What is it to be a Dark Angel? It is to be the first Legion, the honoured, the Sons of the Lion.

Don’t panic, I haven’t abandoned the Crimson Fists! But I have had a Horus Heresy Dark Angels “itch” that I’ve needed to scratch for a long time now. I also needed a model to be the subject of a new guide – the “simple” LED plasma weapons tutorial – so it seemed like a good idea to kill two birds with one stone. Regular readers will know I already have a LED plasma weapon tutorial, but this new one is the “simple” version and features:

• Less cutting
• Less drilling
• Alternatives to soldering
• Alternatives to resin casting

So on the whole it’s more accessible. The new tutorial can be found here and my original LED plasma tutorial can be found here.

As readers of a certain ‘vintage’ may have spotted, I’ve taken influence for this model from the classic piece of artwork shown below.

This is the box art for the Space Marine game. A 6mm ‘Epic’ scale game released in 1989, it was set during the Horus Heresy and compatible with the first edition of Adeptus Titanicus. This is a classic image of the Dark Angels that’s firmly lodged in my subconscious. I haven’t tried to copy the art precisely, but I definitely wanted to capture the “feel”. I’ve combined the helmetless Marine firing a bolter in the centre with the plasma marine in the bottom left. I’ve changed the colour palette slightly to bring it more in line with current interpretations of 30K Dark Angels, as seen in the Forge World Horus Heresy books. For example, the chapter symbol on the model painted is red rather than the black(!) shown here. But hopefully the influences are still recognisable.

This isn’t the start of a new army, in fact I’m already working on the Crimson Fists again. The Dark Angels will be a Kill Team at most. However there will definitely be more Dark Angels coming up later in the summer as I have some new LED tutorials to write, and they are excellent demonstration models!

So if you’d like to have a go at LED plasma weapons on your own models, then you can check out my new “simple” version tutorial here.