Slipping out of the shadows this week comes the latest Warhammer 40k Codex release with the Dark Angels arriving following their army set a couple of weeks ago. But up for pre order today is not just the individual releases for the kits in the Deathwing Assault box, but a couple of brand new kits too in the form of Asmodai and the Inner Circle Companions

In this review we’ll be taking a look at the new kits, checking out the sprues and seeing what they look like in the flesh once they are all painted up!

Massive thanks to Games Workshop for sending us free early review copies to check out on the site. If you would like to support the site then why not order your Dark Angels through our affiliate Element Games and save yourself money too?

We’ve also filmed a full unboxing of the new kits which you can see just below or over on YouTube

So without further ado let’s check out the new kits that are up for pre order today!

Asmodai, Master of Repentance Review and Unboxing

First up we have Asmodai, Master of Repentance with his gorgeous new plastic kit. It’s certainly a glow up from his previous metal model, and the kit looks amazing when built up and painted!

I really enjoyed painting this guy up – I wanted to make it tie into all of the Dark Angels in my collection, so the robes follow the Deathwing scheme and the armour is black highlighted to green to match the scheme I painted for The Lion.

Size wise, he is much bigger than he used to be, being almost as tall as Belial – I know a few people have been worried that he isnt “Primaris” sized, but that’s not something you need to worry about, this guy will look great alongside Primaris marines with no issues whatsoever.

I did find his assembly a little fiddly, which is surprising given how simple the kit is, but I really struggled to get his sword arm fitting flush to the contact points on the body and to the scenic base at the same time – I’d recommend building him and his arm fully first, and then attach him to the base – the sword should have enough give in it to find somewhere to attach the helmet to the rock, doing it the other way round left a bit of a gap for me under his armpit – which is unfortunate!

Despite a fiddly build he was really fun to paint up, and I can’t wait to get him onto the battlefield.

Inner Circle Companions Review and Unboxing

Next up we have one of my favourite recent kits, the Inner Circle Companions. This is a really cool kit with parts to build 3 models out of 6 possible combinations. There are enough heads and arms for a squad of 6 built from 2 boxes to have 6 completely different poses, which is a really nice touch – I just kind of wish this was packaged as a box of 6 so I could have painted all of them! Another set of 3 will be added to my army as soon as I get my hands on them!

Like with Asmodai, the Companions were a joy to paint up. What I really like about the Dark Angels is that you have quite a lot of different colours to play with over the army. From the greens of the standard marines, to the bone of the Deathwing and the black of the Ravenwing. This is given a shot of a new shade with the Companions with their robes offering something new and different to paint.

Assembly was really easy and posed no problems, and I’m already eager to paint up some more of them!

Deathwing Knights Showcase

The new Deathwing Knights were already part of the Deathwing Assault box, but as GW sent us a box of them I thought I’d get them painted up to so they could accompany Belial into battle!

I followed Duncan Rhodes’ Deathwing guide for these, using predominantly Two Thin Coats paints in order to achieve the really nice bone colour.

The Deathwing Knights are a little more detailed than the standard terminators as they have robes and trinkets hanging from them, so just get ready to get a smaller brush out to hit all that detail. One think I really like with these are the fact that the transfer sheet has some decals to put on the scrolls on the shields. Once they have been varnished down they look just as good as free handing them with a fraction of the work! Just make sure you cut them down small enough to fit on the part, as if you leave them a little too big it will dispel the illusion of this being text written on them.

Summary

While this has been a fairly small wave of Dark Angels kits, they have done a great job in keeping the army visually up to standard with the other 40k releases. The old kits were starting to look a little small, and these now stand proud beside their Primaris brothers.

From a purely selfish point of view I’d have liked to have seen some new Ravenwing kits come out alongside the book, though I’m sure that is something that will happen next time they are due a new book.

This also sets the scene for future Space Marine Chapters with a mixture of new kits and upgrade frames. For example I think it’s highly likely that a stand along Assault Terminator kit will be released alongside a Blood Angels upgrade frame that allows you to recreate the options they had in their old kit, and maybe even the Space Wolves will get parts compatible with the Space Marine range to help them feel a little more up to date.

We are only 2 months into 2024, but I have a feeling that a lot of really cool Warhammer 40k content will be coming this year, and I can’t wait to check it all out!

The new Dark Angel releases are up for pre order today and are released on Saturday 10th March

Games Workshop provided Sprues & Brews with free copies for review purposes.

Published by Matt Crowther

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