At the last tournament I was attending – 3 City Heresy – I saw an army that I really desired. I desired it not because it was beautiful or powerful (although it quite is), but because of the number of models required for a standard-sized game of 1500-2000 points. The army in question was Grey Knights built on Khaldor Draigo (spelling?), making Paladins the Troops choices. Now special characters are not really all that commonly allowed in tournaments in Poland so that kept me from making said army for myself. This and the lack of time for my own modelling.
Some two months ago I was informed that Grey Knights actually have Terminators in Troops, and that Paladins can be made scoring units by inclusion of a Grand Master. This made me buy 4 boxes of GK Terminators. These waited for some time until three weeks ago I managed to finish one commission and find a week of time before I had to start another. With the use of MAS Crusader legs and MAS Shoulder Pads T.R. set 2 and some heads I had sculpted earlier, I was able to make myself an army of Adeptus Custodes in just over a week. Now these are not painted as well as I would have liked them to, but I reckon for a week of my time they cut it. Now I need to order Contemptor Dreadnoughts from Forge World to make it a 2000pts-ish army!
What I like most in this army is that it weighs less than 1kg, fits into a second smallest Feldherr bag, requires very little thought when playing and takes little time to deploy, play with, and pack up. This may make me actually want to play 40k in this edition still, as this was my biggest gripe with my Adeptus Mechanicus IG counts-as: It weighs 14kgs and has 9+ vehicles and 70+ infantry. Now I can travel light and drink beer without it actually hampering my play too much, and have time between games to actually talk to my 40k buddies!
They look great for reaching completion in such a short amount of time. I am facing the same challenge by trying to complete my Black Templar army by Christmas. I had to skip past much of the details and adopt the “wash-and-go” paint style while placing most of the emphasis on the glow (which is the selling point of the army’s visuals at this point). Kudos! Though it does seem that there are a lot of these Custodes armies surfacing around the net. Did you draw inspiration from the others which have been popping up or is this a figment of your own imagination? Either way, job well done!
It is just amazing what you can do in one week time. I probably would have made it to finish the assembling in the same time only 😉
Great painting and conversions. Well done.
Nice conversions!
Too bad those heads aren’t available, looks like some Scibor heads would be the best approximation to the very nice one you created.
Okay after a lot of studying of the models, a couple of questions:
1) The bulk of the Paladins have had their upper torso Grey Knight elements removed and a Imperial symbol replacing it. Was that a green stuff conversion you did for each one?
2) On your Grandmaster, what upper torso did you use for that body? I cannot figure it out. It looks like a Terminator torso that is different from the stock Grey Knight torso (from the looks of the rear torso shot) but which one? Most vexing!
How much would it cost to get 1 of these? id like to have a collection of custodes