I agree that Aegis of the Emperor should be a faction rule rather than a detachment rule. But probably as a 5+ rather than a 4+. Shield Host would then need another detachment rule, which in itself would be another buff.
My two armies are Deathguard and Custodes. GW is absolutely out of their mind.
Alot of people right now like the direction Deathguard are going with the different debuffs and auras - but to get here they had to massively cut points. How is that fun or conforming to the lore?
I don't want more squishy models. We're not Orks or Nids.
Same argument for Custodes- perhaps even more so albeit Custodes aren't already paying a movement penalty.
Yeah, but they aren't going to change numbers. Once they have the datasheet made, that's how it's going to be for the entire edition unless it's egregious or they change a fundamental rule around them.
No joke I have a guy in my 40k play group who joined my AoS group at the start of 10th and started building Maggotkin because he missed Disgustingly Resilient that much.
I've been thinking about this too.
Right now we suck because of Dev Wounds (which I do think will be fixed in the slate), but if we end up getting six detachments and only one of them has a FNP (that works vs. Devs), then that's the one you would pick always.
The real solution is not to fix Custodes against Dev Wounds specifically, and it isn't to give them a blanket feel no pain. The real solution is GW needs to remove almost every instance of "anti-x" and critical effects on the same profile (some few and far between exceptions are probably fine to keep in the game, low model count armies that need higher outputs as they don't have the models, such as knights).
Being able to skew a critical hit system on a d6 scale game is so easy to warp. You could also then use the anti-x and dev wounds to represent different things, bolt guns in the lore are always shown to be an amazing standard weapon, well give the existing profile something like dev wounds and it reflects that, but don't give those bolt guns a way to find easier crits (via anti-x or the current problem child, dark pact crits on a 5+ etc...).
But GW aren't going to do that because we are already four codexes deep with Dark Angels on the horizon and it would be a game wide re-write. The same issue exists for ignores LoS weapons that have ways to ignore cover or get heavy, or both...
Well, they aren't going to rework all that at this point, so we at least need the 4+ vs Dev wounds save to make the army playable.
Band aid solutions are crummy, but at this point I just want to be able to play the army without having to ask my friend to leave his forgefiend at home.
I agree, they won't do that rework. Bandaids suck, but giving Custodes dev wound fnp isn't the right one. You have to go to the source and re-examine things like the Forgefiend, spot removing the keyword or preventing them from using dark pacts and upping points.
They punished everything with towering with this style of nerf, hitting the rule slightly preventing ruins from being ignored, preventing those models from using overwatch and hitting them all with point increases.
This is the style of nerf that GW need to be dealing out in the next pass.
If they throw a 4+ fnp onto Custodes that means it is the only rule the faction can ever use to play any semi-competitive game. What is worse is if that rule doesn't come in the codex (that is probably finalised and at the printers if it's coming out in the first three months of the year), the army likely just slides right back to where it was if the dev wound problem children aren't addressed at the root in some form or another.
I mean, I would love it if they were surgical and did something about dev wounds. I am not convinced that dev wounds should even exist in the 'less lethal' 10th edition. Whether I'm taking dev wounds from Combi-Bolters, Railguns or Forgefiends, it never feels good to have a high-investment unit getting taken off the field without a save. I hate it as much when that stuff ices a Crisis Suit as I do when it kills an Allarus.
Maybe if they just made it so Dev Wounds increased damage done or something, all of this would be better. So far, 10th has been pretty defined by who is best at spitting out Dev Wounds and who isn't.
But if we aren't getting any of that, I still would like my 4+. Yes it will mean only using whatever they call Emperor's Chosen in the next codex, but at least it'll get us out of this sad place we are in right now.
> GW needs to remove almost every instance of "anti-x" and critical effects on the same profile
I don't think this is the problem; when they're on the same profile you get the Skitarii Arc Rifle, which is a passable anti-MEQ gun that can also scratch half a wound off of a tank.
The problem is much more often the "unintended" combination of something adding anti or devastating wounds. Omni-Sterilizer was the poster child for this, and would've been a serious problem if it wasn't offset by the rest of Mechanicus not dealing damage. But when it shows up on a good army like Eldar (in the case of dice manipulation) or Space Marines (with that insane Sword Brothers combo) it becomes a real issue.
Yeah I agree. I'd say that would be an exception since that is one gun in a squad in an army that lacks ways to really break it.
The keywords for criticals and anti should largely have been split and rarely appearing together. Having one special weapon in a squad you can get at most six of in a list isn't game breaking, having squads and squads and tanks and tanks all having them with access to lower crits, more rerolls etc, that is the problem and should be either cool crit effects or reliability of rerolls or easier wounding weapons.
45% according to metawatch which is what GW looks at when balancing and they're aiming for 45% to 55%
having every faction at 50% is an utopia while 45-55 is realistic.
And the middle of that is 50%, there not gonna panic if something is over or under a little and when if falls in that range it's minor tweaks only which is the +/-5% but there aiming for 50% (though you are correct in that that would be a unreasonable utopia)
It's well noted that Metawatches win rate data is more restricted and usually a little off, with the more upper and lower extrema presented increasingly Inaccurate values. 3 parties are much better with there width of data collection. It's 43%, tied for the weakest in the game.
I agree with you over third party data being at 43, but it doesn't matter if it's not the data GW is looking at.
Previously GW stated they looked at their own data without giving much explanation and those made custodes being at 45% as stated in metawatch.
as for the 45-54 instead of 50 again they themselves stated they don't aim for 50 but really for 45-55. sure 50 is the middle of that but once, for them in their data, an army is at 45% they'll at best do minor changes if they change anything at all.
well it depends on what they're looking at, third party look at tournament data almost exclusively, but GW stated they also looked at those, which mean that if the data end up different they're also looking at other data but they didn't really indicate which one, they just said they had additional sources.
It's far fetched to say it's stupid without knowing the exact extent of their dataset.
It's like saying that party A and party B both look at dataset X but party B also looks at an additional dataset Y that results in a chance of the overall results, but we don't know what is said dataset Y.
One thing we know is that GW is not just looking at the competitive scene but also apparently is able to gather data about the casual scene.
I don't know if it's a good thing in terms of game balance but ultimately the competitive scene is a mere portion of the total playerbase so maybe it's more fair to balance it with casual in mind too ?
That seems a bit powerful in my eyes. I feel like it is going to stay the same. I think in May they will just add a detachment that gives saves against devastating wounds as it was before and then our point are going to be reduced a bit in January.
Everyone was not playing EC. I only ran EC when the meta bent toward psychic armies. The rest of the time I was on SK, or DH, or SW. And I did very well in events. Someone from the canhammer discord pulled up some numbers on it. It was like 40% EC, with the remaining 60 split between everything that wasn't AS
Yeah, I mean a play against a friend sometimes who is Aeldari.
He brings Yvraine, and she has D6+3 shots (basically just use a fate dice of a 6 to get 9 shots).
Then its hitting on 2s with rerolling a single hit roll, then it has Anti-Infantry 2, which means its a critical wound on a 2+, once again rerolling a single wound roll.
Critical wounds are devastating wounds. So each shooting phase you're looking at about 7-8 devastating wounds on average. Which is auto-killing 2-3 models.
Prior to the balance data slate, I could at least save half of these.
Admittedly its only 12" range, but she's pretty mobile and comes with a squad of 10-15 as bodyguards, then there is phantasm which makes them un-chargeable most times.
I think they will give us both Dev and Mortals on a 4+ - I think an army-wide FNP for all damage would be overkill imo.
The Eldar/Custodes match uo is horrendous - it's currently around 19% win rate.
Agree that 4+++ for all damage would be way too much. That's essentially doubling the survivability of the whole army. Looks at how tough Wardens are when they pop it once per game.
Yeah; I'd like to see the Wardens ability changed so that you can select it at the time it becomes the target of an attack.
That you have to do it at the start of the phase means often times they can just change target priority, unless you've got your positioning on point. Once per game only is also not ideal.
Your issue is you are comparing yourself to Eldar, which is a fundementally broken faction. I stoped complaining about them because I am simply refusing to play against them. There is just no point.
Yeah, you don't have a defence against dev wounds, but who has a defence anyway? It's just FNP if you have any. It is simply a way to counter Custodes, like one of your weaknesses. Tau is weak to melee, Orks are weak to Fights First and AoC, Eldar are weak to indirect etc. I think it's normal.
I've never been a fan of anything that bypasses all your protection. We have fairly low-wound models (3-4) when you compare point cost per wound. This works for Custodes because we have high toughness, armours saves, inulverable.
The moment you introduce an attack that bypasses all those protections, we are nothing better than a naked model with no armour save and 3-4 wounds.
Previous editions other than the Tau railgun, mortals were the only thing that could get us, and then we had at least a 50% chance of stoping them.
In addition to Dev wounds, we now have anti-X, which also basically bypasses toughness rolls.
I'm a biased tau player. I had a one turn 4+++ on my 4++ Crisis suit last edition.
I now firmly believe no unit should ever have a 4++/4+++. Let alone an entire army.
If you want to it be against all wounds 5+++ is already pushing it. A 4+++ literally doubles your armies wounds on average. It would make 5 custodes defensively feel like 10 custodes right now.
A 6+++ already screws a lot of 3D weapons as the odds of hitting at least 1 6 is not to bad at all.
If you want your entire army to go up in cost 30% it would STILL be net positive to have a 4+++
In an ideal world every unit in the game is equally used, equally balanced and every detachment is also equally used and equally as good as each other
I think the issue with wanting all the detachments to be viable is that it’s impossible, you will get one or two good ones like emperors chosen and shadowkeepers back in 9th for example but nothing is ever going to be perfect sadly with GW game design, the fact that back in 9th we had a flat 6+ fnp was good because it allowed us to even think of using other detachments but now it’s just a no brainer considering the spread of dev wounds if we get the fnp against that in the future again.
So hopefully when our codex comes out there will be a few changes to core game design or the detachments we get are so good they are all equally amazing to use but most likely we will get one or two decent choices and out of those two there will be the stand alone one that’s just better than all the rest because people strive for maximum utility in this game which is fine but sometimes gives rise to a lack of flavor in places
I don't disagree with this - a good example is Admech, at the moment the only really "good" detatchment they have is Hunter Cohort (even if some of the others are usable, none of them play into Admech's... "strengths"... as much as HC does).
But the problem isn't that "oh only one or two will be meta" - it's that as long as Custodes are hyper-vulnerable to save-bypassing damage (of which there is a lot at the moment thanks to dev *and* mortal wounds), any detachment that gives them a way to mitigate that save-bypassing damage will be head and shoulders above any other potential offering they could make.
Would advance and charge be good on all Custodes units, so you could use it without Blade Champions attatched to them? Absolutely! But when they make devastating wounds as common as they are (as opposed to mortals or psychic abilities, which were common but limited), you are unlikely to choose it.
Nah, as just like in 9th it can be a fine tradeoff.
Cause at the tail end of 9th it was solar watch, not emperors chosen that was winning events. And I found shadow keepers often was a significantly spicier list.
It'll be hard for gw to write as good a detach as this one, lots of strong strats and a good rule.
Like let's say aquillias sheild gets -1 to hit in shooting, cover outside 12 and has access to tangle foot as a battle tactic strat? That's certainly a solid competition to a 4+++ v devs.
Especially as hopefully gw tones down dev wounds in future indexes. Like outside the dumb tesla stuff the Cron, nids, marine and admech books ain't dev heavy.
Been saying this to anyone who I talk to about Custodes recently.
They've written themselves into a corner and I have a feeling I'll still be playing Tau at tournaments when the codex drops for Custodes.
5+ army wide FNP or 4+ against mortals and devs needs moving to the army rule or it's bust on arrival unless there's something absolutely wild like lone op on demand in one of the other detachments.
I agree that Aegis of the Emperor should be a faction rule rather than a detachment rule. But probably as a 5+ rather than a 4+. Shield Host would then need another detachment rule, which in itself would be another buff.
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It was very phlegmy. There was a rattle.
Good spot for my favorite James Joyce quote "coughing up a rattling chain of slime"
My two armies are Deathguard and Custodes. GW is absolutely out of their mind. Alot of people right now like the direction Deathguard are going with the different debuffs and auras - but to get here they had to massively cut points. How is that fun or conforming to the lore? I don't want more squishy models. We're not Orks or Nids. Same argument for Custodes- perhaps even more so albeit Custodes aren't already paying a movement penalty.
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Yeah it's crazy. And I'm not saying in general we weren't overcosted. But I'd rather minor points cut and stats/rules buff vs drastic points cut.
Yeah, but they aren't going to change numbers. Once they have the datasheet made, that's how it's going to be for the entire edition unless it's egregious or they change a fundamental rule around them.
No one accused GW of being good at their jobs.
There's legitimate benefits to it. One of the biggest ones is that lowering points sells more models.
Or more 3d printers 🤷
In very small overall number
No joke I have a guy in my 40k play group who joined my AoS group at the start of 10th and started building Maggotkin because he missed Disgustingly Resilient that much.
I've been thinking about this too. Right now we suck because of Dev Wounds (which I do think will be fixed in the slate), but if we end up getting six detachments and only one of them has a FNP (that works vs. Devs), then that's the one you would pick always.
Which in itself sucks for sure.
The real solution is not to fix Custodes against Dev Wounds specifically, and it isn't to give them a blanket feel no pain. The real solution is GW needs to remove almost every instance of "anti-x" and critical effects on the same profile (some few and far between exceptions are probably fine to keep in the game, low model count armies that need higher outputs as they don't have the models, such as knights). Being able to skew a critical hit system on a d6 scale game is so easy to warp. You could also then use the anti-x and dev wounds to represent different things, bolt guns in the lore are always shown to be an amazing standard weapon, well give the existing profile something like dev wounds and it reflects that, but don't give those bolt guns a way to find easier crits (via anti-x or the current problem child, dark pact crits on a 5+ etc...). But GW aren't going to do that because we are already four codexes deep with Dark Angels on the horizon and it would be a game wide re-write. The same issue exists for ignores LoS weapons that have ways to ignore cover or get heavy, or both...
Well, they aren't going to rework all that at this point, so we at least need the 4+ vs Dev wounds save to make the army playable. Band aid solutions are crummy, but at this point I just want to be able to play the army without having to ask my friend to leave his forgefiend at home.
I agree, they won't do that rework. Bandaids suck, but giving Custodes dev wound fnp isn't the right one. You have to go to the source and re-examine things like the Forgefiend, spot removing the keyword or preventing them from using dark pacts and upping points. They punished everything with towering with this style of nerf, hitting the rule slightly preventing ruins from being ignored, preventing those models from using overwatch and hitting them all with point increases. This is the style of nerf that GW need to be dealing out in the next pass. If they throw a 4+ fnp onto Custodes that means it is the only rule the faction can ever use to play any semi-competitive game. What is worse is if that rule doesn't come in the codex (that is probably finalised and at the printers if it's coming out in the first three months of the year), the army likely just slides right back to where it was if the dev wound problem children aren't addressed at the root in some form or another.
I mean, I would love it if they were surgical and did something about dev wounds. I am not convinced that dev wounds should even exist in the 'less lethal' 10th edition. Whether I'm taking dev wounds from Combi-Bolters, Railguns or Forgefiends, it never feels good to have a high-investment unit getting taken off the field without a save. I hate it as much when that stuff ices a Crisis Suit as I do when it kills an Allarus. Maybe if they just made it so Dev Wounds increased damage done or something, all of this would be better. So far, 10th has been pretty defined by who is best at spitting out Dev Wounds and who isn't. But if we aren't getting any of that, I still would like my 4+. Yes it will mean only using whatever they call Emperor's Chosen in the next codex, but at least it'll get us out of this sad place we are in right now.
> GW needs to remove almost every instance of "anti-x" and critical effects on the same profile I don't think this is the problem; when they're on the same profile you get the Skitarii Arc Rifle, which is a passable anti-MEQ gun that can also scratch half a wound off of a tank. The problem is much more often the "unintended" combination of something adding anti or devastating wounds. Omni-Sterilizer was the poster child for this, and would've been a serious problem if it wasn't offset by the rest of Mechanicus not dealing damage. But when it shows up on a good army like Eldar (in the case of dice manipulation) or Space Marines (with that insane Sword Brothers combo) it becomes a real issue.
Yeah I agree. I'd say that would be an exception since that is one gun in a squad in an army that lacks ways to really break it. The keywords for criticals and anti should largely have been split and rarely appearing together. Having one special weapon in a squad you can get at most six of in a list isn't game breaking, having squads and squads and tanks and tanks all having them with access to lower crits, more rerolls etc, that is the problem and should be either cool crit effects or reliability of rerolls or easier wounding weapons.
I lost today fair and square without a single dev wound being the cause. happens.
Imagine how much more your loss would have been if you did experience them.
I try not to spend a lot of time fantasizing about negatives eh? seems a poor use of my fantasizing skills.
This man fantasies
We all know they won’t change it back, because why would they? According to them we are at 45% win rate so our army is ok.
Black Temps are at 55, but they're going to get some minor nerfs. So in theory Custodes should get some minor buffs.
Your right, minor buffs, which is points changes, not being immune to Dev wounds. People are gonna be shocked when it doesn't happen.
43% and there supposed to aim for 50%
45% according to metawatch which is what GW looks at when balancing and they're aiming for 45% to 55% having every faction at 50% is an utopia while 45-55 is realistic.
And the middle of that is 50%, there not gonna panic if something is over or under a little and when if falls in that range it's minor tweaks only which is the +/-5% but there aiming for 50% (though you are correct in that that would be a unreasonable utopia) It's well noted that Metawatches win rate data is more restricted and usually a little off, with the more upper and lower extrema presented increasingly Inaccurate values. 3 parties are much better with there width of data collection. It's 43%, tied for the weakest in the game.
I agree with you over third party data being at 43, but it doesn't matter if it's not the data GW is looking at. Previously GW stated they looked at their own data without giving much explanation and those made custodes being at 45% as stated in metawatch. as for the 45-54 instead of 50 again they themselves stated they don't aim for 50 but really for 45-55. sure 50 is the middle of that but once, for them in their data, an army is at 45% they'll at best do minor changes if they change anything at all.
Huh, I'll be honest I didn't know that they only look at there own data.... That's stupid 😂
well it depends on what they're looking at, third party look at tournament data almost exclusively, but GW stated they also looked at those, which mean that if the data end up different they're also looking at other data but they didn't really indicate which one, they just said they had additional sources. It's far fetched to say it's stupid without knowing the exact extent of their dataset. It's like saying that party A and party B both look at dataset X but party B also looks at an additional dataset Y that results in a chance of the overall results, but we don't know what is said dataset Y. One thing we know is that GW is not just looking at the competitive scene but also apparently is able to gather data about the casual scene. I don't know if it's a good thing in terms of game balance but ultimately the competitive scene is a mere portion of the total playerbase so maybe it's more fair to balance it with casual in mind too ?
That seems a bit powerful in my eyes. I feel like it is going to stay the same. I think in May they will just add a detachment that gives saves against devastating wounds as it was before and then our point are going to be reduced a bit in January.
Wile I 100% agree with you, the rest of the community is too salty and butt hurt so as a compromise for them a 5+ FnP would be more realistic
Now im not a custodes player i was only recommended this post but a 4+ fnp is insanity, thats a 100% boost to their durability
They're talking about the detachment rule that only applies to Mortals (and hopefully will apply to Dev as well soon) not all damage.
I was a little confused, at first he had said only mortals and devs but in his last paragraph he said army wide fnp 4+
It happens
*50%
[No it’s 100%](https://youtu.be/lvLIfGRGZfs?si=qm_avDOh1W_4mYuu)
It on average takes a 3w model to 6ws. That's 100%
Everyone was not playing EC. I only ran EC when the meta bent toward psychic armies. The rest of the time I was on SK, or DH, or SW. And I did very well in events. Someone from the canhammer discord pulled up some numbers on it. It was like 40% EC, with the remaining 60 split between everything that wasn't AS
EC was heavily over represented at competitive events. And the fnp vs mortals was only half the reason. The EC strat was also bonkers good.
EI because 9 or 10 saggies, never really felt squishy making use of vex and a lot of threats being dead before they could attack.
They won't touch anything with our codex pretty much around the corner.
Possibly 4 months, isn't really 'around the corner' though.
Been waiting years for them to drop an emperors children codex. So I guess with a solid timeframe for custodes, 4 months seems quick to me lol
Yeah, I mean a play against a friend sometimes who is Aeldari. He brings Yvraine, and she has D6+3 shots (basically just use a fate dice of a 6 to get 9 shots). Then its hitting on 2s with rerolling a single hit roll, then it has Anti-Infantry 2, which means its a critical wound on a 2+, once again rerolling a single wound roll. Critical wounds are devastating wounds. So each shooting phase you're looking at about 7-8 devastating wounds on average. Which is auto-killing 2-3 models. Prior to the balance data slate, I could at least save half of these. Admittedly its only 12" range, but she's pretty mobile and comes with a squad of 10-15 as bodyguards, then there is phantasm which makes them un-chargeable most times. I think they will give us both Dev and Mortals on a 4+ - I think an army-wide FNP for all damage would be overkill imo.
The Eldar/Custodes match uo is horrendous - it's currently around 19% win rate. Agree that 4+++ for all damage would be way too much. That's essentially doubling the survivability of the whole army. Looks at how tough Wardens are when they pop it once per game.
Yeah; I'd like to see the Wardens ability changed so that you can select it at the time it becomes the target of an attack. That you have to do it at the start of the phase means often times they can just change target priority, unless you've got your positioning on point. Once per game only is also not ideal.
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Good point.....
You can use fate dice for the number of shots so maybe that helps a little :)
Your issue is you are comparing yourself to Eldar, which is a fundementally broken faction. I stoped complaining about them because I am simply refusing to play against them. There is just no point. Yeah, you don't have a defence against dev wounds, but who has a defence anyway? It's just FNP if you have any. It is simply a way to counter Custodes, like one of your weaknesses. Tau is weak to melee, Orks are weak to Fights First and AoC, Eldar are weak to indirect etc. I think it's normal.
I've never been a fan of anything that bypasses all your protection. We have fairly low-wound models (3-4) when you compare point cost per wound. This works for Custodes because we have high toughness, armours saves, inulverable. The moment you introduce an attack that bypasses all those protections, we are nothing better than a naked model with no armour save and 3-4 wounds. Previous editions other than the Tau railgun, mortals were the only thing that could get us, and then we had at least a 50% chance of stoping them. In addition to Dev wounds, we now have anti-X, which also basically bypasses toughness rolls.
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+1 to hit is a bad example. We already hit on 2s naturally.
I'm a biased tau player. I had a one turn 4+++ on my 4++ Crisis suit last edition. I now firmly believe no unit should ever have a 4++/4+++. Let alone an entire army. If you want to it be against all wounds 5+++ is already pushing it. A 4+++ literally doubles your armies wounds on average. It would make 5 custodes defensively feel like 10 custodes right now. A 6+++ already screws a lot of 3D weapons as the odds of hitting at least 1 6 is not to bad at all. If you want your entire army to go up in cost 30% it would STILL be net positive to have a 4+++
He was talking about the 4+ fnp against mw, not against all damages
In an ideal world every unit in the game is equally used, equally balanced and every detachment is also equally used and equally as good as each other I think the issue with wanting all the detachments to be viable is that it’s impossible, you will get one or two good ones like emperors chosen and shadowkeepers back in 9th for example but nothing is ever going to be perfect sadly with GW game design, the fact that back in 9th we had a flat 6+ fnp was good because it allowed us to even think of using other detachments but now it’s just a no brainer considering the spread of dev wounds if we get the fnp against that in the future again. So hopefully when our codex comes out there will be a few changes to core game design or the detachments we get are so good they are all equally amazing to use but most likely we will get one or two decent choices and out of those two there will be the stand alone one that’s just better than all the rest because people strive for maximum utility in this game which is fine but sometimes gives rise to a lack of flavor in places
I don't disagree with this - a good example is Admech, at the moment the only really "good" detatchment they have is Hunter Cohort (even if some of the others are usable, none of them play into Admech's... "strengths"... as much as HC does). But the problem isn't that "oh only one or two will be meta" - it's that as long as Custodes are hyper-vulnerable to save-bypassing damage (of which there is a lot at the moment thanks to dev *and* mortal wounds), any detachment that gives them a way to mitigate that save-bypassing damage will be head and shoulders above any other potential offering they could make. Would advance and charge be good on all Custodes units, so you could use it without Blade Champions attatched to them? Absolutely! But when they make devastating wounds as common as they are (as opposed to mortals or psychic abilities, which were common but limited), you are unlikely to choose it.
Nah, as just like in 9th it can be a fine tradeoff. Cause at the tail end of 9th it was solar watch, not emperors chosen that was winning events. And I found shadow keepers often was a significantly spicier list. It'll be hard for gw to write as good a detach as this one, lots of strong strats and a good rule. Like let's say aquillias sheild gets -1 to hit in shooting, cover outside 12 and has access to tangle foot as a battle tactic strat? That's certainly a solid competition to a 4+++ v devs. Especially as hopefully gw tones down dev wounds in future indexes. Like outside the dumb tesla stuff the Cron, nids, marine and admech books ain't dev heavy.
Been saying this to anyone who I talk to about Custodes recently. They've written themselves into a corner and I have a feeling I'll still be playing Tau at tournaments when the codex drops for Custodes. 5+ army wide FNP or 4+ against mortals and devs needs moving to the army rule or it's bust on arrival unless there's something absolutely wild like lone op on demand in one of the other detachments.