Chapter symbols

You'll have to forgive the poor quality of the images, these were done while supervising the children painting. I have been pondering chapter symbols for my forces for a while and while I have settled on the Eagle knights symbol, the others are still WIP's.

Ill start with the Eagle Knights as this is now fixed, mostly as its been painted on to the shoulders of most of my army!

A Flamer from one of the tactical squads.

A simple design but representative of the chapter, a knights shield and the talon slashes of a eagles claw. Its also my first attempt at a free hand shape and so far repeating the shield two dozen times hasn't been to bad, there's only about another two dozen to go now! I like the shield, its nice and simple yet it still has a meaning, rather than being something random or sticking on a random transfer from one of the many sheets I have lying around. However, this symbol was actually fairly easy to come up with, some of the others were a lot harder and took far more effort. In fact I still haven't come up with one for the Emperors Disciples.

That's supposed to be a sword in the middle, just in case you were wondering.

The symbol about is my proposed chapter badge of the dark guardians. The main colors of the guardians is black and silver, mostly black armour with silver highlights with one black shoulder, for company and squad markings and a red shoulder for the chapter symbol. The red is supposed to represent the chapters blood shed in the name of the emperor, the green diamond (yes, it does look kinda blue but its supposed to be dark green) is to represent there progenitors, the dark angels and also to be a shield and finally the sword is to symbolize the other weapon of a guardian, which surprisingly is a sword. There, so the sword and shield of a guardian, over a field of blood. Oh you have to love the nice imagery of the 40k universe. Its not perfect, but I think it will work and it includes some element of the dark angels models that make up the bulk of the terminator and bike models the force is comprised of. 

Stone dragons chapter symbol, 90 degrees out, plus dark guardians mk1 on the right and mmk1lower left.

So, the stone dragons are next up and were actually Xxx while I was away on holiday. We were at a Viking museum, (because we don't get enough of Viking up here!) when I came across an exhibit of Anglo-Saxon writing and one symbol in perticular. Now with the space wolf/Viking back story, this intrigued and further examination of the "letters" led me to the second symbol. The first was Stan or the symbol for st, which also has the meaning on stone.

The second was the symbol for ior or io, which also means serpent. Ok so its not quite dragon, but a dragon is kind of a serpent, so it works in my books at least.

So it doesn't take a genius to work out where this is going. Combine the two symbols and you've got the chapter icon. Job done.

I'm pleased to have these sorted as I think that the chapter symbol makes a big difference to the look and cohesion of an army. Granted there are quite a few more complex symbols out there but I feel that simplicity is really key to how they look on the table, to much detail or an overly busy shoulder pad just ends up looking messy when the models are on the table top. For a golden demon model, great but not in game.