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I’m going to start a Custodes army. It’ll be about 2000 points/90PL. I’ve mainly picked units I like the look of and will enjoy painting because painting is 80% of the fun for me. However I’ve also paid attention to how well they’ll do on the tabletop as I’ve just started actually playing games after 2 years of painting Ultramarines.

I’m decided on everything apart from whether to get the land raider. My quandary is 3 fold.

1. I’m going to make them Shadowkeepers who stand guard over the secrets from back in the day etc and I’m not sure a land raider would fit in. What use would a land raider be in guarding books, scrolls etc?

2. Their primary colour will be black and I’m not sure I like the aesthetics of black tanks. Happy to be convinced otherwise.

3. I’ve had a look at a few lists and none of them include land raiders. Are they competitive at all?

TIA.

If you want them to do good on the tabletop a land raider is the LAST thing you want. Land Raiders are useless. Worse than useless because they chew up a quarter of your points.

Land Raiders are often depicted as objects of devotion to certain chapters, such as Word Bearers and Dark Angels. If you wanted to create some fluff around a reason for it being there, saying the Land Raider has some special purpose devoted to protecting secrets would be a good place to start. Maybe give it a name, like the Bastion of Knowledge.

Black tanks look fine. Use edge highlighting and avoid going pure black except in the shadows.

Land Raiders are not competitive. Use them to make your army look nice / complete, not to make it efficient. I started a Grey Knights army and have painted 3 Land Raiders, other than the Crusader I don't use them on the tabletop. Once the rest of the army is done, I will do the same with Deathwatch.

You... Do realise the Shadow Keepers also guard against... Things that must never be released or it could destroy the Imperium as a whole?

Its never revealed what those things are, but many speculate it's some very, very dangerous things from the dark age of technology, powerful xeno artefacts or biological things. Even rogue psychic power plagues which were "eradicated" by the Emperor's own power, but I would hazard a guess some remain.

I'm making up some Land Raiders for my Custodes, but I'll be honest, it's for looks mainly. They look pretty in gold. If there was a Megabattle, or a fun narrative game I could possibly break them out, but for anything competitive it's not Landraiders.

I play the marine faction that probably has the best land raiders in the game (Thousand Sons - we have powers to make them +1BS, -1 to hit, heal them like a techmarine, give it a 5+ invuln) but every time I've tried them they're still hot trash.

the big problem with them is that as soon as they get consolidated into by a single gretchin....boom, sayonara 4 lascannons, twin HB, etc. They're just a brittle, unwieldy basket to stick your eggs in and then they get smashed.