Custodes Project 2018

So, The Euphemism (I must get him back into blogging) and I will be living in the same city for a few years now. As one of my goals for this year is to get more games in, I suggested to him the prospect of us attempting some doubles tournaments to which he readily agreed! Many years ago we did a local store WHFB doubles tournament (my Tomb Kings and his Skaven against mostly Chaos opponents if I remember correctly) and we lost hideously but had a good time doing it. This time round we are going to try 40k, a game I haven't played in about three years and basically need to relearn! For a new edition and a new attempt at doubles glory, I have decided to start a new army: the Adeptus Custodes who will be fighting alongside The Euphemism's own growing Custodes force.

As I mentioned in my hobby goals for the year, I plan on getting myself a box of Custodes every time I finish a project. My first few boxes will be geared towards a 1000 points doubles list, then afterwards I hope to build up to a 1500 point force of pure Custodes supplemented by roughly 500 points of complementary misc. Imperium stuff: e.g. Sisters of Silence, Eisenhorn, etc. I don't intend this to be ultra-competitive (after all, double Custodes isn't exactly a tournament-winning formula) but I hope to have a decent variety of things that I can have fun with. My list will be roughly as follows:

- Shield-Captain  x1 (weapon yet to be determined)

- Guards x3 with Guardian Spears

- Guards x3 with Sword and Shield

- Allarus x3 with Axes

- Vertus Praetors x3 with Hurricane Bolters

I'm hoping to make this army out of four boxes of stuff plus some various bits bought off of eBay as I'd like to convert every miniature in this army, even if it is only by a little. From a modelling perspective I'd really like to flesh out some of the more niche roles the Custodes perform for the Emperor. After all, besides being peerless warriors the Custodes are described as being diplomats, philosophers, artisans, assassins, etc. and I'd like to try and represent that on the tabletop with some little characterful conversions.

I have not read this book but I have been inspired by the cover art

Painting-wise I plan on largely following the default Custodes colour scheme but using more black than red as I feel that even though they are venturing out into the galaxy again, the Custodes should still wear the black robes of mourning as a signifier of the changes they have undergone since the internment of the Emperor upon the Golden Throne. Indeed, I hope to make each of these 13 miniatures appear as a grim avatar of death, the will of the half-dead Master of Mankind made manifest. I'll largely be following the Warhammer TV painting tutorial for Custodes that Duncan did, as well as tutorials he did for fur cloaks and pale flesh.

My hobby habits in a nutshell

This should be a fun little adventure and I hope to document it here on the blog as I assemble my forces and begin getting to grips with the new edition of 40k. Though I have many other outstanding projects, I just can't resist the shiny new miniatures and have allowed myself this one excess this year. As Custodes are a very elite force this should hopefully be a rather small at self-contained project at least, and when it is over with I hope to begin saving up for plastic Sisters of Battle that (Emperor willing) shall arrive next year...

Finished Malifaux Project!

For my first Malifaux crew I chose Lady Justice and her Death Marshals, mostly because they are simply the coolest, most eye-grabbing set in the game in my opinion. Nothing better embodies the horror, the magic, and the western feel of the setting than a blind ninja lady leading ghost-rider cowboys who are literally dancing on coffins. They were an absolute blast to paint (if a little fiddly at times) but I like to think I managed the gritty, desperate, and violent image I have of the city of Malifaux itself, and particularly the grim world of the Death Marshals.

I think this is all I'm going to do with my Lady Justice crew for now, as I have a few different options to try out here and I'd like my next Malifaux purchase to be a different crew and master. I will definitely return to Lady J though and perhaps add even more units like Death Marshal Recruiters which synergise with my existing collection. More thoughts and pictures below:

Fell Bats Conversion

For a long time I have wanted to include Fell Bats in my undead forces and unfortunately the current GW miniatures are really old and unfit for purpose. So earlier this year I spent some time rifling through my bits boxes to see what I could come up with. These are the results of which I am rather proud. I forgot to take pictures of them without paint (I got excited and started painting right away so these are very WIP pics) but I think its fairly obvious what I've done here. These miniatures can be put together quite easily, and are made from pieces most Death players likely have lying around.

The base of this conversion is the spare pieces from assembling a unit of Crypt Horrors. If you assemble the Crypt Horrors you will be left with the wings, hairy back, and head of the Vargheists. I began by taking these pieces and gluing them together in a flying pose. The heads glue really easily onto the top of the hairy back piece and the wings can be glued to roughly where the shoulders should be with relative ease, though you may need to cut the joints a little for the best fit. 

For the claws I then took some spare Ghoul arms and glued them to the bottom of the back piece. This may require cutting down the shoulder joint of the arms a little. I also elected to go with arms that weren't holding any items and showed the bare claws. 

This leaves us with all of the bat except for the front of the torso. You could green-stuff in some muscles or something but I elected to glue a skeleton shield to the front of the body for ease. The round shields from the Skeleton Warriors kit cover this front area quite nicely and I thought it would provide a nice space to display the colours and heraldry of an army. After all, I like to think of these bats as a proud Vampire/Necromancer's pets that they would want to cover in their personal colours or sigils. As an extra detail I added some arrows poking out of the bat above to show where enemy archers had tried to bring it down. 

I then used some green stuff to fill in gaps, make small tails, and generally smooth any connections that didn't look quite right. Finally they were glued to a standard 40mm base by their wing-tips (I'm not a fan of using flying bases but they could work equally well) and where necessary I glued coins to the bottom of the base to make sure they wouldn't fall over. 

I believe these Fell Bats are a fair bit larger than the current Fell Bat miniatures but with a more dynamic pose and more modern pieces I think you'll agree they are much better. I also think they fit within the aesthetic of most undead armies better than using Tyranid bits, which seems to be the most common means of converting Fell Bats that I have seen previously. I'm sure that others will be able to refine this method further, but for now I rather pleased with my Fell Bats and I hope it inspires others to try rooting through their bits boxes to see what they can make!