I agree with above but for a different reason
Marine beating custode is the least important thing wrong with that book.
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Originally Posted by Son_Of_A_Horus
I dont have a problem with a space marine getting whopped by a normal human. I have a problem with characters and troop types that are said to be unbeatable. Save for really powerful things like the demon primarchs or the c'tan.
Yes i know they went to terra but i said Horus may as well have sent the world eaters legion to terra ITSELF (this being the key word in the statement) which he doesn't. The siege of terra involved more traitor legions than just the world eaters. Please read the post correctly.Erm, Horus DOES send the World Eaters to Terra; the siege of Terra and everything. Turns out one on one duels are not a good way to determine a legion's effectiveness at siege warfare...
I get its not that unbelievable that a custode would be killed by a marine in 1v1 combat its just that this marine has no weapons and is wearing a standard issue body glove while the custode is fully armed and armoured. That was the bit that got to me.
Also whoever called the custode in question a cripple was wrong, the book states the only thing wrong with him was a slightly slower reaction time however in the very same scene the custode is shown to be able to deflect las bolts with his guardian spear like some kind of jedi. If this is a custode with slightly slower reactions then fine but its still a lot faster than any marine as iv never heard of them being able to deflect shots at them.
Okay, this may be the WE anboy in me speaking, but is this as unreasonable as people are making it sound?
We have a veteran World Eater on one side. A marine in a chapter known for their gladiatorial-style combat, and this guy is a squad leader of sorts, so presumably an expert amongst experts of that style of warfare. So is logical that he's damn good at one-on-one fights. Gladitorial style fights at that, where rules are pushed aside for sheer aggression and street-fighting.
On the other side, we have an injured man using a polearm against an unmounted foe, which is rarely a good idea if their reaction times are even close.
Now, Physical attributes aside, we have one guy trained for this EXACT set of circumstances (Fighting with whatever you have to hand versus a better equipped foe and using their weapons against them), versus someone who is evidently far from the peak of his fitness.
Punching through ceremite and rib cage is..farfetched, sure, but not exactly the most extreme thing we've ever seen an astartes warrior do under duress, and World Eaters are in theory slightly stronger due to their inplants. Its not impossible, just unlikely.
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One thing I haven't seen anyone mention: The Custodes was also hampered by the webbing he was hit with. He moved enough to make sure it didn't incapacitate him, but it still restrained him somewhat.
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but that is the crux of the issue, I don't care about astartes vs custodes nonesense. Custodian had advantages stacked on his side, even assuming he is an inferior fighter he should have won.
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beer and axes
Are they though? Angron might be the big red angry Spartacus of M31, but I don't recall seeing it mentioned elsewhere (admittedly I'm only as far as having finished Know no Fear and think I'm a few Audios behind) that the WE's are "Gladiators", butchers definitely, but Gladiators?
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Well, they have fightning glatiatorial pits or something. Mentioned in Butcher's Nails.
That might be it.
"WE ARE THE ONLY SOURCE OF GOODNESS, SEVERE AND DRASTIC. THERE IS NO OTHER SOURCE OF HOPE THAN US. WE ARE AGONISINGLY ALONE."
beer and axes
In fact, when the WB do turn, the Custodes among them put up a tremendous fight and one Custades takes out two fully armed SM before being taken down. Based on that, the WE would probably not have been able to take the Custodes out, much less utterly destroy him like that. Still, for the sake of the plot we have to do the "suspension of disbelief" thing.
He was not armoured with real combat armour, it was traditionall and had no function IIRC.
This really bugged me as well, I thought the book as a whole was really good but this was naff. When we make armour we make it using our own weapons as a frame of reference, i.e. bullet proof vests are built to stop bullets that definitely hit harder than a human soldier. So in 30k surely a custodians armour is designed to stop bolt rounds/energy weapons which hit harder than a spacemarine. (Even a pyschotic, implant wearing, rage-fulled one). For that spacemarine to punch through (probably) the most heavily protected part of the armour just didn't track in my opinion (note there is no reference to the cutode himself here, just the armour, in my eyes the cutode has nothing to do with the force created by the punch of the world eater).
He does send them to Terra itself.
However, I believe what you are trying to say is that he should have "sent them to Terra by themselves" or "sent them alone to Terra", which is a different matter. I'm sorry if that feels like nitpicking, but it totally changes the sentence from meaning that they only go to Terra to that they go alone to Terra.
As for the original question, as has been stated before, the Custodes was in a bad shape and the Marine was at his peak, so that levels them out a bit. As far as punching through ceramite, marines have always been doing silly stuff like that. I've always found it silly, but it's nothing new.
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Well in my opinion it's rubbish, as you say a Custode should never be that easily beaten, as I go along with the "The are to a marine what a marine is to a human". But I am a bit of a Custode fanboyThe feel I've been getting from their mentions in the recent fluff is that they are still better than marines, but not by anywhere near as much as being to a marine what marines are to man. A lto of their superiority seems to be mental too, they are headstrong, they have supreme confidence (standing up to Primarchs even though they would likely be killed easily in a fight for example) in themselves and belief that they are right. The seem less restricted mentally than space marines (possibly less/no indoctrination and in part due to their proximity to the Emperor perhaps), more resourceful and cunning (blood games). They seem to be trained primarily in holding their own in singles combat as opposed to focusing on squad unity and cohesion like marines. Things like that, I also get the feel that there is physically something superior aswell, we know they arent created like marines (no geneseed) and the emperor has chosen them as his force, I don't believe for a second he would do that if marines were superior.
I see where you are coming from, but unless its stated that this marine is the worldeater equivilent of a kung-fu master, it seems a bit unlikely that that is the case heh.
Engel rocking up with the common sense. I like it. I also agree that Nemesis is the worse heresy book I've read so far.... It may even be the worst book I have read... Full stop.I take it you haven't read "Nemesis" or "Prospero Burns" then.
Anything can and does happen in 40k, from the tabletop to the written page. It was necessary for the plot and so it happened, explanations for his reactions and age also abound, but at the end of the day, it was a plot-fight and so it happened. Daemons also exist in the real world only as long as the plot requires them to. Bolters only have enough ammo until the plot requires them not not.
40k is NOT hard science fiction and nor is the Black Library. Get over it and enjoy the story.
And sometimes, the marine is SO BADASS, he has his arm torn off, then comes back to jump the warboss from behind and force feed it a grenade before it can kill his chapter master. That being said, the same marine also once disarmed an enemy by taking a sword to the chest and ripping it from his opponents hand when it got caught in his fused ribcage...
As apparently invincible as Custodes are, we are talking about an old knackered one who was half covered in webbing and was also having to worry about the other Crusader Host prisoners getting loose, including a Thousand son Psyker who we know really worries him. On the other hand, you have a pumped up, ultra violent World Eater who has probably been doing five million press ups a day in his cell with nothing to lose and a few combat stimulants surging through his arteries. I don't get why it's so hard to believe. It's a one-on-one and not really a fair fight, even if Custodes are as super-hardcore as we've been told. Does it mean that 300 World Eaters could beat 300 Custodes? No. It doesn't. It's an isolated incident with extenuating circumstances that can't be applied to other potential incidents.
I loved the book and the day FW release some models for the Custodes, I am tempted to have a crack at doing some sort of pre-heresy Crusader Host force led by these super-super-humans.
Should the WE be able to beat the Custode 1 on 1?? Probably due to points above.
Should the same WE (without armour) be able to punch straight through the custodes power armoured chest piece, without his arm crunching up to his elbow in a mangled mess, even with his enhanced bones and muscles??? Nope
Im not moaning about a marine killing a custodes as theres always a chance, but punching through the custodes armour was just plain stupid!
I actually had to back track and re-read that the marine was a WE and not Marneus Calgar lol
Yes, sometimes they are sufficiently badass to do that. Are you agreeing or disagreeing with me?
It is appropriate and possible for anyone to kill anyone in 40k. The basic damage mechanic in the game has always been the to-wound system which means that individuals generally live unharmed until they suddenly are killed. Not a hit points countdown, just sudden, random death, and even multiple wounds are usually limited to two or three for man size individuals, with Instant Death floating around to deal with them. (And the Damage stat before that, when a single wounding heavy bolter hit might kill a Marine Captain) Game mechanics versus fluff, I know, but it's a pretty big part of what has made 40k so gritty to me. Being a better fighter doesn't make you win, just more likely to win.
The same thing only more is what makes Necromunda the experience that it is.
Last edited by Grimbad; 15-07-2012 at 18:07.
I was agreeing with you haha. In fact I just gave 2 examples of Cortez being a supreme badass, even for a Space Marine.
Can we count the webbing as slowing him down? I seem to remember reading that the webbing was dissolving before the world eater was released. Seems that stuff isn't meant to last long.
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In all fairness to the book, I think that other than this and a few other scenes of over the top Space Marine heroism, this novel was amazing. In fact, I think it was entirely due to the lack of general Space Marine-ism that it was so interesting. An astropath as a protagonist!? Absolutely refreshing.
Though there was absolutely no defense for this part of the story. It was the most embarrassingly ham-fisted attempt at tension in the whole book. First, the Custodes' team-mate gets liquidized by a guardsman in an instant. If his reaction times couldn't prepare him for the guardsman to turn and aim his gun, power up the coils of his plasma gun and discharge... then I am sorry. He does not belong in the Custodes. How is he expected to protect against an assassin if he can't even notice something so obvious?
Secondly, there's been a lot of defense for the world eater. I don't buy it for one heart-beat, and I didn't while reading the book. Case in point: the guardian spear incorporates a bolt pistol...
That fight should have lasted a whole 0.5 seconds. World eater says, "I am going to rip your spine out through your chest!"
Custode fires.
World eater explodes. Game, set, match.
Space marines cannot dodge point blank bullet fire. Definitely not semi-automatic, and certainly not while aimed and directed by a Custodian.
All the talk about gladiatorial combat, combat drugs and all that other stuff doesn't convince me otherwise for a second. He was a heaping mass of muscle pumped up on steroids. I can't fathom him bob and weaving his way around dodging bolt shells.
As for the whole punching through armour, the Custode definitely wasn't wearing power armour. I have no idea why, but for some reason he was wearing chain-mail with bronze plate over top. He was armoured little better than an ancient Greek hoplite, from what I remember. I don't know why he was going to meet the most dangerous criminals on Terra in an antique, but there it is. I remember wondering while reading, "Why is this fool wearing chain-mail? That armour wasn't even particularly effective for its time period!"
So at least it didn't reach any "punch through ceramite" levels of absurdity.
Though the talk about him being a 'cripple' is hyperbolic. It's like saying an olympic athlete who recovers from a bad injury is a cripple. Sure they might not be able to compete at the highest level, but they will probably still beat the high school track team.
Finally, on a tangent, I am definitely not a fan of what Aaron-Dembski Boden (to my knowledge he is the first) started in the First Heretic. For a group who are dedicated to protecting the Emperor, the Custodes are the most absolutely embarrassing counter-intelligence group in the galaxy.
In that novel they ignored the most blatantly telegraphed "WE ARE GOING TO TURN AGAINST YOU" signs.
They apparently are hot-headed, egotistical alpha-males who fight individually, but not as a unit. That is just plain dumb for a group that needs to work counter-insurgency, and act as bodyguards and defenders. I just find their portrayal embarrassing in the novels.
I don't want them to be a legion full of Calgars, but they just act so unintelligent, and incompetent. They barely put up a 'tremendous' fight. Heck, their leader gets beaten by the Word Bearer captain a few times in the dueling ring.
So... given all that we know from their portrayal in the novels, it really isn't surprising that a custode tasked with defending the most dangerous astarte criminals decides to wear bronze armour, get taken by surprise by a rather telegraphed betrayal, and then lose to a spandex wearing man who brought nothing but his balls of steel to a gunfight.
Just my two or three cents.
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