Editing Warhammer 40,000/Tactics/Kill Team(9E) Imperium (section)

==Talons of the Emperor==
===Why Play Talons of the Emperor===
*'''Pros'''
**You'll be fielding some of the most game-breakingly overpowered motherfuckers in all Kill Team, with the most durable baseline troops in the game - you'll have WS, BS, Sv 2+, W18 on all your troops even before you equip them with their fearsome weapons.
**''Almost'' all of the things that might give your golden boys trouble in 40k, hordes, heavy weapons, tanks, most mortal wounds sources, flyers, etc, are out of the equation in Kill Team. This is the game that ''really'' plays to the Custodes' strengths.
***9th has further patched a lot of what threatened Custodes in the last edition, nerfing heavy and special weapon spamming (no more frag cannon or plasma spam in particular) and adding Sisters of Silence to your roster to shut up any psykers.
**You enjoy making people yell "What the hell am I supposed to do about ''that''?" when they see your team.
**Custodes get APL3, letting them carry out a lot in an activation.
**You get to play the [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CI0tY5PRuHs Juggernaut's theme song] as your Custodes are carving their way through the enemy team.

*'''Cons'''
**You'll be seen as a major [[that guy]].
***No seriously, a guy that fields a [[Warlord Titan]] in 40k will have more people willing to go up against him than you will with your golden boys.
***To compensate some, your bananas have only two loadout choices.
**You'll be able to tally off your entire list with one hand, with a normal sized Kill Team of only 4 if running pure Custodes (and why wouldn't you).
**Swarms ''can'' still a problem. If you can't break a large team for one reason or another, you may have trouble killing them fast enough. Which leads to the next problem...
**Your low model count and relatively slow movement will likely see your 4-man squad being outmaneuvered. Controlling objectives <s>could be</s> will be a problem.
**Everyone is scared of you. Everyone will be brainstorming a way to counter you. Odds are every team you go up against ''will'' be optimized to give you as hard, and annoying, of a fight as possible. Don't expect victories to be quick or fun.

===TotE Wargear===
*'''Oath Parchment (3 EP):''' Once per battle, you can give them a free use of the Command Re-Roll ploy.
*'''Tanglefoot Grenade (3 EP):''' {{W40kKeyword|Adeptus Custodes}} A thrown weapon with short range that robs the target of 1 AP, which can be absolutely hampering to lesser operatives and inconvenient to marines.
*'''Misericordia (2 EP):''' {{W40kKeyword|Adeptus Custodes}} without storm shield only. when they fight, they deal a addtional 2 MW on a 3+.
*'''Psyk-out Grenade (2 EP):''' {{W40kKeyword|Anathema Psykana}} only, meaning your sisters. Like with the Grey Knights it's utterly meaningless without {{W40kKeyword|Daemon}} or {{W40kKeyword|Psyker}} targets to make it worth something.
*'''Vratine Faceplate (2 EP):''' {{W40kKeyword|Anathema Psykana}} only, meaning only your sisters. Once per battle, a sister can subtract 3 damage from any injury they take, effectively giving her 11/12 wounds.

===TotE Units===
This kill-team consists of two Fire teams.
<tabs>
<tab name="Custodian Guard Fireteam">
This Seek & Destroy/Security fireteam is composed of 2 of the following:
*0-1 Custodian Guard Leader (if there are no other leaders)
*1-2 custodian Guard Warrior

*'''Custodian Guard Leader (Combat, Staunch, Marksman, Scout):''' The leader of your Custodes is little different from the basic one, and that's fine. With an OP template to work from, you won't find much else to improve upon without breaking stuff. Hell, they ignore Injured and any APL penalties! Not even space marines can brag about that anymore!
*'''Custodian Guard Warrior (Combat, Staunch, Marksman, Scout):''' Your golden banana is the apex of all that there is to offer in the entirety of Kill-Team. 2+ save, 19 wounds and an APL3 means that they can easily carry out a job by themselves. Of course, you are the least-numerous force in all of the game, so you're gonna likely expect nothing but people running circles around you.
**Your weapon loadouts are locked to only two: The classic guardian spear, giving better damage and infinite shooting range, and the sentinel sword, which is weaker and has range limitations on the gun but also has a 4+ invulnerable save and improved parrying power for tanking.

</tab>
<tab name="Sister of Silence Fireteam">
This Seek & Destroy/Security/Recon fireteam is composed of 5 of the following:
*0-1 Sister of Silence Superior (if there are no other leaders)
*0-5 Sister of Silence Prosecutor
*0-5 Sister of Silence Witchseeker
*0-5 Sister of Silence Vigilator

*'''Sister of Silence Superior (Marksman, Scout):''' The Sisters of Silence aren't as tanky as the custodians. Though they only have 8/9 wounds, they get the 3+ save of space marines and plenty of different weapons. Also helping them is the Psychic Abomination rule, which shuts off psykers and makes them untouchable by psykers. The Sister Superior can pick up whatever weapons her sisters can, though she'll lack any of the honours better suited for melee in a longer-term game.
*'''Sister of Silence Prosecutor (Staunch, Marksman, Scout):''' The sister with the boltgun. While not capable of covering all the space, she can fire from any distance and can deal more damage than the witchseeker's flamer.
*'''Sister of Silence Witchseeker (Marksman, Scout):''' The flamer has limited range, but can cover crowds due to Torrent and has a 2+ BS. This allows you to overcome the numbers issues your sisters will likely encounter.
*'''Sister of Silence Vigilator (Warrior, Staunch):''' This particular picks up a greatblade, a rather potent power sword with Lethal 5+ to grant more crits. That said, she does it at the cost of her gun, meaning that she'll need cover in order to close the distance with the opposition.

</tab>
</tabs>

===TotE Ploys===
<tabs>
<tab name="Strategic Ploys">
*'''Aegis of the Emperor (1 CP):''' Degrades any crits your operatives cover into normal hits. With how valuable these guys are, you'll absolutely be needing them to avoid the serious damage.
*'''Creeping Dread (1 CP):''' For the turn, any operatives within square/3" of a {{W40kKeyword|Anathema Psykana}} unit see their WS/BS suffer as if they were injured. This is especially helpful for your vigilator, who'll need those WS penalties to avoid injury.
*'''Peerless Warriors (1 CP):''' For this turn, your {{W40kKeyword|Adeptus Custodes}} units can shoot and fight twice in their activations, which will be crucial when you only have two to four models.
</tab>
<tab name="Tactical Ploys">
*'''Arcane Genetic Alchemy (1 CP):''' When rolling saves, you can trigger this for a {{W40kKeyword|Adeptus Custodes}} operative and make one save into a crit save and negate a serious crit like a melta.
*'''Brotherhood of Demigods (1 CP):''' At the end of the firefight phase, one {{W40kKeyword|Adeptus Custodes}} operative makes one free Fight or overwatch action (it won't count as activation). Getting in that one more jab in before points are scored up.
*'''Talons (1 CP):''' Triggered when your operatives are within pentagon/6" of an enemy operative or within circle/2" of an objective. This allows one custodian and sister within square/3" of each other to be activated simultaneously, giving a sort-of GA 2.
</tab>
</tabs>

===AC Strategies===
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'''Counterplay'''
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Let's all just be honest here, AC players don't actually need to be given strategies to win with Adeptus Custodes. This is why you're really looking at this section - figuring out how to ''try'' and fight Custodes with everyone else.
As a general rule, be prepared to pull out every last bit of underhanded [[Powergamer]] [[That Guy]] [[Cheese]] you can if you want any chance of victory. This isn't about about "fun" or "fair." Those ideals were thrown out the window by the guy that’s sending Custodes against you. You cannot ''afford'' to fight fair.
*A good general bit of advice for fighting against Custodians is to play using the Narrative Play missions from the Kill Team: Elites codex, which all have a 125 point limit. Because the cheapest Custodian model is 33 points, they'll be unable to spend any of the additional points, essentially giving you a 25 point advantage (''which still won't guarantee a win for you, just raise the odds in your favor a bit''). If they complain, just point out that the elites codex also includes the rules for their kill team, so if they want to use some parts of the book they should be prepared to use all of it. Plus they'll start with two extra CPs.
*'''Space Marines:''' The jack of all trades faction invariably suffers against the custodes. The basic model isn’t strong enough to ever stand a chance against a custodian, while their “relatively” high cost and lack of invulnerability saves outside of commanders means that each loss you take will hurt. Your only real option is to play like the imperial guard, take as many special weapons as you can and stay in cover/on the run. This tactic works exceptionally well with the primaris psykers, who are not only accurate with great guns, but are also exceptionally tough and hard to hit in cover. If you prefer a melee set up then your best bet is to grab a captain in gravis armour to ignore their strength 5 and 8 weapons. Either loadout you’ll want to bring psykers to both fire mortal wounds and the boost your guys to the point that they’re not horribly outclassed. 
*'''Deathwatch:''' ''This'' is where you bring your four frag cannons. And nobody will begrudge you for it, but be careful, as chances are you’ll only have one more model than your opponent and if the custodies catch you in melee you're doomed.
*'''Grey Knights:''' Considering that you're budget custodes (admittedly not by much) your fighting strategy doesn’t change too much. Mortal wound spam them from afar along with as much psi bolt ammunition as you can possibly throw. Melee will be a close call (most likely being down to who charges first) as the custodes and grey knights have very similar weapons, with the custodes having better weapons and more attacks, but the grey knights have more bodies. Overall, probably the “fairest” matchup in kill team.
*'''Astra Militarum:''' Even in swarms you're too weak to fight custodes, so your only choice is to spam special and heavy weapons. Meltas, plasma, or call in storm troopers for their special weapons, hide in cover, obscure yourself, plant explosives, just do everything you can to avoid a straight up fight against all the custodes strength 6 weapons.
*'''Adeptus Mechanicus:''' This is where you want all that minus one toughness goodness. The ad mech punch above their weight category in melee with strength 5 melee weapons, an invulnerability save and numerous buffs, so you're the best GEQ for fighting custodians. Just don’t expect a lot of your guys to live.
*'''Chaos Space Marines:'''
*'''Death Guard:''' Death Guard have two options (more than most factions). Firstly, pour everything you have into a Plague Marine (or termie) fighter with the Flail. Give him Grandfather's Blessing, bring a pair of PMs with big guns and a Champion with a Fist along for the ride and curse the errata that dropped its damage down to 1. Also, bring poxwalkers and use Cloud of Flies to stop him being sniped. If you feel like properly picking on custodes like they’re small children with milk money then there’s option two, which is to take two death shroud terminators (although only in an elite game) and something to make up the cost for a three man minimum team. Deathshrouds are the toughest thing in the game after custodes, with toughness 5, 2+/4++/5+++ and weapons which deal a straight 3 damage. They are the only thing in the game which can fight a custodes and win without cheating, making this tactic a simple matter of playing a game of tag (embarrassing for the custodes, exhausting for you with your 4” move and cataphracti armour).
*'''Thousand Sons:''' Your Brotherhood of Psykers special rule can allow you to simply overwhelm the Custodes with psychic casts. However, you're slow and you won’t get get all is dust against the custodes multi damage weapons so you’ll need to get lucky with the dice rolls.
*'''Eldar:''' For games with commanders, Farseers have multiple casts per turn, letting you reliably get at least one power off without a hitch. Use it to either spam Psybolt and/or buff one of your dudes with a Fusion Gun or a Bright Lance platform. Your Warlock's/Spiritseer's Jinx power can be incredibly useful, as it's one of the precious few ways to ''reduce'' their invuln saves. Alternatively, Wraithguard with Wraithcannons or D-Scythes can potentially kill a Custodes model with a few lucky shots. Defensively, use your slightly superior speed to attempt to kite them or at the very least duck behind cover.
*'''Dark Eldar:''' All your poison weaponry with some reasonable ap gives you a better chance of wounding a custodian than most factions, but you're extremely squishy and not as good in melee as you need to be to 1.kill a custodian or 2. Actually survive the encounter. Stay at range, stay mobile and stay hidden.
*'''Harlequins:''' 4+ invulnerability saves and large numbers of high quality attacks will serve you well, but unfortunately that’s your only option as your ranged weapons are not up to the task of fighting a custodian. Make your pistols as cheap as possible, take your best melee weapons and get the charge, which, admittedly, is precisely what the space clowns are good at.
*'''Necrons:''' Take full advantage of how resilient necrons are, the multiple damage custodes deal combined with buffs to reanimating protocols means that it will be disproportionately difficult for a custodian to kill a necron warrior. With this you either have the choice of buffed hordes, swamping your foe with all that beautiful ap-1 fire you have, or close in with necrons with pseudo storm shields and melee weapons.
*'''Orks:''' Tell the Custodian player that a Meganob costs one point more than a custodian guard despite having a worse movement, weapon skill, ballistic skill, toughness, and leadership, no invulnerable save, a worse shooting attack, worse special rules, and a comparable melee weapon that actually costs points. That way, when you inevitably lose, you might make the other guy feel a bit guilty. Seriously, there's not much you can do. You don't have any of the tools necessary to beat the bananas. Maybe just take 16 boyz and 1 grot to drown them in dice rolls before your team gets broken by morale, but even then it's a long shot.
**Counterargument: Orks are some of the best armies to play against Custodes, simply because the amount of bodies they can throw at the Emperor's caretakers. A Kommando Boss, Two Kommandoes, a Burna Boy, a Boy Gunner with the Rokkit Launcher and 15 gretchins are more than six times the amount of bodies the Custodes can kill. If you send the gretchins to block the custodes' movements by keeping them in melee, the kommandoes to get the "Kunnin’ Infiltrators" stratagem to move behind enemy lines and take difficult objectives, and the boy with the rockit just in case you get lucky and manage to get one down in one shot, you can have uncontested control of the battlefield. They can kill three of your units at most each turn (and you can improve those odds with "Just a Flesh Wound" stratagem, so your team will hardly be broken by morale before getting all of the objective points and winning the game. Throw garbage at them, one gretchin at a time, keep them from moving, and keep your leader hidden. [[lulz|That's the way the cheapest unit in the game can win against the most elite of teams]].
***This assumes that you're dedicating your entire roster to just fight AC and only works in missions that don't have killing victory conditions.
*'''T'au Empire:''' Mobility is your only option. The tau have excellent guns, but if a custodian gets into melee with any of your units (anything from warrior to battle suit) you're dead. Period. Instead, fill up on battle suits or stealth suits and keep the custodes at a distance, make maximum use of cover, line of sight and any additional buffs and hope that the boys in gold don’t catch up.
*'''Tyranids:''' Did someone say lictors? We did, and they’re right behind you. Take four lictors and dog pile the two or three custodians you’ll be fighting. The lictors high attacks count, strength 6 and good ap means that one or two lictors on the charge (which you will have) have a “good” chance of killing a banana. Downside, lictors are very squishy, if you're caught in the open, wait too long to charge or get stuck in melee you’ll be dead, 4 wounds is not enough against 4 strength 6 ap-3 DD3 attacks. As they want to get into melee range as well, if the terrain allows save your CP you normally might use for Veteran or Metabolic Overdrive and use it instead on Adrenaline Surge to try and get whoever you gang up on first dead before the other 2 join the fray. Caustic Blood and Implant Attack are less useful but given your entire battle is likely to be decided entirely in 2 or 3 fight phases, it can be worth spending the CP. 
** Pretty much uniquely, the nids have access to the only commander capable of going toe-to-toe with custodes and coming out on top: the broodlord. Make him a level 3 melee specialist, and you get 7 WS2+ attacks rerolling ones, wounding on 4s, also rerolling ones, and with AP-3 Dd3. The clincher here, however, is that on a wound roll of 6 your damage is upped to 3 (courtesy of the claws) and turned into MORTAL wounds (courtesy of the level 3 melee ability). This means if you roll one 6 out of 7 hits (and the maths is firmly in your favour here) you INSTAKILL CUSTODES. Two 6s and you're instakilling shield captains. Plus you're faster than them so they can't run away, and you can cast catalyst on yourself for a 5+++. However, your defence is far weaker than theirs, so if they charge first you can take some serious damage, and they can whittle you down in the shooting phase as well. Stick to cover and let them come close to you before charging (charging happens in the movement phase in kill team, after all, so if they want to get closer they won't be able to swing first). 

*'''Genestealer Cults:''' Rock Cutters. You have 4 of them and they're your best hope, but pray to the great devoured in the sky that the dice gods are merciful. Alternatively go as cheap as possible on your models to take one patriarch as your commander and go to town with your 6 multi damage attacks at strength 6 rerolling failed wounds. In both scenarios however you’ll need to dodge from cover to cover to avoid being blown to pieces by the custodes shooting.
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'''TotE Strategies:'''
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OK fine, we'll talk about how best to use your Golden Boys.
First, its key to keep in mind that with 2-3 unit kill teams you can fit every possible kill team combination possible in 100pt games on your Roster. There's no real reason not to take the perfect list.
Second, you're godlike in melee. That is where you live. But outside of it, your D2 AP-1 might look attractive but it's low strength and there's only 3 of you putting out fire. If all three of you fired at a lowly guardsman theres a 10% he walks away. Sounds good until you realize theres 8 of them, averaging 5+W of damage against you a around, because don't doubt they'll resort to plasma spam if they're facing you. And guardsmen aren't even particularly good shots compared to some of the other things out there.
But in melee, you're safe. They can't run any more, their buddies can't shoot you and you're dishing out between 3 up to 5 attacks with a WS2+ and a strength and damage equivalent to a Supercharged Plasma Gun plus an extra attack with the Misercordia.
Terrain use is key, as is using the Balistus's Concussion Grenades if you're taking an Allarus. When losing one model is 1/2 of your team, you don't want to be at the whims of the RNGod. Coupling Take Forward Positions and the Veterans Adaptive Tactics and a first round Charge can lock down several models early and end the game before it begins. A scout can also help but keep in mind that with 2 or 3 models, Take Forward Positions 20% only applies to 1 model. 

Also while your golden boys are harder thenall the sailors lineing up to meet your mum, you still only have four of them and objective games will be a struggle. As such don't discount the Sisters of Silence. A kill team of five sisters and two Custodes strikes a balance between numbers and toughness and increases range firepower with just more bolter bodies.
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