How to Play Adeptus Custodes in Warhammer 40,000 11th Edition

Faction Pack v1.1 does not print this rule. Its contents are Detachments, Imperial Armour Datasheets and Rules Updates, and none of those sections reprints Martial Ka'tah. So unlike our T'au Empire set, where the pack reprinted the army rule verbatim, the wording here comes from the community rules mirror. Treat it accordingly and check the Warhammer 40,000 app.

Each time a unit from your army with the ability is selected to fight, select one Stance. Until that unit has finished making its attacks, the Stance is active for it:

• Dacatarai Stance. Melee weapons equipped by models in this unit have [SUSTAINED HITS 1].
• Rendax Stance. Melee weapons equipped by models in this unit have [LETHAL HITS].

The skill in this is smaller than people expect and it repeats more often than people expect. It is not an army-wide decision made once. It is a decision you make every time a unit swings, which over a five-round game is perhaps fifteen or twenty separate choices. Getting them right is a habit rather than a plan.

The habit is simple. Rendax against anything with a good save or high Toughness, because [LETHAL HITS] converts a critical hit straight into a wound and skips the roll you were going to fail. Dacatarai against anything cheap and numerous, because [SUSTAINED HITS 1] multiplies attacks and a horde dies to volume rather than quality. Against a mid-range target the answer is usually Rendax, because a Custodian's attacks are already good enough to hit and the wound roll is where they get stuck.

Two details worth internalising. Both stances say melee weapons, so a Custodian Guard squad shooting its guardian spears gets nothing from either. And the rule attaches to models with the Martial Ka'tah ability, which your Sisters of Silence do not have. In a mixed list, half your models are outside the army rule entirely, and three of the nine detachments are built around exactly those models.

The one detachment that changes how this works is Shield Host, whose Martial Mastery rule makes an army-wide choice at the start of each battle round and improves whichever stance you then select. That interaction is covered on its own page.

The structural change is Detachment Points. In 10th edition you chose one detachment; in 11th you get a DP budget of roughly 2 DP at 1,000 points and 3 DP at 2,000 points, and spend it on detachments that each cost 1 to 3 DP, so most factions can now combine detachments.

Custodes did not get an 11th-edition codex. They keep their existing codex and run on the free Adeptus Custodes Faction Pack, currently version 1.1, legal for matched play from 22 July 2026.

That date is the single most important piece of housekeeping on this page. Sixteen other 40k faction packs were reissued on 26 August 2026. Custodes were not among them. Their pack is a month older than the T'au, Necron, Ork, Aeldari, Death Guard, Space Marine and Chaos Space Marine packs, and its own WHAT'S NEW block lists just three items, all of them Imperial Armour datasheet fixes: FRAME removed from the Ares Gunship and Orion Assault Dropship, and a rewrite of the Ares Gunship's Infernus Firebombs ability. If you are reading this after a Custodes reissue lands, assume the detachment lineup below has moved.

What the pack actually contains is more than most people think. It prints five detachments in full, not three. The three new ones are Might of the Moritoi, Silent Hunters and Tharanatoi Hammerblow, all at 1 DP. But the pack also reprints Lions of the Emperor and Solar Spearhead in full, in the older codex page layout, which means those two are first-party documents rather than things you have to look up. Its Rules Updates section then amends three more detachments by name: Auric Champions (the detachment rule itself, the Martial Philosopher enhancement, the Shoulder the Mantle stratagem), Shield Host (the detachment rule's first paragraph, the Castellan's Mark enhancement) and Talons of the Emperor (the Taloned Pincer stratagem, tightened from 9 inches to 8, and the Champion of the Imperium enhancement).

Only one detachment, Null Maiden Vigil, appears nowhere in the pack at all. Its page carries our weakest-evidence disclaimer.

The pack also prints thirteen datasheets in full: Custodian Guard with Adrasite and Pyrithite Spears, plus twelve Imperial Armour entries that keep the Forge World range legal, including the Telemon Heavy Dreadnought, both Contemptor patterns, Aquilon and Sagittarum Custodians, and the grav-tanks. And it errata several datasheets these pages lean on: new Salvo Launcher and Vertus Hurricane Bolter profiles, Toughness 7 and Wounds 8 on the Shield-Captain on Dawneagle Jetbike, Toughness 7 and Wounds 5 on Vertus Praetors plus a rewritten Quicksilver Execution, Deep Strike added to Valerian, and the FRAME keyword added to the Anathema Psykana Rhino and Venerable Land Raider.

One thing the pack does not do, and it is a genuine difference from other factions: it publishes no Warhammer Legends section. Nothing in the Custodes range was moved to Legends by this document, and no 40k Legends file appears in the live Warhammer Community downloads index. There is no list of units you have to stop using.

Your DP budget scales with game size: about 2 DP at 1,000 points and 3 DP at 2,000 points. The nine Custodes costs, read from the Munitorum Field Manual v1.3:

• 3 DP: Lions of the Emperor (Take and Hold) and Talons of the Emperor (Take and Hold). Each fills a whole 2,000-point budget, so each runs solo.
• 2 DP: Auric Champions (Priority Assets), Null Maiden Vigil (Reconnaissance), Shield Host (Purge the Foe) and Solar Spearhead (Take and Hold). Each leaves 1 DP spare.
• 1 DP: Might of the Moritoi (Take and Hold), Silent Hunters (Reconnaissance) and Tharanatoi Hammerblow (Disruption).

Eight of those nine are agreed by both our official source and the community mirror. One is not.

Lions of the Emperor is contested. The Munitorum Field Manual v1.3 lists it at 3 DP, prints an increase marker beside that value, and flags the detachment UPDATED with FORCE DISPOSITION(S) CHANGED. Wahapedia still lists it at 2 DP. This is not two tier-1 documents disagreeing: the Munitorum Field Manual is the official first-party source for Detachment Points and the mirror has not yet picked up the v1.3 increase. We state 3 DP. But we flag it everywhere the number appears, because the difference is not cosmetic: at 2 DP the detachment takes a partner and at 3 DP it cannot, so a reader working from the mirror will build a list that no longer exists. The Munitorum Field Manual also flags Tharanatoi Hammerblow as updated with a changed force disposition, though its cost is unchanged at 1 DP.

On Unique Tags, there is no dispute at all. Two tags, and all three sources agree on the strings and on who carries them:

• ARMOURY sits on Might of the Moritoi and Solar Spearhead.
• LIONS sits on Tharanatoi Hammerblow and Lions of the Emperor.

Faction Pack v1.1 prints UNIQUE: ARMOURY above the Might of the Moritoi page and UNIQUE: LIONS above the Tharanatoi Hammerblow page, and restates each tag inside the rule text. The Munitorum Field Manual and Wahapedia record the same two strings and add the second detachment in each pair. Auric Champions, Null Maiden Vigil, Shield Host, Silent Hunters and Talons of the Emperor carry no tag in any source.

Put the arithmetic and the tags together and the lineup comes out like this. Four 2-DP anchors times three 1-DP specialists is twelve combinations, minus the one the ARMOURY tag blocks, giving eleven legal two-detachment armies at Strike Force. Add one legal three-detachment army, the three 1-DP detachments together, and that is the whole legal space at 2,000 points.

Nine detachments are legal. By DP cost:

3 DP, run alone

• Lions of the Emperor (Take and Hold) is the spread-out champions detachment. Against All Odds gives every non-Vehicle Custodes model +1 to the Hit roll and +1 to the Wound roll on every attack, ranged and melee, if there are no other friendly units within 6 inches of the attacking unit. That is an enormous buff with a demanding condition, and the whole detachment is about honouring the spacing. Despite the reputation, this is not a Lone Operative detachment; Lone Operative comes from one of its enhancements, Praesidius.
• Talons of the Emperor (Take and Hold) is the Custodes and Sisters of Silence combined-arms detachment. Revered Companions gives your Anathema Psykana units an aura that hands Feel No Pain 5+ against Psychic Attacks and mortal wounds to Custodes within 6 inches, and gives your Custodes units an aura that hands +1 to the Hit roll to Sisters within 6 inches. Each aura pays the other half of your army, which is the detail people reverse.

2 DP, with a point to spare

• Shield Host (Purge the Foe) is the generalist. Martial Mastery lets you pick one of two effects at the start of each battle round: melee Critical Hits on unmodified 5+ for models with Martial Ka'tah, or +1 Armour Penetration on their melee weapons. The first bullet is a multiplier on your stance choice, not a standalone buff, and that interaction is why this is the default first detachment.
• Solar Spearhead (Take and Hold) is the armoured detachment, and it carries two rules plus a keyword grant. Auric Armour gives Custodes Vehicles +2 Objective Control while at Starting Strength and escalating re-rolls as they take damage. Moritoi Ancients gives Custodes Walkers +2 inches Move and +1 to Advance and Charge rolls. And its Keywords rule lets you make up to 2 Walker models into Characters, which means a Dreadnought can carry an Enhancement and be your Warlord.
• Auric Champions (Priority Assets) is the character hunt. Assemblage of Might names one enemy unit at the start of your Command phase, and until your next Command phase your Character units add 1 to the Wound roll against it. Characters only, declared a turn in advance.
• Null Maiden Vigil (Reconnaissance) is the Sisters of Silence anchor. Creeping Dread (Aura) forces Battle-shock tests in your opponent's Command phase on enemy units within 12 inches of your Sisters that are either Psykers or below Starting Strength, with a penalty if they are Below Half-strength. Selecting it makes Prosecutors BATTLELINE.

1 DP, the splash picks

• Might of the Moritoi (Take and Hold) is the Dreadnought package. March of the Honoured Dead gives Custodes Walkers +2 inches Move and +1 to advance and charge rolls. That is the whole rule, and it is word for word the same effect as Solar Spearhead's second rule.
• Silent Hunters (Reconnaissance) is the Sisters utility package. Advancing does not stop an Anathema Psykana unit starting an action, and Ceaseless Vigilance lets those units mark an enemy within 12 inches as nulled, giving that enemy +3 inch detection range. It is the only Custodes detachment with nothing contested about it whatsoever.
• Tharanatoi Hammerblow (Disruption) is the Terminator package. The Hammer Falls lets a Custodes Terminator unit that made an ingress move this turn re-roll charge rolls.

One expectation to reset: the three 1-DP detachments print three stratagems and two enhancements each, while the six larger ones print six and four. A 1-DP detachment is a narrow tool and the price is correct.

If you came here because you own Custodes Dreadnoughts, read this section before you write a list. It is the one genuine trap in the faction and it catches almost everybody.

There are two detachments that buff Custodes walkers, and they overlap almost completely.

Might of the Moritoi costs 1 DP. Its entire detachment rule, March of the Honoured Dead, is two bullet points: friendly ADEPTUS CUSTODES WALKER units have +2 inches Move, and have +1 to advance rolls and charge rolls.

Solar Spearhead costs 2 DP. Its 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.

Those are the same effect, written twice. Solar Spearhead simply contains the whole of the 1-DP detachment as one of its three components, alongside the vehicle-wide Auric Armour rule and the Keywords grant that turns up to two Walkers into Characters.

And here is the trap. Solar Spearhead is 2 DP. Might of the Moritoi is 1 DP. That is exactly 3 DP, exactly your Strike Force budget, and it is the most obvious Custodes list anybody can draw on paper: the detachment that makes walkers fast, plus the detachment that makes walkers fast.

It is illegal. Both detachments carry the ARMOURY tag, and no two detachments in your army may share a Unique Tag. Faction Pack v1.1 states the tag inside the Might of the Moritoi rule text itself, and the Munitorum Field Manual v1.3 and Wahapedia both record UNIQUE: ARMOURY on both detachments. There is no ambiguity here and no source disagrees.

And even if the tag did not exist, the rules would not stack, because they are the same effect. You would be spending a third of your budget to buy something you already had. Games Workshop signposted this twice: both detachments print a 1CP stratagem called Flawless Construction with near-identical wording, one restricted to Walkers and one to Vehicles. They are written as alternatives, not partners.

So the real question is not how to combine them. It is which one to take, and that is a genuine decision:

• Take Might of the Moritoi (1 DP) if walkers are a component of your list rather than the list itself, and you want the other 2 DP for something that fixes a different problem. Two or three Dreadnoughts moving faster inside a Shield Host or Auric Champions army is a strong, cheap addition.
• Take Solar Spearhead (2 DP) if the armour is the army. You get the walker mobility for free inside it, plus +2 Objective Control on undamaged vehicles, escalating re-rolls as they get hurt, six stratagems instead of three, and the Keywords rule that lets a Telemon carry Augury Uplink for a 5+ Feel No Pain. That last one is not available anywhere else in the faction and it is the strongest argument for the more expensive detachment.

What to build instead, if you want walkers:

• A walker component: Shield Host (2 DP) + Might of the Moritoi (1 DP). A generalist core that improves every melee attack in the army, plus Dreadnoughts that arrive. This is our recommendation for a walker-curious first list.
• A walker army: Solar Spearhead (2 DP) + Silent Hunters (1 DP). The armour does the work, and the Sisters run the objective actions that tanks cannot, which is the specific weakness of every vehicle list.
• A two-threat army: Might of the Moritoi (1 DP) + Tharanatoi Hammerblow (1 DP) + Silent Hunters (1 DP), the only legal three-detachment Custodes army. Walkers advancing, Terminators arriving, Sisters scoring, no shared tags.

Check the Warhammer 40,000 app before an event, and if you are playing in a tournament, ask the organiser rather than your opponent.

Start from your collection, then check the arithmetic, because two of the nine detachments rule themselves out of the standard list-building shape entirely.

If you want a balanced army, take Shield Host (2 DP) and spend the spare point. Martial Mastery improves every melee attack made by a model with the Martial Ka'tah ability, it asks one decision per battle round rather than a plan, and it has no theme you have to build around. It is the safest home base in the faction and our default recommendation.

If you own Dreadnoughts, read the section above before anything else, then take either Solar Spearhead (2 DP) or Might of the Moritoi (1 DP), never both.

If you own Sisters of Silence, you have three options and they are genuinely different. Null Maiden Vigil (2 DP) makes them the army and turns off your opponent's stratagems through Battle-shock. Silent Hunters (1 DP) makes them a utility arm inside a Custodes list. Talons of the Emperor (3 DP) makes the two halves buff each other through interlocking auras, and fills the whole budget doing it.

If you own Allarus Terminators, Tharanatoi Hammerblow (1 DP) is the cheapest way to make them a real plan rather than a slow walk, and it pairs with any of the four 2-DP anchors.

If you love characters, Auric Champions (2 DP) concentrates your damage into a handful of models and rewards naming a target a full turn ahead. Lions of the Emperor (3 DP) is the other character detachment and it is a whole army rather than an anchor, because at 3 DP nothing can be added to it.

For a first Custodes list, we would build Shield Host (2 DP) plus Silent Hunters (1 DP). Shield Host teaches the army rule, because its own rule multiplies whichever stance you pick and so forces you to think about the stance choice every round. Silent Hunters fixes the structural problem every Custodes army has, which is that you do not have enough bodies to run secondary actions without giving up a scoring model. Neither carries a Unique Tag, so there is nothing to get wrong.

Three shapes that a reasonable list-builder reaches for and that do not work.

Solar Spearhead plus Might of the Moritoi. Exactly 3 DP, and a shared ARMOURY tag. This is the one that hurts, because it costs precisely the budget and it is the most obvious walker list in the game. It has its own section above and its own page. We never suggest it anywhere on this site, in either direction.

Lions of the Emperor plus Tharanatoi Hammerblow. Illegal twice over. Lions of the Emperor is 3 DP in the current Munitorum Field Manual, so there is no point left to spend, and both detachments carry the LIONS tag on top of that. It is attractive because both print an identical 1CP stratagem called Unleash the Lions that splits an Allarus or Aquilon unit into single-model units, which reads like a designed synergy. There is a second layer to this trap: Wahapedia still lists Lions of the Emperor at 2 DP, so a reader working from the mirror computes 2 plus 1 and gets a legal-looking 3. At the current official cost it does not fit, and the tag would block it even if it did.

Talons of the Emperor plus a Sisters detachment. Talons costs 3 DP. At Strike Force you have 3 DP. There is nothing left. This is not a tag question, it is subtraction. It catches people because Talons is the Custodes-and-Sisters detachment and Silent Hunters and Null Maiden Vigil are the two Sisters detachments, so a player who has just bought Sisters models reaches for all of them at once. If you want Sisters supporting Custodes on a budget that allows a partner, take Null Maiden Vigil (2 DP) plus a 1-DP specialist instead.

The general rule for this faction, which is worth internalising: the two Unique Tags are drawn around exactly the pairings that would double up on the same idea. ARMOURY stops you stacking two walker rules that are literally the same text. LIONS stops you stacking two detachments that print the same stratagem. If a Custodes pairing looks like it doubles an effect, check the tag before you build it.

Three habits carry Custodes games in this edition.

First, choose a stance every single time and never on autopilot. Martial Ka'tah is a per-unit, per-fight decision, which means you make it fifteen or twenty times a game. Rendax and its [LETHAL HITS] is the default against anything tough or well-saved, because a Custodian's problem is almost never hitting and almost always wounding. Dacatarai and its [SUSTAINED HITS 1] is for chaff, where more attacks beats better attacks. The cost of getting this wrong is small each time and large across a game.

Second, protect against mortal wounds specifically. A 2+ save and a 4+ invulnerable are why Custodes models are hard to kill, and neither applies to mortal wounds. That is how competent opponents remove your army. Shield Host's Arcane Genetic Alchemy exists precisely for this, giving Feel No Pain 4+ against mortal wounds for a phase, and Talons of the Emperor's Null Aegis and Empyric Severance are the same answer from the Sisters side. If your detachment has a mortal wound answer, budget a command point for it every game.

Third, solve the action problem before it costs you the mission. You will field somewhere in the high teens to low twenties of models. Every one of them standing on an objective is a model not fighting, and every one running a secondary action is a model not scoring primary. This is the structural reason Silent Hunters is such a strong 1-DP pick: Sisters that can advance and still start an action are the only cheap solution the faction has. Shield Host's Vigilance Eternal, which keeps an objective under your control after your unit leaves it, is the other one, and it may be the single most valuable stratagem in the faction.

On command points, note the shape of each detachment's suite. The three 1-DP detachments are 1CP throughout with three stratagems each, so they will not absorb your budget. Auric Champions has two 2CP stratagems, Superhuman Reserves and Vigil Unending, and both are about getting one more use out of a single model, which tells you what that detachment thinks it is doing. Talons of the Emperor has one, Emperor's Executioners, and it is a finisher rather than an opener. Budget for reactive stratagems in your opponent's turn rather than spending everything on your own, because with this few models a saved unit is worth more than an extra kill.

Start with the honest version of the buying question. Custodes are an unusual army to collect: the model count is very low, which makes them quick to build, quick to paint and easy to transport, but the cost per model is high and each kit is a large share of your list, so a bad purchase hurts more than it would in a horde army.

If you are looking for a Custodes starter set, the box you want is the Combat Patrol. There is no separate Adeptus Custodes starter set in the current range, and the old Start Collecting! line that people still search for was retired across the whole 40k range and replaced by Combat Patrol boxes, so a Start Collecting: Adeptus Custodes box is not something you can buy new. If you find one listed, it is second-hand stock of a discontinued product, and you should check its contents against current datasheets before paying a premium for it.

[Combat Patrol: Adeptus Custodes](/40k/boxes/combat-patrol-adeptus-custodes) is the standing entry boxed set and the cleanest on-ramp. [Battleforce: Adeptus Custodes](/40k/boxes/battleforce-adeptus-custodes) is the seasonal multi-kit bundle: Battleforces are re-cut every year, so what is inside changes from season to season and the box is only worth buying when its contents match the detachment you actually want to play. We do not print a kit list for either box here, because Games Workshop's own product pages are the only reliable source for current contents and we will not reproduce a list we cannot verify today. Both linked pages carry live retailer pricing so you can compare against buying the kits separately, which is the calculation that matters with a Battleforce.

[Boarding Patrol: Adeptus Custodes](/40k/boxes/boarding-patrol-adeptus-custodes) is a Boarding Actions set. Boarding Actions is a separate game mode with its own two Custodes detachments, the Black Ship Guardians and Voyagers in Darkness, and none of the nine detachments in this guide applies to it.

Buying by detachment, if you already know which way you are going:

• A gold infantry core, for Shield Host, Auric Champions or Lions of the Emperor. Custodian Guard Squad first and more than one box of it, then Custodian Wardens for the heavier melee block. Add a Shield Captain or a Blade Champion, because in this faction the Character is not optional: three of the nine detachments restrict their best enhancements to a Shield-Captain specifically.
• Terminators, for Tharanatoi Hammerblow. Allarus Custodians, and build two units rather than one, because a single block is a single point of failure for the whole detachment plan.
• Speed, for every detachment. Vertus Praetors Jetbikes are the most improved unit in the current pack, which raises them to Toughness 7 and Wounds 5 and rewrites Quicksilver Execution. They are better than the datasheet most people remember.
• Sisters of Silence, for Silent Hunters, Null Maiden Vigil or Talons of the Emperor. The Sisters of Silence Vigilator / Prosecutor Squad is the catalog's Sisters kit, and it builds all three Sisters datasheets: Prosecutors, Vigilators and Witchseekers. One box covers a lot of ground.
• Centrepieces. Captain-General Trajann Valoris and Valerian and Aleya are Epic Heroes, which means none of them can carry an Enhancement. Buy them because you want them, not because a detachment needs them. The Valerian and Aleya box is the efficient buy if you are heading toward Talons of the Emperor, since it contains both halves of that detachment's namesake pair.

Compare current prices across retailers on the Adeptus Custodes army page and the boxes page.

Two buying warnings specific to this faction. First, the Dreadnoughts and grav-tanks are not in our catalog as 40k kits. The Telemon, both Contemptor patterns, the Caladius and the Coronus are all printed in Faction Pack v1.1 as Imperial Armour datasheets, and our catalog's Legio Custodes entries are Horus Heresy kits that do not build those 40k datasheets. We do not link them, because pointing you at the wrong product is worse than linking nothing. Second, there is no Legends warning to give you, which is genuinely good news and worth stating: the Custodes pack moved nothing to Warhammer Legends, so unlike several other factions right now, no unit in your collection has quietly stopped being a matched-play datasheet.

If you are new or returning, build a Shield Host (2 DP) plus Silent Hunters (1 DP) list first. Shield Host has no theme to satisfy, so you can field whatever you own, and its rule forces you to engage with the army rule every battle round rather than ignoring it. Silent Hunters costs one point and solves the problem that decides more Custodes games than any rules interaction, which is that you never have a spare model to run an action with.

Once you are comfortable, the natural next step depends on what you enjoyed. If you liked the melee arithmetic, swap the 1-DP partner for Tharanatoi Hammerblow and learn to deliver a Terminator block. If you found yourself wanting bigger models, go to Solar Spearhead at 2 DP and accept that the armour is now the army. If you found yourself wanting your Characters to do the killing, Auric Champions at 2 DP rewards planning a turn ahead more than any other detachment in the faction.

If the Sisters of Silence models are why you are here, start with Null Maiden Vigil plus Silent Hunters, which is 3 DP of pure Sisters support with no tag conflict, and read the Talons of the Emperor page before you commit to the 3-DP version.

Because Custodes are still on a faction pack rather than a full 11th-edition codex, expect a future codex to re-tune this lineup and its points. Two things are flagged as less than certain until then. The army rule wording, which is not reprinted in the pack at all and comes from a community mirror. And the Detachment Point cost of Lions of the Emperor, where our official source says 3 DP with an increase marker and the mirror still says 2. Everything else on these pages is read off the pack or the Munitorum Field Manual.

One last piece of timing advice. Custodes sat out the 26 August 2026 reissue that revised sixteen other faction packs. That makes a Custodes revision more likely than not in the near term, so check the Warhammer 40,000 app rather than a printout before an event, and re-read the detachment pages here after any pack update lands.