Horus Heresy: Legio Custodes Venatari Squad with Bucklers and Pistols

Hiya all

My Custodes are progressing well now! So I’m trying to keep the momentum and Hobby Bingo up. 

This is my second Venatari squad to be completed (and last of these beautiful flying Custodes). 

We are working on a lot of projects in the background at the moment so bare with us!

After this squad I will be onto some more Custodes Terminators!

Drake Seta

Battle Bunnies

@battle_bunnies_drake_seta on Instagram

Legio Custodes: Aquilon Terminators with Adrathic Destructors

Hi all 

Just finished a unit of Legio Custodes terminators. 

I followed our painting guide to get them looking all lush!

Have 6x more Terminators to do soon and then vehicles and a host more. 

Battle Bunnies

Don’t forget to check out our YouTube channel. We have a great unboxing video and painting guide of the new Goliath Maulers. 

Review: Aeronautica Imperialis

Hi all,

Games Workshop has given us an advance copy of the new Horus Heresy: Aeronautica Imperialis rule book and aircraft cards for the two main factions from the book.

The rule book is genuinely useful for anyone who wants to get into Aeronautica Imperialis and just happens to want to do a Heresy-era squadron; this book contains:

• All the core rules for AI (good news to veterans of the game, these look no different to the previous 40k-era publications - more on this later!)

• A campaign section around the Forge World of Vanaheim

• 8 scenarios (the classic Dog Fight scenario but a bunch of other scenarios like a canyon run - some may be familiar to people who have bought some of the campaign books)

• Squadron lists for Legiones Astartes, Divisio Aeronautica and a section on the Ares Gunship

The book itself is much like the campaign books in that they are contain a lot of artwork of various aircraft through-out - nearly every legion is represented in the artwork in some form (the only ones I haven't seen are Iron Warriors and White Scars) so there is plenty to work with if you need inspiration on how to paint your aircraft. If the Legiones Astartes do not take your fancy though there are plenty of examples of different colour schemes for the various squadrons within the Divisio Aeronautica.

Each squadron list has their own list of campaign abilities and make reference to the previous campaign books which makes it clear that while this book is set in the Horus Heresy era, you can still play these lists in games of Aeronautica Imperialis with the squadron lists from all the other publications so if you want you can test your Legiones Astartes squadron against an Ork squadron, your Divisio Aeronautica against the Aeldari and so on to simulate air combat in the Great Crusade (or heck, you can see how the legions would have handled the Tau Empire in a "What if..." style scenario).

The Legiones Astartes

If you are familiar with the Adeptus Astartes squadron list then you will know most of what is going on here - they have the same standard upgrades as before, the campaign abilities are also the same. The things that are different however are that there are no named planes anymore and in their place there are legion-specific upgrades instead - I really like this, I wasn't a huge fan of the named aircraft, I really prefer the idea that I can give my planes more fluffy upgrades instead. As I'm a relative novice, an Aeronautica Imperialis expert we know has shared their opinion on the legion specific upgrades:

• Dark Angels: Ravenwing Veteran
  A single once per game reroll - basically to turn a below average roll into hopefully an average roll - cost seems a bit steep: best use is on a damage roll where you really need something dead and didn’t get it, but still a bit much for a one off. Note, this is the same points but worse than the Emperor’s Children ability. Could do with a price reduction or add the +1 Ace manoeuvres
• White Scars: Swift of Wing
  Jink - this is the equivalent of -1 to min speed and +1 to max speed + a little more manoeuvrability on chunky Astartes craft this is a BIG advantage for an every turn ability
• Space Wolves: Peerless Hunter
  +2 FPR to tailing fire approx 0.5 extra structure off an enemy unless a THawk >1 at Short Range but need to be tailing. Well balanced
• Imperial Fists: Aegis Pilot
  +1 Structure Point; this would tie in w/ techmarine upgrade as well. This is a bargain, no roll of the dice needed, just straight up increase the number of hits you can take, therefore survivability and damage output for the game. This is the most valuable of all of the upgrades and probably worth more than its current points cost
• Blood Angels: Master of the Skies:
  Once per game double throttle; useful for Storm Eagle landing troops and getting to peak range fast, seems ok for the points
• Iron Hands: Iron Father
  4+ repair roll for each lost Structure. Techmarine is already broken on a Thunderhawk, this is just a little worse. A Techmarine on a Storm Eagle/Fire Raptor is 4pts for 5+ per structure -> 2/3rds -> 1 Structure but not guaranteed on a Fire Raptor/Storm Eagle, or 2 Structure on a Gunship. As it’s less guaranteed and might not get a chance to use if over-killed, it’s definitely worth less than the Imperial Fists ability unless on a Thunderhawk Gunship
• Ultramarines: Alarus Pilot
  A once per game pick a different Ace manoeuvre - handy for reacting to an enemy’s unexpected manoeuvring, but not amazing for once per game
• Salamanders: Tempered Plating
  Ceramite Plating + ignore extra damage once per game - kinda saves 1 Structure on a reduced XD roll. Likely, but not guaranteed use, seems well balanced
• Raven Guard: Shadow Bird
  Stealth (-1) is only helpful on a low altitude ground defense unit i.e. bombing an Icarus but probably worth it. Ideally, I’d like to see the Stealth Ability increased to also be -1 to hit at Long Range. Or maybe this could be added to this ability and adjust the points cost accordingly
• Emperor’s Children: Phoenix Pilot
  A once per game reroll and +1 Ace Manoeuvres- very good on a low manoeuvrability aircraft. Otherwise it is the same as Ravenwing Vet but better for the same points and to be honest it sounds about right at this points value
• Iron Warriors: Hullbreaker Missiles
  Upgrade all kraks to XD5+ from XD 6+; w/ 2 sets of Krak that’s 0.2 Structure. I’d drop the points cost on this, unless on a gunship
• Night Lords: Anguish Engines
  -1 handling within 3 hexes; better if using expanded damage rules, otherwise, pretty pointless
• World Eaters: Red Hunter
  Once per game +1 to hit rolls within short range. Thunderhawk Gunship 16 dice now hitting on 4s instead of 5s; 3 extra hits for just over 1 extra structure off an enemy craft - too much of a bargain. Otherwise, just helps on a ground attack run w/ Kraks on Xiphon/Storm Eagle = reasonable
• Death Guard: Shroud of Barbarus
  Cant be targeted or fire for a single turn - Storm Eagle in prep for landing / Fire Raptor in prep for strafing run. Quite a different ability and difficult to place a value on without a chunk of play testing: feels a little overcosted. It’s certainly not an extra point of structure due to the zero damage output at the same time
• Thousand Sons: Corvidae Initiate
  Fire at full effect in bad weather at Medium and a once per game ignore the +/-1 altitude penalty This is the best overall ability, but takes skill and luck to get the best out of it. Well worth the points
• Sons of Horus: Warmaster's Chosen
  A once per game reroll Initiative for the turn. Ok, it’s a chance, it can make a difference at a key point in the game, IF the opponent rolls averagely and you roll badly. seems reasonably costed
• Word Bearers: Possessed Pilot
  A once per game increase S/M range by 2 hexes. Yep, pretty good on a Storm Eagle/Fire Raptor, too good on a Thunderhawk Gunship
• Alpha Legion: Sacii Pilot
  Redeploy a craft after deployment; minor benefit

The Divisio Aeronautica

This squadron list is basically the 30k equivalent of the Imperial Navy squadron list in terms of aircraft however it looks like they make use of the Astra Militarum ground assets (the hydra flakk battery and the basilisk anti-aircraft gun) so that could give them a slight but interesting twist if you make use of the assets in your games. I am not that familiar with the Imperial Navy/Astra Militarum rules to know if there is any difference in the pilot upgrades and campaign abilities.

Legio Custodes - Ares Gunship

This gunship was previewed a few months back on one of the twitch streams and given the armament, if feels like a heavy bomber but in terms of manoeuvrability it is on on par with a Fire Raptor. This is the only custodes plane (and is a pretty solid one at that) but you have the option of either fielding them as a full squardron of just these gunships or you can add one to a Legiones Astartes/Divisio Aeronatica list - note that in terms of upgrades, they can only choose from the standard Legiones Astartes upgrades (regardless of what list they are in - representing their post-human status and resources available to the Adeptus Custodes), they can't take legion-specific upgrades and they can't use any upgrades from the Divisio Aeronautica list.

Aircraft Cards

I've also got a chance to review these with the book. These are pretty standard for all releases of squadrons for Aeronautica Imperialis so I doubt this will be a huge surprise to anyone. In each of these sets you get pretty much all the cards you will ever need to field a 150 point squadron in Aeronautica Imperialis - there may be some edge cases like if you want to spam a load of vanilla thunderbolts as a full Divisio list then you probably would need a second set.

You generally get 4 of each weapon and aircraft upgrade (though less if it is for a less numerous aircraft like the Thunderhawk), you get single copy of each of your ground assets and ace pilot abilities and in the case of the Legiones Astartes set one of each of the legion specific upgrades so single set should cover all your needs for whichever squadron list you choose.

All in all, this looks like an excellent update so it gives some interesting new options to play around with and I am looking forward to playing some Horus Heresy Aeronautica soon. See you in the skies pilots and good hunting!

Hector Cephas

Legio Custodes: Telemon Dread

Hello,

We have added a Telemon Dread to the groups Legio Custodes force. I was given the honour of assembling it. I have to say that I wasn't a huge fan when I saw the model originally, however getting to assemble it has changed my mind. It is a great kit and went together very well. I was also surprised at how large it is!

He comes with a big base and I wanted to make use of the space with the pose. It is big and powerful, again I wanted to get this into the pose. Big striding steps swinging the fist to kill it's foes. 

We are looking forward to getting some paint on him and seeing what he can do on the table! Anyone else have one? What are your thoughts on the model and rules?

Happy hobby!

Darien 

Legio Custodes Sagittarum Guard Squad 1

Hello,

The Legio Custodes continues to grow. Today we have the first of 2 Sagittarum Guard squads.

Custodian squad leader - Kofun 

Custodian - Augustus

Custodian - Qin Shi

Custodian - Raja

Custodian - Yuri

Squad Kofun provide the custodes with ranged support. They aim to keep their brothers in combat from getting swamped by to many enemies, thinning the ranks that are coming to provide support. 

In the Web Way Squad Kofun held high ground during several assault from the Neverborn on the bastions that the Legio had created within the ancient cities of the Eldar. They stared down endless hordes and kept there hands on the tigger with each bullet killing yet another Neverborn. 

Happy hobby!

Darien

Legio Custodes Squad Lothair

Hello!

Here is our second Custodian squad that Drake and I have been painting up for the group. This squad is headed up by a Sheild Captain.

Shield Captain Lothair
Custodian Berengar
Custodian Enyu
Custodian Hor-Aha
Custodian Leszek

Squad Lothair spent much of the early Crusade fighting in the vanguard of the Emperor's forces and have had the privilege of fighting by his very side during a campaign. Shield Captain Lothair and his squad have specialised in Zone Mortalis battles and were called to action by the Emperor during a boarding action against onto a Ork hulk. The battle against the Green Skin was fast and violent. Each smash of the shield and slice of the sword bring down one or more Orks. The Shields of the squad used to enclose, protect and attack as one with the Emperor. The fighting in this campaign earned each of the squad a new name. 

Lothair's squad found themselves again in close quarters fighting at the outbreak of the Webway war, this time fighting in ancient Eldar cities with the Webway. Once the scale of the war became clear, bases of operation had to be established and this fell, in part, to Lothair. He lead the way through unknown streets, fighting the Neverborn at every turn. After weeks of endless fighting contact was lost with Lothair. It is unknown whether he and his squad still fight on in the name of the Emperor and Terra. 

All kinds of Neverborn joined the fighting, creatures on 2 legs, 4 legs and even flying. I did not matter to Lothair they were all cut down. 

Happy hobby! 

Darien

Legio Custodes Painting Guide

Hello! 

You may be aware that several of the Bunnies are working on some group projects, one of the projects is the Legio Custodes. We have been gathering the force together for a while and have begun putting paint to model! Below is our guide as to how to paint them. We have aimed to keep them as true to the art work in Book 7 as possible.

Gold armour:
1 - Chaos Black spray

2 - Warplock Bronze base 

3 - Warplock Bronze/Retributor Armour Heavy drybrush

4 - 1:3 Warplock Bronze/Retributor Armour Hemisphere zenith drybrush

5 - Retributor Armour Zenithal dry brush

6 - Liberator Armour highest zenithal drybrush highlight.

7 - 1:1 Seraphim Sepia to pre mixed armour mix (pot of Agrax Earthshade/Pot of Nuln Oil/pot of Klear floor polish and half pot of Water) Wash. 

8 - Liberator Armour highest zenithal again drybrush highlight.

9 - Edge highlight Mithril Silver on highest and most prominent edges.

Gloves and Peerages
1 - Doombull Brown

2 - Druchi Violet and Agrax Earthshade.

White Rope
1 - Administratum grey
2 - Nuln oil wash
3 - White Scar drybrush highlight.

Eyes
1 - Blood for the blood god

Hair
1 - Word Bearer Red
2 - Agrax Earthshade.
3 - Highlight Mephiston Red drybrush zenithal highlight Evil Sunz Scarlet

Blue jewels
1 - Abaddon black
2 - Zenithal highlight Mithril Silver
3 - Soulstone Blue (2 coats) 

The finished product:

We hope that this will provide some help to those of you planning Custodes armies! To help with more inspiration we have a whole army on the way in the coming months, so keep your eyes open for more updates. 

Happy hobby! 

Darien

Hector Cephas; Hobby planning and dealing with a lack of inspiration

Hey guys,

It seems that despite my frankly awesome start to the year with my World Eaters project, I've unfortunately landed myself in a hobby rut. It has has felt like a disaster but it has got me thinking about what went well with my World Eaters project, what went badly, what I need to improve and so on and this made me think of work...

That's no bad thing - I've got an awful lot of experience in project planning as a software engineer and more specifically, I have experience in various development lifecycles. For example, my World Eaters project was done almost in using Waterfall (admittedly unconsciously!):

1. I worked out my requirements...
2. ...planned the project...
3. ...ordered everything in and did everything according to the plan (including weekly milestones to achieve so I had something new to show in the weekly progress reports)...
4. ...made sure everything was good to go (checking if my basing etc were all completed and nothing missed from my original requirements)...
5. ...and pretty much signed it off with time to spare.

And this made sense as I had a specific set of requirements and a specific deadline (ToS) up-front so it made it easy to do and it worked really well in my opinion.

However, since ToS, I haven't done nearly as much hobby stuff. I've kinda been pottering around, doing odds and sods and not really getting anywhere and the reason for this is that I am missing both the hobby goal and a deadline so what I did earlier this year won't work unless I fix that - easier said than done! I always had the inspiration and desire to do my World Eaters, just no deadline to do it for.

Where am I going with this? Well, I have a project I've been setting myself up for (Custodians) and a deadline that I'd like to complete them by (~22nd September - a week before the campaign weekend I advertised last week). However, I don't feel ready to do the project as I'm not entirely happy with my own requirements so doing it the Waterfall way isn't going to work - especially if i started on it right now. What I feel I need to do is take on a smaller project and use that to drive the Custodes one - I'm going to do a proof of concept by doing a Blood Bowl team:

1. It's a squad of characters so I need to paint some things en-mass but ultimately the detailing has to be done model by model - just like with the Custodes to do them justice
2. I can use the a similar colour scheme to what I intend to do for the Custodes to make sure I am happy with it - I am currently unsure how well I can do it
3. It hopefully will give me enough momentum to push me into the Custodes project and hit the ground running with a more well refined project and confidence that I can complete it too.

So yeah, hopefully you'll see a hobby update from me this week as I make a start on that.

I feel this post probably will give you more insight into how I plan my projects more than anything else but I hope it does help anyone who feels a bit lost in what they want to do with their hobby projects. If you have a different approach to planning a project, write a comment below as I'd be very interested to hear from you - I feel I could improve my productivity but I haven't got myself to a happy medium as I can go from doing nothing to doing a hyper condensed project and then back to doing nothing instead of going at a more leisurely pace to achieve the same end result in a similar time frame.

Until next time!

Hector Cephas 

Hector Cephas; Legio Custodes Contemptor-Achillus Dreadnought unboxing

Hi guys.

I didn't require too much convincing huh? Following on from last night's unboxing post, I am going to show you guys what you get in a Contempto-Achillus kit.

Like the jetbike, this also comes in a white Forge World box like most medium to large kits seem to be being packaged in these days. The box is exactly the same size as the jetbike one and is probably the smallest ones they will do. This kit comes with a colour-coded instruction leaflet but unlike the jetbike, you probably will need to use this, particularly with the arm assemblies.

As you can see, there are quite a few pieces in this kit - the usual flat and bent feet options are present but this kit is probably more customisable and unlike any Legio Astartes contemptor, you do not need to also buy additional weapon kits to get the full mileage out of this kit as you already have all your possible options available here.

Here you have all the possible wrist mounted weapons you can have (in terms of looks I really like the Infernus Incinerators but in terms of coolness I would have to do with the Adrathic Destructors) and of course the Achillus Dreadspear:

This is the main reason I got the kit. Don't get me wrong, I like the other Dreadnought kit with the sword and shield but I just love Guardian Spears - my Custodian Guard detachment is going to be spear-heavy for better and for worse!!! A nice thing to note is that the spear is completely devoid of molded on hands so it doesn't restrict you on how you can pose the model which is fantastic - it's given me some cool ideas of how I want to post the model in general.

You would not believe how hard it was for me to not make some kind of a hand pun here but yes, two whole sprues with hand options which ultimately boil down to "clenched fist", "gripping hand" and "open hand" for both the left and right hands (so 6 hand options in total).

Forge World has been clever here - they've deliberately left round recesses in the wrists and all wrist weapon options to allow you to easily magnetise your weapons. I'm hoping the hands aren't going to be too close to the wrist magnet sockets as I'd like to also magnetise the hands too to allow me to transport this model more easily once its built. I'll let you know how that goes!

Let us know what you thought about this. I personally love this kit and I think it will be a pleasure to build - I'll have so much fun posing the model before I even start gluing!

Until next time!

Hector Cephas

Hector Cephas; Legio Custodes Gyrfalcon Jetbike unboxing

Hi guys,

The postman came today and delivered me my next batch of Forge World goodness and I figured I may as well do an unboxing video to show you all what the new Legio Custodes jetbike looks like as a kit.

I've got to say, it looks like a beautiful kit, quite simple to build and if you've built a Legio Astartes jetbike before now, you'll probably zoom through the assembly without the instruction leaflet.

Much like all the recent kits, you get a full colour-coded instruction manual with step-by-step instructions with how to build your new jetbike. One think I almost overlooked previously at the weekender but it more apparent now I have the kit is the fact that the legs and arms are modeled with some kind of fabric over them - a minor detail but I like the fact that they've done that as it make sense that they would cover their ornate armour to protect it from particulate damage given the speeds these bikes would be flying at; very cool indeed!

Without any further ado, the Custodian biker. Very straight forward, you should hopefully notice the fabric over the legs at least. The chest plate and pauldrons are not covered so you get your usual intricately detailed armour pieces. One thing you may have noticed is that is that there are 3 arms here - this is one of the parts of the kit where you have optional parts though this one is just for personal preference; I'm unsure whether I will model mine with the power lances or not but it's great that we have the option (also, the power lance part of the bikers default wargear so modeling your biker without one should not leave you at a disadvantage in my opinion).

And now the jetbike itself! No surprises here really - front section, rear section, engine/exhaust section to connect the two sections together and then all the frills around it to make it a bike and it is beautifully detailed - I'm an absolute sucker for little things like the controls for the bike on the main fuselage and the centre console. Another thing I like about this kit is how simple it should be to magnetise the weapon systems for the bike so you can pick and choose your load out without compromising. I personally like the Adrathic Devastator - it looks nasty and packs a wallop when used on enemy armour and infantry alike - but all the options are worth considering so I'll be magnetising mine for sure.

I really like this kit and I'm looking forward to fielding them with the rest of my Custodian Guard in the future!

Let me know what you think of the kit and would you guys be interested in an unboxing post for the Contemptor-Achillus Dreadnought kit too?

Until next time!

Hector Cephas