We’ve already featured his Blood Angels successor Chapter the Grail Guard, but our Steve is such a good – and prolific – painter that we had to give his other big Warhammer 40,000 army a proper showing. Just how many pots of red and gold has this man been through?
Steve: When Si and Nick asked if they could use my army for an episode of Battle Report I immediately said yes. It’s always exciting to get your miniatures featured on one of our channels even after years working here. The only catch? I had to paint the new Shield-Captain before he was released… well, okay then!
I regularly get asked how I do the gold on my armies, as I can bash out a unit fairly quickly these days. I start with a spray of White Scar then another of Retributor Armour, as I find the initial coat makes the gold a lot more vibrant than just spraying onto bare plastic. I then overbrush with Stormhost Silver, apply two coats of Reikland Fleshshade, and finish off with ‘Ardcoat.
I’m known as the Custodes collector here in the office, and for good reason as my goal is to complete the Codex, i.e. to have at least one of every single entry and weapon option built and painted, and usually more than one. I am very nearly there, with only a couple of Sisters of Silence squads to go. To give you an idea of what this entails, with the new miniature I now have 8 Shield-Captains, each with different wargear.
Custodes infantry are iconic, especially with their guardian spears, so they form the backbone of my collection. My current tally is around 80 across all of the different squad types, including a few Forge World units, and after I've finished the final few units from the Codex, other Forge World units will be next in line.
The inclusion of jetbikes in the first Codex was very exciting to me as they are incredibly rare in the Imperium yet fit so well with the aesthetic and lore of the Adeptus Custodes, and so now I have the beginnings of my own fleet. The four used in the Battle Report are usually just part of one squad in my display case, but it was fascinating to see how effective they are in smaller units as well.
I love Dreadnoughts, as those of you who saw my Grail Guard last year may remember. My usual approach when including several versions of the same kit is to build the first one pretty much as shown in the construction book, then convert the subsequent ones. Building the first one as “standard” really gives me a good idea of how the kit is supposed to work and gives me ideas on how I can tweak things later on.
I couldn’t resist when making my first Telemon to do a little something extra (and sneaky) for the base, casually dropping into conversation with one of my regular gaming buddies that I liked how he had painted his Aeldari and asking how he achieved his effect. The next time we played and I showed up with an ex-Revenant Titan on my base, the look on his face was priceless and remains a talking point all these years later.
The last of the units included in the Battle Report was my Land Raider. This venerable war machine is, for me, THE most iconic vehicle in the 41st Millennium, and it looks great in gold!
However, it took quite a bit of practice to get the gold right. It is done with exactly the same process as described above, but I am not naturally a patient man so my initial attempts were really streaky and messy once I applied the Reikland Fleshshade. My advice when doing large surface areas is to take your time and concentrate on one flat edge at a time, which allows you to control where the shade pools a lot more easily than if you try to do the whole model in one go.
The story of Roboute Guilliman striking out from Terra on his Indomitus Crusade at the head of the first full force of Custodes to leave Holy Terra in 10,000 years really struck a chord with me, and gave me the perfect excuse to finally paint a Primarch.
My version has been slightly reposed and finished with golden armour to be in keeping with the Adeptus Custodes he leads, though with flashes of Ultramarines Blue to show where his loyalties truly lie.
If there was one thing my collection lacked, it was long range firepower… at least that was the excuse I told myself when deciding to convert a Custodes-themed Imperial Knight.
Though the head and the shoulder pads are the most obvious changes, the most time was spent removing all of the rivets and filling in all of the armour seams. My idea was that this is an extremely old machine closer to the original STC pattern that all other knights are derived from, giving it a subtly sleeker and more refined look.
Thanks Steve, incredible work as always. Someone get this man a Fyreslayer army! If you want to try your own hand at his simple-but-effective gold recipe, you can pre-order your own battleforce of Adeptus Custodes alongside the new Codex and accessories tomorrow.
And you can watch Steve’s army in action on this week’s episode of Battle Report, over on Warhammer+.