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!



New Year, New Post

Rumours of my death have been greatly exaggerated.


Or in other words, I'm back! Only 2 years and 3 months late but hey, if the Imperium can't keep track of dates then surely I can be forgiven?


I wont bore you with the details but I'll just say everything is settling down and getting back to normal and I'm getting back to doing what I love, painting tiny plastic figures.


I've not been entirely absent since the last update, I have been keeping up with new releases and announcements (as well as the relative controversy that have gone with them). I've even been picking up models here and there (only for them to languish on the sprues).


But!  I do not come empty handed, finally starting to get my hobby groove back, and having a little extra time off over the holidays, I have got some painting done.  I finally got round to making a start on my Custodes from the Battle of Prospero box (they sent me 10 Custodes and no Terminators, which actually didn't bother me as I'm not a huge fan of Tartarus armour to begin with).


They aren't quite finished yet, they need another layer or two of highlights and there's a few details left to pick out but over all I'm happy with where they're headed.

Perhaps not the best unit to choose to get yourself back into painting but you know, in for a penny in for a pound.

I really like the Custodes models, they're true to the artwork in Visions of Heresy without being too fiddly on detail to be able to actually paint them.  I will say that I feel that unless Forgeworld (or even GW themselves) don't put out some alternate bits for them the poses my start to feel repetitive if you have too many of the same variation, but that's a minor gripe and once I'm back full swing into building and converting I'll just start chopping and changing them to keep them fresh.

 Here's some, admittedly terrible, shots of the individuals, they'll get the full lightbox treatment once they're finished, and I'll also do some side by sides with my Custode conversions I did way back when for the Tempus Fugitives Burning of Prospero event.

 

 

 

 I also made a start on a 4 man(for now) squad of Sentinel Guards, these guys have only had the first layer of gold so are clearly nowhere near done but hey, I actually did something so here they are!

Still much work to be done.

I've got another 5 Custodes still on the sprue who will be being built as Sagittarum Guard once I get paid and order the conversion kit, I'll also be picking up a set of the Aquilon Terminators with Infernus Firepikes.  I've also got some of the bits on their way to build my Shield Captain, but he really will deserve his own post once he's done.



 My copy of the Age of Darkness rulebook also arrived this week so I'll be having a proper read through that over the weekend and seeing what has changed from the core 7th ed books, I've seen a lot of discussions/arguments about whether 30k should stay in 7th or update to 8th and I do have my opinions on the matter which I'll pen properly while I'm going over the book.

In non Warhammer news I joined a new gaming group! Headed by the good Dr Vesuvius over at The Axis of Naughtiness, who at seems is as good at updates as I am, that said we have been playing a long running Savage World campaign as well as some excellent one off games, the one I am really enjoying right now is Starfight.

Here's some examples of the print and play stuff.

It's a pretty simple pick up and play space ship combat game, and helpfully, its print and play and dirt cheap to buy, I think I picked up the basic rules and most of the expansions for about £10. 

The rules are simple, you have a set number of dice that are your ships power dice, you roll them at the start of each turn and allocate them to the shields, weapons and engines marked on your ships sheet, as you take hits you lose dice, when you have no dice left, your ship explodes, I mean, there is a little more to it but that's the rules in a nutshell.  Now, I mentioned its print and play yes? Well, if you have a hex grid gaming mat then you can make it more like this!

This was with Dr Vesuvius' mat and some old Star Trek Micro Machines (and Catan bits to represent planets) but it makes it much more visual than the print and play, which my only grip with is that if you print it on A4 its quite small.  I'll be getting my own hex mat at some point and some models to play with, perhaps I can repurpose some of the smaller Battlefleet Gothic ships to use?  We shall see.

Anyway, that's it for now, I'm hoping to get some more painting done on the Custodes tonight or tomorrow so will hopefully have them finished by weekend.

Until then!