Gottacon 2014 - Three Kingdoms inspired army

Ok
My plan is to build a fun themed army, and first off I need to choose which codex so any help is appreciated.

The army will be Romance of the Three Kingdoms inspired.
Check here if you need some info on the inspiration
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romance_of_the_Three_Kingdoms
and specifically
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shu_Han

The concept is mighty heroes leading their forces into glorious battle.
The colour scheme for the army will follow that of Shu, and will therefore be primarily green and gold with black and silver trim, and heroes with red highlights.
Dragons feature heavily in the iconography, so I will need to sculpt them onto the shoulders and other appropriate places, or find/acquire items to use as such.
Every model in the force will be named and converted (even regular troops who will be some of the many hundreds of extra characters who appear in the stories).
Banners will be included on many models.
All "heroes" (SC's and characters) will have uniquely sculpted/built weapons as the heroes they will based on (example: Guan Yu uses a guan dao which is basically a halberd, Zhang Fei has a "she mao" or "snake spear")

I am thinking of the following choices for codex:
Space Wolves - Can take Wolf Guard, which can be divided among the squads and act as the heroes/special models. Good units overall. Heroes like Arjac that I could proxy as the elite heroes.
This seems to be the most logical choice. The army is good, fun to play, and the heroes will be good and varied, but not overpowered, and would feel like the games I am basing this off with heroes leading their units. Plus it has a cavalry unit (one of the heroes I want is a cavalry character)

Dark Angels/Grey Knights - Both have similar ability to field terminators as troops. GK have paladins, DA have Knights, which could be used as the hero unit(s). The positive is many choices for hard units, and good characters. The negative is their would be one superhard core unit (pallies or knights) and not much else, representing the heroes, which would be fine, but not as flavourful i think.

The models I will use will not be determined by the list, as I plan on using whatever I need to, to make the models how I envision them, just need help right now on the book.
Once the codex is chosen I will then harass you guys for advice on the modelling side.
This will be an ambitious project for me.

Questions/comments please.

I think personally, I would go Wolves in this case.

DA and GK, especially if you want Paladins, is just not going to get enough bodies on the table for 6th edition. There are ways to remove units, simply by volume, that would have you weeping. I lost 10 Terminators, plus a Terminator Lib, in 1 ROUND of shooting to an Eldar/DE army, and none of it was AP2.

So really, if you want to slap a few Terminators down (Arjac, a Cyclone or 2, and thats it) and then spread a ton of mini characters around on the cheap, Wolves would have to get my vote, and they can still do some good things.

If you REALLY wanted to go crazy, get a Guard Blob in there, and lead them with a Rune Priest, now we are starting to bust out some good things.

EDIT: You want a Cav character? HAS to be Wolves, DA just dont bring the pain like a Thunderwolf. :]

Yeah, I was already leaning towards wolves, just looking for any holes it might have or anything I might have overlooked in DA/GK.
I was/am seriously considering the IG blob/priest as well. It would feel right for the story as well.

I agree with the SW codex; 4 major ICs plus wolf Guard means alot of characters. Lone Wolves with Chain fist and Storm sheild also put on the hurt. Allied Guard (done right) will also fill the gaps in the game play that the wolves are missing (blob squad, Vendetta, manticore)