Table Ready: Iron Hands Morlocks

From Kit-bashing to Traitor-Smashing

Once upon a time, in what is clearly a fuckin fairyland, a grumpy old bald man set out to build himself an Iron Hands ally detachment to accompany his Ultramarines army. Just an ally. 

The original goal was to buy a few of the unique units that the 10th Legion gets to bring to bear against the traitorous forces of the Warmaster. That was during the dark ages of the Horus Heresy wargame. Intentions shifted between the release of the 2nd edition of Heresy and the  update of the Shattered Legion rules. 

Then I woke up. 

From Small Beginnings

As I said, I originally planned as an Ally Detachment, you know, a convenient way for my brain to justify buying a few bespoke units and painting up a few squads of a Legion that I thought was neat. That fell apart, much like my plan for the Raven Guard, but, the key difference being that I had already built and painted some of the Iron 10th. 

With completed models already occupying space in my collection, what was I to do? Expand the army, of course. I chatted up Connor to get an idea of what I could do to make this collection unique from my Ultramarine and Word Bearer Heresy armies. Like always, he had ideas. Too many and rather dangerous for my bank account. Every time I see him, he plants another disastrously wonderful idea in my head which germinates, blooms and blows up my hobby space. I fuckin love it. Anyway…

The first thing he mentioned was Morlocks, a unique Terminator unit available only to the Iron hands, a squad that doesn’t have official models. The second thing he brought up was the fact that he had already built some. Then he mentioned that he didn’t need them anymore. So, yeah, now I have kitbashed Morlocks crafted by a buddy. A whole bunch, to be precise, or precisely vague.

From Bits to Badass

The Morlocks are pretty much the best warriors of the Iron Hands Legion. Veteran warriors all of them, they protected Ferrus Manus, although, I guess nothing could protect him from the force of his anger. 

One of the benefits of the Heresy game over the more mainstream 40k is that there are genuine opportunities for kitbashing models and even entire units. The units presented in the digital files are just as legal to use in games, but don’t have a specific model kit. Some are variants, like adding jet packs onto standard models, but others are more complex. Case in point, Morlock Terminators. 

Thanks to the Exemplary Battles pdfs published by the GW 30k team, we’ve gotten a number of interesting missions, scenarios, and units to flush out more of our favorite armies in the Horus Hersey. There’s been a lot of cool units but the ones that grabbed my attention most were the Iron hands Morlocks, the pride of the Iron Tenth and the honor guard for our favorite hot head Ferrus Manus. In lore the Morlocks (and clan Avernii as a whole) were the experienced veteran core of the Xth legion, and most of them were cut down during the Drop Site Massacre so they don’t come up often after that. There were some survivors however (and they even have some additional rules to reflect that) which means they’d need rules and a suitable kitbash to match the brutal approach to warfare taken by the Iron Hands.

Unpopular opinion I know, but I’m not the biggest fan of the standard cataphractii heads for a legion conversion, as I don’t think it fully encapsulates the personality of the legion in question. So with a sharp knife, some patience, and a little bit of blood sacrifice I carved both the plastic cataphractii torso and Iron Hands MK3 helmets to play nicely. I did opt to use both the legs and axes from the Gorgon Terminator kits because, let’s be honest, they’re fantastic sculpts that hold up and help give the models more of the Xth feel (though it did need a little putty at the waist so not all the terminators were hunched over barreling forward). Volkite chargers were from the plastic tartaros kit, where as the grav weapons came from the old Badab boarding upgrade set (really showing our hobby age here). The Volkite culverin took a lot of cutting and sanding but I managed to splice it onto a plastic cataphractii heavy flamer arm (and kept the hand to boot)

– Connor

After exchanging a few pieces of paper with pictures of presidents, I found myself with a small collection of handmade Morlock Terminators. While it wasn’t a lot of miniatures, it was far more than I needed for one squad. After divvying up the minis, I found myself with many options. 

The second complete squad would be armed with Volkite weapons. All of them could be equipped with Volkite Chargers. The Augmentor, which is the fancy title for their sergeant model, can also be equipped with a Volkite Culverin, a two handed heavy Volkite weapon most commonly carried in two hands by an infantry unit. Not by this guy, though.

So, it is all Connor’s fault, and I can’t wait for his bad influence to rain hell down on my free time and hobby budget again. I ended up with two complete painted Morlock squads, with a Standard bearer option and three choices for unit leaders (different guns but all armed with a chainfist). With these specialist terminators complete, I find myself nearly done with a Zone Mortalis force, the first step in my Iron Hands plan. Visit again soon to see more 10th Legion as the Zone Mortalis list gets completed and then expanded on.