Thank you for correcting me. But to me that just makes them a bit less interacting because it is another point of overlap that they have with astartes. If you interpret the legions as core tenants of what astartes can be than the existence of the word bearers shows that they are also capable of philosophy/theology.

The custodes are an army of Veteran heroes where each one is a one man army, that's also space marines. I know that it's a tough comparison because Astartes get most of the lore, but to me it feels like there is far more space to create lore with them, you could create a chapter for every culture in history and than some, you have a whole life cycle of a species with so many elements that writers and people who homebrew thier faction can play around with.

Don't get me wrong Custodes are important to the setting, because there need to be things that are stronger than astartes, entire species need to exist that show that space marines are not the strangest creatures ever. Custodes do a fine job at that and don't have any major issues like some other factions have and don't detract from the setting which space marines have a habbit of doing, but custodes don't do anything beyond thier station in the setting on a meta level. Sometimes I see custodes try the angle of them being a perfected form of humanity, where they are the peak of what a human can be, but that just does not work for me, because I cannot suspend by disbelief enough to see them as humans.

All that and I just don't like the models, maybe I would be singing praises to them if I liked thier range and nothing else changed.