The Imperial Fists are a First Founding Chapter of the Adeptus Astartes. Thus they were one of the original Legions. Legion 7 was led by Primarch Rogal Dorn and while they were quite rounded out and generally good at most things – the Imperial Fists and their Primarch excelled at siege warfare.
Good day! Zak Ludick here with another Warhammer 40k lore post. I am trying to do one Imperial, one Chaos and one Xeno as I go along. In between and as time allows for it, I will do some posts about painting and gaming as well! Yesterday I made a post of the Horus Heresy miniature of Rogal Dorn painted by my friend Nicholas. Go check it out!
Right, onwards with the Fists.
They can build a wall, they can break it down. Whether it is breaking open a fortification wall or building a wall, this Space Marine Chapter’s skill at siegecraft is only matched by their sense of loyalty and stoicism. They are an undoubtable Loyalist Chapter and stood guard at Terra until the Adeptus Custodes we put into place at the Emperor’s side as bodyguards, though I am not entirely sure about the timeline.
Essentially, when fielding this army, you are playing a Chapter that is VERY close to being a vanilla army. They follow the Codex Astartes pretty much to the letter. This was not always so. After the Horus Heresy, the Primarch of the Ultramarines – Roboute Guilliman wrote a military treatise that would later become the blueprint of the organisational and administrative structure of the Space Marines.
Rogal Dorn and several of the other Primarchs opposed this and there were two camps of thought among the brothers. This nearly caused a second Civil war, right on the heels of the Horus Heresy, something that probably would have turned everything in Chaos’ favour.
Rogal Dorn and the other conceded and the Imperial Fists First Founding Chapter kept their heraldry, while the rest of their number were split up into armies such as the Crimson Fists, Sons of Dorn, Subjugators and many more. The Crimson First are really die-hard and have a little bit of rules specific to them in the Imperial Fist Codex. There are a lot of other Second Founding Chapters and some of them it is not ever certain that the Imperial Fists are their founding Chapter or not.
The other notable Chapter that came out of the Imperial Fists are the Black Templars. This is a Second Founding Chapter that got their OWN rulebook! So I will not speak too much about them today. All I can say is that at the time of the Second Founding, the original Emperor’s Champion – Sigismund, became the Chapter Master of the Black Templars who vowed never to stop crusading.
Getting back to Imperial Fists, they play very similar to most Space Marines, with the addition to having Warlord Traits, Stratagems and Wargear, etc that support the type of combat that that is in their background – being able to break down fortifications and the ability to hold objectives. The army is less likely to give up or fall back. They are likely to stay and shrug off damage.
In the lore a small amount of Imperial Fists can hold out against insurmountable odds. Even adding one Imperial Fist to take charge of a force of Imperial Guardsmen holding a fortification will double their potential to hold that position. The Fist would reinforce their barricades, dig them in and remove blindspots to their siege.
This is Tor Garadon. He is the 3rd Company Captain and wielder of a Chapter Relic known as the Hand of Defiance. Pretty cool model. I would not mind collecting him!
Now currently going for R520 at my local hobby store:
https://www.swordandboard.co.za/collections/warhammer-40k/products/99120101258?_pos=1&_sid=0f0664920&_ss=r
I have around R748 in my blogging for hobby fund but there were other things that I was planning on getting first!
Thank you for reading!
