He’s almost here – Lion El’Jonson is available to pre-order this Saturday, and his incredible miniature is a must-have not just for Dark Angels fans, but anyone with a fondness for immaculate miniature design. Since that firmly includes us here at Warhammer Community, we caught up with Seb and Dom from the Warhammer design team to find out just how much went into crafting such an awe-inspiring presence as the Lion.
The guiding principle was to have the Lion contrast against his brother Roboute Guilliman. “I wanted a relationship between the two,” Seb told us, “It’s hard to talk about the Lion without talking about Guilliman, and they were very much informing each other.”
“Whereas Guilliman is all about optimism for a shining new Imperium, we wanted the Lion to be the dark, secretive side,” Dom explained. “We wanted him to sit in opposition to Guilliman, and from a narrative perspective, that gave us a really interesting place to go with his miniature.”
Roboute Guilliman represents leadership and command – as Seb put it, ‘an embodiment of the Emperor himself’ – and is wreathed in eye-catching ornamentation. In contrast, Lion El’Jonson has always been a frontline fighter and leader, and his armour is much more stripped-back to suit his direct, uncompromising nature.
His previous incarnation from Warhammer: The Horus Heresy was a major design influence, and the design team made sure there was a clear distinction between the Horus Heresy miniature and the Warhammer 40,000 miniature. “He has a new suit of armour,” Dom told us, “and it was very clear to us that we wanted him to look like a proper knight of old.”
“He still has a lot of personalised elements using a lion as an icon,” Dom continued. “He’s got it on his tilting plate, as a sculptural element on his right shoulder pad, and he’s wearing a lion’s pelt on his back too. It was important that his honorific as ‘the Lion’ was shown on the model itself.”
Though the rest of the miniature cleaves closely to the Dark Angels’ themes of knighthood and secrecy, the Emperor’s Shield is a bombastic statement piece that sharply contrasts with the rest of the Lion’s garb. Seb clued us in on its origins, saying “I had this idea that it would be cool for the Loyalist Primarchs to inherit something from their father’s armoury, so we decided that the Lion’s shield would be his. Like the Emperor’s suit of armour, it’s absolutely over-the-top.”
“If you look at the design on the shield, it has a single-headed eagle representing the Emperor, and a serpent in its mouth depicting evil, Chaos, or even Horus himself,” Dom told us. Imagine being so mad at your son that you draw yourself eating him on your own shield.
When asked about Fealty, the Primarch’s massive new sword, Seb explained, “We know Cypher, and there’s rumours that he carries the Lion Sword. We like it better when there’s more mystery about it – and it suits the Lion more that way – so we came up with a new sword to keep that intact.”
Were there any elements of the Primarch the design team were especially pleased with, we wondered?
“The way the Lion’s been designed, he could stand alone as a single miniature,” Dom said. “If it was the only thing you ever wanted to build and paint, it would be an incredible piece in its own right with loads of details and scenic elements. But the model itself also tells loads of stories about the Dark Angels and who they are, and it’s really nice to bring a more mythological part of Warhammer 40,000 to the tabletop.”
Pre-order the Lion – with his retinue of Bladeguard Veterans and two gorgeous art prints – when they arrive this Saturday alongside the final chapter in the Arks of Omen series.
Stay tuned to Warhammer Community this week for more insider information on this incredible model.