Alright fellas, ive been doing some research on what I should build for my first army, and I'm stuck between custodes and tyranids. The custodes low numbers are appetizing from a monetary perspective(though I'm sure this adds difficulty as well) and I can paint golds pretty well. The more slow paced and assumingly objective based playstyle interests me. The tyranids, however, have just always been favorites of mine, and I also do like speedy bois and board control fits a lot of my style in other game.
Any strong opinions for or against one of the 2?
I think a lot of it boils down to your preferred playstyle, tbh. Do you want to do a smaller, more elite army, or go with a horde that can sweep across the table?
Custodians are slowish, but they're also hilariously hard to kill and hit like a freight train, especially if you're willing to cough up for some of the Forge World units like the Orion gunship or the Aquilon termies. Plus you get Dawneagle jetbikes, which are fast, killy as hell, and can do just about anything you want them to. Their infantry units also have access to deep-striking and a variety of transports, so they're not as slow as you might think. That said, the low model count really hurts if you come up against an army that can just drown you in bodies or gunfire, and you probably want to take an allied detachment with them (Imperial Guard, Sisters of Silence, Marines) as a CP battery and force multiplier, so they might not be quite as monetarily cheap as you'd hope when all is said and done. So, if you want to play a small but elite army that punches way above its model count and looks pretty as hell, then Custodes are your guys. I'd say they're probably not a bad choice for a first army.
Now, as to the other guys: I've always wanted to do a Tyranid army myself because I love the lore of "giant eaty space bugs that constantly adapt to whatever's thrown at them", and really, they're a pretty versatile army, depending on how you build them and what stratagems and hive fleet adaptations you choose. Melee-heavy army with units that can get halfway across the table in a single turn and shred through damn near any infantry in the game? Shooty army with tons of dakka and options to poison the enemy and deal out shitloads of mortal wounds? Flying circus with Tyrants and Crones and Gargoyles? Nidzilla army full of Carnifexes and Trygons and maybe a Dimachaeron and whatever other big models tickle your fancy? Psychic spam with Zoanthropes and Neurothropes? Whatever the hell you want to do with 'nids, you can do with 'nids, and they have a lot of different models that look pretty cool. Of course, the downsides are that they usually have a massive model count, so are more expensive to collect, individual units tend to be pretty fragile, and you don't have a ton of all-rounder units, so they can suffer from overspecialization on the tabletop. They can also be fiddly to paint, from what I'm told, so if that's a consideration for you, Custodians might be a better choice.
In the end, though, it really just boils down to what you want to do. These are gonna be your dudes, after all.
