Many many… many moons ago I started my war gaming hobby by buying Warhammer 40k third edition with my pal Paul. The starter set came with Space Marines and Dark Eldar. He took the punt space elves whilst I took humans best hope, the superhuman space marines. We stopped and when we returned to the plastic crack scene we hit Warhammer Fantasy. As that system changes to AOS we merged into other games. I vowed I’d never play a big battle game again yet here I am building up an Iron Hands list once again.

What changed? Well first Paul the pointy eared puppet got back into 40k, and then Games Workshop pushes out some amazing new Space Marine models, in particular the Invictor Tactical Warsuit which I fell in love with as soon as it popped up on my screen. That with a new powerful book was all I needed and so the army began.

The Iron Hands then got its own codes and made them one of the most powerful armies you can play. This was great and bad at the same time. Great in the sense that I’d be playing with a strong rule set but bad in the fact that many would jump on the Iron Hands bandwagon, an army very few played in the past.

My plans are not to net list. The standard Iron Hands build seems to be a big block sat being buffed in the back lines. To me an army that doesn’t move isn’t fun. I’m going back to my 40k routes and focusing on what I loved about the army and fitting in kids of dreadnoughts…. so far this includes an Invictor Warsuit, ironclad, venerable and two Redemptor dreadnoughts. This bundled with marines, a Stormtalon gunship and some powerful HQ choices make an army that can move and shoot splitting it up into three groups.

Time will tell if this army will work but I know I’ll have fun playing with it… and that’s all that matters.