Building a Better Iron Warrior with Third Party Bits!

Old School here with more of my "Building a Better Chaos Space Marine series" and while I was just going to do an undivided post, I am coming across more and more great stuff every day and we will actually be looking at building a better Iron Warrior today and we will do so looking at 3rd party bits. I would also like to say, these kits would be great for building pretty much any mech aligned Marine Legion, whether it be Iron Hands or their successors or even some of the Salamanders. Anyway, let's take a look at a post filled with bionic bits!

First up is a set of bionic heads from Puppetswar. While I do like Puppetswar most of the time, this kit is a little campy to me. I see Robocop, a couple Arnold's from Terminator and I think even Trapjaw from He-Man in these bits. While I love some campy stuff, it isn't screaming Iron Warriors to me.

Next up are these beautiful half-helms from Anvil Industries. Holy crap, where have these been my whole life. Not only would these work for my Pre-Heresy Iron Wariors, but they would look great with the Post Heresy guys too! I like the fact that one is still a closed helmet and there are some little details like scars and bionics to break up the kit. This is probably my favorite set of heads!

We have seen hem once and now we will see them again. These heads from Chapterhouse Studios look great and would easily fit the tough, siege warfare style of the Iron Warriors.

Next up are the Steam Knight Heads from Max Mini again, which I think could work just fine for Iron Warriors.

Here is here we start to get into some of the coolest stuff: Bionic limbs. There are plenty of great bionics from the various companies out there! This first groups is from Anvil Industries and they are clearly for guys armed with bolters and special weapons. I think they look great. The extra cables help them stand out from their competitors as well.



Kromlech has some great arms that are meant or orks but could easily work to represent anything from a chainsword to a powerfist!

Puppetswar has a great set that includes a set of legs, two separate legs, a torso, a power fist, a pair of bolter style arms, a chainsword arm and a power sword arm and they all look great. I have handled these bits before and they are very detailed and rival the quality of the Kromlech bits I have experience with.

This kit here is one I ordered from Maxmini back when you could still buy Kromlech stuff there and I have to say that I wasn't 100% satisfied with it. For the most part the bits were passable, but the legs were a little short with tiny feet, both heads look goofy, being a little too cylindrical, one of the arms was perfect and the other is twisted into a bizarre pose that really doesn't look good on the model at all. Finally, the little clamp hands are ... well, too small. of all the bionic kits this is my least recommended based on experience.

Let's go back to Anvil Industries since they seem to really have it together when it comes to Bionics. This kit is clearly the kit for the powerfist champion. While that is no longer the optimal choice in many cases, it still looks great and could be a good consideration if you o that route.

Also from Anvil are these arms, which appear to be a more posable and muti-functional version of the arms we looked at from them earlier. The arms come in parts so they are more posable, which is very appealing!

That's not all, Anvil also makes a Bionic Torso! The torso comes looking as though you are seeing the bionics through destroyed armor, which is really awesome! The cabling and ribs and all look perfect to me and seeing them with the bits here makes me see the potential for what I could do with an Iron Warrior with this bit. This is going on my X-Mas list.

This is another kit that I have. The Maxmini Mech Weapons set is pretty sweet. The cog toothed weapons look great and with both Axes and Swords being very useful at the moment, I m glad my iron Warriors have these in the bits box.

Finally, no Iron Warrior army is truly complete without Mechatendrils and plenty of sweet hoses and cables. There is no better way to get any of those than to make them yourself with the tentacle maker from Green Stuff Industries. Take a look at the examples here.

Overall, I think there are a lot of great options, but I really like the heads, torso and arms from Anvil Industries, the Max Mini weapons and the multi-pack from Puppets war. I think the market is flooded with great ways to make Iron Warriors and it doesn't surprise me because they are one of the coolest legions in the Chaos Marines fluff.

Let's hear what you think about these bits and drop some links to places if you have more or better suggestions for Iron Warriors.