Might of the Moritoi: The 11th-Edition Custodes Dreadnought Detachment

Two bullet points, and no conditions attached to either. Friendly ADEPTUS CUSTODES WALKER units have +2 inches Move, and have +1 to advance rolls and charge rolls.

That is the entire detachment rule, and three things follow from it:

• It names the WALKER keyword, which means Dreadnoughts and nothing else. Your Caladius and Coronus grav-tanks, your Pallas Grav-attack, your Venerable Land Raider and your aircraft are Vehicles but not Walkers, and they get nothing. This surprises people who read the detachment as an armour package. It is not; the armour package is Solar Spearhead.
• There is no trigger, no once-per-battle limit and no command point cost. It applies from deployment to the end of the game, for free. Unconditional rules are rare on 1-DP detachments and this is most of why the price is right.
• The two bullets compound rather than merely add. +2 inches Move extends the base of your threat range, +1 to Advance extends it again on the turns you run, and +1 to charge rolls narrows the gap you have to close at the end. A Contemptor with a 12 inch charge requirement is rolling on a much friendlier curve than the one you remember.

What it buys you is consistency, which for an army with three or four units that matter is worth more than damage. A Custodes Dreadnought that reaches combat is one of the best melee units in the game. A Custodes Dreadnought that spends the game two inches short of a charge is a very expensive gun platform.

The rule text also states that this detachment has the ARMOURY tag and cannot be taken with another ARMOURY detachment. Read the next section before you build.

Three, all 1CP, which is the standard shape for a 1-DP Custodes detachment.

• Flawless Construction (your opponent's Shooting or the Fight). When an enemy unit targets a friendly ADEPTUS CUSTODES WALKER unit, attacks that target your unit with a Strength greater than your unit's Toughness have -1 to wound rolls. On a Toughness 12 Telemon this pushes most dedicated anti-tank fire from wounding on 4s to wounding on 5s, which is a large reduction on the exact attacks that were going to kill it. Note that Solar Spearhead prints a stratagem of the same name with near-identical wording restricted to Vehicles rather than Walkers.
• Unstoppable Advance (your Movement). When a friendly ADEPTUS CUSTODES WALKER unit is selected to move, your unit has MOBILE. In 11th edition's dense terrain this is often worth more than the extra two inches: a Dreadnought that can go through a ruin instead of around it has a completely different threat map, and stacked on the detachment rule it turns a theoretical charge into a real one.
• Prioritised Eradication (your Shooting). When a friendly TELEMON HEAVY DREADNOUGHT unit is selected to shoot, its Arachnus Storm Cannon weapons have [RAPID FIRE 6] and its Iliastus Accelerator Culverin weapons have [RAPID FIRE 2]. This is the only stratagem locked to a single datasheet and the only one that adds damage.

One correction, because it is repeated widely: no total shot count appears anywhere in the pack. Community write-ups quote figures as high as around 36 shots for a Telemon under this stratagem. The pack grants Rapid Fire values on two named weapons, and what that produces depends entirely on the loadout you built and whether you are inside half range. Do not plan a turn around a number nobody printed.

The habit to build: spend Unstoppable Advance on the turn a walker needs to cross terrain rather than saving it, and hold a command point in your opponent's turn for Flawless Construction on whichever Dreadnought is about to be focused.

Two, and this is the detail most write-ups get wrong: both are Upgrades on an ADEPTUS CUSTODES WALKER unit, not character relics. You do not need a Character to carry either of them, which matters a great deal in a Dreadnought list that may not field a classic Shield-Captain at all.

• Interred Expertise (Upgrade) (25 pts). ADEPTUS CUSTODES WALKER unit only. This unit's attacks can re-roll hit rolls of 1 and re-roll wound rolls of 1. Both, on every attack, ranged and melee. On a walker throwing a lot of attacks this is the more valuable of the two by a clear margin, and it is the one to take if you can only afford one.
• Auramite Sarcophagus (Upgrade) (15 pts). ADEPTUS CUSTODES WALKER unit only. When you target this unit with the Crushing Impact stratagem, that use is -1 CP. Crushing Impact is a core stratagem rather than a detachment one, so this is a discount on something a walker-forward list is already spending. It is worth taking on the Dreadnought you expect to charge repeatedly and worth nothing on one you intend to keep shooting.

A related correction. Older write-ups worry about where the enhancements go in a Dreadnought-centric detachment with few character slots. That worry is misplaced: neither enhancement wants a Character, and neither can go on one. If your Shield-Captain is here, he is here for leadership, not to carry a relic.

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

• Telemon Heavy Dreadnought is the only unit named in a stratagem and the one whose guns most want the extra movement, because Rapid Fire wants half range. Faction Pack v1.1 reprints its datasheet in full.
• Contemptor-Achillus Dreadnought is the melee walker the detachment is really written for, since the charge bonus is worth most on the hull that wants combat. Also reprinted in full by the pack.
• Contemptor-Galatus Dreadnought is the durable shield-and-blade walker and the one to leave holding the middle while the others advance.
• Venerable Contemptor Dreadnought is the cheapest way to field a second or third Walker, which matters: an unconditional buff paid for by one model is a bad rate.
• Custodian Guard hold the objectives your Dreadnoughts are too busy advancing to score. They gain nothing from the detachment rule, and that is the point.
• Vertus Praetors give a one-axis list some map presence. They are Mounted rather than Walker so the rule skips them, but the pack improves them directly to Toughness 7 and Wounds 5 and rewrites Quicksilver Execution.

One buying note. The Telemon, both Contemptor patterns and the Venerable Contemptor have no 40k entry in our catalog, so we link no box for them. Our Legio Custodes boxes are Horus Heresy kits and do not build these datasheets; pointing you at one would be worse than linking nothing. See the army page for the full roster.

This is the part to read before you build a 2,000-point list, because the list in question is the one your models point at.

Solar Spearhead (2 DP) + Might of the Moritoi (1 DP) costs exactly 3 DP, a full Strike Force budget, and it is the obvious walker list: the armoured detachment plus the Dreadnought detachment.

It is illegal. Both carry the ARMOURY tag, and no two detachments in your army may share a Unique Tag. Faction Pack v1.1 states the tag inside this detachment's own rule text, and the Munitorum Field Manual v1.3 and Wahapedia both record UNIQUE: ARMOURY on both detachments. No source disagrees.

And here is the part that makes it a genuinely good design rather than an arbitrary restriction: the rules would not stack even if the tag did not exist. Solar Spearhead's second detachment rule, Moritoi Ancients, reads add 2 inches to the Move characteristic of models in ADEPTUS CUSTODES WALKER units and add 1 to Advance and Charge rolls made for such units. That is this detachment's entire rule, reprinted inside a bigger one. You would be spending a Detachment Point on something you already owned.

Games Workshop signposted it twice. Both detachments print a 1CP stratagem called Flawless Construction with near-identical wording. They are alternatives.

So the real decision is which, and it is a real decision:

• This detachment at 1 DP if walkers are a component of your army and you want 2 DP for something that solves a different problem.
• Solar Spearhead at 2 DP if the armour is the army. You get this rule for free inside it, plus vehicle-wide Objective Control and re-rolls, six stratagems instead of three, and the Keywords rule that turns up to two Walkers into Characters so a Telemon can carry Augury Uplink for a 5+ Feel No Pain. Nothing else in the faction does that.

We never suggest the pairing anywhere on this site, in either direction.

Take it when you own two or more Custodes Dreadnoughts and you want them to be a threat rather than a gun line, and when you would rather spend your other 2 DP on something that is not about walkers at all.

Be clear-eyed about the limits. The rule covers one keyword. It does nothing for your grav-tanks, your infantry, your jetbikes or your Sisters. It adds no damage of its own, and with three stratagems it will not absorb command points.

Sample gameplan: pair it with Shield Host (2 DP). Shield Host improves every melee attack made by a model with the Martial Ka'tah ability, which includes your Dreadnoughts, so the two detachments compound on the same models: Martial Mastery's Armour Penetration bullet on the battle round your Contemptor charges, Rendax Stance for [LETHAL HITS] on the swing, and Interred Expertise re-rolling the 1s underneath all of it. Put Auramite Sarcophagus on the walker you expect to charge most, spend Unstoppable Advance to cross the terrain that would otherwise cost you a turn, and hold a point for Flawless Construction.

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