Monday 8 January 2018

The S Word & New Custodes

Cards on the table, I didn't finish the Custodes.  I almost did, but then I got distracted. They've got their bases and most of the detail now, I just need to do one more highlight on the armour and the gems.


What distracted me? Well, remember a little while back I was working on some Squats for my Imperialis Militia list, well, almost as soon as I got a feel for what I was going to do with them GW went and released the Kharadron Overlords which appeared to be their way of saying "Here are some Squats but not really" so I picked up the Admiral and a unit of the Arkanaut Company while I mulled over my options and then there they sat... until now!


Well, ish, the Arkanaut Company is assembled, mostly, but lacks pistols as I wanted to change the ones they had but I'm not sure what to replace them. I'll have a think and see what happens.


What I did do was the Admiral,  now I had done a model for my Force Commander already done, but he's been summarily demoted to an Enginseer, poor chap, a few dashes of red and a Servo arm and he should be ready to go.  Now for his replacement:




I really like the base model so didn't want to do a lot to change it, I still want to stick with the theme of a chunk of the Squat equipment being repurposed mining gear so I decided not to change the armour except to remove the huge backpack and replace it with something a bit smaller.




I like the idea of this armour being the middle step between the Grenadiers (Carapace Armour) using the Ironbreakers and the Exosuits (Ogryns counts as) converted from Centurions. The Arkanaut Company will represent those troops wearing Flak Armour.  I swapped his head for one from the Slayers box as I felt with the full face helmet (which I kept mag-locked to the back of his armour) he might have lost some character and looked a little too much like the base model. He's armed with a plasma pistol which at first I took from the Death Korps upgrade pack, but that felt far too small so he got an upgrade to a Legion one.

His backpack is the same modified one from the Skitarii box with the extra pipes and bits cut off and an overshoulder lamp added from the Grey Knight Terminator Apothecary.  I really wasn't sure about the lamp at first but once I painted it I'm really happy with how the model feels, the armours nice and chunky and industrial and once he's been weathered I'm sure he will look like he's spent years down the mines in it.  The Hammer was my only concern, as the Force Commander doesn't have the option for a Thunder Hammer, but it was too nice and detailed to cut off, for the purposes of rules I am going to count it as a Power Fist, which seems fitting I think. 

Overall I'm really happy with how he's turned out, I just need to finish up his face (god I hate painting faces) and weather him up a bit and he'll be good to go...well, once he has some troops to lead!  I'll post a bit of background for him once he's finished.


In other news, they announced new Custodes models over the weekend and I've come away from the release with a resounding... meh.  Which is disappointing, as I said in my last post, I love the Custodes kits, I mean, I don't hate the new stuff, but very little from it grabs me really.  I didn't take these pictures but nabbed them from google so credit to the original photographer.


The Veterans are probably my favourite of the lot, on one hand I like the addition of the robes as it brings it closer to the artwork, but on the other hand I'm worried there's not going to be a lot of variety to the poses, the two guys on the right of the picture look basically identical except ones got a spear and ones got an axe. I'll probably grab some to use as Hetaeron Guard since I'll only want 5 as a guard for my Shield Captain 


Jetbikes, I like the bikes themselves (again, they're closer to the artwork) but what is going on with the riders torso? those gorget wings just look silly. The one bonus I can see of these over the FW ones is they are likely to be significantly less expensive.  Maybe I'll see if I can swap out the bodies for the normal Custodes body.


Shield Captain, the most meh of the bunch he's got no real character about him, his armour somehow feels less fancy than normal Custodes bar the addition of a cloak, he's really static too.  So yeah, meh... 


Terminators.  Hey look, lets give the Custodes Terminators! But, FW already do some god damn beautiful kits for them. Good point, but lets give them Terminators and make them shittier than the FW ones!  As you can guess, I'm not a fan, compared to the Aquilon Terminators these look like conversions, and not even good ones. I will definitely not be picking up any of these. I get that in the 10,000+ years since the Heresy they would have had upgrades, and they're clearly meant to give a fell of the Grey Knight Terminators but god are they ugly! and also, what exactly is the point in having a wrist mounted gun when the one built in to your main weapon takes two hands to fire?  or did no one think of that? *sigh*

Not a massive update, and apologies for the Terminator rant! I'll have more to show next time.

Until next time!





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