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 nordsturmking wrote:

Goreshrek wrote:
So how do you suggest handling pysker-heavy armies? I am just moving to Custodes (from Orks!), and had my butt handed to me by Thousand Sons with unstoppable casts. He had a squad of 10 termies with a 3+ invuln that he could move anywhere.
Honestly curious. Thx.

What else did he have in his list?
Custodes have 3 options for deny the witch. 2 strats(1 from war of the spider) and a warlord trait.

You can take an Inquisitor too for some extra denies! Hector Rex still survives and Kyria Draxus/Greyfax are good too!

I will second the calls to counter psyker spam armies via Vexilla Teleport Homer + Allarus Bomb + Superior Firing Patterns (Double Rapid Fire Profile) + Blood Games Veterans. (6s Auto-Wound)

If you have Trajann, the teleport homer can at least be free with the moment shackle. But that much firepower will dumpster 2 characters, before you have an easy charge on the screen to clear that out too.

That all Shields list has a major problem. Massed high d fires/MWs. A Smite List would take it apart. As was shown. I really wonder how it's taken until now until someone had the stones to throw that list into a tournament, and even more surprising how no one knew what to do against it. Methinks the skill level in the player base of most tournaments right now isn't optimal.

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
That all Shields list has a major problem. Massed high d fires/MWs. A Smite List would take it apart. As was shown. I really wonder how it's taken until now until someone had the stones to throw that list into a tournament, and even more surprising how no one knew what to do against it. Methinks the skill level in the player base of most tournaments right now isn't optimal.

Shield lists have been played, the best custodes player at LVO 2020 was one of them. I think most people don't play it because it is boring as feth.

 nordsturmking wrote:

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
That all Shields list has a major problem. Massed high d fires/MWs. A Smite List would take it apart. As was shown. I really wonder how it's taken until now until someone had the stones to throw that list into a tournament, and even more surprising how no one knew what to do against it. Methinks the skill level in the player base of most tournaments right now isn't optimal.

Shield lists have been played, the best custodes player at LVO 2020 was one of them. I think most people don't play it because it is boring as feth.

This is the major hurdle for it to me as well. Fall back every Move. Just stand and survive

Thanks again. Since I am still building my army, another related question: How many Allarus do you consider 'a bomb'. I have acquired 1 box, the only one within an hours drive of my home, only because the GW store manager held it for me. So that is 3 Allarus. Seems a pretty small bomb. The custodians units I had were too small to do much damage.

Goreshrek wrote:
Thanks again. Since I am still building my army, another related question: How many Allarus do you consider 'a bomb'. I have acquired 1 box, the only one within an hours drive of my home, only because the GW store manager held it for me. So that is 3 Allarus. Seems a pretty small bomb. The custodians units I had were too small to do much damage.

A minimum bomb should be 5, but ideally you're looking at 8-10 if you want it to be the center-piece force of your army plan. Also keep in mind, Allarus can come in squads of 10, but Aquillons are capped at 6 in case you consider those.

Yeah your decision between the two should be as such:

Do i want to snipe characters and hold objectives? Take 10 allarus with spears and utilize their strats.

This works really well with solar watch, or shadowkeepers.

Do i absolutely need to kill one or two nasty targets? 5-6 aquilons with destructors if you have the points.

Aquilons are a bit better at min sized squads starting on the board as well, since their shooting is a bit stronger (anti-horde with bolters, anti-elite with destroyers).

 Eihnlazer wrote:
Yeah your decision between the two should be as such:

Do i want to snipe characters and hold objectives? Take 10 allarus with spears and utilize their strats.

This works really well with solar watch, or shadowkeepers.

Do i absolutely need to kill one or two nasty targets? 5-6 aquilons with destructors if you have the points.

Aquilons are a bit better at min sized squads starting on the board as well, since their shooting is a bit stronger (anti-horde with bolters, anti-elite with destroyers).

Why spears? Wouldn't you want to run the axes?
Same shooting profile, better in melee.

no, cause if you need the higher strength you should be running aquillons.

Spears are letting you go cheap. 65pts per allarus is great for what they can do, and they can always use the +1 to wound strat if they need too since its only 1 CP.

The points cost reductions on the aquillons make them a more attractive option for alot of lists, but running the allarus cheap gives them room for play.

Spears allow them to attack at S6 with +1 to wound. That's a great character sniping weapon. The S8 would be extra points, but you would do just as well against T3/4 characters.

Just for the record, how many T5+ characters are out there excluding monsterous or vehicle characters?

Just Space Marines?

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
Spears allow them to attack at S6 with +1 to wound. That's a great character sniping weapon. The S8 would be extra points, but you would do just as well against T3/4 characters.

Just for the record, how many T5+ characters are out there excluding monsterous or vehicle characters?

Just Space Marines?

Demon Princes, Demons, Other Custodes, Gravis Captains, Deathguard,etc are all T5+
The 1cp to make them effective at wounding in a command point hungry army is not inconsequential.

You can magnetize the axe/spear head and the weapon haft. There is just enough plastic to hold a 1mm magnet in each piece without drilling through, as long as you're careful, best to do it by hand.

Spears are better against the armies I face regularly, but axes are better against others where armour saves are less prevalent.

The axes strat 'Castellan Strike' is pretty lame though, as its only usable when all the models in the unit target the same enemy. In my experience if you're taking a squad of Allarus big enough to want to use the strat on, they're likely to be doing a multi-charge at some point in the game, especially if you Vexilla Teleport Homer them. For this reason, and the point difference, I would generally take spears in a TAC list.

Spartacus wrote:
You can magnetize the axe/spear head and the weapon haft. There is just enough plastic to hold a 1mm magnet in each piece without drilling through, as long as you're careful, best to do it by hand.

Spears are better against the armies I face regularly, but axes are better against others where armour saves are less prevalent.

The axes strat 'Castellan Strike' is pretty lame though, as its only usable when all the models in the unit target the same enemy. In my experience if you're taking a squad of Allarus big enough to want to use the strat on, they're likely to be doing a multi-charge at some point in the game, especially if you Vexilla Teleport Homer them. For this reason, and the point difference, I would generally take spears in a TAC list.

So can you find pictures of this? Because I took a look at my haft, and it's still just as big as my drill. I have the GW drill, maybe I'm using the wrong drill? I would really like to see how this is possible the way you are describing it.

shaft of the spear is really to small to magnitize without some difficulty. Much easier to magnitize the shoulders overall.

As I sit here gluing together an Allarus, a small magnet would fit on the flat part of the haft above the hand. File off the small bump that fits into the weapon head. Each weapon head has a small indent, glue another magnet there.

Goreshrek wrote:
As I sit here gluing together an Allarus, a small magnet would fit on the flat part of the haft above the hand. File off the small bump that fits into the weapon head. Each weapon head has a small indent, glue another magnet there.

Yep this exactly.

Currently travelling but I can post pictures on the weekend.

So just had a fun game on TTS against a Dark angels player. Man those deathwing termies are hard......

He had:

Talonmaster/w +6" range on his guns
Chaplain/w master of sanctity and 6" consolidation bubble
Deathwing ancient/w 5+++ bubble
Apothecary on bike/w cheif apoth

2 incursor squads (5man)
Intercessor squad (5man)

3 deathwing bodyguards/w hammer and shield

2 squads of 3 MM attack bikes

2 squads of 5 Deathwing terminators/w maces and shields.




I took a surprise list:

Shadowkeepers
Trajann
Captun Unkillable-Indomitable, auric aquillas, superior creation

Telemon with double storm cannon
squad of 5 venetari/w pistols

4 squads of 5 saggitarum guard/w daggers



Thats right, i actually almost outnumbered my opponent with bodies. 30inf and 7 bikes vs 26 inf and 1 bike and 1 telemon. Unheard of for a custodes list.


Was a very close game and i ended up winning by like 5 points (no thanks to secondaries).

The 4 squads of sagg guard are pretty mean with trajann buffing them.
Captain unkillable did what he was supposed to do, tanking his whole army for 1 and a half turns and stealing an objective from him.
Telemon didnt do jack againgst the deathwing termies (total of like 7 wounds dealt negated by 2 ressurected termies), but he did hold an objective for 4 turns.
The venetari are quite nice for some added backfield threat, clearing his intercessor squad off an objective in the charge phase thus taking it.

Totally wrong post. Sorry.

Is there a best combo now for VoTBG?

It seems like Shadow Keepers SC on a Bike is still the best target for it, but I don't know if the meta has shifted and Blood Games isn't as powerful in 9th?

With the redaction of self buffs, I figure a SC being able to re-roll a deny strat might be helpful?

I just realized there are two strats now that bear the same acronym. Veterans and Victors of the blood games. I was talking about Victors.

Had 2 RTTs this weekend with my Custodes, used the new IA rules. Went 2-1 on Saturday (3rd of 14) and 3-0 Sunday (2nd out of 10). List was basically the same, tested out 2 variants:
Overall I felt the first iteration with the adrathic destructors on the terminators was better, and even though my record was better on Sunday's tournament I would have done better with Saturday's version. Basically comes down to the terminators usually engaging things where flat 3 AP-3 is a better choice and always wanting Superior Fire Patterns on the Venetari. Sagittarum Guard are really, really good and being able to chuck 9 anti-marine shots across the table is quite valuable, as is the rude shock when your opponent realizes just how nasty 12 misericordia attacks are when they try to sneak in and charge them.

Saturday:
Game 1 (and my only loss of the weekend) to deathguard, spamming Blight Haulers. Went second. Some mistakes by me and ultimately deciding to vexilla homer in my terminators where they still had a 9" charge (trying to bypass some nurglings) and failing to connect with the blight haulers meant I wasn't owning enough of the board and unable to achieve my secondaries while turning the primary tide about a turn too late. Opponent got second behind a guy with an Iron Hands Astraeus that was played illegally.

Game 2: White Scars. Decided to go all in and bum-rush his army...I won the roll off and chose second knowing he'd have to move up and into charge range of my bikes and Telemon. I took some big risks turn 1 (like not raising my banners for secondaries) in favor of dumping all my shooting and charges into his outriders, assault intercessors, and characters. I slaughtered most of his stuff out (including a chaplain and apothecary) my turn 1 and while a lucky turn 3 of saves helped me out it was going to be an uphill battle for my opponent after that. I was most proud of myself this weekend in that game since it proved one of the ways I had theory-played that matchup in my head, plus any time you can beat space marines it's a good day.

Game 3: Drukari. Game was almost over before it began...Custodes hard-counter dark eldar. Went second, rolled well on my invul saves turn 1 but even if I hadn't it would have been tough for my opponent. He still scored alot of points so it was close, but I surged on turn 5 with a maxed primary score. Moral of that game is to make sure you can score enough points so you can keep up with an army that doesn't care if it all dies.

Sunday:
Game 1: Necrons, with a skew build that spammed mortal wounds (2 C'tan and a Transcendant Vault). Went second. I won, but only because we (my opponent) ran out of time and we had to call it turn 4 and I had accrued more points at that time cause I had more secondaries scored, otherwise I would have been tabled. He did have some really good save rolls and really bad C'tan power rolls...it was a weird game overall but that list sucks to play against.

Game 2: Chaos Space Marines (Alpha Legion). Went first and killed alot of stuff. I held the middle of the table and laughed at his AP-2 attacks while killing stuff. Sag guard tanglefooted his terminator bomb and Venetari shot it off the table.

Game 3: Salamanders. Went first, killed some stuff. Hid out for his first turn; he made a big mistake and pushed all his stuff forward, clearing out a space for my deepstriking terminators and Venetari to come in behind his army. His deepstriking inceptors whiffed against my Sag guard, who killed one of the squads next turn and my shield captain speared the other one over 2 turns. He killed the Venetari over a couple turns (they had whiffed against his chaplain, though chaps later died) and the terminators tanked a bunch of eradicator shots and punched them and a bike captain to death. I started losing stuff, but was ahead on points by alot...ended the game with 2 Sag guard on my home objective turn 5. My opponent was my regular sparring partner so it felt good to finally get a win against the green marines.

 greyknight12 wrote:
Had 2 RTTs this weekend with my Custodes, used the new IA rules. Went 2-1 on Saturday (3rd of 14) and 3-0 Sunday (2nd out of 10). List was basically the same, tested out 2 variants:

Spoiler:

Patrol
Shield Captain on Dawneagle, captain commander - day 1 had Unstoppable destroyer, day 2 was Strategic mastermind

3x3 Sagittarum Guard (2 squads had misericordias)

Vexilla Magnifica w/spear
5 Aquilon terminators - day 1 had Adrathic destructors, day 2 had lastrum bolters

3 Agamatus bikes with las-pulsars
4 Venetari with pistol/buckler - 5 on day 2

Telemon with fist and accelerator culverin, Eternal Penitent

Overall I felt the first iteration with the adrathic destructors on the terminators was better, and even though my record was better on Sunday's tournament I would have done better with Saturday's version. Basically comes down to the terminators usually engaging things where flat 3 AP-3 is a better choice and always wanting Superior Fire Patterns on the Venetari. Sagittarum Guard are really, really good and being able to chuck 9 anti-marine shots across the table is quite valuable, as is the rude shock when your opponent realizes just how nasty 12 misericordia attacks are when they try to sneak in and charge them.

Saturday:
Game 1 (and my only loss of the weekend) to deathguard, spamming Blight Haulers. Went second. Some mistakes by me and ultimately deciding to vexilla homer in my terminators where they still had a 9" charge (trying to bypass some nurglings) and failing to connect with the blight haulers meant I wasn't owning enough of the board and unable to achieve my secondaries while turning the primary tide about a turn too late. Opponent got second behind a guy with an Iron Hands Astraeus that was played illegally.

Game 2: White Scars. Decided to go all in and bum-rush his army...I won the roll off and chose second knowing he'd have to move up and into charge range of my bikes and Telemon. I took some big risks turn 1 (like not raising my banners for secondaries) in favor of dumping all my shooting and charges into his outriders, assault intercessors, and characters. I slaughtered most of his stuff out (including a chaplain and apothecary) my turn 1 and while a lucky turn 3 of saves helped me out it was going to be an uphill battle for my opponent after that. I was most proud of myself this weekend in that game since it proved one of the ways I had theory-played that matchup in my head, plus any time you can beat space marines it's a good day.

Game 3: Drukari. Game was almost over before it began...Custodes hard-counter dark eldar. Went second, rolled well on my invul saves turn 1 but even if I hadn't it would have been tough for my opponent. He still scored alot of points so it was close, but I surged on turn 5 with a maxed primary score. Moral of that game is to make sure you can score enough points so you can keep up with an army that doesn't care if it all dies.

Sunday:
Game 1: Necrons, with a skew build that spammed mortal wounds (2 C'tan and a Transcendant Vault). Went second. I won, but only because we (my opponent) ran out of time and we had to call it turn 4 and I had accrued more points at that time cause I had more secondaries scored, otherwise I would have been tabled. He did have some really good save rolls and really bad C'tan power rolls...it was a weird game overall but that list sucks to play against.

Game 2: Chaos Space Marines (Alpha Legion). Went first and killed alot of stuff. I held the middle of the table and laughed at his AP-2 attacks while killing stuff. Sag guard tanglefooted his terminator bomb and Venetari shot it off the table.

Game 3: Salamanders. Went first, killed some stuff. Hid out for his first turn; he made a big mistake and pushed all his stuff forward, clearing out a space for my deepstriking terminators and Venetari to come in behind his army. His deepstriking inceptors whiffed against my Sag guard, who killed one of the squads next turn and my shield captain speared the other one over 2 turns. He killed the Venetari over a couple turns (they had whiffed against his chaplain, though chaps later died) and the terminators tanked a bunch of eradicator shots and punched them and a bike captain to death. I started losing stuff, but was ahead on points by alot...ended the game with 2 Sag guard on my home objective turn 5. My opponent was my regular sparring partner so it felt good to finally get a win against the green marines.

Thanks for the report. Your list seems like a lot of fun, really cool to hear that you also had success with it.

How did you like the telemon with the fist? Did he do some work in melee?

lmao the insanity of the sword and board shield captain.

Give him the veiled blade relic for +d3 attacks.
Give him Defiant to the last so that he gets +3 attacks from loosing 3 wounds.
Give him a vexilla imperiatus with all seeing anihilator trait for+1 attack and exploding 6's.
Fight againgst chaos to get the exploding 6's stratagem.

He can now theoretically do:
5 base attacks + 1 for vex, +3 for loosing wounds, +3 from the D3 on the relic = 12 attacks and a dagger.

So he rolls 13 dice, all 6's turn into 2 hits and explode, giving him 13 more attacks. He rolls 13 more 6's, giving him a total of 52 hits total. 4 of these hits are daggers for -2ap 1 damage, the other 48 are all swords for -3ap and D3 damage.

So yes, your humble shield captain can dish out in one round of combat (if the stars are aligned) a total of 148 damage. Average is quite a bit less.........

SILENCE! Enough talk like that! You'll bring down the Nerf bots of doom, and he'll be turned into a 200 point unit. We aren't allowed to be good remember?

@Einlazer that's not how exploding 6's work...they give you additional hits, not additional rolls. So you'd just have the 13 attacks, of which 2.2 are 6s which would be 5ish additional hits. So only about 18 hits.

@Tiberias the fist was great, he punched a chaplain and a Daemon prince to death and in general was a solid unit to advance up the board with the vexilla, with the strat he has 6 attacks wounding most things on 2's and flat D4. I think the mixed loadout is best since adding a second fist doesn't outweigh either of the guns and a single fist results in 5 S16 attacks, aka more than a single gun if you can get into melee.

@Fezzik I haven't been taking VotBG, I personally didn't feel that my shield-captains were getting into situations where they needed it all that much. It's still powerful and not a bad choice, but in 9th I'd make 2 arguments against:
1) The game is 1 turn shorter, so you have fewer turns to "make your CP back"
2) There's alot of really good stuff to spend CP on now, and with Moment Shackle or Captain-Commander 5+ CP regen the ones in-game have a chance of being re-couped or free, whereas pre-game CP are just gone. D3 damage means you're not getting as much as you'd like out of most characters, and while the ones that do extra (relic axe or Einlazer's Sword captain) might be worth the "wade into your opponent's army" approach they suffer from being slow.

grey, the thing is there are 2 different kind of explosions going on here.

All seeing anihilator makes each 6 turn into 2 hits, but theres a strat againgst chaos that gives you an additional swing for every 6 as well.

So yes, what i posted is correct. If in theory, you rolled thirteen 6's to hit, you would score 26 hits, then roll an additional 13 hit rolls, which could in turn also be 6's for 26 more hits.

Will it happen? not likely, but its just talk about potential. to roll twenty six 6's in a row is a pretty astronomical feat.

Usually what happens is you roll your 13 attacks, reroll the 1's, and are left with 12-13 hits. 3-4 of those are 6's, so you roll 6 more attacks, reroll the 1's and get another 6-7 hits to end up with 22hits or so on average.
Pretty nice for a single model.

 Eihnlazer wrote:
grey, the thing is there are 2 different kind of explosions going on here.

All seeing anihilator makes each 6 turn into 2 hits, but theres a strat againgst chaos that gives you an additional swing for every 6 as well.

So yes, what i posted is correct. If in theory, you rolled thirteen 6's to hit, you would score 26 hits, then roll an additional 13 hit rolls, which could in turn also be 6's for 26 more hits.

Will it happen? not likely, but its just talk about potential. to roll twenty six 6's in a row is a pretty astronomical feat.

Usually what happens is you roll your 13 attacks, reroll the 1's, and are left with 12-13 hits. 3-4 of those are 6's, so you roll 6 more attacks, reroll the 1's and get another 6-7 hits to end up with 22hits or so on average.
Pretty nice for a single model.

You have to roll perfectly for all that to go off as planned. I'll admit, a SC with sword/board and dagger is a good unit for the cost, but it's not going to be one shotting any titans or even knights, any time soon. For me it's still a good beatstick to bully enemies with, or careless opponents, but it's hardly a Gazz or a Abbadon, or even a Ragnar. Those are beastly melee commanders.

How are folks finding the re-priced Agamatus Las-pulser bikes? They seem very reasonably priced for some tough, mobile, ranged anti-armour that is sorely needed by Custodes and while not cost efficient for horde clearing duties still have a decent number of shots and attacks to clear objectives when needed.

Very tempted to start Custode's force with a brick of Sagittarum guard accompanying Trajann, and a couple of small squads of Agamatus with Auric Aquilla/eagle's eye Bike captains. I really like how versatile Sagitarrum with daggers are, some decent shooting that can plink a few wounds of anything, respectable CC against non-specialist's and being assault can have a surprising amount of movement when needed.

Thinking of using the brick to hold the mid-field and weaken heavily held objectives while the bikes take out hard targets/lightly held objectives. Late game let surviving elements of the brick split up and seize what objective they can. Biggest weakness I can see in that strategy is leaving the backfield abandoned against deepstrikers and possibly devoting to much CP to buffing HQ's for relics/VotBGs.

I love the laser bikes. They give you the melee of bikes and the shooting of a Caladius. I've personally had better success with 2 3-man rather than 1 6-man, simply because the smaller units are killy enough to engage most stuff and you can spread out over more of the board.

I'd also say you need less stuff to take the "outer objectives" than you'd think, and the nature of 9th edition scoring means you have to get on the objectives early and a late-game push is probably going to be too late.

I want to try the dickbikes, but I am hesitant. Can a SC on a Vertus give them re-rolls, or does the FW barrier exist?