Tips Against Custodes

[Axilleas]

So my friend just finished painting his brand new Custodes army and I will be coming up against them next weekend (after black friday). I know he has 6 of the jet bikes, enough troops to make a battalion, Trajan Valoris, 2 shield captains and a couple of the banner guys.

 

Any tips on how to effectively play against them?

 

To add difficulty to the discussion, there will also be an Ork army (with Gorkanauat) and a CSM army, random 2v2 matches.

 

Go.

[PeteySödes]

The only one on one I’ve done against custodes I was just messing around and took a 100% dreadnought army. That said, they struggle a bit with anti armor so it was pretty brutal.

 

Bjorn eats shield captains for breakfast and aleviathan was also able to reliable delete a 3 man troop unit a turn with dual storm canons. Other than though I’m not sure what use my wierd experiance would be haha.

[Karhedron]

Axe/Shield Dreads are a good start. Anything with T7+ will be good as the bulk of the Custodes attacks top out at S6. This means they will eat your regular infantry for breakfast without breaking a sweat but armour will be awkward for them. Arjac is quite fun to use against them as his 3++ shield that also reduces damage by 1 will help in combat.

 

Psychic powers are tricky against Custodes but it is worth investing in some source of mortal wounds as that is often the quickest way to get them down. Small squads (sometimes individual models) can make them very vulnerable to Living Lightning.

[Kasper_Hawser]

Well Karhe, you were partially right about the Axe Shield Dreadnought. I had a game with a pure Custodes army. I used a Wulfen Dreadnought with Axe Shield for the first time. Used it to remove 2 Custodes in one round of battle, and then I tried to use him to tie TEN custodes, 5 of which had storm shields.

 

Jesus, despite wounding on 5s, the 10 custodes had an unholy amount of attacks, 3 attacks each of up to maximum 30 hits on BS2+. this resulted in about at least 5 wounds which I have to save 4++, and even if I save 2, that's D3 damage for each guardian spear/sentine blade.

 

And in shooting phase, the 5 who had swords and shields fired their pistol 2 swords. 

 

Long story cut short, the Wulfen dreadnought did survive about 2 full turns before succumbing to the banana wave. 

 

That game was especially brutal and in a way, disadvantageous to me. He had 2 dick captains, a squad of dick bikes, one ten man squad followed by 2 smaller 3 man squads to fill battalion, then one gang of Allarus terminators and that guy with a -1 to hit banner vexila. For me, I had 4 Razorbacks, 4 plasma combi plasma MSU, Bjorn, a RP, WGBL, Stormfang and 2 Long Fangs. Long story cut short, it was a dominate and destroy mission, aka get objective and kill points, my combined firepower just couldn't penetrate his invulns in time. Most of the time, only my 1 damage weapons got through the 2+/3++/4++s, whereas all my overcharged plasma and lascannons plinked off their banana armour.

 

Sigh, only Bjorn managed to kill reliably, and even then, he died in the end, trying to take down a dick captain but all were blocked by the Dawneagle's 3++.

 

I think the only hard counter for Custodes is Rune Priest spam. Otherwise it is nigh impossible to get through their armour and invulns as a marine. High strength arnour will bounce off, multiple damage weapons have low AP and not enough volume.

 

Sigh, rather depressing game actually but still much more fun than fighting a Castellan Knight.

[BrotherAetherick]

I don't think custodes have good answers to wulfen (unless their entire army is bikes). With T4, storm shields and 5+++ they are quite resilient to their hurricane bolters and other small arm fire. The ability to fight on death and flat 3 dmg makes charging them very dangerous.

[Kasper_Hawser]

I don't think custodes have good answers to wulfen (unless their entire army is bikes). With T4, storm shields and 5+++ they are quite resilient to their hurricane bolters and other small arm fire. The ability to fight on death and flat 3 dmg makes charging them very dangerous.

 

Not sure what you mean by T4, considering that ALL custodes are S5, but yeah, a tooled up Storm shield Wulfen squad can give Custodes trouble, but not for long. Bear in mind that in a battle forged custodes army, their MINIMUM invuln save is 4++. And nearly Custodes can take a Storm shield as well. And Custodes shooting isn't the problem: it is their CC which in my opinion, trumps even the Wulfen in a straight fight.

[Shas Oh Dear]

Custodes main weaknesses are expensive core troops, lack of anti tank and lack of psykers. Personally I'd be looking at something like 3x rune priest, 3x vindicators and then rhino/razorbacks for all my troops. Keep all your units spaced properly to avoid being multicharged and you can really start to strip the shiny guys down without taking much damage in return.

[Kallas]

 

I don't think custodes have good answers to wulfen (unless their entire army is bikes). With T4, storm shields and 5+++ they are quite resilient to their hurricane bolters and other small arm fire. The ability to fight on death and flat 3 dmg makes charging them very dangerous.

Not sure what you mean by T4, considering that ALL custodes are S5, but yeah, a tooled up Storm shield Wulfen squad can give Custodes trouble, but not for long. Bear in mind that in a battle forged custodes army, their MINIMUM invuln save is 4++. And nearly Custodes can take a Storm shield as well. And Custodes shooting isn't the problem: it is their CC which in my opinion, trumps even the Wulfen in a straight fight.

I believe Brother Aetherick is referring to the Wulfen's ability to resist Custodes.

 

That is, T4, 3++ and a 5+ FNP is good for warding off the Custodes anti-infantry firepower which is typically 4/0/1 or 4/-1/2.

 

Edit: I do think Wulfen would come out as top dog (pun very much intended) in a brawl vs Custodes. 2W/5+ FNP is functionally very similar to just 3W, especially when facing random multi-damage weapons. Wulfen pack the same kind of volume of attacks, but also have Death Frenzy to double down; and Wulfen as ultimately a little cheaper with better support (eg, Battle Leaders for rerolling 1s to wound).

 

Edit 2:

5 Wulfen with 4 TH/SS costs 239pts vs 4 Custodian Guard with Sentinel Blade/Storm Shield.

 

Comparatively, the Wulfen kick out 12 Thunder Hammer (10/-3/3) attacks (plus 5 Frost Claw [6/-2/1 rrW] attacks) vs the Custodes 12 Sentinel Blade (5/-3/d3) attacks. On the resilience front, the Custodes die from every failed save against the Hammers, whereas the Wulfen have a straight 33% chance to survive a Sentinel Blade, and aren't guaranteed to die to a 2 or 3 on the damage roll either; and then they fight again when they do die.

 

I think on a pure trading front, Wulfen are the stronger force, but a Custodes army will be capable of bullying the areas of the table where the Wulfen aren't.

[BrotherAetherick]

Yep, Kallas has it right. If the Custodes player is spamming jetbikes they can kite wulfen all day. But against any of the foot troops, wulfen eat them for breakfast. This lets you protect your other units from their charges and you can deny areas of the board for them.

[Karhedron]

Well Karhe, you were partially right about the Axe Shield Dreadnought. I had a game with a pure Custodes army. I used a Wulfen Dreadnought with Axe Shield for the first time. Used it to remove 2 Custodes in one round of battle, and then I tried to use him to tie TEN custodes, 5 of which had storm shields.

 

To be fair, he is fighting a unit worth worth 3 times as many points as he is. There aren't many units in the game that can handle that kind of mismatch and those that can usually only do so under narrow circumstances. 1 Wulfen Dread is good but won't last long. Now image if you had a couple of them, to back up Bjorn and you can see they would last longer and do more damage. Chuck in a character with the Armour of Russ to make the Custodes always strike last and they are starting to look more vulnerable.

[Kasper_Hawser]

 

Well Karhe, you were partially right about the Axe Shield Dreadnought. I had a game with a pure Custodes army. I used a Wulfen Dreadnought with Axe Shield for the first time. Used it to remove 2 Custodes in one round of battle, and then I tried to use him to tie TEN custodes, 5 of which had storm shields.

 

To be fair, he is fighting a unit worth worth 3 times as many points as he is. There aren't many units in the game that can handle that kind of mismatch and those that can usually only do so under narrow circumstances. 1 Wulfen Dread is good but won't last long. Now image if you had a couple of them, to back up Bjorn and you can see they would last longer and do more damage. Chuck in a character with the Armour of Russ to make the Custodes always strike last and they are starting to look more vulnerable.

 

 

Yeah noted. In the end was one sided in the Custodes favor. And he had used his Alarus terminators to eliminated my armour of russ Rune priest earlier.