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There is so much they could do to buff us and makes us more interesting..

I've posted these before, but just these profile changes to our main weapons would give us a buff and make for more interesting choices:

Sentinel Blade:
S: User; AP: -3; D: D3
Abilities: every time the user fights with this weapon, he can make D3 additional attacks in this fight phase.

Guardian Spear (two profiles!): every time the bearer fights, choose which weapon profile you are going to use for this fight phase.
Profile1:
S: User; AP: -2; D: D3
Abilities: when choosing this profile treat every attack from the users profile as 2 attacks instead.

Profile2:
S: +2; AP: -3; D: 2

Castellan Axe:
S: +3; AP: -2; D: 2
Abilities: In a turn in which the bearer has successfully charged, change the weapon profile to the following for the fight phase: S: x2; AP: -2; D: D3+1

They could give our units more interesting special rules. In 7th guardian spears could be used to block incoming attacks if you rolled above what your opponent rolled on his attack roll. They could give our wardens a 5+ feelnopain to make them more viable again etc...

My point is there is a plethora of possibilities and opportunities to buff our guys slightly, without making them over the top

Proliferation of grav armor ate the niche of custodes at being better marines pretty hard

stratigo wrote:
Proliferation of grav armor ate the niche of custodes at being better marines pretty hard

So give custodes more special abilities to distinguish them from Marines an hammer home the point of them being martial paragons. That's the only serious option in my opinion
You can't inflate the profile stats of custodes more except for maybe wounds and attacks. If you make them S6 base, or even worse T6 base, it would be too much obviously.
Now I'm not saying you think custodes should be T6 base, but my point is that you can't really go another direction than to give them more special abilities....and buff their weapons of course to be on par with marines.

Tiberias wrote:

stratigo wrote:
Proliferation of grav armor ate the niche of custodes at being better marines pretty hard

So give custodes more special abilities to distinguish them from Marines an hammer home the point of them being martial paragons. That's the only serious option in my opinion
You can't inflate the profile stats of custodes more except for maybe wounds and attacks. If you make them S6 base, or even worse T6 base, it would be too much obviously.
Now I'm not saying you think custodes should be T6 base, but my point is that you can't really go another direction than to give them more special abilities....and buff their weapons of course to be on par with marines.

I totaly agree Custodes need to be way better than marines model per model. But at this point custodes pretty much need army wide transhuman, 1+ armor, 4-5 attacks, 4-5 wounds or they are just golden space marines which i would really hate.




Oh i forgot the deathwing kights also get:
Once per battle, this unit can attempt to Deny the Witch as if it were a Psyker. If the model attempting to manifest the psychic power is a Chaos Psyker, you can re-roll that Deny the Witch test.

and:
Each time a Morale test is taken for this unit, it is automatically passed.

 nordsturmking wrote:

Tiberias wrote:

stratigo wrote:
Proliferation of grav armor ate the niche of custodes at being better marines pretty hard

So give custodes more special abilities to distinguish them from Marines an hammer home the point of them being martial paragons. That's the only serious option in my opinion
You can't inflate the profile stats of custodes more except for maybe wounds and attacks. If you make them S6 base, or even worse T6 base, it would be too much obviously.
Now I'm not saying you think custodes should be T6 base, but my point is that you can't really go another direction than to give them more special abilities....and buff their weapons of course to be on par with marines.

I totaly agree Custodes need to be way better than marines model per model.

Oh i forgot the deathwing kights also get:
Once per battle, this unit can attempt to Deny the Witch as if it were a Psyker. If the model attempting to manifest the psychic power is a Chaos Psyker, you can re-roll that Deny the Witch test.

and:
Each time a Morale test is taken for this unit, it is automatically passed.

Deathwing knights are stupid right now and everyone agrees that they are dumb. Free transhuman on top of everything else is not ok.
I would be Very surprised if the current inner circle rule will also be in the 9th ed dark angels codex. If it remains, gw better throw us a bone...

I would really love it if we were granted some form of special detachment for a sort of low cost Grey Knight option. We need psykers/chaplains....badly. We could easily create the lore around Emperor blessings or "boons" that manifest in the start of battles. Give a unit an attack twice thing, or +1 to wound blessing direct from big daddy.

We need to involve the emperor's will somehow into our force, and it should be through a chaplain/librarian unit.

 FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
I would really love it if we were granted some form of special detachment for a sort of low cost Grey Knight option. We need psykers/chaplains....badly. We could easily create the lore around Emperor blessings or "boons" that manifest in the start of battles. Give a unit an attack twice thing, or +1 to wound blessing direct from big daddy.

We need to involve the emperor's will somehow into our force, and it should be through a chaplain/librarian unit.

I mean, we have sisters now for anti-psyker.
My personal take is that Custodes should just have whatever buffs built-in to their datasheets. They fight individually and are the manifestation of the Emperor outside the Palace, they don't need a random dude to inspire them. Acts of heroism, etc are perfectly fine as stratagems.
The Imperial Armor index may give some clues as the what direction Custodes will take, but I'm guessing the codex is far enough away that it will be basically just be the rules we already have give or take. I wouldn't be surprised if this time next year we're talking about the Talons of the Emperor codex previews.

 greyknight12 wrote:

 FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
I would really love it if we were granted some form of special detachment for a sort of low cost Grey Knight option. We need psykers/chaplains....badly. We could easily create the lore around Emperor blessings or "boons" that manifest in the start of battles. Give a unit an attack twice thing, or +1 to wound blessing direct from big daddy.

We need to involve the emperor's will somehow into our force, and it should be through a chaplain/librarian unit.

I mean, we have sisters now for anti-psyker.
My personal take is that Custodes should just have whatever buffs built-in to their datasheets. They fight individually and are the manifestation of the Emperor outside the Palace, they don't need a random dude to inspire them. Acts of heroism, etc are perfectly fine as stratagems.
The Imperial Armor index may give some clues as the what direction Custodes will take, but I'm guessing the codex is far enough away that it will be basically just be the rules we already have give or take. I wouldn't be surprised if this time next year we're talking about the Talons of the Emperor codex previews.

I agree. No chaplains or psykers for us, doesn't fit in the slightest. We're not marines

and, just to play devils advocate, do we actaully need a buff at the moment, given how we seem to be doing pretty well so far in 9th (anecdotally)?

however, I agree they need to re-carve our design space and give us back a "niche" that isnt totally shared with marines, as difficult as that may be. they can't really make us much more "elite" without starting to go into literal one man armies, so im not sure where they should take us. one option would be giving us bonus CP as a detachment ability, to let us make more use of the "Individual heroics" stratagems and such.

I think when it becomes time for a new codex (Which will be quite a long while from now) these things I'd like to see.

Make Spears, axes etc assault rather than rapid fire.

Make Missile Launchers 2 shots instead of 1.

Give the hurricane bolters ap-1

Make the 1 damage weapons 2 damage.

As far as toughness goes....I don't know. I'm spitballing here. I know Gravis is eating at our niche. Maybe consider making the terminators t6? Adding 1 wound to the 3 wound dudes? Its just so easy to over buff this army.

 iGuy91 wrote:
I think when it becomes time for a new codex (Which will be quite a long while from now) these things I'd like to see.

Make Spears, axes etc assault rather than rapid fire.

Make Missile Launchers 2 shots instead of 1.

Give the hurricane bolters ap-1

Make the 1 damage weapons 2 damage.

As far as toughness goes....I don't know. I'm spitballing here. I know Gravis is eating at our niche. Maybe consider making the terminators t6? Adding 1 wound to the 3 wound dudes? Its just so easy to over buff this army.

Can't change Hurricanes because it's a shared profile. It'd need a new name.

That said, we're really strong and sword+board just got buffed. I'd say all we really need are:

Culexus/Sisters range increased to 24" (maybe 30").

Sisters on Jetbikes (okay not really, but I can dream).

+1W on all infantry/Jetbikes units across the board.

1D3 melee changed to flat 2 across the board.

Matching our melee to power weapons (+1S on Sentinel Blades, +2 on spears, axes get -1AP).

xerxeskingofking wrote:
and, just to play devils advocate, do we actaully need a buff at the moment, given how we seem to be doing pretty well so far in 9th (anecdotally)?
....

Yes. The new marines are gonna be almost as OP as last years iron hands. 12-18 eradiacators are gonna delete custodes armies in no time.

Just a quick side note, how would you guys approach a necron list with the nightbringer? It feels like that guy can solo half a custodes army.

I kinda like the nightbringer being the best beatstick in the game, since he is the actual grim reaper of 40k, but it seems like he counters us very, very hard.

Tiberias wrote:
Just a quick side note, how would you guys approach a necron list with the nightbringer? It feels like that guy can solo half a custodes army.

I kinda like the nightbringer being the best beatstick in the game, since he is the actual grim reaper of 40k, but it seems like he counters us very, very hard.

I have no idea beyond playing keep away from him, weakening him with shooting, and trying to charge to finish him off. That, or using a small squad of 3 guard to beat 3 wounds off him as a sacrifice to try and weaken him faster.

My biggest hope is that

1. Sisters get moved to Troops and get obsec
2. Terminators get some sort of damage reduction strat. Anything 1-3 is reduced to 1. etc. I feel giving them a buff to Toughness is actually feasible. They should be roughly as tough as a jet bike...
3. Speaking of jetbikes, make them T7.
4. Make guardians 40ppm base, make spears 2 and sword 0 shield 5.
5. Make the Miser free

9. New Redemptor options?

 FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
My biggest hope is that

1. Sisters get moved to Troops and get obsec
2. Terminators get some sort of damage reduction strat. Anything 1-3 is reduced to 1. etc. I feel giving them a buff to Toughness is actually feasible. They should be roughly as tough as a jet bike...
3. Speaking of jetbikes, make them T7.
4. Make guardians 40ppm base, make spears 2 and sword 0 shield 5.
5. Make the Miser free

9. New Redemptor options?

1) Not going to happen, espically with SM scouts moving over into Elites out of troops. Clearly, they feel that troops should be the core building blocks of a army and that anything not part of that core should be specialist/elite option. sisters are not our core, guardian squads are.

2) & 3): the strats i can see, but im doubtful about stat increases, if only becuase they would have to come with significant points increases.

4) thats a significant cut in costs. you think they'd go for that?

5) i doubt free, but they may make it cheaper.

6) you mean access to all the SM dread arm-weapons like the lascannon, plasma cannon, volkite baster etc? possible but unlikely, unless they let it in via FW index which i honestly doubt.

Make Spears, axes etc assault rather than rapid fire.

to again play devils advocate, we already HAVE assault type spear options, via FW. I must note that they dont seem that popular.

Matching our melee to power weapons (+1S on Sentinel Blades, +2 on spears, axes get -1AP).

that, i can see happening.

Jetbikes going to T7 is a bit much don't you think?

How about this, in addition to the weapon changes I proposed:
Guard gets another wound and maybe another attack.
Terminators get another wound and attack.
Our whole army gets a 6+ feelnopain, wardens get a 5+ feelnopain.
Our whole army gets a 5+ shrug against mortal wounds in psychic.

I'd personally like to give our guard units some special abilities to make them more interesting and hammer home the point of our guys being melee specialists. For example:

"as long as this unit still contains at least two custodian guard equipped with storm shield in the fight phase, enemy units have to subtract 1 from their hit roll when targeting this unit"
This could represent the enemy running into a shield wall and having a harder time hitting our guys. It would help against lots of attacks, and would do nothing against thunder hammers for example because of the -1 cap...so it would not punish other elite units with high value attacks too much.

And

"as long as this unit still contains at least two custodian guard equipped with guardian spears in the fight phase, if this unit was charged by an enemy unit, roll a d6 for every enemy model eligible to fight in this fight phase. On a 6+ the enemy unit suffers one mortal wound."
I'd give them a strat to buff this to do mortal wounds on a 5+. I think charging our spear guys should come with some risk. Running head on into golden demigods of War, holding massive spears shouldn't come without risk.

You could do similar things for wardens and terminators. Things like these distinguish would help to distinguish us once more as THE elite faction I believe.
I'm not saying my suggestions are the be all end all solution, but my point is, there is SO much they could do.

So I think a big problem with our faction is that we suffer from what I like to call "Captain Marvel/Superman" problems. How do you show how powerful Superman is without completely invalidating everyone else in the established fluff?

If 1 Custode in fluff is supposed to be the literally perfect warrior, how to you rep that numerically and not break the game or make SM's worthless? You can't.

Which is why we don't base our rules off what fluff says we should be able to do. If you give our entire army S7 spears and D6 axes, on top of a 1+/3++6+++ you might as well just not play anything else.

The only option I can see is us giving up something to get something. Give up the Army wide 5++ or the Psykic 6+++, and maybe get something. I dunno, but right now we are still damn good, and you can't buff us reasonably anymore, and keep costs managable. I mean our troop tax alone is an entire battalion for some armies. You start raising those numbers, and we start losing matches....

Can't lose the army wide 5++ that goes to a 4++, we need that more than any other army in the game.

Also like I said, you don't need to inflate our stats to distinguish us from marines, I even gave some suggestions. And while those might not be the best ideas, since I'm not a game designer, you get my point. There is a lot you can do.

To be fair, one thing that already sets us apart now is that we are the only army in the game that still gets a 3++ on their stormshields (and we ignore AP -2 in cover with them, which is also nice).
I hope they keep that in our new codex.

Edit: another thing that needs attention is Trajann Valoris. His axe should have always been flat 3 dmg, but I'd go as far as making it flat 4dmg. He's our biggest, baddest dude and right now he's laughable in combat.

I don't think 5 attacks at S10 AP3 d3 damage (Rerolling all misses and wounds) is "Laughable" but oh well. He's not Ragnar or Thrakka, but then he doesn't need to be. He's a buff bot that can act like a beat stick if needed. With the new CORE rules, I doubt he'll be a mainstay of any lists now, as our tanks aren't core. If you want to use him like Trakka then yeah, he'll need better damage. Flat 4 sounds nice but I seriously doubt it'll happen.

 FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
I don't think 5 attacks at S10 AP3 d3 damage (Rerolling all misses and wounds) is "Laughable" but oh well. He's not Ragnar or Thrakka, but then he doesn't need to be. He's a buff bot that can act like a beat stick if needed. With the new CORE rules, I doubt he'll be a mainstay of any lists now, as our tanks aren't core. If you want to use him like Trakka then yeah, he'll need better damage. Flat 4 sounds nice but I seriously doubt it'll happen.

Unfortunately he is, especially for his cost. He is outfought by ragnar by on every day of the week and ragnar is considerably cheaper. Look, we are at a stage in the game where a unit with 3wounds T5, 2+, 4++ and 6+++ (wardens) is considered not tough enough to compete. 5 attacks at S10 AP3 and D D3 should be great, but it just isn't nowadays. I dislike this trend as much as the next person, but here we are.....that's one of the many issues with constant power creep.

Edit: and he shouldn't fething be a buffbot, but this hopefully won't be possible anymore once our codex drops. I always hated it that the best strategic use for characters like trajann or abaddon for example, was to let them sit back and buff some stuff.

The easiest, if not the best fix, for Trajann is to just let him use all 3 Moment Shackle abilities each battle instead of just one.

Wardens are our most meh unit and need a redesign. They're out-classed by every other infantry and are poor generalists.

Audustum wrote:
The easiest, if not the best fix, for Trajann is to just let him use all 3 Moment Shackle abilities each battle instead of just one.

Wardens are our most meh unit and need a redesign. They're out-classed by every other infantry and are poor generalists.

That would be neat, but flat 3 dmg on his axe minimum is also required once he can't give his aura to a telemon or caladius anymore.....well assuming the telemon and caladius will not be CORE which I think is to be expected.

Just an idea, move Wardens to Troop slot and allow them to take some form of ranged weapon? Such as the Aquillon weapons?

Call me crazy but what about painting the new Land Speeders gold and calling them Venerable Land Speeders? Heavy Melta Support in a pinch!

 FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
Just an idea, move Wardens to Troop slot and allow them to take some form of ranged weapon? Such as the Aquillon weapons?

Call me crazy but what about painting the new Land Speeders gold and calling them Venerable Land Speeders? Heavy Melta Support in a pinch!

Ok, but what would wardens then do better than our standard guard or sagittarum? The stormshields on our normal guard are too good to pass up and if you were to make wardens good at shooting, you run a risk of completely invalidating saggitarum guard as a unit, which would be bad also.

No, wardens need their own niche. Keep them in elite and either give them a 5+++ and/or give the unit the ability to deny psychic powers, essentially baking the strat into their profile. That way they would have more specific purpose.

The new landspeeders do not have nearly enough eagle iconography on them to be usable for us Our own variant of a landspeeder would be cool though.

One thing is for certain tough, once our new codex drops....whenever that is going to be, I seriously hope that GW manages to give valerian and aleya some useful rules for once. It's kinda hilarious and sad at the same time how much they botched these characters ingame.

Tiberias wrote:

 FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
Just an idea, move Wardens to Troop slot and allow them to take some form of ranged weapon? Such as the Aquillon weapons?

Call me crazy but what about painting the new Land Speeders gold and calling them Venerable Land Speeders? Heavy Melta Support in a pinch!

Ok, but what would wardens then do better than our standard guard or sagittarum? The stormshields on our normal guard are too good to pass up and if you were to make wardens good at shooting, you run a risk of completely invalidating saggitarum guard as a unit, which would be bad also.

No, wardens need their own niche. Keep them in elite and either give them a 5+++ and/or give the unit the ability to deny psychic powers, essentially baking the strat into their profile. That way they would have more specific purpose.

The new landspeeders do not have nearly enough eagle iconography on them to be usable for us Our own variant of a landspeeder would be cool though.

One thing is for certain tough, once our new codex drops....whenever that is going to be, I seriously hope that GW manages to give valerian and aleya some useful rules for once. It's kinda hilarious and sad at the same time how much they botched these characters ingame.

Aleya is really useful for getting access to the Sisters denial strat and aura on a model with character protection (and can thus potentially get close enough to use them without dying). The Valerian tax for her is just too high.

Ok, but Giant golden Land speeders of Melty Goodness with a 5++ and a 6+++?

Also, we literally don't need Wardens right now. They are more costly than basic troops but crappier than terminators (their closest counterpart). We need to make "Warden" a thing that you can assign to a model/unit before hand. Basically make them have a 6+++ for 2cp.

Otherwise, there is no real reason to have another foot slogging heavy elite infantry unit. It's already half our army. No, we need some form of T8/9 shooting that doesn't come from a tank. Some form of venerable Devastator squad.

Honestly the entire army should have Transhuman across the line and weapons a flat 2 at the very least

I will say not having another phase of damage really hurts as the increase the range of models across armies that can ghaz/void dragon our damage to nothing.

There are only a handful of armies that can reliably do the kind of damage you’re asking for across 3+ phases, and those that do pay exorbitantly for those options.

C’Tans in their current form are a balancing nightmare, and asking for the means to one-turn them is asking to open up a lethality arms race the likes of which this game hasn’t seen. You don’t want to go down that road.

I get the part about ghazghkull and the c'tan, especially the nightbringer, but I'm generally ok with there being some models in the game that just counter us very well, as long as they are rather rare. Like sterling said, how do you give us the means to down a ctan in one turn without making us over the top?

Coming back to wardens though, I agree with the general consensus that they don't really have a place in any custodes list right now, but I would not go as far as to make a strat to assign any unit the "warden" status. Simply because we actually have dedicated warden models (which are actually quite cool looking) and I think they deserve to get a rules update to be able to stand on their own as a unit. Just giving them a 5+++ would make them at least interesting...well in my opinion at least.