The Fallen Rise.

And so the Dark Angels have officially arrived. I've seen the leak pics, and I have to be honest I thought I'd best reserve my opinion until we get official pictures. They're finally here, so heres my thoughts.

Belial. A fair static model, but I think it shows off a commanding presence, and works pretty well. I'm not a huge fan of the bone armour with green robes... it looks a wee odd. Overall though a nice model, and I think a better colour scheme would improve.

Ah the return of Asmodai. A nice update, and I think DA fans will lap him up. 

The Codex itself, it'll be hard to have many thoughts on this until I've seen the rules and how the book looks and feels, but artwork wise the cover is pretty darn nice!

 Thsi first variant flyer. I really think this looks terrible. Why on Terra would you put stone like statues on a flyer? Absolutely horrible only made better by being able to make this...

 Now thats more like it. You can see the Storm Talon influence, but has an Imperial Guard feel to it too. Looks nice, and has no statues on it. Thank the Emperor! Missiles under the wings look good too. Also intrigued with the nose cannons...

Wowser. And I don't mean that in a positive way. One of the things that did appeal to me about the Dark Angels, was the Ravenwing. The idea of an army of bikes and speeders is always good, and like the white scars would be an impressive looking army on the table. Unless you have this speeder variant. This is horrible beyond even Nurgles doings. I like the idea about the rumoured rules for it, but this is just terrible. The gun point at the front is bad, the engines look pretty pap where they are... I just cannot stand this model.

This variant of the hideous flyer is only marginally better for the plasma cannons on top... but even those look unlike the usual plasma cannons of the Imperium.  Still a dire looking thing.

More bad colour scheme, but the models themselves look alright.  One thing that used to bug me about the 'watchers of the dark' is this... they're so mysterious, yet wear power armour. Look at the foot? A really odd choice that always confused me with Azrael's watcher.

Terminator command squad? I think these are kinda cool. The plasma cannon looks nice, and I'm jealous I can't use one in my Evandalists! The only negative I have for these is the banner. It looks daft on the top, how do you fit that in a Land Raider? I remember seeing one with a termie holding one, and that didn't look right either. I think they could have changed it to be holding a relic of some kind that had the same rules and purpose as a banner. 

So they are my quick thoughts on some of the new DA releases. Very hit and miss, I don't think many non DA fans will be turned but users of the Fallen will probably enjoy the new set of releases. What are your thoughts?

(All images property of Games Workshop)

Evandalists vs Half Deathwing Company

Yep, HALF, of the Deathwing. I think it was about 2650 ish points, so Mark could fit in as many terminators as he could. And Belial. I didn't know what to expect in this game so I went with a little bit of plasma, 2 Termie squads in Land Raiders, one with Chaplain and one with Captain, 3 tactical squads, Khan and a bike squad, and vindicator and dreadnought. Capture and Control time! Deployment, I kept many units off so I could react to my opponents actions. The vindicator, dreadnought and devastators with plasma cannons started as these could do a lot of damage. Although they only killed about 5 terminators in total!

Then my units make an appearence. The Land Raiders come on and unleash my terminators who do well against their DW counterparts, and Khan and a tacitcal squad come on from the far side to assault the DW objective. 

I was able to take control and kept the pressure on Mark by being able to choose what to assault after weakening with plasma shots. In turn 5 I got control of my objective and by the end of turn 6 I had full control of the DW post too. 

It was an enjoyable game against an army I had no idea how to play, but my tactics going in seemed to work reasonably well. Terminators are good, but perhaps not good enough. The Dark Angels codex is a little old now, and it seems like a good time for GW to bring a new version out. Will they? Who knows. Playing against them it felt a little dated and a tad underpowered. Mark did well with what he had but some of the limitations were a little harsh. A win for me and another enjoyable game=]