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Hecaton wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Not at all.

Cadia was a Fortress World, and a significant one. And Abaddon wanted it destroyed, in a way only a Blackstone Fortress, once corrupted, can achieve.

By no means do all worlds have that level of defences. And the Guard simply aren’t going to have a huge amount of stuff left post bombardment. And nearly sod all left post Exterminatus, because that’s what Exterminatus does.

Uh huh. So how do Custodes deal with a Guard regiment on a Fortress World?

See my comment about Exterminatus?

The answer is…..Exterminatus. Soon as all life is extinct, thats job jobbed. With no navel assets of their own, and nothing to stop a systematic eradication of all star ports? Whether any element hid away in bunkers is rendered moot, as there’s no way for them to replenish supplies.

Can anyone name me one Imperial Guard soldier, commander, or leader that wouldn't suck start their own pistol/rifle if ordered to by a Custodian? I mean, literally, the inverse is true as well. What Imperial Soldier free of any taint would willingly choose to fire a weapon at a Custodian? Any fear of the commisariat goes out the window, when you are afraid of pissing off the God you believe in.

But yeah, any imperial force that knowingly did battle with Custodes forces would surely face the unending wrath of all their imperial cohorts, right? I mean, even if one fired, the other 9 trillion would make sure that one didn't fire twice.

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
Can anyone name me one Imperial Guard soldier, commander, or leader that wouldn't suck start their own pistol/rifle if ordered to by a Custodian? I mean, literally, the inverse is true as well. What Imperial Soldier free of any taint would willingly choose to fire a weapon at a Custodian? Any fear of the commisariat goes out the window, when you are afraid of pissing off the God you believe in.

But yeah, any imperial force that knowingly did battle with Custodes forces would surely face the unending wrath of all their imperial cohorts, right? I mean, even if one fired, the other 9 trillion would make sure that one didn't fire twice.

I dont know any of the trillions of rogue/rebels/chaos "ex" guardsmen in the setting??

Is the pro Custard side in this debate for real or is only trolling?

Yes we get it, Golden Boys are high in the IOM ranks, they have shinny ships, they are Morrines+ 1000...

...astra militarum are just the extras in the setting, hopeless base humans against a galaxy of metamen and cosmic horror.

But this is a "What if scenario".

(Y sin embargo, se mueve...).

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
Can anyone name me one Imperial Guard soldier, commander, or leader that wouldn't suck start their own pistol/rifle if ordered to by a Custodian? I mean, literally, the inverse is true as well. What Imperial Soldier free of any taint would willingly choose to fire a weapon at a Custodian? Any fear of the commisariat goes out the window, when you are afraid of pissing off the God you believe in.

But yeah, any imperial force that knowingly did battle with Custodes forces would surely face the unending wrath of all their imperial cohorts, right? I mean, even if one fired, the other 9 trillion would make sure that one didn't fire twice.

Depends on the circumstances. Like if the Custodes were being a bunch of witches to the point that the SW or BA were like "hold on now", or were butting heads with the Inquisition, the Guard could have quite a lot of support.

At this point, you are the troll. Several well educated folks in the lore realm have explained to you the facts, and you just throw your poop on everything and scream NO! at it. You even accused one person of being a imperialist. Whatever that means.

Point being, Custodes are 99% made up fluff lore. There is very little actual facts to go off of, aside from the fact that 10,000 of them, with the Emperor, killed off all the Thunder Warriors in existence. And in case you forgot, Thunder Warriors were to astartes, what Primaris are to Old marines. They were bigger, stronger, faster, and had far more powerful weapons.

And they lost. To 10,000 individually hand crafted super warriors of the Emperor. That's who the Custodes are. They are the elite of the Elite.

Sorry whatever faction you play doesn't have suitably exciting lore for you, to keep you from just being an ultra chad on other factions lore.

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
At this point, you are the troll. Several well educated folks in the lore realm have explained to you the facts, and you just throw your poop on everything and scream NO! at it. You even accused one person of being a imperialist. Whatever that means.

Point being, Custodes are 99% made up fluff lore. There is very little actual facts to go off of, aside from the fact that 10,000 of them, with the Emperor, killed off all the Thunder Warriors in existence. And in case you forgot, Thunder Warriors were to astartes, what Primaris are to Old marines. They were bigger, stronger, faster, and had far more powerful weapons.

And they lost. To 10,000 individually hand crafted super warriors of the Emperor. That's who the Custodes are. They are the elite of the Elite.

Sorry whatever faction you play doesn't have suitably exciting lore for you, to keep you from just being an ultra chad on other factions lore.

This post was ment to be answering my last post?

Im genuinely confused.

Its obvious Im a troll, as established repeteadtly by the authority of some lore masters, but I would like confirmation on this particular point.

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
At this point, you are the troll. Several well educated folks in the lore realm have explained to you the facts, and you just throw your poop on everything and scream NO! at it. You even accused one person of being a imperialist. Whatever that means.

Point being, Custodes are 99% made up fluff lore. There is very little actual facts to go off of, aside from the fact that 10,000 of them, with the Emperor, killed off all the Thunder Warriors in existence. And in case you forgot, Thunder Warriors were to astartes, what Primaris are to Old marines. They were bigger, stronger, faster, and had far more powerful weapons.

And they lost. To 10,000 individually hand crafted super warriors of the Emperor. That's who the Custodes are. They are the elite of the Elite.

Sorry whatever faction you play doesn't have suitably exciting lore for you, to keep you from just being an ultra chad on other factions lore.

They also were betrayed suddenly and likely had their infrastructure support withdrawn, or sabotaged. It's not really a fair comparison. The Custodes trying to defeat Imperial Guard in a head-on conflict are likely going to do worse than that. The Imperial Guard has far more Leman Russ tanks than there are Custodes, by a few orders of magnitude.

The imperal guard has more baneblade then there are custodes. Head to head custards have no chance.


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Also somthing to remember the imperium can not stand withought the guard. While custodes hung out with big E and did nothi g for a long ass time.

How did we even get to that point in the discussion?

What's even the precise question here? Can the Custodes defeat THE imperial guard? As in the entire guard with all it's billions of soldiers? Yeah, no they can't, but it's a bit of a silly question tbh.

Can the Custodes (all 10000 of them, with all their toys?) take over a world that is being occupied by the imperial guard like Cadia? In all likelihood yes, but not without taking casualties, probably even quite heavy casualties.

People seem to forget that Custodes, while representing the pinnacle of gene craft the imperium is capable of, are still mortal and if a demolisher cannon hits a bananaboy point blank in the face, that custodian is still mush. Being the best individual warriors the imperium has (notice didn't say soldiers), doesn't make them invincible.

The imperium has been said to have a million, million world's. 1,000 million is a billion. There are know to be 20,000 custodes. And a million, million worlds. Let's say only 1% of of a million (which is 10,000) million worlds gives a guard regiment. That's 10 billion guard regements let's a regement is 100 men as I don't beleve 40k has a set size though I know they are generally dipicted as much larger. That 1,000 million men otherwise known as a trillion men.
That's before tanks or before giving them rapid fire wepons of any kind.
Let's say the average guard member is 150 pounds. That's 150 trillion pounds. They could lay on the custards and kill them all.

I know 40k messes with scale but there is no sinerio where one millitary out numbers another like that and looses.
Also do you think the imperium is only given one regement from 1% of it worlds?

Boosykes wrote:

Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also somthing to remember the imperium can not stand withought the guard. While custodes hung out with big E and did nothi g for a long ass time.

Fully agree that the imperium could not stand without the guard.

I hate that meme though that custodes just sat beside the Emperor until Guilliman told them to move their asses. Directly after the heresy there were almost no Custodes left, since they suffered staggering losses in the war of the webway, we're talking above 90% here. Considering how freaking long it takes to create a single Custodes, they had to spend a considerable amount of time to replenish their numbers.

They also moved behind the curtains and eliminated threats to Terra or the Sol system, just mostly in secret. Trajann Valoris, the current captain General, is in all likelihood at least thousand years old (no exact number in the codex lore) and is described as one of the most active captain generals ever.

Does that mean that they are perfect and do nothing wrong? No, they are imo quite the hypocrites because they lament the state of the current imperium while at the same time having done nothing to shape the imperium after the heresy or try to prevent it's subsequent fall into superstitious dogmatism. And they very much could have done something even with their drastically depleted numbers after the heresy, since even one Custodes carries tremendous weight when councelling a planetary governor.

The problem custodes have is that their lore wasn't fleshed out when the pillars of 40k lore had been written. This simply creates some discrepancies.

I agree and your right they where not entirely stagnant all I'm saying is if custodes where all killed then well the Emperor would be guarded by the imperial fists or somthing but if all the guard where killed then there would be no imperium.

Classically, the Imperium is said to have a million worlds, not a million millions. Do you have a source for the latter? The Imperium is a scattered archipelago connected by stable warp routes within the vast ocean of the galaxy, and there are entire xenos empires hidden between its worlds.

That said, in some weird proposterous vacuum scenario where the entire Imperial Guard alone fights the entire Custodes alone, the Custodes win due to their fleet- they can besiege them from space without ever actually coming into range of a battle cannon. Obviously, if they entered the field they would be overwhelmed by trillions of Guardsmen, but why would they do that? If the Imperial Guard and Imperial Navy were fighting together, then yes, the Custodes would be stuffed in every scenario. However, the Navy and Guard are deliberately separated exactly for that reason- to minimise the risk of effective rebellion.

That doesn't make the Guard useless, it means it has been crafted with failsafes against rebellion, that weaken it as a fighting force but improve the central power base.

It also doesn't negate the hierarchy that MDG mentioned, because each step has sufficient power to overwhelm the expected level of betrayal of the step below- it is rare for more than a single Guard regiment or Navy ship to turn traitor at once, it is rare for more than a single Chapter to turn traitor. Marines have the power to crush a single regiment or ship, and Custodes have the power to crush a single rogue Chapter (although generally most heretical forces are dealt with by equivalent forces, like the Volscani Cataphracts being destroyed by the Cadian 7th and 8th at the Battle of Tyrok Fields, or the Astral Claws being defeated by a coalition of loyalist Chapters in the Badab War).

I agree that the Imperium would be hurt more by losing the Guard than the Custodes- the Planetary Defense Forces, the Guard, and the Navy are the backbone of the Imperial armed forces, doing the bulk of the fighting. Other forces are supplementary tools adding capability to that.

Boosykes wrote:
The imperium has been said to have a million, million world's. 1,000 million is a billion. There are know to be 20,000 custodes. And a million, million worlds. Let's say only 1% of of a million (which is 10,000) million worlds gives a guard regiment. That's 10 billion guard regements let's a regement is 100 men as I don't beleve 40k has a set size though I know they are generally dipicted as much larger. That 1,000 million men otherwise known as a trillion men.
That's before tanks or before giving them rapid fire wepons of any kind.
Let's say the average guard member is 150 pounds. That's 150 trillion pounds. They could lay on the custards and kill them all.

I know 40k messes with scale but there is no sinerio where one millitary out numbers another like that and looses.
Also do you think the imperium is only given one regement from 1% of it worlds?

This post is brilliant.

Unfortunetly... BANANA BOYZ have ships, and are DADDY Best Pals... So Custodes alwayz Win!!!!

Illustrating that within The Imperium Hierarchy of Deadliness exists doesn’t detract that the Imperial Guard remain the absolute backbone.

The untold billions of men and women under arms are the most likely to be fighting on any given front. Indeed, many fronts won’t see any other Imperial Forces, including the PDF as those only exist on Imperial Worlds.

And for the most part? That’s more than enough for many theatres. It has to be, otherwise The Imperium would’ve collapsed entirely Millenia ago.

No one here has disputed that. But it doesn’t change the simple fact that as well as ease of logistics, Regiments are easy prey for Space Marine Chapters by design.

Now, are there instance of PDF, Guard and Navy turning traitor in concert? Yes, absolutely. One example is Genestealer Cult infiltration and infestation. But even then? Wholesale rebellion in such cases remain relatively rare. Which in turn means the crews and combatants duking it out amongst themselves first.

Boosykes wrote:
The imperal guard has more baneblade then there are custodes. Head to head custards have no chance.


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Also somthing to remember the imperium can not stand withought the guard. While custodes hung out with big E and did nothi g for a long ass time.

The Imperial Guard could outfit every single guardsman into a Baneblade and they would still be effortlessly put down by the Custodes I'm afraid. Because all the Baneblades in the galaxy don't amount to much when you don't have a single starship at your disposal and all those Baneblades will be helpless against being vaporized by continent-busting missile salvos. And that's if they bring the light weapons, since the Custodes could easily bring weaponry capable of destroying the planet outright.

Sorry Guard fans, but no matter how many of you there are you're pretty much completely helpless without the Imperial Navy to support you and as such the Custodes or even a single Space Marine chapter could take you out. Sad.

40k wiki: In the game universe, the Imperial Guard is a colossal military organisation consisting of roughly 500 trillion men and women supported by at least a few hundred billion Armoured vehicles each from thousands of different systems within the Imperium of Man

40k wiki: How many custodians are there 40k?
As a result of the inherent difficulty of their creation, the number of active Legio Custodes warriors has never, it is believed, exceeded 10,000.

So look I can't find the million million worlds qote I seem to remember. maybe becuse its impossible to have the kind of manpower and material as is reported in the imperium with just 1 million worlds.i just thought that made sense l. If it's based on milky way galaxy then there are at least 100 billion planets. If the imperium is only a million worlds then it makes uup . 01% wich is way to small so like I said 40k dosent handle numbers well.

Anyways from the wiki it looks like I was extramly conservative on number of guardsmen. And I doubled the custodian guards numbers. So ya. In a straight fight the custodians have no chance at all. Less than I originally thought.

But sure since you all like dus ex machina yes the imperial navy is the strongest faction.

But always remember you banana boys would get stoped if you got out of line. And likely it would be the guard who did the majority of the stomping.

Is there some sort of black hole in this thread that sucks the reading comprehension out of select people?

Nobody is disputing that, in a straight-up fight pitching every single Custode against the entirety of the Imperial Guard, the Custodes would lose. But that's not a remotely plausible scenario. As multiple people have pointed out, the entire point of the organisation of the Imperium's military units is to prevent individual elements becoming too powerful. That was the lesson of the Horus Heresy. So "the Imperial Guard" is a nonsensical way of viewing what the likely enemy would be in a fight between the Custodes and elements of the Imperial Guard. They'd be fighting a relatively small number of them (yes, they'd still be vastly outnumbered) but Space Marines and Custodes both have the advantage of coordinated fleet-based operation and would therefore have immediate strategic superiority over any rogue Imperial Guard regiment. I also wouldn't be surprised if vital intelligence regarding command structures and security details are accessible by the elements higher up the chain to facilitate dealing with potential rogue units.

Boosykes wrote:
So look I can't find the million million worlds qote I seem to remember. maybe becuse its impossible to have the kind of manpower and material as is reported in the imperium with just 1 million worlds.i just thought that made sense l. If it's based on milky way galaxy then there are at least 100 billion planets. If the imperium is only a million worlds then it makes uup . 01% wich is way to small so like I said 40k dosent handle numbers well.

Considering Hive Worlds alone can reach into the high billions for population and there are often entire planets (and in some cases systems) dedicated to exclusively producing soldiers, not really. The general consensus is that the Imperium has at least one million worlds under its control but due to the nature of such a vast empire and the inadequacy of the Imperial bureaucracy, the real number is unknown and as such we could very well believe the Imperium could hold one billion worlds. That being said, what does and does not constitute a "world" is up in the air. Habitable planets sure but what about stations, moons, or asteroids? A solar system could have 100 colonised asteroids and stations but no actual planets.

But sure since you all like dus ex machina yes the imperial navy is the strongest faction.

It's not a Deus Ex Machina to say the Custodes as an organisation would beat the Imperial Guard purely because the Custodes have the ability to independently travel through space.
Also, the Imperial Navy isn't the strongest military arm within the Imperium because it has built-in redundancies to prevent it from being a huge deal if chunks of it turn rebel. Just like the Guard doesn't have ships, the Navy doesn't have the manpower to garrison bases and planets exclusively. They have security teams and breachers for potential ship-to-ship combat but they could not reliably hold a planet without outside assistance from local PDF or the Guard, which is entirely the point.

But always remember you banana boys would get stoped if you got out of line. And likely it would be the guard who did the majority of the stomping.

The Custodes are basically demi-Gods to Imperials. Whatever they say goes because they are the voice of the Emperor. If the Custodes marched out in force and declared all Space Marine Chapters to be heretics in need of purging, the Imperium would do it.

Slipspace wrote:
Is there some sort of black hole in this thread that sucks the reading comprehension out of select people?

Nobody is disputing that, in a straight-up fight pitching every single Custode against the entirety of the Imperial Guard, the Custodes would lose. But that's not a remotely plausible scenario. As multiple people have pointed out, the entire point of the organisation of the Imperium's military units is to prevent individual elements becoming too powerful. That was the lesson of the Horus Heresy. So "the Imperial Guard" is a nonsensical way of viewing what the likely enemy would be in a fight between the Custodes and elements of the Imperial Guard. They'd be fighting a relatively small number of them (yes, they'd still be vastly outnumbered) but Space Marines and Custodes both have the advantage of coordinated fleet-based operation and would therefore have immediate strategic superiority over any rogue Imperial Guard regiment. I also wouldn't be surprised if vital intelligence regarding command structures and security details are accessible by the elements higher up the chain to facilitate dealing with potential rogue units.

Ok, then it's kind of a pointless discussion.

If the Lord Commander Militant and the head of the Custodes decided they had to throw down, with the weight of their organizational and political power behind them, I would still have my money on the LCM and not the head of the Custodes.

Boosykes wrote:
40k wiki: In the game universe, the Imperial Guard is a colossal military organisation consisting of roughly 500 trillion men and women supported by at least a few hundred billion Armoured vehicles each from thousands of different systems within the Imperium of Man

40k wiki: How many custodians are there 40k?
As a result of the inherent difficulty of their creation, the number of active Legio Custodes warriors has never, it is believed, exceeded 10,000.

So look I can't find the million million worlds qote I seem to remember. maybe becuse its impossible to have the kind of manpower and material as is reported in the imperium with just 1 million worlds.i just thought that made sense l. If it's based on milky way galaxy then there are at least 100 billion planets. If the imperium is only a million worlds then it makes uup . 01% wich is way to small so like I said 40k dosent handle numbers well.

Anyways from the wiki it looks like I was extramly conservative on number of guardsmen. And I doubled the custodian guards numbers. So ya. In a straight fight the custodians have no chance at all. Less than I originally thought.

But sure since you all like dus ex machina yes the imperial navy is the strongest faction.

But always remember you banana boys would get stoped if you got out of line. And likely it would be the guard who did the majority of the stomping.

A whole lot of words to sheepishly admit that the Custodes could easily defeat the entire Imperial Guard militarily because the latter are just a bunch of idiots sitting around in tanks waiting to be bombarded. I accept your concession.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Hecaton wrote:

Ok, then it's kind of a pointless discussion.

If the Lord Commander Militant and the head of the Custodes decided they had to throw down, with the weight of their organizational and political power behind them, I would still have my money on the LCM and not the head of the Custodes.

In reality what would happen is the Lord Commander Militant would be assassinated and the plebeian rabble of the Guard would fall back into line (if not mutiny because to declare war with the Custodes is tantamount to declaring war on the Emperor himself, it would fracture the Imperial Guard between loyalists and traitors).

They wouldn't even need to crush them with the fleet that they actually have the the Guard don't. Though they could of course, the Guard as said being a bunch of guys sitting around in tanks waiting to be bombarded.

 Gert wrote:
The general consensus is that the Imperium has at least one million worlds under its control but due to the nature of such a vast empire and the inadequacy of the Imperial bureaucracy, the real number is unknown and as such we could very well believe the Imperium could hold one billion worlds.

Turning the given estimation of "a million worlds" into a three-orders-of-magnatude-more "billion" sure seems like a stretch.

The whole "Custards can take the ENTIRE guard" argument is one of the most asinine things I've ever seen.

Custards will steam-roll just about any standard formation, grouping, or planet of guard they're likely to see. This is 100% accurate. In any situation which is boils down to "Custards are putting down a rogue element of the guard" they win without issue.

But if we're talking some silliness of "the guard" as in the entire imperial guard.... Absolutely not.

In any sort of land-battle the custodes auto-lose. There are so many guardsmen that you could make a literal planet out of unequipped guardsmen (as in the planet is guardsmen, not just covered in them), plant all the custodes on it, and they'd eventually be crushed by the weight of guard corpses or drown in their blood. The custards could have a super-strong defensive position in which the entire imperial guard lays siege via running at them naked, and eventually the guardsmen will kill them with their bare hands; because it's 10,000 vs literally BILLIONS of dudes. You could plant the custards on a planet (not made of guardsmen) which is COVERED in guard and their kit, and the custards would instantly evaporate due to something like 500,000 basilisks, medusa, and death strikes opening fire on their starting position.

The fleet doesn't change this. Stepping away from the fact that the custards don't crew their own fleet, they have serfs / servators / ect to do that (putting it in very much a similar capacity to the Imperial Navy, meaning that the Guard should technically encompass the Navy, putting us in much the same situation as before)... There are so many guardsmen that they could be dumped into space, in kit or nude, and the custodes fleet would crash and burn due to the sheer mass of conglomerate corpses, or from the incalculable number of corpses clogging their engines causing the ships to be destroyed, or at least drift uselessly through space until everyone starves to death.

But stepping away from that.

Even if we take on the scenario of "Custards get their fleet and IG are jerking it planet side."... They will eventually run out of virus bombs, tac nukes, and various other elements required to glass planets. They will, eventually, run out of void-based weapons of sufficient capacity to cleanse planets. Thereby forcing them to eventually do it with boots on the grounds. In which case we simply run into the original scenarios again; where billions of screaming guardsmen gradually whittle away the pathetically small 10k custodes, even if it's across multiple theatres on multiple planets, and win.

And that's if we pretend that none of the planets in the entire imperium have any sort of planet-to-void defenses. In which case again, there are simply so many guardsmen crewing so many installations that the custards will, eventually, fall to attrition from taking small losses here and there as they roflstomp the guard.

And even that is if we ignore that 40k is a setting where it's established that ground-warefare is an essential part of taking / pacifying planets.

There is, again, a strength within numbers. Custodes are super strong and insanely powerful, but quantity does possess a quality all its own. And while there are many ways to mitigate that difference, nothing can be done when the orders of magnitude are so obscenely out of whack as 10k, vs hundreds of billions.

Exactly according to the wiki ther 450 trillion members of the guard. Same wiki says custodes have never broken 10k members.

Nuff said.

Any who this is looking off topic so I'm out after this.

Custodes eat your heart out.


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Boosykes wrote:
Exactly according to the wiki ther 450 trillion members of the guard. Same wiki says custodes have never broken 10k members.

Nuff said.

Any who this is looking off topic so I'm out after this.

Custodes eat your heart out.

 morganfreeman wrote:
The whole "Custards can take the ENTIRE guard" argument is one of the most asinine things I've ever seen.

Custards will steam-roll just about any standard formation, grouping, or planet of guard they're likely to see. This is 100% accurate. In any situation which is boils down to "Custards are putting down a rogue element of the guard" they win without issue.

But if we're talking some silliness of "the guard" as in the entire imperial guard.... Absolutely not.

In any sort of land-battle the custodes auto-lose. There are so many guardsmen that you could make a literal planet out of unequipped guardsmen (as in the planet is guardsmen, not just covered in them), plant all the custodes on it, and they'd eventually be crushed by the weight of guard corpses or drown in their blood. The custards could have a super-strong defensive position in which the entire imperial guard lays siege via running at them naked, and eventually the guardsmen will kill them with their bare hands; because it's 10,000 vs literally BILLIONS of dudes. You could plant the custards on a planet (not made of guardsmen) which is COVERED in guard and their kit, and the custards would instantly evaporate due to something like 500,000 basilisks, medusa, and death strikes opening fire on their starting position.

The fleet doesn't change this. Stepping away from the fact that the custards don't crew their own fleet, they have serfs / servators / ect to do that (putting it in very much a similar capacity to the Imperial Navy, meaning that the Guard should technically encompass the Navy, putting us in much the same situation as before)... There are so many guardsmen that they could be dumped into space, in kit or nude, and the custodes fleet would crash and burn due to the sheer mass of conglomerate corpses, or from the incalculable number of corpses clogging their engines causing the ships to be destroyed, or at least drift uselessly through space until everyone starves to death.

But stepping away from that.

Even if we take on the scenario of "Custards get their fleet and IG are jerking it planet side."... They will eventually run out of virus bombs, tac nukes, and various other elements required to glass planets. They will, eventually, run out of void-based weapons of sufficient capacity to cleanse planets. Thereby forcing them to eventually do it with boots on the grounds. In which case we simply run into the original scenarios again; where billions of screaming guardsmen gradually whittle away the pathetically small 10k custodes, even if it's across multiple theatres on multiple planets, and win.

And that's if we pretend that none of the planets in the entire imperium have any sort of planet-to-void defenses. In which case again, there are simply so many guardsmen crewing so many installations that the custards will, eventually, fall to attrition from taking small losses here and there as they roflstomp the guard.

And even that is if we ignore that 40k is a setting where it's established that ground-warefare is an essential part of taking / pacifying planets.

There is, again, a strength within numbers. Custodes are super strong and insanely powerful, but quantity does possess a quality all its own. And while there are many ways to mitigate that difference, nothing can be done when the orders of magnitude are so obscenely out of whack as 10k, vs hundreds of billions.

Obviously the Custodes lose on the ground against the entire Guard, they would just never do that. This is some weird hypothetical where Guard is vs Custodes without outside factors. The Navy isn't a factor because they have an entirely separate command structure to the Guard, whereas the Custodes fleet is fully under their control and part of their organisation. Holding ground is also not really a consideration in such a stupid scenario, but if it was, the Guard win if the Custodes try.

Also, the idea you can throw corpses at an Imperial fleet to clog it up is laughable. There are a lot of Guardsmen, trillions probably, but space is enormous and that number would struggle to make a cloud between Earth and the moon, let alone something dense enough to affect kilometres-long ships around an entire planet. Orbital defenses do exist, but the planets with the strongest defenses are typically not self-sufficient in resources like food, so besieging them by blockading supply routes is an option.

Again, this scenario is very abstract- obviously there are tons of outside factors in the actual setting that would affect this, but the base scenario is outlandish to begin with.

The Guard are still more important than the Custodes to the integrity of the Imperium as a whole, they just rely on the Navy to do it (the Navy, in turn, relying on them).


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Boosykes wrote:
Exactly according to the wiki ther 450 trillion members of the guard. Same wiki says custodes have never broken 10k members.

Nuff said.

Any who this is looking off topic so I'm out after this.

Custodes eat your heart out.

Is this the Warhammer 40k wikia? I am not aware of any actual figures for the overall size of the Guard, although trillions is likely the correct ballpark. GW tends to be very imprecise with numbers to allow endless space for your own homebrew forces to slot in.

Well, if you review the thread entirely?

You’ll find nobody ever made such a claim, other than the self declared troll, desperate to conflate and confuse issues.

His bizarre ranting, done for reasons entirely known to himself, was in reaction to me illustrating the deliberate internal hierarchy of Imperial forces, where every step up the tier is intentionally able of putting down the tier below it, should it prove a rogue element in need of putting down.

And that includes how they’re organised as military forces. PDF are, without Inquisitorial recruitment, stuck on their planets, having no fleet of any description.

Imperial Guard enjoy better training and materiel than the PDF. Whilst some regiments may have dedicated Mass Conveyer transports to shift them from planet to planet, the Guard itself has no Naval forces as such, certainly none intended for combat.

The Navy is the opposite. Bondsman and Ratings for defence against boarding actions, but nothing you can really rely on planetside. Certainly no tanks or artillery.

Arbites are orders of magnitude better armed and equipped than the PDF, their role should the worst happen being to survive should they not be able to put down a rebellion or uprising, holding out in their Fortress Precincts. Buildings the PDF most deliberately lack the specialised equipment, training and knowledge to crack, outside of external support. So when other wings of the imperium arrive, there’s still a fixed Imperial Presence planetside.

SoB are of course very well equipped, and are something of a wildcard. Any planet with an Abbey etc has some pretty reliably loyal troops to again slap down renegade PDF and even renegade Guard.

Astartes are next up. No matter who or what went rogue? The Astartes can face it and defeat it. They’re particularly adept, tactics wise, at wrecking enemy command structure. Any sufficiently hierarchal organisation (such as….the Imperial Guard) are vulnerable to exactly that sort of headshot

Ad Mech, like SoB are another wildcad. Typically they’ve no particularly vested interest in non-Forgeworld planets, or Mechanicus aligned Knight Worlds. But their forces are such they can walk over PDF and IG assets. And like everyone from SoB level and up, have their own fleet assets. But, without the promise of some technological relic, unlikely to get involved in putting down rebellion on a random Imperial World.

Custodes are of course the pinnacle of this Pyramid. I’m not even sure the High Lords of Terra can order them to do anything. Ask, sure. But not outright order, because that’s not their duty. If memory serves, and I’m not confusing things, Guilliman only got them out and about because The Emperor told them to. And they’re the ones you might want should any renegade Astartes surface. They’re also pretty deft at taking out rogue elements of the IG, and even, arguably, SoB should the need arise.

Nobody, except Trollboy, claimed anything to the contrary in terms of scale of conflict.

Who and what the High Lords command is very much an individual issue when it comes to certain organisations. Those with independence from the wider Imperial command structure (Custodes, Astartes and certain Knight Houses) can be commanded, requested or bartered with for aid in a given theatre.
Excluding the role of the Captain-General as a High Lord, the Custodes (prior to the opening of the Rift) weren't ever actually asked for anything. They did what they wanted, when they wanted. Even during the War of the Beast the High Lords were very hesitant to even request an audience, let alone aid in the conflict and it was only after the Beheading that the Lord Commander, Dragan Vangorich, asked the Captain-General to take a seat on the council.
For the Astartes, it depends on who is asking and which Chapter is being asked. A recently founded Chapter looking to attain glory would likely readily accept a command from the High Lords, whereas a Chapter of note such as the Howling Griffons or Iron Snakes might respond to a request for aid. Generally speaking, the High Lords don't really need to command the Astartes to do things anyway. The point of the Astartes is to go about smashing the enemies of mankind and they're rarely found to just stick to a single system or campaign. Most importantly, the High Lords have tested the independence of the Astartes before and it has bitten them many times when they've pushed too hard to get the Astartes more centralised.
For Knight Houses its all about honour, pacts and debts. A Knight House that swore an oath to Guilliman in the Heresy to defend the far reaches of Ultima Segmentum isn't going to break their oath to Crusade in Segmentum Obscurus, not unless they also had a debt to pay to the individual who contacted them and even then it could be judged that a single Knight is all that requires the debt to be paid.

 Haighus wrote:

Obviously the Custodes lose on the ground against the entire Guard, they would just never do that. This is some weird hypothetical where Guard is vs Custodes without outside factors. The Navy isn't a factor because they have an entirely separate command structure to the Guard, whereas the Custodes fleet is fully under their control and part of their organisation. Holding ground is also not really a consideration in such a stupid scenario, but if it was, the Guard win if the Custodes try.

Also, the idea you can throw corpses at an Imperial fleet to clog it up is laughable. There are a lot of Guardsmen, trillions probably, but space is enormous and that number would struggle to make a cloud between Earth and the moon, let alone something dense enough to affect kilometres-long ships around an entire planet. Orbital defenses do exist, but the planets with the strongest defenses are typically not self-sufficient in resources like food, so besieging them by blockading supply routes is an option.

Again, this scenario is very abstract- obviously there are tons of outside factors in the actual setting that would affect this, but the base scenario is outlandish to begin with.

The Guard are still more important than the Custodes to the integrity of the Imperium as a whole, they just rely on the Navy to do it (the Navy, in turn, relying on them).

The entire custards vs the entire guard (a frankly silly comparison, yet one people are making here) always results in the custards being genocided. There is no combat-scenario (of any type) where this goes well for the banana-boys. With singular exception of weird scenarios where the custards are still fully supported by "outside factors" but the entire imperial guard is, for whatever bizarre reason, not.

This basically boils down to the ship ammunition argument.

In the scenario of the custards being entirely on their own they eventually run out of exterminatus-class weaponry and have to turn their campaign into boots-on-the-ground. If they lose so much as 1 custard per planet (a pretty generous estimate for them tbh, considering each planet would easily have a million + guard), they're fully wiped out before they even make a dent in the IG numbers.

In the scenario of the custards being replenished and resupplied (which means that it's not guard vs custards; it's guard vs custards + mechanicus + navy) the custards still lose. Even the most sedentary agri planet has void defenses in the form of a handful of defense platforms and non-navy planet-bound ships in the same way that they all have PDF; they need to be able to defend themselves against minor threats / have a hope of holding out against larger ones. So the guard are again massacred in individual engagements, but the custards eventually lose to the pure attrition of minor losses before they've have a noticeable impact on the guard's numbers.

Custards don't even win if they sit back for a few thousand years to let old age and famine do the work for them. Guardsmen are unisex and drawn from all walks of life across a million worlds. While some planets would be entirely incapable of sustaining life without outside intervention there are hundreds of thousands which are not. Meaning that even a bunch of naked guardsmen dropped across bunches of planets will eventually colonize said planets, reach space-worthy levels of tech, and take the fight to custodes where they eventually win from attrition. There's an argument to be made for the IG getting wiped out over time via psykers being born and all that gak, but in that case it's not guard vs custards it's guard vs custards + demons.

Custards can win in situations like taking every guardsmen, packing them shoulder to shoulder on as few planets as possible, and then giving the custards a hack for unlimited exterminatus ammo. Or where the entire guard is stripped of any form of fighting capability other than bare fists, but the custards are allowed to take as long as they want and able to fully replenish any losses whilst the guardsmen are rooted in place and incapable of moving or acting until the custards enter orbit.

While the entire concept is silly and weird to begin with, the custards only beat the entirety of the guard in truly farcical situations.

Again…..a single troll is trying to argue All The Guard. No one else is. At all.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

Arbites are orders of magnitude better armed and equipped than the PDF, their role should the worst happen being to survive should they not be able to put down a rebellion or uprising, holding out in their Fortress Precincts. Buildings the PDF most deliberately lack the specialised equipment, training and knowledge to crack, outside of external support. So when other wings of the imperium arrive, there’s still a fixed Imperial Presence planetside.

Do you have a source for this? To my knowledge the PDF varies greatly depending on the world, but they're still often rolling out on IG-style equipment (possibly not the best of it, but still LOTS of tanks, artillery, etc.), not to mention they'd be the ones in charge of any planetary and orbital defenses. Although I can imagine the Arbites being well armed and armored, claiming that they're an "order of magnitude" more advanced seems incorrect, especially when it's noted that the PDF can vary so greatly from world to world. The lexicanum article on the PDF even mentions Stormtroopers and Carapace Armor as being available among the more advanced PDF forces. I'd wager that there are many worlds where the Arbites are far outgunned and outnumbered by the PDF, and that (should it choose), the PDF would roll over them.

In fact it probably happens a lot in cases where a PDF turns heretic/traitor, and the Arbites get stuck making last-stands in their citadels, under siege of PDF artillery and whatnot.


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 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

Ad Mech, like SoB are another wildcad. Typically they’ve no particularly vested interest in non-Forgeworld planets, or Mechanicus aligned Knight Worlds. But their forces are such they can walk over PDF and IG assets. And like everyone from SoB level and up, have their own fleet assets. But, without the promise of some technological relic, unlikely to get involved in putting down rebellion on a random Imperial World.

Custodes are of course the pinnacle of this Pyramid. . .

I would also imagine that the Custodes tread a little carefully around the Adeptus Mechanicus. They're Imperial in loyalty, sure, but they're sorta adjacent to it with their own religion, hierarchies, motivations etc. And they're very, very big, very, very powerful, and very, very critical to the Imperium in ways that many of the other "branches" are not. I believe that they're also completely independent of the other branches in terms of their military logistics as well. They don't need the Navy to get around, they don't need the Guard to fight ground battles, etc.