is what i worked with for years.

this is what we will be working on to show you how to make a proper box and to make the angled pieces you will need for so many templates. It is bugbates mini fortress. i cant seem to find a link back to his list on i believe it was dakadaka. oh well i will add it in as soon as i find it 

i will do a full run down on how i built this tower in the next week or 2 so if you are interested keep an eye on this page. 

first step get out the scissors and cut out the 2 sections we will need to form the tower core. the 2 sections above are good pieces for showing how to put together buildings they will give us one square box and and nice sloped skirting for it that also forms another box. it is also a good way of seeing how easily crushable foam core gets much stronger the more pieces you add to it.

any way the first this that everyone should look at is HOW to cut a nice straight line. now you could free hand down the lines you traced onto your fome core.

But that ends up being off most of the time on longer cuts so my suggestion is to pull the ruler out of your combination square and cut like this but with the hand i have holding the camera holding the ruler.

as long as you keep your blade sliding along the ruler it comes out great every time. just keep your fingers away from the blade but i don't think i need to tell you people that.

after you do the 4 copy's of this you need and the 4 copy's of the other piece.

You will have to move beyond cutting nice flat square lines but you should also be getting good at it at this stage. so it was all worth it. Now comes the part that most people have troubles with. All the templates I have ever seen assume that all the pieces you are working with are paper thin and that is because they are all most forced to due to the format of being printed on paper. so we have to make them fit together like they are that thin. not as hard as you think i assure you. 

this is how i do it just place the tip of your knife where the piece needs to end and slide your ruler back and make it even the whole way across then you have something to keep your cut straight just like when we were cutting straight down .

after you get that end cut off you will see on this piece that there are a few more cuts to be made. that is because this piece is one joined angle piece so first trace the lines off this template on the start of both of the angled cuts.then it make sure you can do this as easily as possible use your rules like we did to cut the pieces out in the first place but only cut the paper from the first layer. then in a 2ed cut cut only the foam very lightly so you done cut the bottom piece of paper just like we did when cutting the angles that will join together the idea is to remove the parts that will be in the way of making the connections flush in the case of the parts that are separate pieces and to let the 2 half's bend together to form a nice angle on the bottom pieces. 

 This is what they should look like with you have all the pieces cut away.I think this is a good stopping point for today. please come back next week for the next installment of terrain 101 and keep an eye out for the full post on building bugbates mini fortress             

Terrain 101

I can't start to talk about building terrain with out first pointing you to the most helpful page on the net http://40kaddict.blogspot.com/terrain-is-everything-standard-template This man has made scratch building buildings and such so much easier and added a layer of detail that most people starting out would never add 

this is one i built from his 2 story ruins template but so are all of these

As you can see he gives you a great out line to start with and from that you can shape the final building to suite your needs. I am sure you all took the link at the top to Dwez blog and took a bit of time to look around and saw all the great buildings he has done. The thing you will see is that his interpretations of the plans he made are a little different then what I have done with them and I am sure anything you would make would look different still. I Honestly Feel that is what the GW buildings lack some times. Sure they look nice and all but they all end up looking a little to much alike. There is nothing like a nice set of home built terrain.

So from hear out I am going to look to break down any building tips I can muster into quick and easy steps to get you started building your own battlefield. Next Monday look forward to an introduction to fomecore and some simple ways to make it work for you!  

Project list

I have all ways had a problem with keeping my self focused on getting done one task before I move on to the next idea. This tends to get a lot started and nothing done. Over the last all most 9 months keeping my hobby log thread on Bell of lost souls has had a great influence on me as far as completing my main project. My imperial fist army  

So riding on the coat tails of that success is what this blog is all about it will give me a place to show what i am doing and also keep me on track to complete all the half done things i have started.

In that vain this is my current To Do list

1. painting up options for my imperial fists
2. completing my small adeptus custodes army
3. Orks
4. vampire counts
5. MORE TERRAIN 
6. Zone mortis board 
7. finish my scratch build warhound
8. paint my baneblade tank
9. start painting up the high elves from the warhammer starter box
10. paint up the citys of death building i got back when it came out
11. warriors of chaos
12. possibly revisit my Tau 

there is no real order to that list so i am hopeing to start denting that list as soon as possibal. But i am sure new things will come up to expand it at some point. That is half the fun with this hobby tho there is always something around the corner!