Epic - Custodes - pt1 - Trigger

It's a project i've certainly been contemplating for a while (amongst the morass of others, yeah, i know).


Epic Custodes

For non-Epicers and non-40k universers these are specialised Imperial faction troops. Bigger and better versions of the Marines more or less, but far less numerous, as far as the fluff goes. An Elite of the Elite... maybe. Maybe not. Anyway, they're gold armoured, close combat oriented Imperials. 

A fluff summary would be that they're the guards of the corpsified Emperor's body on Terra and used to be like his body guard when he was out and about.

There was a post recently-ish of someone who'd built a printed army, kind of preempting my project and leading me to think about it more. Having an existing example and a few pics definitely helps planning and projecting, and with inspiration.

There are a few models available on thingiverse already, some for vehicles will be usable as is. However, the infantry options are a bit mono-pose, especially after my work on the Templar with many variations. I didn't want a stand of these guys just all standing in the same pose - it looks a bit dumb.

So i set about tracing (and simplifying) the existing models (only done one so far - and future efforts will be variations based on that - sword and bolter variations to be done).

Came up with about 10 pose variations, then started printing.

First stand...

I'm only adding 4 models per stand for these guys as they're a bit bigger, and frankly a bit annoying to position.  Should have done some left-handed variations too, would have helped.

Size comparison with a left over Terminator and Tactical marine.

In the fluff Custodes are stated as standing a foot taller than a marine so this is about on par.

As a fluff note they all have 'spears' which are more a kind of power glave (cutting blade rather than thrusting spear tip) which also have an integrated bolter (gun) near the end too. For positioning the spears tend to get in the way a little, but i eventually managed to get 12 stands done.

I most definitely am not printing out multiples formations of everything for this army. I've selected about 7 model types that i'll need to field a functional army. Won't be a tournament winning army (running theme and seems to be my niche) but it will have a couple of formation options available based on what i make. 

Anyway, the core of this army is the 'Custodes Guardian' squads - which is 6 stands of these guys [above]. You need to take one of these 'core formations' and may then take two 'support formations', which are the other unit types. 

I also printed out 'hover bikes' (and some extra bases). Bikes happen to also be 'core formations' which is handy.

There are actually two different types of bikes here, 12 'light' bikes and 6 'heavy' bikes. The heavies can be substituted into the formation so don't need as many. 

These were thingiverse models straight out of the box.
Size-wise they fit perfectly with the models i did - which isn't overly surprising as they're by the same person. The bike prints were fairly unimpressive (a lot of the little feature fins were atrophied, which is a print issue, not a model issue - but clearly resolution still plays a part in what's appropriate for a model) but generally (just) good enough to use.
Additionally, the heavy bikes all - except one - compressed on the nose. There was one 'good(-enough)' print so i kneaded up some green stuff and press moulded it's fender.

The impression seemed to work ok so my intention is to either;
a) dribble resin into the impression and hit it with the uv. might work, might not. 
b) might alternately push some more green stuff in there once the original mould is 100% set.

I used some olive oil spray between the original model and the greenstuff and i think it helped with releasing the model - should have got the clearstuff at cancon, damnit.
Given greenstuff is a day to set this is a week-long project (or more).
Anyway, the plan is to cut off the underside front of the heavy bikes and fit in the new fender. Won't make a huge amount of difference at arms length... but i'll know.

Given this is a 'display' army rather than a 'performance' army it's  probably worth making it look as decent as possible.

And that's where it's at.

Until next time...