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Can anyone point me to some tactics on how to handle custodes? I'm playing Night Lords running terror assault in a local escalation league, with someone on team loyalist running Talons of the Emperor and planning to mix Sisters with Custodes.

They're tough and often have a larger than normal coherency and can toss wounds around. High strength weapons are very useful, rending. Plasma support squads. Vindicators, both kinds. Dreads with dual kheres assault cannons. Medusas. If it's escalation I assume they can't have too many units of custodes. What do you have at your disposal for your night lords?

Custodes' least favourite things in the world are fast melee units that out-charge-threat them (Guardian Spears are only AP2 on the charge and they need the attacks bonus to make up for their low numbers), volume of S6+ (they don't have to fail very many saves to die), and S10 (or things that inflict Instant Death on their own).

While plasma support and vindicators/medusae certainly exist and are effective tools I found during my time trying to play the Talons that the things that scared me most were morale-resistant infantry with S5+ attacks. Custodes barely have blast weapons; their only answer to blobs is morale, which means you have to get up in the blob's face and fight them. If you put daemons, or World Eaters Augmented Inductii, or something similar down and just sort of run at them they'll die. They may go down in a bloody struggle taking lots of your troops with them but they will die, they won't be able to win. Take a big unit of Night Raptors with a couple of axes, let the Custodes kill a few basic bodies, and watch them disappear.

Another question in the same vein as the OP, what's the best way to take down a custodes orion? It's decently armored, feths with interceptor, can reduce the strength of incoming hits to the front arc, and altogether scares the gak out of cuz it's a seemingly invulnerable flying assault vehicle with a contemptor galatus inside.

Don't get into melee! The spear guys can be brought down yes but most players will surely have the sentinel guards instead which are so hard to down it's stupid, even with the nerfs.

Out manouevre them if you can and shoot a lot of ap2 or rending. Take out their infantry from range and take away their ability to capture objectives. Easy in theory of course but in my experience of playing with them, melee is their safe place - don't let them enjoy it.

 Coolyo294 wrote:
Another question in the same vein as the OP, what's the best way to take down a custodes orion? It's decently armored, feths with interceptor, can reduce the strength of incoming hits to the front arc, and altogether scares the gak out of cuz it's a seemingly invulnerable flying assault vehicle with a contemptor galatus inside.

It may be seemingly invulnerable from the front but if you can find a way to put some strong fire up the tailpipe AV11 and Jink isn't that much of a defense on a 600pt model hauling 200+pts of cargo. If you can Deep Strike a flyer behind them or find a way to outflank a flyer (off the top of my head a Storm Eagle taken as a Dedicated Transport for a Recon squad can do it, and bring either four hellstrike missiles or two twin lascannons along for the ride) that'll work, a Heavy Support squad in a Drop Pod can pop up and make a mess of it just through sheer volume (Iron Warriors (cheaper flakk missiles on Iron Havocs) and Imperial Fists (Tank Hunters on volkite culverins, possibly with an Armistos) are better at it but everyone has the power to try).


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 ColdSadHungry wrote:
Don't get into melee! The spear guys can be brought down yes but most players will surely have the sentinel guards instead which are so hard to down it's stupid, even with the nerfs...

Addendum: While Custodian Guard (spear squads) only have AP2 on the charge Sentinel Guard (shield squads) can buy power gauntlets on every model, so charging them with an artificer/Terminator-armour squad isn't a solution.

It is one of the few:

AP2 on Initiative.
AP2 shooting.
High volume of low ap, like Volkites, 3+ Poison. Even Fury of the Legion bolters from a 15 man squad can be pretty scary.

Thanks for the tips y'all! The custodes player has decided to play another (traitor) faction for hte league, but I'll be starting another thread on tips for fighting the solar auxilia since they seem quite tough to deal with especially in lower point games.