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Who is more powerful? The Custodes or the Legion of the Damned?

I ask because I want to make a custom LOD army and make statlines/rules for the LOD that make them approximately equal to the Custodes just to keep points similar and performance on the battlefield similar = very hard to kill and very deadly.

Custodes are more powerful to an obvious point. Feel free to convert though. Only question you really need to ask is why some dudes are just mysteriously appearing on the battlefield.

Custodes. More recent models = more powerful. (I know this is the lore section, GW retcons the lore to make the people with the more recent models the best all the time.)

Custodes are very much the "be all and end all" of Imperial troops i.e. the best of the best of the best. while the legion are powerful (and we don't really know all that much about them) if i was going to make homebrew rules I'd probably base them on the stat lines of veteran marines or grey knights over Custodes. Possibly, seeing as they are very hard to kill, you could look at maybe modifying Death Guard rules? -1 damage seems more fitting for the legion over the outright melee superiority of the emperors chosen given their partially ethereal nature.

This is all just based on my own interpretations of how powerful the legion are on an individual basis (personally I would rank them below custodes and grey knights but above other marines)

Another option would be marine stats, but with the dark angels inner circle rule of "rolls of 1-3 to wound always fail". While we have background indicating the legions possibly demonic resiliency,

I can't offhand think of any depiction of them as being as skilled as a custodian guard. they just turn up out of nowhere (hence the grey knight suggestion, as the teleporting shenannigans they can get up to are very much in keeping with the little info about the legion of the damned that we actually have.

The Legion are essentially "ghost marines" and whilst hard to kill due to their insubstantial nature and able to appear in unexpected places, have never been stronger or 'better' than other marine veterans.

Deathwatch veterans with stormshields could also work as a way to model them?

The Legion are ghost Space Marines. You can't kill ghosts ergo they are more powerful.

Theyre ghost rider marines. I would imagine you wouldnt wanna get punch by a spirit on fire. I was thinking of costing them about the same as custodes to reflect that very powerful ethereal energy and almost impossible to kill aspect of being a ghostly creature. the lore has them painted as much more powerful/survivable than a basic marine.

Custodes kill Daemons all the time. Ghosts are just another type of daemon/warp creature. These sisters overhear with face paint and top knots would like to banish you from existence now...

warpedpig wrote:
Who is more powerful? The Custodes or the Legion of the Damned?

I ask because I want to make a custom LOD army and make statlines/rules for the LOD that make them approximately equal to the Custodes just to keep points similar and performance on the battlefield similar = very hard to kill and very deadly.

Please define powerful here.

A Custodes is a near perfect warrior. Each Custodes is, in their own way, a living embodiment of martial perfection. The Heresy novels make the argument their sheer singularity is in fact their weakness. As a wider organisation of Singular Fighters, they kind of lack the cohesion of a Military Unit, where the constituent parts work together, and end up stronger then the sum of said parts.

It’s the difference between being a Warrior, and a Soldier. For the purpose of this post, think Samurai vs squad armed with assault rifles. One on one, Samurai is probably gonna win. Single Samurai vs squad? There’s only one outcome.

Legion of the Damned are, individually, nowhere near as lethal as an individual Custodes. But, being incarnations of fallen soldiers who still act in squads? Who truly knows?

Model to model, or man to man…
Custodes. Hands down. In SOME situations the Legionnaire may be more durable, but not as potent a fighter.

I would start with GK or Deathwatch as your base for the Legion of the Damned.

I third the "deathwatch w/stormshields" idea. Actually, it's an idea I have wanted to do myself for some time! I think I even started a thread about it a while back...

Anyway, the idea is basically to make it so that everyone in your army has a stormshield and thus you don't actually model the shield at all.

For "normal" dudes I would try to use the deathwatch bolter as it mimics some of the old powers that their ghosty bolters used to have (ignore cover etc). And deathwatch squads can take as many plasma/melta as they like, just like one of the old rules for LotD!

It actually works quite well I think! :-)

Yeah but LOD and custodes have a fight I would imagine LOD would win because they’re ghosts. Custodes could shoot them and next to nothing happens. Custodes are limited by the fact they are physical in form only. LOD are ethereal beings and only semi physical so you can’t really hurt them like a normal target. The lore says the LOD can get hit with anti tank weapons and continue on like nothing. So I would say they are as powerful as custodes. Say 3 custodes = 5 LOD. Pretty close. And the LOD bolters could ignore invulns and FNP since they’re firing flaming ghost bolts

warpedpig wrote:
Yeah but LOD and custodes have a fight I would imagine LOD would win because they’re ghosts. Custodes could shoot them and next to nothing happens. Custodes are limited by the fact they are physical in form only. LOD are ethereal beings and only semi physical so you can’t really hurt them like a normal target. The lore says the LOD can get hit with anti tank weapons and continue on like nothing. So I would say they are as powerful as custodes. Say 3 custodes = 5 LOD. Pretty close. And the LOD bolters could ignore invulns and FNP since they’re firing flaming ghost bolts

No?

That's a LOT of assumptions, none of which really are born out with the facts.

It'd be reasonable to say "A Custodes would have trouble PERMANENTLY killing a Damned Legionnaire, without the help of Sisters of Silence."
But it'd be like fighting a Daemon-the Custode might lack the abilities needed to make them dead-dead, but they certainly have the skills to banish them to the Immaterial by rending their body asunder.

This actually gets me wondering, do we even HAVE recent LotD lore? If I remember right, the last time they showed up in the 40k game was several editions ago?

So, for all we know, they are going to be super-ghosty dudes if they ever come back. Absurd stats, crazy points, all that stuff...

Or, conversely, they could basically be:

"Use standard space-marine rules but their chapter tactic is a 5+++ save."

Funny thing is that either way I would still like them back :-)

leerm02 wrote:
This actually gets me wondering, do we even HAVE recent LotD lore? If I remember right, the last time they showed up in the 40k game was several editions ago?

So, for all we know, they are going to be super-ghosty dudes if they ever come back. Absurd stats, crazy points, all that stuff...

Or, conversely, they could basically be:

"Use standard space-marine rules but their chapter tactic is a 5+++ save."

Funny thing is that either way I would still like them back :-)

Funny part is that BT already do that 5++ save thing better than them with their Vows if that was supposed to be their thing.

I think the last time we heard about them lore-wise was their intervention on the Phalanx while it was in the warp, helping to banish Belakor and his daemons from taking it over. After that, they've basically been incognito and been put to the side in favour of Torchbearer fleets and Primaris. I think a big reason behind the lack of their appearance in lore in recent times has to do with their lack of plastic models. They were all metal/finecast and were quickly legend'ed and quietly removed from the store. I have a feeling when they get reintroduced that they'll be their own sub-faction with upscaled models closer to the new HH Mk6 marines.

Technically speaking with the Great Rift it should be even easier for them to manifest in various warzones.

From what everyone has said so far I would put them as below custodes in toughness and killing power but above a primaris marine.

My thoughts so far would be a 3+ Base 4+ invuln 5+ FNP. T5. 2W. And 3/3 on BS/WS. And give them ignore cover and very good AP bolters. Also some kind of ethereal bayonet that they could carve up people in close combat pretty well with.

Sounds pretty good to me!

Honestly, I really wouldn't mind them actually becoming a new subfaction/small-faction...

But then again: I love "small factions" with few models and a lot of theme.

I was going to play them as the ghosts of the drop site massacre. So the bolter troops will be iron hands. Assault troops will be raven guard. Salamanders as melta/flamer squads. Armor will be black with flames and bones. Knee pad and pauldrons will show legion markings

In 5th edition LotD had rules. They where elite SM that can deep strike. Some weapons options. They had invinerable saves.

Grey Knights also had some rules for ghosts. One units of ghost grey knights. They had terminator armour and where way better then LotD.

Custodies where not around then, At least not on 40K, perhaps in 30K. But custodies would be better then the GK Terminators.

If course this is from 4 editions ago. But the general army power would be around the same, at least in lore.

8th edition also had some Legion stats. As can be seen here:

https://www.belloflostsouls.net/2018/03/40k-deep-thought-codex-legion-of-the-damned.html

I've never heard of the Ghost Grey Knights! What a cool way to flesh out a small faction! Any idea why that went away? (Lore or real-life both)

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

Please define powerful here.

A Custodes is a near perfect warrior. Each Custodes is, in their own way, a living embodiment of martial perfection. The Heresy novels make the argument their sheer singularity is in fact their weakness. As a wider organisation of Singular Fighters, they kind of lack the cohesion of a Military Unit, where the constituent parts work together, and end up stronger then the sum of said parts.

It’s the difference between being a Warrior, and a Soldier. For the purpose of this post, think Samurai vs squad armed with assault rifles. One on one, Samurai is probably gonna win. Single Samurai vs squad? There’s only one outcome.

Legion of the Damned are, individually, nowhere near as lethal as an individual Custodes. But, being incarnations of fallen soldiers who still act in squads? Who truly knows?

One Astartes makes that observation to cope with his obvious inferiority to the Custodes. At no point is their alleged lack of cohesion actually shown to be a weakness because they routinely crush Marines in far greater numbers than they possess.

Custodes are strictly superior to Astartes. In every way.

The Legion of the Damned aren't normal Astartes though and I don't really have the knowledge on them to make a comment on this specific thread.

But the Custodes aren't just different from the Astartes. They're better.