Lions of the Emperor: The 11th-Edition Custodes Champions Detachment

One sentence, and it is one of the largest buffs printed in the edition: each time a model in an ADEPTUS CUSTODES unit from your army, excluding VEHICLES, makes an attack, if there are no other friendly units within 6 inches of that unit, add 1 to the Hit roll and add 1 to the Wound roll.

Both halves. On every attack. Ranged and melee alike. There is no phase restriction, no once-per-battle limit and no command point cost. If you could turn it on reliably it would be the best detachment rule in the faction by a distance.

The condition is the entire game. Three details decide whether you get paid:

• It measures from the attacking unit to other friendly units, not to the enemy. Your opponent cannot switch it off; only your own deployment and movement can.
• Six inches is further than it feels. Once you are holding two objectives, screening a landing zone and moving a Character with an escort, three of your units are usually inside 6 inches of something friendly without you having planned it.
• It is checked at the moment the unit attacks. A unit that started the turn properly isolated and then drifted into support range while moving has lost both bonuses by the time it swings. This is a movement-phase discipline problem, not a deployment problem.

VEHICLES are excluded entirely, so this is an infantry, mounted and character detachment. If your collection is Dreadnoughts and grav-tanks, this is not your detachment; Solar Spearhead is.

One correction worth making explicitly. Lions of the Emperor is frequently described as the lone operative detachment. The detachment rule contains no Lone Operative ability. Lone Operative comes from one of its enhancements, Praesidius, and only for the bearer. The rule is about spacing, not about being untargetable.

Six, all 1CP, which is unusually cheap for a large detachment and tells you it expects to spend a point most turns.

• Unleash the Lions (your Command). Target one ALLARUS CUSTODIANS or AQUILON CUSTODIANS unit on the battlefield; it is split into separate units of one model each, each with a Starting Strength of 1. In this detachment this is not a convenience, it is the rule engine. Splitting a three-model Allarus blob creates three units that each only need to stay 6 inches from the others to qualify for Against All Odds. It is the single most important stratagem on the page.
• Peerless Warrior (the Fight). Target one Custodes unit that has not been selected to fight; until the end of the phase its melee weapons have [PRECISION]. Precision lets you allocate hits to a Character inside the target unit, which is how a detachment of duellists removes an enemy leader without grinding through the bodyguard.
• Defiant to the Last (the Fight). Just after an enemy unit selects its targets, each time a model in your targeted unit is destroyed, if it has not fought this phase, roll a D6 adding 2 if it has the CHARACTER keyword; on a 4+ it is not removed and fights after the attacking unit finishes. On a Character that is a 2+ to swing back, which in a detachment built on isolated champions is the difference between a trade and a loss.
• Gilded Champion (any phase). Just after a Custodes CHARACTER model uses a datasheet ability that can only be used once per battle, it can use it one additional time, though not in the same phase. Once per model per battle. In an army whose best abilities are once per battle, this is a second copy of your best turn.
• Manoeuvre and Fire (your Movement). Just after a Custodes unit Falls Back, it is eligible to shoot and declare a charge that turn. In a detachment that wants units apart, this is what stops one enemy charge from pinning two of your champions together.
• Swift as the Eagle (opponent's Shooting). Just after an enemy unit has shot, target one Custodes unit, excluding VEHICLE units, that it targeted; your unit can make a Normal move of up to D6 inches. A reactive reposition, and in this detachment it doubles as a way to re-establish spacing after a crowded turn.

The habit to build: Unleash the Lions early, then treat Manoeuvre and Fire and Swift as the Eagle as spacing tools rather than as movement tricks.

Four, and two of them are restricted to a SHIELD-CAPTAIN specifically, so plan your characters at list-building time.

• Praesidius (25 pts). ADEPTUS CUSTODES model only. The bearer has the Lone Operative and Stealth abilities. This is where the detachment's reputation actually comes from. Lone Operative means the bearer cannot be targeted from beyond 12 inches, which is precisely the protection a model standing on its own to satisfy Against All Odds needs. It is the enhancement that makes the rule survivable rather than merely strong, and it is our first pick.
• Admonimortis (30 pts). SHIELD-CAPTAIN model only. Improve the Strength of the bearer's melee weapons by 3, and the Armour Penetration and Damage by 1. The most expensive and the most direct: it turns a Shield-Captain into a genuine monster and vehicle killer, which is what a champion standing alone needs to be worth the isolation.
• Superior Creation (25 pts). ADEPTUS CUSTODES INFANTRY model only. The first time the bearer is destroyed, roll a D6 at the end of the phase; on a 2+ set it back up where it died, not within Engagement Range of enemies, with full wounds. A 2+ to come back at full wounds is close to a free extra model in an army that fields twenty.
• Fierce Conqueror (15 pts). SHIELD-CAPTAIN model only. At the start of the Fight phase, add 2 to the Attacks characteristic of the bearer's melee weapons for every 5 enemy models within 6 inches, rounding down. Against a twenty-model unit that is +8 Attacks. Against a three-model elite squad it is nothing. Pick it for the meta you actually play, not the one you imagine.

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

This detachment has the only Detachment Point cost in the faction that our sources disagree about, and the disagreement is not cosmetic.

The Munitorum Field Manual v1.3 lists Lions of the Emperor at 3 DP. It prints an increase marker beside that value and flags the detachment UPDATED with FORCE DISPOSITION(S) CHANGED, so the document is telling you directly that this number went up in the current revision. Its force disposition is Take and Hold.

Wahapedia still lists it at 2 DP.

We state 3 DP, and here is the reasoning, because it differs from how we handle a genuine conflict. This is not two tier-1 documents contradicting each other, which is the case where we assert nothing. The Munitorum Field Manual is the official first-party source for Detachment Points, and the community mirror is a revision behind it, having not yet picked up the v1.3 increase. Following the mirror over the official document would be following the older of two agreeing-in-kind sources.

What it changes for you is everything about list-building:

• At 3 DP, this detachment fills a Strike Force budget on its own. It takes no partner, and no page on this site suggests one for it.
• At 2 DP, it would leave a point spare, and the obvious spend would be Tharanatoi Hammerblow. That list is still illegal, because both detachments carry the LIONS tag. So the cost dispute changes how much you can add, and the tag independently rules out the specific thing you would want to add.

Check the Warhammer 40,000 app before an event. If you turn up to a tournament with a 2 DP Lions list built from a mirror reading, the list is wrong at the door.

• Shield-Captain carries Admonimortis and Fierce Conqueror, the two SHIELD-CAPTAIN enhancements, and is the archetypal Lion. This detachment wants several Characters operating apart rather than one deathstar, so fielding more than one is correct rather than indulgent.
• Blade Champion is a second cheap melee Character. Every additional independent unit is another one that can satisfy the spacing condition on its own terms.
• Allarus Custodians are the Unleash the Lions target, and in this detachment that stratagem multiplies the number of qualifying units.
• Custodian Wardens are the durable infantry that can be left alone on an objective and still hit hard, which is exactly the shape the rule rewards. They are not Vehicles, so the rule applies in full.
• Vertus Praetors are Mounted rather than Vehicle, so Against All Odds applies to them, and their speed is what lets you keep re-establishing spacing as the board fills up.
• Trajann Valoris is the strongest single champion in the faction and a natural fit. As an Epic Hero he cannot carry an Enhancement, so pair him with a Shield-Captain who can.
• Valerian is another Epic Hero champion, and Faction Pack v1.1 adds Deep Strike to his core abilities, which is a direct way to place a lone model somewhere no friendly unit is within 6 inches.

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

Take it when your collection is gold infantry and characters, when you enjoy a movement-phase puzzle, and when you are content to field one detachment and no partner, because at 3 DP that is what you are choosing.

Be clear-eyed about the limits. VEHICLES gain nothing, so a walker or grav-tank collection is in the wrong place. The rule asks you to spread out in an edition with dense terrain and objectives that pull units together, which is a real tax on your movement phase every turn. And a spread-out Custodes army is a fragile Custodes army in one specific way: isolated units cannot support each other, and a good opponent will focus them down one at a time. Praesidius and Defiant to the Last exist because the designers knew that.

Sample gameplan: put Praesidius on a Shield-Captain and push him forward as an untargetable-at-range threat. Spend Unleash the Lions in your first Command phase to split an Allarus block into three qualifying units. Move deliberately, checking the 6 inch bubble around each unit before you finish the movement phase rather than discovering the problem when you attack. Use Peerless Warrior to snipe out the enemy Character who is holding their line together, and hold a point for Defiant to the Last on whichever of your champions is about to be focused.

Because this detachment fills the budget alone, everything it needs has to come from inside it. That is the trade: the largest rule in the faction, and no second detachment to cover its blind spots.

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