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If you gave talons some reason to exist it might be worth it against hordes? I assume that's what they were going for with the idea of claws, but they lack the attacks. Thing is; give more attacks, you have to up the cost, and the fists just get even more 1 sided.

Honestly if you made the fists lose 1 attack, and the claws gain one attack, I could see that go either way depending on the opponent.

So fellas I have two Telemon Dreds, and no grav tanks. I assume the optimal setup is a shield captain to babysit them both in the twin storm cannon setup with a vexilla, using them to hopefully claim backfield objectives where possible.

Otherwise, would it be better to have one be twin fists, and one shooting?

 iGuy91 wrote:
So fellas I have two Telemon Dreds, and no grav tanks. I assume the optimal setup is a shield captain to babysit them both in the twin storm cannon setup with a vexilla, using them to hopefully claim backfield objectives where possible.

Otherwise, would it be better to have one be twin fists, and one shooting?

Shooting is always better than fists, from a competitive standpoint. You have the right idea on setup. Try not to move them for objectives unless you have to since it: 1. Makes it harder to keep them both in the auras. 2. Gives them -1 to Hit. Try to keep the Vexilla and the Shield-Captain positioned so they can heroically intervene and clear off anyone charging them.

Audustum wrote:

 iGuy91 wrote:
So fellas I have two Telemon Dreds, and no grav tanks. I assume the optimal setup is a shield captain to babysit them both in the twin storm cannon setup with a vexilla, using them to hopefully claim backfield objectives where possible.

Otherwise, would it be better to have one be twin fists, and one shooting?

Shooting is always better than fists, from a competitive standpoint. You have the right idea on setup. Try not to move them for objectives unless you have to since it: 1. Makes it harder to keep them both in the auras. 2. Gives them -1 to Hit. Try to keep the Vexilla and the Shield-Captain positioned so they can heroically intervene and clear off anyone charging them.

Depending on how chaos knights/disco lords impact the meta there MAY be a reason to have one with one fist just to ward off potential chargers if you're running pure custodes or minimal screens. Most of the nasty chaos stuff can't shoot a Telemon efficiently (so it will go for assault) and aggressive melee is still one of the best methods to deal with knights so I'd expect those components to be aimed at your telemons.
I'm probably wrong; I'm just wary to automatically discount S16 in any form. Against knights, the storm cannon does 2.67 wounds/turn against a 4++ knight (3.56 vs 5++), the fist does 11.11 against no CC invul (8.89 vs 5++ in CC) plus maybe 1 from the plasma projector. Trading a single storm cannon for a fist almost halves your ranged capability, but gives you a tremendous CC capability that you otherwise don't have...obviously if you don't get to punch stuff then it's not worthwhile though.

EDIT: Since I'm on a roll here, Telemons can actually take a charge from a knight fairly well; since they are T8 with a 4++ and effectively 16ish wounds. That means a knight needs to on average wound 6 times with a fist or chainsword and 16 times with feet to kill one. With WS2+ (Gallant class, no re-rolls) that's 10.8 attacks from a chainsword/fist and 12.8 attacks from feet (since they all get multiplied by 3). Combine that with a tanglefoot to deny the charge to begin with and it's unlikely that a single knight kills a telemon on the charge.

I would never advocate 2 fists. To lose such a powerful gun to gain just 1A and the flamer, for roughly the same cost, doesn't make much sense to me. But yes a fist could be a crucial factor if you are facing something like a charging knight.

Another thing to think about is that you're only taking 2 shooting units, which are both T8 2+/4++/6+++. The -1 Vexilla might be wasted on them; if anything you want you opponent to be blunting their big guns against the Telemons great durability, rather than your more fragile Jetbikes or whatever. A -1 to hit on top of that will discourage any shooting at them big time. If you start taking Caladius tanks, then stick the Vexilla back in to account for their relative lack of durability.

I honestly don't know how else besides the tanks, that Custodes are taking down any type of Knight class unit. We just don't have the shooting outside of Tank/Telemon castle. An extremely Lucky Valoris? A 10 man squad of Aquilons with Powerfists that lose two in the charge and pop Remember the Fallen?

5 Aquilons does 25ish wounds on average to a Knight with no invul, not including any damage from their guns or misericordia.

Right, I was wrong on my unit size. So if you take the full squad of 6, then lose 1 say in the charge, pop remember the fallen, you get 25 punches. Without any invuln, that's 27.78 wounds getting through.

I think I can honestly assume if you are sending out a killteam with the express purpose of dropping a knight equivalent, you are going to back it up with a Captain, or Valoris? Giving re-rolls, that boosts it over 28 and it's dead.

That all being said, a LOT has to go right there. It's an incredibly risky play, and you are spending a lot on it going just right. I am just trying to think up ways for Custodes to take down a Knight in a single turn.

Aside from Telemons, and some extremely lucky tank shooting, the other Contemptor DNs?

 greyknight12 wrote:

Audustum wrote:

 iGuy91 wrote:
So fellas I have two Telemon Dreds, and no grav tanks. I assume the optimal setup is a shield captain to babysit them both in the twin storm cannon setup with a vexilla, using them to hopefully claim backfield objectives where possible.

Otherwise, would it be better to have one be twin fists, and one shooting?

Shooting is always better than fists, from a competitive standpoint. You have the right idea on setup. Try not to move them for objectives unless you have to since it: 1. Makes it harder to keep them both in the auras. 2. Gives them -1 to Hit. Try to keep the Vexilla and the Shield-Captain positioned so they can heroically intervene and clear off anyone charging them.

Depending on how chaos knights/disco lords impact the meta there MAY be a reason to have one with one fist just to ward off potential chargers if you're running pure custodes or minimal screens. Most of the nasty chaos stuff can't shoot a Telemon efficiently (so it will go for assault) and aggressive melee is still one of the best methods to deal with knights so I'd expect those components to be aimed at your telemons.
I'm probably wrong; I'm just wary to automatically discount S16 in any form. Against knights, the storm cannon does 2.67 wounds/turn against a 4++ knight (3.56 vs 5++), the fist does 11.11 against no CC invul (8.89 vs 5++ in CC) plus maybe 1 from the plasma projector. Trading a single storm cannon for a fist almost halves your ranged capability, but gives you a tremendous CC capability that you otherwise don't have...obviously if you don't get to punch stuff then it's not worthwhile though.

EDIT: Since I'm on a roll here, Telemons can actually take a charge from a knight fairly well; since they are T8 with a 4++ and effectively 16ish wounds. That means a knight needs to on average wound 6 times with a fist or chainsword and 16 times with feet to kill one. With WS2+ (Gallant class, no re-rolls) that's 10.8 attacks from a chainsword/fist and 12.8 attacks from feet (since they all get multiplied by 3). Combine that with a tanglefoot to deny the charge to begin with and it's unlikely that a single knight kills a telemon on the charge.

As somewhat noted below, if you're trying to melee a Knight, use Aquilons. Jetbikes also work as long as you hit the magic number connecting the charge (6 plus the Captain). Your math and mine is a little different though because the Telemon should average 5.19 wounds on a 4++ Knight with two Storm Cannons (I did add a Captain for re-rolls to Hit).

Chaos isn't the biggest player on competitive so spec'ing too hard just to fight them isn't advisable. In the last 5 weeks of major tournaments, in the top 4 lists of each, we had:

7 Orks
12 Imperium Soup (No Knights)
6 Imperium Soup (Knights)
5 GSC/Tyranids
8 Chaos Soup
10 Eldar Soup
6 Tau
2 Necrons

Chaos Soup was only 1 ahead of Orks and was behind No Knights Imperium and Eldar Soups in prevelance. Knight+Chaos (so including Imperium Knight lists) lists across the board only comprised 14/56 lists (or 2/8). You're substantially more likely to face lists without Knights in the current meta than lists with Knights. Even if Chaos Knights gives that a buff, there's a lot of other things you should prioritize being ready for first.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
Right, I was wrong on my unit size. So if you take the full squad of 6, then lose 1 say in the charge, pop remember the fallen, you get 25 punches. Without any invuln, that's 27.78 wounds getting through.

I think I can honestly assume if you are sending out a killteam with the express purpose of dropping a knight equivalent, you are going to back it up with a Captain, or Valoris? Giving re-rolls, that boosts it over 28 and it's dead.

That all being said, a LOT has to go right there. It's an incredibly risky play, and you are spending a lot on it going just right. I am just trying to think up ways for Custodes to take down a Knight in a single turn.

Aside from Telemons, and some extremely lucky tank shooting, the other Contemptor DNs?

Knights will almost always charge Aquilons first. You want to pair them with a Culexus via Operative Requisition Sanctioned so that the Culexus can use the 'Soul Horror' stratagem to force the Knight to fight last. With Trajann you only need 4 Aquilons to kill a 'standard' Knight (not counting Trajann himself, so really 3+Trajann).

My math was for 1 storm cannon, vs one fist. So about half your number is about right

 greyknight12 wrote:
My math was for 1 storm cannon, vs one fist. So about half your number is about right

Fair enough on that front then!

So, why would one choose the storm cannon over the other ranged weapon? One is 4 shots, one is 8 shots, surely the higher shot weapon would average out more damage, seeing as how AP doesn't matter?

 FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
So, why would one choose the storm cannon over the other ranged weapon? One is 4 shots, one is 8 shots, surely the higher shot weapon would average out more damage, seeing as how AP doesn't matter?

AP doesn't matter but strength does. The other gun is S7 so you're wounding Knights on 5's. The Storm Cannon is S9 so it wounds on 3's. The Storm Cannon also innately re-rolls all failed wounds against VEHICLE keyword. It ends up averaging out a bit more than the other gun as a result. EDIT: I should add that the Storm Cannon is flat 3 damage while the Accelerator is flat 2 damage too.

 FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
So, why would one choose the storm cannon over the other ranged weapon? One is 4 shots, one is 8 shots, surely the higher shot weapon would average out more damage, seeing as how AP doesn't matter?

Because one wounds on 5s, the other on 3’s with a reroll and has more damage
Assuming accelerator hits with all the shots:
8 hits, wounding on 5s gives 2.67 wounds, 4++ means 1.33 go through for 4 dmg.

Yeah, took me a hot minute to realize the weapons on the Telemon, and the Weapons on Caladius are not quite the same gun. The Illiastus on the Tank is a better gun since its str8, d3 dmg to the Telemon's STR 7, 2 damage version.

That being said, the telemon's storm cannon is a much better version of the Caladius' blaze cannon, since its the exact same profile, but 72 inches and 36 inches for the beam/burst modes to the Caladius' 36 and 24 inch ranges

 iGuy91 wrote:
Yeah, took me a hot minute to realize the weapons on the Telemon, and the Weapons on Caladius are not quite the same gun. The Illiastus on the Tank is a better gun since its str8, d3 dmg to the Telemon's STR 7, 2 damage version.

That being said, the telemon's storm cannon is a much better version of the Caladius' blaze cannon, since its the exact same profile, but 72 inches and 36 inches for the beam/burst modes to the Caladius' 36 and 24 inch ranges

It's also 2 beam/6 burst to the effectively 1 beam/6 burst of the caladius which is the bigger factor...you can get 4 beam shots off a telemon vs 2 max off a caladius. It would be interesting for them to unify the profiles; it would change up which guns are a auto-take on the tank and telemon and make it more of a debate on which chassis you want it on.

The Callidus has the advantage of extreme movement and "fly". So it can get in and out of hot spots and cover. I haven't used dual telemons ever. I don't know if I could properly screen them enough.

I actually did run two telemons in a list this weekend.
Admittedly, it was a casual kind of game, but having one twin storm cannons, and one with a fist and culverin (thing eats hellblasters)....pretty good results. Ended up blasting the anti-armor elements away pretty fast, and then ran amok the rest of the game.

I do like my telemon twins

 iGuy91 wrote:
I actually did run two telemons in a list this weekend.
Admittedly, it was a casual kind of game, but having one twin storm cannons, and one with a fist and culverin (thing eats hellblasters)....pretty good results. Ended up blasting the anti-armor elements away pretty fast, and then ran amok the rest of the game.

I do like my telemon twins

Tell me they have names?

But of course!
I settled on Allaric and Justinian after the game.

So Custodes just took third (and 4th) at the Show Me Showdown. Here were the lists:

3rd:

Scott Thompson - Show Me Showdown
​
++ Spearhead Detachment +1CP (Imperium - Adeptus Custodes) [, 1CP] ++
+ HQ +
Captain-General Trajann Valoris []

+ Elites +
Contemptor-Achillus Dreadnought (Beta) []: 2x Lastrum Storm Bolter
Vexillus Praetor [6 PL, 124pts]: Castellan Axe, Vexilla Magnifica, Warlord

+ Fast Attack +
Pallas Grav-Attack (Beta) ]: Twin Arachnus Blaze Cannon
Pallas Grav-Attack (Beta) []: Twin Arachnus Blaze Cannon

+ Heavy Support +
Caladius Grav-tank (Beta) []: Twin Illiastus Accelerator Cannon, Twin Lastrum Bolt Cannon
Caladius Grav-tank (Beta) []: Twin Illiastus Accelerator Cannon, Twin Lastrum Bolt Cannon
Caladius Grav-tank (Beta) []: Twin Illiastus Accelerator Cannon, Twin Lastrum Bolt Cannon
Telemon Heavy Dreadnought (Beta) []: Arachnus Storm Cannon, Arachnus Storm Cannon, Spiculus Bolt Launcher

++ Battalion Detachment +5CP (Imperium - Adeptus Mechanicus) [, 8CP] ++
Forge World Choice . Forge World: Graia

+ HQ +
Tech-Priest Enginseer []
Tech-Priest Enginseer []

+ Troops +
Skitarii Rangers []
. Ranger Alpha: Galvanic Rifle
. 4x Skitarii Ranger
. Skitarii Ranger (Transuranic Arquebus): Transuranic Arquebus
Skitarii Rangers [] . Ranger Alpha: Galvanic Rifle . 5x Skitarii Ranger
Skitarii Rangers [] . Ranger Alpha: Galvanic Rifle . 4x Skitarii Ranger

++ Vanguard Detachment (Imperium - Officio Assassinorum) [] ++
+ Elites +
Callidus Assassin []
Eversor Assassin []
Vindicare Assassin []

[]

4th:

Tyler DeVries - Show Me Showdown
​
Custodes spearhead detachment
trajann

Vexillus Praetor, misricordia, Vexilla Magnifica

Caladius Grav-tank Twin Illiastus Accelerator Cannon, Twin Lastrum Bolt Cannon
Caladius Grav-tank Twin Illiastus Accelerator Cannon, Twin Lastrum Bolt Cannon
Caladius Grav-tank Twin Illiastus Accelerator Cannon, Twin Lastrum Bolt Cannon

Stygies Battalion
tech priest dominus
tech priest enginseer

rangers
rangers
rangers

scorpius disintegrator, belleros energy cannon
scorpius disintegrator, belleros energy cannon
scorpius disintegrator, belleros energy cannon

Vostroyan Battalion
Emperors Fist Tank Company -1 cp

tank commander, punisher, x3 heavy bolters
tank commander, battle cannon, x2 plasma cannons, heavy bolter

platoon commander (warlord)

x10 guard
x10 guard
x10 guard

Anyone notice some similarities? It's an impressive amount of heavy shooting in the 3rd place list.

Shooting lists are always gonna be strong. Custodes just don't have any shooty options in the vanilla codex.

People are spazzing out about how strong the grav tanks are when they are needed desperately to be competitive.

They seem to be underpointed, but if we can only place in the top tables with an OP unit obviously the rest of our army needs help.

Two things:

1. What is the benefit of making the flag the warlord?
2. Why have the the LRs in that list? I'd rather drop those for CC and drop in a few more Pallas. I don't understand the value of LR in his list.

 FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
Two things:

1. What is the benefit of making the flag the warlord?
2. Why have the the LRs in that list? I'd rather drop those for CC and drop in a few more Pallas. I don't understand the value of LR in his list.

1. If you talking about list 1. Trajan has a set WL trait that kinda sucks for that list so no reason not to swap it to something else. If its list 2. The Platoon Commander can't be targeted and IG has some of the best WL traits in the game.


Yeah I'm kinda regretting posting all those Battle Reports now. Seems like my poor grav-tanks are sticking up too much and likely to get hammered down the next beta release. I just hope not too much or others are made better to compensate.

TCs are there for more dakka and threat saturation. The standard russ is very likely packing the relic battle cannon which is a flat 3 damage, can shoot the table, and with the Vostroyan strat is hitting on 2s (not to mention making the plasma fully safe and hitting out to 42 inches).

Youre looking at 8 different, dangerous tank chasses.

I guess to elaborate on my second question, is going guard for Heavy support a better idea then just going dual CC and throwing more points towards Custodes?

I would love to know if those TCs did their work or even earned their points back. In these specific matches.

 FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
I guess to elaborate on my second question, is going guard for Heavy support a better idea then just going dual CC and throwing more points towards Custodes?

I would love to know if those TCs did their work or even earned their points back. In these specific matches.

The battlecannons on the tanks are considered quite strong. Tyler seemed to be following the conventional wisdom very heavily in his list so I doubt he would spend points on Telemons, Pallas or other 'off-brand' units. As he had hit the 3 Max or the Caladius, going to Tank Commanders would be the next 'meta' move.

 FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
I guess to elaborate on my second question, is going guard for Heavy support a better idea then just going dual CC and throwing more points towards Custodes?

I would love to know if those TCs did their work or even earned their points back. In these specific matches.

You'd only have 320-ish points to work with by swapping out the TCs for CCs. Given the entire list is based around long range shooting, you're not going to get a lot out of those 320 points in additional Custodes blingery. TCs of the non-Pask variety arent flashy in the era of Knights, but they get gak done.

Is there a bad side to Pallas Grav attack tanks? The twin linked cannon, 16" move, T6, 6 wounds, PotMS, Grav Wash, for 100 points....why is no one taking these? 3+/5++, that's a lower costing harder hitting Shield Captain on a bike.

Lemans were kept down by the dominance of the castellan. With its influence waning people will catch on quick. While they are vulnerable to High AP due to the abundance of Invul saves most have been going to lower AP weapons with greater number of shots.

The LR:Conqueror I think is going to be the new sneaky unit. Just a few points more then a "Basic" LR it has a co-axial Storm bolter that lets it reroll hits within 24" (30" if Vostroyan) That 2d6 S8 shots with a 35" threat range AP -2 Dd3 for 155 points. (Not to mention the storm bolter counter as a turret weapon and get to shoot twice as well lol.) With T8 Toughness and 75% accuracy when firing at say a knight it averages 3.5 damage to a Tank Commanders 3.63 despite being Spam-able (You can bring 9 of them and still have 600 points to play around with in a 2k game) And the WL trait Old grudge is wonderful for making them incredible knight/whatever unit you really want dead hunters.

Really their primary weakness is being caught in melee. As unlike the Caladus Tank no fly keyword. So a strong screen is needed for them. And their optimal effectiveness a bit short so smart tank hunters that get a long field can out range them some what (There cannon still have 48/54" range just only get rerolls within 24") Also the 2d6 shots are feast/famine. I have had games where I was averaging 9-10 shots a tank and games where I was getting 4-5 shots. That lack of consistency can be rough.

If you want to check out the AM tactics thread I just did a mini bat rep for a tourney Saturday that I fielded 2 TC and 3 LR:C.