Of all the Warhammer 40,000 minis that Games Workshop revealed during the World Championships Preview on Friday, it's the new Ultramarines that I'm most excited for - which is rare. In the lore and in their model range, the Ultramarines have a well-deserved reputation for being the most vanilla of all the 40k factions, the stock-standard Space Marine chapter that their more interesting cousins diverge from. But the new Wardens of Ultramar are something else: a command squad of Marines and high-ranking human officers who do an incredible job bringing some of the setting's richest subtext into the spotlight.
Strictly speaking, the Wardens are backing dancers for Captain Titus, the hero of Warhammer 40k: Space Marine 2 and newly-appointed Warden of Ultramar. His command squad is led by his Space Marine companions from the videogame, Veteran Sergeant Metaurus - now equipped like a Bladeguard Veteran - and the youthful Gadriel, who has been promoted to the banner bearing rank of Ancient.
But it's the four new human characters in the squad who really excite me. Each of these figures is a significant human officer. There's Gaius Silva, a naval commander in the huge Ultramaran Defense Fleet; Amelia Minervas, a Legatus of the Ultramar Defense Auxilia and the squad's liaison with human soldiers; Lucia Vestha, a diplomat and political wheeler-dealer; and Dainal Kornelius, a veteran Astropath.
As a whole, the group feel like a call-back to the very first edition of Warhammer 40k, before Space Marines were the main characters, and it was anyone's bet which of the many arms of Imperial government would become the most important part of the setting.
The miniatures look incredible. Ultramarines miniatures have incorporated Romanesque motifs ever since someone took a Jez Goodwin Space Marine captain with a horsehair plume and painted it Ultramarines blue, but here we get to see how those aesthetics work on humans. More than that, we see how Ultramaran sensibilities cross over with faction identities from the wider Imperium, with shared visual motifs drawn from the Astra Militarum, Rogue Traders, Imperial Navy, and Adeptus Astra Telepathica.
That dual aesthetic represents visually the way that Imperial loyalties are often divided, and how politics complicates everything in Imperial society. Take the Ultramaran Defense Fleet and Defense Auxilia. They're beholden to the masters of Ultramar, the Ultramarines, and ultimately Roboute Guilliman. But according to the Codex Astartes - a book of laws that Guilliman himself wrote - Space Marine chapters are forbidden from commanding Imperial navies or conventional militaries. There may be loopholes that Guilliman is exploiting - but his political rivals aren't going to see it that way.
And this connects up to the plotline surrounding Captain Titus's elevation to Captain. Guilliman has commaned Titus to reconquer the 500 worlds of Ultramar. In the ace trailer for the new minis, Titus says "the Primarch asks the impossible" - and with Necrons, Tyranids, and Chaos trampling over the 500 worlds, we can't really argue.
But when many within the Imperium believe that Guilliman is building his own petty Empire in an effort to overthrow the Emperor, the ever increasing control and military power Guilliman exerts within the 500 worlds is going to look more and more like evidence of his Empire-building intentions.
This, in turn, brings us to why the Ultramarines are so much more interesting than they first appear to be. Aesthetically, they're space Romans - but they take cues from ancient Rome culturally as well. Ultramar is one of the most civilized parts of the Imperium, but it's still a tyranny, and Guilliman keeps increasing the authority of Space Marines over human Imperial governors. He has the best intentions. So did Lufgt Huron, Tyrant of Badab; in a way, so did Horus Lupercal. There is massive grimdark potential within the Ultramarines - and simply putting them in context, looming above their human servants, brings it out.
What do you think of the new Wardens of Ultramar minis? What was your favorite reveal on Friday (or Saturday morning, depending on your time zone)? We're always game to gab in the Wargamer Discord community.