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It doesn’t matter what they kill on the charge, locking them up for a turn so they don’t reroll does.

A squad of 3 Bikes will destroy a rhino on the charge, a squad of 5 bikes will destroy a rhino on the charge or being charged... That is, if the law of averages is with you.

And those averages increase if the rhino is wounded which isn't that improbable.

 mrhappyface wrote:
A squad of 3 Bikes will destroy a rhino on the charge, a squad of 5 bikes will destroy a rhino on the charge or being charged... That is, if the law of averages is with you.

And those averages increase if the rhino is wounded which isn't that improbable.

You didn’t kill a Razorwing on the charge by your own account. Funny how the story changes.

 Primark G wrote:

 mrhappyface wrote:
A squad of 3 Bikes will destroy a rhino on the charge, a squad of 5 bikes will destroy a rhino on the charge or being charged... That is, if the law of averages is with you.

And those averages increase if the rhino is wounded which isn't that improbable.

You didn’t kill a Razorwing on the charge by your own account. Funny how the story changes.

What does that have to do with it?
1. That's a different unit.
2. I charged that with a captain, not a bike squad.

The story hasn't changed, these are two completely different stories with completely different maths.

Yeah, because if we factor in Overwatch against a Rhino...

60 shots is (just over, due to rerolling 1s) 10 hits is 10/3 wounds is 10/9 damage.

Combine that with the 10.8 points of damage you get on average from 5 bikers, and they SHOULD kill a Rhino if the Rhino charges them.

According to Anydice, with Overwatch, they have a...

Wowza. Greater than a 90% chance.

Also, what if the Rhino fails its charge?

Edit: So, I Anydiced 5 Allarus with axes, and they actually have 9 percentage points on the Bikers for killing a Rhino if the Rhino charges. T7 is, after all, their sweet spot.

That being said, I'd still take the bikes over the termies. 90% versus 99% isn't that far off, and the bikers are significantly better in most other categories.

I like how one of the most basic of tactics (charge something tough but worthless into a unit to lock them up) has now been discovered to work at diminished effect against bikers.

I really am amazed at this counter tech /s.

 Ordana wrote:

I really am amazed at this counter tech /s.

It's totally pointless discussion. If you charge an enemy with a proper tank you basically grant them additional fighting phase AND overwatch while denying overwatch for yourself and locking said tank in combat that is stupid. If you charge them with some throwaway unit -- you can deny them a charge for 1 (one) turn IF they will not be able to destroy it with overwatch and CC attacks you allowed them to make in your turn.

But in any case, it is so obvious that only a troll (I think everyone knows who I'm speaking about) can argue about it.

How about a wave serpent? I think three jetbikes will struggle to kill even a rhino with rerolls. I think three per squad is very typical.

AstraVlad wrote:

 Ordana wrote:

I really am amazed at this counter tech /s.

It's totally pointless discussion. If you charge an enemy with a proper tank you basically grant them additional fighting phase AND overwatch while denying overwatch for yourself and locking said tank in combat that is stupid. If you charge them with some throwaway unit -- you can deny them a charge for 1 (one) turn IF they will not be able to destroy it with overwatch and CC attacks you allowed them to make in your turn.

But in any case, it is so obvious that only a troll (I think everyone knows who I'm speaking about) can argue about it.

That is the general tone of this entire thread. I'm glad we're all growing wise to it more and more at this point, and hopefully we can all just learn to ignore it and move on.

Here is the article:

https://www.glasshammergaming.co.uk/2018/05/04/meta-buster-killing-custodes-jet-bike-armies/

They do make a mistake about the banner.

So I took Deathwatch into battle as allies. My experimental force was:

Astra Militarum Battalion (Minimum, CP battery, Warlord)
Custodes Outrider (Captain, 3 Bike Squads, Vexilla)
Deathwatch Battalion (Watchmaster, Primaris Librarian, 3 Intercessor Squads one of which had Hellblasters mixed in).

My opponent's list was, without detachment specifics: Magnus, Mortarion, 2 Hellforged Leviathans and a bunch of cultists with smaller HQ's.

We used ITC missions. I have to say, the Intercessors did extremely well. In one turn of shooting, the Hurricane Bolters and Hellfire rounds from them took Mortarion down to 1 HP (I think it was 120 Hurricane Bolter rounds and 30 Hellfire shots total). I obviously used the Deathwatch tactic to let them re-roll 1's to Wound on Heavy Supports and LoW's. I finished him off with a solo charge from the Bike Captain.

The Leviathan Dreadnoughts were MVP's though and decimated large portions of my force. For anyone who doesn't know, the Chaos version is substantially better than the Imperium on. A Chaos Leviathan's Butcher Cannon (which it gets 2 of) fires 8 times at S8 AP-1 and does 2 Damage at 36". It hits on a 2+ normally. Unlike the Imperium version, Chaos doesn't have anything like the Relic rule so they can just take them.

I did end up crippling both Dreadnoughts fairly badly, but not before I lost 2 bike squads to them (third was damaged by Magnus's super smites). Game got called for time (tournament practice) after end of battle round 3. It was extremely close.

I found the Deathwatch to actually be really good allies! I would say about on par with Mechanicum or Blood Angels. Just spamming high rate of fire SIA guns gives you a fairly solid gun line even against the likes of Mortarion or other big beasties (high Tyranids, Guilliman). I was also swimming in CP with 14 base + Kurov's Aquilla + Grand Strategist. Hellblasters are sufficient anti-tank for most purposes too it seems.

I think it would be easy to go 'wrong' with Deathwatch by trying to take too many of their special toys or getting too cute with it. Just spamming bodies with decent rate of fire, keep it very basic, let's them be a nice firepower addition.

I can’t wait to experiment with the new DW. I want to do a small battalion for the PKTs.

What do you guys thinking about the Forgeworld Tanks?

Are there any good LoWs or flyers to use with Custodes?

Knights seem too expensive, but would be pretty nice. It's too bad only traitor knights can take two avenger gatlings.

Skhmt wrote:
Are there any good LoWs or flyers to use with Custodes?

Knights seem too expensive, but would be pretty nice. It's too bad only traitor knights can take two avenger gatlings.

Currently, no.

Once Knights have a codex and potentially get cheaper?

Still probably not. Elite + Elite is rough, but it could happen.

Bluthusten wrote:
What do you guys thinking about the Forgeworld Tanks?

They're, much like the Land Raider, meh.

Land Raider:
- Better Strength (not really important)
- Better Attacks (again, see above)
- Better Armour Save
- PotMS
- Smoke Launchers
- Better shooting vs big targets

Coronus Transport:
- 30pts cheaper
- +1 transport capacity
- Better movement
- More wounds
- 6++ save
- -1 to hit for CC units that charge it
- Able to leave combat and shoot
- Better shooting vs MEQ/GEQ (?)

That's pretty much the run down. As with before, I'd still go with the Land Raider, it fills the gap of transport and high strength fire rather than just transport and more of what Custodes already have. The Grav-tank isn't bad at being a pure shooting platform but I feel like there are better options that can be brought in by Admech and cheaper options that can be filled by Guard.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Skhmt wrote:
Are there any good LoWs or flyers to use with Custodes?

Knights seem too expensive, but would be pretty nice. It's too bad only traitor knights can take two avenger gatlings.

There's always the Shadowsword/Baneblade/etc. shenanigans. I'm gonna try it out at some point.

What about a fellblade?

Or stormtalons with krak missiles?

Or a fireraptor?

It’s way too many points for a pure Custodes army. Wait and see what FW does with the grav tanks.

Another list that finished in top 3 here

https://diceshot.com/category/adeptus-custodes/

Nice to see a couple of pure Custodes lists doing well there. Seeing the same AM + Custodes Imperium soup lists just spamming jetbikes gets incredibly boring, as great as bikes are. Hopefully we see some of the FW Custodes units make these lists at some point.

I like some variety as well... just takes some more thinking to do well.

Keeping in mind the rule of two (can take each datasheet only twice besides troop choices, and two detachments max), what's the best 1k points Custodes list?

Right now I like two shield captains on bike, 6 guard, 3 guard, 3 guard for a battalion, all with Misericordia. I teleport in the large squad.

Sharing list from small tourney

https://diceshot.com/2018/05/09/adeptus-custodes-b-wombles-list/

I'm beginning to see a theme.

Minimum guard battalion + 2-3 shield captains on bike + 6-9 vertus praetors and fill the rest of the points with custodian guard to make a second battalion or run a 3rd detachment of allies or put more into the guard side of the list.

It's one of the strongest options. Unfortunately, everything else is too expensive.

Skhmt wrote:
I'm beginning to see a theme.

Minimum guard battalion + 2-3 shield captains on bike + 6-9 vertus praetors and fill the rest of the points with custodian guard to make a second battalion or run a 3rd detachment of allies or put more into the guard side of the list.

Bikes are the best unit in the codex by far.
Nothing does CP battery like Guard.

The only question is what to do with the rest of the points.

Well I'm trying to build a list with Custodes + AdMech, probably a Cawl Mars detachment of some sort.

At least two lasercrawlers and a squad of robots I think, but the robots force the use of Cawl and a Cybernetica Datasmith, so maybe 3 lasercrawlers and a battalion instead might work better.

Gives us that good long range anti-tank that the list is lacking, along with snipers via Rangers with Arquebuses.

Something like:

Custodes Outrider
Shield-Captain on Bike with hurricane bolter and misericordia
Shield-Captain on Bike with hurricane bolter
3 Vertus Praetors with 3 hurricane bolters
3 Vertus Praetors with 3 hurricane bolters
3 Vertus Praetors with 3 hurricane bolters

Mechanicus Styges Battalion
Tech-priest Dominus with volkite blaster and macro stubber
Tech-priest Enginseer
8 Skitarii Rangers with 2 transauranic arquebuses
5 Skitarii Rangers with 1 transauranic arquebus
5 Skitarii Rangers with 1 transauranic arquebus
Onager Dunecrawler with neutron laser, 2 cognis heavy stubbers, broad spectrum data-tether
Onager Dunecrawler with neutron laser, 2 cognis heavy stubbers, broad spectrum data-tether
Onager Dunecrawler with neutron laser, 2 cognis heavy stubbers, broad spectrum data-tether

2000 points, 9 CP

Id take a look at the Icarus array over (some) Neutrons, a lot of scary stuff you want to shoot has Fly.

I considered AdMech robots aswell but its a big point investiment and CP hungry so combining bikes, robots and guard never really fit in a list.

That's why I took the broad spectrum data-tether on the neutron lasers though. If the target has hard-to-hit, you can spend 1CP to make a dunecrawler 2+ to hit.

While that's not ideal, the list also has a few jetbikes too.

The list also puts out 183 S4 shots a turn at 12", and 98 S4 shots at 24", about 2/3 of those shots at BS2+. So weight of fire is pretty ok too.

 Ordana wrote:
Id take a look at the Icarus array over (some) Neutrons, a lot of scary stuff you want to shoot has Fly.

I considered AdMech robots aswell but its a big point investiment and CP hungry so combining bikes, robots and guard never really fit in a list.

When I did the math waaaay back when, a Neutron Laser did comparable damage to something like a Fire Raptor as the Icarus Array did. I generally prefer the Neutrons having run a list like that maybe half a dozen times.