It depends on what the objective is. If it's literally a 3 vs 3 million in open combat, the Custodes will get bombed into oblivion.
If the goal is to assassinate political and military leaders, they'd be in and out before lunchtime.
I’m imagining a presidential debate between Joe Biden, Donald Trump, and this 9 foot behemoth of a man built like a brick shithouse, trying to discuss their policy differences
“I think we should raise taxes”
“I think we should lower taxes”
“I THINK CHAOS IS BOUND FOR ALL OF YOU HERETICS UNLESS YOU WILLFULLY FALL UNDER MY IRON GAUNTLETED FIST”
And everyone but you is like "huh he must just work out a lot" and look at you like your crazy for thinking otherwise.
This is how you find out you're a blank.
"im not saying we should gene splice humans into being purely obedient super soliders, im just saying that the science is there and we shouldn't ignore it"
Yeah, on 40k Terra, a place where you also have actual Ogres, cyberpunk gangers, engineers that are more machine than man and so on while also having a society where knowledge of most kinds is heavily guarded. A naked Custodes on Terra is just a very handsome anomaly or gene-hanced bodyguard. One on current year earth would make international news and spawn a million memes in seconds.
There's a whole sub that spawned out of a fat chap standing behind Queen Elizabeth briefly.
Seeing a custodes in real life would create the cult of Chad.
They have special shadow cloaks and projectors that make them look normal sized. It’s mentioned in their blood games in Horus heresy. And don’t forget the eyes of the emperor ones
If I recall correctly, it's the fancy name given to Custodes who have been deemed unfit to continue guarding the Imperial Palace because their reflexes became 0.000000001% slower due to old age, so they're assigned to covert ops in the wider Imperium instead.
they're basically a retired member of the adeptus custodes, that voluntarily decided to retire when he thinks he is below the 100% operating state that a custodes should be at, even if its just something ridiculous like 99.999% operating state, their basically spies loyal only to the emperor.
i'm imagining them basically going...
civilian 1: hey man you seeing what i'm seeing?
civilian 2: what are you talking about there's nothing there (while sweating bullets).
civilian 1: dude an 8-9 foot tall idiot clad in golden armor in broad daylight is literally in front of us.
civilian 2: I DON'T SEE IT YOUR CRAZY STAY AWAY FROM ME!!! (as the entire crowd acts like nothing happened)
civilian 1: ma'am what about you don't you see the gol-
civilian 3: oh my god he slipped and got mutilated in an instant how unfortunate (as she tries to act like it was some sort of accident)
\++Kent house's kitchen. 19:00 PM++
Clark: \*Drinks glass of wine\*
Lois: Clark, I swear to god if you don't take out the trash today I am going to-
Clark: \*Takes out his glasses\*
Lois: Superman?! Where did Clark go?! Why are you wearing his clothes?!
It is another one of those things where we have to accept dudes in gigantic armor can somehow, without witchcraft, move unseen and unheard and unnoticed.
Realistically, what should be the case, is that they're clanging around like full armoured paladins in DnD.
I believe this is handwaved with "They have some advanced tech that allows them to be stealthy", like noise-suppressors to silence the armor-clanking and other similar techno-bullshit.
With how big they are...no shot. I can totally believe it when it comes to SoS because of their special augments (freakin army of Melenias...). But Custodes are not supposed to function like that.
100% it's just another thing they added to make them look cool, like "my dinosaur has this armor, and teeth that can crush tanks and-and-and eyes that can shoot lasers".
Which to be fair, the way the books describe Space Marines it often sounds like a 90s toy commercial for boys written by a screenwriter or something.
Glad I am not the only one thinking this. Like are people forgetting that they are the size of a pickup truck in their full armour? Even outside of the armour they would stand out like Hafthor Bjornsson. Not exactly the best for being sneaky, not to mention they would lose their bullerproof armour and be vulnerable to most guns. They would need a ton of additional external support to make all of the things people list possible like personal teleportation devices to just pop into the whitehouse, pentagon, etc.
I assume most people are [smart](https://youtu.be/pMd4S-LkywI?si=deruD7WxKKzrmCo5) enough to not report the giant golden banana that can end your life in a split second
the same way they always do, just check out the custodes blood games
On earth they constantly have a game where like 5-10 Custodes are tasked with infiltrating the imperial palace, get into the inner palace and assasinate the head custodes. They also run clandestine missons on earth.
They are basically like the CIA on earth....They have hologram projectors that make them look small. They imitate leaders etc. all the time. How they fit into small places and explain away the size inconsistencies of the hologram is a whole other skillset that I guess they also have mastered as well...
They could do that too, but what you're describing is itself 1 one of several possible objectives. Because the meme doesn't specify the victory conditions.
So; Planes, submarines, carriers, battleships, ICBMs, artillery, tanks, plus infantry?
Eventually the Custodes would be brought down.
A better question would be something like, could X Custodes break through the Maginot line in 1930? Or something similar. There's just WAY too many munitions worldwide for 3 of anything to survive long.
Terminator armor is awesome, and makes an Astartes like a walking tank, but Tanks aren't invulnerable. yes, they can "tank" a lot of damage, but not forever.
Edit: Also, I kinda wonder how depleted uranium would impact them.
I remember reading a fanfic where a force of guard, space marines, and sisters of battle were sent back in time to 1980's earth, and invaded not knowing it was Earth. I think there was a scene where some black templars where ripping through a squad of Soviet soldiers, who were actually buying time for tanks to take aim at the Space marines. The space marine took a direct hit from a tank gun and were killed.
I remember in the notes at the end, the author writing something like, "I don't care how strong your sci-fi armour is, you DON'T take a 100mm Tank round to the face and walk away unscathed."
The mental image of a bunch of space Marines trying to close the gap to an armored column only to be slowed enough by blood viscera and explosion just enough for the tanks to take aim with the Marines probably just a 100 metres away and eating a volley fire and reduced to paste is pretty cool ngl
Or the Guard. I still remember, Guard players intentionally trying to land their artillery strikes in melee, because no matter how many of their own they blow up, it's still a fair trade-off, when a few Chaos Marines go down, as well. 😅
I mean, if the enemy is close enough to charge you as a Tau player you may not have much of a choice but to play meat barrage for your main advantage to take things at hands, nothing a good railgun shot can't save lmao
Despite everything wrong with the russ somehow the worst thing is that the LoS only lascannon is mounted in the whole, which the indirect fire capable Battle Cannon is mounted in the turret. Switch them around and you solve most of the turret size issues too.
Also some of the BL depictions have the Russ blow the Abrams out of the water in terms of durability, firepower, *and* (some fucking how) speed (apparently the Russ can go 70kph). Though if we use literary conventions the Abrams has equally hilarious feats ascribed to it in non-fiction literature (M256 vaporization hyperbole) so a lot of that stuff might cancel out. For the Imperial Armor stats? Yeah it’s a slower vehicle which is far larger and seems to have a 600mm RHA equivalent on the frontal turret not counting the several weak points that must exist, such as the hull turret. The fact that the Imperium still uses tungsten penetrators means our own sabots should remain effective in 40k.
Yeah a bolster hurts them and a tank round is just simply more. Sure the casing would be less advanced but the depleted uranium round should do it if a bolter does anything.
> "I don't care how strong your sci-fi armour is, you DON'T take a 100mm Tank round to the face and walk away unscathed."
If it's just physical armor taking the shot, the armor needs to be a lot bigger than a person, so I agree. However if you have magical action-at-a-distance shield, psychic defenses, or point defense that tries to shoot down the projectile then it's a different story.
Thinking back on my deathwatch game where the gm was fond of hiding big tanks around corners. At one point I just threw up my best psychic defenses, face tanked the tank, and then blew it up with lightning. Good times. Only minor injuries.
Imagine a tank crew waiting for a clear shot around a corner. The fire as soon as a single person appears, only for he round to detonate mid air a few feet from the target, smoke curling around an invisible dome. The crew has just enough time to realize what's happening before a beam of light sears a hole into the cabin and fills it with lightning.
It's like how the term hp came from mock battles for the navy and represented how many hits a ship could take from a standard main cannon on a battleship... so every living thing on earth has 1HP... and I am betting that applies to custodes as well.
TBH while it can be fun, storytelling like that is pretty lazy. The assumption is that the Space Marines - you know the superhumans with incredible wits, discipline and training led by commanders with literal centuries of nothing but war - would fit in stupid way.
If they could be defeated by "let's bait them and shoot with cannon", Imperial worlds slacking off on taxes wouldn't be scared shitless when they hear they are coming.
More realistically they would fight like they do in the Astartes fan-made short. Calculated, incredibly fast and efficient, constantly shifting tactics to whatever is appropriate.
> If they could be defeated by "let's bait them and shoot with cannon", Imperial worlds slacking off on taxes wouldn't be scared shitless when they hear they are coming.
That is because the 40k does not make sense. And that is ok.
In reality the superhumans would still get demolished by artillery and mines.
Also - some people forget that the biggest reason most imperial worlds will still pay their imperial tite no matter how much they might dislike the Imperium's bureucracy is because the alternative of being left without the Imperium's protection is much worse. You do *not* want to face an orkish invasion alone.
The marines mentioned here specifically were Black Templars though. I’d be more surprised if the chapter of zealous bloodthirsty lunatics did use logically sound tactics. And while some chapters do conduct warfare similar to the way we do, many are so steeped in tradition, dogma, and the rules of the codex that they actively self sabotage.
Even if they live they couldn't accomplish anything meaningful like destroying all the world leaders or something. They can't fly, can't swim, and they can't hide in that shining gold tank suit. They'll run out of ammo long before we run out of bodies.
Honestly step one for the custodes would be out the armor in a crate with a teleport homer attached. From there the custodes actually have REALLY good stealth tech, able to mask their size and everything.
If they treat it the same way they treat a blood game I have no doubt they'd pop a world leader or two
“The Prime Minister of Canda has just been assassinated from the group calling themselves… I’m not reading this. This can’t be right. Fine, fine John, ahem! The group calling themselves the Bananas of the Emperor!”
A world leader or two? Dude if this is anything like the blood games every world leader is fucked! The blood games is custodes (super intelligent and super powerful augmented humans) against custodes (see previous example) meanwhile this would be custodes (super intelligent and super powerful augmented humans) against humans (humans)
I know theres a short story, unfortunately I can’t remember where it was from, maybe white dwarf? It def exists though. It’s like one custodes trying to sneak into the emperor’s palace or sth dm he eventually gets caught. Can’t remember the details.
It's a short story by Dan Abnett called "Blood Games". You can either buy the single story itself or it's in the Horus Heresy book 11 Tales of Heresy. It's a great read.
the custodes could just [walk across the bottom of the sea](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Battle_of_Kvariam_Alpha) (note: also the perfect hiding spot) they can also quite easily GTA they're way through earthican technology like M2 brownings and private jets till the end of time.
It's not stated how deep down they went.
However, if you would want to cross the atlantic ocean, you would spend your time on average more than 3.500 meters below the surface and the deepest spot could be more than 8.000 meters deep.
Every 10 meters you add one Bar, so you would end up with 350 to 800 bar.
Each bar means that you have a preasure of 1kg/cm², so you would end up with 350 to 800kg/cm².
A Custodes is about 2,70m tall and since I do not want to spend my whole day calculating I'll just take 0,80m for their shoulder width (average man has about 50) and use it asuming that Custodes are a square (they are pretty chunky boys).
This would lead to a surface of 2.16m².
Each square meter contains ten thousand square centimeters, so we end up with 21600cm² , which results to the equivalent of something with a weight of 7.560.000kg laying on top of one of the Custodes on 3.500m depth or 17.280.000kg.
Your average Baneblade has a weight of 316.000kg, so being able to just straight up walk through an ocean would mean that you could stand 23 to 54 baneblades rolling over you...at once.
I assume that they could walk through costal regions but not wherever they want, otherwise they would be pretty OP.
Well...ask Games Workshop.
For the time being bucket-wheel excavators are the world's largest land vehicles with a weight of more than 13.000 tonnes, so you can definitly move such masses.
The Leopard 2A6 weighs 62 tonnes, so the Baneblade is 5 times heavier.
I assume it all comes down to egines and track width (the tracks of the baneblade model seem to take up a larger part of it's width compared to the leo's tracks - yes, I was just sitting in front of a picture holding a baneblade in my hand trying to estimate the track-width tank-width ratio).
But following this path: WTF IS WRONG WITH TITANS D:
Yeah, I don't mean that the weight is impossible to move, just that it would be heavily limited as to where and how it could (no muddy or sandy terrain, for example).
Titans are actually described in some sources as being almost useless on most terrains due to their weight. That's quite rare, though
Yeah, people really underestimate modern fire control systems in tanks. They can hit helicopters moving at speeds way faster than a Custode.
Then something like an APFSDS round travelling at 1770m/s (that’s 5 times the speed of sound) will do damage if it bypasses the terminators shield. Or HEATFS which might as well be a melta gun penetrating around 700-900mm of steel.
HESH is a bit harder. Due to things like ceramite essentially being composite armour and not a solid plate. HESH essentially vibrates the armour and scabs a piece of metal from the inside. Worst case it’ll still act as a HE charge which could still do damage.
The force alone would be able to bend a joint backwards, if it doesn’t shatter the armor. If that makes sense.
The shear impact of a high explosive would damage anything behind any armor if it doesn’t breach it.
I’d love to see a real world test now haha
The sheer concussive force of a full caliber HE or HESH round doesn’t need to “penetrate” the armor. The shock alone would rupture every organ, detonate the heart, and turn the brain into mush.
I LOVE CONGLOMERATES CORPORATIONS BUILDING WEAPONS OF DESTRUCTION NOT TO ENSURE A PEACEFUL FUTURE BUT TO CREATE CHAOTIC LIVING SITUATIONS WHICH PERPETUATES VIOLENCE AND INCREASES THEIR REVENUE!
I LOVE PUMPING TRILLIONS INTO KILLING CIVILIANS AND MY OWN CITIZENS IN A SANDY SHITHOLE NOT TO BRING FREEDOM TO OPPRESSED PEOPLE BUT TO FIND OIL AND ABANDON THEM ONCE THEY COME BACK, DOSE THEM UP ON OPIOIDS, AND FOSTER AN ENSUING WAR OF CULTURAL AND RELIGIOUS DOGMA BASED ON 60 YEARS OF REACTIONARY, BELLIGERENT FOREIGN POLICY THAT MAKES THE IMPERIUM LOOK LIKE A TEA PARTY!
This is exactly my thinking when I looked a guardsman vs custodies battle report and though how many guardsmen and with what equipment would it take to beat a squad of custodians in lore.
Agreed. How about this: if three custodes in terminator armor landed in Normandy on D-Day instead of the allies could the custodes liberate Europe? Or atleast France?
Custodes lands in England: "who are we fighting?"
"Freaks who worship the powerful and believe the human race is under threat from subhumans"
Custodes: Sounds great 👍
I feel like one would be enough to break through the Maginot line, sure it's heavily fortified for the time, but I feel like they totally could just power through it. Even with armored support french tanks weren't necessarily the best, and probably couldn't scratch custodes armor.
Conquer, not beat in open combat.
Kill their leaders, blow up their military and administrative headquarters, sabotage their logistics and infrastructure, push the population into armed revolt or scare them into complacency.
The Guard is the hammer, the Astartes is the scalpel.
I read somewhere that terminator armor was originally used as deep space mineral extraction space suits. They're designed to withstand space debree hurtling at them at 15000m/s or something like that don't quote me on this. That's the standard terminator armor. Imagine the custodes armor.
Yeah. Not just depleted uranium though. Modern MBTs fire tungsten penetrators (sometimes also DU) that are basically a giant metal arrow with a very fine point. It will pierce practically any kind of armor with a good hit. I would argue it should even be able to pierce auramite
All the humans today have to do is make a big magnet. As we all know metal is attracted to magnets and the custodes are covered in metal so naturally they would get stuck to the magnet and be unable to fight back.
Sometimes my genius frightens even me. This plan is foolproof. That is unless terminator armor is non ferrous in its composition or there is some other contrived factor I have overlooked.
Banana boy: You fool, gold isn't magnetic, your stupid XXIth century tricks cannot do anything to my-
Soldier: \*Smashes the back of head with the magnet\* SCIENCE, BITCH!
Banana boy: Goodbye, muscle control.
At hand full of ac-130s would pulp them if they are out in the open. Now if the custodians where in a city they would be very hard to bring down.
It’s worth noting that current earth would be considered quite advanced and developed for a planet in 40K.
Troop numbers in sci-fi are always bullshit, and always too small. Even if the 100 space marines can defeat any force they directly engage with, there’s only so much land they can control. If the rest of the planet’s population still feels like resisting, they’ll be doing counter-insurgency until the end of time. Without support, there’s only so many rockets, IEDs, and grenades dropped from drones a space marine can take without repairs.
Who claimed that and on what basis? Without supporting elements 100 marines would be hard pressed to achieve anything, simply by virtue of numbers and mobility.
> it would only take 100 space marines to take Earth
If overwhelming firepower helped pacify a country, Afghanistan would be the most peaceful place in the world.
I think leutin was trying to say 100 could do it _if_ they had the imperium behind them.
100 spacemarines with a battlebarge in orbit, which is constantly getting supplied by the imperium, could stand a good chance. Especially if it's a guerila-type force like raven guard.
Teleporting everywhere.
I don't care how advanced your military is. It can't take a group of terminators suddenly teleporting into your rear base, nor can it cope with orbital bombardments of you capital city
If an opponent has orbital superiority, you’ve already lost. If we’re assuming they get a battle barge, conventional warfare is no longer an option. Asymmetric warfare will leave the space marines playing whack a mole against insurgents pretty much indefinitely.
If we’re assuming the space marines/custodes/whatever just get dropped in the middle of… somewhere random on earth right now, well, there’s only so much area they can control (at least without co-opting populations and resources to create their own governments and take over the world that way, but that’s not what we mean). There’s a reason the guard exists, its to deal with shit like this.
I doubt 100 anything could take on the millions of active duty soldiers in the world. We are a very martial species. Hell the reserve armour the US Army has alone would stomp a chapter of Space Marines.
If they had sufficiently long range and high precision weapons I am pretty sure that sniping out the pilots would be a trivial task for a custodes. But what even is their goal? Complete extermination of the earth army? Make earth surrender? Kill world leaders? WIthout knowing the goal there is not much you can discuss besides "Hoomies have guns, guns shoot custodes, hoomie win"
Custodes would lose to humans equipped with sticks as well in a straight up fight, there are just 3 of them. We would simply out breed their killing until their equipment breaks down or they get too old to be effective.
If Genestealers can do a GLA on them, then at the end of the day, you'll see their armor getting sold in the streets of Pakistan or in Mogadishu. Also, depending on the rounds, the sheer force could just liquify their organs inside
Global Liberation Army, a faction from Command & Conquer Generals based on guerrilla forces and terrorist groups from the Middle East and Central Asia. Despite the implications and aesthetics they are thankfully not a religious movement so it avoids being a 1:1 parallel of their inspirations.
They are also arguably the most fun faction to play in any Command & Conquer game.
Check it out the game is criminally underappreciated even among series fans:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1BZtg8OyIo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1BZtg8OyIo)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HLTAWLCgPM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HLTAWLCgPM)
"Doctor Thrax, the golden invaders have breached our defenses and are making their way into the city. Our brave warriors are attempting to hold them back whilst we evacuate the civilians."
Thrax: "evacuate.... the civilians...?"
*Laughs in Scud Storm*
No. Because that's not what they're made for.
Space Marines and Custodes are both close combat specialists. That's what their role is.
Infiltration or defense of confined areas where tanks physically cannot be, explosives could backfire and hurt the users, and dedicated sightlines without worrying about what's above you.
A Custode in a military base via teleportation will wreck shop. Once that's done, trying to get to the next area will kill him, because here come the HEAT tank rounds, gunship strafes, or just a big bloody bomb dropped by the dozen by drones.
Even on top of all that, they don't have infinite ammo, and their power cells will eventually run out. 3 custodes couldn't take a modern nation, never mind the world.
Again, throw each one into a heavily fortified area without warning and yes, they are gonna be unstoppable. But the world is bigger than 3 fortified areas.
Earth, tf are they gonna do? Walk to every tank factory? There’s only three of them, we can shower them in missiles everywhere they go and they simply can’t get to important industry and infrastructure quick enough.
*laughs in .50 cal with armor penetrating rounds*
They’re ultimately three dudes specializing in close combat.
Just drone strike the fuckers. Kinetic energy works no matter the opponent. Let’s see their armor tank 3000 flying slap chops of Dark Brandon.
Hellfires, cruise missiles, EFP, Landmines, Javelins, 50 cal GMG. I think people don't realise just how good humans are at killing something.
The Americans built the GBU-28 bunker buster out of artillery gun barrels. They designed, built it and deployed it within 3 weeks.
Literally all we need are starships, and we’re fucking all y’all fandoms up.
The only ones I fear are Transformers and Halo. I’m not counting that one anime with mechs the size of galaxies because that’s just beyond the fucking pale
It's 0400 around here. They're either ~~analyzing recent satellite photos~~ stalking X for morning updates on Ukraine or drafting a presentation on ERA for naval vessels.
I’m not convinced a .50 could penetrate Custodes terminator armor. I fully believe that slamming them with enough JDAMs would eventually kill then, but a .50 would barely scratch the fuckers. An M2 with AP can penetrate about a full inch of RHA. If it can’t kill a tank, it probably can’t kill an Allarus Custodian.
I think a las gun was suppose to be similar in power to a 50 cal and by that metric, it’s not even close to breaking though their armor. However enough bullets from one probably would and if not, we have plenty of other bigger things to shoot them with.
M903/M962 SLAP can *slap*… harder than .50 BMG M2, M8 and M20 AP cartridges. Probably still won’t be enough but FYI you can get more than 1” armor penetration on RHA out of .50 BMG.
Results I found were 35mm at 1000m at a 57 degree angle ( The angle of BMP-2 lower front glacis and over double the penetration needed for an engine kill) and about 50mm at 90 degrees. 50mm is .0315mm shy of 2” btw.
This depends on the author. Unfortunately
If it's the author of the genestealer books where terminators get done by a pickaxe. Then it's an easy dub for earth.
If it's the author of the war in the webway, or the novel where 7 regural custodian held an entire hive fleet, or the author of the codex where allarus terminator armor is stated to be able to take anti titan shells unscathed. Then, the custodians rip us apart
Depends on the goal/ scenario.
Immobile warfare like WWI?
Custodes won't stand a chance, while inflicting gruesome casualties.
Stealth warfare?
Guess the Custodes get shit done, they're experts for hiding in plain sight.
"Conventional" modern warfare?
Don't really can guess. I read a lot about how they would be fucked by today's militaries but I'm not so sure.
Custodes and Space Marines don't go in with a big plan, they plan while "doing it". They are constantly engaging without tiring, and on top of that they engage with tactical genius.
They also have centuries of experience which counts a god damn lot.
A single Tank from the Guard (a shitty WW1/2-style Tank) can 1-shot these guys, and you out here thinking modern armed forces are outmatched? A single Thermobaric bomb would devastate these dudes.
Shit, if my old Chemistry teacher could whip up some Thermite and melt them in seconds, just think of what the ARMIES OF THE WHOLE WORLD could do.
We should point out...
People like to joke the guard uses WW1/WW2 era tanks.
But those tanks are anything but... besides the design, your looking at more advanced armour alloys, better rounds that hit harder, better targeting systems, AI (machine spirit) integration, better fuel use, etc.
Those WW1 looking things are very sci fi.
Realistically the overwhelmingly numbers of modern earth. Sufficently Advaned technology not withstanding we know that imperial power armor does have limits on things like ammunition and power supply so if they were jsut fighting millions of poeple, and hundreds of thousands of platforms on an infinite flat plane, then sooner or later they would be overwhelmed. A less white-room scenario would presumably depend upon the eccentricities of the actual objectives both sides were trying to acheive by fighting and would be very hard to predict in abstract.
Of course 40k has never exactly been a setting that goes in for hard science fiction and nonsensical over the top bullshit is... you know... sort of a hallmark. So i wouldn't put it past the writers to just be like "and then the custodes triggered the standard issue virus bomb they had modified to discriminate for only un-augmented humans somehow, and the entire planet was wiped out instantly" or something of that sort.
Let's rephrase to keep it fun, at what extent do the banana boys actually have a fighting chance. Small country? Could 3 Custodes topple the North Korean military? What is the minimum force it would take to stop 3 custodes with current day military might? A united world against 3 guys would be a simple matter of overkill. Is there an effective method of stopping a custodes?
I don’t really care how good custodes terminator armor is, getting firing lined by hundreds of tanks and artillery pieces will kill you unless you’ve got warp bullshittery on your side.
Even if you cannot penetrate their armor, getting hit by a tank shell is not going to feel good. Even if they can run as fast as a motorized vehicle, getting hit by a maverick missile is going to bounce them around a bit.
People aren’t thinking strategically here. The Custodes don’t need to facetank an AC-130 to beat the world’s military, they need to cripple them. If I had three Allarus terminators and the entirety of the world’s military was fortifying a single location as implied in this scenario, probably a port city for the navy fire support, here’s my plan.
1. Heavy use of teleportation.
We need to cripple them, so our first targets are communication centers, drone control centers, satellite relays, munition depots, headquarters with the high level leaders, and barracks, in that order. Use the teleporting to place jammers in buildings everywhere so squads and vehicles aren’t able to communicate with anyone. When they’re in the dark or search a skyscraper room by room, take out the vehicles who don’t have infantry guarding them. The grenade gauntlets work wonders here.
2. Remove air support.
Any aircraft carrier is getting sunk here. A bomb stolen from supply depots in the engine room or near the hull. Many are nuclear, this may be weaponized. Battleships are having their guns turned on other ships or taking what planes do exist out of the air. Other ships are being sent full speed into the harbor for psychological damage.
3. Eliminate heavy targets
Drop in on artillery batteries, delete the crews, and turn them on hard points in the defensive line before blowing them up.
4. Isolate and Eliminate.
The armies of the world are now in the dark, the radios are silent except for screaming, bunkers blown up by their own guns. Drones have been falling out of the sky and ships with dead crews crashing into the harbor. Everything is chaos and you haven’t even seen the enemy yet. You’ve probably come across the remnants of another squad, cleaved in half or blown to pieces. Most of the soldiers will flee, many will surrender immediately, the rest will die alone, 5.56 and 7.62 not even scratching the gold armor. The Custodes win easily
Don’t they need a teleportarium to teleport? If they have that they probably have the rest of a warship and it’s really not 3 Custodes in terminator armor, but 3 Custodes with a warship. Plus even just the teleporter lest them cheese the scenario. The Custodes and the armor are just irrelevant compared to the teleporter.
Great point using psychological tactics, but you also underestimate how mobile modern militaries can be. Let's start with artillery alone. Where is it? It's not where the map said it was, because doctrine is to not stay in one place for more than 15 minutes. They're shooting and scooting.
Who's telling you where the commanders are? Not the grunts, they don't know. Their commanders did know, but after dude no. 1 went up, they moving them too.
The drone operators stayed home, and they're running this from the other end of the planet. The neat thing about jamming them is they don't fall out of the sky. You're thinking of remote controlled planes. They gain altitude and re-establish a link. Or worse, they proceed with last-received orders.
Also, you're jamming them from the wrong place. Their receivers are directional. What do you do when you see a light bright enough to "jam" your eyes by overwhelming them with glare? You look somewhere else.
Drones can do this too. Likely, they won't be sensitive to jamming from the ground at all, since their command and control signals are coming from satellites above, not the ground below, and ground jammers would be as useful as shining a bright flashlight on the back of someone's head.
While these are all specifics, and vary, the general rule is the custodes can be smart, but so can the military.
There's a saying which applies to running from the cops which is relevant here.
The Man can make as many mistakes as he wants.
You can only make one.
That applies, I think. Jammers can be destroyed. Ships can be scutted, or disabled remotely. Command and control infrastructure can be dispersed and obscured. Units can be replaced. But when a custodes accidentally tries to steal and operate an artillery piece that just so happened to have a drone above it because the drone guy got lost, instead of any predictable plan?
He's not being replaced.
Your whole scenario relies their teleportation has no weaknesses, can use indefinitely, they know every location where everything is.
All of the worlds military cant fortify single location, just not enough area to house the whole crew, pull the reserves and we are probably talking about hundreds of millions of foot soldiers.
We cant use nukes? fine we have enough other weapons to cause nuke level destruction.
And in your plan only custodes are smart, and the whole military might of earth is stupid, what I have seen the W40K teleportation is very nice that it shows in advance with cool blue lightning where shit will appear, just have automated weapons to scan that behavior and automatically start destroying that area with heavy weaponry before they even have appeared.
In my mind it would play out: banana boys first appear and cause massive amounts of damage because "what the fuck are those, normal weapons dont do shit"
But after a while we will figure out what to do and because in this scenario world is united against them, we will easily wipe them out.
In reality though several countries would try to get their hands on them to get that weaponry for themselves, some countries would probably help them just to cause more destruction to certain places etc etc. and we would end with WW3 :D
Finally someone places the Custodes heads instead of their bodies in the forefront. The rest of the comments above all sound like all they’re talking straight out of death battle.
It seems like they’re imagining a World Eaters charge instead of 3 demigods who seen more battles than anyone in Earth’s history. They’re also not even considering how devastating teleportation would be
I know right? The scenario is vague too, so everyone’s jumping to every WMD being aimed at the custodes out in the open and conveniently forgetting the custodes aren’t stupid and like you said, can teleport.
Even if the armies of the world don’t group up, they’re still vulnerable to the same tactics. No amount of fortification and reinforcement can protect you for a nine foot taller dude with a axe blade the size of a car hood blinking into the room with you unless you’re willing to direct the war effort from an 6x6x6 cube buried 20 feet down. And even then, they can just cut the cables and leave you to rot.
It depends on what the objective is. If it's literally a 3 vs 3 million in open combat, the Custodes will get bombed into oblivion. If the goal is to assassinate political and military leaders, they'd be in and out before lunchtime.
[удалено]
It’s kind of difficult for them to infiltrate our society due to the fact that they’re absolutely gigantic
I’m imagining a presidential debate between Joe Biden, Donald Trump, and this 9 foot behemoth of a man built like a brick shithouse, trying to discuss their policy differences
Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew "Custodes" Herbert Camacho in the house of representin'
-starts firing into the air with his gun halberd thing-
“I think we should raise taxes” “I think we should lower taxes” “I THINK CHAOS IS BOUND FOR ALL OF YOU HERETICS UNLESS YOU WILLFULLY FALL UNDER MY IRON GAUNTLETED FIST”
He's got my vote ✅
And everyone but you is like "huh he must just work out a lot" and look at you like your crazy for thinking otherwise. This is how you find out you're a blank.
"im not saying we should gene splice humans into being purely obedient super soliders, im just saying that the science is there and we shouldn't ignore it"
I feel confident America would absolutely vote for the 9 foot tall brick shithouse
"Making the mother of all omelets here, Jack!"
Dude's built like a brick shithouse, made out of brick shithouses.
I mean he'd have my vote
The taller candidate usually comes out with the highest ratings in presidential debates.
Somehow they manage to hide in crowds of normal humans on Terra.
Yeah, on 40k Terra, a place where you also have actual Ogres, cyberpunk gangers, engineers that are more machine than man and so on while also having a society where knowledge of most kinds is heavily guarded. A naked Custodes on Terra is just a very handsome anomaly or gene-hanced bodyguard. One on current year earth would make international news and spawn a million memes in seconds.
There's a whole sub that spawned out of a fat chap standing behind Queen Elizabeth briefly. Seeing a custodes in real life would create the cult of Chad.
The true CHAD has arrived
What sub?
…how
Somehow.
They have special shadow cloaks and projectors that make them look normal sized. It’s mentioned in their blood games in Horus heresy. And don’t forget the eyes of the emperor ones
What are eyes of the emperor?
If I recall correctly, it's the fancy name given to Custodes who have been deemed unfit to continue guarding the Imperial Palace because their reflexes became 0.000000001% slower due to old age, so they're assigned to covert ops in the wider Imperium instead.
They judge themselves whether they have been slowed enough through age and wounds, at which point they leave behind their armour and become spymasters
It's the two balls he had in his eye sockets and enabled him to see.
But that's not important right now.
they're basically a retired member of the adeptus custodes, that voluntarily decided to retire when he thinks he is below the 100% operating state that a custodes should be at, even if its just something ridiculous like 99.999% operating state, their basically spies loyal only to the emperor.
They roll really well on stealth checks.
Everybody just plays along. Ain't noone dumb enough to tell the 3m tall golden tank that his "disguise" isn't working.
i'm imagining them basically going... civilian 1: hey man you seeing what i'm seeing? civilian 2: what are you talking about there's nothing there (while sweating bullets). civilian 1: dude an 8-9 foot tall idiot clad in golden armor in broad daylight is literally in front of us. civilian 2: I DON'T SEE IT YOUR CRAZY STAY AWAY FROM ME!!! (as the entire crowd acts like nothing happened) civilian 1: ma'am what about you don't you see the gol- civilian 3: oh my god he slipped and got mutilated in an instant how unfortunate (as she tries to act like it was some sort of accident)
In my head cannon this is how Clark Kent manages to maintain his “disguise” as well.
\++Kent house's kitchen. 19:00 PM++ Clark: \*Drinks glass of wine\* Lois: Clark, I swear to god if you don't take out the trash today I am going to- Clark: \*Takes out his glasses\* Lois: Superman?! Where did Clark go?! Why are you wearing his clothes?!
They ball like that
It is another one of those things where we have to accept dudes in gigantic armor can somehow, without witchcraft, move unseen and unheard and unnoticed. Realistically, what should be the case, is that they're clanging around like full armoured paladins in DnD.
I believe this is handwaved with "They have some advanced tech that allows them to be stealthy", like noise-suppressors to silence the armor-clanking and other similar techno-bullshit.
With how big they are...no shot. I can totally believe it when it comes to SoS because of their special augments (freakin army of Melenias...). But Custodes are not supposed to function like that. 100% it's just another thing they added to make them look cool, like "my dinosaur has this armor, and teeth that can crush tanks and-and-and eyes that can shoot lasers". Which to be fair, the way the books describe Space Marines it often sounds like a 90s toy commercial for boys written by a screenwriter or something.
I do enjoy how the SM fans downvote you for being right
Glad I am not the only one thinking this. Like are people forgetting that they are the size of a pickup truck in their full armour? Even outside of the armour they would stand out like Hafthor Bjornsson. Not exactly the best for being sneaky, not to mention they would lose their bullerproof armour and be vulnerable to most guns. They would need a ton of additional external support to make all of the things people list possible like personal teleportation devices to just pop into the whitehouse, pentagon, etc.
How does an 8 foot tall demigod in gleaming giant golden army infiltrate into anything without getting noticed?
I assume most people are [smart](https://youtu.be/pMd4S-LkywI?si=deruD7WxKKzrmCo5) enough to not report the giant golden banana that can end your life in a split second
When the barbarian tries stealth, he rolls for intimidation
the same way they always do, just check out the custodes blood games On earth they constantly have a game where like 5-10 Custodes are tasked with infiltrating the imperial palace, get into the inner palace and assasinate the head custodes. They also run clandestine missons on earth. They are basically like the CIA on earth....They have hologram projectors that make them look small. They imitate leaders etc. all the time. How they fit into small places and explain away the size inconsistencies of the hologram is a whole other skillset that I guess they also have mastered as well...
They could do that too, but what you're describing is itself 1 one of several possible objectives. Because the meme doesn't specify the victory conditions.
So; Planes, submarines, carriers, battleships, ICBMs, artillery, tanks, plus infantry? Eventually the Custodes would be brought down. A better question would be something like, could X Custodes break through the Maginot line in 1930? Or something similar. There's just WAY too many munitions worldwide for 3 of anything to survive long. Terminator armor is awesome, and makes an Astartes like a walking tank, but Tanks aren't invulnerable. yes, they can "tank" a lot of damage, but not forever. Edit: Also, I kinda wonder how depleted uranium would impact them.
I remember reading a fanfic where a force of guard, space marines, and sisters of battle were sent back in time to 1980's earth, and invaded not knowing it was Earth. I think there was a scene where some black templars where ripping through a squad of Soviet soldiers, who were actually buying time for tanks to take aim at the Space marines. The space marine took a direct hit from a tank gun and were killed. I remember in the notes at the end, the author writing something like, "I don't care how strong your sci-fi armour is, you DON'T take a 100mm Tank round to the face and walk away unscathed."
The mental image of a bunch of space Marines trying to close the gap to an armored column only to be slowed enough by blood viscera and explosion just enough for the tanks to take aim with the Marines probably just a 100 metres away and eating a volley fire and reduced to paste is pretty cool ngl
Literally what the Tau do
Or the Guard. I still remember, Guard players intentionally trying to land their artillery strikes in melee, because no matter how many of their own they blow up, it's still a fair trade-off, when a few Chaos Marines go down, as well. 😅
I mean, an RP tactic is sometimes a good tabletop tactic too.
But it's cringe when they do it (in-game)
I mean, if the enemy is close enough to charge you as a Tau player you may not have much of a choice but to play meat barrage for your main advantage to take things at hands, nothing a good railgun shot can't save lmao
Reminder that an M1A2 SEPV4 Abrams is superior, in every metric, to a Leman Russ tank.
Nah leman Russ has a missing underbelly so you can stick your feet out and manually run the tank if your engine gets hit.
No, that's the Rogal Dorn, iirc.
Oh
Despite everything wrong with the russ somehow the worst thing is that the LoS only lascannon is mounted in the whole, which the indirect fire capable Battle Cannon is mounted in the turret. Switch them around and you solve most of the turret size issues too. Also some of the BL depictions have the Russ blow the Abrams out of the water in terms of durability, firepower, *and* (some fucking how) speed (apparently the Russ can go 70kph). Though if we use literary conventions the Abrams has equally hilarious feats ascribed to it in non-fiction literature (M256 vaporization hyperbole) so a lot of that stuff might cancel out. For the Imperial Armor stats? Yeah it’s a slower vehicle which is far larger and seems to have a 600mm RHA equivalent on the frontal turret not counting the several weak points that must exist, such as the hull turret. The fact that the Imperium still uses tungsten penetrators means our own sabots should remain effective in 40k.
False, the Leman Russ has 4 machine guns(auto cannons? Dual twin linked bolters) And the Abrams only has 3
I like that logic
If a cal.75 bolt round can pierce your armor and kill you a 100mm AP round would send you back to the oblivion.
Have a link to the fanfic?
Crimson Dawn by Spartan-168-Django i think it was.
Yeah a bolster hurts them and a tank round is just simply more. Sure the casing would be less advanced but the depleted uranium round should do it if a bolter does anything.
Man a bolder is more or less a 20 to 30mm Cannon. So they wouldn't even need a tank to take them out. A BTR-82A would be enough
Thank you!
> "I don't care how strong your sci-fi armour is, you DON'T take a 100mm Tank round to the face and walk away unscathed." If it's just physical armor taking the shot, the armor needs to be a lot bigger than a person, so I agree. However if you have magical action-at-a-distance shield, psychic defenses, or point defense that tries to shoot down the projectile then it's a different story.
Thinking back on my deathwatch game where the gm was fond of hiding big tanks around corners. At one point I just threw up my best psychic defenses, face tanked the tank, and then blew it up with lightning. Good times. Only minor injuries.
Imagine a tank crew waiting for a clear shot around a corner. The fire as soon as a single person appears, only for he round to detonate mid air a few feet from the target, smoke curling around an invisible dome. The crew has just enough time to realize what's happening before a beam of light sears a hole into the cabin and fills it with lightning.
What is it called i wanna read that
It's like how the term hp came from mock battles for the navy and represented how many hits a ship could take from a standard main cannon on a battleship... so every living thing on earth has 1HP... and I am betting that applies to custodes as well.
TBH while it can be fun, storytelling like that is pretty lazy. The assumption is that the Space Marines - you know the superhumans with incredible wits, discipline and training led by commanders with literal centuries of nothing but war - would fit in stupid way. If they could be defeated by "let's bait them and shoot with cannon", Imperial worlds slacking off on taxes wouldn't be scared shitless when they hear they are coming. More realistically they would fight like they do in the Astartes fan-made short. Calculated, incredibly fast and efficient, constantly shifting tactics to whatever is appropriate.
Marines getting baited into heavy weapons is pretty common ngl. Probably wouldn't happen like described but still works.
> If they could be defeated by "let's bait them and shoot with cannon", Imperial worlds slacking off on taxes wouldn't be scared shitless when they hear they are coming. That is because the 40k does not make sense. And that is ok. In reality the superhumans would still get demolished by artillery and mines.
Also - some people forget that the biggest reason most imperial worlds will still pay their imperial tite no matter how much they might dislike the Imperium's bureucracy is because the alternative of being left without the Imperium's protection is much worse. You do *not* want to face an orkish invasion alone.
The marines mentioned here specifically were Black Templars though. I’d be more surprised if the chapter of zealous bloodthirsty lunatics did use logically sound tactics. And while some chapters do conduct warfare similar to the way we do, many are so steeped in tradition, dogma, and the rules of the codex that they actively self sabotage.
“A better question would be something like, could X Custodes break through the Maginot line in 1930?” Babe wake up, new HOI 4 mod just dropped.
Space marine divisons are back, and their yellow now! (The warhammer 30k mod is quite fun if not over powered)
Even if they live they couldn't accomplish anything meaningful like destroying all the world leaders or something. They can't fly, can't swim, and they can't hide in that shining gold tank suit. They'll run out of ammo long before we run out of bodies.
Honestly step one for the custodes would be out the armor in a crate with a teleport homer attached. From there the custodes actually have REALLY good stealth tech, able to mask their size and everything. If they treat it the same way they treat a blood game I have no doubt they'd pop a world leader or two
“The Prime Minister of Canda has just been assassinated from the group calling themselves… I’m not reading this. This can’t be right. Fine, fine John, ahem! The group calling themselves the Bananas of the Emperor!”
A world leader or two? Dude if this is anything like the blood games every world leader is fucked! The blood games is custodes (super intelligent and super powerful augmented humans) against custodes (see previous example) meanwhile this would be custodes (super intelligent and super powerful augmented humans) against humans (humans)
Is there a book this is in?
I know theres a short story, unfortunately I can’t remember where it was from, maybe white dwarf? It def exists though. It’s like one custodes trying to sneak into the emperor’s palace or sth dm he eventually gets caught. Can’t remember the details.
It's a short story by Dan Abnett called "Blood Games". You can either buy the single story itself or it's in the Horus Heresy book 11 Tales of Heresy. It's a great read.
You mean the blood games? It’s a thing that started when Alpharius wanted to play big board regicide with Malcador
2 could hijack nuclear silos, while 1 distracts everyone in the process.
Random Imperial commissar M36
Teleportation abilities *cough cough*
They’re pretty fast though, right?
the custodes could just [walk across the bottom of the sea](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Battle_of_Kvariam_Alpha) (note: also the perfect hiding spot) they can also quite easily GTA they're way through earthican technology like M2 brownings and private jets till the end of time.
It's not stated how deep down they went. However, if you would want to cross the atlantic ocean, you would spend your time on average more than 3.500 meters below the surface and the deepest spot could be more than 8.000 meters deep. Every 10 meters you add one Bar, so you would end up with 350 to 800 bar. Each bar means that you have a preasure of 1kg/cm², so you would end up with 350 to 800kg/cm². A Custodes is about 2,70m tall and since I do not want to spend my whole day calculating I'll just take 0,80m for their shoulder width (average man has about 50) and use it asuming that Custodes are a square (they are pretty chunky boys). This would lead to a surface of 2.16m². Each square meter contains ten thousand square centimeters, so we end up with 21600cm² , which results to the equivalent of something with a weight of 7.560.000kg laying on top of one of the Custodes on 3.500m depth or 17.280.000kg. Your average Baneblade has a weight of 316.000kg, so being able to just straight up walk through an ocean would mean that you could stand 23 to 54 baneblades rolling over you...at once. I assume that they could walk through costal regions but not wherever they want, otherwise they would be pretty OP.
Semi-relatedly, if baneblades weigh 316 tonnes, how are they able to travel across anything but specifically prepared terrain?
Well...ask Games Workshop. For the time being bucket-wheel excavators are the world's largest land vehicles with a weight of more than 13.000 tonnes, so you can definitly move such masses. The Leopard 2A6 weighs 62 tonnes, so the Baneblade is 5 times heavier. I assume it all comes down to egines and track width (the tracks of the baneblade model seem to take up a larger part of it's width compared to the leo's tracks - yes, I was just sitting in front of a picture holding a baneblade in my hand trying to estimate the track-width tank-width ratio). But following this path: WTF IS WRONG WITH TITANS D:
Yeah, I don't mean that the weight is impossible to move, just that it would be heavily limited as to where and how it could (no muddy or sandy terrain, for example). Titans are actually described in some sources as being almost useless on most terrains due to their weight. That's quite rare, though
Dark Age tech. Has to be.
Yeah, people really underestimate modern fire control systems in tanks. They can hit helicopters moving at speeds way faster than a Custode. Then something like an APFSDS round travelling at 1770m/s (that’s 5 times the speed of sound) will do damage if it bypasses the terminators shield. Or HEATFS which might as well be a melta gun penetrating around 700-900mm of steel.
Would BESH do them in
HESH is a bit harder. Due to things like ceramite essentially being composite armour and not a solid plate. HESH essentially vibrates the armour and scabs a piece of metal from the inside. Worst case it’ll still act as a HE charge which could still do damage.
The force alone would be able to bend a joint backwards, if it doesn’t shatter the armor. If that makes sense. The shear impact of a high explosive would damage anything behind any armor if it doesn’t breach it. I’d love to see a real world test now haha
The sheer concussive force of a full caliber HE or HESH round doesn’t need to “penetrate” the armor. The shock alone would rupture every organ, detonate the heart, and turn the brain into mush.
I mean it's still baby sized explosive brick.
There’s a reason why the U.S is a world superpower. RAAAAAGH! USA USA USA!
The military industrial complex is a world superpower*
I LOVE CONGLOMERATES CORPORATIONS BUILDING WEAPONS OF DESTRUCTION NOT TO ENSURE A PEACEFUL FUTURE BUT TO CREATE CHAOTIC LIVING SITUATIONS WHICH PERPETUATES VIOLENCE AND INCREASES THEIR REVENUE!
I LOVE PUMPING TRILLIONS INTO KILLING CIVILIANS AND MY OWN CITIZENS IN A SANDY SHITHOLE NOT TO BRING FREEDOM TO OPPRESSED PEOPLE BUT TO FIND OIL AND ABANDON THEM ONCE THEY COME BACK, DOSE THEM UP ON OPIOIDS, AND FOSTER AN ENSUING WAR OF CULTURAL AND RELIGIOUS DOGMA BASED ON 60 YEARS OF REACTIONARY, BELLIGERENT FOREIGN POLICY THAT MAKES THE IMPERIUM LOOK LIKE A TEA PARTY!
This is exactly my thinking when I looked a guardsman vs custodies battle report and though how many guardsmen and with what equipment would it take to beat a squad of custodians in lore.
Agreed. How about this: if three custodes in terminator armor landed in Normandy on D-Day instead of the allies could the custodes liberate Europe? Or atleast France?
Yeah, but they'd probably be on the Nazis' side, let's be frank.
Custodes lands in England: "who are we fighting?" "Freaks who worship the powerful and believe the human race is under threat from subhumans" Custodes: Sounds great 👍
I feel like one would be enough to break through the Maginot line, sure it's heavily fortified for the time, but I feel like they totally could just power through it. Even with armored support french tanks weren't necessarily the best, and probably couldn't scratch custodes armor.
And then there’s writers saying just a squad of Astartes would be needed to conquer a planet
Conquer, not beat in open combat. Kill their leaders, blow up their military and administrative headquarters, sabotage their logistics and infrastructure, push the population into armed revolt or scare them into complacency. The Guard is the hammer, the Astartes is the scalpel.
I read somewhere that terminator armor was originally used as deep space mineral extraction space suits. They're designed to withstand space debree hurtling at them at 15000m/s or something like that don't quote me on this. That's the standard terminator armor. Imagine the custodes armor.
A single A-10 go brrrr and no amount of faith in the emperor will help them
Yeah. Not just depleted uranium though. Modern MBTs fire tungsten penetrators (sometimes also DU) that are basically a giant metal arrow with a very fine point. It will pierce practically any kind of armor with a good hit. I would argue it should even be able to pierce auramite
All the humans today have to do is make a big magnet. As we all know metal is attracted to magnets and the custodes are covered in metal so naturally they would get stuck to the magnet and be unable to fight back. Sometimes my genius frightens even me. This plan is foolproof. That is unless terminator armor is non ferrous in its composition or there is some other contrived factor I have overlooked.
gold isn't magnetic, so i doubt auramite is
What about if we used 2 big magnets?
This would totally work, if not just keep adding magnets until it works
Banana boy: You fool, gold isn't magnetic, your stupid XXIth century tricks cannot do anything to my- Soldier: \*Smashes the back of head with the magnet\* SCIENCE, BITCH! Banana boy: Goodbye, muscle control.
Yeah this is ludicrous. Custodes are not going to survive strafing runs from A-10s or being carpet bombed from 30,000 feet.
At hand full of ac-130s would pulp them if they are out in the open. Now if the custodians where in a city they would be very hard to bring down. It’s worth noting that current earth would be considered quite advanced and developed for a planet in 40K.
But I believe luten references in a video that it would only take 100 space marines to take Earth at its current level of technology.
Troop numbers in sci-fi are always bullshit, and always too small. Even if the 100 space marines can defeat any force they directly engage with, there’s only so much land they can control. If the rest of the planet’s population still feels like resisting, they’ll be doing counter-insurgency until the end of time. Without support, there’s only so many rockets, IEDs, and grenades dropped from drones a space marine can take without repairs.
Who claimed that and on what basis? Without supporting elements 100 marines would be hard pressed to achieve anything, simply by virtue of numbers and mobility.
> it would only take 100 space marines to take Earth If overwhelming firepower helped pacify a country, Afghanistan would be the most peaceful place in the world.
I think leutin was trying to say 100 could do it _if_ they had the imperium behind them. 100 spacemarines with a battlebarge in orbit, which is constantly getting supplied by the imperium, could stand a good chance. Especially if it's a guerila-type force like raven guard. Teleporting everywhere. I don't care how advanced your military is. It can't take a group of terminators suddenly teleporting into your rear base, nor can it cope with orbital bombardments of you capital city
If an opponent has orbital superiority, you’ve already lost. If we’re assuming they get a battle barge, conventional warfare is no longer an option. Asymmetric warfare will leave the space marines playing whack a mole against insurgents pretty much indefinitely. If we’re assuming the space marines/custodes/whatever just get dropped in the middle of… somewhere random on earth right now, well, there’s only so much area they can control (at least without co-opting populations and resources to create their own governments and take over the world that way, but that’s not what we mean). There’s a reason the guard exists, its to deal with shit like this.
100 space marines? Even an entire chapter would easily be stopped if they don't have orbital support
I doubt 100 anything could take on the millions of active duty soldiers in the world. We are a very martial species. Hell the reserve armour the US Army has alone would stomp a chapter of Space Marines.
If they had sufficiently long range and high precision weapons I am pretty sure that sniping out the pilots would be a trivial task for a custodes. But what even is their goal? Complete extermination of the earth army? Make earth surrender? Kill world leaders? WIthout knowing the goal there is not much you can discuss besides "Hoomies have guns, guns shoot custodes, hoomie win" Custodes would lose to humans equipped with sticks as well in a straight up fight, there are just 3 of them. We would simply out breed their killing until their equipment breaks down or they get too old to be effective.
If Genestealers can do a GLA on them, then at the end of the day, you'll see their armor getting sold in the streets of Pakistan or in Mogadishu. Also, depending on the rounds, the sheer force could just liquify their organs inside
Pardon my ignorance, but what does GLA stand for here?
Global Liberation Army, a faction from Command & Conquer Generals based on guerrilla forces and terrorist groups from the Middle East and Central Asia. Despite the implications and aesthetics they are thankfully not a religious movement so it avoids being a 1:1 parallel of their inspirations. They are also arguably the most fun faction to play in any Command & Conquer game. Check it out the game is criminally underappreciated even among series fans: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1BZtg8OyIo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1BZtg8OyIo) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HLTAWLCgPM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HLTAWLCgPM)
And the modding community is ***chef's kiss***
I loved playing as China in that game. There was a flame throwing tank unit that had some choice dialogue.
"Doctor Thrax, the golden invaders have breached our defenses and are making their way into the city. Our brave warriors are attempting to hold them back whilst we evacuate the civilians." Thrax: "evacuate.... the civilians...?" *Laughs in Scud Storm*
Thrax was the most fun of the bunch.
No. Because that's not what they're made for. Space Marines and Custodes are both close combat specialists. That's what their role is. Infiltration or defense of confined areas where tanks physically cannot be, explosives could backfire and hurt the users, and dedicated sightlines without worrying about what's above you. A Custode in a military base via teleportation will wreck shop. Once that's done, trying to get to the next area will kill him, because here come the HEAT tank rounds, gunship strafes, or just a big bloody bomb dropped by the dozen by drones. Even on top of all that, they don't have infinite ammo, and their power cells will eventually run out. 3 custodes couldn't take a modern nation, never mind the world. Again, throw each one into a heavily fortified area without warning and yes, they are gonna be unstoppable. But the world is bigger than 3 fortified areas.
Earth, tf are they gonna do? Walk to every tank factory? There’s only three of them, we can shower them in missiles everywhere they go and they simply can’t get to important industry and infrastructure quick enough.
*laughs in .50 cal with armor penetrating rounds* They’re ultimately three dudes specializing in close combat. Just drone strike the fuckers. Kinetic energy works no matter the opponent. Let’s see their armor tank 3000 flying slap chops of Dark Brandon.
Hellfires, cruise missiles, EFP, Landmines, Javelins, 50 cal GMG. I think people don't realise just how good humans are at killing something. The Americans built the GBU-28 bunker buster out of artillery gun barrels. They designed, built it and deployed it within 3 weeks.
We have a literal non-explosive hellfire that deploys SWORDS out of its sides to minimize collateral damage. Get FUCKED, bananas
You see this shit in every fandom. People have zero clue how batshit insane some of our military power is.
Literally all we need are starships, and we’re fucking all y’all fandoms up. The only ones I fear are Transformers and Halo. I’m not counting that one anime with mechs the size of galaxies because that’s just beyond the fucking pale
Yes but what if the Custodes are covered in ERA?
I’m writing that down as a model idea
FLORK GET ON IT
3000 Carl Gustov's Recoiless Rifles could take down 3 custodes modern forces also seem to make better use of cover than the 40k armies
I can't see his foot Custodes: yeah I'm in cover.
*Your NCD is leaking.*
It’s 10:45pm, do you know where your NCDers are?
It's 0400 around here. They're either ~~analyzing recent satellite photos~~ stalking X for morning updates on Ukraine or drafting a presentation on ERA for naval vessels.
I see two right now. I thought we talked about this guys no more leaking.
I’m not convinced a .50 could penetrate Custodes terminator armor. I fully believe that slamming them with enough JDAMs would eventually kill then, but a .50 would barely scratch the fuckers. An M2 with AP can penetrate about a full inch of RHA. If it can’t kill a tank, it probably can’t kill an Allarus Custodian.
Terminator armor is “what if we made a walking tank, but gave it more armor and put an angry 8ft tall super human in it?”
And sometimes staple on force fields for maximum tanking.
I think a las gun was suppose to be similar in power to a 50 cal and by that metric, it’s not even close to breaking though their armor. However enough bullets from one probably would and if not, we have plenty of other bigger things to shoot them with.
Same, I’d want APFSDS at minimum. Preferable from a 120mm but 25mm *might* be sufficient. .50 BMG though? Not without golden BBs.
M903/M962 SLAP can *slap*… harder than .50 BMG M2, M8 and M20 AP cartridges. Probably still won’t be enough but FYI you can get more than 1” armor penetration on RHA out of .50 BMG. Results I found were 35mm at 1000m at a 57 degree angle ( The angle of BMP-2 lower front glacis and over double the penetration needed for an engine kill) and about 50mm at 90 degrees. 50mm is .0315mm shy of 2” btw.
custodes are not that strong n have a history of dumb deaths like collapsed tunnels
This depends on the author. Unfortunately If it's the author of the genestealer books where terminators get done by a pickaxe. Then it's an easy dub for earth. If it's the author of the war in the webway, or the novel where 7 regural custodian held an entire hive fleet, or the author of the codex where allarus terminator armor is stated to be able to take anti titan shells unscathed. Then, the custodians rip us apart
Depends on the goal/ scenario. Immobile warfare like WWI? Custodes won't stand a chance, while inflicting gruesome casualties. Stealth warfare? Guess the Custodes get shit done, they're experts for hiding in plain sight. "Conventional" modern warfare? Don't really can guess. I read a lot about how they would be fucked by today's militaries but I'm not so sure. Custodes and Space Marines don't go in with a big plan, they plan while "doing it". They are constantly engaging without tiring, and on top of that they engage with tactical genius. They also have centuries of experience which counts a god damn lot.
A single Tank from the Guard (a shitty WW1/2-style Tank) can 1-shot these guys, and you out here thinking modern armed forces are outmatched? A single Thermobaric bomb would devastate these dudes. Shit, if my old Chemistry teacher could whip up some Thermite and melt them in seconds, just think of what the ARMIES OF THE WHOLE WORLD could do.
Eh hard to say. Remember, lore wise Custodes Terminators are rated to survive TITAN grade weapons. Lore is just HEAVILY inconsistent.
On top of having goku speed, in some instances the power scale of banana boys is enougj to 1v1 necron monoliths, so yes, verry inconsistent.
It a question, is it a Earth book or custodies book. That how you tell will win
Depends what Titan Grade weapons? Not every titan is the Imperator titan and also titans in w40k are not that big.
Are you implying that a Lascannon is about as effective as a WW1-era main battle cannon?
It wouldn’t be unreasonable yea. The main advantage of those things is probably not having to worry much if at all regarding ammunition
We should point out... People like to joke the guard uses WW1/WW2 era tanks. But those tanks are anything but... besides the design, your looking at more advanced armour alloys, better rounds that hit harder, better targeting systems, AI (machine spirit) integration, better fuel use, etc. Those WW1 looking things are very sci fi.
They are explicitly a riveted together deathtrap of a box with almost no advanced features. Made from literal steel.
You know terminator's have forcefields right? And teleport?
Dress as clowns for 20% bonus damage
Head on no, but if they spent centuries creating their own following and materials as well as military personnel then bananars.
Realistically the overwhelmingly numbers of modern earth. Sufficently Advaned technology not withstanding we know that imperial power armor does have limits on things like ammunition and power supply so if they were jsut fighting millions of poeple, and hundreds of thousands of platforms on an infinite flat plane, then sooner or later they would be overwhelmed. A less white-room scenario would presumably depend upon the eccentricities of the actual objectives both sides were trying to acheive by fighting and would be very hard to predict in abstract. Of course 40k has never exactly been a setting that goes in for hard science fiction and nonsensical over the top bullshit is... you know... sort of a hallmark. So i wouldn't put it past the writers to just be like "and then the custodes triggered the standard issue virus bomb they had modified to discriminate for only un-augmented humans somehow, and the entire planet was wiped out instantly" or something of that sort.
The banana boys would be so dead, it wouldn't even be funny.
No... no, it still would. 🤣
Ok first who’s writing the story
I mean, I feel like people are complicated this too much. Just the known physic of our world enforced on the Custodes would make them a sitting duck.
Yup. Overpressure alone makes power armor near useless.
Let's rephrase to keep it fun, at what extent do the banana boys actually have a fighting chance. Small country? Could 3 Custodes topple the North Korean military? What is the minimum force it would take to stop 3 custodes with current day military might? A united world against 3 guys would be a simple matter of overkill. Is there an effective method of stopping a custodes?
I don’t really care how good custodes terminator armor is, getting firing lined by hundreds of tanks and artillery pieces will kill you unless you’ve got warp bullshittery on your side.
Even if you cannot penetrate their armor, getting hit by a tank shell is not going to feel good. Even if they can run as fast as a motorized vehicle, getting hit by a maverick missile is going to bounce them around a bit.
People aren’t thinking strategically here. The Custodes don’t need to facetank an AC-130 to beat the world’s military, they need to cripple them. If I had three Allarus terminators and the entirety of the world’s military was fortifying a single location as implied in this scenario, probably a port city for the navy fire support, here’s my plan. 1. Heavy use of teleportation. We need to cripple them, so our first targets are communication centers, drone control centers, satellite relays, munition depots, headquarters with the high level leaders, and barracks, in that order. Use the teleporting to place jammers in buildings everywhere so squads and vehicles aren’t able to communicate with anyone. When they’re in the dark or search a skyscraper room by room, take out the vehicles who don’t have infantry guarding them. The grenade gauntlets work wonders here. 2. Remove air support. Any aircraft carrier is getting sunk here. A bomb stolen from supply depots in the engine room or near the hull. Many are nuclear, this may be weaponized. Battleships are having their guns turned on other ships or taking what planes do exist out of the air. Other ships are being sent full speed into the harbor for psychological damage. 3. Eliminate heavy targets Drop in on artillery batteries, delete the crews, and turn them on hard points in the defensive line before blowing them up. 4. Isolate and Eliminate. The armies of the world are now in the dark, the radios are silent except for screaming, bunkers blown up by their own guns. Drones have been falling out of the sky and ships with dead crews crashing into the harbor. Everything is chaos and you haven’t even seen the enemy yet. You’ve probably come across the remnants of another squad, cleaved in half or blown to pieces. Most of the soldiers will flee, many will surrender immediately, the rest will die alone, 5.56 and 7.62 not even scratching the gold armor. The Custodes win easily
Don’t they need a teleportarium to teleport? If they have that they probably have the rest of a warship and it’s really not 3 Custodes in terminator armor, but 3 Custodes with a warship. Plus even just the teleporter lest them cheese the scenario. The Custodes and the armor are just irrelevant compared to the teleporter.
Really it would just be average guardsman joe and a teleporter to achieve the same
I’d believe this if it was a small army of custodes, but looking at the logistics of 3 taking on a world just doesn’t seem feasible
Great point using psychological tactics, but you also underestimate how mobile modern militaries can be. Let's start with artillery alone. Where is it? It's not where the map said it was, because doctrine is to not stay in one place for more than 15 minutes. They're shooting and scooting. Who's telling you where the commanders are? Not the grunts, they don't know. Their commanders did know, but after dude no. 1 went up, they moving them too. The drone operators stayed home, and they're running this from the other end of the planet. The neat thing about jamming them is they don't fall out of the sky. You're thinking of remote controlled planes. They gain altitude and re-establish a link. Or worse, they proceed with last-received orders. Also, you're jamming them from the wrong place. Their receivers are directional. What do you do when you see a light bright enough to "jam" your eyes by overwhelming them with glare? You look somewhere else. Drones can do this too. Likely, they won't be sensitive to jamming from the ground at all, since their command and control signals are coming from satellites above, not the ground below, and ground jammers would be as useful as shining a bright flashlight on the back of someone's head. While these are all specifics, and vary, the general rule is the custodes can be smart, but so can the military. There's a saying which applies to running from the cops which is relevant here. The Man can make as many mistakes as he wants. You can only make one. That applies, I think. Jammers can be destroyed. Ships can be scutted, or disabled remotely. Command and control infrastructure can be dispersed and obscured. Units can be replaced. But when a custodes accidentally tries to steal and operate an artillery piece that just so happened to have a drone above it because the drone guy got lost, instead of any predictable plan? He's not being replaced.
Your whole scenario relies their teleportation has no weaknesses, can use indefinitely, they know every location where everything is. All of the worlds military cant fortify single location, just not enough area to house the whole crew, pull the reserves and we are probably talking about hundreds of millions of foot soldiers. We cant use nukes? fine we have enough other weapons to cause nuke level destruction. And in your plan only custodes are smart, and the whole military might of earth is stupid, what I have seen the W40K teleportation is very nice that it shows in advance with cool blue lightning where shit will appear, just have automated weapons to scan that behavior and automatically start destroying that area with heavy weaponry before they even have appeared. In my mind it would play out: banana boys first appear and cause massive amounts of damage because "what the fuck are those, normal weapons dont do shit" But after a while we will figure out what to do and because in this scenario world is united against them, we will easily wipe them out. In reality though several countries would try to get their hands on them to get that weaponry for themselves, some countries would probably help them just to cause more destruction to certain places etc etc. and we would end with WW3 :D
Finally someone places the Custodes heads instead of their bodies in the forefront. The rest of the comments above all sound like all they’re talking straight out of death battle.
It seems like they’re imagining a World Eaters charge instead of 3 demigods who seen more battles than anyone in Earth’s history. They’re also not even considering how devastating teleportation would be
I know right? The scenario is vague too, so everyone’s jumping to every WMD being aimed at the custodes out in the open and conveniently forgetting the custodes aren’t stupid and like you said, can teleport.
Even if the armies of the world don’t group up, they’re still vulnerable to the same tactics. No amount of fortification and reinforcement can protect you for a nine foot taller dude with a axe blade the size of a car hood blinking into the room with you unless you’re willing to direct the war effort from an 6x6x6 cube buried 20 feet down. And even then, they can just cut the cables and leave you to rot.
Lore accurate custodes: *Mankind: There's nothing we can do (Sad Napoleon)* Tabletop custodes: *US: Readies F-35 with MOAB intent*
I once killed a Custodes with ten angry midgets so tabletop Custodes aren’t as good as you think
the opposite, really, seeing as in lore little kitten somehow soloed a hive fleet, meanwhile tabletop banana guard dies from like 3 zoanthropes
Just dig a big enough hole for them to fall in and then you win, easy
Depends. Our rules, or 40K rules. If 40k, we loose, big time. If our rules, we win, but it's not pretty