Goatboy’s Warhammer 40K: Welcome to the Iron Hands Cybernetic Meta!
Goatboy here again for my first impressions of the Iron Hands Supplemental Codex.
This time it is all about the Iron Hands. Next time it’s the Raven Guard’s turn. Now as a whole, I think the Iron Hands book is probably stronger, but it needs a lot more CP support and army building to get working right. The Raven Guard is all about the action heroes kicking butt, while the Iron Hands will grind you into a paste under their robotically enhanced Air Jordans.
Interestingly, GW released the two easy to paint marine armies in a month. Black armor has a ton of different options to paint up, and both use a simple white highlight on their raised Chapter Symbols. This makes it easy for players to get mixed in and it gives you two marine options with a single paint job if you don’t go heavy on the crazy cybernetic parts. Let’s break it down like last time and go through what I think of the book in lovely digestible pieces.
Goatboy’s Quick Iron Hands Review – Revenge of the Cold Hard Logic!
New Unit
Review: A
Thoughts: This is the guy you will build an army around. That is if you want to use non-FW dreads and other nonsense that doesn’t come with a built-in 5+ invulnerable save. Overall he is pretty good, does a lot of damage, and is pretty dang cheap. Thankfully for the non-marine players, he is a unique option, and we didn’t have to live thru a wave of Forge Fathers running around telling us to clean up our rooms. It’s kind of annoying to see this guy get more wounds and toughness options when you compare it to some Death Guard choices. Let’s hope we get some dataslate fixing coming in the future for the older, grayer codexes.
Extra Rule
Review: A
Thoughts: This extra rule of getting to reroll 1’s to hit is huge. While the army got a sweet Iron Hands characters, he isn’t a Chapter master. Having that auto built-in for the start of the game seems pretty powerful and lets the army work spread out. It depends on how you design your army and move the Doctrine around. If you are going into cold hard robots, you will most likely stay in the Devastator doctrine, and this rule will always be powerful.
Warlord Traits
Review: B+
Thoughts: There are some powerful character options here with a 5+ FNP (4+ with Stratagem), ability to Deny the Witch, healing vehicles, and powerful consolidation option (moving not towards the closest). They just don’t feel nearly as busted as some of the Raven Guard ones, and other armies’ abilities. Still, they are not bad, and it just means you won’t be burning CP to give more out.
Relics
Review: A
Thoughts: I think the Iron Hand Relics are overall pretty good. They are used to build armies around, and I expect a few CP will be spent activating these. Beyond the ones shown already I think the CP regenerating one is pretty good as it is just a Relic instead of a Warlord Trait. The Mindforge psychic weapon looks useful for a smash Librarian as well as another very powerful upgrade for a Primaris model (I spelled it right, Mars!). Overall these are very good – with multiple options to choose from. The successor ones seem pretty interesting in that you can build out a Character Dreadnought who regains d3 wounds a round, plus whatever ones you want to do with other characters around it. We could see Successor Iron hands as again – creating a cool brutal Ironclad Dreadnought seems good.
Stratagems
Review: A+
Thoughts: This is where the book shines as they have a lot of powerful Stratagems. Do you want a way to Deny a Psychic power after you try to Deny the Witch? We got you covered. How about an option to do double wounds on an unmodified roll of 6 to wound? We got that too. How about having a unit get two doctrines at once? We got you, my robot bro. Oh – how about all of those only costing 1 CP? Remember that chat about having a 4+ Feel No Pain save thing for an infantry unit? Yeah, that costs 1 CP too. Oh, how annoying are Tau Savior protocols? You can have that now for an Iron Hands Character too – for 1 CP. Hey, you want to overwatch on a 5+ – we got that too, my man, all for 1 CP. This armies Stratagems are designed to be used so remember that when you build out an army. You will need multiple Battalions to get that bank up, and I expect a lot of scouts to hit the tabletop as the cheapest troop choice mixed with all the killing options you need.
Psychic Powers – Technomancy Discipline, aka I Love Vehicles!
Review: B-
Thoughts: This is the weakest link in the book, but that was expected. You can heal some vehicles, do some Mortal wounds, and even get cheeky with a power that forces an opponent to take a mortal wound on each roll of a 1 when shooting. Psysteel Armour seems to be the best because it adds a 1 to the saving throw of a unit (not invulnerable save, thankfully). I think if you have a few dreads going into one caster this will let you heal things up, but it feels like games are not really about leaving models wounded – unless they have a deep bank of wounds like a Knight. Still, the discipline makes sense for an army that loves vehicles.
The Verdict
Overall I think this army is going to show up a lot on the tabletop as old UM armies move away from going blue with their Repulsors. I think there is a distinct chance to have a dreadnought build show up with this – but feel we’ll see the more common bodies of troops, some powerful characters, and tanks running around. It is a shame the Impulsor didn’t show up as it could be a potent option in the build. A tank with a 4+ invulnerable save, and an FNP option is pretty dang good.
~Get ready to see a lot of grim cybernetic plastic dudemens on the tabletop!
