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FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
Custodes need a better Warden like Astartes need a better Eradicator. But to be fair, we are not asking for better, we are asking for unique. All we want is not another carbon copy of the Guardian with better melee. I would love for them to have some form of role as a chaplain unit. 3-5 man unit, that sings the songs of dead heroes. All we want is unique. We are the only faction with less plastic units than resin, and three of our plastic units are complete garbage or useless. Wardens, LRs, and Contemptors.

Well I gave unique earlier and nobody remotely worked off of that, although I do say unique simply because the role of bodyguard TECHNICALLY isn't filled in the army, but then again how much does a Custodes HQ need meat shields?

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
Custodes need a better Warden like Astartes need a better Eradicator. But to be fair, we are not asking for better, we are asking for unique. All we want is not another carbon copy of the Guardian with better melee. I would love for them to have some form of role as a chaplain unit. 3-5 man unit, that sings the songs of dead heroes. All we want is unique. We are the only faction with less plastic units than resin, and three of our plastic units are complete garbage or useless. Wardens, LRs, and Contemptors.

Well I gave unique earlier and nobody remotely worked off of that, although I do say unique simply because the role of bodyguard TECHNICALLY isn't filled in the army, but then again how much does a Custodes HQ need meat shields?

Good point. I am torn, Custodes need ZERO help right now, we are as close to perfect as we can be. But at the same time, I would like to actually use the models I bought, and I have two boxes of Wardens on my to-do shelf that I am dying to use. But to alter them would disrupt our balance. It's very tricky.

Custodian Guard get shields or spears, Wardens get axes or spears. It seems to me like the unit is meant to be a more offensive unit, they also get an extra attack. Remove the 6+ FNP (because FNP on a multi-wound model is silly). Now you have a simple choice between the more defensive Guardians and the more offensive Wardens.

Adjust pts to account for lower durability or whatever, not like GW cares about pts. I know that adding more bloated rules is all the rage, but sometimes less is more. Their stubbornness is represented by higher Ld and that Strat.

When people ask what they do you don't have to go over a novel's worth of rules to explain how Tribune Vitali has taken an oath to this and Tribune Paulus has taken an oath to that or how on the full moon they can save the life of a character by taking a quadratic number of mortal wounds based on the position of Mars in the heavens. They're your choppier Custodian Guard, simple as that.

 vict0988 wrote:
Custodian Guard get shields or spears, Wardens get axes or spears. It seems to me like the unit is meant to be a more offensive unit, they also get an extra attack. Remove the 6+ FNP (because FNP on a multi-wound model is silly). Now you have a simple choice between the more defensive Guardians and the more offensive Wardens.

Adjust pts to account for lower durability or whatever, not like GW cares about pts. I know that adding more bloated rules is all the rage, but sometimes less is more. Their stubbornness is represented by higher Ld and that Strat.

When people ask what they do you don't have to go over a novel's worth of rules to explain how Tribune Vitali has taken an oath to this and Tribune Paulus has taken an oath to that or how on the full moon they can save the life of a character by taking a quadratic number of mortal wounds based on the position of Mars in the heavens. They're your choppier Custodian Guard, simple as that.

That would be a quick fix, and also super boring.

I don't get why in these kind of discussions it's always just a choice between boring and rules bloat. There is a spectrum here, you can give a unit one or two interesting special rules to make them stand out, without writing pages of unit rules.

Another problem I see with your suggestion is that yes, you can lower the price on wardens to make them the de facto more offensive variant of custodian guard and I would argue that still nobody would include them in their list. They have the same issue as our standard custodian guard with spear: equipping them with shields is just always better hands down, because survivability is key in this edition.
Our wardens would be cheaper in this scenario, but our terminators would fulfill that offensive role better and with more surviability, so they'd again be left in a corner with no purpose.

Arson Fire wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:
They aren't weak though. The pay an appropriate amount over a CG for their additional wound and FNP and weapon. Terms are only taken over wardens because of stratagems - it has nothing to do with the raw stats. Wardens are pretty darn deadly. They are distinguished over CG by many things...weapon/attacks/extra wound - what more do you want and do you want to pay for it.

Just FYI, they don't have an extra wound over custodian guard. They still just have 3.

Well I coulda sworn they had an extra wound. They might be a tad overcosted then.

If they are the super custode veterans, then I think they should have better attacks, not just stronger. Give Wardens D2 damage spears and 3d axes. That would mean it's not a debate of them over Terminators.

 Xenomancers wrote:

Arson Fire wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:
They aren't weak though. The pay an appropriate amount over a CG for their additional wound and FNP and weapon. Terms are only taken over wardens because of stratagems - it has nothing to do with the raw stats. Wardens are pretty darn deadly. They are distinguished over CG by many things...weapon/attacks/extra wound - what more do you want and do you want to pay for it.

Just FYI, they don't have an extra wound over custodian guard. They still just have 3.

Well I coulda sworn they had an extra wound. They might be a tad overcosted then.

They still need their own niche. If you make wardens just a smidge cheaper, they still wouldn't see play, because allarus and aquilon are just better. If you make them significantly cheaper they would invalidate spear custodians even more, which is another unit nobody uses, because shield guards are that much better.
You can't fix this properly by tweaking points. Wardens need more or different special rules.

By all means, make them more expensive and give them a fight last aura for enemy units.

So there are two arguments a lot of people use around altering the Custodes, and I only understand/appreciate one.

Custodes lack diversity but pay a premium per model. This argument makes sense. All our units are essentially the same thing: big dumb idiots that are hard to kill. We have a unit of terminators that appear to be designed to hunt and kill characters, and a few flavors of weak as feth golden gals that will likely die before being usefull. If you go over to the FW side of the house we are a Mech powerhouse with basically Knight class super heavy Naughts and a flyer that puts a shadowsword to shame. We don't have a lot of room to play fun styles. It's mainly: get to the objectives and stay there. And that's our entire faction. Wardens are slightly more stabby Guardians that are slightly harder to kill. meh.

That is a fine argument. Lets change the army to make it more interesting. Right there with you.

Now, Lets change the army because the Fluff or because MaRinEs got BUFFS is a pair of bad arguments. Marines are the poster children of the game, ofcourse they are hot right now. They also got a FULL re-vamp in the last two years, so yeah. As for fluff, look, Varian will never be what he is in the book, nor will or should Alleya. Being badassed in a book does not mean baddassed on the table. The Sanquinor is the physchic manifestation of Sanguinius, but he's got basic jump pack marine stats. We should not be walking Primarchs, each swinging S8 D6 long swords of death.

Be honest, if Custodes were even close to their fluff it would be game breaking. These guys slaughtered Thunder Warriors, who were pretty much Astartes on Space meth.