The 30 space marines that valdor fought were also not an ordinary marines, its from thousand sons blade master that are psychicly linked and have the ability of foresight, and valdor defeat them all whilst only sustaining a single injuries

Custodians jump from insane what is Space marine to real human. To getting destroyed by 5-7 Astartes. They are super inconsistent.

Nice take on Custodes, tho I would give them a bit more props, but I am biased. You have a sub #296. Keep up the solid work.

It's important to note the changes in writing styles, tones, and overall effectiveness of the custodians throughout the lore. It's incorrect to say that the custodes changed in power levels, but their portrayal in Horus Heresy Book 7 Infero has clear biases. Firstly, the Horus Heresy books are written with a deliberate in-universe Imperial perspective, and the custodes are given a much greater focus than what other contemporary sources on the Burning of Prospero depict. It's also notable that the custodes of this interpretation were the kind corroborated in the 8th edition custodes codex, which implied that all custodes are roughly equal in abilities, with only select few champions like Valdor excelling beyond. Secondly, the custodes "rates" are by far the highest ever depicted within 40k, only being beaten by the 6 custodes vs thousands of tyranids in Duty Unto Death. However, this is not the stance supported by other areas of the lore. Most sources in the contemporary area are either implicit or downright explicit in the difference in capability between custodes of different ranks, and nowhere is it suggested that your average custodian can kill 10+ veteran marines on average or without a severe trade. Their portrayal in the First Heretic (killing two space marine veterans/champions and a chapter master) is immediately followed by a more grounded stance on what their durability is like (Argel Tal unloading an entire boltgun magazine into his helmet, not killing him but clearly taking him out of the fight. A fight later in the book, with 3 custodians trading evenly with a number of Gal Vorbak, pretty strongly establishes the possessed as "custodes" level. Custodians die several times in the Dawn of Fire series, one notable example being a custodian who was instantly vaporized by the thermal lance of a Knight Armiger. One custodian is also killed in the Shadowthrone box lore, having gotten sniped by a genestealer cultist wielding a mining laser. A custodian tribune in the siege of terra felled 14 out of the 16 world eaters that attacked him, although world eaters are maybe not the best depiction of combat efficiency and tribunes are fairly higher end as far as custodes go. One of the higher end depictions is the custodian warden Hekkarron and over ten dark angels in the novel Cypher: Lord of the Fallen. He manages to outpace the first couple of dark angels and then kills their plasma gunner, thus freeing him to continue killing a few more. His armor is badly damaged by the barrage of bolts, but since the Dark Angels don't know where to aim or how to slow his advance they get bodied until a librarian hits him with psychic force. The custodian resists due to all of his enhancements, but its enough for two missiles to strike and mortally wound him, forcing him to retreat. He dies as a result of this, having killed six dark angel veterans. Of vital note is their portrayal in books by Chris Wraight, who is the leading expert on custodes through the Vault of Terra and Watchers of the Throne. His portrayal of custodes is one that I think many fans can agree with. On their own, custodes body most anything else in the galaxy, and one custodes vs one space marine is almost universally in the custodes favor. What sets them apart overall, however, is their use of strategy and doctrine. The Custodes fight with neuro-synergy, meaning they take on a kind of mental battle calculus that allows them to move fluidly, allocating their individual strengths most efficiently, and, despite what some other in-universe accounts say, fight as a cohesive whole. Because each custodian is equal in this calculus, they can fight without communicating directly or structuring themselves like squads and platoons, since each custodian calculates where to fire without hitting their allies, where to swing so as to block a blow that would have killed their brother, etc. They aren't "lions" fighting alone, they are in fact capable of organized warfare. But they are bad at it. It's a precalculated endeavour, measuring their success according to abstract absolutes like "each loyalist unit is a custodian, everything else is not a custodian, the ultimate end goal is the survival of the Emperor." It means they always overestimate other imperial allies, or ask too much of them. It means that they don't always appropriately weigh the threat of each opponent. It means that as they accumulate battlefield losses, they lose their economy of force that makes them so effective, which means they started dying more, which only further worsens their power. And it ultimately means that they don't benefit from force multiplication like their enemies do. As Wraight shows, one custodian against ten marines will be fairly successful, but ten custodes against a hundred marines will absolutely struggle and sustain major losses. This actually corroborates with Duty Unto Death. The six custodian wardens last a long time against the tyranids, but once the first one falls it becomes two, then four, until a single custodian only barely survives. So while Custodians are indeed indomitable champions and demigods in their own right, the particular methodry of their deployment and creation does not lend itself to winning organized warfare. This is to be expected. The custodians were fundamentally bodyguards, meant for dealing with singular threats or protecting the emperor from isolated opponents, so being individually superior to every other living thing makes them especially suited for preventing assassinations. But their inability to maintain an economy of force over the course of an extended engagement makes them ill-suited for major operations as frontline soldiers, which gives a paradigm advantage to the various armies of 40k that are especially designed for this kind of war.

writing lately has given Custodes a lot more respect, old lore was a joke they were pretty much on par with a marine. There are still some things that you just shake your head at, in one of the beast books some eldar were lopping off custodes heads in the palace like nothing (harlequins) supposedly top tier eldar but still i mean come on. I think that yah 5-10 prepared astartes could probably kill a lone run of the mill custodes. Likewise i think 5-10 prepared Custodes could probably kill some of the more mediocre primarchs, lorgar, alpharius...guilliman.

good vid. comment for the algo ;) keep it up

Uhm…aren’t the White Scars a loyalists legion? Or is this Dornian Heresy? It gets complicated keeping it all straight.