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So I want to paint a predominantly orange army, I've narrowed it down to either Custodes or a SM custom chapter. In terms of fluff I have no problem imagining an orange Space Marine army, but I'm having trouble imagining an orange custodes army in the setting.

Would an orange Custodes army be acceptable in fluff terms?

And before any helpful souls reply, I'm aware that I can paint my models whatever colours that I choose. I tend to sell on my armies at a certain point to fund new hobby stuff, so I like to adhere to the fluff in terms of possible colour schemes. It also helps with my immersion in the universe if my army has a realistic look, relative to the setting.

Custodes are known to form specialised bodies as the particular situation calls. Orange colored ''cell'' could be formed to fight either some unusual/unique threat or to fight an old one in a new way.

Is this an attempt at making a Cheeto Man Custodian Meme? Because that is silly, and I would enjoy watching the Cheeto Man army get wrecked.

Retrubutor gold, wash in fugion orange?

Shadow Walker wrote:Custodes are known to form specialised bodies as the particular situation calls. Orange colored ''cell'' could be formed to fight either some unusual/unique threat or to fight an old one in a new way.

Thanks. Is that an established part of the fluff, enabling any colour to be used in theory?

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:Is this an attempt at making a Cheeto Man Custodian Meme? Because that is silly, and I would enjoy watching the Cheeto Man army get wrecked.

No. I don't understand people who paint whacky "amusing" colour schemes, but each to their own.

Backspacehacker wrote:Retrubutor gold, wash in fugion orange?

Ooh, that's an interesting thought, but no, I was going for a regular orange.

I futzed around with metallic orange a lot in this thread: https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/745329.page

If nothing else, Reaper's Orange Brown is fantastic base for doing any kind of work with Orange.

I've seen your Marines before buddy, they are very nice, but I'm defo going down the traditional non-metallic orange road

Like this?

That's more like it, but with some turquise blue detail to make it pop, and hopefully a little more contrast.

But if I could get some solid justification for Custodes, that's the path I'd rather travel

The Custodes codex does not call out any particular practice for variant color schemes and assumes gold as the standard, calling it out at least once as a fitting color for the Emperor's bodyguards. There are two things that might be of interest to you, though.

Their armor is explicitly noted as being able to be dyed on a molecular level (relevant for battle damage as you wouldn't have metallic color underneath the paint because the material of the armor is altered to be that color).

Just as naturally as gold is wordlessly accepted as the standard color, there are two shield companies highlighted that have black and white armor respectively. This is in no way explained or remarked on as exceptional, so I reckon if you had a good in universe reason why your Custodians are orange, you'd be within the limits of what the general army background suggests.

I'll also note that the black Custodians are the ones charged with guarding the dark dungeons beneath Terra and the white ones are the Solar Watch, which to draw on a similar image are the ones soaring above Terra's clouds. I think it stands to reason that if you find something you can connect with your chosen color, it would fall in line with that precedent.

It may also be worth holding off for another week to see if the new codex sheds more light on it. Given GW likes build your own subfaction rules these days, they might expand the background and add illustrations in support of that.

Thanks for taking the time to type that Geifer, that’s very helpful!