Here’s a kit which looks good on the box art but is simply phenomenal in person. While I wasn’t completely sold on the updated Deathwing Knights (which I found to be better proportioned but otherwise very plain compared to the older version), the Inner Circle Companions bring the Dark Angels aesthetic in droves. They’re every bit the image of the mysterious, monastic, Arthurian space knights.

I see these as a solid replacement (upgrade) for the older Dark Angels Veterans kit – great to build as a unit, but with some valuable conversion bits. I used one of the greatswords on my gravis captain conversion. There are also some handy spare heads covered in cowls. While you can get these from the new Dark Angels Upgrades kit (which is a cheaper way of doing things if you just want heads with hoods), they offer some variety. It’s well worth keeping hold of the spare parts after building this kit.

This is how they turned out. Absolute badasses.

Here’s how I painted them.

Prime the whole thing with GW Chaos Black.

The robes are mostly glazing. They essentially follow the same idea and colours as my tutorial on painting green armour for Salamanders but the idea is to keep the bulk of them close to Caliban Green and all that highlighting is focused on the prominent raised edges.

Red power swords are something I’ve wanted to try out for a while and I think they turned out well, if slightly more pink than I’d have liked. I wrote a blog on the process here.

For the black armour, I used slightly different colours on each. This wasn’t so much an artistic decision as forgetting what I’d used, then wanting to try something else. My favourite combination was to use an Abaddon Black base coat, highlight with Dark Reaper, then a finer highlight with Fenrisian Grey. The sharp corners have a small dot of Vallejo White. I liked the hint of blue this gave and is best seen on the guy with the banner.

A note on the banner: it’s a pain to get your brush in there if you built the whole thing first. If I was doing these again, I’d leave the banner in sub assemblies then glue it after painting.

The censers, belt buckles, trim, and other random dangling gubbins use a Warplock Bronze base coat, all over Nuln Oil wash, then a heavy drybrush of Sycorax Bronze. I prefer this look over gold on Dark Angels as it keeps them darker and more mysterious, as though these are relics from a long-forgotten age. There was also a passage in one of the older codexes where one of the Dark Angels Chaplains (I think) talked about eschewing garish baubles.

Smoke from the censers is a Dark Reaper base coat, all over Nuln Oil wash, then highlights of Vallejo Dark Grey and Mechanicus Standard Grey. I kept the paint quite thin for these highlights.

Here’s a closer look at the individual minis.

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