The forces of the Master of Mankind come to the battlefields of the Horus Heresy in our full review of the 3rd Edition Liber Custodes, covering the armies of the Custodes, the Sisters of Silence and the Divisio Assassinorium. Updating the rules originally seen as a free download on Warhammer Community, Liber Custodes brings these up to date in a brand new tome in the same format as the other books that came out at launch.

Alongside Liber Custodes, there’s also a brand new Legio Custodes Battle Group box up for pre order today with a stack of new miniatures – We’ll also be taking a look at this set and how the kits go together

Massive thanks to Games Workshop for sending us these over to check out on the site. If you would like to support the site then why not order your copy through our affiliate Element Games and save yourself some money too?

We’ve filmed a full unboxing of the new Battle Group set which you can see just below or over on YouTube

We also have a full review of the Mailed Fist Super Heavy Tank Supplement up today which you can read here

So without further ado, let’s check out the new Battle Group Box!

Legio Custodes Battle Group Unboxing

So before we jump into the Liber Custodes, let’s take a look at the Battle Group! Games Workshop have done a number of these now for Warhammer The Horus Heresy and they are always really good value and a way of getting the kits a little earlier that general release.

In this one you get a stack of stuff – and all of the kits in here are brand new!

You get a Shield Captain – with the option of a helmeted or unhelmeted head – This is a great model and is different enough to stand out from your other Custodians

Jay has gone for a slightly different scheme on these ones, opting for a black but keeping some flashes of gold and red to keep things interesting.

You get a set of 6 Guardian Spear armed Custodian Guard Sodality. These are much slimmer than the old Custodes models, but have a brilliant look to them, there’s a range of different poses with the plumes on their helmets trailing in different directions which gives them some brilliant movement to them.

You also get a set of 6 sword and shield armed Sentinel Guard – these use the same core frames for the body, but come with a different sprue for the weapons. I suspect these are both going to be sold as separate boxes of 6 when they are released seperatley, and if you are picking up this box then keep in mind that you only get 6 of each weapon loadout – you can’t build 12 Sentinel Guard for example. I suspect most people will want a mix of squads in their army, so it isnt much of an issue – but just something to be aware of

Now for the really cool stuff in the box – Included is a Contemptor-Achillus which can also be built as a Contemptor-Galatus. We’ve previously worked on one of the resin ones of these, and the plastic likeness is very close to it. Side by Side it’s hard to tell the plastic one from the resin one, and there’s lots of movement and possibility available in the kit, which is very cool! I’m looking forward to seeing what they do with the plastic version of the Telemon Dread…

The final kit in the box is the Caladius Grav-tank, and this thing looks stunning. I’ve always been a fan of the resin Custodes tanks, but the plastic one keeps that same look while also being easier to build and lighter too. Again, just like the Dread these have a really close likeness to the resin one. The weapon sprue is separate here, opening up the potential for future new varients of the tank too! There’s a new full mounted weapon on the kit too, the Twin Neutronium Cascade Projector.

There’s around 1160 points worth of models in this box making it a great entry point for someone looking to put together a Custodes army, and I have a feeling this is going to be a very popular box!

So what about the book? Let’s take a look

Liber Custodes Review

So on to the Liber Custodes itself. Just like the Liber volumes that got released at the start of the edition, this one contains the rules for the Custodes, the Sisters of Silence and the Assassins – though I had expected a couple of new options for some of those armies.

Let’s start with the Custodes – As you would expect they have to be loyalists, and keep their “Only in Death” rule from the Warhammer Community document. Essentially, this means that your Custodians never get routed in combat, but instead become stunned. On top of that they can never Fall Back or Disengage. This fits the theme of the Custodes – they are the elite best of the best and are only deployed when needed – they are not likely to flee from combat and will stand their ground until the very end. From a rules point of view this is a double edged guardian-spear though, while you will never be running away you’ll also have situations where a smart opponent will pin you down with tar pits to try and lock you safely in combat for the rest of the game

The Custodes get 5 new Detachments.

First up we have the Moritoi Covocation, this is an interesting Apex Detachment which allows you to take 2 War Engines (which can take any of your 3 dreads) – War Engine slots are normally at a premium, so this is pretty handy, especially as one is a prime slot.

Next up we have the Hykanatoi Convocation which consists of 2 troops and a Heavy Transport, making this an easy way to include your core units and their transport – Like the other detachments we get a Prime slot here too, which is nice to use for extra slots.

We also get the Tharanatoi Convocation which consists of 2 Heavy Assault squads for your Terminators. There’s also a Ephoroi Convocation for your Recon (Venatari)

Finally we get a really nice one filling out a lot of the other slots in the army. The Kataphractoi Convocation has a Fast Attack, a Heavy Transport and an Armour slot, making this a nice one to get the rest of your army to fit in your detachments without having to pick up multiple generic detachments.

Custodes are always going to be a very elite low model count army, so it’s good to see these new detachments to make building an army a little easier.

We also get two new Prime Advantages – Prefect can be taken by Shield Captains and gives them an extra wound and Officer of the Line (2), making it easier to find the slots to put together your army. The second Prime Advantage is Hetaeron Guard which increases the Eternal Warrior stats on one of your units, which is really cool.

So onto the profiles! A lot of the profiles are similar to those seen in the original PDF, but there are some changes to unit sizes and weapon options here and there – we’ll take a quick look at what everything in the army list does now.

Constantin Valdor is our Primarch equivalent and has a decent stat line that can put him toe to toe with most foes. just taking him in your army gives all your non-vehicle units Fear (1) for the first turn, which is very cool – as long as you take advantage of it in turn 1. He also has the ability to increase your deep strike rolls by one, making you reinforcements turn up more reliably.

He’s pretty expensive, but probably our best fighter and combined with his decent weapon and Hatred against paragons he hits very hard when used against those units.

For High Command we get the Tribune – He’s not changed much from his previous incarnation, however we only have a choice of two weapon loadouts now – Eternity spear or Eternity Blade and Shield. Previously he had a range of weapons he could take so now looks to be fixed to the sprue options.

We see the same for the Shield Captain, who shares the two weapon options. He also no longer has Officer of the Line, with that rule now existing with the Prime Advantage you can take for him – this essentially stops you from spamming units with him, as you have to pick one to speciailise as your officer of the line in order to get those extra slots.

Aquilion Terminators retain their old profile and unit size – I am interested if we get some different models to represent these as part of this release.

Custodian Guard and Sentinel Guard see some tweaks compared to their previous rules. The most obvious of these are the updated unit sizes – you buy both of these as a unit of 6, and then can go up to 12 models in a squad. Previously you could buy different types of spear, however these have all been removed now which makes things a little more straight forward to identity which unit is which. As before they all have Eternal Warrior 1, which gives them a little more survivable and Vanguard 2 on even your basic troops means you want to be using these to remove units from objectives.

Sagittarum Guard are no longer in the book – I do wonder if these will return in a future Journal Tactica perhaps…

All three of the War Engines are still in the book however, two flavours of Contemptor and the Telemon. These keep their old rules and are still very cool, very tough and pretty easy to slot into the army when combined with the new Apex detachment. A lot of armies struggle to take dreads in numbers, but I feel Custodes can now do it better than most.

The Coronus Grav-Carrier gets some upgrades to bring it in line with the new squad sizes – it can now carry 14 infantry now allowing it to take the new larger squads of 6 along with a character (All our infantry have Bulky 2), and it also matches the tank in the army set with a new option for its nose gun. The Neutronium Cascade Projector is a template weapon hitting at AP3 with breaching 6+ and Phage (T), it also has an interesting Annihilation Cascade rule which allows it to do additional hits similar to volkite, but based on the number of hull points the target took.

Next up are a couple of quick units. The Venatari are essentially our jump troops – with a decent movement of 14 and outflank they are great at harrassing enemy lines, and with their Tarsus Buckler they are -1 to wound against Volley Attacks and Overwatch which combined with their toughness of 5 makes them pretty hard nuts to crack.

The Gyrfalcon Jetbikes are still here, however they do get some changes to unit sizes to a minimum of 2 models and a max of 10 models (which maybe hints at a 2 model plastic kit on the way…) these are still very cool and also offer a nice quick unit for forcing models off objectives.

The Pallas also has some tweaks in Liber Custodes that hint towards a new model on the way – It’s main weapon can now comes as default with an Illiastus Accelerator and can be swapped out for the Blaze Cannon for a points upgrade – this now gives this light tank a couple of different roles depending on how you outfit it.

As mentioned earlier, the Caladius not only has the option of upgrading from the standard Caladius into the Annihilator variant by swapping out the main turret, it also shares the new hull weapon options seen on the Grav Carrier. I fully expect us to get two different kits here to represent both variants.

Surprisingly, both of the Super Heavy Flyers still exist in the new book. I’m not sure if we will get a plastic version any time soon, but it’s really good to see both still represented for existing players who already have one!

While the profiles in this book are very similar to those in the PDF, we do get some new stuff with the Advanced Reactions and Gambits.

The Blade Splits is the new Custodes Advanced Reaction, and this allows a squad of at least 6 models to split into two separate units. This is triggered when an enemy unit moves within 12″ and there’s some fun stuff you can do with this such as forcing an enemy unit to split their fire against 2 new units, or to sacrifice one half of the squad to keep the other kicking around.

The Custodes get 4 Gambits, and there’s some fun stuff here – The first allows you to add extra attacks based on the differece between outside support (to a max of +3), there’s one that limits you to a single attack, but with a damage equal to your wounds (making Valdor deal 6 damage for example). One halves your attacks but makes them crit on 5s, and the final one gives you +1 toughness, but makes wound tests fail on a 1 or 2. There’s some stuff here that is only going to be worth it in very particular circumstances, but I feel this represents the Custodes being able to pull out their tactical insight in these edge case situations.

It’s not just the Custodes in the Liber Custodes though, we also get the army list for the Sisters of Silence – however if you’re expecting all the expanded units that we saw last edition you’re going to be disappointed here. The profiles match those in the PDF and are limited to just units with models. This is especially disappointing as we actually had units that did not yet have models last time, but there’s always the chance that these follow in a future wave alongside another Journal Tactica.

The core rule for the Anathema Psykana (To give them their full title) is the Anathema rule – this makes it so that they ignore the effects of all Psychic abilities, and are only ever wounded by Psychic or Immaterial weapons on a 5+

While this may have little effect in most games, it makes them super thematic when fighting against Daemons or Thousand Sons for example – and I feel this is the kind of force that you really want to lean into the narrative with. I’ve got a small Sisters of Silence force that I’d love to expand in the future, but I’m happy we do at least get some rules for them in this book.

All of the profiles here are the same as in the original free PDF, with Krole, Knight-Centura, Anathema Cadre and Kharon Acquisitors represented. I am sad we’ve not got more units here, but hopefully the transport at least gets a plastic update and we perhaps see some other kits down the line.

Sadly there’s not even any advanced reactions or Gambits for the Sisters of Silence, which seems a massive shame given the other forces in the book do.

Finally, Liber Custodes also contains the Dividio Assassinorum army list. These are a little different in that you add these to your army with a special Prime Advantage. Clade Operative unlocks 3 slots that can only be filled with Assassins, and you are limited to using this Advantage once per army – meaning you’re only ever going to be able to bring a maximum of 3 assassins.

Assassins are also tough to hit, having the Nemesis rule – This means you only ever made snap shots against them, which is pretty cool and makes your Assassins hang around the battlefield a little longer.

We get rules for 7 different Assassins in Liber Custodes, including the 40k ones which is pretty cool – There’s a couple of points differences compared to the original PDF, but we’ll have a quick look through what they do now

Adamus Assassin – This is a fragile but effective assain with an AP 2 weapon with shred and critical hit 5+ and a gambit that always allows it to hit on a 4+ regardless of WS which is pretty cool

Callidus Assassin – Another fun one, Polymorphine makes it so that it cant be shot or charged unless the Assassin has already attacked, or if a model passes an Intelligence test to be able to see it. On top of this it gives the Stunned status to the first model it charges, and any wounds of a 6 on it’s phase sword ignore all saves and damage mitigation, which makes it very dangerous.

The Culexus is an anti-psyker assassin that has hatred of Psykers and Psy-Chock on it’s ranged weapon. It also has a quasi Eternal Warrior, reducing the damage of ranged weapons targetting it by 1

The Eversor is your drug fueled combat monster – it has an ace Gambit where it increases it’s focus roll and attacks by 3, but has the chance of taking damage as a side effect.

Vanus Infocyte Assassin is an interesting one that interacts with reserves, it gets access to 2 special reactions – the first allows the assassin to pivot aircraft before they more, and the second can be used to suppress or pin units that come in from reserves.

The Venenum Assassin is a poison specialist with some cool rules – there’s a lot of posioned weapons on offer, but the main melee weapon Hookfang has anyone who takes a wound from it take a toughness test or suffer another wound.

Finally we get an oldie but a goodie with the Vindicare Assassin – they have a 100″ range sniper rifle that shoots at S7 and causes pinning and has a chance of ignoring Eternal Warrior. Though, the lack of AP makes it easy to save against.

In Liber Custodes we also get a new Advanced Reaction for the assassins – when they are targeted by a shooting attack they can move equal to their Intelligence, to try and get out of line of sight of the shot, which is very fun!

Summary

So what do I think of Liber Custodes? Well it’s cool that we finally get this as a book to allow you to fun these different forces, though a lot of the content is repeated from the original free PDF which does seem a bit of a shame. In particular, if you are a Sisters of Silence player you will be a little disappointed that a lot of the flavour we lost from 2nd edition hasn’t been added back.

The real focus of the book is the Custodes along with the new kits, and there is some fun stuff here for Custodes players. The new kits in particular are absolutly gorgeous and I’m very tempted to pick some up to go alongside my Sisters of Silence force – the units that have been tweaked have also got a couple of new options to mix things up, and the increases unit sizes is interesting – though this may cause you to have an army with not enough models if you are using old Warhammer 40k kits rather than the new Heresy plastics.

I do like that all of the units in the army box can be used in 40k too, as I was a little worried that we would see the more exotic units lose their 40k rules.

I do feel that we will probably get some future model releases in Journal Tactica releases in the future, so I just hope that the Sisters of Silence get some more love that way, as there is a lot of cool stuff they could still get.

If you collect Custodes though you’re going to want to pick up Liber Custodes through, and there’s lots of hope for cool new models following these ones!

Liber Custodes is up for pre order today and is released Saturday 4th April

Games Workshop provided Sprues and Brews with free copies for review purposes.