I did a customs scheme for my Imperial fists, the 226th company who became known as “The Blackhands”. Their captain in a battle broke from 7th legion doctrine and while victory was achieved it was not without cost. During the battle an enemy weapon scorched the left side of his armor rendering the armor on his left arm black. When he faced judgement he was censored and told to leave his arm black as his marking of censor. Out of solidarity with their commander the entire company painted their left arm black as well.

Having veterans painted as crusader colors does sound neat. Thank you for the idea!

Something a lot of people seem to forget is that the minis they buy are THEIR minis. If you want to paint your ultramarines yellow, you can. They're YOUR minis. Paint them however you like.

So I've been mulling around the idea of a Night Lords company dedicated to "infrastructure reduction" (based off one of the chapters referenced in the Word Bearers section). I don't have a company number yet, but the name "Tower of Splintered Bone" feels really thematic and cool. They'd be focused on pure destruction of building, cities, or whatever else when something needed to be brought into compliance. Lots of heavy weapons, vulkite, and possibly tanks. What do you guys think?

The Blackshields lore inspired me to take a look again at the HH. Making your own empire run by rogue Marines is totally up my alley and with better rules than CSM got in 40k, this might just be my jump into HH!

I've been researching the Black Shields, and if I end up picking up the new box, I'll probably paint them as blackshields. I hope we see support for them, as they're not necessarily Loyalists or Traitors.

"There's a huge variation beyond what GW sells." This needs to be written in fire, 10 meters tall, for evwry fan to see.

After a 12 year Break you are about to bring me back into the Hobby. Such a Good Channel!

I have an idea for a unique Emperor‘s Children company, the Rubicund Dexter. They are infamous for the swift and bloody end they brought to the siege of Azathoth station, and to honor the Word Bearers whom they fought alongside in that battle, they use silver ornamentation instead of gold and paint their right gauntlets a dark red colour.

I have a blood angel company that were always a little reluctant to move away from their Ravager ways, when Signus happened they all lost it and the red thirst took over completely, even afterwards they all remained right on the edge of the thirst at all times with a very high rate of legionnaires succumbing to it altogether. Naturally, they searched high and low for a cure and found it in ritual blood drinking. The company went on to form the Blood Drinkers in the 2nd founding

The whole thing about the Horus Heresy is that it the devs treat it like a historical game. That’s what makes it cool in my opinion

Ive had the idea of mulling off of 40k lore after it. Cato Sicarius, meme as he is, is described as a "Knight of Talassar" constantly. Ive had this concept for a theme in the Ultramarines Legion, all Marines hailing from Talassars Noble houses, members of a knightly lodge, a simple Trident shield heraldry being their sigil, riffing on the more noble and martial side of the Ultras, and perhaps the marines in said company admiring the Dark Angels methods of Orders in the Legion. Wanted the force to look like a snapshot from Nuceria battling the World Eaters!

I've gotten back into the hobby after a long time away, wife got me the latest Horus Heresy box, painting Loyalist Death Guard. Loving it so far!

Now who would try replicate the Badab Salamanders scheme? Preposterous! *looks at new beakies* 👀... Well maybe just a squad...

I am so glad about the shout out you gave to the Fighting Tigers of Veda at the beginning.

Been collecting blackshields for precisely this reason. I love converting and blackshields just lend themselves best for it in heresy i feel.

The limitation is what draws me to 30k - it's essentially setting yourself a design brief and finding out what interesting stuff you can do within a set idea.

We have Templar Brethren in the Heresy, so painting Imperial Fists mostly black with splashes of yellow is also a great idea, especially if you want to do some precursor company to the Black Templars!

I have always loved the look of death guard and their ethos, but I really never liked Mortarion much. I wanted to stick to basically ONLY Mk3, cataphractii, and dreads with some minor support stuff, but they all have their right hand still painted red, in defiance of Mortarion's ruling to do away with the old. Super weathered painting with enamels and keep the bas colors simple other than that flash of deep red

I like the idea of a Deathwing heresy army, with bone white parts of armor all over

Great video, my Imperial Fists company is going for a slight different alteration with the right shoulder pads being painted dark blue with 3 star bursts to represent that they were recruited from void nomads brought into compliance during the crusade. You can take liberties with your "chapters" so long as you don't go off the deep end.

All the legions had scouts who could be seen in camouflage... well, hopefully they wouldn't be seen, but point taken! Great video.

I’m currently working on a Warsmith conversion, the basis is the new Black Templars Castellan, a couple of Mk3 bits and I’ve used one of the servo arm backpacks from the havocs kit. He’s a bit beefier than even the Cataphractii but still fits the brutal siege vibe of the Iron Warriors

Love the dreadnought cameo at the end. That's a serious bit of nostalgia.

LOVE your Brotherhood of the Void idea - and the Late Heresy Emperor's Children. Will still totally show my love to the Black Templars when I get my hands on the Heresy box, and paint up some Imperial Fists (now to learn to paint yellow better...) - but I totally get your thoughts on this topic. Great video mate!

Option 7: go nuts with basing. Greating a unique army can come from the basing as well. Swamp, lava, skulls, autumn, snow, it all adds to differentiate.

Well done to Arbitor for an insightful vid, but I suspect there's a seventh option that - with the full release of both Libers now - might have been only covered in passing, or falls outside of sole-faction armies: composition of Detachments and Alliances. Basically - much like mainline 40K - the Legions and their allies fall on the Loyalist/Traitor divide, depending on which primarch declared for the Emperor or the Warmaster. Some factions - like the Mechanicum and Imperial Army - fought on both sides, while some - Daemons or the Custodes/Sisters of Silence - fought purely for one side or the other. This ALSO extends to the Legions and their units; unless you take a unit, character or trait that expressly has 'loyalist' or 'traitor' in its byline, then they could be taken by either side. For example, I intend to form a Legio Dark Angels army as my Primary detachment, focusing on the Deathwing (The Unbroken Vow rite). As my Secondary Detachment will aim to be formed by Loyalist Iron Warriors, I cannot take, say Perturabo or any Rite or Unit with the Traitor sub-type, but I can - when they get released - apply 'Legio Neutral' traits or units or any Iron Warrior-specific of the same with a Loyalist byline. Just some food for thought.

I gotta say: I only recently discovered your channel, but you and your videos have been such a massive inspiration for me getting my love for the hobby back. Thank you!

Absolutely. I wanted to paint some Heresy era Blood Angels after reading Fear to Tread and getting some Mark III marines...and was told there WAS no one "Blood Angels scheme"--it all depended on what company you were painting! Gold trim, brass trim, black trim, scarlet, crimson...it all depends on what you want to use.

I’ve started a Night Lords with Sons of Horus Ally force, and my Night Lords company, the 99th, are a bunch of late recruited gang filth. The last batch from Nostromo before it was destroyed. As such they were greatly hated by Kurz, and the feeling with the 99th’s Officer corps was mutual. So at first chance they buggered off when he wasn’t looking. They still wear the midnight blue, but they embrace the gang cultures they once belonged to. Resulting is in some different detail colorings on pauldron as and such. Hell, even the Company Captain rebirthed his old gang in the ranks of his officers.

Dude this video was awesome! i've only just gotten into painting the models and i love the horus heresy novels. as much as i love the schemes i was worried about it getting old now i know not to worry about that. this was a big help, and now i've got a lot of ideas. thanks man

Great video! Super useful information and does a great job of debunking the idea that Heresy is totally rigid and inflexible without being disrespectful to the fluff and setting.

Woah I was struggling to think about ways to personalize my army now that I want to dive into Horus Heresy 2.0, and this video has really hit the spot. Ye have a new sub brother, keep on the great work!

Order of the Courageous Heart; I made a company veteran squad of Lamenters a while ago using a combination of plastic heresy and older tactical kits, consciously avoiding any Aquila or Crux Terminatus iconography. I always thought they would fit right into a 30K setting quite neatly as some kind of elite unit. Your video has given me renewed pause for thought. Cheers!

I'm currently painting my Sallys in their post unification camo of yellow with the black lines, in that Legions were literally picking up and dusting off ancient technology so quickly in order to resupply and ship back out that they never bothered to change their armor colors.

Thank you! This is EXACTLY what I need. I am jumping into HH with second edition and wanted to go with the Iron Warriors, as I want to include robots and siege vehicles. But the thought of loads of standard Marines, drybrushed silver only doesnt really make me enthusiastic. After watching this, I think I will create a company that has been bogged down in a campaign for decades, and have added ablative armour for better protection from the enemy shells and mortars, and I can then have some fun with plasticard and even fantasy knight bits.....

Great video. Your content is really enjoyable! Keep up your amazing work!

You have got me all sorts of excited to make my heresy marines. I have been sat here for the past three days starting to wonder if I should actually play an existing legion (my 40k chapter is custom) So with seeing this, It has given me wonderful ideas as to what I can do, even within the pre-existing chapters. Thank you.

Your army looks great, Ian. Thanks for sharing this video with us. I have always wanted to paint my Heresy army as the missing Legions, with the 2nd using the thousand Sons rules, while the 11th uses the Raven Guard or World Eater rules.

I plan on using Indominus Pattern Terminator Armor for my Dark Angels so I can use the 40K Terminator kit that has a lot of the heraldry on it. I’m going to put Aggressor shoulder pads to het rid of the Crux Terminatus.

Thanks for this video! Gave me loads of inspiration!

Great video, I've been pondering this recently for my own White Scars! Your Brotherhood of the Void concept is fantastic from a fluff perspective but also a great way of using the troops from the new box set. I think I might go and look at WS successors and see if any take my fancy.

Great vid thank you. I always like creating my own custom army with background, characters and the whole shebang. The Heresy seemed rather limited for that but you did provide good options for it.

I love the fact that AL have so many different colour schemes. Came up with my own, non-metallic one. Basecolour is a teal, glazing rich purple into the shadows and green/turquoise into the brighter areas. I'll add a bunch of freehanded scales, chains and hydras all over and paint their pauldrons, some beaks and some fingers black, highlighting up to a dark teal. Metals will be mostly bright silver with a bit of bronze here and there. I'll start with a heavily converted and individualised squad of 10 which won't conform to the rules but will just be a passion project. I'll see where I'll take it from there.

Great video and very helpful for people who want to add a little homebrew to their Horus Heresy armies.

I love the customization options in 40K. Great video for a beginner like me. I appreciate you clearing up some things that I was not sure about.

Great video! For my HH force I’ve been working on the 47th company of the Night Lords. Originally a mechanized company it suffered many losses during the Thramas crusade and so was forced to absorb units from other depleted companies to maintain fighting strength. What I hope this cobbling together of different units allows for me to maintain that core of veteran armored vehicles as well as have the ability field a variety of other specialized units that weren’t part of the company originally. Still need to decide on a name, but thanks for the inspiration!

I was going to start with 2 legions, one each for loyalist and traitor, but after deciding I want to kitbash a Legion of the Damned force for loyalists the most appropriate rules look to be Alpharius led Alpha Legion ( I converted a master of possesion to represent him ). It will probably get an Salamanders allied detachment to add to the flaming theme. The traitor legion is going to be later Emperor's Children with skintone pink as well as the metallic purple.

Your videos are always excellent, as an obscure sub-faction fan I must say I had to pick my Jaw off the floor when you mentioned the Marauders (also the art for the alternate MK VI color scheme!) and The Purge back to back!

An excellent video! While a lot of us are always ready to jump in and switch things around, it's important to remind everyone that it's perfectly ok to do so :)

Great Ideas, thank you Ian!

for my re-entry into HH and LI, this vid was a great refreshener ! Btw : I really like your channel but somehow I had never subbed. Now I did ! Great work.

Lovely work Ian; some great ideas.

I've been playing around with the idea of how to incorporate the Native American themed elements of the OG Dark Angels back in the day into a more modern force, so I've settled on a pair of companies that served in the Rangdan Xenocides alongside the Space Wolves and Luna Wolves. Most of their recruitment came from a series of Tribal Worlds and with the ferocity of the fighting coupled with the infuence of their fellow legions they fell back on their traditional honorifics and ceremonies. One company is a massed infantry of the stormwing with a core of 20 man tac squads and tac support squads with Iroquois markings and decoration on their armour, and the other a Ravenwing section of jetbikes and speeders with Sioux inspired markings. The marks are in various Red, White, Bone, Yellow and Green colours on both the faces and armour of the marines, resembling the warpaint and textiles of the tribes. Hopefully this adds that extra colour and vibrance that I think can sometimes be lacking from the Dark Angels. I'm sticking away from any feathers or those sorts of additions aside from maybe the wings on the back of the jetbikes like in 40k. Any thoughts or ideas?

I've been toying with doing a Destroyer Ultramarines army. I think this video has pretty much cemented that as I already got a decent of UM bits on hand to make it different than all MKVI Marines. I dig that paint scheme and the idea of using rad weapons.

Great video! I'm planning on doing Emperor's Children, so the colour scheme part was especially useful! The recent addition of the Sunkiller heavy weapons squads in v. 1.0 a while back really got my attention; maybe my army will be some sort of siege company that fought alongside the Iron Warriors (and hence will have parts of their armour be silver and have more heavy support squads and siege equipment)...

My favorite example for customization is the Serrated Sun's, aka Argel Tals company. Sure Word Bearers had gray and gold I believe as the colour scheme, but the Serrated Sun's had the trademark crimson and silver that would eventually spread too the entire legion!

Brilliant vid, as always

I really enjoyed this video, I genuinely thought there wasn't much wiggle room in HH and more content like this that shows variety is what I'm out for !

I've been working on scouring era Sons of Horus. Mostly heresy plastics with new chaos legs as a base and then dragging anything and everything from the bits box. Might not be everyone's cup of tea, but I like it.

I was thinking about a essentially "penal company " of night lords who's hands are all sinners red to be called the death marked. They'd essentially be used as frontline troops usually given to other legions, in this case the iron warriors to be used as first wave troops destined to die. Having to use a lot of mixes armour due to their damned existence as no one wants to resupply dead men, they'd look more hodgepodge than normal night lords

Having never really given nurgle much thought, I really got into modelling Death Guard with the 8th ed boxes ( I now have approx 3k points of DG complete, and a non-DG nurgle warband in progress), and I've really liked the crusade -era Dusk Raiders colour scheme since I first saw it, so I think a variation of that will be the way I'll go, when I can afford to get into HH.

Thanks for the video.

You made the HH interesting to me for the first time since 86'

Man this was so helpful to see, and inspirational with regards to army design. The 30k reddit is way too, stuck in a box about this topic. Honestly I'm looking for an excuse to use some winter camo patterns/masks that I've used on historical tanks in the past. My plan is to wait another few months to see what kits are coming in plastic, and see how the local community takes to the game system. Right now we're all hyped on AoS.

I was thinking of doing my thousand sons in mostly bone, with gold and red metallic highlights. After seeing the artwork of what was basically my idea for the colour scheme, I'm now pretty tempted to do it

Great video!

Is that a Space Crusade dreadnought in your Word Bearers army???

12:59 Dreadnaught! Bring up the Missile Launch... aarrgghh!

I rewatch this video every few months

Great advice, really inspiring 👍

The main reason I love guard so much, as every planet is going to have some kind of military, each with different uniforms, weapons, vehicles and tactics, leaving basically endless scope for unique armies, in both 40k and heresy

For me, the golden rule is have fun but not at the expense of other people. I enjoy the pseudo-historical aspect of the Heresy. However, a few good friends of mine are exploring other aspects of the Heresy. One of them is working on a splinter faction of the Iron Hands and has leaned into their alliances with the Mechanicum to recoup their losses after Istvaan V, unaware of the civil war on Mars. The "Knights of Mars" are the result. Another friend has done an Ultramarine chapter, codenamed "Rainbow Warriors". It was a way for him to use his Rogue Trader 40k project as the basis of his 30k one. And the best thing is that it all fits. It all fits. I think that the only real red line I have is Primaris gear in the Heresy. Even then, I recognize that there could be a fluffy and plausible reason for Primaris Marines turning up in the Heresy.

I've been a fan of Warhammer for a while through books and video games and have always chickened out on diving into the Hobby side of it. But I'm starting to get the urge to buy the new Heresy box so I can do a Loyalist Company of one of the Traitor Legions (or vis versa).

Hey I like painting the box art! (Nice vid!)

I've been painting all of the legions over the last 8 months or so on the side, partially to challenge myself and partially because I wanna test out schemes if I take the plunge into the Heresy. Did a Luna Wolf to signify all legionaries that had different loyalties from their primarchs and am doing an Ashen Claw for all those that went renegade to do their own thing. Gotta say that I love the Ashen Claws dark grey and red scheme. If I do take the plunge then I will probably go with Sons of Horus or Ashen Claws depending. It's amazing just how much flexibility there is even in Heresy.

5:29 I literally just started painting my salamanders for Legions Imperialis in the flame camo scheme 😂

Yeah, this isn’t historical wargaming, but on the other hand - there is some fun to be had with trying to be as „historical“ as possible, even in a fantastic scenario. i recently painted up a historical army and had great fun researching Hospitaller Knight liveries by decade - and I can see doing that with a heresy army, because the background in the FW „black books“ is surprisingly deep. The key is not being dogmatic about it, but creative , and your video pretty much demonstrates the perfect mindset for this, because you show how very individual designs can happily fit into the known lore.

Thanks Ian

You’ve given me a great idea for my word bearers in painting up some mark 3 grey veterans & mark 4 & 6 in more of the later Hersey red, black & silver to give my legion more flavour. Could even do a campaign of argel tal starting as a loyalist praetor before succumbing to the dark gods by lorgars wishes 😊

Although this video is more 30k than 40k, the alternate color scheme tip did help a lot! I'm making a homebrew chapter for my little brother, and its such a fun way of differentiating the Primaris and Firstborn marines in his Chapter.

I love the lore of HH but I was reluctant to play the game as I thought there was less room for creativity than in 40K. Now you got me convinced, I may join the hype ;)

One idea I've been thinking of, but will probably be sat on the back burner until I have more cash available, is an Iron Hands army, where they only have matching shoulders and left hands. Other than that, they're wearing mixed armour marks and colours. The backstory being that they're Istvaan V survivors, wearing the armour they had to scavenge together to survive the Drop Site Massacre and keeping it as a warning o their enemies that they've withstood the worst the traitors could throw at them and survived.

Dawn Raiders, yay! Gotta love them.

This was a cool video. I'm not into Heresy other than the novels for the most part (too many marines, not enough Xenos) but your videos are gradually winning me over to the hobby side of it. GW should be paying you commission :D

Really great ideas for giving people more options on paint schemes. Speaking of, back in 2nd edition the Ultramarines used to denote specific companies via shoulder trim color. At least one company was magenta/purple(5th company maybe?), and I always thought that would make for a cool looking army.

I know im late but id like to say that this really inspired me for my own HH company, I decided to make their power pack white to show their allegiance purity and their allegiance to the Emperor, since the co,our white is also associated with angels, I decided to make it also like a nod to their angelic n primarch Sanguinius

I like the look and overall color scheme of 30k DA to their 40k. Also, started my dive into wh. With a buddy comparing Horus to my childhood hero, Sephiroth. So, I started in with DAs. I wanted to incorporate my two favorites into one, creating a DA unit called, The One Winged Angels. Black armored, marines with Silver pauldrons, and the iconography of the DA only showing one wing, instead of two. A melee primart focused unit. Loyalist, but also wanted to tie them into 40k, by saying several were suck up by accident and misplaced by Caliban's world shattering warp storm.

I went with an Istvaan III loyalist force, so made up of EC, WEs, DG and Sons. Looks nice together and really shows the chaos of the setting. However, turning them unique even that early, WEs right arms are all coated in blood to rep the Warhounds, EC squads are all from Demeters, Tarvitz and Lucius company's. My CC are made up of WEs and Sons, tactical and some support are EC and a few DG heavy support squads make the rest. Looks unique (even though I'm just mixing and tweaking standard patterns) is thematic and fluffy as i can make it. Also, love fielding my RT Guard with them 😁

I've been planning an Imperial Fists army ever since I saw the Fafnir Rann model (I'm still waiting for mine to show up, lol), but after I am finished with them, I'm tempted to collect a traitor force to go up against them. For whatever reason, I'm really tempted to paint some Sons of Horus minis in the old Luna Wolves colour scheme; it's a beautiful scheme, and it feels slight more unique and special (My only problem would be having to take all the SoH iconography off the forge world models XD)

"Every company has reconnaissance squads or seeker squads who're far more likely to be seen in [camo]. " Not if the camo is any good, they're not 😂

I am doing late war word bearers using mostly modern CSM models but I've swapped some back packs out for stuff from various other mark sets and I plan to do the same with a few helmets. But the current CSM kit works pretty good for them.

I wish I could get the black books still, I'm just getting into the heresy and they seem like such a wealth of information

right now my plan is to play Imperial Fists, starting with the big box set, even though I dont really want MK 6 for my Fists. My plan to solve that is to get plastic card and add extra panels to make the armor more beefy and less sleek, as well as using helms and (at least the right) shoulder pad from probably MK3 upgrade bits. If it wouldn't almost double the cost, I'd get the true-scale armor (torso and legs) from Tortuga, but that's a bit pricy.

Love your 10th company of the unspeaking chapter I'm actually going to be running a black shield Force containing a lot of thunder warrior parts essentially they've been so under supply that they've had to rely on Old relics or have just had to strip down their equipment to bare Bones.

I've not played 40k in about 20 years, but the new edition of Heresy on the horizon is slowly drawing me in. My current plan for when I inevitably cave is to build a loyalist Luna Wolves force in various stages of changing their heraldry back from Sons of Horus. Mismatched armour panels, hastily painted over iconography and some obvious divergent thoughts on how to show their true loyalty. But then Black Shields and Shattered Legions are tempting too...

I'm thinking of making a mechanized white scars infantry unit, need to read myself a bit more into the book to fill in the gaps :)

Painting my Emp. Children in white with purple and gold trim, I seem to recall there was a reference to this in the Epic Space Marine rules, where 2 legions clashed and it was viewed from far away, so it looked like the 2 colours merged and destroyed each other. The ECs were were white, can't recall the other colour or legion. Anyway, white just seems a great colour for a legion obsessed with perfection.

I ended up painting my box as Salamanders and some squads are standard green with some flames. My veterans are mostly black with flames. Remembering Istvaan V and the loss of their Primarch (so they thought). It looks VERY Salamanders but I liked the story I had made up for my company

Come to think of it, this also could also be useful for those who play modern 40 K as well. It could provide backstory for year chaos space marine, warband or loyalist, space, marine chapter.