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So. I've been reading the Ahriman series and find myself in a mood to try and create an army built around massed psyker characters.

Chaos Sorcerors would be ideal (which will obviously be unbound)

[Note: I know you can in theory use psykers for massed summoning, but that's essentially just a chaos daemons army without a warp storm table, not an 'army of psykers', as far as I'm concerned]

The obvious downside is that of anyone fielding a pure independent character army - namely that independent characters are soft and squishy for their points value, and a high-level marine psyker (who tends to be the wrong end of 100 points for a 2-wound model) doubly so. Secondly, there's a need to get up close and personal; few psychic disciplines have a reliable effect on stuff more than, say, a foot away.

My brain says terminator armour is a nice cover for both issues - a 2+ save and the option to deep strike. Equally, if going unbound, you could deliver them into the middle of the enemy army quite easily with a Kharybdis - capable of packing in many terminator-armoured sorcerors and putting up a fair fight as a missile platform once it lands, and I can either keep the sorcerors together and pod them in, or hold one or more of them in reserve and teleport them in afterwards, depending on the mission and the enemy.



Kharybdis Assault Claw

Chaos Sorceror x 9
- Mastery Level 3
- Terminator Armour
- Spell Familiar
- Melta Bombs

The above list gives me 220 points to spend on upgrades. I'm quite happy to take three 'Unbound Factions', so I can pull individual sorcerors from Black Legion, Crimson Slaughter and the basic Codex Chaos Space Marines as required.

The options I can see:

Replace one sorceror with Ahriman or Typhus - note that if I want to be able to mix and match models, I can only have one mark. Ahriman does also offer Master of Deception.
Replace one sorceror's Spell Familiar with the Balestar of Mannon
Give one sorceror the Last Memory of Yuranthos
Give one sorceror the Prophet Of The Voices - not ideal as I don't want to spam daemons and he can't joint other units
Give one or more sorcerors Marks Of Chaos - as long as they're consistant
Give one sorceror the Eye Of Night - one use anti-tank is probably not a bad call.
Give one sorceror the Burning Brand Of Skalathrax


Those look like the main options - I'm not sure which ones would be best, and can anyone see a good option I've missed?
Equally, which disciplines are going to be best to focus on? If fielding a massed block of expensive characters, a fair number of telepaths (to hope for invisibility) is an obvious start, but I'm unsure what else.




Equally, my brain suddenly realises you could do something very similar but battle-forged using 2-3 Librarius Conclaves from the marine codex. Each individual psyker is less effective, and there's no option of spell familiars, but could that work?

The Tyranid Neural Node looks cool, but I can't convince my brain the Malaceptor is worth it, and the fact that I can only use hive mind disciplines is annoying, no matter how lethal warp lance can be.

ok so if you want to feild this many sorceres then do this...

9x sorcerers
5xbikers

use the points and upgrade the guys fully.

mon on the bikers, sorcerers unmarked, all the sorcerers in the biker squad start rolling for invis then the rest for daemon summoning, have fun

Hmm...

Still don't really want to have an 'escort unit', but biker sorcerors is a fair point to think about. It'd give them the speed and toughness to take a bit of a kicking, albeit leaving them a bit more vulnerable to regular small arms.

I could actually take mark of nurgle sorcerors - the Nurgle powers I seem to remember not being all that bad, and T6 is a hell of a weight to get through, especially with Biomancy powers floating around.


Chaos Sorceror x 11
- Mastery Level 3
- The Mark Of Nurgle
- Spell Familiar
- Meltabombs
- Chaos Space Marine Bike

is actually quite a nice force. You've got the agility to split up and combine as you need to, and at T6 with Jink and a 3+ save, you'll take some killing - plus, thanks to Jink you can make the most of Shrouding if you roll it on the Telepathy table. Plus, since you're going to need to get close to kill things, being able to keep Frag Grenades that you'd lose with Terminator Plate might work well.

Ya but still probably won't win against anything maybe summoning will get you close to doing something

I like the idea of biker sorcerers scooting around the battlefield, but they still won't get around as fast as Disc sorcerers. The Mark of Tzeentch is required and gives access to mostly terrible powers, but at least some of the sorcerers would have Doombolt and that's really NOT a bad power to have. You can even group up all the jetbikes together and create something similar to the Tzeentch Daemon deathstar, only with sorcerers who nuke things with magic.

But if you don't go with the jetbikes, I'd just drop the marks altogether and rely on the 3 power rolls to provide the necessary utility the squad needs to survive. That said, you can get a LOT of great powers with this setup and the squad should be almost invincible with all of them being cast. But I still think this option is worse than the jetbikes because...

Your worst enemy will be getting Assaulted... doesn't matter what assaults you because it will immediately reduce your spell list to blessings only. It will also beat the pulp out of your sorcerers if it has AP2 melee like every monstrous creature. Even Tzeentch sorcerers only have a 3++ potentially, they're going to drop like flies with blessings only due to majority toughness rules (no biomancy shenanigans).

If you run them as separate units, they won't be able to stack buffs and then they'll die just to common volume of fire or lucky plasma shots. Or heck, a lascannon that rolls well. They NEED to be grouped to survive and that limits how much they can kill each turn or where.

With all these issues, Jetbikes are the way to go and for god's sake stay out of close combat!

Hmmm... Depends. A lot of scary monstrous creatures are also characters and hence I can take them on with a biomancy-enhanced sorceror. Whether that's a good idea (still only 2 wounds and 2 attacks - well, 3 for the disc I guess) is a different question....

Sorcerors on discs would move fast, but would also be T4 not T6.

3++ is nice - throw in a Black Legion sorceror with crucible of lies to have one guy with 3++ rerolling 1s (and/or a balestar sorceror with precognition if you get lucky) and you're pretty damn tough.

Hmmm.....

My brain wants to try this. Far more importantly than effectiveness, discs feel more sorcerer-esque than an astartes vincent black knight, and the tzeench powers aren't that bad. They're the weakest discipline (annoyingly) but at least flickering fire means everyone has at least a frag missile, and breath of chaos is actually good. The only real stinker is the bloody boon power.






Automatically Appended Next Post:
...Hmm.

Have poked things around. I can fit 9 sorcerors on Discs in 1875 points. I approve of the numerology!

6 x "Generic Sorcerors"

Chaos Sorceror
- Mastery Level 3
- The Mark Of Tzeench
- Sigil Of Corruption
- Meltabombs
- Spell Familiar
- Disc Of Tzeench

3 x "Named Sorcerors"

Pryomancer

Chaos Sorceror
- Mastery Level 3
- The Mark Of Tzeench
- Sigil Of Corruption
- Meltabombs
- Spell Familiar
- Disc Of Tzeench
- Veterans Of The Long War
- The Last Memory Of Yuranthos

Prescient

Chaos Sorceror
- Mastery Level 3
- The Mark Of Tzeench
- Sigil Of Corruption
- Meltabombs
- The Balestar Of Manon
- Disc Of Tzeench

Annoying Invulnerable Save Guy

Chaos Sorceror
- Mastery Level 3
- The Mark Of Tzeench
- Sigil Of Corruption
- Meltabombs
- Spell Familiar
- Disc Of Tzeench
- Veterans Of The Long War
- The Crucible Of Lies


Actually works out at 1875 on the dot.
Obviously everyone gets one Tzeench power plus Tzeench's Firestorm, and then two powers on either Telepathy, Sanctic or Malefic Daemonology, Pyromancy or Biomancy.

I'd suggest Telepathy and Biomancy are probably key - giving me the Blessings that'll keep the squad(s) alive - Shrouded, Invisiblity, Endurance, etc.

That said, the fact that a unit can only attempt each power once means that having as wide-ranging a 'spellbook' as possible is probably a good thing - especially if I run as a pack of 9 but even if I split up into two or three groups.




Automatically Appended Next Post:
...Damn. You know what - I should really have looked at discs before now! Never realised they increase your toughness like a bike.....

Wow, now that looks interesting! I would actually like to try this list myself! It's so very fluffy too!! Army of disc sorcerers uniting to cast spells and rain down oblivion with the power of the 9.