The Dark Angles
No it’s not a typo! The Dark Angles are Hexys’ homebrew space marine chapter.
The basis of the Dark Angles is a box full of assorted second-hand Warhammer painted as a mix of Angels of the Dark and Blood variants, that was gifted to us by a colleague. In addition to a large number of 2nd-edition era monopose space marines, ancient (and by modern standards, tiny) terminators, a handful of bikers, an old Baal pattern predator, and a Death Company squad, there was a truly delightful hand-drawn paper banner that proudly proclaimed them to be the “Dark Angles”.
In honour of these idiosyncratic trappings, we devised The Dark Angles: a group of Dark Angels who may or may not have fallen during the Heresy but who are certainly willing to get into a fight with almost anyone! Over time we’ve more-or-less mothballed the original second hand box, replacing them with new space marine models we liked the look of and wanted an excuse to paint.
We struggled somewhat to find a lore explanation for the clearly dumb name. In the end, we landed on the idea of a nasty little gene-seed mutation that gives them exceptional night vision while also causing gene-seed implantation to fail more often. As a result of their reduced numbers and the challenges of replenishing them, the Dark Angles place a higher value on the lives of individual space marines, viewing them as a sorely finite resource. As such, they rarely engage in ‘fair’ fights, preferring to exploit any advantage (or angle) they can in order to achieve their objectives with the minimum risk. Their mutation makes them particularly good at night raids, hence the ‘dark’ moniker. It also prompted them reverse the traditionally white robes they wore during the Heresy, exposing the darker red lining.
We’ll be updating this page as-and-when members of the Dark Angles are finished and photographed, but for now, here’s who we have.
Chapter Master Azrael
Depending on how you define it, the original, metal Azrael is possibly the first miniature painting commission I ever received. Then as now I was primarily a Chaos Space Marines player, and my most common opponent played Dark Angels. His interest was far more in the tactics and gaming side of the hobby, which is probably why he invariably wiped the floor with me whenever we played. I, however, had far more patience for painting, so when he added Azrael as an HQ choice he asked me to paint him. I remember being deeply proud of the finished product, although given that I was approximately 13 at the time I suspect that both my memory and judgement are somewhat imprecise.
The new Azrael is a beautiful sculpt, perfectly capturing the feel of the original while adopting the larger Primaris proportions and taking on a more dynamic pose (not to mention fixing the mechanically unconventional bullpup design of the gun). I’m particularly fond of the faithfully reproduced back banner, a feature I hope we see more of as the Primaris line expands.
Our only conversion was a simple headswap - the Leagues of Votann provide a good range of female heads with proportions that work well for Space Marine bodies, and given how nice the folded-back hood looks we would have been remiss not to make use of one here.
