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The Fists Exemplar


Halandaar

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Fair Warning - There will be a few spoilers from the Beast Arises series within this post/topic which I am disinclined to hide because they inform a lot of what I'll be talking about, and in any case, it's been out for years; read it!

With the disclaimer out of the way, let's talk Fists Exemplar! I've been pondering about doing a force of them ever since reading the books. There's enough basic information provided that I don't need to do all the work myself, but there's plenty that's ill-defined which mean I can be creative in some areas too. I started off with the colour scheme; the armour is described as being unpainted ceramite, which I figure is a matte grey. It'd also be pretty dull to paint, so I made some slight changes in the form of some yellow trim (and fists!). This is the look I'm envisioning for the basic Marines:

gallery_84244_15044_46435.jpg

Next question is the composition of the army itself. I had these thoughts:

  • Novel-true Option - Only exist in the 1500 or so years between the second founding and the War of the Beast, so no Primaris (or anything else considered to be "new" or rediscovered tech)
  • Ultima Founding Option - Be made up purely of Primaris and exist in the timeline of the Dark Imperium. We know there are entire Ultima-founding chapters, and I'm pretty sure I read that some once-destroyed chapters have been resurrected in this form. While the ultimate fate of the Fists Exemplar is lost to time after being buried by Maximus Thane, it's possible that Guilliman would remember them personally from the second founding (especially as Oriax Dontallion was a huge fan of the Codex Astartes) and choose to gift their heraldry to a new chapter.
  • Heresy Option - A renegade force led by Zerberyn, the 1st Captain who defected (presumably with at least a few of his troops) after fighting alongside the Iron Warriors.
  • Rule of Cool Option - Do whatever, use whatever.

Now I'm a big fan of dual-purpose armies, and the prospect of something that could be played as a loyalist Imperial Fists successor and a renegade army using the Iron Warriors rules appeals to me a lot, especially as there is a natural overlap in terms of the chapter/legion rules, and the Grey/Yellow/Black colour scheme also lends itself well to that usage. It potentially also offers the opportunity to build some unique looking units for use in one format or the other, like loyalist-styled Berserkers for use with the Chaos rules, or "Mutilators" which function like Aggressors in the loyalist rules.

I'd be interested to hear any thoughts/feedback at this stage.

Cheers!

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Go Ultima Founding. Its a great excuse to bring back chapters.

I second that. You can justify the Chapter's diversity (use normal Marines) by claiming Guilliman asked the Imperial Fists to second some officers and drill instructors to what would otherwise be an all-Primaris Chapter, to teach the Fists Exemplar to honor Dorn in deed (battle) as well as in word.

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Go Ultima Founding. Its a great excuse to bring back chapters.

I second that. You can justify the Chapter's diversity (use normal Marines) by claiming Guilliman asked the Imperial Fists to second some officers and drill instructors to what would otherwise be an all-Primaris Chapter, to teach the Fists Exemplar to honor Dorn in deed (battle) as well as in word.

I'm also in agreement on this.

 

 

Small quip: Unpainted ceramite is metallic (see: Grey Knights).

 

Cool idea! I think Ultima Founding would be great to bring them back. :smile.:

Grey Knights are stated to have unpainted and POLISHED ceramite. It's stated that before they changed their colours, the Death Guard (Dusk Raiders) and Word Bearers (Imperial Heralds) armour was unpainted Ceramite:

 

Dusk_Raiders_Marine.jpg

http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/mediawiki/images/1/1a/WBPreHeresy.jpg

 

Looks very grey to me :wink:

 

And the Unification War Era Imperial Fists were shown to have the dark slate-grey as well. And it's stated that all Unification Era Legions had unpainted ceramite originally, with some variation here and there.

http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/mediawiki/images/5/57/IF_VII_Legion_Vet.jpg

 

So, realistically, the Fists Exemplar should have armour like that VII Legionary.

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If you give the Fists Exemplar unpainted ceramite, you'll need a way to distinguish them from the Grey Knights.

 

It's a matter of pride. No son of Dorn would be happy if someone mistakes him for some unknown Primarch's get.

 

Maybe paint both arms yellow, and/or use a darker shade of gray on the armor?

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If you give the Fists Exemplar unpainted ceramite, you'll need a way to distinguish them from the Grey Knights.

Chapter badges and standard Adeptus Astartes equipment (vice the specialized equipment of the Grey Knights) should be sufficient.
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Grey Knights shouldn't be silver, the name is a give away. The 'eavy metal team just paints them silver because it looks cool.

 

Didn't the Death Guard also sport unpainted ceramite? Couldn't the material be a generic term that could be processed by STC using locally sourced elements and, in turn, end up with a different color depending on said resources?

The pre-Heresy Death Guard were always depicted as grey before Forge World brought out the first black book. The Death Guard codex actually describes the pre-nurgle scheme as 'gleaming white and grey' and the art shows a mark III marine with a mix of grey, white, green and gold with the white being the mark III plates while the mark II under armour is grey.

 

So the white of the Forge World Death Guard is probably paint or due to different grades of ceramite being used for different parts of the armour.

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I think maybe something like the heresy era fist you posted could be great, with the yellow right hand. The Dusk Raiders show that that may have been a common honorific, and it looks pretty cool to boot, with other yellow sprinkled in to taste. I do like the idea of an Ultima Founding chapter, as I can imagine a lot of extinct chapters would have been resurrected. You can explain non Primaris Marines as either attached advisors or just by them making both types to take advantage of equipment they were gifted at their Founding.
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I would vote for this scheme because I think it's really cool looking. Also, it's what I used for my Primaris IF. :)

 

And the Unification War Era Imperial Fists were shown to have the dark slate-grey as well. And it's stated that all Unification Era Legions had unpainted ceramite originally, with some variation here and there.

http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/mediawiki/images/5/57/IF_VII_Legion_Vet.jpg

 

So, realistically, the Fists Exemplar should have armour like that VII Legionary.

 

 

My fists: http://www.bolterandchainsword.com/topic/336095-not-yer-daddys-imperial-fists-hellblasters-071817/?p=4807243

 

My two yen.

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  • Ultima Founding Option - Be made up purely of Primaris and exist in the timeline of the Dark Imperium. We know there are entire Ultima-founding chapters, and I'm pretty sure I read that some once-destroyed chapters have been resurrected in this form. While the ultimate fate of the Fists Exemplar is lost to time after being buried by Maximus Thane, it's possible that Guilliman would remember them personally from the second founding (especially as Oriax Dontallion was a huge fan of the Codex Astartes) and choose to gift their heraldry to a new chapter.

 

Fluff-wise, Guilliman will remember them and there won't be any knowledge, on his part or anyone else's, as to why they're gone from Imperial records. His resurrection of them in honor as Primaris seems only natural.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Thanks all for the input, some good thoughts and ideas!

Go Ultima Founding. Its a great excuse to bring back chapters.

I second that. You can justify the Chapter's diversity (use normal Marines) by claiming Guilliman asked the Imperial Fists to second some officers and drill instructors to what would otherwise be an all-Primaris Chapter, to teach the Fists Exemplar to honor Dorn in deed (battle) as well as in word.

Cool idea! I think Ultima Founding would be great to bring them back. :smile.:

I'm also in agreement on this.

I do like the idea of an Ultima Founding chapter, as I can imagine a lot of extinct chapters would have been resurrected. You can explain non Primaris Marines as either attached advisors or just by them making both types to take advantage of equipment they were gifted at their Founding.

Fluff-wise, Guilliman will remember them and there won't be any knowledge, on his part or anyone else's, as to why they're gone from Imperial records. His resurrection of them in honor as Primaris seems only natural.

Well, looks like there is a consensus here! I've opted to go for an Ultima-founding, primarily Primaris Chapter with a small cadre of Oldmarines seconded from somewhere (probably the Crimson Fists) to function as an advisory/training group.

For now, I'll represent this by only including Oldmarines in the HQ and Elite slots of the army; all other battlefield roles will be fulfilled by Primaris troops. Whether this ends up actually being decent as an army on the tabletop doesn't really worry me too much, it just has to be cool.

Thinking about the colour scheme, this image:

http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/mediawiki/images/5/57/IF_VII_Legion_Vet.jpg

was actually what I had in mind when I was initially coming up with my colour scheme ideas. It has that unpainted armour look, but is still very obviously a son of Dorn. That said, after a couple of attempts at painting up test models, the slate grey wasn't really working out for me, so I opted to go with a more metallic look (helped in no small part by how good Honda's Primaris Fists look!)

So this is what I ended up with after throwing a few colours down on a spare MKIV marine:

med_gallery_84244_15044_30761.jpg

Pretty happy with how it looks, and this is going to form the basis of the scheme for the various units. Thanks everybody for the input and suggestions so far!

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