[Hunter909]

I am considering making a new pre heresy space maine army but i am not sure what legion i should base it on.

It would be very helpful if you guys could come up with some suggestions for:
1. What Legion
2. What units should form the base? (or army lists if you feel so inclined, it would be most helpful)
3. What colour scheme (as i don't have a copy of all)
4. Any good conversion ideas?

 

[hippypancake]

I saw a killer pre-heresy Luna Wolves army it had the Mournival as it's command squad and everything so I must say that would be a great legion to play

the units that form their base imho would be just normal tact marines

Colour scheme would be White with black trim(?)
here is a pic from Lex

Conversions would be fun, the roman-esque red mane, and conversions of the Mournival maybe? you might be able to take the abaddon model and model him back to the emperor's light?

 

[Hunter909]

lua wolves would be cool, i originally got the idea from a pre heresy emporers children army show on the GW site
pictures below

 

[space cowboy]

My opinion on the Pre-Heresy stuff is that you should do a Legion that changed armor color scheme after the Heresy. I know that there is so much more to Pre-Heresy modeling and painting, but there isn't tons of difference between Pre-Heresy Ultramarines (for instance) and modern Ultramarines; maybe different looking power armor and definitely different looking terminator armor. I just don't think it has the same impact as seeing that Pre-Heresy color scheme on the miniatures.

That being said, I would say the first thing to do is pitch the armies that didn't change schemes. You can always go with a traitor legion that didn't change schemes, as just the completely different look with the same color scheme can still give the 'Hey, neat!' effect, but I am not one to go only part of the way on a project like this. This leaves, I believe:

Dark Angels
Emperor's Children
World Eaters
Death Guard
Thousand Sons
Luna Wolves/Sons of Horus
Word Bearers

Now, from here you would want to decide what codex you would want to use to represent the tactics and organizational structure for the Legion you want to play. My suggestions are as follows:

Codex: Dark Angels
Dark Angels
Codex: Space Marines
Emperor's Children
Death Guard
Luna Wolves/Sons of Horus
Codex: Blood Angels
World Eaters
Codex: Black Templars
Word Bearers

I specifically didn't assign the Thousand Sons as I don't feel there is a codex that would allow you to truly represent the usage of psychic talents by those throughout the legion, so you could kind of use whatever. If you want to be really clever, you could use Codex: Eldar. Even though the armor saves wouldn't be comparable to those of the standard space marine for the standard foot troop, and the weapons are different, the book really kind of covers everything. The aspect warriors could easily represent the different squad types, while Exarchs can represent the low-level psykers that would be coming up through the various temples, with the Exarch powers representing the psychic powers they would utilize in combat. Warlocks would be the mid-level psykers with Farseers being the temple masters. Wraithlords and Wraithguard could represent the war machines that were psychically guided in the Thousand Sons novel, and the legions (not just the Thousand Sons) even employed jet bikes during the Crusade. The only thing that stinks is the tanks don't match up all that well.

My personal favorite choices for Pre-Heresy projects are Thousand Sons (for creative army composition options), Word Bearers (for uniqueness; they seem to be the least done in these types of projects), or World Eaters (I happen to think the Blue and White color scheme is really sharp.)

As far as finding the color scheme is concerned, you can just go to http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/First_founding and click on the link for each legion to see its pre-heresy scheme.

The only real conversion ideas I have involve terminators. http://itkovian.blogspot.com/2009/08/pre-heresy-terminator-shoulder-pad.html has templates for Pre-Heresy terminator shoulder pads for use with a tutorial linked at the start of the blog post. My opinion is that Chaos Terminators make the best base for Pre-Heresy terminators as long as the chaos iconography and spiky bits are filed off of the armor and weapons.

 

[shaantitus]

There is some fine advice there. It a shame that the tsons are so difficult to find a codex for. The thing is the chaos codex is probably the best. Sorcerer hq's and a combination of rubrics and mot marines. Havocs with mot and model them with spell effects to stand in for missile launchers or other heavy weapons.

 

[Hunter909]

by the way, does anyone know what legion is on the front of false gods, i know it should be luna wolves but they seem to be the wrong colour

 

[gen.ahab]

Death Guard

 

[Katie Drake]

Not tons that I can say that hasn't already been said, but I would like to point out that there are a lot of weapons/units available in the current Codecies that weren't available before or during the Heresy.

If I decided to do a pre-Heresy army I'd stay away from the following:

Predators with twin-linked lascannon turrets (not invented until well after the Heresy by the Space Wolves)
Attack Bikes
Land Raider Crusaders or Redeemers
Sternguard (as at least two of the special ammunition types they have access to weren't invented until post-Heresy)
Librarians (this sort of depends if your army is supposed to represent one pre- or post-Council of Nikea)
Dreadnoughts with plasma cannons (according to some sources they had man-portable ones, but that's all)
Razorbacks

I'm sure I'm missing a number of things but this is what I could come up with off the top of my head.

 

[yanlou]

by the way, does anyone know what legion is on the front of false gods, i know it should be luna wolves but they seem to be the wrong colour

Death Guard

na, it is luna wolves on false gods front cover, gen.ahab your getting mixed up with galaxy inflames front cover which is death guard,

anyway, id say go for pre-heresy word bearers, not seen any about and the colour scheme should be fairly easy, granite grey, or you could do them just as the heresy is starting when the changed to the red and silver,
if not word bearers then luna wolves or emperors children.

 

[hungryugolino]

Go for Alpha Legion. They're awesome.

 

[Hunter909]

i do like the alpha legion, they've been a favourite of mine for a while, particularly the story in the Chaos Marine codex how they brought down that Loyalist chapter. Also the Horus Heresy book "Legion" gives a great insight to them pre-heresy. I might go with an army of them but firstly, because of the secretiveness, should i used DA veterans, with the robes, to accentuate this.

 

[space cowboy]

i do like the alpha legion, they've been a favourite of mine for a while, particularly the story in the Chaos Marine codex how they brought down that Loyalist chapter. Also the Horus Heresy book "Legion" gives a great insight to them pre-heresy. I might go with an army of them but firstly, because of the secretiveness, should i used DA veterans, with the robes, to accentuate this.

I would say maybe for veterans or however you are representing the operatives, but they still fought with some measure of conventional tactics in squads during more conventional battles.

If you are using the regular Space Marine codex to represent them, I would try to figure out how to model the Geno Chilliad from Legion in place of normal scouts. Also I would try to make all of your dudes in power armor look as much like each other as possible, and use the same head for anyone without a helmet if you can as well.