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New to the hobby and looking for suggestions


Salty Soviet

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So I just got into the hobby and got a couple boxes of figures. Im officially invested in custodes and im looking for some advice. What are some things you wish you had known prior to building your first set? Also are people meeting for actual games as of late or is it still pretty spaced out? Just curious as I got into the hobby because the tabletop game is super neat to me. 

I have a box of custodes guard, a set of allarus terminators and im building a box of vertus preators. Plus a friend of mine gifted me Trajan Valoris so I expanded pretty quickly. 

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I’d find a way to play before investing too deeply - I know some game nights at stores and ORDO are going on.  I’ve been playing in my garage (masked and distanced) for months. 
 

ypu need to play - at least with what you have or proxies. Get to know the rules.  Do t worry about paint just yet. 
 

getting your head around rules - sequence and all that will help. The table top model and terrain are all alluring... but don’t let them distract 

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2 hours ago, Torg said:

 

I’d find a way to play before investing too deeply - I know some game nights at stores and ORDO are going on.  I’ve been playing in my garage (masked and distanced) for months. 

 

The good news here is that you picked Adeptus Custodes, so you don’t need to invest much money in order to build a full army. A generic Shield-Captain, five Custodian Guard, five Allarus Terminators, and three Dawneagle Jetbikes will form a legal 1,000 Point army, give or take.

Easy transport, lower(ish) cost, and looking really cool are the main reasons I collect Custodes myself.

The kinda bad news is that Custodes can be a very tricky army to play. You’ll be outnumbered at least three to one by Primaries Space Marines and they’re generally considered an “elite” army. Space Orks and Imperial Guard will have individual units that contain more models than your entire army and they will have three or four units to your every one.

I called this “kinda bad news,” because it’s also one of the most interesting things about playing the Custodes. It’s a strategic and tactical puzzle you need to solve every game.

Welcome to the Endless Watch. 

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Excited to get started! thanks! Yes I am finishing my allaris terminators right now. Then I have a box of versus preators I need to build. So in total ill have 3 allaris terminators (one as a captain), a squad of 5 guard (2 sword/shield, 2 spear, 1 vexilla), and 3 vertus preators.

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Just now, Salty Soviet said:

Excited to get started! thanks! Yes I am finishing my allaris terminators right now. Then I have a box of versus preators I need to build. So in total ill have 3 allaris terminators (one as a captain), a squad of 5 guard (2 sword/shield, 2 spear, 1 vexilla), and 3 vertus preators.

Want to join in the Crusade that is going on? Sound like you have about 500pts already

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I have never built or played as custodes, but what do I wish I knew before starting/building in general?

1) Magnets can be very nice and pretty easy for larger kits like vehicles/dreads and some characters.  Less so for general infantry although custodes are elite enough that maybe the effort is worthwhile.  But dont be afraid of them just ask for advice/watch videos.

2) GW flight stems of most types kind of suck and will likely break sooner or later.  Third party, homemade, or just carry around glue and cry a little sometimes.  Oh standard super glue can fog those same stems as well as other acrylic…odorless works well.

3) Some rules just dont make sense and may take GW years to explain or replace them. 

4) If you are at all serious as a player, hobbyist, or collector…eventually your house will fill up with plastic even if all you want is to “play a 2000 point game”. 

5) GW paint pots (and some paints) kind of suck.  Wash can spill, others can dry out.  I still use a lot of it, but don’t be fooled by it is expensive/official, so it must be the best.  

These are not meant to be “top tips” or the most important things, but things I was genuinely surprised to find out.  

Edited by Hodor
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22 hours ago, Salty Soviet said:

Sure, though Im so new that I need a bit of help. Im reading the rule book and I have a pdf of my codex but I get the feeling some of this won't be concrete in my head until I actually play. 

The current edition is one of the easier to learn and more logically designed iterations of GW’s games... But, in my experience, all wargames are a lot easier to Learn by Doing than they are to Learn by Reading. Maybe it’s just the way my brain is wired, but I can learn in five minutes of gameplay what might take me five months of reading the rulebook.

(Oddly enough, I have the exact opposite experience with roleplaying games.)

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My two cents of advice for a beginner: it's important that you keep in mind that 40k is a game and also a hobby, and there are many many people involved in the game/hobby for many different reasons. Some people primarily love to paint miniatures, some collect, some play, some play super competitively, some mostly love the science-fiction story behind the universe, and all of us have some combination of these interests and more but people's motivations differ.

So as you get involved with playing and painting and the community-at-large, at some point you are bound to find yourself in a game with a player or players who are not interested in the same kind of experience that you are, and sometimes that can be awkward or unpleasant. When that happens, don't let it put you off that your opponent is too competitive or not competitive enough, or has unpainted models/doesn't like that you have unpainted models, or knows/doesn't know their army inside out, etc etc.. It happens, keep looking, you'll find a like-minded group of people to play with that share your love of the game as that develops.

Good luck, and have fun -! It's an awesome hobby.

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Also, while Shiny Boiz are cool...Orks is da best!

Gonna regurgitate some of the above.

1) I've met so many really awesome people through this hobby. Every once in a while you'll run across someone you just don't click with, it's the minority but it happens.

2) DON'T OVERBUY. Seriously, it's wicked easy to do and can be overwhelming.

3) Other companies make some really good stuff, don't be afraid to check em out.

4) Orks and Ork players are still da best!

Welcome to the hobby, never hesitate to ask questions;)

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4 hours ago, PourSpelur said:

Also, while Shiny Boiz are cool...Orks is da best!

Gonna regurgitate some of the above.

1) I've met so many really awesome people through this hobby. Every once in a while you'll run across someone you just don't click with, it's the minority but it happens.

2) DON'T OVERBUY. Seriously, it's wicked easy to do and can be overwhelming.

3) Other companies make some really good stuff, don't be afraid to check em out.

4) Orks and Ork players are still da best!

Welcome to the hobby, never hesitate to ask questions;)

Other companies? For what? I thought gw was the only game in town for 40k

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On 4/30/2021 at 5:42 PM, Torg said:

I’d find a way to play before investing too deeply - I know some game nights at stores and ORDO are going on.  I’ve been playing in my garage (masked and distanced) for months. 
 

ypu need to play - at least with what you have or proxies. Get to know the rules.  Do t worry about paint just yet. 
 

getting your head around rules - sequence and all that will help. The table top model and terrain are all alluring... but don’t let them distract 

I want to reiterate the importance here of what Torg said. It's huge. 

  1. Be careful of theory-hammer. You might think that new unit sounds good on paper, and find out you fall short, or doesn't fit your playstyle/strategy, etc. 
    1. Proxy units in some friendly learning games. Don't feel you need to blow your paycheck to get a full army right off. Especially since you'll end up like most of us with boxes never assembled, never painted, and you won't be able to keep up the modelling side of things.
      1. Don't be afraid to ask, wouldn't bug most because it's not about winning, it's about learning a 'game'.
      2. I once made a cardboard replica of a Necron monolith, and spray painted it black, and such was able to use it for a few games and see if I even liked it. Then, dropped some cash.
  2. Playing games helps you find out what kind of player you are.
    1. A must spam every overpowered unit and leaf blow my opponent off the table.
    2. Balanced list for strong, but friendly games.
    3. Don't mind the squishier units because they look pretty (do custodes even have squishy units?) 🤪
  3. Start playing, don't wait. My first 3 games were two 500 point and a 750 point. I wouldn't go past that until you've gotten some core play in. However, 1000 points is a sweet spot to get to because games get more balanced and full feeling. 500 and 750 can be hard to beat a 2+ save, etc. Then again, these aren't about trying to beat you, they're about game mechanics. Then get more games in..
    1. Eventually you'll want 1500, then 2000 to finish off a normal battle army. HOWEVER, at this point you should be nearly a veteran and don't rush this. You'll find yourself 'behind' assembling and pains in your wallet if you go too fast. Patience and playing the 'long' game will help. 😁
    2. We usually do an escalation league, which really helps, but with Covid I don't know when I'll be able to run the next one at the clubhouse.

 

Lastly, you'll find this group is usually friendly and always willing to help. However, I find this hobby in general is mostly pretty helpful.

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8 hours ago, Salty Soviet said:

Other companies? For what? I thought gw was the only game in town for 40k

Games Workshop wants you to think they’re the only game in town for the entire wargaming hobby (seriously, they insist their staff call it “the Games Workshop hobby” and not “the miniature wargaming hobby” for this exact reason) and while they are the sole source of official models and rules for Warhammer 40,000 and their other games they are not the only source for 32 mm tall toy soldiers (not to mention things like paint, brushes, bases, carrying cases, etc.)

There are some people in the hobby who will reflexively badmouth GW for any reason. I’m not one of them. I line their models, I like their paints, and so forth... But I’m also not a blindly brand loyal GW-or-Nothing type either. Always shop around! 

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I am not sure... how old is the current codex for custodes? I know that most 8th armies are not up to snuff when compared to 9th ed books.  So - remember that sometimes its not you... its your codex lol.  But like Dark Trainer was saying - you need to find out what kinda player you are - find out how you will most like to play - and then with experience under your belt plan to make additions to your army based on that natural play style.

-d

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Just now, Torg said:

I am not sure... how old is the current codex for custodes? I know that most 8th armies are not up to snuff when compared to 9th ed books.  So - remember that sometimes its not you... its your codex lol.  But like Dark Trainer was saying - you need to find out what kinda player you are - find out how you will most like to play - and then with experience under your belt plan to make additions to your army based on that natural play style.

-d

Custodes have issues against Drukhari due to their expense. Other than that they were one of the strongest in tournaments and still make it up in the tournaments but it is a lot of Forgeworld Units. Some you cant get outside of secondary sources currently

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Codex: Adeptus Custodes (8th Edition) came out in January 2018, so it’s one of the middle books from that edition, Psychic Awakening: War of the Spider was also a big shot in the arm for us. The most problematic thing is that the majority of the units for the Custodes don’t exist in the codex, they come from Forge World... it’s kind of an annoying juggling act.

The central “gimmick” of the Custodes is that every single model in our army has awesome stats. The basic rank-and-file Custodian Guard with a Spear is about as generic as it gets and has a statline that makes other armies’ Named Special Characters look like redshirted cannon fodder. Naturally, this means every unit we have costs oodles of points... So the biggest impact on the army from official rules updates isn’t new special rules or re-wording of existing rules, it’s point costs. Something as seemingly inconsequential as changing the cost of the misericodria from 3 Points to 5 Points would cause a massive shift in the army. 

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9 hours ago, Salty Soviet said:

Other companies? For what? I thought gw was the only game in town for 40k

Sorry, wasn't clear. I was talking about hobby supplies mostly. Citadel paint can be good but there's a world of other companies out there.

For example, GW's Flashgits yellow is one of my favorite paints. GW ceramite white I hate, love Army Painter matte white.

GW tools are normally rebranded from other companies with double the price etc...

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2 hours ago, PourSpelur said:

Sorry, wasn't clear. I was talking about hobby supplies mostly. Citadel paint can be good but there's a world of other companies out there.

For example, GW's Flashgits yellow is one of my favorite paints. GW ceramite white I hate, love Army Painter matte white.

GW tools are normally rebranded from other companies with double the price etc...

I use Turbo Dork for metallics, Vallejo for most paints, and GW

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