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Gores wrote:
Shields give you a 4+ invuln, then the custodes faction trait pushes it to a 3++. The shield also gives you +1 to armor saves. So guardians with shields are 1+/3++

Agh!! forgot the trait giving +1 invun just got thinking it was base 4+ thanks for pointing it out. Though it still seems the loss of damage and range is a largish draw back especially in this eds 2wound troop armys popping up here there and everywhere.

Skullhammer wrote:

Agh!! forgot the trait giving +1 invun just got thinking it was base 4+ thanks for pointing it out. Though it still seems the loss of damage and range is a largish draw back especially in this eds 2wound troop armys popping up here there and everywhere.

Nah, I can tell you right now that your opponent will find a 3 man squad of guard with shields sat on an objective in cover far more frustrating than anything else in your army. You're essentially 0+/3++, ignoring AP-1/-2. Sword and board guards are great for basically guaranteeing you objective control for whatever they're sat on.

There was a list that I think podium'd by just taking 10 man squads of sword + board and HQ's. That was basically it. Fill up to 2k points. The writer said to just stand on half+1 objectives every game. Fall back from every combat to minimize their chances to shoot you and just...endure. They won't get through you till T4 and by then their primary is ruined.

Audustum wrote:
There was a list that I think podium'd by just taking 10 man squads of sword + board and HQ's. That was basically it. Fill up to 2k points. The writer said to just stand on half+1 objectives every game. Fall back from every combat to minimize their chances to shoot you and just...endure. They won't get through you till T4 and by then their primary is ruined.

Fell back from combat to avoid being shot at?

Audustum wrote:
There was a list that I think podium'd by just taking 10 man squads of sword + board and HQ's. That was basically it. Fill up to 2k points. The writer said to just stand on half+1 objectives every game. Fall back from every combat to minimize their chances to shoot you and just...endure. They won't get through you till T4 and by then their primary is ruined.

While probably being very effective at that time, that list had to have been the most boring thing to play ever....

 mrhappyface wrote:

Audustum wrote:
There was a list that I think podium'd by just taking 10 man squads of sword + board and HQ's. That was basically it. Fill up to 2k points. The writer said to just stand on half+1 objectives every game. Fall back from every combat to minimize their chances to shoot you and just...endure. They won't get through you till T4 and by then their primary is ruined.

Fell back from combat to avoid being shot at?

To avoid being stabbed. I just accidentally wrote shoot.


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Tiberias wrote:

Audustum wrote:
There was a list that I think podium'd by just taking 10 man squads of sword + board and HQ's. That was basically it. Fill up to 2k points. The writer said to just stand on half+1 objectives every game. Fall back from every combat to minimize their chances to shoot you and just...endure. They won't get through you till T4 and by then their primary is ruined.

While probably being very effective at that time, that list had to have been the most boring thing to play ever....

I think he even said it was super boring, haha.

However boring it is, it was still one of the most effective and powerful lists of ours in 9th yet. I mean, what other top 3s have we had? Strictly POST Drukari.

A guy recently won a GT with custodes called the Tau Tipper 2021. However he had super easy matchups all tourny.

He played one DG player who was running the zombie horde for example.


Im annoyed because this 5-0 at a GT zoomed him to the top of the Custodes faction leaderboard (which i was going for), and its almost impossible for me to get ahead of him now due to my bad luck at the Lone Star Open.

 Eihnlazer wrote:
A guy recently won a GT with custodes called the Tau Tipper 2021. However he had super easy matchups all tourny.

He played one DG player who was running the zombie horde for example.


Im annoyed because this 5-0 at a GT zoomed him to the top of the Custodes faction leaderboard (which i was going for), and its almost impossible for me to get ahead of him now due to my bad luck at the Lone Star Open.

That is unfortunate. I have heard that ITC is more about how many you attend vs how many you win outright. Gotta grind more points.


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FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
However boring it is, it was still one of the most effective and powerful lists of ours in 9th yet. I mean, what other top 3s have we had? Strictly POST Drukari.

It was pre-No Prisoners though so it might not be a great idea now. Surrenders a lot of points there.

 Eihnlazer wrote:
A guy recently won a GT with custodes called the Tau Tipper 2021. However he had super easy matchups all tourny.

He played one DG player who was running the zombie horde for example.


Im annoyed because this 5-0 at a GT zoomed him to the top of the Custodes faction leaderboard (which i was going for), and its almost impossible for me to get ahead of him now due to my bad luck at the Lone Star Open.

Challenge him directly for the title either by a matched play 2k game or a duel to the death, whichever suits you both best

Didn't a guy place well that basically did the same "all shield" list, but threw in a few mixed Spear x2 Shield x3 squads? I feel like there was some variation on it that did really well recently. I had a friend call me a bastard today when he found out I run Custodes. He plays Tau, and had no idea what I played. I get his anger, given their state, but I've never encountered outright scorn for my Custodes before. It was really odd. I wouldn't say we were ever "Broken".

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
Didn't a guy place well that basically did the same "all shield" list, but threw in a few mixed Spear x2 Shield x3 squads? I feel like there was some variation on it that did really well recently. I had a friend call me a bastard today when he found out I run Custodes. He plays Tau, and had no idea what I played. I get his anger, given their state, but I've never encountered outright scorn for my Custodes before. It was really odd. I wouldn't say we were ever "Broken".

It might be the problem that Custodes are kind of OP in friendly games, since our roster is quite limited it's pretty hard to take an army that is bad. I know in the recent crusade campaign me and some friends have had my Custodes have just been stomping everything, the only army that has come close to beating me is dark eldar. I'm not even trying to run a super competitive army, I've basically been taking and trying out every unit in our roster but god damn do we hit hard if your opponent isn't taking a tier 1 army.

Could also be that we just get a reputation of being the most annoying faction to kill even if we still get beaten on objectives. In the same crusade campaign, my bike captain (Banana Joe) now has a reputation of being the most bs, OP lord to ever hit the game.

Ok, so we die with difficulty. We don't actually hit harder than most other armies. SM out shoot us in every flavor, same with Ad Mech now. DE will still eat our lunch, as will Harlequins and some Eldar lists. I haven't seen the entire ork book, but I'm guessing they are now a good matchup to us. That leaves Nids, Tau, and IG. Without their codex, they are all hurting, and have a VERY hard time with us, but I don't see us as bad as say, pre-nerf DE levels of cheese. We do 2 things well, and that is basically it. We hit hard and we don't die.

Actually point for point, Custodes dont hit hard at all.

Other than Venetari popping a strat, and our tanks (which are pretty squishy compared to the rest of our line), nothing in the Custodes army really puts out massive damage.

Yeah theoretically, a 750pt unit of Allarus terminators will kill anything they charge if buffed with +1 attack and rerolls, but who takes that? Its half your army at 2k and can kill 1 or 2 units when it drops in. Thats pretty bad efficiency.

 Eihnlazer wrote:
Actually point for point, Custodes dont hit hard at all.

Other than Venetari popping a strat, and our tanks (which are pretty squishy compared to the rest of our line), nothing in the Custodes army really puts out massive damage.

Yeah theoretically, a 750pt unit of Allarus terminators will kill anything they charge if buffed with +1 attack and rerolls, but who takes that? Its half your army at 2k and can kill 1 or 2 units when it drops in. Thats pretty bad efficiency.

It's difficult to deliver into the really juicy targets with any degree of consistency, but the achillus hits really, really hard.

The achilles does hit hard, my fault for forgetting, but he has the problem of being very squishy for a custodes unit as well.

With effectively 10.5 wounds and a 2+/5++ he's even easier to kill than our grav tanks by anything other than D2 weapons.

At 160-180pts and a CP for cost, I tend to rarely find him making his points back. He's only going to do anything against an opponent who runs into him, or if you spam 5-6 dreads.

 Eihnlazer wrote:
The achilles does hit hard, my fault for forgetting, but he has the problem of being very squishy for a custodes unit as well.

With effectively 10.5 wounds and a 2+/5++ he's even easier to kill than our grav tanks by anything other than D2 weapons.

At 160-180pts and a CP for cost, I tend to rarely find him making his points back. He's only going to do anything against an opponent who runs into him, or if you spam 5-6 dreads.

All very fair points. Whenever I play the achillus I go for dread host to ensure better consistency for a charge from deepstrike with the "golden light of the moraides" strat or I bring a vexilla for the teleport homer strat, but that move is very telegraphed.

But you are right, the achillus is difficult to deliver and it needs the right matchup to make its points back. It's just so freaking cool though.....since I painted up mine, I can't bring myself not playing it, but I wouldn't consider myself a very good or competitive custodes player, so I just go for style

as a tsons player, ive been following the the new codex, and it seems seems to be very mortal wound heavy. people running the numbers suggest 15+ MW a psychic phase is doable while the casters are alive, and with the sheer number of casters they have, they can stay alive long enough to really ruin our day. Yes, they're psyker MW so we get the 6+ FNP against them, but its still enough to melt sword and board squads that can tank most other fire, plus they have a "remove Invul saves" power and AP-2 guns as standard, so they can really screw us over. OH, they can pop a -1 damage strat to make "All is Dust" kick in vs Damage 2 weapons to boot.

I dont really know how popular Tsons will be in the wider meta, but it might be worth thinking about counterplay for them, as they seem to have had a (much needed) buff to power levels and thier MW spam shtick plays right into our traditional counter

This really seems to be GW's 2nd major way of dealing with Invulns. The first is the DE way, of 90+ weak attacks that basically chip away due to weight of dice. The second is the heavy on the MW generation, ala 1kSons, or what the DG bring to the table.

I am not making a value judgement, but merely stating this is what GW appears to be leaning hard into. Dice Volume, or MW's on lots of attacks.

One thing I noticed about the new grey knights was that kaldor draigo sneakily kept his 3+ invuln.

Now, GW has been moving away from 3+ invulns in basically all 9th ed codices so far, but this might suggest that we are going to keep at least some 3++ in our 9th ed codex. I for one would be pretty annoyed if draigo gets to keep his premium invuln but Valoris doesn't.

Well, he is a normal 4++ with a SS right? I also think he costs more than a SC with a SS so, there's that. Right now, I am struggling to put together a list that is fun but for both sides, against my friend who plays Tau. I want him to have a good time, but the matchup is HEAVILY tilted towards me no matter what I pick right? I was going to go with two SCs with axes, and two max squads of wardens, and the min requisite troops with spears. Is that slightly less broken in matchup terms?

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
Well, he is a normal 4++ with a SS right? I also think he costs more than a SC with a SS so, there's that. Right now, I am struggling to put together a list that is fun but for both sides, against my friend who plays Tau. I want him to have a good time, but the matchup is HEAVILY tilted towards me no matter what I pick right? I was going to go with two SCs with axes, and two max squads of wardens, and the min requisite troops with spears. Is that slightly less broken in matchup terms?

I'm not sure what you mean by he's a normal 4++ with stormshield. Do you mean draigo? Because apparently he still has a 3++ in the new codex.

Regarding your question about a friendly match against tau: a good friend of mine plays tau as well and from experience I tend to agree with you. The matchup in friendly games favors the custodes because we can hold objectives really well, tau struggle with this a lot as we all know. So imo it becomes a question of whether he can kill enough of you stuff to then get the objectives.
Can tau kill your stuff? Yes, absolutely. But can they do it quick enough to be able to get enough points? Probably also yes if you decide to tie up your points with Wardens. But don't handycap yourself too much since you are also supposed to have fun. Just don't spam shield guard and dreadnoughts too much.

Edit: if you wanna bring dreadnoughts, it also depends which one. The Achillus for example is a notoriously bad pick against Tau, because he won't do anything in melee unless you manage to get rid of the drones first and he dies rather easily in shooting and overwatch. Conversely a friendly tau list will probably have difficulty ever killing a shadowkeepers Telemon.
So it's not about bringing the very worst units we have to make the matchup even imo, but more about not bringing a super optimized list. Take some small style picks, bring an assassin.

Just played against the new T-sons and I lost, but more due to my horrid rolls in the fight phase than due to their power.

Theres simply too much -1 damage crap out there for Custodes to be a threat.

They can give any rubric squad -1 damage, and can give a deamon prince -1 damage and only half attacks, making it almost impossible to reliably kill them.

I swung into his 4 wound daemon prince twice with an axe captain and twice with a 3 man sword and board squad and did 2 damage, which he proceeded to heal with a power.

The 10 man block of terminators with -1 to damage and a 4++ are impossible to kill since they are fearless and he can bring back 2 per turn with powers and abilities.

The fact that they are now just as durable as us, and can throw out anywhere from 5-15 MW's casually every psychic phase means we have to play perfect to have a chance in most games.

 Eihnlazer wrote:
Just played against the new T-sons and I lost, but more due to my horrid rolls in the fight phase than due to their power.

Theres simply too much -1 damage crap out there for Custodes to be a threat.

They can give any rubric squad -1 damage, and can give a deamon prince -1 damage and only half attacks, making it almost impossible to reliably kill them.

I swung into his 4 wound daemon prince twice with an axe captain and twice with a 3 man sword and board squad and did 2 damage, which he proceeded to heal with a power.

The 10 man block of terminators with -1 to damage and a 4++ are impossible to kill since they are fearless and he can bring back 2 per turn with powers and abilities.

The fact that they are now just as durable as us, and can throw out anywhere from 5-15 MW's casually every psychic phase means we have to play perfect to have a chance in most games.

TSons were always rough for us due to the MW prowess. While their damage is nerfed they are tough now. Our best bet is to probably outrange them (i.e. Telemons and Caladii).

If you're fighting an optimized TSons I'd say he probably brings double Contemptors for even more MW output.

 Eihnlazer wrote:
Just played against the new T-sons and I lost, but more due to my horrid rolls in the fight phase than due to their power.

Theres simply too much -1 damage crap out there for Custodes to be a threat.

They can give any rubric squad -1 damage, and can give a deamon prince -1 damage and only half attacks, making it almost impossible to reliably kill them.

I swung into his 4 wound daemon prince twice with an axe captain and twice with a 3 man sword and board squad and did 2 damage, which he proceeded to heal with a power.

The 10 man block of terminators with -1 to damage and a 4++ are impossible to kill since they are fearless and he can bring back 2 per turn with powers and abilities.

The fact that they are now just as durable as us, and can throw out anywhere from 5-15 MW's casually every psychic phase means we have to play perfect to have a chance in most games.

couple of minor points, but im pretty sure all the Tsons regen tricks have a wording that says "a unit cannot be healed more than once per turn" which applies across all forms of healing (ie psyker powers, strats, relic abilites, etc) Oh, and on a 10 man squad the -1 damage trick is 3CP, so if hes doing that more than once he;s really burning the CP he could be using for other puposes. my only advice would be sisters of silence and let their ability to ignore character protection on psykers give you targeting options to hit and hurt his casters.

xerxeskingofking wrote:

couple of minor points, but im pretty sure all the Tsons regen tricks have a wording that says "a unit cannot be healed more than once per turn" which applies across all forms of healing (ie psyker powers, strats, relic abilites, etc) Oh, and on a 10 man squad the -1 damage trick is 3CP, so if hes doing that more than once he;s really burning the CP he could be using for other puposes. my only advice would be sisters of silence and let their ability to ignore character protection on psykers give you targeting options to hit and hurt his casters.

I mean if he's only doing like 2 damage to a unit per turn, you only need one heal per unit.

And the -1D strat you only need to use on that one turn after the scarab termies come down and get counter charged.

The healing is one terminator per turn gets full heal, then a power revives one, then a cabal ritual thing brings a second back.

Yeah, I don't know how we win the Thousand Sons match up now, our regular ranged weapons with AP-1 D2 mean nothing when they get -1D and +1Sv vs them, hurricane bolters will get laughed away by anything but Tzaangors, even the Telemon's heavy guns are killing 1 model per shot that goes through (and god knows how it'll get through when they can throw down -1 to hit and 4++ invul on a big squad) and when we do kill 1 or 2 models they just bring it back. They are just gonna grind us down with mortal wounds and volume of AP, multi-damage fire.

Maths for a 5 man Allarus Custodian dropping in and charging a unit of Rubrics with all their psychic and strat buffs (-1 to hit, 4++ invul and -1D):

In shooting: about 4W

In melee: 7W from axes, 1W from misericordia

So a total of 6 rubrics killed (not taking into account damage spillover), 3 of which can be brought back the next turn. So your 350pt unit took out 63pts before getting blasted off the table by psychic and shooting. And who's to say the Thousand Sons player doesn't use forewarning forcing you to use auramite and adamantium or else take some damage before even getting a shot off.


I'm not particularly worried about this though, it is just how the game works: the newer codex is always gonna be better. What worries me is how ridiculous they're gonna have to make Custodes in order to fight these new codices, are our basic troops gonna be 4W 2+/3++/6+++(5+++ against mortal wounds) -1D and ignore wound rolls of a 1-3?

All I know is I hope that people start breaking out the Black Templars to counter out all the T-sons and G-knight lists that are sure to show up at Tournaments.

I am willing to bet that GK/1Ksons will not shift the meta 3% points. GK still suck as a general faction, being hyper elite with nothing to show for the cost, and 1Ksons basically require a perfect matchup against a R/P/S faction, like custodes. Most of the Meta will still wipe the floor with 1K Sons.