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Even if you put enough custodes (bikes or infantry, doesn't matter which) on the front lines to hold against ork mobs, anything not immediately in melee is getting pummeled by Lootas or smasha guns surrounded by gretchin, and in the case of the Lootas using grot shield. When it's impossible to get to them they become very very nasty

Competitive ork lists don't really run lootas anymore, or even very many boyz for that matter. Lootas should be pretty easy to handle since we have a 2+ in cover and use 3W models. I play against some pretty competitive ork players w/ custodes and I haven't lost a game against them yet. A smart ork player will actually try to outmaneuver and hide from you, not overwhelm you with boyz.

Well I personally find Lootas really nasty. Run right they have a good chance at 3 shots each and can shoot twice, always hitting on 5+ And getting an extra hit on 5+ with Grot shield and Kustom forcefield. Very little we can do against that. I regularly play against a guy who runs them and my 2+ or 1+ in cover doesn’t matter against that many shots. I end up doing what Custodes do well, hiding & just holding objectives as best as I can.

Unless I'm missing something, 15 lootas shooting twice with more dakka looks like:

15(lootas)*2(# of shots)*2(shooting twice)=60 shots

60(shots)*0.33(hit rate)*1.33(more dakka)=26.66 hits

26.66(hits)*0.66(wounds)*0.16(failed saves)=2.8 failed saves

1 custode takes 4 damage, dies, another takes 2 damage.

Seems like a lot of points and CP to kill a 50 point model. Also realistically an ork player wouldn't use more dakka unless forced to because they moved, it's a terrible waste of CP.

And yeah I just hide and take objectives also vs orks, and they just leave me alone to avoid giving up kill points. Not that much dies during the game.

Orks took third place at a recent Major, and so did Chaos. Spikey bits did a article about what a shock it was seeing a Chaos list go to the finals.https://spikeybits.com/2019/06/top-five-1st-place-lists-across-the-latest-40k-tournaments.html

The Ork lists:

https://spikeybits.com/2019/06/orks-dominate-40k-top-3-army-lists-from-gentlemans-40k-gt.html

And Space Marines feel hordey, especially when my base troop model costs 50 points.

Dude, that’s the 2019 Gentlemen’s GT...I was there and it was a year ago. I also played against Ben Jurek’s list at Battle for LA the month before, and believe me it wasn’t a horde.

 FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
Orks took third place at a recent Major, and so did Chaos. Spikey bits did a article about what a shock it was seeing a Chaos list go to the finals.https://spikeybits.com/2019/06/top-five-1st-place-lists-across-the-latest-40k-tournaments.html

The Ork lists:

https://spikeybits.com/2019/06/orks-dominate-40k-top-3-army-lists-from-gentlemans-40k-gt.html

And Space Marines feel hordey, especially when my base troop model costs 50 points.

Go to 40kstats.com to find recent lists. Click on top 4.

So CSM suck now?

1st Place
Mani Cheema - CSM

5-0-0

2nd Place

Mani Cheema - CSM

5-0-0

Nathan Roberts - CSM

4-1-0

3rd Place

Adam Ryland - Thousand Sons

4-0-1

4th Place

Matt Robertson - Sisters of Battle

3-0-2

And there are several top finishes for Evil Suns Ork lists.

Chaos has the “possessed bomb”, which is basically a bunch of Possessed (hence the name) that through stacking traits and abilities are either -4 to hit and/or untargetable by shooting. For Custodes, Chaos has always been a potentially bad matchup since a lot of lists were spamming mortal wounds or at least had the ability to switch into that role. I haven’t played against them, and realistically it’s silly to plan it out since War of the Spider will probably be out before tournaments resume. However, the naturally high BS of Custodes means it’s still possible to shoot the possessed in some cases or simply focus down the other parts of the list, and if you get to swing first hitting the bomb with a killy enough melee unit could kill it before it swings back with a billion attacks.

I think the emergence of Grey Knights will see Possessed bombs disappear tbh. Like you said greyknight the negatives to hit or Alpha Legion shenanigans are largely against shooting so if we can slam them with a hammer unit out of fgltc then I think we can beat them, if and when they show up.

I was merely pointing out the flaw in a previous post that stated Chaos isn't competitive anymore. They still have top placings in many tournaments. Both Chaos vanilla and other blue and green flavors.

Orks are slightly less varied, what with really only one style being effective. Heavy on the Wierd Boys, and nobs(?) I don't know the competitive ORk scene.

My point is, horde armies are out there, and we still have problems with them in 2k games. we can't spare the points to toss a squad of 8 bikes in, and out melee just doesn't have the shooting to make an effective dent.

The best case scenario for us has always been to play to our strengths, and pray for some form of melee/fight phase buff.

 FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
I was merely pointing out the flaw in a previous post that stated Chaos isn't competitive anymore. They still have top placings in many tournaments.

No one said Chaos wasn't competitive...I've looked through the past 2 pages. In fact, anyone in who follows the competitive scene would tell you that Chaos is one of the best armies though in a weird place cause of GK.

Orks are slightly less varied, what with really only one style being effective. Heavy on the Wierd Boys, and nobs(?) I don't know the competitive ORk scene.

I'll tell you the competitive Ork scene looks and plays totally different than the competitive Chaos scene

My point is, horde armies are out there, and we still have problems with them in 2k games. we can't spare the points to toss a squad of 8 bikes in, and out melee just doesn't have the shooting to make an effective dent.

Look at the lists again. Nothing from Chaos resembles any semblance of a threatening horde, unless you're concerned about cultists. And if you're concerned about hordes, replace something else in your list with an anti-horde unit. 1 bike kills 4.4 guardsmen a turn (or cultists in cover)...it doesn't take much to cover that base. You don't have to use bikes either, Sag Guard and Caladius tanks are also decent options. That's part of part of competitive list-building, changing the units you take to adapt to the meta.

The best case scenario for us has always been to play to our strengths, and pray for some form of melee/fight phase buff.

Why? The winning-est list Custodes have had this edition, period, has been based around shooting (triple Caladius). I'd like to be a better melee army too because it's fluffy and more fun, but in a shooting edition I'll take more ranged firepower if that's all I've got.


Look man, I'm not trying to pick a fight with you. But literally every one of your posts comes across as an aggressive "hot take", and you defend those wrong opinions hard until they've been picked apart for a full page in depth by every other poster. We're all here to share ideas and get feedback on how to play this army better; we bring facts and experiences and compare notes. If I ask a question, I'm not going to shoot down the answer, especially bearing in mind that tone is hard to communicate on the internet. I'm here to learn with an open mind, and I hope everyone else can keep one too.

The most recent Psychic Awakening short, consequences, mentions a Custodes Shield-captain having a storm bolter on his guardian spear. Probably a typo, but if we get Storm Bolter Guardian Spears that would make hordes a lot more handle-able

Not really, because SC's with spears is possibly the worst configuration for them. Also, if our HQ units being within 24" of a horde is our answer to hordes, count that as a fail. If they make it an option for anthing with a spear, that instantly changes the value of wardens and Spearanators. What this may be is GW saying giving the Aquilon SBs to regular Terminators? Like replace the Launchers with SB's?

 FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
Not really, because SC's with spears is possibly the worst configuration for them. Also, if our HQ units being within 24" of a horde is our answer to hordes, count that as a fail. If they make it an option for anthing with a spear, that instantly changes the value of wardens and Spearanators. What this may be is GW saying giving the Aquilon SBs to regular Terminators? Like replace the Launchers with SB's?

He's just saying that a storm bolter would mean the ROF on a guardian spear would double. Which, if it keeps the stats of STR4, AP-1, D2, and just doubles in shots? That would be really nice.

1. That would make spears pretty broken, as they would essentially be rapid fire Primaris SBRs. 2. It would invalidate a huge chuck of current models and weapons. What would be the point of the Axe if the Spear Captain can already do +1 to wound and gets twice the shooting?

What is the point of bikers if Captains can put out better stonger shooting? Nah, this has to be a typo. Regular SBs S4/ap0/d1 maybe, but not at AP1 D2.

Honestly with double rate of fire custodes would still have pretty lousy shooting for their points.

A lastrum storm bolter on a spear does seem like thematic overkill though, yes.

Honestly custodes theming in general does seem a bit wonky in places, especially the baffling codex terminators that just have a little extra bulk and a wimpy wrist gun over normal armour and equipment.

Custodes are not meant to be a Stand alone Faction, they were ccreated back in the Days of Soup, when GW was pushing every army to need 2-3 battalions of Imperial Guard or SM scouts. They never expected Custards to be stand alone.

SM bolters can be AP1/2. Why not us? But what they do to spears should apply to axes and swords too tbh. Still... A few extra shots aren’t going to matter on 3-9 spears. All infantry guns need to be assault 2 so they can be used on the move (while advancing as they’re slow otherwise) to be useful... or my personal favourite is pistol 2 to be fluffy. Spears as 24” S4 AP1 D2 Pistol 2 makes them good. Shooting heretics in the face as you mash them up in melee is thematic as feck.

Allarus have some pretty cool special rules. Run them with the 12” heroic intervention warlord trait and they can do some cool stuff. They’re just overcosted and suffer from the same problem all Custodes do, a 2+ save means squat when every man and his dog is running around with high rof AP1 and AP2.

Custodes as Talons get Sisters etc. so that’s good at least. How useful a bunch of T3 3+ armour saves will be we’ll see. GW could do some cool stuff and allow us to have Sisters in Guard squads buffing their anti psyker capability but they’ll probably just add them as troops/elites.

Basically there’s some cool sh*t that has precedence already you could do to make Custodes unique and thematic. Or you could just add some new strats and give us Sisters. Let’s hope GW come through for us.

Pretty sure that the author of that piece just either forgot the name of the weapon or looked at a picture and said “storm bolter?”.
No other psychic awakening book that I’m aware of has changed stat lines of weapons. The most they might change would be adding a strat or doctrine-like system that changes them to rapid-fire 2, etc. But I can almost guarantee you the basic weapon profiles aren’t changing in their PA book.

 greyknight12 wrote:
Pretty sure that the author of that piece just either forgot the name of the weapon or looked at a picture and said “storm bolter?”.
No other psychic awakening book that I’m aware of has changed stat lines of weapons. The most they might change would be adding a strat or doctrine-like system that changes them to rapid-fire 2, etc. But I can almost guarantee you the basic weapon profiles aren’t changing in their PA book.

I think you hit the nail on the head when you said make all spears and swords assault 2/3. Our swords should be assault 3.


If this were christmas I'd be asking ffor GW to give Non-FW custodes some love in the realm of Terminator buffs. But our most worthless unit will likely continue to be worthless.

Nah sadly I also don’t think it’s likely weapons or unit profiles will get changed. We’ll get talons keyword whatever that gives us (prob squads of sisters as elites). Some new strats and new WL traits probably based around different hosts/companies and similar to what we’ve seen already in other releases... which could be alright but not changing our real issues. Likely no changes to CPs though so not so helpful at the end of the day when your running 4-8 CPs. We’re a small book and looking at what GSC, DW, or Harlequins got doesn’t fill me with much hope. Nice to dream though!

If Deathwatch are anything to go by, I'll expect maybe a few strats that never make it into a game, and a new SC.

 FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:

If this were christmas I'd be asking ffor GW to give Non-FW custodes some love in the realm of Terminator buffs. But our most worthless unit will likely continue to be worthless.

Uh, Allarus clearly aren't our most worthless unit. Surely that would go to the Land Raider or basic Contemptor?

I could see both of those potentially earning their points back. The lascannons could take out something big, and the Multi-Melta could as well. Also it's our most Dakka unit non-FW. So the Assault cannon can potentially clear up mobs. Allarus in the numbers required to be even potentially useful require almost 500 points. Or around 5-6 models. Hell, the base unit is 252 points, which is almost never makes back. I've had success with a unit of 10, but that was 840 points. and even then, they were just immovable objective blockers.

I find myself using the Land Raider a lot because I don't have Forge World money, and if it gets a 5+ invuln I think that would do the trick.

nemesis464 wrote:

 FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:

If this were christmas I'd be asking ffor GW to give Non-FW custodes some love in the realm of Terminator buffs. But our most worthless unit will likely continue to be worthless.

Uh, Allarus clearly aren't our most worthless unit. Surely that would go to the Land Raider or basic Contemptor?

I wouldn’t class either of those as custodes units, I wouldn’t even consider taking them unless they were converted to look the part, such as by buying a real custodes dread and giving it an assault cannon.

If we were able to go dual las on the contemptor I'd almost have to buy it as I have no long range anti vehicle in my list. But as it stands the Multinaught might as well have a flashing neon sign saying KILL ME on it.

If Allarus get a 3++ without having to sacrifice the spear or axe in my opinion that would really improve their worth. Or if they got thunder hammers, although that would mean a whole new model, so that's not happening.

I'd rather they make the launcher a S5 AP1 D2 weapon. We are already hilariously hard to kill.