Blog Wars 7 army painting countdown

Hi folks,

It's nearly that time of the (half) year again when Blog wars is upon us. It wasn't until a month ago whether or not I knew that exam results would allow me to attend but as soon as I got the green light I knew what I would be taking - Iron Hands.

My reasoning behind this was as follows. I took Eldar to the last Blog Wars partly because I wanted to try something different and partly because I wanted to paint some unique and lovely models rather than more power armour. This time around, however, I have a very different perspective in that between exams and commission work I have left myself very little time to get an army up to scratch. The fact that the Iron Hands are one of my most complete Space Marine armies and that black can be painted relatively fast made them a no brainer. I'd rather have taken Whitescars or Black Templars, but given the time frame there was no was that was going to happen. 

So I put together an army list that would be fluffy and would rely heavily on models I had already complete while allowing me to paint up some new ones. Here's what I'm taking:

Now, there's a slight issue with Blog Wars in that it requires each army to take a special character. The obvious problem here being that while Games Workshop finally ordained to give Iron Hands some love this edition, they still neglected to give them a special character. Not even in the Raukaan supplement! FM would be displeased. After speaking with Alex the TO it was decided that rather than having to demote Iron Hands to allies and take a primary with an SC or having yet another coteaz on the field, it would be fine to make an exception in this case and take a normal character who was sufficiently expensive and fluffily equipped. 

Now the list contains my existing 2 tactical squads in rhinos as well as 5 assault terminators in a land raider. The new additions are an extra biker, a techmarine on bike, a hunter for anti-air, two venerable dreadnoughts and, last but not least, my converted Chapter Master. He's a brute of an Astartes, more machine than man and effectively built into his tracked carriage. (kind of reminds me or mutoid man from smash TV if anyone's old enough to remember that game) Anyway, a few things to paint over the next week then but far from an impossible task. Here are some shots of the army as it stands: