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 Dr. Mills wrote:
Hello fellow custard creme players,

I'm asking more upon what would be the most effective pure custodes army at 2000pts that didn't have any dawneagle jet bikes.?

Now, I fully understand that this will not be hyper competitive or be an all winning force, but the meta in my local club is casual with a more narrative feel to missions and no one uses allies at all, so it's very beer and crisps than WIN AT ALL COSTS! At the local!

Now, while casual, were not noobs so there are some tasty armies. A pure death guard, Alderiri, Drukhari, Primaris Marines, space marines, Adeptus Mechanicus, all flavours of DarkbAngel, and Astra Militarum and finally Necrons. A wide array of opponents and as such, we're used to unique rules, stratagems, deep strikes etc. So dakka - how would a potent custodes armyook that didn't ally up it spam jetbikes?

Telemon Heavy Dread does wonders. Gives us a source of ranged firepower.
Took this against a guard list with Stormlord, Banehammer and Shadow sword all filled the max with lasguns and plasma.
Trajan, Shield Captain, 3 squads of Guard with 3 spears and 2 shields, Vexilla, Telamon with Illustaus, 4 Jetbikes.
Lost 8 models and killed all his tanks by T4. MVP was Telemon and Trajan (first time running Trajan).
I got lucky getting 1 squad of guard and trajan charging in from DS.

So yeah swap the jetbikes for allarus.

So with the bonus to Invulnerable Saves for pure Custodes Detachments, for basic Custodian Guard, what is the best loadout? I have seen anything from 1-3 Storm Shields and Sword with the rest rocking Spears. Is there any real benefit to going pure Sword and Board or pure Spear?

As of right now, I have three Jetbike Shield Captains with Hurricane Bolters(they augment my Blood Angels army), a Vexilus Praetor with a Guardian Spear, and five unbuilt Custodian Guard. My Custodes aren't going to be a main force for my army. My Captains can swap out their Hurricane Bolters for a Salvo Launcher as well.

 casvalremdeikun wrote:
So with the bonus to Invulnerable Saves for pure Custodes Detachments, for basic Custodian Guard, what is the best loadout? I have seen anything from 1-3 Storm Shields and Sword with the rest rocking Spears. Is there any real benefit to going pure Sword and Board or pure Spear?

Pure sword is what you put on a group you want to hold ONE SPACE and just never give it up even under WITHERING amounts of fire. All spear is what you do when you want some board presence and damage built in.

Most people do 1-2 Shields from what I've seen so the unit is flexible and can do a bit of both. Think of them in these terms though and they'll serve you well.

Audustum wrote:

 casvalremdeikun wrote:
So with the bonus to Invulnerable Saves for pure Custodes Detachments, for basic Custodian Guard, what is the best loadout? I have seen anything from 1-3 Storm Shields and Sword with the rest rocking Spears. Is there any real benefit to going pure Sword and Board or pure Spear?

Pure sword is what you put on a group you want to hold ONE SPACE and just never give it up even under WITHERING amounts of fire. All spear is what you do when you want some board presence and damage built in.

Most people do 1-2 Shields from what I've seen so the unit is flexible and can do a bit of both. Think of them in these terms though and they'll serve you well.

That is kind of what I thought. Sword and Board is what you do when you want your opponent to rip their hair out because the dudes refuse to die.

One Sword/Shield and 2-3 Spears is what I would do depending on how much I'm treating them as a Troop Tax.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
One Sword/Shield and 2-3 Spears is what I would do depending on how much I'm treating them as a Troop Tax.

They are 100% the Troop tax. So that is why I am more tempted to just use all Spears. Though a bunch of Shields would make for an extremely annoying Troop to squat down on an objective.

I am thinking of doing three squads of 5 rocking 4 Spears and 1 Sword and Board.

For Guardians I would go all spears if you run 3-man squads.

I second that. A shield improves your invul by 33% at the cost of both shooting and melee, and costs more too.

The shield made a lot more sense before the codex when guard only had a 5++. But with the free 4++ now, it'd be a tough buy even if it was the same price as a spear.

And against AP -1 or 0 attacks, it does literally nothing.

 Primark G wrote:
For Guardians I would go all spears if you run 3-man squads.

One of the main reasons I won't be doing that is because the squads have 5 men in the box. I suppose I could make three squads of three Spears and a Shield Captain or Vexilus Praetor (probably the Praetor since I have three bike Captains). That might be my best option, to be honest. That literally runs me the price of one more box of dudes.

I find at least one shield to be absolutely worth it, but I take a lot of bikes when I take Guardians. I don't need the Guardians to shoot and I don't hit many targets with them where S6 makes a difference over S5. In stead want them to sit, survive and score objectives.

If you play SC2, think of it like Siege Tanks (Swords + Shields) and Marauders (Spears). One is mobile and less durable, one is when you want to tell the other player "don't bother attacking here, this spot on the board is off limits".

Why would you ever use spears over shields? When does the extremely marginal increase in power ever come into play?

Meanwhile, Sentinel Blades help you shoot out of tarpits, often giving you a critical extra charge.

karandrasss wrote:
Why would you ever use spears over shields? When does the extremely marginal increase in power ever come into play?

Meanwhile, Sentinel Blades help you shoot out of tarpits, often giving you a critical extra charge.

T3 models-wound on 2s instead of 3s.
T5 models-wound on 3s instead of 4s.
T6 models-wound on 4s instead of 5s.

Better range on the guns, so can offer more from the backfield. Better damage too.

Stratagem access (wound at a +1-swords don't have jack diddly, to my knowledge).

If you're in the back line, 3 shots is better than 0 at 12.1-24". Against multiple-wound models, spears are more than twice as good at shooting than sentinel blades. Spears also randomly do significantly better against rubic marines than sentinel blades in shooting, they save at 4+ against guardian spear shooting rather than 2+ against sentinel blade shooting.

I did the math on spears vs swords including shooting in combat (but not shooting before charging) and spears are generally close when they lose to swords at T4/7/8/9, but are far better when they win against swords.

As for the storm shield... you'll generally take one less wound every 4 krak missiles from space marines (BS 3+) than a standard custodian guard. Or you'll take 3 less wounds (the total wounds of a custodian guard) every 11.57 krak missiles fired from space marines, on average.

It's good... that's why we give 3++ to bike captains... but it's not THAT good considering the extra cost and the actual detriment to shooting and combat.

And yes, over one battle round in combat, not including initial shooting before charging, a guardian spear armed custodes will do slightly more damage to T3/5+/1W models than a sentinel blade armed custodes, but slightly worse (4.26 vs 4.16 wounds per round per custodian guard, not turn) against cultists with a 6+ save. And even against cultists, although sentinel blades will do slightly more damage, they're less point efficient per kill.

 JNAProductions wrote:

karandrasss wrote:
Why would you ever use spears over shields? When does the extremely marginal increase in power ever come into play?

Meanwhile, Sentinel Blades help you shoot out of tarpits, often giving you a critical extra charge.

T3 models-wound on 2s instead of 3s.
T5 models-wound on 3s instead of 4s.
T6 models-wound on 4s instead of 5s.

Better range on the guns, so can offer more from the backfield. Better damage too.

Stratagem access (wound at a +1-swords don't have jack diddly, to my knowledge).

They do have a strat actually: sentinel storm. I don't think it's very good though. Let's you fire your pistols at the end of the enemy shooting phase for 2 CP.

The pistols do help clear tarpits though. If I'm fighting 20 fearless cultists that charged me last turn, getting 6 pistol shots plus my attacks helps a lot.

That said, I also view it as a utility issue.

When building a Custodes list, anything that can take an axe gets an axe over a spear. So now I'm full of 4++ units with axes and my bikes. Do I need the stronger damage of Spears? Not really. Axes and Lances blow them out of the water. So the Shields at least offer the unit something the rest of my list doesn't have.

I don't fault folks taking Spears now though and I generally avoid Custodes battalion for serious games. HQ's and Vexilla get axes, rest lances. Add in a Telemon and Astra Militarum CP battalion.

Blades do little extra against tarpits. a whole 0.3 wounds extra against cultists over your opponents and your own turn. (for a squad of 3).
(18 spear attacks doing 12.5 wounds vs 18 sword attacks doing 10 and 6 shots doing 2.8)

I like the 1 sword/2 spear mix, since having a tank model generally deters people, and the imagery of one Custodian with his shield protecting his two fellows firing over his shoulders is a good one.

What could possibly be game changing - the high upside of Stormshields, or extra bolter shots at 12.1-24" range? IMO Custodes shouldn't be fighting T5-6 units; they're usually too fast, and you should have better options for them.

 Ordana wrote:
Blades do little extra against tarpits. a whole 0.3 wounds extra against cultists over your opponents and your own turn. (for a squad of 3).
(18 spear attacks doing 12.5 wounds vs 18 sword attacks doing 10 and 6 shots doing 2.8)

My squads of 3 don't get 18 attacks! Haha.

I get a bit more when I do the math. 9 spearb attacks kill 6.25. 9 swords kill 5. 6 shots from pistols do 2.78 for a total of 7.78 to 6.25. About 1.53 wounds per 3 Custodians once you're in the thick of the tarpit.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

karandrasss wrote:
What could possibly be game changing - the high upside of Stormshields, or extra bolter shots at 12.1-24" range? IMO Custodes shouldn't be fighting T5-6 units; they're usually too fast, and you should have better options for them.

T5/T6 should usualllllly be handled by Bike squads, yeah.

Audustum wrote:

 Ordana wrote:
Blades do little extra against tarpits. a whole 0.3 wounds extra against cultists over your opponents and your own turn. (for a squad of 3).
(18 spear attacks doing 12.5 wounds vs 18 sword attacks doing 10 and 6 shots doing 2.8)

My squads of 3 don't get 18 attacks! Haha.

I get a bit more when I do the math. 9 spearb attacks kill 6.25. 9 swords kill 5. 6 shots from pistols do 2.78 for a total of 7.78 to 6.25. About 1.53 wounds per 3 Custodians once you're in the thick of the tarpit.

Please read. If you worry about tarpits your not just in combat on your turn. your in combat on both turns. So for the complete picture you also need to account for your opponents turn where spears will kill more then swords and you don't get to shoot pistols.

karandrasss wrote:
What could possibly be game changing - the high upside of Stormshields, or extra bolter shots at 12.1-24" range? IMO Custodes shouldn't be fighting T5-6 units; they're usually too fast, and you should have better options for them.

If you read my post at all... It's not a "high upside" of a stormshield. It's a small increase in invul save by sacrificing some shooting and melee AND paying extra points.

I think the problem is people see "stormshield", remember how good it is in other armies without a natural 4++ or on models with 5+ wounds, and see it as an auto-include. A stormshield is amazing if you have no invul save. It's good if you only have a 5++ too. But next time you use them, see how many 3s you actually roll vs ap-2 or better attacks on your stormshield guys. You might roll one or two, but you probably won't roll any before he dies.

 Ordana wrote:

Audustum wrote:

 Ordana wrote:
Blades do little extra against tarpits. a whole 0.3 wounds extra against cultists over your opponents and your own turn. (for a squad of 3).
(18 spear attacks doing 12.5 wounds vs 18 sword attacks doing 10 and 6 shots doing 2.8)

My squads of 3 don't get 18 attacks! Haha.

I get a bit more when I do the math. 9 spearb attacks kill 6.25. 9 swords kill 5. 6 shots from pistols do 2.78 for a total of 7.78 to 6.25. About 1.53 wounds per 3 Custodians once you're in the thick of the tarpit.

Please read. If you worry about tarpits your not just in combat on your turn. your in combat on both turns. So for the complete picture you also need to account for your opponents turn where spears will kill more then swords and you don't get to shoot pistols.

Ouch, someone's a bit of a grouch today. You actually can shoot on the enemy's turn too if you use the Stratagem, but let's ignore that for now.

Anyway, that's a completely skewed view. Almost all analysis on this board is done in one of two ways: 1. You look at a single turn. 2. You examine the whole fight till a unit is wiped out. You're not doing either. Let's look at 2.

Cultists charge Custodes. For this purpose, I'm just gonna ignore what damage the Cultists do. We're talking about a real tarpit so we'll look at a 40 man unit of Black Guard near Abaddon (so no morale loss).


Custodes 1 (Enemy Phase): 6.25 dead from spear Vs. 5 dead from sword.

After rounding, 34 Cultists left / 35 Cultists left.

Custodes 2 (Hero Phase): 6.25 dead from spear Vs. 7.78 dead from sword.

28 Cultists left Vs. 27 Cultists left.

Custodes 3 (Enemy Phase): 6.25 Vs. 5

22 Cultists left Vs. 22 Cultists left
(After 3 turns, weapon selection ties out, this is the break even point)

Custodes 4 (Hero Phase): 6.25 Vs. 7.78

16 Cultists Vs. 14 Cultists

Custodes 5 (Enemy Phase): 6.25 Vs. 5

10 Cultists left Vs. 9 Cultists left

Custodes 6 (Hero Phase): 6.25 Vs. 7.78

4 Cultists left Vs. 1 Cultists left

Custodes 7 (Enemy Phase): Custodes break free!

So what this tells us is that with a 40-man blob, either loadout breaks free at the same time to resume being useful. If you are fighting a 37-39 man blob (likely weakened due to some other fighting on the board), the swords will break free a turn earlier than the spears.

I'm sure someone better at math could figure out a ration for determining lower levels of Cultists where swords would break free, but that's beyond me.

If you factor in stratagems, the spear Stratagem doesn't change anything (already wounding on 2's). The sword stratagem accelerates things pretty good though. Ignoring WHY you'd blow CP this consistently to shoot these guys again (maybe they're on the relic or something), it's:

Custodes 1 (Enemy Phase): 6.25 dead from spear Vs. 7.78 dead from sword.

After rounding, 34 Cultists left / 32 Cultists left.

Custodes 2 (Hero Phase): 6.25 dead from spear Vs. 7.78 dead from sword.

28 Cultists left Vs. 24 Cultists left.

Custodes 3 (Enemy Phase): 6.25 Vs. 7.78

22 Cultists left Vs. 16 Cultists left
(After 3 turns, weapon selection ties out, this is the break even point)

Custodes 4 (Hero Phase): 6.25 Vs. 7.78

16 Cultists Vs. 8 Cultists

Custodes 5 (Enemy Phase): 6.25 Vs. 7.78

10 Cultists left Vs. 0 Cultists left (swords are free!)

Custodes 6 (Hero Phase): 6.25 Vs. 7/N/A

4 Cultists left Vs. N/A

Custodes 7 (Enemy Phase): Spears break free!

So does it matter to you to get swords out a turn before spears in some cases (either via breakpoint or stratagem use)? If so, look into this. If not, write the tarpit section as a wash and ignore it. If you factor in return attacks from the Cultists the swords might help a bit more too because the spears will probably lose a model sooner due to swords keeping the Cultist body count lower faster.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

Skhmt wrote:

karandrasss wrote:
What could possibly be game changing - the high upside of Stormshields, or extra bolter shots at 12.1-24" range? IMO Custodes shouldn't be fighting T5-6 units; they're usually too fast, and you should have better options for them.

If you read my post at all... It's not a "high upside" of a stormshield. It's a small increase in invul save by sacrificing some shooting and melee AND paying extra points.

I think the problem is people see "stormshield", remember how good it is in other armies without a natural 4++ or on models with 5+ wounds, and see it as an auto-include. A stormshield is amazing if you have no invul save. It's good if you only have a 5++ too. But next time you use them, see how many 3s you actually roll vs ap-2 or better attacks on your stormshield guys. You might roll one or two, but you probably won't roll any before he dies.

As I've said, it really depends what you want that unit to do (though you should only ever be taking Custodians because you're restricted to a pure army or just really need CP).

That said, take a Dark Reaper's Starswarm as an example (not an uncommon gun). Each model should average .67 wounds against spears and .44 against shield. It takes 4.8 Reapers to kill a single spearman (so 5 after rounding). It takes 6.8 to kill a single shieldbearer (so 7 after rounding). Dark Reapers were commonly fielded in units of 7-9 who would get Soul Bursted to shoot 14-18 times. The full volume of that shooting should wipe three spearmen, but it'd leave 1 shieldbearer still standing.

Use Shields when that kind of thing makes a difference to your plan and strategy.

Yes, if you play with the numbers, there will be specific situations in which paying 21 pts and sacrificing killing ability will benefit you. Dark Reapers happen to be one of the most efficient examples that hurt Spears over Shields, with exactly ap -2, multiple damage per shot, and a whole lot of shots.

No one ever claimed the stormshield has zero effect. That's obviously not true. But you're paying extra points for a little extra survivability against only anti-tank/anti-meq attacks. It's a unit that's usually only taken as a tax, and people are paying for some flexibility and then sacrificing it to limit them to a single battlefield use... which is standing on an objective with about 10% of your points (~180pts, so less at 2k but more at 1750).

That said, paying points for one meat shield against units like that isn't exactly a bad deal.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
That said, paying points for one meat shield against units like that isn't exactly a bad deal.

Right, most players take a mix for flexibility.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Skhmt wrote:
Yes, if you play with the numbers, there will be specific situations in which paying 21 pts and sacrificing killing ability will benefit you. Dark Reapers happen to be one of the most efficient examples that hurt Spears over Shields, with exactly ap -2, multiple damage per shot, and a whole lot of shots.

No one ever claimed the stormshield has zero effect. That's obviously not true. But you're paying extra points for a little extra survivability against only anti-tank/anti-meq attacks. It's a unit that's usually only taken as a tax, and people are paying for some flexibility and then sacrificing it to limit them to a single battlefield use... which is standing on an objective with about 10% of your points (~180pts, so less at 2k but more at 1750).

Right, my whole point is to build them for what you need

(and major U.S. tournaments are 2k)

Running some math on spear shooting vs tactical squad bolters, you get 0.41667 vs 0.11111 wounds per shot vs Primaris Marines. Spear shooting is 3.75x the effectiveness of marine bolters, but cost 4x more points per model. So while a tad less point efficient, a 3 spear squad is doing more shooting damage against Primaris Marines than an 11 bolter bs 3+ squad.

Of course against 1w models, spear shooting is far less efficient, but still about twice as good as a marine bolter.

Basically, don't discount guardian spear shooting. It's actually surprisingly useful.

Skhmt wrote:
Running some math on spear shooting vs tactical squad bolters, you get 0.41667 vs 0.11111 wounds per shot vs Primaris Marines. Spear shooting is 3.75x the effectiveness of marine bolters, but cost 4x more points per model. So while a tad less point efficient, a 3 spear squad is doing more shooting damage against Primaris Marines than an 11 bolter bs 3+ squad.

Of course against 1w models, spear shooting is far less efficient, but still about twice as good as a marine bolter.

Basically, don't discount guardian spear shooting. It's actually surprisingly useful.

Marine bolters are pretty useless too. In general, when making effective shooting you want stuff like plasma, lascannons, autocannons, starswarms, avenger gatling cannons, Telemon guns, storm cannons, e.t.c, You either need high rate of fire or good strength so you're not wounding on 5's.

In general, most aren't losing any sleep over how they'll kill Primaris Marines.

Be that as it may, we were only looking at pistol shooting cause you can do it in combat.

EDIT: I may have missed the reason you posted this. If so, I apologize.

Skhmt wrote:
Spear shooting is 3.75x the effectiveness of marine bolters, but cost 4x more points per model.

I imagine it costs a bit more because it's an Uber-bolter with a built in melee weapon that will wreck most things.

Audustum wrote:

Skhmt wrote:
Running some math on spear shooting vs tactical squad bolters, you get 0.41667 vs 0.11111 wounds per shot vs Primaris Marines. Spear shooting is 3.75x the effectiveness of marine bolters, but cost 4x more points per model. So while a tad less point efficient, a 3 spear squad is doing more shooting damage against Primaris Marines than an 11 bolter bs 3+ squad.

Of course against 1w models, spear shooting is far less efficient, but still about twice as good as a marine bolter.

Basically, don't discount guardian spear shooting. It's actually surprisingly useful.

Marine bolters are pretty useless too. In general, when making effective shooting you want stuff like plasma, lascannons, autocannons, starswarms, avenger gatling cannons, Telemon guns, storm cannons, e.t.c, You either need high rate of fire or good strength so you're not wounding on 5's.

In general, most aren't losing any sleep over how they'll kill Primaris Marines.

Be that as it may, we were only looking at pistol shooting cause you can do it in combat.

Marine bolters are pretty useless but hurricane bolters are literally 6 bolters. Against multi-wound, 3 spears are about as effective as two bs 3+ hurricane bolters.

 mrhappyface wrote:

Skhmt wrote:
Spear shooting is 3.75x the effectiveness of marine bolters, but cost 4x more points per model.

I imagine it costs a bit more because it's an Uber-bolter with a built in melee weapon that will wreck most things.

Yeah, you pay more for much better melee and a 2+/4++ at t5. Custodian Guard really aren't that bad, except that you either need an extremely expensive transport or to spend CP to get them moving faster than 6", and they don't have squad heavy weapons to let them sit in the back line.

Sword and board looks cooler. Done

 mrhappyface wrote:

Skhmt wrote:
Spear shooting is 3.75x the effectiveness of marine bolters, but cost 4x more points per model.

I imagine it costs a bit more because it's an Uber-bolter with a built in melee weapon that will wreck most things.

I mean factor in that it's ALSO a mastercrafted power weapon and you realize guardian spears are a fairly good deal