38 minutes ago, DarthAnthrax said:
First, just so I´m getting the right intel here, we are in a time period where the Dark Angels haven´t gone through their reorganization yet, right? So they would still wear black armor, and divisions like the Firewing would still be existing? And would they refer to themselves as "Dark Angels" yet? I think I read somewhere that came in pretty late.
From looking at the Timeline, the discovery of Lion El'Jonson is found between 835 and 837.M30, and apparently around that time also named his legion (?).
The start of the Ullanor campaign seems to be in 999.M30, so ~160 years later. So I reckon they did call themselves 'Dark Angels' for quite some time already. I think they Firewing stayed until the second founding. According to lexicanum it stayed atleast until the Heresy.
Regarding the colour scheme, this post seems to claim that they only changed color scheme around the second founding...
Edit: All in all I think it is safe to say that all the changes (except the naming) were made during the second founding.
Regarding 'Bolter Mastery': We don't have much ranged capacity at the moment, with most members being stronger in the melee, and we don't have a Devastator. On the other-hand, Squad modes are quite powerful and having extra options available could prove very useful.