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Thanks for explaining....thats nasty, but like you guys already said...no way they don't FAQ that.

Tiberias wrote:
Thanks for explaining....thats nasty, but like you guys already said...no way they don't FAQ that.

I mean, I'd be in favor of a points bump rather than changing the interaction. I think it's fun to have that kind of stuff out there. Not everywhere, but let it be a DE schtick.

You can't change the points, it's a combination of a relic and a trait that enables it. I mean I guess they could start charging points instead of CP for relics, but they don't seem to have any interest in doing that.

yukishiro1 wrote:
You can't change the points, it's a combination of a relic and a trait that enables it. I mean I guess they could start charging points instead of CP for relics, but they don't seem to have any interest in doing that.

I thought the 'get an attack for every failed attack's was a trait but the 'make 2 attacks for every 1' was a bog standard weapon (and can this be point adjusted)?

The relic weapon makes it 2 damage and poison 4+, the WL trait lets her reroll hits and wounds, and the mega succubus trait lets her try again on anything that fails to do damage.

dont quote me on that though, i dont own the codex.

Ok so details aside, stay clear of succubi and bring hurricane bolters when facing the new dark eldar, is that the basic consensus?
They can have a lot of fight last if they roll hot with incubi plus Ld debuffs like grim trophies. So generally try to avoid combat with them I guess? Popping their transports shouldn't be all too difficult I guess and a 5man squad of venatari should quite easily shoot a full size incubi squad off the table if necessary.

Tiberias wrote:
Ok so details aside, stay clear of succubi and bring hurricane bolters when facing the new dark eldar, is that the basic consensus?
They can have a lot of fight last if they roll hot with incubi plus Ld debuffs like grim trophies. So generally try to avoid combat with them I guess? Popping their transports shouldn't be all too difficult I guess and a 5man squad of venatari should quite easily shoot a full size incubi squad off the table if necessary.

Right. Arachnus Telemons get props here because both firing modes will have use too.

Hello the Cally tanks with the non-storm cannon guns and Pallas grav tanks. For a hundred points, one of those does a fair bit of Deldar Munching.

well, i finially managed to get a game of 40k!

i met my opponent late last year in the local GW store while queuing to buy stuff, got to chatting, and aggreed we would have to meet up and play sometime. well, today was that time, so we totally ignored lockdown rules and i came round his house for a pair of 500pts games.

the battlefeild, which stayed the same both games. all terrian provided by the oppo who was the host. the ruins are bits of polystyrene form a TV box, painted and with these neat posters printed off the web, aged and stuck on them. the barrels were some copper joint thing he got in a hardware store, painted lurid colours with some glue gun "toxic waste"


my forces. shield cap with the Gatekeeper, 3 guard with spears, and 3 aquillions with bolters.


oppos forces: Bjorn the fell handed (with melta), primaris lt with neo volkite thingy, and 10 assault intercessors. most of the hair and the wolf pelts were green stuffed on.



both games were just straight deathmatches, and both won by me, much to my surprise. Oppo was used to playing against the starter set necrons he also owned (his GF also plays), and i dont think he really appicated how much tougher the Custodes were.

Oppo won 1st turn both games. game one, he kept the Assault intercessors in a single 10 man unit, and moved and advanced to close the gap. wasnt able to get a charge off but hugged the centre ruin (agreed as scaleable) my turn, im able to charge everything, aquillions and guard in the intercessors and the sheild cap into the LT (bjorn intervened with the shield cap). intercessors are eaten alive by the Aqullions with no return, and LT is cut down by my sheild cap, who only takes a single wound form Bjorn. turn 2, oppo discovers that Bjorn is not power-fist proof (they were able to consolidate into him).

game two, more or less the same, but Oppo went with 2 combat squads. he hang back slightly and was able to get the charge on his turn 2 after killing a Aquillon with a the melta. threw his intercessors into my guard squad and with a maximum effort of doctrines, auras, relics ands strats was able to kill the 3 guard, but the cap and the aquillons were still able to kill Bjorn and his LT, at which point he conceded.


overall? im impressed at how resilient we are. that 4++ saved by backside, repeatedly, and while he admits he wasnt really running a hot list, just threw a 500 point force together, my golden boys and myself preformed much better than i feared we might. I realised after i'd already packed up that Oppo and me both kept forgettig about Duty Enternal on bjorn, which meant he went down a awful lot faster than he should to the dmg 2 Aquillions (i guess he wasnt used to dmg 2 enemies, or just using dreads, it was only like his 2nd game with Bjorn after finishing him). hopefully next time i meet him i we can take it up to 1k and start really having some fun.

At 500 point level we tend to be unstoppable.

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
At 500 point level we tend to be unstoppable.

by his own admission he was playing a list he threw together at the last minute at 500 points, and really just wanted to play bjorn, so it wasnt a very optimal list. However, if we'd remebered the dreads damage reduction, and/or i'd not taken the aquillons but more guards, then i think i;d have had a lot more problems, so it was really luck on my part. Plus, we were playing straight deathmatch not a proper objective game, so that might have affected things as well.

but yhea, it seems hard to bring enough firepower to bear to hurt us at 500pts.

I mean if it was a WAC wulfen list we wouldn't be able to do much, but yeah. Even as hasty Custodes army at 500 points we are fielding basically an army of HQ level units. With shooting that is basically relic bolters. I don't see how GW was thinking this would be even slightly balanced. It's spent so much time balancing the game around 2k.

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
I mean if it was a WAC wulfen list we wouldn't be able to do much, but yeah. Even as hasty Custodes army at 500 points we are fielding basically an army of HQ level units. With shooting that is basically relic bolters. I don't see how GW was thinking this would be even slightly balanced. It's spent so much time balancing the game around 2k.

honestly? back in the early noughties when i played 3rd ed, 500 pts or even 1k games were just Not A Thing (outside of Saturday morning "bring what you got and play it" type multiplayer games the GW stores ran, to keep the kids playing and buying). If you wanted to play a "proper" set piece battle, it was 1,500pts or bust. things have creeped up to 2K over my 10 year hiatus but still, the default was and always was that the game was balanced at the 1-2k points level. The designers have to make assumptions about how the game is played, and balance off that, and part of that is that the game is less well balanced at wildly different point levels to that "expected" range. things are either too tanky or too killy, with tough units being almost unkillable becuase no one has enough firepower to kill them (with low point games) or super easy to kill because theirs so much firepower available to counter them with (at high point games). I imagine if i tried playing a 4k game i'd find my guys would melt way to quickly in the face of the sheer number of dice that were being thrown at them.

Got a game in vs Drukhari yesteday at 2k points.....
Having an enemy with every squad being flimsy, but every squad having teeth is a pain in the butt. The whole army having advance and charge turn 2 makes it just bonkers fast, and the succubus could DOUBLE in points, and still be 'Must take' good.

That, and the new dark lance profile is just devastating. Every failed wound is a dead terminator. Dead bike. Dead Custode. And its pretty easy for them to have as many dark lances as you have models.
Meh.

I got into this hobby in LATE 7th, and I was flat out TOLD by the GW rep that games START at 2k and go up, but you could still play the "Bring what you got" lists and it would be ok. But if I wanted to get into anything like the actual game, it didn't start until 2k. I'm not saying this as a fact, but as an observation by a relatively, new player who was told by a rep that was how the game was setup to be played. Obviously he was wrong, but still, my point is that GW has pushed this as the norm for a while, it being "Tournament Standard" and all. I appreciate the points about it being different for different folks, but my main issue is Custodes and lack of balance. If GW is insisting on 500 games and 1k games being a thing, then don't look to our next codex for buffs. No way we stay at our current strength if GW wants these 30 minute games to be a viable thing, Ala if you bring 500 points of GSC you actually stand a chance against my 500 points of Custodes.

 iGuy91 wrote:
Got a game in vs Drukhari yesteday at 2k points.....
Having an enemy with every squad being flimsy, but every squad having teeth is a pain in the butt. The whole army having advance and charge turn 2 makes it just bonkers fast, and the succubus could DOUBLE in points, and still be 'Must take' good.

That, and the new dark lance profile is just devastating. Every failed wound is a dead terminator. Dead bike. Dead Custode. And its pretty easy for them to have as many dark lances as you have models.
Meh.

Sounds like a tough match, what did you bring?

yeah, Drukari games are entirely a different thing now. Before the new codex it was "can we chew through all these bodies and score enough", to "Can we survive 3 turns and still have more than one unit of shield guard on the table"?

Dark angels, Death guard, Chaos demons, and Drukari all match up favorably against Custodes now. Combined with our slightly bad matchup with knights and some nid lists we are in a rough spot in the meta atm.


Im gonna do my hardest at the upcoming Dallas Open with pure custodes but i dont expect better than a 3/5 record tbh.

If i get good matchups i might be ok.

How are we in a "tough spot"? We are currently in the top of the meta. Not the best, but we aren't GSC. We are capable of objective camping, we can destroy character heavy lists, and our TAC lists are some of the top lists in the game. I honestly don't understand how we are in a bad place. Yes, the factions with a 9th ed. codex are capable of downing us, but that is most of the factions in the game. 9th codexes are slightly OP compared to 8th ones.

Eihnlazer wrote:yeah, Drukari games are entirely a different thing now. Before the new codex it was "can we chew through all these bodies and score enough", to "Can we survive 3 turns and still have more than one unit of shield guard on the table"?

Dark angels, Death guard, Chaos demons, and Drukari all match up favorably against Custodes now. Combined with our slightly bad matchup with knights and some nid lists we are in a rough spot in the meta atm.


Im gonna do my hardest at the upcoming Dallas Open with pure custodes but i dont expect better than a 3/5 record tbh.

If i get good matchups i might be ok.

Let us know how things turned out for you, I'm curious how pure custodes manage to hold their own

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:How are we in a "tough spot"? We are currently in the top of the meta. Not the best, but we aren't GSC. We are capable of objective camping, we can destroy character heavy lists, and our TAC lists are some of the top lists in the game. I honestly don't understand how we are in a bad place. Yes, the factions with a 9th ed. codex are capable of downing us, but that is most of the factions in the game. 9th codexes are slightly OP compared to 8th ones.

That's not entirely what he meant, I think. We are not bad right now. Our shield guard is good, as is basically any FW dreadnought. But the factions he mentioned play very well into us. The new drukhari are lightning fast and hit extremely hard, even against us. Really any of their units can be a threat. Death guard has some of the best fight last ability in the game right now and their -1 dmg hurts us a lot (think venatari and aquilon). Demons apparently can dish out more mortal wounds than we can ever hope to deal with.
Bear in mind that if you don't do tournaments, this probably differs in your local meta, depending on how competitive your gaming partners are. But the point is not that we are bad, but rather that many of the top factions apparently play well into our faction, since let's be honest, we are not that elite anymore.

Yeah, anyone with a 9th Ed Codex is going to eat our lunch, and thats expected. We are currently one of the very few factions that can survive in 9th, with our 8th rules. Us, Harlies, Eldar, and Sisters.

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
Yeah, anyone with a 9th Ed Codex is going to eat our lunch, and thats expected. We are currently one of the very few factions that can survive in 9th, with our 8th rules. Us, Harlies, Eldar, and Sisters.

Slight correction, the Daemons don't have 9th Codices either. Indeed, I expect their shenanigans to be brought into line once they have one.

Daemons seem to be an outlier, I don't think they would be top 5 if we weren't in the middle of a pandemic where people are basically trotting out crazy lists and they are winning majors. I chalk that one up to Covid.

Sisters, Custodes, Jokers, those are legit 8th edition contenders for 9th meta. Just my somewhat worthless opinion.


Sisters give me fits to play against. Ok, that squad of girls in spandex with big swords just charged my entire squad of terminators, this should be fun.....Wait, I have to roll HOW MANY saves? Strength 8? Each one is HOW MUCH damage? (Starts just removing models from table)

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
Daemons seem to be an outlier, I don't think they would be top 5 if we weren't in the middle of a pandemic where people are basically trotting out crazy lists and they are winning majors. I chalk that one up to Covid.

Sisters, Custodes, Jokers, those are legit 8th edition contenders for 9th meta. Just my somewhat worthless opinion.


Sisters give me fits to play against. Ok, that squad of girls in spandex with big swords just charged my entire squad of terminators, this should be fun.....Wait, I have to roll HOW MANY saves? Strength 8? Each one is HOW MUCH damage? (Starts just removing models from table)

Repentia are really, really good, but if you manage to save 4cp for transhuman and emperors auspice, you can neuter them quite decently (emperors auspice being the really, really important one here). Without rerolls they lose a lot of punch. And never forget the ever powerful tangle foot grenade.

Tiberias wrote:

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
Daemons seem to be an outlier, I don't think they would be top 5 if we weren't in the middle of a pandemic where people are basically trotting out crazy lists and they are winning majors. I chalk that one up to Covid.

Sisters, Custodes, Jokers, those are legit 8th edition contenders for 9th meta. Just my somewhat worthless opinion.


Sisters give me fits to play against. Ok, that squad of girls in spandex with big swords just charged my entire squad of terminators, this should be fun.....Wait, I have to roll HOW MANY saves? Strength 8? Each one is HOW MUCH damage? (Starts just removing models from table)

Repentia are really, really good, but if you manage to save 4cp for transhuman and emperors auspice, you can neuter them quite decently (emperors auspice being the really, really important one here). Without rerolls they lose a lot of punch. And never forget the ever powerful tangle foot grenade.

I agree and this matches my experience. I've fought them twice in tournament settings and played them once for an opponent as tournament practice. Every time the Repentia just bounced off their opponent and died.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
Daemons seem to be an outlier, I don't think they would be top 5 if we weren't in the middle of a pandemic where people are basically trotting out crazy lists and they are winning majors. I chalk that one up to Covid.

Sisters, Custodes, Jokers, those are legit 8th edition contenders for 9th meta. Just my somewhat worthless opinion.


Sisters give me fits to play against. Ok, that squad of girls in spandex with big swords just charged my entire squad of terminators, this should be fun.....Wait, I have to roll HOW MANY saves? Strength 8? Each one is HOW MUCH damage? (Starts just removing models from table)

While it's a fair theory for many things I'd point out that the Daemon list was made by TJ Lannigan who was the top ranked Chaos player for 2020. He generally knows his stuff.

 Eihnlazer wrote:
So if a DA succubus or murder archon can delete an entire squad of shield guard or saggitarum guard (kill about 3-4 in one fight phase on average), are we still appropriately pointed?


Note these are sub 100pt models taking out 156-212pts worth of custodes in a single phase on average.............



Either GW loosing their mind or they have plans for custodes later on.


I dont think dropping our points would be appropriate either though, as that makes certain factions and players hate on us even harder. Orks, tau, and non mortal spewing tyranids already have a really hard time against custodes as is.

The answer is no, custodes are not appropriately pointed any more. Deldar have a lot of anti custodes tools in their arsenal, from what posion does to a non dread or mech list, to an extremely powerful mortal wound trick.

But, they are still elves, and bikes be good against that.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
How are we in a "tough spot"? We are currently in the top of the meta. Not the best, but we aren't GSC. We are capable of objective camping, we can destroy character heavy lists, and our TAC lists are some of the top lists in the game. I honestly don't understand how we are in a bad place. Yes, the factions with a 9th ed. codex are capable of downing us, but that is most of the factions in the game. 9th codexes are slightly OP compared to 8th ones.

Each new army that comes out is strong compared to custodes. And strong against custodes.

But that's just your bog standard new edition power creep working out.

Like, gw isn't even really trying to hide it, each new book represents a dramatic jump in power compared to their old one, and compared to the meta as a whole usually. Just have to hope when our turn comes around we aren't unlucky and get one of the few duds that will inevitably show up through the edition.

Honestly, I am worried we might get a relegated to a WD or Campaign book update. Why would GW spend the time creating a codex for less than 10 models (Counting GW plastic)? I know they've said they plan on rolling FW into their codexes but they haven't for anyone else yet unless there are FW units in the DG and DE books. I just don't see us existing in the future without becoming stupidly broken. In order to avoid getting gutted by DE archons and witches, we need to be 5-6 wounds PER model, For terminators 6-7. For bikes that mean 9-10. Characters? 8-9? What do our dreadnaughts become? Mini knights at 15-20 wounds? How do you even point that? No, I don't see this edition allowing the ability of having armies with less than 10 units and actually winning. Once Chaos books start dropping and Daemons get brought into 9th, we are toast. Anyone wanna guess what Bloodletter and horrors are going to do to us in 9th?

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
Honestly, I am worried we might get a relegated to a WD or Campaign book update. Why would GW spend the time creating a codex for less than 10 models (Counting GW plastic)? I know they've said they plan on rolling FW into their codexes but they haven't for anyone else yet unless there are FW units in the DG and DE books. I just don't see us existing in the future without becoming stupidly broken. In order to avoid getting gutted by DE archons and witches, we need to be 5-6 wounds PER model, For terminators 6-7. For bikes that mean 9-10. Characters? 8-9? What do our dreadnaughts become? Mini knights at 15-20 wounds? How do you even point that? No, I don't see this edition allowing the ability of having armies with less than 10 units and actually winning. Once Chaos books start dropping and Daemons get brought into 9th, we are toast. Anyone wanna guess what Bloodletter and horrors are going to do to us in 9th?

Very simple answer: custodes are very popular and sell very well. We won't be in a white dwarf. Worst case will be another adeptus custodes codex, best case: talons of the emperor codex.

And you are also exaggerating again. We don't need a bazillion wounds. Custodian guard going to 4 wounds would be a big boost and I can see that happen.
GW is obviously willing to try new things to boost survivability. If our shield guard get an inate ability that you can't reroll hit rolls against that squad in melee, that alone would be a big boost.
I remain hopeful for our 9th Ed codex if the quality of recent releases continues. Dark eldar is a genuinely well made codex, hopefully ours will be similar: strong but not broken.

I think in order to stay competitive with the new releases we just need our strats recosted.

all the 2+ CP strats need to be reduced to 1CP+1 for more than 5 models.

We need -2 to charge back on our tanks (which should be coming with a strat). The tanks themselves need to go up 1-2 wounds each and have their save increased to 2+ with no point change.

The Ares and Orion both need to drop about 50pts and have their explosion damage be increased to D6 or D3+2.

+1 wound on all our infantry and bikes would be big, but this would also mean that our bike captain and terminator captains would go to 10 wounds with the CC trait.

We could also use Tribunes for reroll 1's to wound.

Vexilla are also overcosted, which they fixed and then unfixed for some reason.

I agree, fixing some points and adjusting strat cost is huge for us.
As I said I can see our infantry and bikes getting one more wound and maybe one additional attack. The captain commander trait that gives +2wounds needs to be changed in that case. My suggestion is to change it to - 1dmg on all attacks against the captain, which might be too good now on a current auric aquilas bike captain, but consider that we are likely going to lose 3+ invulns....(unless we remain the only faction in the game who keeps them)

 Eihnlazer wrote:
I think in order to stay competitive with the new releases we just need our strats recosted.

all the 2+ CP strats need to be reduced to 1CP+1 for more than 5 models.

We need -2 to charge back on our tanks (which should be coming with a strat). The tanks themselves need to go up 1-2 wounds each and have their save increased to 2+ with no point change.

The Ares and Orion both need to drop about 50pts and have their explosion damage be increased to D6 or D3+2.

+1 wound on all our infantry and bikes would be big, but this would also mean that our bike captain and terminator captains would go to 10 wounds with the CC trait.

We could also use Tribunes for reroll 1's to wound.

Vexilla are also overcosted, which they fixed and then unfixed for some reason.

Any changes to our forgeworld models are done, they aren't going to be looked at again except for edge case faqs and point costs.

And, good. I don't want to play the forgeworld army.

Tiberias wrote:
I agree, fixing some points and adjusting strat cost is huge for us.
As I said I can see our infantry and bikes getting one more wound and maybe one additional attack. The captain commander trait that gives +2wounds needs to be changed in that case. My suggestion is to change it to - 1dmg on all attacks against the captain, which might be too good now on a current auric aquilas bike captain, but consider that we are likely going to lose 3+ invulns....(unless we remain the only faction in the game who keeps them)

I have a feeling that relic 3 pluses will stick around, and I would not be shocked if our shield guard gets to keep it as a way to make the army unique. It fits with the concept of the army and gives survivability that isn't perma transhuman or minus 1 to damage.

But if they don't, then they should stop being cowards and just give us a 4 plus invul overall and make our trait something else.