The Female Custodes Kit Is the Coolest Thing GW Has Done in Years

At the New Year Preview today, Games Workshop showed off a slew of new models and projects to look forward to, and while all of it looks pretty awesome, one of the coolest things in the list, and perhaps one of the coolest things they’ve done in a long time, is releasing a preview of the new Legio Custodes kit. Custodes are pretty cool in general (although your feeling about having to play against them is subjective): huge, ornate gold armor, big cool weapons, and just an amazing look on the table make them one of the coolest armies on a table to begin with, but the new kit preview included something that fans of Games Workshop products have been hoping for: female sculpts for 40k (and 30k).

Sure, last year we were introduced to the Custodes Calladayce Kesh, whose appearance in the 10th Edition Codex was a surprise lore drop that was pretty sick -- but there weren’t really models to back up Kesh’s appearance in the book. She existed, and the lore then existed according to GW’s messaging, but there weren’t models. But now, with the new preview, not only are there models but they look sick as hell. Even more importantly, they’re not solely named heroes, but just regular units you can build yourself. Warhammer Community confirmed earlier today that the models in the preview are both male and female, and honestly, the roll out is almost as cool as the models promise to be once they’re in people’s hands. It is worth applauding that the female Custodes models look cool, but also the way they’ve been woven into the army and the support behind them from Games Workshop means a lot to fans who enjoy seeing their games reflect them in new ways, as well as moving away from tired tropes of “you can tell this one is a girl because it is pink or has large breasts”.

Warhammer Community notes that the new kit in the preview contains the ability to build male or female Custodes, and frankly that rules, because the universal appeal of a kit like this is to customize your army the way you want, how you want. An entire army of female Custodes -- your own named units with lore and designs for your narrative campaigns -- are now easily within reach, officially supported by the mainline products. No longer will you have to source heads from Age of Sigmar or Blood Bowl to customize your Custodes to include female models, because now you can just buy them directly from GW.

The announcement of Kesh last year was cool, and the inclusion of female Custodes was also cool, because it shows the expanding and evolving world of Warhammer 40k and appeals to people who want to build interesting lore compliant and flavorful armies. But without official models, it felt like it was mostly just “Yeah, that helmeted Custodes? Female.” And frankly, shout outs to the GW team for making awesome looking Custodes models that are male or female and doing so without tired tropes like Boob Armor, meaning that these new models don’t do anything to break the consistency of your armies that already exist. We’re really excited to see more of these models up close and how they’ll look painted and on the table, and hopefully this is a signal that Games Workshop is going to keep giving us way more model diversity in the ranges across various armies and games.

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Tags: 40k | Warhammer 40k | Adeptus Custodes | gw online preview