Games Workshop are going to be making Space Marine players pretty happy this weekend with pre-orders going live for two new Codexes (I know its Codices but Games Workshop use the wrong one...) for both the Iron Hands and the Raven Guard. Ready your emos and dour engineers!

Each of the Warhammer 40,000 releases will come in a number of different flavours. You can either get the standard book, its limited-edition battle-brother or the digital version for use on your tablets and mobile devices. As a friend of mine said, it looks like the covers for each of the Codexes now look like these Space Marines are taking their Tinder profile pictures...

I much preferred when the covers of the Codexes showed a larger piece of art, much like what we saw from Raymond Swanland, but I suppose these have a clean look to them. These Codexes then feed into some model releases for both of these Chapters...

Pimp Yo' Primaris

Both Chapters are going to be getting Primaris Upgrade Kits which will allow you to make your Space Marines look like they belong!

Each set comes with an array of heads, weapons, shoulder pads and additional accessories which start to break up the very uniform look of the Primaris Space Marines. As well as the plastic elements you'll also get a transfer sheet or two which mean you can get some additional iconography into the mix when you run out of bitz.

You could either use these to make twenty Primaris Space Marines (using one shoulder pad each) and then drop in the accessories here and there to make the most out of the kit, or you could really go for it and put everything onto a squad of ten. I think the transfers mean that you can really stretch this out and hopefully avoid having to buy too many of them to get your army looking swish.

Leading The Way

We also have two new characters for these Chapters. We've previously seen the new take on Kayvaan Shrike of course with his mega-emo haircut...

...but for the Iron Hands, we have the fearsome-looking Malkaan Feirros who is their Master Of The Forge.

He comes armed with his shoulder-mounted heavy bolter called Gorgon's Wrath and a massive axe called Harrowhand which is there for slicing through foes with ease. As well as being a combat monster he is also able to keep vehicles moving on the tabletop giving him lots of different tasks when in the midst of battle.

Sneaky Space Marines

As well as these new Chapter specific releases there are also some newcomers for any Space Marine Chapter. The new Phobos Lieutenant is making his way to the tabletop.

And, you'll also be able to start taking enemies out from long range with the addition of the Eliminators. Both of these releases would be pretty good for those wanting to play Eliminators with their stealth focus.

I really like the addition of these new scout-based elements into the Space Marine army. I always liked the idea of a stealthy Space Marine army but when you've got the upgraded armour as you can see here why bother with those trainees?

It will be interesting to see how this is handled and reworked with the likes of the Space Wolves and Black Templars since their Scouts are very different from those in standard Space Marine armies.

What do you make of the new releases?