Guardians of the Emperor - Legio Custodes Test Mini

Now, i don't know about you, but when the Horus Heresy range first dropped i remember thinking "Aw man, how cool would it  be if they eventually did Custodes!?" Well, that day of course did arrive, and I'm just as excited about them now as i was then! More so given the insane levels of cool that the model range has shown so far!

So true to form, as soon as Mrs Gungraves back was turned, i casually logged onto Forgeworlds website and ordered myself a....modest....selection of Custodes!! More on those in the coming weeks. First up though i had to nail down a colour scheme. 

I have to admit, GW's tutorial on these guys was pretty good, so i more or less followed their guide for this mini. I did swap out some of the paints for the Vallejo Game Air equivalent in some cases. 

I base coated the model in white, then hit it with Vallejo Game Air Glorious Gold. Once dry, i applied an zenithal highlight of Polished Gold, again using the airbrush. 

I then washed the whole model with Seraphim Sepia (or whatever its now called!)

I then started refreshing the gold with thinned down Polished Gold, being careful to leave plenty of shadow in the recesses.

Then finally i applied a tiny highlight to the apex's using Vallejo Game air Silver. I called the gold areas done at this stage, so i blocked out the other areas in their base colours before doing any more. I was still happy with the gold afterwards, so left it at that!

As the Custodes are going to be quite a special army for me, i wanted to make sure i got some sweet bases for them. I always wanted the theme of this army to be the Webway, where they spent so much time fighting daemonic incursions with the Emperor! No i haven't read Master of  Mankind yet, so no spoilers please!

Scibor's do a great range of bases, so i was confident I'd find some there. These are some of their SF Elven bases in 30mm (2mm off the standard size for some reason, but i don't think anyone will notice!) As the Webway was build by the ancient Eldar, i think these fit my theme perfectly!

I basecoated them in Army Painters Desert Yellow.

I then dry brushed them with Ushabti Bone.

Then lightly dry brushed them with White Scar.

Finally i added some shadows to the bases. I did this using an airbrush with Vallejo Beasty Brown and then Dark Fleshtone for the deepest recesses. I then edged the bases in Abbadon Black. Suitably ancient Eldar-y i think!

Here's the (nearly) finished test model on a finished base. I completed the shading and highlights on the other base colours, but ran out of thinner before i could get onto the power blade!! I will go for a blue glow effect on the blade initially, but i may do it in silver metallics. We'll see.

I'll get this guy in the light box once I've done the blade. In the meantime please let me know what you think!

The GunGrave