Custodes at Annihilation: The Weekender. Custodes go Undefeated!

Hey everyone, Geoff “iNcontroL” Robinson here to talk about my experience taking the Adeptus Custodes to my first tourney. Check the Tactics Corner for more great articles and guides!

Before we get into the list I have to talk about this tourney.. it was a bit different. Taking place in the gorgeous Portland, Oregon it only makes sense that this tourney marches to the beat of it’s own drum. Five rounds of Open War cards for missions, twist cards, ruse cards AND ITC secondaries (wat). Well, it made for about as odd of a tourney as you can get but it was darn fun. I played one game of practice for this with my buddy Anthony who proudly uses Deathwatch (he likes to complain) but we quickly learned this tourney was going to be FUNNY but also.. probably good for my Custodes? We shall see…

THE LIST:

This is a very similar list to what I started with when I first began my journey sexually experi- .. playing the golden men. I love the 3 salvos as they give me unique tools to deal with bigger targets. With this list I have a LOT of command points due to the relic/warlord trait so I can reroll the D6 on the melta missiles reliably getting me some juicy hits. Hurricane bolters are still the top performers with how accurate custodes are but when I had ONLY hurricane bolters I found myself lacking some choices. I also dropped the second culexus so I can make the salvos fit and used the extra points to put in another mortar team and misericordia’s. I will say the little swords have been underwhelming. They don’t reroll to wound and with less damage/ap they are a severe after thought. Only add them if you have extra points in my opinion! This list PLAYS FAST.. I finished all my games well ahead of time. This list IS FUN. All of them feel like heroes and they both deny scoring (save for head hunter..) and they score well (who wants to shoot at a culexus?). The Custodes bikes DIE EVERY TIME but usually they drag everyone down with them OR they murder faces too hard and thus are allowed to live in the golden light of the Emprah.

First game of the day we get an interesting mission: Kill the courier. My opponent selects his Shield Captain on bike with a 3++ and then deep deploys him in his backfield. I select my Culexus because I’m a try hard sonofabitch and I wanted to win. He gets first turn and does what a LOT of people do.. try and kill Custodes. Unfortunately trying to kill Custodian Guard sitting in terrain is about as fun as trying to choke out a dolphin who ain’t having it. His Devastators, Death Company and his assortment of Scouts, Librarians and what not.. they all couldn’t do it. He also realized in trying to kill them he made himself available for the natural selection of my counter assault. As the dust settled he was very, very dead. His courier was the last model and it valiantly assaulted 2 of my own Shield Captains and the entire Vertus Praetor squad. This was this young man’s first tourney and he said he had fun.. his army was a beautiful army painted to look Aztecan. He would go on to have a great tourney and hopefully we hooked another victim into the WH40k tourney scene clutches!

My second game was vs an awesome gal who has been around the Pacific Northwest as a tourney player for awhile and yet our paths have never crossed so I was very excited to play her. She has the typical Grey Knight double bash bros of Grand Masters in baby carriages, strike teams with falchions, guard mortar squads and Celestine with friends. She also took a squad of death company backed by mephiston. The mission was a fun one where you place 6 objectives but roll a dice and the first one to roll a “6” becomes THE objective. Winner controls that at the end of turn 5. Fun! As luck would have it my opponent won the roll to go first AND had the objective safely tucked in her corner. That said she made the mistake of assaulting my Vertus Praetor squad placed aggressively in the middle of the table with her Death Company rocking a bunch of swords but no power weapons. I was also able to use the “Swooping assault” (or whatever) strategem and counter charge Mephiston who was raging out with my nearby Shield Captain who summarily executed the vampire before he could swing. Two combats later and all of the Death Company was gone. Things were looking good for the Custodes as my Assassins were running down guardsmen and my backfield seemed secure. With so many of my bikes unscathed ALL the Grey Knights that came in couldn’t focus on anything else. Grand Master Dread Knight’s pack a punch and certainly did the lion’s share of work for her but in the end the mobility of my list meant that she was running out of models and the objective was now squarely in my possession. The mission also had an odd “twist” in that we had to divvy up our list into 3 new “detachments” and they could come in 1 at a time each turn but off of any board edge. This meant her Celestine squad with scary inferno pistols couldn’t really do much and ended up getting destroyed before having much impact. A very bloody game but I was able to deny a few key powers like Gate of Infinity with my denial stratagem and it meant she just couldn’t get around the table the way she wanted. I will say, my Guard detachment farmed up a good 10+ extra command points so I was rerolling like a mad dog AND my Callidus made her eat up the last of her command points by turn 2. Really potent 1, 2 punch!

This game was myself vs a good friend in Ben Cromwell. He’s a fellow Team Zero Comp teammate and a 2x USA representative at the ETC. He, like myself, took a list that wasn’t geared for this tourney but rather was a normal ITC tourney trying to make it’s way in this odd odd tourney. More than any other game this game’s mission.. won me the game. By a lot. Ben was running 6 plague burst crawlers and 2 Bloodletter bombs. There were other elements to his list but this is what brought home the bacon. The mission? Comet. So at turn 3 the sole objective lands somewhere on the table and whoever controls it at the end of turn 5 wins.. simple enough. The twist? Nightfight. Every gun is range ’12 and on turn two and onward it extends ‘6 then ’12 but only on a 4+ LOL. So poor Ben.. couldn’t really shoot for the first 2-3 turns. I mostly murdered his Nurglings and we both wracked up some ITC secondaries until one of us blinked first and dropped in our big hitters (his the Bloodletters, mine the bikes). Ben had the top of the turn so he had to make something work.. he dropped down the bombs and went for it but the Custodes ALWAYS have an answer! The tangle foot grenade stratagem is a Bloodletter bombs worst nightmare. I can only chuck them off my infantry but I have 9 of those suckers and they WANT to fight so they were out there.. one bomb didn’t make it after losing 6 inches on the charge and the other got a short charge off into a guard unit where they then murdalated them. Unfortunately for Ben with all of his elements on the table I dropped down from the golden light of the Emperor himself and rained death and destruction on his diabolical self. Bloodletters cleared and tanks getting tied up (but I think only 1 died the entire game? LOL) he was in a pickle. The game really turned when a shield captain jumped onto his Warlord Daemon Prince, killed him and then tied up two tanks. With no firepower to stop me from controlling the objective he conceded.

One of the nicest dudes I’ve ever played! This guy had a really fun and well painted Tau army. Unfortunately for him.. the game was a bit mean to him. We had 3 objectives that “burn” when the opposing player controls them.. lose all 3 and you die. We ALSO had a single objective that if controlled on the end of your own turn by your opponent also resulted in a loss.. so lots of objectives. Tau at this time didn’t have a codex and he took a somewhat fluffy list with the intent of having fun, looking good and punching you gently in the chest like a playful friend. Well, I took a list that was meant to look sexy (thanks FLG) and punch you through your face and into your brain pan where it then reaches down your spinal column and rips out most of your inner workings. It did that. On turn 1 3 units of Custodian Guard were in combat with at least 1 stealth suit team but mostly 2, the Vertus Praetor unit had charged and killed most of his infantry and all he had was 3 commanders coming in and a R’vharna that had felt the sting of a melta missile doing 5 damage. I burned all 3 objectives and controlled the other on turn 2 and that was that. Despite all this he was a really good sport and is SUPER stoked for the Tau codex.

 

This was a game I was worried about all tourney long. His list IS NAAAAAAAAASTY. These things chuck out a melta shot (not that scary as they mostly hit on 4’s by being Tallarn) and D6 (roll 2d6 take the highest) flamer shots that are str6 -1 ap 2 damage. But.. that isn’t the scariest part. When these suckers die on a 4+ they do D6 mortal to everything in 6… I HAVE AN ASSAULT ARMY.. yikes. Behind this is some Blood Angel characters with guard getting him a lot of command points and holding down objectives. The list is very much so the 14 Hellhounds that all move 12 and can outflank by the way. Fortunately to decide this tourney we got the most normal deployment and mission type yet. Two progressive objectives, kill points (which get doubled if you kill the Warlord, COOL) and every turn you roll 3d6 on a 6 you pick a unit and do D3 mortal to it (debris is falling from the sky).

Mitch plays a board control game so he spread out and in retrospect probably over-committed to one of my flanks. He deployed almost equally but probably put 5-6 of his tanks (including 3 outflanking) on my left side which had a Shield Captain, infantry squad and a Custodian Guard squad holding 1 of my 2 objectives. The rest of my army was on the other flank castled up in some ruins or arriving via deep strike as assassins OR the bikes with one of my shield captains. To win this game I’d need some luck and some really solid play. As expected my left flank collapsed almost immediately. He dropped D3 mortal on the Shield Captain and then crushed the rest with his tanks. Laughably 2 of my Custodian Guard lived on and continued to play ring around the rosie with 3-4 tanks for the rest of the game. They tied them up, did some wounds but mostly just dodged melta shots and endured fires beyond what should be possible. We both kinda laughed but as the game went on his laughs turned to moans and mine into grins.

The rest of the battle was rough on me. I failed a few charges and the charges I did make would result in his Hellhounds blowing up and doing massive damage (he didn’t fail to blow a single tank up except one later in the game that only had his units within 6). At one point my entirely healthy Shield Captain took all 6 mortal wounds and the unit of bikes took 5 from a single explosion…OUCH. I was paving my way though fighting up the right flank to get closer to his little Company Commander who had Kurov’s Aquila and was a Grant Strategist. Mitch didn’t notice until it was too late but the last few of my bikes got up there and slew the commander with ease. I was also able to butcher his Blood Angel champion who had another relic and now I squarely controlled his objective.

It was here that the game began to distance itself in my favor. Wracking up some progressives I gave myself a few points of buffer with my 1-2 Guard on the left flank surviving and controlling that objective. I was running low on units though as my assassins fought valiantly but with so many flamers out there it was only a matter of time. The Callidus tried to tie up a tank and did so for a couple but then was burnt to a crisp. The Eversor was deftly making hidden charges from behind terrain to grab a tank and slow them down.. he also made a number of his 4++ saves and did what he could. Even his explosion when he eventually died did wounds to two tanks. The speed of Mitch’s Hellhounds are terrifying though.. realizing his commitment the remaining 5-6 tanks on my half of the table started to make their way to my guard detachment but it was too late. With the lone Spear Guardian holding the left flank and my bike force holding his home objective for 2 turns I was able to secure primary. We straight tied on secondaries and when we added up kill points Mitch had me by a LOT but with the added bonus of me slaying his warlord and mine remaining intact I secured the win on that front as well. Mitch was a fantastic opponent and I was very proud to do battle with a list/general I respected greatly and overcome the odds against me.

 

In conclusion I had a high score in paint (I MEAN LOOK AT THESE.. the FLG Paint Studio did a fantastic job on them!) and I had a high score in sports (I tried to be on my best behavior.. but also with Custodes playing so fast I almost never had to push my opponent to play faster!) I was able to come away from the tourney the champion! I won a really cool golden statue of a space marine thanks to Aaron Albert (CaptainA here on FLG) and we earned some money for charity (the tourney was raising money for food in Oregon). This next weekend I am flying to Arizona to compete there with our very own Frankie and our pal James. I won’t change a thing in my list. I had SO MUCH FUN, played really fast and I won! These are all the things I can ask for from my list. Now, this tourney had some wonky missions and I definitely think overall it favored me nearly each time but when the game did feel normal I didn’t feel like I was ever at severe risk. I think it’s critical to keep your big bike unit in reserve so it can always decide where to fight and it can shoot up some stuff. Shield Captains are amazing but they are prone to a bad situation costing them everything. If you make a mistake with them they are gone. Curse of the elite army.. which means you need a LOT of practice if you plan on winning with Custodes. Finally, the Assassin detachment might actually be as fun as the damn Custodes are. I kid you not.. WOW! Maybe it’s because my other armies are Tyranids or Mechanicus where we got some fun stuff but not really as.. character filled as I feel like the Assassins are? When my Eversor goes ham and drops 2-3 dudes with his pistol then reliably makes a 10 inch charge to get into the underbelly of my opponent I start making sword sounds and grinning maniacly.

Hope you guys enjoyed the writeup! I’m a co-host on Pablo’s Chapter Tactics and I’ve started doing Codex reviews as an official reviewer for GW that you can see here. Come check out my stuff and let me know what you think in the comments! I will be reading!