Snakes of Ithaka

Salutations folks!

Today I want to share one of my current hobby projects. Recently I reread Brotherhood of the Snake by the excellent Dan Abnett (Ebook from the Black Library ) and it has inspired me to embark upon a new army, namely the Iron Snakes. For those not familiar with the Iron Snakes they are a Ultramarine successor chapter based on the planet of Ithaka and its moon Charybdis located in the Reef Stars. The Reef Stars have long been plagued with raids by the Dark Eldar or "Primuls" in the local tongue as well as a massive Ork invasion as depicted in the novel. The Iron Snakes are also briefly included in the new Space Marine Codex. With this project I will have an actual "Codex" army (Black Templars don't count, GW). That being said, the Iron Snakes make use of some idiosyncratic methods of warfare not seen in a purely Codex chapter. For example, each tactical squad is depicted as having an apothecary in it. I fully intend to model this for my Tac squads, but not to have them count in game terms except in command squads. The Snakes also make use of war spears and combat shields, habits taken from hunting the great sea wyrms of their home world and also similar to the Classical Greek Hoplite style of fighting. I have modeled and begun painting on two examples of this so far and I intend to model more spear and shield models as well as models with bolter and shield and combat blade and shield.

 Here are some of my works in progress:

The shield and spear models I had to do a bit of cutting and scrounging in the old bits bag. The hands are from a Vanguard Thunder Hammer and a right hand with a grenade. The left arms are also grenade throwing poses. The spears are High Elf spears taken from the Fantasy Spearmen set. The shields are a non GW product. They are off of the Wargames Factory Saxon Thegn box set. I removed the boss and filed away the metal rim. The model with the trident I intend to use as my company Captain while the model with the traditional combat shield will be the Company Champion. Throughout the entire force, I want to try to maintain the classical Greek theme as well as the nautical roots of the Ithakan wyrm hunters. My next big challenge will be to get some sort of scale hide bits to use as wyrm trophies and make/find some more Greek style short swords.

That is all for now, good readers. Look for more of the sons of Ithaka over the coming months as the army takes shape both in models and lists (or something else if my hobby attention shifts to something else.....). Happy gaming!!