WH 40k - Space Marines

I want to start the post off by saying this at the very beginning. I do not like Space Marines. At all.
I'm not really sure why I don't like them. I think it may have more to do with the fact that EVERYONE plays Space Marines and it's obvious that GW gives more love to the Space Marine chapter than any other army.

To be honest, I wasn't going to start a SM army, because of those reasons. I ignored every post I saw about them. Even to the point where I didn't know all the units/stats of the most played army in 40k history.  The only thing I really noticed about the entire SM line of models was the Techmarine and Dreadnought, both of which are my favorite models.
Then I heard about the Dreadzilla list. A list where most of your army is put into Dreadnoughts and it's being led by a super Techmarine. It could be made even better by adding in Vulkan Hestan, a special character that pretty much is another super Techmarine.  That's when the urge to build this army grew.

The army needed to have a theme that revolved around giant robots being led by what is basically their creator/upkeeper.  I found some fluff on the Iron Hands chapter and loved the idea that these were SM's that made themselves stronger by removing their weak, soft fleshy parts and replacing them with cold, hard steel. Cyborg super soldiers= Glee!

Since this was the first army I had created to follow a specific them, I decided to get resin bases to outfit the entire thing. Enter the clockwork bases from https://ironhalo.net to fit in with the mechanical theme.
These are so amazingly detailed, that I'm shocked that none of the pieces broke off as I handled them. These terrible pictures really don't do them justice. You have to see them to understand how well they add to my army.

The whole urge to create the army was for the dreadnoughts. I decided to go with nothing but ironclads. The idea of a a bunch of robots rushing forward to tear shit up with their bare hands made me constantly smile.
4 of them are based off the Assault on Black Reach dreadnought with some forgeworld arms, 1 is a real Ironclad, and 1 is a converted regular dreadnought I got somewhere that didn't have any arms with it. Out of them all, the actual Ironclad is the one I hate the most. I added little detail bits to spice up the looks, and I'm really happy with the Imperial Guard one.

Leading the army is the Master of the Forge. This guy was a beast to paint. So many little details, that it felt overwhelming. I didn't know where to start, and I'm horrible at painting weapons, let alone Power Weapons. Still not sure how I like what I did with him. He's also the first guy I tried "weathering" on. It turned out well enough that I did it to the whole army, but I'm sure I could do much much better.

While cleaning this model of mold lines, I managed to slip and slice apart his poor hand. I was upset for a little bit when I realized that he'd be GLAD to get rid of those weak sausage fingers and happy to replace it with a smoke launcher! Now he gets a cover save all the time! Not really, but it doesn't look too horribly on him.

Purity seal guy, he's sort of a religious nut. He knows that troops are among the first units to die horrible deaths and firmly believes that the Emperor will save his life as long as he believes strongly enough.

Purity Seals=Faith=Belief, thus Belief=safety

So he shoved as many as he could find onto his body and so far I think it's working. The Emperor truly does love him.