'Punching Down' the Custodes>Marines>Mortals questions.

[TheTrans]

Thought I'd pop this in here and get some thoughts from you learned individuals. I'm down in Victoria, Australia and I've recently seen a lot of poo-pooing against custodes due to them being able to give marines a wallop, so I kicked off a bit of a discussion on some local FB groups, would love your guys thoughts also!

So a quick and possibly divisive (shocking I know) question or at least topic for the community.

Was talking to a mate yesterday about possible next army projects I'm looking at doing and I was saying that poor old Custodes seem to cop a lot of flack and therefore sometimes get limited at events due to their ability to be able to actively punch down at marines, which got me thinking. 
All the issues that Marines seem to have facing Custodes, is the exact same thing that Solar Aux and Militia seem to be up against when fighting marines (Those being, broadly, the 'lesser' army will have issues killing the opposing force as it rushes across the board and once said opposing force engages the 'lesser' force in combat, its pretty close to game over, outside of weirdly skewed lists or terrible dice). 

I feel the general consensus for Solar Aux and Militia having a hard time against Marines is 'well, that's how the fluff goes, and marines are pretty balanced'. 
So why, when Marines face the equivalent issues against Custodes is it 'Oh that's ridiculous, they are broken' instead of 'well Custodes would dick-kick marines in the fluff so if marines are balanced, then we good holmes' haha. 

So just wondering what peoples thoughts are given that the relative jumps are about the same between Custodes>Marines>Mortals and why one is perfectly acceptable, where as the other is frowned upon?

[Noserenda]

Custodes are still suffering from being super broken in 1st ed and people are extremely slow to forget stuff like that sadly.

 

Some marine players have extremely fragile egos, I suspect it's just because as the basic army that's where most players start but I've definitely seen players deflate into petulance when they get their butts kicked by Anathema in melee so I can only imagine it's worse when they get "out marined" :D

 

I think it's not helped by some folks really pushing main character syndrome for space marines either tbh.

[Joe]

To be honest I'm not convinced that the community will ever forget the army for how broken it was during 1E. Then there's personal bias thrown in (a lot of people don't think they should be an army at all, in both 30k AND 40k).

 

 

[No Foes Remain]

Had a game at Warhammer World last week, my SoH and Cthonian Headhunters vs Custodes vs Word Bearers. Headhunters held their own against the WB because he just had a tactical squad and later a despoiler squad against them so they still got all their armour saves.

 

Meanwhile two custodes walked through a tactical support squad, a tactical squad then half a terminator squad. While I lost a despoiler squad, a terminator squad and half a tactical squad (the other half ran away) to three. And with their movement speed it's hard to play a game of 'keep-away' from them.

 

The issue is them having low AP weapons on their basic troops, which is fair enough but hard to counter unless you want to spam plasma and be a dick (I had 3 plasma cannon speeder bikes that killed 2 custodians from that 3 man squad in the first turn but aside from chipping a wound off two more I could do nothing else). Maybe moving their weapons to AP3 so at least terminators stand a chance against them may help, but outside of lots of breaching (looking at you Sicaran Omega) or expensive Legion elites I don't see much way of dealing with them. Either that or bring back the person who charges goes first, rather than charge, ok initative order = custodes go first and kill everything.

 

 

Would like to add, not salty. It was all fun against my best friend and my friend from work (custodes and WB respectivly) and we enjoyed it, also being out first HH 2.0 game so we probably got stuff wrong and also didn't do reactions because we were trying to grip the basics.

[SkimaskMohawk]

13 hours ago, TheTrans said:

feel the general consensus for Solar Aux and Militia having a hard time against Marines is 'well, that's how the fluff goes, and marines are pretty balanced'. 
So why, when Marines face the equivalent issues against Custodes is it 'Oh that's ridiculous, they are broken' instead of 'well Custodes would dick-kick marines in the fluff so if marines are balanced, then we good holmes' haha. 

So just wondering what peoples thoughts are given that the relative jumps are about the same between Custodes>Marines>Mortals and why one is perfectly acceptable, where as the other is frowned upon?

 

Well it shouldn't be acceptable on either end lol. You should be able to enjoy the power fantasy of all the factions and still have a game where your skill is what drives your likelihood to win. 

 

You can look at every edition of 40k, from the Heresy formative 3rd-7th, to modern 8th-10th and you will never see the idea that horde/fodder factions should just lose to their "betters" on even points just because. 

 

9 hours ago, Noserenda said:

Custodes are still suffering from being super broken in 1st ed and people are extremely slow to forget stuff like that sadly.

 

8 hours ago, Joe said:

To be honest I'm not convinced that the community will ever forget the army for how broken it was during 1E. Then there's personal bias thrown in (a lot of people don't think they should be an army at all, in both 30k AND 40k).

 

 

But...everything was broken to some extent in 1st. Custodes were pretty dumb before their two points hikes, but by the time the dust settled after malevolence they weren't any more insane than anything else; plasma and haywire were the great equalizers. Feels like it's more like people remember other people talking about them being broken and then forgot what happened. Like when Andy Hoare talked about the fearless hordes of milita in front of artillery, which was changed in 2018 lol. Also a lot of forgetting of what was even more broken at around the same eras.

 

9 hours ago, Noserenda said:

Some marine players have extremely fragile egos, I suspect it's just because as the basic army that's where most players start but I've definitely seen players deflate into petulance when they get their butts kicked by Anathema in melee so I can only imagine it's worse when they get "out marined" :D

 

I think it's not helped by some folks really pushing main character syndrome for space marines either tbh.

 

The closest experience to the 2nd edition main character syndrome I had was back playing in mega battles and learning 4th edition. There was this expectation that marines would beat up on anything; if they didn't the marine player would get mad because...well we were like, 10. How dare 30 leaping hormagaunts kill 5 marines!

 

But, as we understood the game better, that attitude disappeared as we understood that no army got to be the best at everything, and you had to respect your opponents units. 

 

2 hours ago, No Foes Remain said:

Maybe moving their weapons to AP3 so at least terminators stand a chance against them may help, but outside of lots of breaching (looking at you Sicaran Omega) or expensive Legion elites I don't see much way of dealing with them. Either that or bring back the person who charges goes first, rather than charge, ok initative order = custodes go first and kill everything.

 

In 1st their basic spears only had ap 2 on the turn they charged. If they didn't get the charge (and they had the exact same movement and charge range as everything else) they were dying to terminators. If they didn't kill them on the charge, chances are they were dying to terminators. Sentinels could get fists for consistent ap2, but at that point you were I1, and no harder to hit and wound than in 2nd lol. And you paid a lot, getting 3 guys with 2 attacks each for 225. Now you can get 5 guardians for 240, with 4 attacks base, at i5. 

 

It's kinda funny looking at the huge price they slapped on the fists, trying to fix the power build from 1st while making it completely unnecessary at the same time (dreads going to toughness value, melta bombs coming standard, +1 str AP 2 always on, double the attacks, blah blah blah).

[No Foes Remain]

Moving them to AP3 and the spears as Ap2 on the charge would be a great fix, would allow elites and legion elites to stand a chance now without them being able to stomp over the custodes since most of the time the golden guards will go first and hit easier with how CC works in 2.0.

 

RE the metla bombs, didn't come up in the game I had so I will deffer to others with that.

[CaptainKael]

In my local meta, I commonly say that for as far as Custodes are busted above the Marine baseline, Militia is busted the same amount below it.

One of the biggest issues this edition is the WS chart compared to HH 1.0. A single level difference in WS has way too large of an effect. Last edition, our local WE players could fight on an equal footing with Custodes using their despoiler blobs. Usually it came down to who charged whom. But now, the to-hit roll for those despoilers went from a 4+ to a 5+. A 33% reduction (before any of the other buffs in attacks that Custodes got) for what is already one of the premier marine melee armies. Sure, chainaxes gained shred, but that is only resulting in a 25% gain in wounds for the WE player (22% if you consider chainswords for non-WE vs Custodes), so still a net loss before looking at the Custodes' changes. This is also the same problem suffered by mortals fighting marines. It is bad enough that several of us in our meta are talking about going back to the 1.0 WS chart or using an amended 2.0 one where a single point difference is back to 1.0's 4s vs 3s but otherwise follows the current chart.

 

Another issue fighting Custodes this edition is the severe nerf to blast weapons (which overly nerfed Solar Aux and Militia since they were more reliant on them to begin with). Custodes used to fear Medusas and Demolishers with their S10, AP2 statline. These large, vehicle mounted weapons were usually the equalizing factor vs. Custodes for most 1.0 armies. Again, it is the same issue for Militia and Solar Aux fighting marines with their Earthshakers and Battlecannons. Add to this that vehicles in general this edition are suffering (limited reactions being the biggest cause) and we see that Custodes' previous biggest weakness has been largely removed or diminished.

There are also only a few common Instant Death weapons for use vs Custodes. For shooting, it is typically limited to a couple of uncommon anti-tank weapons which only have 1 or 2 shots apiece (like a las Deredeo, Neutron weapons or Kratos Flashburn shells) until you hit some of the LOW options like a Cerberus or Falchion. At which point you are using a LOW to kill basic troops. For melee, it is limited to Leviathans (claw or drill), Gravis Chainfist Contemptors and IF Solarite gauntlets for S10 or Brutal weapons like Gravis power fists and thunder hammers (of which Brutal is horribly implemented and a problem for everyone in 2.0). Compare this to all of the S8-9 weapons that can ID marines - lascannons, krak missiles, all meltas, Scorpius (one of the few artillery units that got a side grade and not overly nerfed point and stat wise), some plasma, power fists, chain fists, thunder hammers. These weapons are all readily available, usually on multiple different platforms and would be present in any typical all comers list - no special tailoring needed. The problem is even more exacerbated for Solar Aux and Militia. S6 and AP4 weapons are everywhere. And almost every weapon that was nerfed (blasts and plasma especially) went from AP2 or 3 to AP4 so they still slaughter mortals as easily as they ever did in 1.0 with some now being only a third as effective vs marines.

 

Another issue is morale. When I saw that the standard marine LD dropped from 8 to 7, I knew that it would have an uneven knock down effect on every army in the Custodes>Marine>Solar Aux>Militia pyramid and that every army under marines would see similar stat drops. This is a big problem in a 2d6 system when the standard Militia Sgt is now LD6 - in 1.0 at LD7, you passed 58% of your LD tests before modifiers; now at LD6, it is 42%. Around a 16% drop. Marines on the other hand, went from 83% (with LD9 sgt) down to 72% (with LD8 sgt); a 9% drop. Shifting these values is horrible on GW's preferred 2d6 system as it has an uneven distribution for every army. And this is not accounting for all of the new Fear sources and Night Fighting dropping LD even lower (which are again more impactful for those already on the lower edge of the curve). There are some exceptions and ways to play around this with USRs or special models (like by offering rerolls at the cost of some wounds via Militia Discipline Masters), but it means that Solar Aux and Militia are extremely reliant on these models/mechanics and can be prone to getting easily swept off the board if their opponent can remove the lynchpins. I am not totally against this in theory, but 2.0 also brought with it easily available Nemesis bolters. Not to mention that if you have to buy a 20 point Discipline Master for every 80 point Militia Infantry Squad just to fix their morale issues, you are now paying the same cost for 21 lasgun wielding, flak armor wearing mortals as 10 tactical marines... and I know which of those 1v1 would come out on top the vast majority of the time.

Basically, my point with all of this is that between the core rules and GW's inability to understand basic statistical math, they shifted the game more towards an elite, infantry heavy game on the whole. With normal Custodes just being more elite than most of the elite marine units, they benefited the most compared to any other faction. And this is before the buffs within their own rules.

As for my opinion, I don't agree with this principal at all. I have debated this in my meta several times that the game is balanced by points, not the relative fluff of each army. In universe, a militia force would almost never care about their kill:death ratio when fighting against Custodes. If they achieved the mission but lost 100+ soldiers for every Custode, they would consider it well spent. So would most Legions. Equal points should equate to roughly equal chances of victory, with general skill being the core factor and a little dice variation for narrative storytelling. If we want to have a narrative last stand style game for example, we could simply give the defender 2/3s of the attacker's points and have asymmetric victory conditions. Maybe the defender judges his degree of success on how many turns he holds or how many units he destroys. But GW rarely does those kinds of missions in its publications.

Within our meta, almost everyone agrees with this. Oddly, it is mostly the Custodes mains that will argue how this matches the fluff and that all of the 2.0 changes are for the better (while typically having never played much 1.0 as well).
 

[Noserenda]

Yeah the problem with Custodes are largely the problems with the edition itself, the game has swung radically in favour of elite infantry (much moreso than the intended basic infantry) so the army with the elitist infantry is obviously going to be the biggest beneficiary of that rules shift.

Simultaneously with that they decided to apparently put super minimal effort and consistency into Liber Imperium, especially its points costs, so it turns out the basic custodians outshine everything else in the list and that makes things even worse! So you may stumble into an optimised force just trying to keep things simple, Custodian players often feeling like they have to take some extra elites and HQ choices to reign in their list... Bizarre.

So yeah, overall the list is alright but it does lean into a few wider problems in counterintuitive ways. I dont think rules tweaks are entirely the way to go, its a rare time where actually sorting out the points will probably fix the issue.

Oh and maybe let other people take melta bombs, gotta share Custodes!

[SkimaskMohawk]

7 hours ago, CaptainKael said:

One of the biggest issues this edition is the WS chart compared to HH 1.0. A single level difference in WS has way too large of an effect

I really like the WS chart change since high WS was basically meaningless in the past. You can have the potential for units to really rely on high WS as their main defensive stat without overloading other parts. The issue is that...they didn't do that and compounded all the stats lol; tons more melee weapons gained AP 3, elite units often doubled their wound count, there's often easy access to I5 on the units, and, well, dreads with their durability. And of course, finished off with a broad lack of proper points adjustment.

 

7 hours ago, CaptainKael said:

Last edition, our local WE players could fight on an equal footing with Custodes using their despoiler blobs. Usually it came down to who charged whom. But now, the to-hit roll for those despoilers went from a 4+ to a 5+. A 33% reduction (before any of the other buffs in attacks that Custodes got) for what is already one of the premier marine melee armies. Sure, chainaxes gained shred, but that is only resulting in a 25% gain in wounds for the WE player (22% if you consider chainswords for non-WE vs Custodes), so still a net loss before looking at the Custodes' changes.

 

Its pretty (sadly) funny for a number of reasons. I mentioned in another post how much the custodes profile had improved, and just above the compounding effect of high WS, I and damage removing chances to interact.

 

A 1st Ed guardian with melta bomb was 60 points. A 2nd edition guardian is 55. For that 5 point loss you get an average of of 4" more movement, 1" more charge distance, usually hit on 5s in melee, up to more than double your attacks, always at str 6 and always at ap2. Whoever did that math needs to be kept away from balancing their household budget. 

 

1st edition WE despoilers are ironically another example of over-compounding bonuses for their points. Effectively 11 points a model at full size and you got a str 6 model (chain axe, inductii) with rage, hatred, reroll 1s to wound on the charge, and 6+fnp. So usually 4 attacks with 4s/2s with full rerolls. That's some similar crack pipe math lol.

 

7 hours ago, CaptainKael said:

Add to this that vehicles in general this edition are suffering (limited reactions being the biggest cause)

 

Its less them not having reactions and yet another compoundorama. Las getting sunder, las being dirt cheap, cover getting nerfed, units getting reactions, vehicle weapons generally taking a nerf. 

 

But ya, anything below av14 with flare shield has it rough 

 

7 hours ago, CaptainKael said:

And this is not accounting for all of the new Fear sources and Night Fighting dropping LD even lower (which are again more impactful for those already on the lower edge of the curve). There are some exceptions and ways to play around this with USRs or special models (like by offering rerolls at the cost of some wounds via Militia Discipline Masters), but it means that Solar Aux and Militia are extremely reliant on these models/mechanics and can be prone to getting easily swept off the board if their opponent can remove the lynchpins. I am not totally against this in theory, but 2.0 also brought with it easily available Nemesis bolters. Not to mention that if you have to buy a 20 point Discipline Master for every 80 point Militia Infantry Squad just to fix their morale issues, you are now paying the same cost for 21 lasgun wielding, flak armor wearing mortals as 10 tactical marines... and I know which of those 1v1 would come out on top the vast majority of the time.

 

This is both very true, and also a little...not.

 

They overcompensated with morale. Having fear and (or) night fight lower it would have been enough; hitting it with a blanket -1 AND bringing back 5th edition pinning is just really oppressive. 5th didn't have pin locking despite every barrage piece gaining it inherently, because leadership offset the high frequency. 

 

But, militia and solar aux are ironically kinda the least vulnerable to the leadership screw over. Solar aux (should) go Reborn cohort and get stubborn LD11 on almost all their infantry. Militia don't have anything for pinning (RIP), but their one warlord trait basically makes them have pseudo fearless. 

 

Still, ya, compounding changes and new systems resulting in a really have/have not dynamic. Wonder if this will come up again lol.

 

7 hours ago, CaptainKael said:

while typically having never played much 1.0 as well

 

This is like, the unspoken secret. A lot of people who participate on forums, reddit, and other social media discussion boards never really played 1st. Theyre like, hobbyists who got a game night in once every few months with the mates and just transplanted past editions rules in. You'll see this still in 2nd; pop over to crusade and heresy on Facebook, ask if a 2nd edition mechanic works in the blatantly obvious way it's written, and prepared to be called a bad person if you intend to play it that way (simply because it's not a legacy mechanic). You tend to see a lot of regurgitated surface level stuff about 1st too; any amount of artillery was game ruining, plasma was game ruining, and it wasn't fair dreadnoughts got immobilized! It's really no wonder that people who argue  "but it's more narrative" only ever engaged in the narrative and had no real investment in the game.

 

4 hours ago, Noserenda said:

Yeah the problem with Custodes are largely the problems with the edition itself

 

4 hours ago, Noserenda said:

Simultaneously with that they decided to apparently put super minimal effort and consistency into Liber Imperium

 

This is basically the issue. Super minimal effort considering the breadth of changes. I remember during the playtest leaks when the last few quality blast weapons changed in v.5. These were things like the Kratos melta and the Leviathan grav flux bombard and their balance change to go with the stat drop was to just cut about 15 points off both. The Kratos works fine with its change to 4 shots, but the Leviathan is hilariously terrible at ap4. Even if they were free for, you'd be paying 270 for that piece of statline that is vastly outperformed by the other gun arms. 

 

They changed the game a ton and were too understaffed to actually test stuff. Or even make make their different rulebook versions have consistent rules lol.

Edited June 29 by SkimaskMohawk