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I think the bigger issue with Dread Host will be the return of screens...people stopped screening after GSC got nerfed to death but as soon as strategic reserves start coming in speed bumps will make a comeback. Custodes do have some great chaff-clearers, but is still going to have trouble dealing with say an out-of-LOS scout squad. With multi-charges being effectively dead the initial deepstrike will not be as deadly either. I actually think that deepstriking bikes may be more valuable because with the vexilla they can get close but also jump over a screen on their charge.
I was initially psyched for dread host but I think I’m now on team Shadowkeepers.

Dread Host Eternal Penitent LoTM Dual Fist Telemon, roll 3d6, take 2 highest, rerolling all 3 for free is pretty darn reliable. The Captain Commander trait to add +1 to charge plus LoTM, pretty reliable.

That, and with two fists, 6 attacks from the dreadnoughts hitting and wounding on 2s is just gonna ruin something's day

 greyknight12 wrote:
I think the bigger issue with Dread Host will be the return of screens...people stopped screening after GSC got nerfed to death but as soon as strategic reserves start coming in speed bumps will make a comeback. Custodes do have some great chaff-clearers, but is still going to have trouble dealing with say an out-of-LOS scout squad. With multi-charges being effectively dead the initial deepstrike will not be as deadly either. I actually think that deepstriking bikes may be more valuable because with the vexilla they can get close but also jump over a screen on their charge.
I was initially psyched for dread host but I think I’m now on team Shadowkeepers.

Balerion wrote:

Audustum wrote:

Balerion wrote:

Spartacus wrote:
People will start getting wise to the Teleport homer + terminator bomb tactic. It's pretty easy to predict where the vexilla is going and just drop a cheap screen in front of him which stumps him for next turn, I've seen it happen already. I wonder if we might see a resurgence of Dread Host as a result once the meta has established. It's nice to have the strat in your back pocket so that your opponent is forced to cover all sides again with his screens, not just where your vexilla is.

You say it like it wasn't a thing in 8th edition. People are "wise" to it for a long time, yet it's still the most reliant deepstrike option for Custodes. If you feel lucky, Dread Host might work out. But I think DH is a trap. If you want a reliable deepstrike, you still need the vexilla, especially now with the smaller board, when it's easier to screen out regular 9" ds. I think it'll be the other way around. After the initial hype for DH, people will abandon it for the other shield hosts, after getting burned by the "3d6" charge.

The odds of failing all three charges are very small I think. Even without re-rolls each charge has something like a 52% chance of success, individually. With a CP re-roll on one, you've got consistent odds I think.

I believe the trap may be in trying to use it to get one unit in. That's when it could let you down. You need three units that are all worth getting into melee.

With the re-roll, your chance is around 75% with DH. So on average, even the re-rolled charges you fail every 4th charge. If you are fine with these odds, when as a custodes you have so few units in the game and every failed charge tends to be a big problem, then go for it. Without re-roll, you have, as you say, around 50/50 chance to get it. I hope you don't fail your most important charge then...

I think we all wanted more reliable charges from PA and that's why we got all excited about DH. But it's a trick. I don't trust the odds after trying it in my last game of 8th a month ago. Even Emissaries I think might see more play at the tournaments than DH I believe.

I think there's two issues in these logics.

For greyknight: I don't think the goal every game should be to charge and smash some big, juicy armored target. That's nice, but you're right that screens can be a problem.

For Balerion: The issue seems to be you're putting everything in one basket or some type of huge beta strike.

Dread Host lets you do 3D6, drop the lowest, on 3 units. The goal here should be to take a backfield objective. Preferably 2 of them. You're not striking in a death star and trying to smash your opponent's army with it: you're trying to claim out of reach positions and then hold them with a very dangerous and very durable force.

One of the ideal setups I keep coming back to looks like:

1. Terminator squad
2. Shield-Captain
3. Dreadnought

The dreadnought should go for a completely different objective than the terminator squad and Shield-Captain. Scoring is fast in the new edition and it is hard to recover points if you fall behind. Reserves aren't looking to be highly favored because you're looking at losing so much potential scoring time with your units not on an objective. If you can land T2 and flip two objectives, that's going to be huge. Even flipping just one will be solid for you. So the terminators come down, shoot at something that isn't whatever chaff they need to charge to reach an objective, dreadnought does the same for a different objective and then you charge that chaff. The chaff is the target.

Your opponent now has to decide if they want to completely surrender the center of the board to bring the strength of their force back to their own deployment zone to get that stuff back or if they want to surrender their deployment zone. This tactic also makes it very easy to max out something like Linebreaker.

I'm not saying Dread Host is hands down the best, but it's definitely one of our top hosts.

@Audustum I think you have it right on how you want to use the deepstrike; however I think that smaller board sizes are going to inhibit a lot of deep-field objective grabs. For example, in the “only war” mission released with the core rules, each deployment zone is 18”x44” which means that 2 units can zone out the entire deployment zone from deep strikers.

 greyknight12 wrote:
@Audustum I think you have it right on how you want to use the deepstrike; however I think that smaller board sizes are going to inhibit a lot of deep-field objective grabs. For example, in the “only war” mission released with the core rules, each deployment zone is 18”x44” which means that 2 units can zone out the entire deployment zone from deep strikers.

I'll admit, I've largely just ignored that one because the GT missions leaked. That said, you may need to deep strike off-position and charge. As long as you can keep it to a 9 roll it doesn't really matter where you start.

One thing that's popped in my head today too is that verticality will be more relevant than before. Ruins are both scaleable and breachable. That means we can land on top of them and keep our distance and charge measurements the same (unlike, say, a hill, where you'd measure straight diagonal for the 9" deep strike restriction but then have to measure every part of the hill for moving up and down).

 iGuy91 wrote:
Dread Host Eternal Penitent LoTM Dual Fist Telemon, roll 3d6, take 2 highest, rerolling all 3 for free is pretty darn reliable. The Captain Commander trait to add +1 to charge plus LoTM, pretty reliable.

That, and with two fists, 6 attacks from the dreadnoughts hitting and wounding on 2s is just gonna ruin something's day

Yeah, tried that. My double fist telemon, that was going to ruin someone's day, ended being stuck in no man's land, getting bracketed to 3rd row in subsequent turn. The only day he ruined, was mine.

EDIT: and why would you pick that commander trait anyway, when there's unstoppable destroyer, or cp refund trait? If you are going for 'in your face' SC, it's going to be most likely on bike, right? At least in my case for sure. Then you shouldn't have too much trouble getting a bike cap into a close range for reliable charge anyway, at which point unstoppable destroyer is soooo tasty!

Audustum wrote:

For Balerion: The issue seems to be you're putting everything in one basket or some type of huge beta strike.

Dread Host lets you do 3D6, drop the lowest, on 3 units. The goal here should be to take a backfield objective. Preferably 2 of them. You're not striking in a death star and trying to smash your opponent's army with it: you're trying to claim out of reach positions and then hold them with a very dangerous and very durable force.

One of the ideal setups I keep coming back to looks like:

1. Terminator squad
2. Shield-Captain
3. Dreadnought

The dreadnought should go for a completely different objective than the terminator squad and Shield-Captain. Scoring is fast in the new edition and it is hard to recover points if you fall behind. Reserves aren't looking to be highly favored because you're looking at losing so much potential scoring time with your units not on an objective. If you can land T2 and flip two objectives, that's going to be huge. Even flipping just one will be solid for you. So the terminators come down, shoot at something that isn't whatever chaff they need to charge to reach an objective, dreadnought does the same for a different objective and then you charge that chaff. The chaff is the target.

Your opponent now has to decide if they want to completely surrender the center of the board to bring the strength of their force back to their own deployment zone to get that stuff back or if they want to surrender their deployment zone. This tactic also makes it very easy to max out something like Linebreaker.

I'm not saying Dread Host is hands down the best, but it's definitely one of our top hosts.

Again, in theory, it sounds great. And if it works for you, then that's amazing. Because one thing you want with your deepstriking custodes, is to get them to their target immediately.
I tried it on a combination of double fist Telemon, SC with the relic axe and allarus vexila with +1 attack banner (allarus squad was held back to come a turn later, to keep them as a counter for Scarab termies squad deepstriking). It ended up with my telemon not making the charge, even with 8th ed. re-roll which is even more reliable than 9th ed. I'm just not going to trust a 9" inch charge, even with 78% chance. You'd think it's reliable, but it's going to fail on you at the worst moment.
Now, with smaller boards, I think Homer is even better than before.
But to each their own. I don't trust the odds personally and I strongly believe the other shield hosts are better than DH. I'm also team Shadowkeeper I tried them and Aquilan Shiled in 9th ed so far, and liked both, planning to try Solar Watch soon, they look very good too. DH failed me, so will take a while for me to give them another chance.

Also people seem to forget we aren't the only army with heroic intervention. Nothing sucks worse than not being able to make your charge and then get slaughtered by a heroically intervening warlord. Had it happen twice already, once with a smash captain, once with a smash SGT, and in 8th it would happen all the time with Daemon Princes/primarchs.I really don't see Dread coming out on top. It's too obvious. At least the other hosts don't hold up a blinking neon sign that says "Kill this unit to stop my entire plan". If I were my opponent, I would take the odds of killing a Dread host Telemon over a squad of buffed up Terminators with Val behind them, any day and twice on Sunday. The Telemon based army also is going to lose more than it wins on missions.

I’m going to have to agree with anti-dreadhost side here. In fact, I’m beginning to be anti-deepstrike in general. Banner drops are great and all, but you’re giving up 3 CP for the privilege which IMO isn’t needed. The reason for this is that pre-war is the spider, terminators not in reserve would just instantly be shot off the board, so you needed banner drop in order to allow them to do their job before horribly dying. Now with the changes to 9th and is getting so many defensive strats, I’ve found that opponents can no longer decimate a squad in a single (and in fact often times 2-3) rounds of shooting. Smaller board sizes also allow your guys to make it into great position by turn 2, meaning I’ve found deploying terminators to actually increase their positional ability.

With all that said I’ve been playing solar watch for +1 movement warlord trait. Their strat to cost the opposing player CP has also been better than I expected, as many armies have disposable characters which need to be mid board. I’m not sure if watch is better than shadow-keepers, but to me it’s a debate IMO.

Salt donkey wrote:
I’m going to have to agree with anti-dreadhost side here. In fact, I’m beginning to be anti-deepstrike in general. Banner drops are great and all, but you’re giving up 3 CP for the privilege which IMO isn’t needed. The reason for this is that pre-war is the spider, terminators not in reserve would just instantly be shot off the board, so you needed banner drop in order to allow them to do their job before horribly dying. Now with the changes to 9th and is getting so many defensive strats, I’ve found that opponents can no longer decimate a squad in a single (and in fact often times 2-3) rounds of shooting. Smaller board sizes also allow your guys to make it into great position by turn 2, meaning I’ve found deploying terminators to actually increase their positional ability.

With all that said I’ve been playing solar watch for +1 movement warlord trait. Their strat to cost the opposing player CP has also been better than I expected, as many armies have disposable characters which need to be mid board. I’m not sure if watch is better than shadow-keepers, but to me it’s a debate IMO.

Well you can spend 3 cp dropping them in somewhere awesome, or 5 a turn making sure they aren't shot to death.

It's more CP efficient to DS them because the amount of Cp to dump keeping them alive is dramatic. They're not any more durable as a base statline than they were before, you spend CP to keep them alive.

stratigo wrote:

Salt donkey wrote:
I’m going to have to agree with anti-dreadhost side here. In fact, I’m beginning to be anti-deepstrike in general. Banner drops are great and all, but you’re giving up 3 CP for the privilege which IMO isn’t needed. The reason for this is that pre-war is the spider, terminators not in reserve would just instantly be shot off the board, so you needed banner drop in order to allow them to do their job before horribly dying. Now with the changes to 9th and is getting so many defensive strats, I’ve found that opponents can no longer decimate a squad in a single (and in fact often times 2-3) rounds of shooting. Smaller board sizes also allow your guys to make it into great position by turn 2, meaning I’ve found deploying terminators to actually increase their positional ability.

With all that said I’ve been playing solar watch for +1 movement warlord trait. Their strat to cost the opposing player CP has also been better than I expected, as many armies have disposable characters which need to be mid board. I’m not sure if watch is better than shadow-keepers, but to me it’s a debate IMO.

Well you can spend 3 cp dropping them in somewhere awesome, or 5 a turn making sure they aren't shot to death.

It's more CP efficient to DS them because the amount of Cp to dump keeping them alive is dramatic. They're not any more durable as a base statline than they were before, you spend CP to keep them alive.

If you are having trouble keeping a character properly screened with out stat lines, then your dice flat out stink and they need to go to the time out corner. The Homer drop will get them there free, likely on turn 2, well within achievable charge distance, without the need to spend gobs of CP. Just because we now have more CP shouldn't mean we need to spend it all in the first 2 turns.

What does this group value a CP at, points wise. If the Telemon costs 3 CP to drop down next to a screen of troops and a HQ or two, and annialates them, that's maybe a 100pts? Was that worth it? No. Now if the Telemon could DS and take out a knight on turn 2, which it cannot, then I would say 4-500pts is worth the CP. obviously those are two wildly different scenarios. But what is the worth of 3CP to drop essentially a giant kill bot within 9 inches of a enemy unit that may very well obliterate it? I would rather give my Terminators or bikes a big buff, and let them do their jobs. I don't see the Dread host Telemon earning it's points or it's CP cost back before it gets killed.

The thing with the DS list is that its a complete one trick pony. It works, you win, it doesn't, you lose.

I also agree with the anti-dread host here. You get a good strategem (the WL trait is rubbish) which requires things to have deep struck that turn. there's so much more utility in shadowkeepers or solar watch- their strats happen for the full game rather than for 1-3 charges in one turn. Plus, if you run a vexilla and your'e 3' away then whats the point of the stratagem?

Richard Siegler is going with Shadowkeepers and says Dread Host is a trap. His credentials are pretty compelling.

Quick question - Unleash the lions, is this intended for units of 3 or can I spend 2cp to unleash 10 lions and make them little character hunters and charge blockers.

 FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
Quick question - Unleash the lions, is this intended for units of 3 or can I spend 2cp to unleash 10 lions and make them little character hunters and charge blockers.

You can do it on units of any size

you can indeed unleash a unit of 10 of them.

Do it at the start of the battle and you essentially have 10 character-level threats running round the board all game- that have obsec. A great little 'alternative' strategy

Dreadhost locks your into a specific play style, and with how small our army is and the small board sizes deep striking a huge bomb is a less consistent than shadow keepers stratagem while the emissaries stratagem is huge offensively and been able to add another 3 inches to your vexilla allows you to spread out to avoid mw bombs

Shinymarine wrote:
Dreadhost locks your into a specific play style, and with how small our army is and the small board sizes deep striking a huge bomb is a less consistent than shadow keepers stratagem while the emissaries stratagem is huge offensively and been able to add another 3 inches to your vexilla allows you to spread out to avoid mw bombs

I wouldn't say it locks you in, precisely the opposite. Most custodes lists will probably have offensive deepstrike elements of some kind, so to not have to tie them in to always use Vexilla Teleport homer like they all do now gives you a huge amount of flexibility in the games where using the homer strat isn't possible or isn't the best option. If you're not putting anything in deepstrike reserve then clearly your aren't gonna be taking dreadhost, I thought that was obvious enough that it didn't have to be said.

I totally agree that having an extra defensive strat is by far the strongest when taken at face value with zero context. My comment earlier in the thread wasn't that Dreadhost is better than Shadowkeepers (it isn't), merely that if Custodes become a popular choice for tournaments, Dreadhost may provide something of an answer to an anti-Custodes meta which could potentially develop in the future (i.e where people are building lists to screen or snipe vexillas to prevent DS units from charging).

So with no FW updates as of yet, are we to assume that the latest PDF is still valid?

When I look at the new Primaris Impulsor, I am so glad I went Custodes over Primaris. I can't believe they are springing 100% new Codexes on a faction that JUST had a Codex re-release less than 6 months ago? How do you justify a new mandatory Codex re-release.

 FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
When I look at the new Primaris Impulsor, I am so glad I went Custodes over Primaris. I can't believe they are springing 100% new Codexes on a faction that JUST had a Codex re-release less than 6 months ago? How do you justify a new mandatory Codex re-release.

Cash money.

Sterling191 wrote:

 FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
When I look at the new Primaris Impulsor, I am so glad I went Custodes over Primaris. I can't believe they are springing 100% new Codexes on a faction that JUST had a Codex re-release less than 6 months ago? How do you justify a new mandatory Codex re-release.

Cash money.

In the words of the great Randy Moss: "Straight CASH HOMEY!"

Has anyone given thought to running twin accelerator culverins on a Telemon? With the new points he costs just 35 more points than a Caladius with the same firepower (more if he doesn’t move) but ALOT more durability. With all the supposed heavy infantry running around, intercessors and a whole army whose thing is ignoring AP-2, it seems like that gun might be nice to have. Obviously not as good as the storm cannons against vehicles, but with twice the shots and being 30 pts cheaper is it good enough?

 greyknight12 wrote:
Has anyone given thought to running twin accelerator culverins on a Telemon? With the new points he costs just 35 more points than a Caladius with the same firepower (more if he doesn’t move) but ALOT more durability. With all the supposed heavy infantry running around, intercessors and a whole army whose thing is ignoring AP-2, it seems like that gun might be nice to have. Obviously not as good as the storm cannons against vehicles, but with twice the shots and being 30 pts cheaper is it good enough?

If you're bringing Aquilons or Jetbikes, yes I think it may be worth it. You need anti-vehicle somewhere, but we don't have to rely exclusively on ranged anymore.

New faq's are out.
Custodes:
https://www.warhammer-community.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/oVgctlFY7Raq3gFJ.pdf

War of the spider:
https://www.warhammer-community.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/RQcH6wZrusJHsEAr.pdf

As was expected:
Only custodes units can get Sworn Guardians and the Emperor’sChosen abilities.

No tanking for a knight via Shield of Honour
No double WLT via shoulder the mantle
Vengeance of the Machine Spirit got fixed
Ancient Artifice is now minus 1 dmg so same as the SM strat.

A nerf to The Emperor’s Auspice Stratagem. doesn't effect number of shots anymore.

Sadly no excpetion for thr Vindicare to ingore the new character rule so he is still pretty much useless because will just be shot to without a baby sitter unit

The nerf to ancient artifice is slightly annoying, but hey...the strat is still decent.

Has anyone given the venatari a spin in 9th already?

Tiberias wrote:
The nerf to ancient artifice is slightly annoying, but hey...the strat is still decent.

Has anyone given the venatari a spin in 9th already?

I gave them a whirl. I think I got unlucky though. They lost like two models to a Plagueburst Crawler, 1 to another weapon and then a 4th to morale (rolled a 6) after failing to kill a 4 wounds Malignant Plaguecaster with Superior Fire Patterns on their pistols.

Audustum wrote:

Tiberias wrote:
The nerf to ancient artifice is slightly annoying, but hey...the strat is still decent.

Has anyone given the venatari a spin in 9th already?

I gave them a whirl. I think I got unlucky though. They lost like two models to a Plagueburst Crawler, 1 to another weapon and then a 4th to morale (rolled a 6) after failing to kill a 4 wounds Malignant Plaguecaster with Superior Fire Patterns on their pistols.

Well that's not a great showing, but it seems the dice gods hated you that day.

Do the venatari have any good targets against tau? I have a Friendly game against the space communists coming up and was thinking of bringing venatari.

Tiberias wrote:

Audustum wrote:

Tiberias wrote:
The nerf to ancient artifice is slightly annoying, but hey...the strat is still decent.

Has anyone given the venatari a spin in 9th already?

I gave them a whirl. I think I got unlucky though. They lost like two models to a Plagueburst Crawler, 1 to another weapon and then a 4th to morale (rolled a 6) after failing to kill a 4 wounds Malignant Plaguecaster with Superior Fire Patterns on their pistols.

Well that's not a great showing, but it seems the dice gods hated you that day.

Do the venatari have any good targets against tau? I have a Friendly game against the space communists coming up and was thinking of bringing venatari.

They do good against crisis suits.

But otherwise, no.

Venatari have a very stong niche which is killing heavy infantry. They are less strong, but still passible at light infantry and armor. Against standard tau nonsense you'll just be killing drones or firewarriors because their big suits have around 30 to 50 wounds

stratigo wrote:

Tiberias wrote:

Audustum wrote:

Tiberias wrote:
The nerf to ancient artifice is slightly annoying, but hey...the strat is still decent.

Has anyone given the venatari a spin in 9th already?

I gave them a whirl. I think I got unlucky though. They lost like two models to a Plagueburst Crawler, 1 to another weapon and then a 4th to morale (rolled a 6) after failing to kill a 4 wounds Malignant Plaguecaster with Superior Fire Patterns on their pistols.

Well that's not a great showing, but it seems the dice gods hated you that day.

Do the venatari have any good targets against tau? I have a Friendly game against the space communists coming up and was thinking of bringing venatari.

They do good against crisis suits.

But otherwise, no.

Venatari have a very stong niche which is killing heavy infantry. They are less strong, but still passible at light infantry and armor. Against standard tau nonsense you'll just be killing drones or firewarriors because their big suits have around 30 to 50 wounds

Thanks for the advice...maybe I'll swap them for some allarus.

How would you guys go about actually killing a riptide? My buddy never plays triptide thankfully, but every time I played against even just one of those suckers I felt that I just had to ignore it and play the mission, because I just couldn't kill it. Or it would have taken me way too many resources to take it down.
It just feels unkillable, when you have to weather overwatch, kill all the drones with massed shots and then still have to overcome a 3++ most of the time.

Tiberias wrote:

Spoiler:

stratigo wrote:

Tiberias wrote:

Audustum wrote:

Tiberias wrote:
The nerf to ancient artifice is slightly annoying, but hey...the strat is still decent.

Has anyone given the venatari a spin in 9th already?

I gave them a whirl. I think I got unlucky though. They lost like two models to a Plagueburst Crawler, 1 to another weapon and then a 4th to morale (rolled a 6) after failing to kill a 4 wounds Malignant Plaguecaster with Superior Fire Patterns on their pistols.

Well that's not a great showing, but it seems the dice gods hated you that day.

Do the venatari have any good targets against tau? I have a Friendly game against the space communists coming up and was thinking of bringing venatari.

They do good against crisis suits.

But otherwise, no.

Venatari have a very stong niche which is killing heavy infantry. They are less strong, but still passible at light infantry and armor. Against standard tau nonsense you'll just be killing drones or firewarriors because their big suits have around 30 to 50 wounds

Thanks for the advice...maybe I'll swap them for some allarus.

How would you guys go about actually killing a riptide? My buddy never plays triptide thankfully, but every time I played against even just one of those suckers I felt that I just had to ignore it and play the mission, because I just couldn't kill it. Or it would have taken me way too many resources to take it down.
It just feels unkillable, when you have to weather overwatch, kill all the drones with massed shots and then still have to overcome a 3++ most of the time.

I would use Terminators and Auramite and Adamatium. Do you have access to FW units?