Auric Champions: The 11th-Edition Custodes Character Detachment

At the start of your Command phase, select one unit from your opponent's army. Until the start of your next Command phase, each time a model in an ADEPTUS CUSTODES CHARACTER unit from your army makes an attack that targets that enemy unit, add 1 to the Wound roll. This is the wording Faction Pack v1.1 rewrites, so play the current version.

Three things follow, and each one shapes your list:

• It pays CHARACTER units only. A Custodian Guard squad with no Character attached gets nothing, no matter what it shoots at. This is the detail that decides whether the detachment is worth 2 DP for you: if your list has two Characters, the rule is small; if it has five, the rule is the army.
• You declare at the start of your Command phase, which is before you move. You are committing to a target a full turn ahead, and your opponent gets a whole turn to react to a choice they can see you made. That is a real cost and it is the skill of the detachment: you have to name the unit you will still want to kill after your opponent has responded.
• It applies to attacks, not to melee attacks. Ranged and melee alike, which makes a shooting Character worth more here than people expect.

The pack also answers the awkward case in its FAQ: if a Character leading a unit is destroyed, for instance by an attack with [PRECISION], the rule does not keep applying to the remaining models in that unit. So the buff genuinely lives on the Character model, and a Precision sniper is the cleanest counterplay against you.

A note on scale. +1 to the Wound roll is worth most where you are currently wounding on 5s or 4s, which is to say against Monsters and Vehicles. That is not a coincidence: this detachment's best stratagem points at exactly the same targets.

Six, and unusually for a Custodes detachment two of them cost 2CP, which tells you the detachment expects to spend heavily on a small number of models.

• Earning of a Name (the Fight, 1CP). Target up to two Custodes CHARACTER units that have not fought this phase; until the end of the phase, each time a CHARACTER model in either makes an attack targeting a MONSTER or VEHICLE unit, you can re-roll the Hit roll and the Wound roll. Full re-rolls on both, for two units, for one command point. This is the best anti-monster tool in the faction, and it stacks with the detachment rule if you named that monster in your Command phase.
• Slayer of Champions (any phase, 1CP). Target one Custodes CHARACTER unit that has just destroyed your named Assemblage of Might target; select a new enemy unit and your Characters add 1 to the Wound roll against it until your next Command phase. If the destroyed unit was a CHARACTER unit, gain 1CP. It refreshes the detachment rule mid-turn, so killing your named target early is worth building around, and against an enemy Character it pays for itself.
• The Emperor's Auspice (opponent's Shooting or the Fight, 1CP). Target one Custodes CHARACTER unit an enemy just selected; CHARACTER models in it have Feel No Pain 4+ until the end of the phase. A detachment that concentrates damage into Characters has to keep them alive.
• Vigil Unending (the Fight, 2CP). Target one Custodes CHARACTER model that was just destroyed and has not fought this phase; do not remove it, and it fights after the attacking unit finishes. Two points to guarantee your best model swings once more, which in an army of very few models is often the whole game.
• Superhuman Reserves (any phase, 2CP). Just after a Custodes WARLORD model uses a datasheet or Enhancement ability that can only be used once per battle, it can use it one additional time, though not in the same phase. Once per battle. Expensive, and it wants a Warlord whose once-per-battle ability is genuinely game-swinging.
• Shoulder the Mantle (your Movement, before Reinforcements, 1CP). Target one Custodes CHARACTER model not leading a unit; select one friendly unit, excluding Battle-shocked and Attached units, within 2 inches horizontally and 5 inches vertically that it could lead, and your model attaches to it as a Leader, changing that unit's Starting Strength accordingly. Faction Pack v1.1 rewrites this stratagem in full, including those exact measurements, so play the current wording.

The habit to build: name your target for what you will kill next turn, not what is annoying you now, and hold a point for The Emperor's Auspice because your Characters are the whole plan.

Four, all restricted only to an ADEPTUS CUSTODES model, which is broad, so they will fit whichever Characters you field.

• Martial Philosopher (30 pts). The bearer's unit is eligible to shoot and declare a charge in a turn in which it Fell Back. And once per battle, in your opponent's Movement phase, when an enemy unit ends a Normal, Advance or Fall Back move within 8 inches of the bearer, if the bearer's unit is not within Engagement Range of enemies, it can make a Normal move of up to 6 inches. Faction Pack v1.1 rewrites that third sentence, so 8 inches and 6 inches are the current numbers. The most expensive and the most flexible, and the Fall Back clause is permanent rather than once per battle.
• Blade Imperator (25 pts). Each time the bearer's unit ends a Charge move, select one enemy unit within Engagement Range and roll a D6; on a 4+ it suffers D3 mortal wounds. Once per battle, after the bearer's unit ends a Charge move, all enemy units within 6 inches must take a Battle-shock test. The mortal wounds trigger on every charge, which makes it the pick for a Character you intend to charge repeatedly.
• Veiled Blade (25 pts). Add 2 to the Attacks of the bearer's melee weapons. And once per battle, at the start of any Command phase, triple the bearer's Objective Control until the end of the turn. Two unrelated effects, and the second is a scoring trick most people forget they own: tripled Objective Control on a Character can flip a contested objective outright on the turn it matters.
• Inspirational Exemplar (10 pts). The bearer has Leadership 5+. Once per battle, at the start of any phase, select one friendly Custodes unit that is Battle-shocked within 12 inches; that unit is no longer Battle-shocked. Cheap insurance, and Battle-shock is one of the few things that genuinely stops a Custodes army, because a Battle-shocked unit cannot use stratagems.

(Points come from the Munitorum Field Manual and move with updates; confirm in the app.)

• Shield-Captain is the detachment's core model, and this is the one list where fielding several of them is correct rather than indulgent, because Assemblage of Might only pays CHARACTER units and more Characters means more of the rule.
• Blade Champion is a cheaper Character body that benefits from the rule in full, and a good Blade Imperator bearer because his job is to charge.
• Trajann Valoris is the best Character in the faction in a detachment that pays Characters, and the natural Warlord for Superhuman Reserves. As an Epic Hero he cannot take an Enhancement.
• Valerian is another Epic Hero Character, and Faction Pack v1.1 gives him Deep Strike, which lets you put a detachment-buffed Character next to your named target rather than walking one across the board.
• Shield-Captain on Dawneagle Jetbike is the fastest Character in the army, which matters a great deal when the rule commits you a turn ahead: speed is how you still reach the target you named. The pack raises him to Toughness 7 and Wounds 8 and rewrites his Salvo Launcher and Vertus Hurricane Bolter profiles. Our catalog has no separate entry for him, so we link no box.
• Custodian Wardens are the unit your Characters attach to. Note that the rule pays the Character models, not the whole unit, so the Wardens are here for durability and for carrying the Character safely.
• Custodian Guard hold objectives, because a Character-focused list still has to score. They gain nothing from the detachment rule, which is a reason to give them the least glamorous job.

See current boxes on the boxes page and the full roster on the army page.

Take it when your collection is characters and elite infantry, when you like planning a turn ahead, and when the thing you keep losing to is a big Monster or Vehicle that your Custodian Guard cannot chew through. Earning of a Name plus the detachment rule is the faction's cleanest answer to that problem.

Be clear-eyed about the limits. The rule pays CHARACTER units only, so a list with two Characters is paying 2 DP for very little. You commit to a target before you move, which a good opponent will exploit by removing or repositioning it. And concentrating your damage into a few models means a [PRECISION] attack or a well-aimed alpha strike can take a large fraction of your army's output off the table in one phase, which is what The Emperor's Auspice and Vigil Unending exist to prevent.

Sample gameplan: pair it with Tharanatoi Hammerblow (1 DP). Name your target at the start of your Command phase, spend Mnemo-locked Shrine Cipher to ingress an Allarus block with a Character attached, re-roll the charge with The Hammer Falls, and swing with +1 to Wound from the detachment rule on the Character models. The rule's one-turn commitment stops being a cost when your delivery mechanism lands in the same turn you declared.

If you would rather have scoring than a hammer, Silent Hunters (1 DP) frees the rest of your army to run the mission while your Characters hunt. Both pairings are exactly 3 DP with no tag conflict, because Auric Champions carries no Unique Tag in any source.

For the fundamentals underneath all of it, read the Adeptus Custodes army guide.