Alongside the new Aeldari Codex there’s a huge wave of new plastic Aspect Warriors and Phoenix Lords being unleashed. Our team have been busily getting to grips with them, and in this review we’ll talk about our thoughts on the ones we’ve managed to build and paint so far.

Thanks to Games Workshop for the generous bounty of review kits!

Wings

Kits Built

• Asurmen
• Fuegan
• Warp Spiders
• Swooping Hawks
• Baharroth

Kits Painted

• Asurmen
• Fuegan (mostly)

Thoughts

Asurmen is my boy and I wanted to use the head start on painting that GW so kindly provided to try to properly do him justice. The result is below.

On the one hand – I am happy that I have done him justice, thrilled with how this came out. On the other, this took me so. Much. Time.

Part of that is because I am a big dumb idiot, and built the whole model before painting it. Historically, I have tended to overuse subassemblies, causing issues with priming and stuff not fitting together at the end of building, and I’ve been trying to correct for that. Here, I overcorrected – i needed to either leave the head off or the banner off while painting, honestly probably the head because the banner is attached to the backpack, and quite structurally integral.

This made painting the bits of the helmet, plume and banner on the inside a huge pain, but I got there in the end. This is not really the fault of the model either – it’s a lovely, lovely kit, went together nicely, and is pretty sturdy despite how spindly some parts look. My only complaint is that the helmet and one of the targeting lenses on the shoulder end up basically touching once build, which means they tend to mulch together a bit once primed. The paint-by-numbers banner was also a bit harder to do than expected, even with the raised blocks, and I think this is quite demanding to paint. Make sure you leave plenty of time!

Fuegan, on the other hand, is a dream both to put together and to put paint on. An interesting tidbit is that the copyright stamp on Asurmen’s sprue is 2023, while everything else is 2024, suggesting he was done first, and it feels like they learnt a few lessons when creating Fuegan. He still comes together super cleanly, but you can fully build him and still have easy access to prime/paint every surface. He’ll be done pretty soon, and I’ll get pictures up when it’s complete.

Of the other units I’ve built, both Hawks and Baharroth are lovely kits. They build very fast, and they look like they’ll paint up quick too, while still looking great. The design on Baharroth is also good – the leg, lower torso and hero rock are all cast as a single piece, making him much sturdier than he looks.

Finally, Spiders. Much like our other authors, these were a lot less fun to build, and some of the same factors that make the build annoying make painting them mildly annoying. I will say that they’re not as bad as I thought they would be on first getting the sprues out, what with the too many arms and cables connecting stuff up on multiple points. The good news is that they’ve been quite clever with the backpacks, which each have some extra contact points or pieces moulded in, allowing you to stably connect things much more easily than with (for example) Necron Immortals. However, this comes at a price – it means that the backpack is so structurally integral that you can’t really leave it off for painting, which you’d really like to. That makes getting the base layers onto the body a huge pain, and there’s a reason I needed to take a break after getting that far on them.

Rockfish

Kits Built

• Warp Spiders
• Lhykhis
• Asurmen
• Baharroth

Kits Painted

• Warp Spiders
• Lhykhis
• Asurmen

Thoughts

Ok, let’s start in the normal real world with kits that are good and kind: Asurmen is just an amazing glow-up that somehow both perfectly invokes what the old one implied while also you know being a modern plastic kit twice the size. There’s honestly not a lot to complain about here, the biggest is just that my lazy ass would prefer a little more brush accessibility as this is very clearly a leave-the-cape-and-banner-off type of sub-assembly requiring model but for most people that’s not exactly a major issue. Beyond my petty whining it’s genuinely a fantastic model that does the concept justice and was quite enjoyable to paint, so great job there GW!

I’ve only just started painting Baharroth today at the time of writing so I don’t have much to say there yet, it was mostly a great build but I did have a weird issue of a tiny piece of the wings flying off ass I was scraping plastic from a nearby attachment point, which could maybe be a one-off casting issue and probably won’t be an issue for you and it’s not particularly noticeable anyway.

Update: Ok in a mildly regrettable moment of over-committing myself, I did manage to finish Baharroth in time, and I mostly liked the painting experience though I think I would have had a lot more fun with a day or two more to spread the model out over!

So after the normal kits we get to the spiders, both the PL and regular flavors, and this is where things go off the rails.

Everything about these models is intended to boggle and confuse. You’ve got everything possible here, the regular Spiders have some parts labeled for the model they are associated to but not everything. You’ve got incomprehensible part sprue placement without any apparent logic for why sometimes a piece is just somewhere else, you’ve got a model with a long gun standing on tiptoes with nothing to secure them down. The PL has a wild number of exact fitment spindly pieces to form the final design, and everything is so vulnerable to being bumped out of alignment. Once you survive the build, the painting for both Lhykhis and spuders is fine to great and they look great all finished up but holy crap is it suffering to get to that point. It really feels like a throw back to kits from over a decade ago before they figured out how to make things easy, but hey at least they’re pretty!

Sky Serpent

Kits Built

• Asurmen
• Fuegan
• Baharroth
• Swooping Hawks
• Warp Spiders

Kits Painted

• Asurmen
• Fuegan
• Swooping Hawks
• Warp Spiders

Thoughts

As a Drukhari player I have built my fair share of Aeldari sets over the years, whether as a kitbash project for my Commorrites or models to add to my Corsairs.

I opted to walk the Path of the Kitbasher and convert the models into Corsairs.

Often stood upon the ruins of a Maiden World, the new sets take hero rocks to another level with some fantastic architecture to be found on Asurmen and Fuegan and are some of my favourite bases that Games Workshop have created. Baharroth and the Swooping Hawks have ruins which are in a slightly different yet welcome aesthetic while the Warp Spiders have some fantastic Webway energy parts which allows some modularity.

The Phoenix Lords are phenomenal and easy to put together and I really enjoyed the sheer amount of options for the Exarchs which allows you to create your own unique models. The Aspect Warriors themselves were easy to build but some of the connections on the Warp Spiders were a little fiddly.

One of my favourite elements of Aspect Warriors sets are the shrine tokens and the new ones don’t disappoint with some great details and insight to the Aeldari pantheon.

Boon

Kits Built

• Asurmen
• Lhykis
• Fuegan
• Baharroth 
• Swooping Hawks
• Fire Dragons

Kits Painted

• Lhykis
• Fire Dragons

Thoughts

Building: Gonna echo Rockfish on her comments about Lhykis. I didn’t build the Warp Spiders yet but I had this constant anxiety throughout the building process that at any moment I could irrevocably mess her up. Once it was finished it looked great! Asurmen and the rest of the Phoenix Lords were by comparison a total breeze and also look great. I did notice some fairly prominent mold lines that needed addressing on Asurmen, which I found funny and consistent with his Aspect, known for being common amongst the Aspects and also for prominent mold lines.

Of the aspects I had only built the Hawks and Dragons and here is what I’ll say about these, and I’ll acknowledge everyone else thinks I’m an idiot for this. Be very careful when building these kits that you do not build yourself out of an Exarch option. In my case, I held the Exarch for last both because it’s the most fun and because I wanted to consider my build choices. In the case of the Hawks, I mistakenly used the parts I needed for the Exarch because I misunderstood how the instructions laid out normal models vs the Exarch model and left myself without a second leg for the Exarch. Not great! Do not do what I have done! The models otherwise fit nicely, 

Painting: I do not have a preference for custom vs traditional schemes on my Aspects but will usually create some blend of the two. The big thing for me is to make sure the scheme is not too similar to a different Aspect in my army. The Warp Spiders are the Aspect in my army that don’t have a good scheme – I don’t like the traditional scheme because my style doesn’t lend itself well (looks samey to Fire Dragons) and my previous scheme is both too close to my Avengers and I’m also not enamored with how it looks on their bulkier frame. So I Google’d “colorful spiders” and after perusing some terrifying images I landed on a yellow/grey scheme that I think pops well with red accents and gold trim. Unfortunately, I didn’t get my Fire Dragons painted in time for a picture.

Corrode

Kits Built

• Asurmen
• Lhykis
• Fuegan
• Baharroth 
• Swooping Hawks
• Fire Dragons
• Warp Spiders

Kits Painted

• Swooping Hawks
• Fire Dragons
• Warp Spiders

Thoughts

Finally, every single Aspect Warrior is in plastic, as is every Phoenix Lord (RIP to Karandras I guess). Building-wise, I love every kit in here with the exception of the Warp Spiders and Lhykis, so I guess it’s really just that one Aspect which sucks. I’m probably being a little unfair, but the four-point contact for the death spinners and the way Lhykis attaches to her web are just… yeah. Oh, and the one Warp Spider absent a hero rock stands on their tippy-toes instead, ugh.

Putting those ultimately minor gripes aside, these are great kits. The regular models are pretty uniform, though there’s some neat touches like the Fire Dragons having six sets of body-neutral guns and arms to work with which lets you get a little more pose variety. The Exarchs are great, with multiple different head options in each kit and three or even four weapon options to pick from.

For me this is pretty much a perfect release. All the Aspects retain their core imagery but reimagined bigger and better than the old metals/resins. The Phoenix Lords look fantastic; I don’t think there’s a single miss in here. Even putting aside the strength of the book, you’re going to see a lot of new Aeldari armies around just because of the quality of these kits.

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