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Hi all,

I've picked up a load of custodes at a very good price, and and I'm just wondering if they only really rocked the gold blind armour with red helmet hair?

I've seen some artwork that depicts them in black armour, and but I don't know if it's official artwork or fan made. So, are the custodes limited to gold, or are they able to have different colour armour?

After the Emperor's duel with Horus there was some stuff saying the red portions of their outfits were made black, but I think that's it as far as official coloring goes.

Don't let that stop you though! I inverted my Custodes so they are silver with gold trim. Looks especially good on the shields!

The black armor is an official one, it's in Inferno from Forgeworld.

After the Emperor 'died', the Custodes abandoned their traditional golden armour and retreated into the Imperial Palace, choosing to wear black instead. Since then, they have virtually never been seen outside of the Imperial Palace again...
...
...
...Until GW wanted to sell new miniatures of course, and so the Custodes re-appeared in the new millennium. Hooray!


Also, as per FW fluff, the Warders of the Vaults of Rython, a subgroup of Custodes who guarded the deepest vaults of the Imperial Palace wore black and silver armour instead of gold.

 Tannhauser42 wrote:
The black armor is an official one, it's in Inferno from Forgeworld.

That armour im basing mine off.
its legit in FW book

This is how they look like in a well-known artwork:

I always thought all the background mooks were Horus's guys.

Mooks on the left are Horus', mooks on the right are the Emperor's.

And they look like space marines wearing a cross between mkIV and cataphractii plate, not custodes at all. Also note the complete lack of swords or spears (yes Forge World has a heresy era custodes unit that uses heavy bolters like regular marines use boltguns but they didn’t exist when that piece was painted) plus the whole point of the “mourning” garb was that they failed - they were not present to protect the Emperor in his moment of greatest need - not least because Horus’s ship was set up to scatter the teleport-boarders and separate everyone so they could be dealt with piecemeal.

 Mr_Rose wrote:
And they look like space marines wearing a cross between mkIV and cataphractii plate, not custodes at all. Also note the complete lack of swords or spears (yes Forge World has a heresy era custodes unit that uses heavy bolters like regular marines use boltguns but they didn’t exist when that piece was painted) plus the whole point of the “mourning” garb was that they failed - they were not present to protect the Emperor in his moment of greatest need - not least because Horus’s ship was set up to scatter the teleport-boarders and separate everyone so they could be dealt with piecemeal.

The FW unit is based on this depiction, among others.