The Dark Angels have left the shadows to pursue their enigmatic agendas. Belial, Asmodai, and the Inner Circle Companions are all available to pre-order this Saturday. We spoke to Martin and Seb, miniatures designers from the Warhammer Studio, about how they brought these grim and vengeful Space Marines to life.
Warhammer Community: The Inner Circle Companions share a similar design space with other elite Space Marine swordsmen, like the Bladeguard Veterans – how did you make them stand out?
Martin: I viewed them as a unique Dark Angels equivalent, and made subtle but impactful differences to set them apart. The Bladeguard Veterans have vambraces on their forearms, for example, with a uniform icon on the right arm. The Inner Circle Companions instead have a variety of different icons on both of their vambraces, each hinting at the wearer’s past – and some of these pair up across certain builds.
That idea came from looking at older Space Marines sculpted by Jes. Many of them had panel lines on their forearms that matched up across left and right arms, so you could pair them off – if you knew to look for that detail!
There are other details on each miniature that further reinforce each Companion’s origins. One has feathers on his belt and can wield a Calibanite greatsword etched with a Ravenwing icon, making it a pretty good bet he was once a member of that formation – but who could say for sure? Probably just the Lion…
WarCom: The kit provides you with two different poses for each Companion – did the flowing robes present any challenges here?
Martin: Cloth is always challenging and fun to work on. I started by checking other fabrics in the Space Marine range. They’re all made of heavy, stiff materials, and I imagined these robes would be similar. I also wanted to make sure that you could see the edge of armour elements showing through to give more shape to the robes, and convey the weight of the material hanging over those sharper edges.
The real challenge came from the double-handed poses, which are always tricky – getting two arms clad in power armour to meet up over the chest! I knew each model was going to have two poses, so I gave each Companion one pose with the chest open and one with the chest covered, both to add variety and to show off the details of the robe over the torso.
WarCom: There’s a lot of dynamic smoke, and we recognised some similarities to the older miniatures from Dark Vengeance. How do you sculpt such an ephemeral substance?
Martin: Every miniature is a snapshot in time, and so – like magical visual effects – we only add smoke if it helps tell a story and adds to the atmosphere. We also made it optional here, because we know some people prefer the choice. The Companions have backpack censers and a thurible, which I imagine are pouring incense. This smoke will be heavier than air, so it should naturally sink down, but there’s one Companion who is running, so the smoke is being lifted by his motion. It’s fun looking back at the older Dark Angels that I was involved with from the Dark Vengeance set and seeing how far we’ve come with sculpting these elements, but also how certain ideas have stuck around.
WarCom: Are there any other details you particularly enjoyed working on?
Martin: Jes had already designed three different Calibanite greatswords for us, so that left us with three more we needed to come up with – including hilt and pommel designs, as well as Dark Angels phrases and oaths etched into them. Coming up with script and designing swords is always fun!
The Dark Angels love their secrets, and so I tried to keep this in mind when detailing them. The hoods are up in the kit for every head – both helmeted and bare – and rather than relic boxes to openly display sacred tchotchkes like other Space Marines, theirs are locked shut. There are a lot of keys relating to the vaults on the Rock that only Inner Circle members can open. Even the robes are symbolic of secrets and obfuscation. The banner, which is based on the icon held by the Watcher on the base of Lion El’Jonson, is a winged angel with its wings curled shut – even their standards have secrets!
Look closely at the sprue, and you'll notice the back of the banner is slightly different from the images that were shared over Christmas. The design was slightly updated before the final models went into production, and the Dark Angels managed to keep it a closely guarded secret, as usual…
WarCom: Asmodai and Belial have been around for decades now. How did you approach such iconic characters?
Seb: I worked on the Lion before Asmodai and Belial – so there’s a bit of lineage working its way through these characters. Lion El’Jonson is a standalone miniature with a lot of personal artefacts and little details, and some of that is reflected in these other high-ranking Dark Angels. Belial has custom Terminator armour with angular chamfered panels that call back to the Lion’s armour. Both characters are depicted mid-stride, which makes for some nice symmetry between the two. They even share similar basing elements.
Asmodai is a little different in that he’s not posed in a dramatic, battlefield manner – he's very static and brooding instead. I wanted to reflect the fact that he’s this merciless Interrogator-Chaplain, who does lots of horrible things to pursue his vendetta. There’s no good or bad for him, just an all-consuming hunt for the Fallen that he is determined to succeed in.
WarCom: As one of the oldest Dark Angels, Asmodai knows a lot about the Chapter and its secrets. How did you convey his very particular character?
Seb: For the Dark Angels, there’s a hierarchy of how much power armour they show that runs parallel to how much they know – the deeper into all those hermetic secrets they are, the more cloth covers them. Asmodai really has very little armour showing at all, just a few parts poking out here and there – he clearly has a lot of secrets to hide. Like Martin, I made the smoke optional, but I really enjoy the visual of this heavy, lazy smoke coiling down from his burners. It frames him and adds to his moody Gothic vibe.
There are nods to the original coloured art of Asmodai on the miniature, as well as the Jez and Juan miniatures, while also trying to keep it fresh. He has pretty subdued heraldry for a Space Marine, so I decided to include some ostentatious elements to contrast against his more austere robes. The Blades of Reason have been redesigned to look like they are a more advanced torture device, with various modes that can be activated, and the studs all across Asmodai – from the halo to the crozius, sword, and backpack – are shorter and more brutal than those on other Space Marines, for a real pugilistic vibe.
WarCom: Belial is an all-action veteran of countless conflicts. What did you do differently with him?
Seb: Belial is more dynamic than a regular Terminator – he’s an expert of fighting in this otherwise quite heavy and restrictive armour. To portray this, he’s sculpted moving swiftly and confidently forward in a more fluid manner than other Terminators. He’s firing his storm bolter from the hip, because he’s a master marksman who can fire a crack shot without breaking his stride.
Azrael, Belial, and Sammael all have swords that share that same winged hilt, because they’re sister swords from a collection, which is different to some of the other new swords across the range that have more diverse designs to represent the Dark Angels’ vast armoury.
For both characters, composition is essential in defining them. As Martin has said, Miniatures are a snapshot of a single moment, so we decide where everything goes and how each element then adds up to tell a story.
Thank you for the insights! You can pre-order all of the miniatures mentioned above, alongside the Deathwing Knights, Combat Patrol: Dark Angels, Dark Angels Upgrades and Transfers, and Codex: Dark Angels on Saturday, and lead the sons of the Lion into battle.