Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

 nintura wrote:
I want to kitbash those tzangors on discs for my exalted sorcs. Maybe put a tzangor head on power armor and use the discs to have more than one exalted sorc on disc?

I want to buy a bunch of pinks/blues/brimstones just so I can troll my friends in a really big game.

Also, am I blind? I dont see anyone talking about any of these in the rumors threads. Or the new vid with Ahriman's quote and eldar symbol that warhammer tv put up.

I was also planning on the Tzaangor discs for my other Exalted Sorcerers. I got 3 kits for 9 Sorcerers. I kit bashed 3 lower torsos from Rubrics to not have 3 farting sorcerers. They turned out good.

I plan on using magnets on their feet, discs and bases so I can use them on foot or on Disc. The Tzangoors I can add to the war herd or I had thought of using their upper torsos as tank toppers since I read in the fluff they are intelligent and treated well by the sorcerers. The bowman can be kitted with extra weapons, auto pistols or banners.

I only ever plan on running more than 3-4 Exalted Sorc on discs on a formation of only Sorc just for fun.

I understand why GW gave us the farting sorcerers as they can count as either on foot or disc, but I just cannot get behind them (literally)

 lessthanjeff wrote:
If the reroll saves was ruled that you lost it when a unit died than I wouldn't use the full war cabal either but I'd still play the regular cabal with Magnus attached. That's actually what I'm taking to an event this weekend.

Looking forward to seeing how Magnus does in your hands!

 lessthanjeff wrote:
If the reroll saves was ruled that you lost it when a unit died than I wouldn't use the full war cabal either but I'd still play the regular cabal with Magnus attached. That's actually what I'm taking to an event this weekend.

If you don't go for maxed cabal, why not go for a normal Cad with Magnus as a LOW instead? You don't have to pay points for rubrics and can have objective secure cultists or tzaangors. And then you can add melta bikers for fast anti-tank and as a unit to join your disc sorcerers in.

I fought against a Thousand Sons army today, and all their powers gave them a lot of tactical flexibility.
The player choose a lot of heretech powers to fight against my armored company, from example.
So, eventually, I don't think the TS lack AT weapons.
However, they are very dependent of the psy, I wonder how they play against Grey Knights ?

I went for the War Cabal because I wanted Magnus and Ahriman to be able to cast as many spells as possible but I'll probably try the CAD at some point as well. Here are the results of the small event I played at today.

My list was Magnus, Ahriman on a disc, a level 3 exalted sorc on a disc with seer's bane, rubric squad, scarab occult squad with hellfyre missile launcher, predator with auto cannon and las cannons, and a heralds anarchic with 3 barebones heralds of tzeentch.

Game 1 (ITC emperor's will mission), my opponent had a death guard cad with a sicaran tank and a chaos knight and a small thousand sons cad with an exalted sorc and scarab occult terms. I got first turn and set up magnus in the middle of my deployment (dawn of war) with ahriman and the exalted sorc just a little bit off to either side. I rolled pretty heavily into heretech because he had so many rhinos and hull points overall. I got flayerstorm on both ahriman and the exalted sorc but my tzeentch powers were almost all breath of chaos and boon of mutation.

Turn 1: I couldn't quite reach the sicaran so ahriman had to sit back more but magnus and the exalted sorc were able to take down the chaos knight and I summoned a burning chariot to start clearing his home objective. I then got to boost both my sorcs back to safety to avoid retaliation. His turn he unloaded on my scarab occult pretty hard killing several of those and because my chariot scattered so close he was able to take it out with a variety of troops on his objective.

Turn 2: My powers failed me pretty badly this round. Summoned chariot got a mishap and rolled a 1. I failed several spells with magnus (even throwing 2 dice on 2+'s for warp charge 1) and he denied a couple spells himself since he had 6ish psyker levels. I managed to kill a rhino and a couple infantry models and that was about it. He deepstruck his scarab occult in behind me and got invisibility on them. He tried to fire a lot at magnus because there wasn't much else in range but caused no damage.

Turn 3: I failed again to kill the sicaran with several heretech spells targeting it. I did get another burning chariot in to clear objectives away more. Ahriman totally whiffed 3 attempts of breath of chaos on the invis scarab occult not getting a single wound. I had kill a unit for 2 maelstrom objectives and failed to kill anything. My surviving occult terms even failed to kill a rhino despite having the hellfyre missile rack and getting a charge with the staff. He was able to kill off my scarab occults in his turn but that was the only damage he caused.

Turn 4: My exalted sorc finally made a charge (after failing a 5" one) and killed his nurgle warlord. I got a second chariot and finally cleared his emperor's will objective combined with novas and beams from magnus. His terms continued their march up but could only contest me on an objective because the durability of the rubrics pulled through.

Game ended there because psychic phases were going so slow so I won 9-3. My successes seemed far more subject to the whims of the psychic phase this game. Going so hard into heretech made it hard to combat non vehicle units so I'll have to balance that out better next time. Magnus was great as a versatile tool that could adapt to whatever the opponent had. He'd take down a knight or large unit one turn then summon chariots to clear units out of cover and help grab objectives the next. He was inconsistent though since things like novas would go off and get strength 1 one turn and then 6 the next or strength d hits would do 1 hullpoint one turn and then erase a vehicle in another. Those are the whims of the psychic phase though. I'm more inclined to rely on the weaker beams more in the future since the strength d spells eat up so many dice and have good chances of not doing any significant damage anyways.

I'll post the next game's results in a bit.

Game 2: (ITC Crusade Mission) My opponent was trying something different and ran the new mastodon filled with an ironclad dread, 2 units of centurion assault devastators, 2 units of sisters of silence, a couple psykers, 3 quad mortars, and a few units of scouts.

I rolled almost everything in heretech again so ahriman got scrapcode curse and the exalted sorc and scarab occult sorc both got flayerstorm. Every single tzeentch power I rolled was boon of mutation or breath of chaos again which I'm getting real tired of. Opponent got first turn so I set Magnus up out of range of the strength 8 shots from all the mortars so he wouldn't get wrecked before he took off and kept the exalted sorc and ahriman attached to the rubrics and scarab terms near the middle.

Turn 1: Opponent drove the mastodon filled to the brim straight towards my lines on one flank, tried to cast some buff spells from inside the vehicle (because even though there were sisters of silence in the vehicle with them GW made auras stop working in vehicles since they don't count as on the table while still letting the psykers cast technomancy buffs while inside a transport), then fired his mortars trying to snipe wounds into my characters but I was able to LOS and pass all my saves. My turn I was able to set Magnus up in a central position within 18" of all my psykers for siphon magic while also getting ahriman and the scarab occult term close enough to the mastodon for casting. Ahriman got all 3 scrapcode curses off taking 8 hullpoints himself, the scarab occult term got 1 or 2 more with flayerstorm, then Magnus hit it with 2 strength D's to finish it off while also casting the nova to kill off 8 scouts from two different units. I then safely flew away with ahriman and sent my exalted sorc flying behind his lines to start dealing with the mortars.

Turn 2: The ironclad dread, one sisters of silence squad, and a librarian advanced on my terminator unit and were able to wipe them out easily (he was using the ap 2 swords on the sisters and I had to throw all my dice at killing the mastodon so he couldn't repair it back up so I had no buffs to my invuls). He tried to bring down magnus with all his mortars and twinlinked shots after surrounding him with the two squads of centurions and another squad of sisters but I survived the firepower. In my turn I had to be careful about getting out of the huge areas in the middle of the table that the sisters of silence were shutting down powers in. I could barely find a safe spot for ahriman to be able to go after the ironclad but he either failed or was denied on all 3 casts anyways. Magnus managed to kill a couple of the centurions and summoned a chariot but it scattered and the wreckage of the damn mastodon blocked line of sight to the sisters so that was no good. I did get to kill a few of the sisters with the ironclad dread using my rubrics but 1 survived. My stellar exalted sorc failed a 4 inch charge into a mortar. I boosted away again to safety with ahriman.

Turn 3: The ironclad and sisters continued their advance and charged into the rubrics but this time my saves were better and the combat against the dread, 1 sister of silence, and librarian ended up lasting several turns making it impossible for me to cast in and finish them off. He failed again to bring down Magnus with all his twin linked melta guns and mortars and such shooting at Magnus. He was able to kill my chariot that ended up doing nothing because of LOS. This time I went ahead and cast force on Magnus so even if he did bring me down I'd insta kill the centurions. I also got another chariot out that was able to wipe the second squad of sisters. My exalted sorc moved towards the second mortar since the first was pretty much finished off by my predator tank at this point and rockstar that he is he failed another 5 or 6" charge.

Turn 4: Opponent gave up on Magnus because he was getting too whittled down so he killed my chariot and tried to hurt my exalted sorc while the rubrics continued their fight against the sister, librarian, and dreadnought. Exalted sorc moved towards the centurions and librarian while psychic shrieking to finish off the second mortar. Magnus ended up finishing off the rest of the centurions and librarian using baleful devolution (getting me a spawn too!) and some beams though so still no combat for my seer's bane. The last rubric finally died at the end of my turn freeing him up but it was too late for Ahriman to be able to clean them up.

Turn 5: The dread made a decently long charge into one of my heralds near the predator tank that was holding my back objective and that was about it for his turn since the others failed the charge. Nothing really mattered at this point so I just moved my exalted sorc over and tried to charge the last sister of silence and librarian. Sure enough, he failed another 4" charge and the game ended 11-0 for me.

I found the sorcs on discs to be phenomenal in both these games because they have such great mobility to get in range and then boost to safety. It also helped a lot getting them within 18" of magnus to let him use siphon magic since even with 21 mastery levels on the table I still needed lots more dice to get everything off that I wanted. Magnus was incredibly durable and my opponents will probably ignore him more in future games. Even with null zones from multiple sisters of silence squads I was still fast enough to get to cast from safety though. Being able to strip 12 hullpoints from a superheavy vehicle in a single turn was pretty impressive and demoralizing for my opponent. Let down that my seer's bane exalted sorc did very little in close combat but that was just bad luck on the charge ranges. Magnus was the focus of most of the games as I kept flying him in right next to multiple units leading to my opponents focusing a lot on him. It makes him lethal to opponents with all those nearby targets but it was also making it really hard to summon since there weren't many safe spots nearby. I'm still finding I want better ways to keep track of spells and the psychic phase in general. It's just a pain to stay on top of everything and makes the game feel less fun for my opponent since they can't do much during my turn.

For tracking effects of psychic powers, I think I'm gonna go with a small dry erase board. Probably the easiest thing I can think of short of making tokens for everything. But even with tokens you still have to fish them out and make sure you have all the ones you need. Ive done it in the past and it always seems like I spend a ton of time looking for just the right token.

I also make my lists in excel, so I make a table for each psyker. That lets me write their powers for each game in pencil. Then I erase it and can use it again next game.

Now for questions:
What's your strategy for rolling for powers?

Are you using your heralds to summon? Or risking the perils with a sorcerer?

How would you approach a mirror match versus thousand sons, both against a force with Magnus and one without Magnus?

Thanks for the battle reports. I'm finding them very helpful.

lessthanjeff wrote:I went for the War Cabal because I wanted Magnus and Ahriman to be able to cast as many spells as possible but I'll probably try the CAD at some point as well. Here are the results of the small event I played at today.

My list was Magnus, Ahriman on a disc, a level 3 exalted sorc on a disc with seer's bane, rubric squad, scarab occult squad with hellfyre missile launcher, predator with auto cannon and las cannons, and a heralds anarchic with 3 barebones heralds of tzeentch.

Game 1 (ITC emperor's will mission), ...

Game ended there because psychic phases were going so slow so I won 9-3. My successes seemed far more subject to the whims of the psychic phase this game. Going so hard into heretech made it hard to combat non vehicle units so I'll have to balance that out better next time. Magnus was great as a versatile tool that could adapt to whatever the opponent had. He'd take down a knight or large unit one turn then summon chariots to clear units out of cover and help grab objectives the next. He was inconsistent though since things like novas would go off and get strength 1 one turn and then 6 the next or strength d hits would do 1 hullpoint one turn and then erase a vehicle in another. Those are the whims of the psychic phase though. I'm more inclined to rely on the weaker beams more in the future since the strength d spells eat up so many dice and have good chances of not doing any significant damage anyways.

I'll post the next game's results in a bit.

lessthanjeff wrote:Game 2: (ITC Crusade Mission) ...

I found the sorcs on discs to be phenomenal in both these games because they have such great mobility to get in range and then boost to safety. It also helped a lot getting them within 18" of magnus to let him use siphon magic since even with 21 mastery levels on the table I still needed lots more dice to get everything off that I wanted. Magnus was incredibly durable and my opponents will probably ignore him more in future games. Even with null zones from multiple sisters of silence squads I was still fast enough to get to cast from safety though. Being able to strip 12 hullpoints from a superheavy vehicle in a single turn was pretty impressive and demoralizing for my opponent. Let down that my seer's bane exalted sorc did very little in close combat but that was just bad luck on the charge ranges. Magnus was the focus of most of the games as I kept flying him in right next to multiple units leading to my opponents focusing a lot on him. It makes him lethal to opponents with all those nearby targets but it was also making it really hard to summon since there weren't many safe spots nearby. I'm still finding I want better ways to keep track of spells and the psychic phase in general. It's just a pain to stay on top of everything and makes the game feel less fun for my opponent since they can't do much during my turn.

Awesome summaries mate, and well done on getting some more wins. The amount of fail in breath is quite staggering and it never, ever fails to amaze me how bad it is when I resort to using it. Given our total lack of anti tank, I feel that you don't have much choice but to devote 2 sorcs to Heretek if your opponent is fielding any reasonable amount of armour, and those games where you don't roll scrap or flayer, well, you're just **** out of luck, hope you rolled +1 T as a consolation prize. I'm surprised that you say that you'd cut back on the str D though due to being too WC intensive. I can see the merits, especially if enemy vehicles have a strong cover save such as darkshrouds, but 6 dice for the beam (if you can catch 2 or more vehicles) isn't really that bad since you can't miss and there's an assured penetrating hit with 5's to explode along with any HP you might do can't be all that bad, surely? You'll be using at least 2 dice for cruse and 3 for flayer anyway and it's still 2 hp either way but much harder to get saves against the beam. That's also some absolutely shocking rolls on the Seer Sorc - How much do you think would have changed if he's made his charges? Looking forward to reading the other games, keep up the awesome stuff.

stewy37 wrote:
For tracking effects of psychic powers, I think I'm gonna go with a small dry erase board. Probably the easiest thing I can think of short of making tokens for everything. But even with tokens you still have to fish them out and make sure you have all the ones you need. Ive done it in the past and it always seems like I spend a ton of time looking for just the right token.

Combine the two ideas. Get some acrylic counters and use wet erase markers (Staedler makes a decent set.)

 Lansirill wrote:

stewy37 wrote:
For tracking effects of psychic powers, I think I'm gonna go with a small dry erase board. Probably the easiest thing I can think of short of making tokens for everything. But even with tokens you still have to fish them out and make sure you have all the ones you need. Ive done it in the past and it always seems like I spend a ton of time looking for just the right token.

Combine the two ideas. Get some acrylic counters and use wet erase markers (Staedler makes a decent set.)

BOOM! That will do it!

I don't have a general strategy for powers, I look over each list and try to plan out what I need. If I need an armor cracking spell and get it on my first try, then I switch to something that can also hurt infantry like psychic shriek. When I see deathstar type lists or units with strong invuls I go into sinistrum, people getting invis make me try to get some doombolts. That sort of thing.

If I had a mirror match, I'd probably roll hard into sinistrum to cut invuls and because the blessing that gives +2 strength, toughness, and attacks would come in very handy for charging in and winning combats/challenges. Even warp lure would be handy for sniping out mastery levels. You really only need 1 or 2 death hexes because I have a very focused fire kind of approach where I like to knock out 1 or 2 units consistently rather than spread damage around. I don't think I'd care as much about getting shriek since our leadership is so high.

I've been throwing 7 dice at gaze of magnus because I think 6 dice comes to around a 26% chance of failure which is far too high for that much of an investment of dice. It is very powerful, but it is only worth it when you can get multiple tough units in the line. If you're just getting 1 or 2 hits I think i'm going to start refraining and use those 7 dice to get lots of buffs and other spells off. The mastodon was an exception because I had to kill it with the beam or it could have regained many hull points back.

Ahriman has been rough because he doesn't have a spell familiar. I actually prefer him just getting scrapcode curse so I can get off several without using my entire pool. When I got him in range of something, he typically consumed 12ish of my dice but it was usually worth it (except for the breath of chaos barrage...)

My heralds were just batteries that I hid in the back to hold objectives and try to keep out of LOS. They were so far back that I didn't even try to summon with them and I wouldn't have wanted to pour the required dice into doing so anyways. I found my opponents weren't getting into my backfield much either as I was frequently up in their face and jumping around luring them in one direction or another so they were content to pretty much sit in place all game.

That's very helpful. I'm hoping to get my first game with Thousand Sons in this upcoming weekend. I'm starting to get an idea of what kind of strategy I should be pursuing.

 godardc wrote:
I fought against a Thousand Sons army today, and all their powers gave them a lot of tactical flexibility.
The player choose a lot of heretech powers to fight against my armored company, from example.
So, eventually, I don't think the TS lack AT weapons.
However, they are very dependent of the psy, I wonder how they play against Grey Knights ?

I posted a short bat rep against some GK's a page back in the thread, if you're interested. In short, it went a lot better than I expected. While they had a decent psychic standing, being able to grab things like Psychic Shrieks on several squads really helped where the GK's are stuck with set powers, except for the HQ's. Flexibility certainly helps, though it is a random thing, obviously.

I've played probably a dozen or more games with my Thousand Sons since the new Wrath of Magnus book was released.

If you want a 'friendly' list you don't take Magnus, but if you want to be able to reliably win a game you take Magnus.

If anyone does know a good use for regular Rubic Marines besides upgrading them with a Melta Bomb and a Rhino I'd love to hear it.

They're doubly useless in the War Cabal because they don't even get Objective Secured. And your Aspiring Sorcerers are unlikely to cast two powers a turn anyway.

Last saturday finally had my first game with Thousand Sons. 1500pts, used an undersize war cabal with Ahriman leading, 2 exalted sorcs (1 on disk with Bane), one unit of 10 Rubrics with soulreaper and 2 flamers, one unit of 5 rubrics, and one unit of 5 Scarabs with soulreaper. I totalled 14 ML, and I think I rolled good powers: 2xinvisibility, 2xdevolution, detonate-beam, that poison flame, shrouding, 2xscream, and something not used.

It was a friendly game againts DA running 3 x ravenwing attack sqd at 3 bikes+speeder, two typhoons one just HB. One sqd had a HB attack bike too. On top of that he had a Deathwin redemption force with 3 squads of termies and a termie cmd sqd with ML1 Librarian.

It was a maelstrom mission 4 (I think, the one you get tac objs equal to turn). Short story is I lost to tabling at turn 5a. My pricipal downfall was losing the initiative after infiltrating scarabs and larger rubric sqd with grimoire exacalted. Instead of me toasting his forward-scouted bike squads and forcing him to bring in DW with scatter or near his table edge, he got lucky and killed 2 termies and 4 rubrics basically with bolters and 3 typhoons shots. I hit for some 4-5 wounds and used ex sorc on disk to kill a bike sqd, but that was my biggest mistake, as it left him stranded alone and easily killed by incoming termies with bolters & assault cannon.

Ahriman killed one full termie squad in one shot of Baleful devolution, althoug got no spawns. Rubrics with 4++ or 3++ were supringsingly resilient. Scarab sorc had some good shots but failed his powers too often. Overall I think I was bit too stingy with warp dice, trying to eke them out, and that led me faling too often. I also neglected blessings, and lost some wound i should not have. Oracular guidance triggered often, nicely turning misses to hits.

Last turn he got bit lucky again, stripping 2 final wounds of invisible Ahriman with less than 20 bolter and typhoon shots.

I think I should have cast invisibly, or both of them, first every turn, and just accept less mind bullet dice. But in our FLGS we usually play with invis toned down as RAW is deemed OP, perhaps that is my excuse to underusing it.

Overall very nice game. It was a hassle keeping up with 14 spells, triggered oracular guidance and triggered T blessing. Was doable with glass bead counters, need more of them.

Tomorrow, full cabal at 1850.

Happy casting,

Timmon

Timmon wrote:

Last saturday finally had my first game with Thousand Sons. 1500pts, used an undersize war cabal with Ahriman leading, 2 exalted sorcs (1 on disk with Bane), one unit of 10 Rubrics with soulreaper and 2 flamers, one unit of 5 rubrics, and one unit of 5 Scarabs with soulreaper. I totalled 14 ML, and I think I rolled good powers: 2xinvisibility, 2xdevolution, detonate-beam, that poison flame, shrouding, 2xscream, and something not used.

It was a friendly game againts DA running 3 x ravenwing attack sqd at 3 bikes+speeder, two typhoons one just HB. One sqd had a HB attack bike too. On top of that he had a Deathwin redemption force with 3 squads of termies and a termie cmd sqd with ML1 Librarian.

It was a maelstrom mission 4 (I think, the one you get tac objs equal to turn). Short story is I lost to tabling at turn 5a. My pricipal downfall was losing the initiative after infiltrating scarabs and larger rubric sqd with grimoire exacalted. Instead of me toasting his forward-scouted bike squads and forcing him to bring in DW with scatter or near his table edge, he got lucky and killed 2 termies and 4 rubrics basically with bolters and 3 typhoons shots. I hit for some 4-5 wounds and used ex sorc on disk to kill a bike sqd, but that was my biggest mistake, as it left him stranded alone and easily killed by incoming termies with bolters & assault cannon.

Ahriman killed one full termie squad in one shot of Baleful devolution, althoug got no spawns. Rubrics with 4++ or 3++ were supringsingly resilient. Scarab sorc had some good shots but failed his powers too often. Overall I think I was bit too stingy with warp dice, trying to eke them out, and that led me faling too often. I also neglected blessings, and lost some wound i should not have. Oracular guidance triggered often, nicely turning misses to hits.

Last turn he got bit lucky again, stripping 2 final wounds of invisible Ahriman with less than 20 bolter and typhoon shots.

I think I should have cast invisibly, or both of them, first every turn, and just accept less mind bullet dice. But in our FLGS we usually play with invis toned down as RAW is deemed OP, perhaps that is my excuse to underusing it.

Overall very nice game. It was a hassle keeping up with 14 spells, triggered oracular guidance and triggered T blessing. Was doable with glass bead counters, need more of them.

Tomorrow, full cabal at 1850.

Happy casting,

Timmon

Isn't baleful devotion a focused witchfire that can only kill one model?

It rolls D6 attacks... so I guess it was played that those attacks spill over into the squad.

I think that Baleful devolution does target the full unit. Have to check that. If it does not, it will not be nearly as good as it seemed.

Btw, I did use Psychic Shriek 3-4 times, rolled badly and didnt get any wounds even on bikes with regular sgt's. Compared to that, Baleful seemed a better choice with BS5 Ahriman and Excalteds, with oracular guidance.

Timmon

Timmon wrote:
I think that Baleful devolution does target the full unit. Have to check that. If it does not, it will not be nearly as good as it seemed.

Btw, I did use Psychic Shriek 3-4 times, rolled badly and didnt get any wounds even on bikes with regular sgt's. Compared to that, Baleful seemed a better choice with BS5 Ahriman and Excalteds, with oracular guidance.

Timmon

Next time try the primaris from ectomancy or whatever the double heavy bolter one is. Getting 18 shots at BS 5 with re-rolling 1s and wounding on 3s with Ahriman is just downright wrong.

 nintura wrote:

Timmon wrote:
I think that Baleful devolution does target the full unit. Have to check that. If it does not, it will not be nearly as good as it seemed.

Btw, I did use Psychic Shriek 3-4 times, rolled badly and didnt get any wounds even on bikes with regular sgt's. Compared to that, Baleful seemed a better choice with BS5 Ahriman and Excalteds, with oracular guidance.

Timmon

Next time try the primaris from ectomancy or whatever the double heavy bolter one is. Getting 18 shots at BS 5 with re-rolling 1s and wounding on 3s with Ahriman is just downright wrong.

Would result in 3.88 dead marines. By comparison, 3 psy shreiks would result in 7.5 wounds to ld8. And getting progressively vs things like centurions or bikers.

nintura wrote:

Timmon wrote:
I think that Baleful devolution does target the full unit. Have to check that. If it does not, it will not be nearly as good as it seemed.

Btw, I did use Psychic Shriek 3-4 times, rolled badly and didnt get any wounds even on bikes with regular sgt's. Compared to that, Baleful seemed a better choice with BS5 Ahriman and Excalteds, with oracular guidance.

Timmon

Next time try the primaris from ectomancy or whatever the double heavy bolter one is. Getting 18 shots at BS 5 with re-rolling 1s and wounding on 3s with Ahriman is just downright wrong.

koooaei wrote:

 nintura wrote:

Timmon wrote:
I think that Baleful devolution does target the full unit. Have to check that. If it does not, it will not be nearly as good as it seemed.

Btw, I did use Psychic Shriek 3-4 times, rolled badly and didnt get any wounds even on bikes with regular sgt's. Compared to that, Baleful seemed a better choice with BS5 Ahriman and Excalteds, with oracular guidance.

Timmon

Next time try the primaris from ectomancy or whatever the double heavy bolter one is. Getting 18 shots at BS 5 with re-rolling 1s and wounding on 3s with Ahriman is just downright wrong.

Would result in 3.88 dead marines. By comparison, 3 psy shreiks would result in 7.5 wounds to ld8. And getting progressively vs things like centurions or bikers.

Fairly sure I've posted this before, even though it's modeled around a BS4 sorc, it's still relevant.

Meh. It's done wonders for me. I've failed many a psy shriek.

The best use for rubrics btw is as fearless bubble wrap for sorcerers, and an extra force weapon spell in the squad in case the sorc fails his roll for the blessing buff.

BTW Can I just say it's super lame that rubric squad aspiring sorcs lost their generic force weapon and have to take staves? Force axe rubric squads have torn up big nasty monsters while they flailed at 4++ fearless sponges.

Timmon wrote:
I think that Baleful devolution does target the full unit. Have to check that. If it does not, it will not be nearly as good as it seemed.

Btw, I did use Psychic Shriek 3-4 times, rolled badly and didnt get any wounds even on bikes with regular sgt's. Compared to that, Baleful seemed a better choice with BS5 Ahriman and Excalteds, with oracular guidance.

Timmon

Son of a gun, it does only target one model... It does offer a chance to snipe ICs or special weapons but I am disappointed that it does not effect units.

ICs can LOS so that is probably better but what a waste if you don't exceed the WC threshold.

Does it only affect the targeted model? It has a weapon profile, which is different than every other Focused Witchfire. So I guess those attacks still must be resolved?

I'll add it to the FAQ list...

Baleful Devolution was not in the FAQ. Rules for focussed witchfires tend to assume you only get to attack a model, but it does not say that it always only targets one model

Baleful Devolution itself speaks of models in plural, and says that "if any models are slain..." and again in placing the spawn "any of the slain models".

This, along with the fact that BD has a proper shooting profiles which many focussed witchfires lack, mean IMO that it does target the full unit, but the first hits are allocated to the target model if the focussed -part of the witchfire succeed.

If BD can only ever kill one model, its is much less useful obviosly.

Timmon

"Models" could refer to targetting a character and being LOS!'ed away.

It can affect the unit once the main objetive died. The profile of the power (as a weapon one) and the fact of the description mentioning "any of the slain models" makes it clear


With "any of the slain models" clearly they are saying that could kill several models with that use of the plural xD.

Never saw anyone using it to wound a single miniature

Franarok wrote:
It can affect the unit once the main objetive died. The profile of the power (as a weapon one) and the fact of the description mentioning "any of the slain models" makes it clear


With "any of the slain models" clearly they are saying that could kill several models with that use of the plural xD.

Never saw anyone using it to wound a single miniature

I would need to look at the FAQ on witchfire but reading it in the book last night it seemed clear. If you exceed the WC needed you can target any model. If you do not exceed you target the closest model.

Perhaps it does mean the closest and if resolved move to the next model though. That would be great.

That question is more fodder for YMDC.

I have been thinking about Firestorm. The best quality is that Firestorm is conferred onto every unit. So it can be cast with single dice from multiple sources, eliminating any need to waste WC as insurance. The worst quality is its high unpredictability, which can be flattened out somewhat by casting multiple instances. Regarding the weapon profile itself, there is an extremely narrow band of effective targets. Low toughness is crucial as anything above T3 kills the Inferno effect. Finally, Firestorm has no AP value, so it's only competitive against other witchfires when facing a flat Invul save.

I used GSC Purestrains and Daemonettes for a quick comparison.

- Daemonettes (Enfeebled to T2, 5++). Firestorm, 3 hits : 3.15W, Warpshock : 2.22W, Doombolt, 3 hits : 1.67W
- Purestrains (Enfeebled to T3, 5++). Firestorm, 3 hits : 2.5W, Warpshock : 2.22W, Doombolt, 3 hits : 1.67W
- Purestrains (Unmodified T4, 5++). Firestorm, 3 hits : 1.68W, Warpshock : 1.78W, Doombolt, 3 hits : 1.67W

The takeaway here is how important low toughness is to get Firestorm working at all. Beyond those numbers which assume hits, scatter is a factor. A direct hit is typically 50-61% likely depending on BS, so Firestorm needs enough models templated to compensate for blasts which scatter off target. You want a direct hit to cover 5+ models, and ideally any misses clip something anyway. If the target geometry is unfavorable, Firestorm cannot be used effectively.

So how do you conceptualize all that junk? I think it means Firestorm is all about opportunity. If a good target like First Curse presents itself, it can be Enfeebled and hit by 4-6 blasts which are always on call and unlikely to miss.

This is situational utility at best, but since the power is guaranteed by Chaos Psychic Focus, I'm looking for positives.

It's still ineffective against the targets Drasius covered on page 25.