yukishiro1 wrote: A lot of that stuff is no more efficient to kill with 3D than 2D, especially when the 2D is ignoring modifiers.
Well, using D3 on Scarabs pulls out CP. If you have D2 and the Orrey they won't spend it. DA is one squad. DG means two shot kills rather than three - an unsupported plasma FF definitely kills one - a TVC might kill one.
The rest all have no damage mitigation and take 1/2 shots from D3 as opposed to 2/3.
I am gonna throw this into the discussion on shooting for Tsons. Personally, while there is much acknowledgement about the power of a volkite Contemptor dreadnaught, I would argue that its not the best fit into a Tsons army.
Hear me out first. Now, Tsons are already very good at killing infantry. Our standard gun the infenal bolter is Str 4, AP 2. It kills everything from terminators to drukhari well. Maybe its not as great against orcs, but we can always raise the str of our weapons by 1 with our infernal master and suddenly, then its fine against orcs too.
Tsons are also great at dishing out MW because of our psychic phase. We have smites for ages plus damage spells. So, what the Volkite Contemptor brings to the table (some MW output) is not something we need anyway because we are experts at MW.
What we DO need is anti tank capability. Because what happens if we run into a World eaters rhino rush. What happens if we meet some sisters of battles in a few Rhinos. What happens if we run into Knights. Or any kind of heavy vehicle list. MWs are inefficient to kill a vehicle.
However, a Volkite Contemptor also sucks at killing most vehicles. It wounds a lot of vehicles on a 5+ and it has 0 AP. All it has is the MW, which a Tsons army already can do anyway.
What I would prefer in a vehicle for my Tsons, is truly dedicated anti tank guns that can kill Rhinos and stuff properly. So, Str 7 to 10 weapons with a high AP. Because that is what a Tsons army lacks.
Like I think most Tsons army will have some rubrics, and some Occults. Once you have a decent amount of these, you have so many inferno bolter shots and soul reaper cannon shots it should easily cover shooting at infantry. I would rather put shooting buffs on a 10 man Occult squad (like the +1 str) rather than a volkite contemptor. The 10 man Occult Termie squad has 8 Combi inferno bolters and 2 soulreapers and 2 hellfire Racks. Thats 32 inferno shots, 10 soulreaper shots and 4 missile shots.
So, I would argue that vehicles that can take high str, high AP guns, like Vindicators, Predator Tanks, Forgefiends, etc are a better fit for us Tsons than a Volkite Contemptor. Because they help to shore up something our MW output is inefficient against - vehicles.
So, I am slowly warming up to the forgefiend now. It may not be the best thing out there. But in terms of anti tank shooting, its probably one of the best we already have in our codex. A vindicator is a good choice too. The issue with a Vindicator though is that its demolisher cannon is very swingy. You could get 6 shots on one round and then 1 shot in the next. The forgefiend is a lot more consistent in terms of number of shots. In fact, it will get max shots against any squad with more than 5 models. A Ceberus forgefiend will get 9 shots against a 6 man squad... that's a scary 27 potential damage against that squad. It will still average 6 shots on average even against a Rhino or vehicle, which is a potential 18 damage and pretty decent. The Hades Autocannon is great too. 8 shots with max 16 damage. Its better in that it can handle T8 as well, but it sucks against damage -1.
The thing is, all the shooting a Occult squad can bring to the table is kinda wasted if you can't crack that Rhino first. Shooting all those infernal bolter shots into a T7 vehicle just feels so bad. So yeah, we need proper anti tank. And I would say that a Volkite Contemptor is not really proper anti tank.
TVC was the popularized response to Raiders. You're right that we have other tools to pop boats. Generally we want to pop in the psychic phase and shoot the occupants instead of shoot and charge like other armies, which makes TVC late to the party.
TVC is great when you get lucky on 6s though.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Eldenfirefly wrote: A vindicator is a good choice too. The issue with a Vindicator though is that its demolisher cannon is very swingy. You could get 6 shots on one round and then 1 shot in the next.
Vindicators are great. Tough to put down. Give it a melta and havoc ( and siege ). Amy damage is secondary. If you really want to make a couple Vindicators work you could keep the IM reroll on the table along with a CP, but the FF will still outshoot it except in edge cases, I think.
Vindicators, while cheap WILL let you down when you roll that 1 for number of shots and/or amount of damage. I'm leaning towards dreads and as much as I hate the Forge fiend model, I think they might do the trick. Would anyone happen to know of a unit can be ported with facade and then still shoot. I swear I remember there being an issue/faq stating that units that are removed from combat in that manner couldn't shoot. Thanks in advance.
Variable shot weapons really shouldn't exist, there's enough variation already in the basic three-step (sometimes four-step) attack sequence, it doesn't need more added into it at the beginning. Maybe stuff like spawn because it's fluffy, but a battle cannon? It's just dumb. It was a bad, early, failed attempt to come up with something like blast templates, and it should just be retired. If you want something to have more shots against larger units, just do that directly by adding the shots. I.e. a blast weapon could shoot double shots against units of more than 10, but one less shot against units of less than 6, to create a tradeoff.
The drill is not way better than a raider, it's a weird jumble of stuff pulling in different directions that's almost impossible to use effectively. It's a deep strike delivery tool, but you can't use it T1 and it has such a large footprint that it makes it difficult to get where you really want to get it. And starting it on the table largely defeats the purpose of it. It has 5 melta shots, but only 12" range, so you'll basically never get the melta bonus on something you really want to shoot. It has massively damaging melee against vehicles...but again, how do you actually get it there if you're using it to DS? That's a less than 50% chance, even with the reroll, even if you can get it into anything it actually wants to be hitting. And it only hits on a 4+ anyway, with only 3 attacks, so it may well just whiff completely. All of these things are things you're paying points for but won't typically get to use.
What makes the raider great is that it's cheap and does the things it does very, very well. The drill is like the exact opposite of a raider, it does a bunch of different things not all that well and is expensive because it pays for all of them.
Didnt Land Raider even get a price cut recently? IF Vindicator's good side is its durability, 5++ TSLC is even more durable. Lascannons should be ok reliability wise as you get four shots. Anyway, at some point in semi-casual I used one to suck shots off Magnus. As a firebase with excalted reroll and preciense it was of course quite good.
The idea of Occults in it and camping mid field seems solid, if not ultra competetive.
Didnt Land Raider even get a price cut recently? IF Vindicator's good side is its durability, 5++ TSLC is even more durable. Lascannons should be ok reliability wise as you get four shots. Anyway, at some point in semi-casual I used one to suck shots off Magnus. As a firebase with excalted reroll and preciense it was of course quite good.
The idea of Occults in it and camping mid field seems solid, if not ultra competetive.
well double vindicator with plow is 280pts for 22 T8 wounds
one LR is 285 for 16 wounds
Didnt Land Raider even get a price cut recently? IF Vindicator's good side is its durability, 5++ TSLC is even more durable. Lascannons should be ok reliability wise as you get four shots. Anyway, at some point in semi-casual I used one to suck shots off Magnus. As a firebase with excalted reroll and preciense it was of course quite good.
The idea of Occults in it and camping mid field seems solid, if not ultra competetive.
well double vindicator with plow is 280pts for 22 T8 wounds
one LR is 285 for 16 wounds
Technically 265 points, as the CA21 points are supposed to be AFTER our codex
Your point stands-if you are going for a tough tank that shoots, double vindi beats land raider.
If you do not need the transport, you are paying a lot for something unused in the raider.
I'm guessing you can use it as a "bunker" of sorts for scarabs who will disembark forward T1, but honestly, losing scarabs to a blown raider feels bad, and with how expensvie a raider+scarabs are, there won't be many other targets out there.
Idk, all of 8th ed I ran my Defiler with twin las and a forgefiend with double gattling and they always did the job for me. Now the Defiler seems to be a side grade to me now (IE he is going to be able to still pull the same weight he used to just through different ways) and the forgefiend seems much better at anti vehicle shenanigans. There is a reason people used to use mass plasma as an option to deal with tanks. I do want to try a predator or land raider now though since they get that nice 5++ save.
Interestingly, up till now. I don't think there are any broken combos or strategems or such at all in the codex. There is certainly ways to build a list with all sorts of synergy and such, but nothing outright so OP I can see like the enriched rounds from Admech or that killer succubus from Drukhari.
I mean, we could smite out 20 MW in a phase, but it would take us tons of smites and witchfire and cabal points. Its not from one smite. So, you can't call that OP. Tsons are supposed to be able to do that. Nothing else really stands out even when mixed in whatever strategems I can find.
Being able to bring back 2 terminators and full heal a third is possibly really powerful, but I don't think that is still broken territory quite yet either because its not a 100% thing, we need a spell to go off on an unmodified 9. And if our opponent knows we can do that, he could just focus son wiping the whole unit. I mean, Occult terminators are tough, but anything dies if you dump enough damage on it.
I am kinda happy Tsons is not openly broken, but still has lots of interesting play.
Although it had a third rhino instead of the battlescanctum.
Mission: Scorched Earth (from the 2021 Grand Tournament Pack)
My Secondaries: To The Last, Strangle Hold, Mutate Landscape
My Opponents: To The Last, Strangle Hold, Abhor the Witch
Score:TS 100 AS 79 (although technically my army was not battle ready)
Terrain was simlar to the recommended GW tournament set up.
A solid game. There was plenty of play left in both lists as we both made a load of tactical mistakes. We both played very cagey trading units tactically to score the mission until the later turns where the thousand sons built up momentum and board control.
On playing against sisters
The 5+ denies were annoying but not everywhere. The Bloody Rose doesn't want to give up exploding 6s in melee so that detachments is only denying on a 6+ as opposed to the Ebon Chalice which was denying on a 5+. At the end of the day they only have so many denies (it's not like their entire army is range of all your casters all the time), our buffs can be cast out of deny range because of the Prism of Echoes. Sorcerous Facade tended to be cast out of deny range too. The Cabbalistic Focus pact was used to ensure scoring mutate landscape each turn.
The Dogmata ability to make a unit immune to psychic powers wasn't as bad as I thought. It only has a range of 6" and needs a 3+ to go off. If it doesn't go off they can easily lose celestine to smites. There is a stratagem to make it automatically go off but the net effect of that is your opponent loses a CP a turn (almost like a meta debuff). Your opponent could castle their entire army behind this null unit but in practice this would give up way too much board control.
On playing thousands sons
Flamer rubrics are fantastic. They are always a threat, they are expendable, they are deadly, they are surprisingly fast (being able to advance and smite/shoot is amazing). 12" range flamers with AP-2 are no joke, they make for a good anti tank solution by sheer volume of fire. They also ensure the unit is always a threat, even when the unit is reduced to 3 models that's still a smite and 2d6 shots. Being immune to moral and objective secure is another wicked combo. If all of that wasn't enough they have access to two additional shooting phases via the Overwatch and Inescapable Forewarning stratagems. 10/10
The Exalted Sorcerer with Prism of Echoes, Rehati and disk was solid, ensured that any unit that needed a buff could get a buff. 10/10
Smite, Smite, Smite. We have so much play with smite, with all our bonuses to cast, and sheer volume of casters I found the army was able to get 4-5 smites off a turn, with some of those being super smites.
Cabbal points, this list had 27, honestly you can never have enough of these. All of the rituals are useful. I'm considering taking Icon of Flame everywhere to get more, they make the army sing.
Command points, this list started with 8, it wasn't enough. Our command points have so much utility. Every psychic phase chances are you will at least be spending 1CP on a re-roll, 1CP on an ignore perils and 1CP to make smite to an automatic 3 damage. You'll want 1CP for Overwatch and 2CP for Inescapable Forewarning. I thought there wasn't any point in taking Helm of the Daemon Eye as I would get 1CP back every Psychic phase (and you can only get a max of one CP a battle round), turns out I rarely had enough Cabbal Points to use Echoes From The Warp. Taking this into account I can't see myself ever spending 2-5 CP pregame on (Risen Rubricae and/or Webway Infiltration). Even taking a second detachment, or gratuitous Relic/Warlord traits could be problematic.
Cult of Duplicity is stupidly strong with flamer rubrics, also using Pact From Beyond to guarantee it goes off is great. It's cast in the psychic phase so you can clear screening units with smite before getting your flamers stuck in to juicier target. Being able to threaten anything on the table turn 4-5 means nothing is safe, your opponent has to zone you all game (which gets harder ant harder as they lose units), you can't just leave a straggler holding an objective.
List changes
I think an infernal master is a must for the re-roll alone. There was plenty of times where I wished I had an extra re-roll, or could re-roll a super smite. Might even save some points to summon a tzeentch herald with gaze of fate (for a second re-roll).
The terminator sorcerers were good (deepsrike smites are useful), but I'm not sure you really need three of them. In some ways 3 exalted (or 2 + Ahriman) is more than enough (if you can keep them alive). You could then use those points to get more rubrics or give all your rubric Icons of Flame.
Don't think I'll bother with Scarabs, they aren't noticeably more survivable than rubrics (repentia/zeraphim will kill 10 scarabs almost as easily as 10 rubrics). There's plenty of stuff in the game that can kill scarabs even with all their buffs. Their shooting output aside from range isn't as good as flamer rubrics. They also prevent you taking to the last on Exalted Sorcerers.
I'm considering some 10 man units of rubrics but the problem I'm having is it stops me taking To The Last on my Exalted Sorcerers.
The Thrydderghyre Exalted sorcerer didn't do anything all game. While I still think it's interesting I might drop it in future if I keep taking To the Last as a secondary.
I probably don't need to take as much temporal surge as I did. Still it did give me loads of options in the end game.
Closing Thoughts
If our last codex was a severed stump... this new codex is truly a hand with more fingers than I could ever have hoped for.
EDIT: Something important I forgot to mention.
A lot of our Cabbalistic Rituals and Stratagems use the following wording:
"when a psychic power is successfully manifested"
From the core rules:
"So long as the Psychic test was successful and the psychic power was not denied by a successful Deny the Witch test, the psychic power is successfully manifested and its effects, which will be described in the power itself, are then resolved."
This is really important as it means you only spend the Command Point/Cabbal Points after you know the power hasn't been denied.
Daedalus81 wrote: Weird that your opponent didn't opt for assassinate. Did they miss the most points on secondary or primary?
Primary turns 3 onwards I had hold more and was shutting down stranglehold (so he scored 9). Only two of my characters were killed so he would have scored less with assassinate. 45 rubrics is a very hard nut to crack to get to those characters.
Yes, you're always going to spend 7 autocasting (don't want to risk your Sorcerous Facade failing), 8 to make something undeniable (mostly used on your warpcraft secondary), 4 for an extra d3, 4 for an extra CP, 8 to re-play doombolt or firestorm, 5 to add +1 to make something important pass, or to nudge your 4-5th smite into a pass or a smite into a super smite. Same with the +2 for 9 cabbal points. Basically it's easy to spend 45 cabbal point a turn and get lots of value.You also have less as you lose units, or if you have units in reserve.
Something that's not quite as obvious is your odds of super smite with a regular 2d6 cast is 8.3%, with +1 (brother hood of sorcerers) it's double at 16.6%. With +2 it's triple at 27.7% with +3 it's more than 4 times as likely at 41%. You can add +1/+2 after seeing the result. When you can re-roll the mortal wound dice with an infernal master, witch-warrior or a summoned changecaster with gaze of fate you can make things evaporate.
What on earth is that list XD I am so freaking confused how you managed to get that thing to work.
You didnt even bother with the flamer strength spell!?
Why does EVERYONE have temporal surge?
This may have worked mostly on a WTF factor and the opponent getting confused at what is going on, but still. a freaking PERFECT game against a meta worthy sisters list?
I built this list in BS, and it comes in at 2101 points, any idea why the numbers are off? Also, whats the cult on the main body of the force?
Copy paste error, there were only two terminator sorcerers in the list. Looks like the list I posted in this thread had three, there should only be two. I wondered why I never had 27 cabal point (should be 25 max). I just assumed it was cause the two terminators were in reserve and things died. Good thing I just counted units every psychic phase.
BoomWolf wrote: Mushkilla...
What on earth is that list XD I am so freaking confused how you managed to get that thing to work.
I was playing a lot of Tzeentch flamer spam summoning list in 8th (so long Fly fall back and shoot) so I know how good 12" flamer are with deepstrike (worked surprisingly well, not tournament winning, but could hold its own).
Conceptually this is very much the same, just with a load more smite, better buffs, better flamers, no need to use summoning to get around the rule of three, and objective secure. Not to mention unlike summoning Sorcerous Facade isn't limited to wholly within 12" of a character that hasn't moved.
You didnt even bother with the flamer strength spell!?
You don't need it against all lists (eg: sisters), when I do need it I swap either smite or sorcerous facade out on the exalted with Prism of echoes/Rehati so it can be cast at 24". Same reason I don't have Twist of Fate I can swap it out with Unholy Sussurus if I need it. Mind this list was very much a compromise of not overwhelming myself with all the Thousand Sons rules (eg: I should probably have taken the redeploy warlord stratagem and an infernal master).
Laziness and redundancy. It's hard enough too remember what powers your sorcerers have. Having all rubrics be the same makes it easier. It's also got a really short casting range. Even though you can only cast it once per phase it's such a clutch spell for playing the mission/warpflaming stuff. I'll probably not have it on the exalted in future.
This may have worked mostly on a WTF factor and the opponent getting confused at what is going on, but still. a freaking PERFECT game against a meta worthy sisters list?
My mind has officially melted.
My opponent had actually played against my old Tzeentch Flamers list quite bit. He said this Thousand Sons list was going to be terrifying. I didn't quite see it myself to be honest. I assumed playing sisters was going to be one of our harder match ups. But those flamers just do so much work.
That being said there was still plenty of play in both sides. I did get lucky (Ahriman lived when he should have died, classic Arhiman). I think the sisters list can't sit back and play its usual game making trades (which is what it did) it has to push way more aggressively and go for a dirty mutual annihilation that ends up being low scoring. The problem is playing aggressive into that much smite and 36D6 S4 -2 flamers is pretty intense.
Flamer rubrics are fantastic. They are always a threat, they are expendable, they are deadly, they are surprisingly fast (being able to advance and smite/shoot is amazing). 12" range flamers with AP-2 are no joke, they make for a good anti tank solution by sheer volume of fire. They also ensure the unit is always a threat, even when the unit is reduced to 3 models that's still a smite ant 2d6 shots. Being immune to moral and objective secure is another wicked combo. If all of that wasn't enough they have access to two additional shooting phases via the Overwatch and Inescapable Forewarning stratagems. 10/10
Hope all this is useful.
Well, you proved that its better to take warpflamer rubrics than infernal bolter rubrics! You also had 90W worth of rubrics protecting your characters. Its a lot more wounds and bodies than I saw some lists that youtube channels were running. Great list for making rubrics into a deadly unit!
I am pretty sure Ahriman has died in every way possible. I bet a grot has meleed him to death, probably on multiple occasions. I've never, ever had a model who manages to die in more ridiculous and unlikely ways. The dude is legitimately cursed.
I once has him die trying to charge at an eldar jet, fun times.
But he most often survives for me, despite the best efforts of my enemy. he usually only dies if I'm caught unprepared by an enemy unit having a rule I'm totally unaware of, or I'm getting absolutely destroyed.
Eldenfirefly wrote: Interestingly, up till now. I don't think there are any broken combos or strategems or such at all in the codex. There is certainly ways to build a list with all sorts of synergy and such, but nothing outright so OP I can see like the enriched rounds from Admech or that killer succubus from Drukhari.
I mean, we could smite out 20 MW in a phase, but it would take us tons of smites and witchfire and cabal points. Its not from one smite. So, you can't call that OP. Tsons are supposed to be able to do that.
You really dont think 20MW per phase isnt broken ? What is wrong with you ? There is very little help against MW, they ignore every defensive rule.
Eldenfirefly wrote: Interestingly, up till now. I don't think there are any broken combos or strategems or such at all in the codex. There is certainly ways to build a list with all sorts of synergy and such, but nothing outright so OP I can see like the enriched rounds from Admech or that killer succubus from Drukhari.
I mean, we could smite out 20 MW in a phase, but it would take us tons of smites and witchfire and cabal points. Its not from one smite. So, you can't call that OP. Tsons are supposed to be able to do that.
You really dont think 20MW per phase isnt broken ? What is wrong with you ? There is very little help against MW, they ignore every defensive rule.
Smite and a few other psychic powers target the closest enemy unit. Opponents can take this into account and make sure the cheap wound units take the heat. When the rubric marines start to die the amount of mortal wounds also start to dwindle. Still lots of D2 weapons out there. I played a few psychic armies and I always hated that lousy first round that I failed a lot of psychic tests and also rolling a bunch of 1/2 for smite damage and end up only doing a few mortal wounds. And then things started to fall apart.
Elite armies that pay a lot of points to protect each wound (deathguard, Custodes and big jumppack units with storm shields) might have to take the thousand sons armies into account but thats not necessary a bad thing.
Something I just realised this edition is we don't lose the Aspiring Sorcerer/Occult Sorcerer when they perils:
"When a PSYKER unit suffers Perils of the Warp, it suffers D3 mortal wounds. If a PSYKER unit is destroyed by Perils of the Warp while attempting to manifest a psychic power, that power automatically fails to manifest. If a PSYKER unit is destroyed by Perils of the Warp, then just before removing the last model in that unit, every unit within 6" of it immediately suffers D3 mortal wounds."
Which also means we don't get that crazy cascading nightmare where the sorcerer perils and does d3 to the unit from perils and then d3 to the unit from exploding, and d3 to everything near by.
What a relief. I've been playing it wrong all this time.
The best cabal point alteration is the cheapest one. Warpsight. It lets you keep your super buffs and garunteed invuln removal out of denial range.if It also lets you perform psychic actions through other units It will be litterally amazing.
dreadlybrew wrote: The best cabal point alteration is the cheapest one. Warpsight. It lets you keep your super buffs and garunteed invuln removal out of denial range. It also lets you perform psychic actions through other units. Its litterally amazing.
Err, I think you will still be in range of a deny. Deny does not need line of sight right?
It doesn't work that way. All it lets you do is cast out of LOS by using the LOS of another psyker of yours, it doesn't measure range from that caster or otherwise boost your range. And the opponent doesn't need LOS to deny.
The wording is admittedly a little wonky and if you really, really wanted to be that guy I guess you could argue that RAW it makes every power unlimited range as long as it's in LOS of any psyker in your army, but I think it is super clear that's not what they intended. What they meant with that wording is that you can cast out of LOS if all the other conditions are met, as long as some other psyker has LOS; it doesn't also mean you get to disregard any range or other targeting requirements.
If you look at the psychic action for our special secondary, you can put your guy on your back objectives that you haven't activated on and cast it through a forward unit without using up their action economy.
Unless you can't use cabal points on psychic actions.
It just doesn't do that, no matter how you read it. At most, if you can use it on psychic actions, you can use it for the single psychic action that targets a unit - psychic interrogation - to cast on an enemy character that isn't in LOS of the caster, but is in LOS of someone else, as long as you're still within the 24" range.
Go back and read it carefully. All it does it let you ignore the LOS requirement on something, if you meet all the other requirements, and if you have LOS from some other psyker. It doesn't remove any other restrictions - you still have to be in range, it still have to be an eligible target, etc. It doesn't cast through a forward unit. All it does is draw LOS from another unit. It's still cast by the original caster and all other limitations other than LOS still apply.
Eldenfirefly wrote: Interestingly, up till now. I don't think there are any broken combos or strategems or such at all in the codex. There is certainly ways to build a list with all sorts of synergy and such, but nothing outright so OP I can see like the enriched rounds from Admech or that killer succubus from Drukhari.
I mean, we could smite out 20 MW in a phase, but it would take us tons of smites and witchfire and cabal points. Its not from one smite. So, you can't call that OP. Tsons are supposed to be able to do that.
You really dont think 20MW per phase isnt broken ? What is wrong with you ? There is very little help against MW, they ignore every defensive rule.
Sisters have a prayer and a 10pt Canoness upgrade that make smites essentially do nothing.
Eldenfirefly wrote: Interestingly, up till now. I don't think there are any broken combos or strategems or such at all in the codex. There is certainly ways to build a list with all sorts of synergy and such, but nothing outright so OP I can see like the enriched rounds from Admech or that killer succubus from Drukhari.
I mean, we could smite out 20 MW in a phase, but it would take us tons of smites and witchfire and cabal points. Its not from one smite. So, you can't call that OP. Tsons are supposed to be able to do that.
You really dont think 20MW per phase isnt broken ? What is wrong with you ? There is very little help against MW, they ignore every defensive rule.
Here's the thing though: There is a humongous difference between what is actually broken and what is perceived as broken.
No I don't think a potential 20MWs per phase is broken. Most powers have 18" range, can fail to cast, can be denied, and most of my casts I can't even choose the target so it can be played around.
There are a lot of things that will average a lot more damage, from further away than my psychic phase (2x3 eradicators for instance).
I understand when people say it is not fun that you can't take invul saves against my mortal wounds because historically invul saves have been something "you can always count on" and since last edition you can't anymore.
But people claiming it's unfair or broken because it's "free damage" drive me up the wall. Most powers are WC6 or 7 which is no different than rolling a 3 to hit and a 3/4 to wound.
Especially now that marines have 2 wounds, the power of MWs spilling over has diminished.
Eldenfirefly wrote: Interestingly, up till now. I don't think there are any broken combos or strategems or such at all in the codex. There is certainly ways to build a list with all sorts of synergy and such, but nothing outright so OP I can see like the enriched rounds from Admech or that killer succubus from Drukhari.
I mean, we could smite out 20 MW in a phase, but it would take us tons of smites and witchfire and cabal points. Its not from one smite. So, you can't call that OP. Tsons are supposed to be able to do that.
You really dont think 20MW per phase isnt broken ? What is wrong with you ? There is very little help against MW, they ignore every defensive rule.
Eldenfirefly wrote: Interestingly, up till now. I don't think there are any broken combos or strategems or such at all in the codex. There is certainly ways to build a list with all sorts of synergy and such, but nothing outright so OP I can see like the enriched rounds from Admech or that killer succubus from Drukhari.
I mean, we could smite out 20 MW in a phase, but it would take us tons of smites and witchfire and cabal points. Its not from one smite. So, you can't call that OP. Tsons are supposed to be able to do that.
You really dont think 20MW per phase isnt broken ? What is wrong with you ? There is very little help against MW, they ignore every defensive rule.
Nope. It isn't broken. Its not like its all from one unit. The 20 MW is literally from the entire cast of castors we have supported by cabal rituals which is what Tsons get for playing pure Tsons. And Tsons aren't an easy army to play. Most of the Tsons armies featured on youtube battle reports since the codex launch have lost so far.
Automatically Appended Next Post: I think one of the challenges of the new Tsons codex is that our smite and witchfire range are now all 18 inch, while last time it was 24 inches. This means that for max effectiveness, we need to get fairly close to our opponent's units. We won't do all our smiting at 18 inches. We need to get to 12 to 18 inches for most of our castors. 12 to 18 inches means that our opponent units could very likely move and charge us the following turn. And Tsons simply can't that good in close combat. Especially Rubric marines. Once we get mixed up in close combat that we can't win, we are in trouble. Falling back means we cannot cast psychic, which is our biggest thing.
At the same time, 9th edition is a game of objectives. And charging into combat on an objective tends to be what the good armies do. So, Tsons seems to be in an odd place in that we are not a long ranged army (since our best thing our psychic is max 18 inches), yet we do not like close combat. So like I said, it will take a good player to get the max out of a Tsons list. There are some weaknesses in a Tsons army that isn't immediately obvious.
20 MW a turn doesn't seem "broken". I mean, it's their main output of reliable wounds. Each MW does one damage. Lots of things have more than 1 Wound, especially now that every single Marine in the game (except us CSMs!) have 2.
Has no one though about laser rapier carrier that get 5++ for anti tank weapon.
What do you think about them the domage output is not bad even if not realy hard to kill.
taetrius67 wrote: Has no one though about laser rapier carrier that get 5++ for anti tank weapon.
What do you think about them the domage output is not bad even if not realy hard to kill.
I don't have any forgeworld models actually. Thats the main reason for me. I suspect someone will try out a janky Tsons vehicle list in a list. Whether it will actually be good, I have no idea.
Cons
1. Most vehicles suck at fighting. And that's a Tsons list biggest weakness.
2. Vehicles are not core. Another weakness.
3. Vehicles are not obsec. Cannot capture or do the mission.
4. Vehicles are not psykers. 600 points into vehicles means 600 points which contribute zero help towards what is Tsons's biggest thing - its psychic phase. Meanwhile, 600 points of Occults or Rubrics have a lot of synergy towards a Tson's psychic phase.
Pros.
1. Vehicles have good anti tank weapons, so can help us out in this area.
2. Tsons vehicles get 5++.
I guess as with everything, we can achieve a good balance.
Eldenfirefly wrote: 2. Vehicles are not core. Another weakness.
3. Vehicles are not obsec. Cannot capture or do the mission.
4. Vehicles are not psykers.
Eldenfirefly wrote: 2. Vehicles are not core. Another weakness.
3. Vehicles are not obsec. Cannot capture or do the mission.
4. Vehicles are not psykers.
Isn't that pretty much the same for everyone?
Yes it is. Probably why its tough to make a vehicle spam list. Hence why I mentioned about having a balance.
I got a Tsons list myself that has 3 hellbrutes, a forgefiend and a Vindicator. But it only has 8 psychic casts across all its psykers and 10 Cabal Points. So... you give up stuff to go with more vehicles, just saying.
Cult of mutation warlord trait (Touch of Vicissitude) and The Stave Abominus. This gives your Exalted Sorcerer 10 attacks S7 -1 1 where each unmodified hit of a 6 causes a mortal wound. You can get 14 attacks with Paradigm of Change and Swelled by the warp. Or just 12 if take swelled by the warp and Dilettante (the advantage of this is you can take Thrydderghyre).
Personally not the biggest fan of close combat sorcerers but if you want to run one it's not the worst set up.
Egleighen's Orrery is such a good relic. Suddenly, ALL your units within 6 inches of the relic bearer gets to ignore ALL modifiers including damage -1...
That irritating Redemptor Dreadnaught no longer gets to ignore -1. Mortarion or Magnus with -1 to hit, -1 dmg ? Now you get to ignore all that. A forgefiend with twin Heavy Hades Autocannon now gets to shoot 8 Str 8 shots and its dmg 2 shots don't get reduced to 1. That suddenly makes it damage output pretty amazing.
And there is a strategem to increase a shooting vehicles's AP by 1. So now the Hades Autocannon is shooting at AP3.
Hellbrute heavy plasma cannons do flat 3 damage. So, if they are in this relic's aura, each failed save is a dead terminator (even if you are a DG or Dark Angel's terminator).
This new Thousand Sons codex has too many good relics. lol
Eldenfirefly wrote: Interestingly, up till now. I don't think there are any broken combos or strategems or such at all in the codex. There is certainly ways to build a list with all sorts of synergy and such, but nothing outright so OP I can see like the enriched rounds from Admech or that killer succubus from Drukhari.
I mean, we could smite out 20 MW in a phase, but it would take us tons of smites and witchfire and cabal points. Its not from one smite. So, you can't call that OP. Tsons are supposed to be able to do that.
You really dont think 20MW per phase isnt broken ? What is wrong with you ? There is very little help against MW, they ignore every defensive rule.
Except for FNP and denies.
And how many armies do have FNP for every unit, and can deny 20 psychic powers ?
H.B.M.C. wrote: 20 MW a turn doesn't seem "broken". I mean, it's their main output of reliable wounds. Each MW does one damage. Lots of things have more than 1 Wound, especially now that every single Marine in the game (except us CSMs!) have 2.
Right, i forgot that tsons can only do damage in the psychic phase. Tsons are like tau, their shooting phase is the psychic phase.
Eldenfirefly wrote: Egleighen's Orrery is such a good relic. Suddenly, ALL your units within 6 inches of the relic bearer gets to ignore ALL modifiers including damage -1...
That irritating Redemptor Dreadnaught no longer gets to ignore -1. Mortarion or Magnus with -1 to hit, -1 dmg ? Now you get to ignore all that. A forgefiend with twin Heavy Hades Autocannon now gets to shoot 8 Str 8 shots and its dmg 2 shots don't get reduced to 1. That suddenly makes it damage output pretty amazing.
And there is a strategem to increase a shooting vehicles's AP by 1. So now the Hades Autocannon is shooting at AP3.
Hellbrute heavy plasma cannons do flat 3 damage. So, if they are in this relic's aura, each failed save is a dead terminator (even if you are a DG or Dark Angel's terminator).
This new Thousand Sons codex has too many good relics. lol
The Orrery is CORE only, I think that is just Rubrics/Scarabs/Helbrutes/Contemptors.
I'd say it is worth some experimentation, which I feel is the same for quite a few of our relics rather than them being autopicks.
Mushkilla's all warpflamer Duplicity list he posted a few days ago was interesting and very different to the Scarab heavy Time list I used to great effect in my first two games, but I notice he had 90 wounds of Rubrics and I had 100 wounds (60 Scarab/40 Rubrics). Has anyone ran a lot less wounds and regretted it?
Has anyone tried any Tzaangor heavy builds yet? Or even used any cultists?
I have seen quite a few battle reports on youtube where the Tsons list lost badly because it had too few wounds protecting its characters. Too much investment into characters and too little points into units that can protect our characters.
The thrall sorcerers in my opinion are a trap. Compare 90 points in a thrall sorcerer or 105 points for a termie sorcerer. For 105, we can bring a 5 man rubric squad already. It has more wounds, more firepower, can do mission, take objectives, etc. So is one more psychic cast even worth all that? Furthermore, both can only throw out one smite each. One Exalted Sorceror or an ahriman is probably enough if you want to load up on all the MW psychics in both trees. There is Doombolt, Tzeentch Firestorm and maybe infernal gaze. The rest are all just smites. Unless you are taking Cult of magic and get Arcane blast. Gift of chaos is too short ranged and iffy, baleful devolution can only be used against big units. So, we don't have to take that regularly, just swop that in if we get a good target.
So, I just don't see the benefit of taking that many characters.
Eldenfirefly wrote: Egleighen's Orrery is such a good relic. Suddenly, ALL your units within 6 inches of the relic bearer gets to ignore ALL modifiers including damage -1...
This new Thousand Sons codex has too many good relics. lol
The Orrery is CORE only, I think that is just Rubrics/Scarabs/Helbrutes/Contemptors.
Ah I missed that. Well, Hellbrutes are core, so they benefit. I guess the forgefiend will still have to get by on its own.
Cult of mutation warlord trait (Touch of Vicissitude) and The Stave Abominus. This gives your Exalted Sorcerer 10 attacks S7 -1 1 where each unmodified hit of a 6 causes a mortal wound. You can get 14 attacks with Paradigm of Change and Swelled by the warp. Or just 12 if take swelled by the warp and Dilettante (the advantage of this is you can take Thrydderghyre).
Personally not the biggest fan of close combat sorcerers but if you want to run one it's not the worst set up.
Yeah ! I had noticed this ! Next Friday I'll have a 1000 Pts game against a Space wolf player and I'll try it out then. I'll also bring a Termi Sorcerer with Exalted mutation and battle Psyker for the maximum slug fest.
And how many armies do have FNP for every unit, and can deny 20 psychic powers ?
Deathskulls
Szarekhan
Sisters
Grey Knights
Graia
DE don't really have anything, but they're the strongest army in the game right now.
And it isn't 20 spells. More like a couple you really want to shut down. And the thing is if you don't want to take a psyker for denies then you get an easy way to score secondaries.
If you are in melee its pretty easy to position yourself to smite your way put of it.
Thousand sons don't get to play the no support game. You have to have a wall of marines, smite, doombolt and Astral blast your way out of melee then shoot the rest. We have 4 units ok with melee, scarab occult termies, maulerfiends and to some extent forge fiends, heldrakes (i never count them out) and tzaangors.
Aside from that you can easily smite off 10 models, teleport away, or fall back. Losing 1 cast to fall back isn't the end of the world.
dreadlybrew wrote: If you are in melee its pretty easy to position yourself to smite your way put of it.
Thousand sons don't get to play the no support game. You have to have a wall of marines, smite, doombolt and Astral blast your way out of melee then shoot the rest. We have 4 units ok with melee, scarab occult termies, maulerfiends and to some extent forge fiends, heldrakes (i never count them out) and tzaangors.
Aside from that you can easily smite off 10 models, teleport away, or fall back. Losing 1 cast to fall back isn't the end of the world.
Scarabs are good, but they're not setting the world on fire like units that can fight twice or get an equivalent number of attacks for half the cost. Like Incubi with Drazhar nearby who do 2.2 D3 wounds and 8.9 D2 wounds deny All is Dust and stripping Scarabs down to invulns. Those 5 Incubi will strip out 5 Scarabs without blinking while the Scarabs just barely could kill them in return - a unit that's less than half their value.
No, it isn't easy to smite out of combat, because your army should be across the board, many spells will not be in range / or be closest, models may not have the requisite MW spell, 10 models is 10MW at a minimum, and vehicles and engines will reduce overall MW output.
Scarabs are good, but they're not setting the world on fire like units that can fight twice or get an equivalent number of attacks for half the cost. Like Incubi with Drazhar nearby who do 2.2 D3 wounds and 8.9 D2 wounds deny All is Dust and stripping Scarabs down to invulns. Those 5 Incubi will strip out 5 Scarabs without blinking while the Scarabs just barely could kill them in return - a unit that's less than half their value.
Similar results with repentia at half the price again. In edition of hyper efficient trading melee units scarabs can struggle.
dreadlybrew wrote: If you are in melee its pretty easy to position yourself to smite your way put of it.
Thousand sons don't get to play the no support game. You have to have a wall of marines, smite, doombolt and Astral blast your way out of melee then shoot the rest. We have 4 units ok with melee, scarab occult termies, maulerfiends and to some extent forge fiends, heldrakes (i never count them out) and tzaangors.
Aside from that you can easily smite off 10 models, teleport away, or fall back. Losing 1 cast to fall back isn't the end of the world.
Scarabs are good, but they're not setting the world on fire like units that can fight twice or get an equivalent number of attacks for half the cost. Like Incubi with Drazhar nearby who do 2.2 D3 wounds and 8.9 D2 wounds deny All is Dust and stripping Scarabs down to invulns. Those 5 Incubi will strip out 5 Scarabs without blinking while the Scarabs just barely could kill them in return - a unit that's less than half their value.
No, it isn't easy to smite out of combat, because your army should be across the board, many spells will not be in range / or be closest, models may not have the requisite MW spell, 10 models is 10MW at a minimum, and vehicles and engines will reduce overall MW output.
Incubi are less durable, and have no guns or psychic powers.
The point is that TS need to be avoiding melee to make the most of many units. It is a detrimental status unless we walk into it knowing we'll come out clean and because of that we lean more on shooting and psychic.
Yeah, it feels very strange to compare Scarabs to dedicated assault units and bemoan their inefficiency when the Scarabs are participating in two additional phases compared to that unit. It'd be insane if the Scarabs looked good in that comparison.
EDIT: Okay yeah that's fair. Certainly if you're trading Scarabs 1:1 into a dedicated melee unit you made a mistake at some point, you had two whole phases to make that more favorable before charges happened.
Arachnofiend wrote: Yeah, it feels very strange to compare Scarabs to dedicated assault units and bemoan their inefficiency when the Scarabs are participating in two additional phases compared to that unit. It'd be insane if the Scarabs looked good in that comparison.
Right, so you would want to tie the conversation back to it's origin where there was a claim that MW were OP and unfair and then place the analysis in that context.
I keep pondering different lists and styles to play Tsons. Its not easy. Coming from being a DG player, DG was easy. You moved up slowly and methodically, took the incoming fire while using terrain as much as you could. Once you sat on an objective in the midfield, nobody was going to shift you off it, unless they could kill your DG terminators. You were short ranged (outside of your Plague burst mortars), but it was fine because you liked to be in Melee anyway. Once in melee, stufff fighting you simply melted or you outlasted them.
Tsons are a lot more complex. They feel like they want to stay at range because their melee isn't that great (in fact, its often a lot of their unit weakness). However, their biggest strength psychic powers need them to be within 18 inches. But getting into 18 inches generally means your opponent is in range to move + charge you next turn.
They are resilient to shooting (though not as resilient as DG. But their shooting while pretty good I would say, isn't super OP like the way Admech is. And its not particularly long range unless you build for it. Inferno bolters are 24 inches. So are Soulreapers. Warpbolters are 12 inches. And like I said earlier, psychic withfire is 18 inches.
They do have selected units that can fight well. But they have no fight last mechanic. So, they need to get the charge in. They are not good at taking charges. This means that against truly dedicated melee units, they will likely come out much worse in the encounter.
They are not quite good for trading units, because Tsons units are expensive. (Only units like Spawn are cheap).
They are not mobile. Not unless you take cult of Duplicity, the crystal relic. But even then, its one or two units. Tsons units are mostly 5 to 6 inch move.
When I build a Tsons lists and start thinking about missions objectives. I end up with objectives where I don't have to move much and stay on my side of the board (or at most center). So warp ritual and wrath of Magnus is almost auto take if possible. I would take warp ritual even if there was no objective in the middle of the board I think.
It feels like against a good player, who understands how deadly our psychic phase is, and who will have Rhinos, vehicles or cheap chaff in front to screen out smites. We will end up playing an outlast game. Where we whittle each other down. And thus, having our own screening and counter charge units become extremely important, because we will definitely have charges aimed at us in the course of the battle.
Its challenging. I like a challenge.
PS: It feels like we want to overwhelm one portion of the board methodically, removing it completely of enemies before moving to the next portion.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Btw, I just thought of another thing that makes the Infernal Master so good. (He literally shows up in every list I design).
Take the Seeker after Shadows warlord trait on the Infernal Master. He gets 1 more Cabal point (nice bonus). But the main thing is that he now gets to roll 3d6 and pick the 2 highest dice for psychic actions.
This transforms your Infernal Master into the best psychic action character for you by far. And because infernal pacts go off in the command phase while pychic actions are taken in the psychic phase. He gets to do both of his thing (and move+advance around to boot).
And there is even a 4 cabal point psychic ritual to gain back 1 CP. If you just want to keep him far back behind obscuring where he is safe. Then he can just glimpse of eternity for a free reroll plus do the 4 cabal point ritual every turn. The reroll = 1 CP reroll effectively. The cabal ritual = 1 cp back. Net net, this one 90 point guy sitting in the back rank doing his thing for 5 turns will net you effectively 10 CP. There is literally no better deal in the game right now I can think of.
And if you pick the warp ritual secondary and move him forward to do the ritual. He makes an excellent warp ritual person too. Because he is rolling 3d6 pick the highest. Not only is it extremely likely to go off. You will likely roll high with it, making it hard to deny the warp ritual. You only need to do warp ritual 3 times out of 5 rounds to get max points for it. I think statistically, if you roll 3d6+1 and pick 2d6+1 highest against a person rolling 2d6 who has to beat your roll to deny, statistically, you should definitely win 3 out of 5 times. (Likely 4 out of 5 times in fact). I think if we use this warlord trait, we don't even need to spend the cabal points to make our ritual undeniable. He will suck up that 1 deny our opponent will be saving up to deny that ritual (allowing the rest of our psychic more free rein) and yet, most likely that deny will fail.
Same thing for mental interrogation. The Infernal Master makes a great mental interrogator with that warlord trait. But I like warp ritual better. Its possible for your opponent to hide his characters out of range of mental interrogation. Warp ritual takes place once you get to 6 inches from the center of the battlefield.
Such an excellent character.
By the way, can I clarify something? Can a Rubric Marine squad do a psychic action and then still shoot? It happens in different phases, from what I understand, and by the time we get to shooting, the psychic action is already completed.
This is where warpflamer rubrics help a little. Overwatch is not as strong as it was (mostly cause it's easy to circumvent by charging in an expendable unit first kinnda wish the overwatch stratagem gave the unit overwatch for the whole phase), but it's good enough to kill most glass cannon melee units on the charge. It means your opponent always needs at least two melee units in position, one to soak overwatch one to do the damage. Even if it means you just kill some chaff it does make getting in close combat with us a little more challenging.
What's more is a lot of melee units come in from reserve these days, eg: zeraphim, bloodletters etc. Inescapable forewarning can do a decent amount of damage with warpflamers.
They are not quite good for trading units, because Tsons units are expensive. (Only units like Spawn are cheap).
You can make them better at trading by increasing their damage output. A unit of 5 rubrics with 4 warpflamers only costs 14 more points than a unit of 5 rubrics with a soulreaper and does almost twice the damage (before taking into account Pyric Flux). Combine this with the ability to shoot in your opponents reserve and charge phase, a bunch of buffs and you can do ok.
One of the key advantages of warpflamer rubrics is they are on average 50% faster (7-12" rather than 6") than regular rubrics because they can advance and shoot. It's basically a speed boost.
Having played against deathguard and smited my way out of a 10 man of poxwalkers, and still had enough mortal wound and magic power to fiddle the board a little, and still suped up my 10 man terminators deathball I can confirm with average rolls you just need to survive melee to punk out 1w melee models.
You want the wall of magic. Its an archetype and I scored max secondaries without venturing into their side of the board.
Did a 3 round tournament today. It went pretty well with WWL. Would have placed second if I took the last game. My first game we ran out of time, because he was pretty new so I don't think I matched to a strong list second round, either.
I didn't take 10 Scarabs and I don't think I will. There is just no way to have the CP for them - I found myself constantly running out and I was getting 2 per round. It would also have made my list way too rigid.
Loss was to Custodes on mission 32, which is their bread and butter. Basically came down to him holding the center for Stranglehold and the mission secondary plus abhor. I nearly tabled him, but not in time to get the center back. I would have liked to have Death Hex ( or w/e its name is now ), but I don't generally carry it and against Custodes I don't pack enough AP for it to matter. We have so little AP4 and none beyond 24". People who complain about a lot of MW might be missing this part of the picture.
You could have used a command point to familiar *new name in the codex* so you had twist of fate. Litterally all you need to do is take away the save, then shoot them.
dreadlybrew wrote: You could have used a command point to familiar *new name in the codex* so you had twist of fate. Litterally all you need to do is take away the save, then shoot them.
Also, if you had some Spawn and another CP, you could select the AP-4 Spawn power and use them as a can-opener (after Twist of Fating them).
I feel like there's going to be a big learning-curve with this codex. There are a ton of options in there, and the challenge is going to be remembering what you can do.
I know the name of the thread is cabalistic riturals but do yall think there is a world where Tsons could soup well? Losing the cabal points is a blow, but could it still be worth it?
I am currently thinking about a Tsons primary army and then a triple PBC Death guard detachment to add some long range support.
Other ideas include chaos daemon detachment for big beater deamons to throw at enemy.
Or is the only way right now to play them seemingly in pure Tsons?
I think soup would be more of a thing if there were more useful soup options. TS have big, glaring weaknesses - lack of melee capability, lack of action monkeys, lack of effective trading units, etc - but they are weaknesses largely shared by their souping options. I don't think anything you can get from other chaos soup options is really worth the cost at this point, and it's a big cost. If chaos had the options imperium or even aeldari has it'd be a different story.
If you do want to take some other stuff, at this point IMO the best option is probably to save some reserve points to summon some daemons, as that doesn't break purity. Furies are good action monkeys, saving 90 points that can either be used for two squads of furies or a changecaster with gaze of fate and one of bolt of change or infernal gateway isn't a terrible strategy, though you have to be super careful with your characters' movement to make sure you don't screw yourself.
ninjafiredragon wrote: I know the name of the thread is cabalistic riturals but do yall think there is a world where Tsons could soup well? Losing the cabal points is a blow, but could it still be worth it?
I am currently thinking about a Tsons primary army and then a triple PBC Death guard detachment to add some long range support.
Other ideas include chaos daemon detachment for big beater deamons to throw at enemy.
Or is the only way right now to play them seemingly in pure Tsons?
I think we can definitely find something to soup with Thousand Sons. The issue isn't losing cabalistic rituals. The issue is that we lose the Tsons secondaries and some of them are really good. Like Wrath of Magnus should be an auto 12 vp, and in some cases, easy 15 vp. And Tsons are amazing at warp ritual secondary, especially since we can use cabal points to prevent any denies to warp ritual going off. I would still love to explore some souping at some point. Especially with Deathguard. I think there are some benefits between souping Tsons and DG.
ninjafiredragon wrote: I know the name of the thread is cabalistic riturals but do yall think there is a world where Tsons could soup well? Losing the cabal points is a blow, but could it still be worth it?
I am currently thinking about a Tsons primary army and then a triple PBC Death guard detachment to add some long range support.
Other ideas include chaos daemon detachment for big beater deamons to throw at enemy.
Or is the only way right now to play them seemingly in pure Tsons?
I got a tournament coming up and I'am bringing this:
Spoiler:
Superheavy detachment
HOUSEHOLD BOND 1: Abominable constitution
HOUSEHOLD BOND 2: Harrying packs
-5 rubric marines with 4 warpflamers
-5 rubric marines with 4 warpflamers
-5 rubric marines
-Chaos contemptor with 2x twin linked Voltair Culvering and Cyclone missle launcher
- 5 spawns
- Helldrake with baleflame
I like the duplicity teleport flexibilty in combination with warpflamers. The bring some objective scoring possibilities that compliment the wardog's. Not going to win the tournament but still a good fight.
I already painted the spawns and the helldrake so I'am using them but normally I wouldn't include them in my list. Spawns are still a good deal and helldrake can help the teleporting rubric marines at the flank and attracting firepower away from the wardogs.
Cultists can be playable in any way? I didn't see any of you talking about that unit (like predator, the other that had no mention at all) and I have 30 anvil industries converted cultist that I want to play.
So far I've played a 2k game, and 2 crusade games 500 and 750.
2k vs death guard, 500 qnd 750 vs orks.
In all three scenarios my opponents felt like the game was over turn 2 because rubrics and exalted sorcs put out so many mortal wounds.
The thing about lower point games is that if you take 3 rubric squads and an exalted sorc your mortal wound output is the same at 500 points as it is at 2000. From 17 to 20. Then you get dope shooting.
In my experience farming cabal points I've found that they are incredibly useful but its a little agonizing for your opponents because it mostly just flexes your wizard power all over them.
I just got my hands on the book and started making lists. It is quite a headache trying to figure out which spells go wherer etc.
But what are your guys thoughts on the Vortex beast? I must say that I really liked that bugger and was thinking about a list with two beasts in.
Spoiler:
Cult of Time - Battalion Ahrinam on disc; (Doombolt/Twist of fate/Cacodaemonic curse)
Daemonprince of Tzeentch; Wings/Talon/Sword (Tzeentch´s firestorm/Doombolt)
Hourglass of Manat
Immaterial echo
Infernal master; Glimps of eternity/Malefic maelstrom (Temporal surge)
5 Rubric marines; Icon of flame, Soulreaper cannon (Presage)
5 Rubric marines; Icon of flame, Soulreaper cannon (Glamour if Tzeentch)
5 Rubric marines; Icon of flame, Soulreaper cannon (Baleful Devolution)
5 Scarab occult terminators; Soulreaper cannon (Glamour of Tzeentch)
5 Scarab occult terminators; Soulreaper cannon (Swelled by the warp)
Chaos rhino; Inferno combi-melta
Chaos rhino;
Mutalith Vortex Beast
Mutalith Vortex Beast
Cult of Change - Patrol Daemonprince of Tzeentch; Wings/Talon/Sword (Swelled by the warp/Gaze of hate)
Conniving plate
Undying form
5 Rubric marines; (Glamour if Tzeentch)
20 Cabal points 8 Command points
The list really lacks heavy fire power but I´m hoping that mortal wounds will compensate. I also have some heavy hitters in close combat with the dual prince and dual vortex beasts.
dreadlybrew wrote: So far I've played a 2k game, and 2 crusade games 500 and 750.
2k vs death guard, 500 qnd 750 vs orks.
In all three scenarios my opponents felt like the game was over turn 2 because rubrics and exalted sorcs put out so many mortal wounds.
The thing about lower point games is that if you take 3 rubric squads and an exalted sorc your mortal wound output is the same at 500 points as it is at 2000. From 17 to 20. Then you get dope shooting.
In my experience farming cabal points I've found that they are incredibly useful but its a little agonizing for your opponents because it mostly just flexes your wizard power all over them.
This is the exact interesting thing I realised making different lists are thinking through matchups with them. You don't need four or five characters to achieve your "ideal" mortal wound output. You just need more rubric squads. The benefit of a character like a sorceror or such is you can stack witchfire spells on them. If you stack a character with buff spells, it doesn't increase your mortal wound output at all. Not to say he won't contribute. But if your objective is to do say 20 MW. Adding an additional exalted sorcerer with just buff spells over the one you already have doesn't help your mw output at all. In the first place, there are only aa few witchfire spells worth taking. Doombolt and Tzeentch firestorm. Infernal gaze averages 1 to 2 wounds. And dark blessing is just too short range ( 6") and iffy (you have to beat toughness). Others are all situational. (like only work on a unit of 6+ models or if it moved/advanced/charged). If you want to delete stuff with MW, then the workhorse witchfire is Doombolt and tzeentch firestorm and basically just smite spam. You don't need multiple characters just to spam smite. You can do that fine with Rubric squads. And regardless of how many such squads or characters you have, after a few smites, the casting cost is so high you will fail even with the +1.
Your typical ideal MW phase is to have 4 to 5 smites through, with 4 cp to add d3 more MW, and then the two witchfire doombolt and tzeentch firestorm going through. Beyond that is getting a 10 or 11 cast smite off or possibly add infernal gaze. And you could probably do that with 4 or 5 units/characters, and its probably cheaper to do that with just 2 characters and 3 units rather than 4 characters and 1 unit.
And beyond these, adding more castors is just for other stuff like buffs or rituals. Because by this stage, casting cost of smite is too high already and you have no more good witchfire spells left anyway. And spamming too many characters inevitably results in you having too small an army to protect your heroes and do missions.
I've been playing cult of magic so I also get Astral blast which has a lot of utility and eases the diminishing returns of smite a little.
I also am not counting out baleful devolution. That spell has some kick to it but im giving it to my witch warrior.
So far super buffing the terminators is creating such a beastly attack sink that the opponent can't really deal with the rest of the rubrics.
Souping away cabal points sort of feels bad because they are a cool new toy but if you are souping make sure you are putting in 6 to 8 damage worth of soup
dreadlybrew wrote: You could have used a command point to familiar *new name in the codex* so you had twist of fate. Litterally all you need to do is take away the save, then shoot them.
Custodes have 0+/1+ saves in cover.
Telemons are 2+, which means AP3 knocks them barely down past the invuln.
And lest you forget, twist is max 12", which is stupid close when you need to take out two telemons.
Zorninsson wrote: Cultists can be playable in any way? I didn't see any of you talking about that unit (like predator, the other that had no mention at all) and I have 30 anvil industries converted cultist that I want to play.
The only thing they can do is swarm objectives. There isn't much to boost their killing power.
Zorninsson wrote: Cultists can be playable in any way? I didn't see any of you talking about that unit (like predator, the other that had no mention at all) and I have 30 anvil industries converted cultist that I want to play.
The "best" way to play cultists is as a big blob buffed by Weaver of Fates. There are, of course, still a number of problems with this strategy and it is not recommended. If you really want to put the cultists on the table its probably best just to bring 1-2 minimum units as backline objective holders/action bots. They don't compare favorably to tzaangors or chaos spawn in this role but they can do it.
I think cultists have the problem of not being worth their points.
They don't provide and active role in your army and you can litterally pay for a legion command to action and shoot for like 10 points on a better unit.
They have 0 defensive strats and cant cast spells.
The only reasonable way to take them is if you are bringing 30 scarab occult terminators and need to fill out min troop slots
I agree. Cultists are not really worth bringing unless you are trying to keep the compulsory troop choices as cheap as possible. But even then Tgors are only 20 points more have a better T and 5++ and if push comes to shove, the ones with blades actually have at least some potential for damage in CC. So unless you really need to cut points somewhere and are using Tgors so want to save 20 points by downgrading to cultists, they really don't have any other use.
It is a shame as I have 20 of the original cultist models from like the 90's who look really good with TS. But I would not use them except in the friendliest of games, not even in like a semi-competitive list.
I definitely wanna try a bunch of monofaction lists, but I do wanna soup too. I just thought of something hilarious and fun fluff wise because Ahriman and Fabius Bile are my two favorite characters. But Fabius Bile's Enhanced Warriors ability on Scarab Occult spam sounds fun. Infernal Master gives me a reroll in command phase, Fabius gives +1S/T/A at the end of movement phase to SOT in 6 inches, psychic phase I can launch them up with Duplicity. Enhanced Warriors applies to Heretics Astartes Infantry, it was never FAQ'd to add the <Legion> keyword, and they had plenty of opportunities so far. But 10 man SOT's with T5 or 40 attacks sounds very fun, plus all the other buffs. Plus pink horror split chaff and Tzeentch Daemon buffs on T-Son daemon engines both also sound tantalyzing.
xeen wrote: I agree. Cultists are not really worth bringing unless you are trying to keep the compulsory troop choices as cheap as possible. But even then Tgors are only 20 points more have a better T and 5++ and if push comes to shove, the ones with blades actually have at least some potential for damage in CC. So unless you really need to cut points somewhere and are using Tgors so want to save 20 points by downgrading to cultists, they really don't have any other use.
It is a shame as I have 20 of the original cultist models from like the 90's who look really good with TS. But I would not use them except in the friendliest of games, not even in like a semi-competitive list.
It seems like thier 1 general use is going to be for them. Which would be zoning. You can still throw the 4++ on them and make the opponent expend a lot of small arms fire on them. Having a cheap disposable screen for SOT or Rubrics is never bad.
Would like to talk about secondaries for Tsons. We have great Tsons secondaries but we can only take one. And the best amongst them is Wrath of Magnus.
So leaving the Tsons secondaries aside, Warp Ritual is another one we should always seriously consider. We have ways to force psychic action through, and we have ways to make our psychic action roll very high by taking the seeker of shadows warlord trait. Its a relatively easy 12 VP.
The last secondary is the tricky one. Honestly, I don't like ROD for Tsons. I feel our units are too valuable to waste their turn doing actions and wasting their opportunity to shoot, etc. warp ritual is different because we have tons of castors, and psychic ritual doesn't prevent us from shooting. But a normal action does. Another reason I don't like ROD is that Tsons units are generally expensive. I hate the idea of throwing away a unit of Rubrics just to do ROD. Because that unit of rubrics could have done much more, and they are not cheap. We do have cultists we can use to do ROD of couse... but given that all the workhorse units in Tsons are relatively expensive, even setting aside 100 points for 2 units of throwaway cultists for ROD feels like a waste of points to me. (Plus they will take 1 CP to put into reserve). At that point, I rather explore another secondary rather than expending so much effort trying to do ROD.
Raise banners is something we can consider despite what I said about ROD. This is because we usually only do banners on turn 1, and the rest of the game, we can just let the banners rack up the VP. Turn 1, often is about moving into position anyway. And stuff is often out of range of shooting. So, I would consider raise banners if the scenario and opponent is one where we are unlikely to be attacked on our home objectives and there are two or even three within easy reach on our side of the board.
Kill secondaries and possible engage are others I would consider. But it all depends on the opponent and the scenario we are playing, and the cult and army we are playing as well. Basically, our third secondary is a lot more fluid and depends a lot on the map, the scenario and our opponent.
As for those taking secondaries against us. We can't do much about Adhor the witch. But I think warp ritual balances out Adhor the witch. We can also have ways to design our list so that it is not that easy to kill our psykers (like take demon prince). This also applies to assassinate as well. Both of these reasons are why I rather not go overboard on characters in a Tsons army. I would draw the line at 3 characters, one of which would be an infernal master that is either kept well back within or near my deployment zone or will be within by big bloc of Occults. And one of the other I would make a demon prince so that he is not an easy kill. This is also why I favor the big block of Occults. It provides protection to our characters. You want to target them, you have to kill off ten Occults first, which would take some serious effort plus I can rezz and heal Occults. In fact, its possible for a Tsons army to be very defensive. Have a large deathball supported by most of our units. Come close and you get blasted by MW plus shot to death with tons of inferno shots and warpflamers, plus charged as a finishing blow by Occults wielding Kopeshs. In that kind of setup, you would literally need to go through the majority of our army before you can get to our characters.
Automatically Appended Next Post: So, my preference going into a game for secondaries would always be take.
1. One of the Tsons secondaries (Wrath of Magnus if possible as a top choice).
2. Warp Ritual from warpcraft
3. Raise the Banners High from shadow operations.
I think these fit in the best with the way Tsons move and play their army. I would always take wrath of Magnus as long as I can. Even against a psyker heavy or deny heavy army. Even against grey knights. Nobody, not even grey knights lean into psychic MW as heavily as we do.
I don't think I'm quite as high on Warp Ritual as you are; the fact that your Aspiring/SO Sorcerers can't perform the action is pretty rough. Don't get me wrong, it's still one of our better choices, but I'm going to be very upset if I ever need to commit Ahriman to a psychic action despite available Rubrics.
An opponent you can't take Wrath against is gonna change your analysis significantly; Mutate Landscape is significantly better than the baseline psychic actions IMO so I'm quite happy to simply take that instead, but it does lock us out of taking other warpcraft secondaries. I definitely like the idea of using Ardent Automata to make performing actions less painful - probably on Scarabs?
Arachnofiend wrote: I don't think I'm quite as high on Warp Ritual as you are; the fact that your Aspiring/SO Sorcerers can't perform the action is pretty rough. Don't get me wrong, it's still one of our better choices, but I'm going to be very upset if I ever need to commit Ahriman to a psychic action despite available Rubrics.
An opponent you can't take Wrath against is gonna change your analysis significantly; Mutate Landscape is significantly better than the baseline psychic actions IMO so I'm quite happy to simply take that instead, but it does lock us out of taking other warpcraft secondaries. I definitely like the idea of using Ardent Automata to make performing actions less painful - probably on Scarabs?
Well, if need be, I think there is a strategem that lets us perform a psychic action and then still be able to cast a psychic power. But I would always try and have my seeker of shadow Infernal master perform the action on a 3d6+1 (pick highest 2 dice).
Yeah, I understand there will be opponents with no psykers where we can't take wrath of Magnus. In which case we will just have to consider the other Tsons secondaries in its place then. Although if I can't take Wrath of Magnus, then warp ritual seems like an easy choice because that mean I should have little problems getting that done. I am not sure if people will specifically avoid psykers in their tourney list though. just because of Wrath of Magnus. That seems too much tailoring for an army you might not even face at a tourney.
Arachnofiend wrote: There are armies in the meta right now that just naturally don't have psykers, Drukhari/AdMech/Sisters all have to soup for them if they want them.
On the other side of secondaries - how worried are we about getting tabled? TSons as a faction generally seem poor on durability point/wound. Range isn't stellar and neither is melee for the most part. Expecting to heavily trade most of the game and end the game with little or no units remaining - but hopefully ahead on points.
Should we be concerned about running 5 or more characters? This would make abhor and assassinate a slam dunk by cutting edge armies and easy to max out.
Is To the Last worth building around from a character perspective? Do we have enough chaff?
MortarionsFriend wrote: On the other side of secondaries - how worried are we about getting tabled? TSons as a faction generally seem poor on durability point/wound. Range isn't stellar and neither is melee for the most part. Expecting to heavily trade most of the game and end the game with little or no units remaining - but hopefully ahead on points.
Should we be concerned about running 5 or more characters? This would make abhor and assassinate a slam dunk by cutting edge armies and easy to max out.
Is To the Last worth building around from a character perspective? Do we have enough chaff?
I think running too many characters raises the risks of us getting tabled because we then have too few points into proper units that can protect our characters. You can make a list with quite a lot of wounds to protect your characters if you run like only two or three characters. And you need some melee capable units in the list too, because there will be lists that get units into melee no matter what we do. Like if something deadly deepstrikes in or comes in from reserve and makes that 9 inch charge, how will we deal with that? If all of our units cannot fight or at least overwatch well with warpflamers, just one deadly unit into our ranks will cause our entire army to fold. So, whether you have one or two Hellbrutes with fists/scourges, demon prince, Occults or Chaos Spawn or Mauler Fiends or Defilers. You need some melee capable units to at least counter charge.
Grind them down is also a big consideration secondary for us, as we will often be out-numbered by quite a bit by enemy units (at least with "elite" builds rather than mini rubric spam)
Spamming chars is just too risky.
Assassinate, grind, abhor. too many VP to harvest.
Eldenfirefly wrote: Like if something deadly deepstrikes in or comes in from reserve and makes that 9 inch charge, how will we deal with that? If all of our units cannot fight or at least overwatch well with warpflamers, just one deadly unit into our ranks will cause our entire army to fold. So, whether you have one or two Hellbrutes with fists/scourges, demon prince, Occults or Chaos Spawn or Mauler Fiends or Defilers. You need some melee capable units to at least counter charge.
There are a few ways in the codex to reduce an enemy's movement and/or charge range, but you have to build for them. I agree completely with your larger point that some CC-capable units are probably necessary. Based on their point-value and the work they can put out, I'm really liking how Spawn are looking right now (especially when buffed by Presage and Fated Mutation).
Played my first game with the new book vs my buds GSC, 1250 points, forget which mission but it was a hold 2, hold 3, hold more iirc.
I took an Exalted Sorcerer on disc, DP, 4 squads of 5 rubes, 2 dreads with double fists, and 5 termies. Honestly just having full smites on all aspiring sorcerers felt huge. I played cult of magic and the amount of mortal wounds i was tossing out was pretty brutal. Love the new powers and cabal point mechanic, lots of planning involved in the psychic phase now, really was a lot of fun
BoomWolf wrote: Grind them down is also a big consideration secondary for us, as we will often be out-numbered by quite a bit by enemy units (at least with "elite" builds rather than mini rubric spam)
Spamming chars is just too risky.
Assassinate, grind, abhor. too many VP to harvest.
Yes, grind them down is definitely also something to consider depending on the matchup and army. Interesting enough, again depending on the matchup, we might be able to go Stranglehold (Domination) as well if we take the crystal relic and have a big block of Occults with Cult of Duplicity. These are obsec and can be made as resilient as DG (though that costs CP). Against certain armies that are not quite that melee capable. Using crystal to plop ten Occults onto a midboard objective on turn 1 could place a lot of pressure on such opponents. Given that occults and rubrics are both teleport capable and both are obsec. We can quite easily do a turn 1 stranglehold and then apply a lot of pressure from there on. Admech are not very good at melee, Tau and Astra Militarium is another example. Like I said, its army and list dependent. But the option is there. Not every list is built to take out 10 Occults in melee. Like a Skitari vanguard block of 20 ? Their main option is to shoot. They won't want to charge a ten man Occult termie block.
What do folks think of this loadout for characters in a list:
Duplicity Characters
Thrall Sorcerer - Presage, Temporal Surge
Ahriman - Glamour, Twist of Fate, Weaver
Exalted - Temporal Manip, Temporal Surge, Prism of Echoes (no disc bc of pts)
Prince - Dark Blessing, Swelled, Conniving Plate relic, Otherworldly Prescience trait, Wings
Time Characters
Rehati Exalted on Disc - Firestorm, Doombolt, Devolution, Scrolls relic, Lore trait
Master - Temporal Manip, Imps and Malestrom
The thing that I'm still puzzling over is whether the Rehati is a great build. Giving him the Time trait would let him cast four times, but he would only know three total powers.
Ahriman has the powers with higher WC, which are therefore more difficult to go off, so his reroll will help there. I know some people push for him as a witchfire caster, but the Rehati is doing that job for me, since the Scrolls makes him very reliable.
Duplicity Characters
Thrall Sorcerer - Presage, Temporal Surge
Ahriman - Glamour, Twist of Fate, Weaver
Exalted - Temporal Manip, Temporal Surge, Prism of Echoes (no disc bc of pts)
Prince - Dark Blessing, Swelled, Conniving Plate relic, Otherworldly Prescience trait, Wings
Time Characters
Rehati Exalted on Disc - Firestorm, Doombolt, Devolution, Scrolls relic, Lore trait
Master - Temporal Manip, Imps and Malestrom
The thing that I'm still puzzling over is whether the Rehati is a great build. Giving him the Time trait would let him cast four times, but he would only know three total powers.
Ahriman has the powers with higher WC, which are therefore more difficult to go off, so his reroll will help there. I know some people push for him as a witchfire caster, but the Rehati is doing that job for me, since the Scrolls makes him very reliable.
Switch the Rehati's cult spell out with another at the start of the first psychic phase. Personally I am much more fond of the Immaterial Echo trait, which when combined with scrolls is all but guaranteed to go off and gives you an undeniable extra cast.
Duplicity Characters
Thrall Sorcerer - Presage, Temporal Surge
Ahriman - Glamour, Twist of Fate, Weaver
Exalted - Temporal Manip, Temporal Surge, Prism of Echoes (no disc bc of pts)
Prince - Dark Blessing, Swelled, Conniving Plate relic, Otherworldly Prescience trait, Wings
Time Characters
Rehati Exalted on Disc - Firestorm, Doombolt, Devolution, Scrolls relic, Lore trait
Master - Temporal Manip, Imps and Malestrom
The thing that I'm still puzzling over is whether the Rehati is a great build. Giving him the Time trait would let him cast four times, but he would only know three total powers.
Ahriman has the powers with higher WC, which are therefore more difficult to go off, so his reroll will help there. I know some people push for him as a witchfire caster, but the Rehati is doing that job for me, since the Scrolls makes him very reliable.
Switch the Rehati's cult spell out with another at the start of the first psychic phase. Personally I am much more fond of the Immaterial Echo trait, which when combined with scrolls is all but guaranteed to go off and gives you an undeniable extra cast.
You can't swap the cult spell or smite for any other spells. They have to come from the same discipline. Since neither of those spells are attached to a discipline they can't be swapped for anything else.
Nah, that's not a requirement of the stratagem. The stratagem just says pick a psychic power from a discipline you have access to, and replace any power you currently have with that power.
You can swap out smite or a cult power...what you can't do is then swap smite or your cult power back in once you've swapped it out, since they aren't from any discipline.
yukishiro1 wrote: Nah, that's not a requirement of the stratagem. The stratagem just says pick a psychic power from a discipline you have access to, and replace any power you currently have with that power.
You can swap out smite or a cult power...what you can't do is then swap smite or your cult power back in once you've swapped it out, since they aren't from any discipline.
Your right just looked it up. Could swore it was restricted by discipline. Guess not though.
Duplicity Characters
Thrall Sorcerer - Presage, Temporal Surge
Ahriman - Glamour, Twist of Fate, Weaver
Exalted - Temporal Manip, Temporal Surge, Prism of Echoes (no disc bc of pts)
Prince - Dark Blessing, Swelled, Conniving Plate relic, Otherworldly Prescience trait, Wings
Time Characters
Rehati Exalted on Disc - Firestorm, Doombolt, Devolution, Scrolls relic, Lore trait
Master - Temporal Manip, Imps and Malestrom
The thing that I'm still puzzling over is whether the Rehati is a great build. Giving him the Time trait would let him cast four times, but he would only know three total powers.
Ahriman has the powers with higher WC, which are therefore more difficult to go off, so his reroll will help there. I know some people push for him as a witchfire caster, but the Rehati is doing that job for me, since the Scrolls makes him very reliable.
I think Arrogance of Aeons is an alternative warlord trait you can put on the Rehati as a witchfire castor. Lets you stack 2 cabal rituals on him. That's useful if he is a witchfire castor.
I am more concerned that you have like 800 points of characters, which means you will only have 1200 points of units defending these characters plus doing missions (primaries and secondaries). Doesn't seem like a lot honestly. You could easily end up having too few wounds and units to do that plus protect your characters. I don't think you would lose much if you replaced the Exalted and the Thrall sorcerer with rubric marines squads. You lose two casts but given your characters, you probably have too many casts anyway. As a smite source, an exalted or thrall is exactly the same as a rubric squad unless you plan to take one witchfire spell on him so that he can cast that witchfire and smite. If its buffs, well, two less buffs in your whole army isn't going to make or break it honestly.
So how do you peeps deal with -1Dmg abilities and the like? I've played orks against my Tsons mate and sadly it's sort of a struggle for em to chew through anything with ramshackle or squigosaurs. Any advice on decent anti tank options?
odorofdeath wrote: just smite the gak out of them. i cant imagine orks have a lot of psychic denial
Eh, an ork list can have a decent amount of denies if it wants. We do have 3 different types of casters and 10 or so spells worth taking. Besides, 6d3 mortals isn't really enough to deal with 5 or so models, many of which may not be on the very front lines.
He tried taking a pair of vindicators, but got a bit unlucky and tried to put them on the squig riders first.
After playing with them I'm a bit down on vindicators; our army is so short on shooting with reach that making your big vehicle-mounted anti-tank gun also be 24" range isn't great. Doesn't much matter how durable they are if they can't shoot the plagueburst crawlers at all.
2 forgefiends with the autocannons are a great anti tank option. They aren't core so they don't get re rolls.
I just bought 2 hell brutes and I'm going to play around with them as antitank. One thing I do to deal woth plagueburst crawlers is perplex. If you can sneak a unit within 30inches you can perplex that thing and it has to come out of hiding or it can't shoot you (most of the time).
Wrath of the wronged, the ignore dr relic, and the +1 str infernal power on a deathball terminator unit can totally take out a plague burster.
You also have presage, the +6inch range power and +1 storm bolter shots.
Against hordes use the strat to double your shots with soulreapers. Watch them die.
You have options and most of it means holding the center and burning down a target a turn. You are obsec and fearless and tough. 40 to 50 marines can just hold the center and hold objectives.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Did we lose the ability to summon demons?
I am kinda down on both the Vindicator and the Forgefiend... I spent three rounds with one Vindicator and One Ceberus Forgefiend blasting away at a Drukhari Raider sitting on an objective. Three rounds later, it was still alive and laughing at me... To say I was disgusted with both was an understatement...
In fact, because they underperformed so much, I think I ended the game with most of the Drukahri infantry dead, but with most of the Drukhari vehicles still alive ... Only one Venom was killed early on by a Hellbrute's plasma cannon.
odorofdeath wrote: just smite the gak out of them. i cant imagine orks have a lot of psychic denial
Eh, an ork list can have a decent amount of denies if it wants. We do have 3 different types of casters and 10 or so spells worth taking. Besides, 6d3 mortals isn't really enough to deal with 5 or so models, many of which may not be on the very front lines.
He tried taking a pair of vindicators, but got a bit unlucky and tried to put them on the squig riders first.
6D3? Just from smite maybe. But you should be doing way more then that. You should have at least 1 Sorc with Witch-Warrior casting Smite that requires 11+ min and auto passing with cabal points. IDK why you only have 2 casters in your army but you should definitely have more then that. I mean with a 1cp strat, 4 Cabal points, Smite, and Doom bolt a single caster can net you 6-9 mortal wounds. That's just 2 generic spells on a generic caster. That's not Ahriman, relics, or warlord traits.
Eldenfirefly wrote: I am kinda down on both the Vindicator and the Forgefiend... I spent three rounds with one Vindicator and One Ceberus Forgefiend blasting away at a Drukhari Raider sitting on an objective. Three rounds later, it was still alive and laughing at me... To say I was disgusted with both was an understatement...
In fact, because they underperformed so much, I think I ended the game with most of the Drukahri infantry dead, but with most of the Drukhari vehicles still alive ... Only one Venom was killed early on by a Hellbrute's plasma cannon.
It's important to not base your judgement of a unit on just one game.
TV Contemptor vs Triple PlasFF
vs Raider
TVC - 23.8%
TPFF - 8.3%
vs Buggy
TVC - 33%
TPFF - 51.4%
vs 4++ Terminators
TVC - 52% for 1 model, 17% for 2, 2.5% for 3
TPFF - 37% for 1, 26% for 2, 10% for 3, 3% for 4
TPFF is way more versatile.
Vindicators are not good at taking on Raiders, no, but they're hard to kill and you'll like having them if Grots ever hit the table and they're still hard to shift.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
dreadlybrew wrote: Hades autocannons are where its at. You can kick up points to give it a plasma mouth if you want but I like the melee threat on my forgefiends.
Double Cannon / Plasma is 17% to knock a Raider and 50.5% for a Buggy - better at Raiders than triple plasma and about the same on Buggies.
Double Cannon is 5.1% and 12.6%.
Plasma helps push the total damage over that edge and I would probably never go just cannons unless I was point conscious.
Hmm... I didn't look at the Maulerfiend that closely previously. But I did and the Magna cutter version is only 140 points. That's pretty cheap. Plus Magna cutters are assault 2 shots with 6 inch range with D6+2 damage! So, the Mauler fiend can move advance 10+d6 inches, and then still shoot something within 6 inches. a threat range of 16+d6 isn't bad really. And the Magna cutters can be shot at engagement range at no penalty to hit because they are assault, not heavy. And of course, the Maulerfiend eats vehicles for breakfast once it gets into engagement range.
Its not a bad package really. Maybe two Mauler fiends might be a better alternative to two forgefiends ... They draw fire, which is great, and they kill vehicles pretty reliably once they charge into range, which again is what I want. They are the one unit in my Tsons army that wants to get up close on an objective and brawl away (other than spawn), and they don't care about any support because they are not core so they literally get no buff benefits anyway.
Maybe I will try out Maulerfiends in my next game. (I can't believe I am saying this given all my bad experiences last time with Maulerfiends...lol)
The only problem with maulerfiends is that they can't advance and charge or be double moved with temp surge.
I've found its something you keep in your lines to deal with bladeguard or other beatsticks that are slow. You can rip away its targets invuln and pump its own invuln to 4+
Not that it matters too much because melta will kill it in one turn.
It might be q great tool to outline with or web way
Was also wondering if a triple Hellbrute supported by a DP with the Egleighen's Orrery might make a more consistant firebase if supplemented by one Forgefiend.
The trio of Hellbrutes can have two with missile launches, plasma cannons, and the third behind them with plasma cannon and fist. So, the Hellbrute trio will shoot 3d3 plasma cannon shots and 2 missiles and benefit from ignoring all negative modifiers and rerolling 1s from the DP. And if they need to fight, the one hellbrute and DP will hit hard.
I was running 2 Hellbrutes, 1 forgefiend and 1 Vindicator for my anti tank. Might consider switching to 3 Hellbrutes and 1 forgefiend. What do you think ? Not enough anti tank ?
While the rest of your thoughts were interesting, I think this strat is really quite terrible.
On a max-sized unit, you're getting 10 extra shots. If you have BS2, re-rolls, and S5 on the bolters (bc sure, why not), then you'll get 9 more hits and 3-6 more wounds, depending on the target. Then they have saves, which will probably be at a 4+ or 4++ (Marines are 2+ in cover, Termies are 1+, many targets have a 4++, etc). That means you're pushing through 1-3 more wounds for 1CP
We are SO cp hungry, that I don't think that's worth the CP. I've never liked the strats such as Hellfire Rounds, where you pay a CP for d3 mortals. This seems like it's even worse, because the variance is much bigger.
They turned that strat from awesome to absolutely terrible. The one to fire double shots with a soulreaper is pretty terrible too, honestly, though I guess it's maybe worth thinking about on a 10-man scarab brick that has 2.
dreadlybrew wrote: 2 forgefiends with the autocannons are a great anti tank option. They aren't core so they don't get re rolls.
I just bought 2 hell brutes and I'm going to play around with them as antitank. One thing I do to deal woth plagueburst crawlers is perplex. If you can sneak a unit within 30inches you can perplex that thing and it has to come out of hiding or it can't shoot you (most of the time).
Wrath of the wronged, the ignore dr relic, and the +1 str infernal power on a deathball terminator unit can totally take out a plague burster.
You also have presage, the +6inch range power and +1 storm bolter shots.
Against hordes use the strat to double your shots with soulreapers. Watch them die.
You have options and most of it means holding the center and burning down a target a turn. You are obsec and fearless and tough. 40 to 50 marines can just hold the center and hold objectives.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Did we lose the ability to summon demons?
You can summon them, and summoning a demon prince is currently the only way to give rerolls to your demon engines, since the demon princes from the demon dex are not CORE locked.
While the rest of your thoughts were interesting, I think this strat is really quite terrible.
On a max-sized unit, you're getting 10 extra shots. If you have BS2, re-rolls, and S5 on the bolters (bc sure, why not), then you'll get 9 more hits and 3-6 more wounds, depending on the target. Then they have saves, which will probably be at a 4+ or 4++ (Marines are 2+ in cover, Termies are 1+, many targets have a 4++, etc). That means you're pushing through 1-3 more wounds for 1CP
We are SO cp hungry, that I don't think that's worth the CP. I've never liked the strats such as Hellfire Rounds, where you pay a CP for d3 mortals. This seems like it's even worse, because the variance is much bigger.
The +1 shots strat seems like it's probably better on big blobs of rubricae. But agreed. I'll probably use one of the other dakka boosting strats instead unless something absolutely positively has to die.
Any thoughts on where I should get my Anti-Tank if I don't happen to own piles of vehicles or forge fiends? I'm almost considering giving up our special ritual mechanic to ally in some regular CSM havocs and such.
Any thoughts on where I should get my Anti-Tank if I don't happen to own piles of vehicles or forge fiends? I'm almost considering giving up our special ritual mechanic to ally in some regular CSM havocs and such.
I keep seeing comments like this concerned about our lack of anti tank. Our anti-tank is built in to the entire army, smite, powers and volume of AP-2 shots.
I keep seeing comments like this concerned about our lack of anti tank. Our anti-tank is built in to the entire army, smite, powers and volume of AP-2 shots.
I'm new to Thousand Sons and probably overly worried about it. With my other armies, I'm able to reach out shoot my opponent's scariest vehicle at a distance regardless of intervening units. Between smite targeting the closest enemy unit and many of our psychic powers having short-mid range (exposing them to enemy charges), I get a little nervous. Few things in 40k are as frustrating as running out of anti-tank attacks before your opponent runs out of tanks.
But you're probably right. If nickel and diming wounds away with inerno bolts and warpflamers isn't crazy, then we can probably kill off tanks at a reasonable clip even if they are screened.
dreadlybrew wrote: You can also spend a cp to give one of those +1ap. The 8 shots from the hades cannons str 8, ap 3 2 damage is great for clearing troops.
Hmm, yea. FF with cannons and a plasma head it is.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
yukishiro1 wrote: They turned that strat from awesome to absolutely terrible. The one to fire double shots with a soulreaper is pretty terrible too, honestly, though I guess it's maybe worth thinking about on a 10-man scarab brick that has 2.
It's ok on 10 man rubrics. The old one should have never been a single CP. It was fine for it's time, because it was propping an old book.
Any thoughts on where I should get my Anti-Tank if I don't happen to own piles of vehicles or forge fiends? I'm almost considering giving up our special ritual mechanic to ally in some regular CSM havocs and such.
I keep seeing comments like this concerned about our lack of anti tank. Our anti-tank is built in to the entire army, smite, powers and volume of AP-2 shots.
Get's even better when you run warpflamers. Things just melt.
That means two of your most important pieces are both within 18" of a single model you want to kill and that it is also the closest visible. A lot of armies also have access to a 5+++ MW shrug.
Yeah you can't realistically use MW to kill vehicles against a decent opponent, unless they actively want your MWs to go into the vehicle. The big flaw with psychic MW spam is that it's almost all tied to the closest visible target, along with being short ranged to begin with.
yukishiro1 wrote: Yeah you can't realistically use MW to kill vehicles against a decent opponent, unless they actively want your MWs to go into the vehicle. The big flaw with psychic MW spam is that it's almost all tied to the closest visible target, along with being short ranged to begin with.
Good thing the game doesn't revolve around killing things.
With the game being objective based and the amount of terrain on tables, vehicles that don't get close are not as effective (there just aren't that many firing lanes with obscuring).
With duplicity your opponent needs to screen the front and back. The catch is we can clear screens in the psychic phase with mortal wounds if we need to (smite away a screen so you can temporal surge or sorcerous facade past them).
Every squad of rubric in my list (each squad has 7 warpflamers) can do a reliable 11W to any 3+ save vehicle. 14W if you use veterans of the long war.
0. A psyker in your army needs to have attempted doombolt
1. Aspiring Sorcerer Use Psychic Maelstrom (8)
2. Exalted Sorcerer Doombolt (6)
3. Great Sorcerer 1CP
4. Exalted Sorcerer smite (5) Malefic scroll for 1CP
That's 6 MW
Then 7 warpflamers wounding on a 5+ against a 3+ does 5+ wounds.
With sorcerous facade that forces your opponent to screen everywhere. Which means they spread out which makes it easier for you to pick off what you need to to win the mission.
We are really good at trading (because we can make almost any psyker unit spike), we can also play really cagey and thanks to our secondaries do very well playing defensively.
So yes our psychic damage is limited to the nearest visible thing. In practice it works well enough as we have a tone of mobility tricks. That's been my experience anyway.
I've played a few games at 2k points with 5 4 10 man rubrics, 1 10 man terminator, 2 exalted ,2 thralls and an infernal and so far no one has wiped out a squad turn1
I play cult of magic because you can nuke hiding characters with Astral blast and the cabal point extra d3 wounds.
I run a witch warrior with aether charge and baleful devolution and tzeenches firestorm. Deleting necron warriors never felt so good.
I need a reality check on this. I'm looking at the Conniving Plate on a Daemon Prince of the Cult of Change who knows the Cult power Dysmanifestation. How would the order of operations work on this? For an enemy with an even number of attacks it's a wash, but for an enemy with an odd number of attacks I see two potential outcomes:
1) You halve the attacks against you in CC, then subtract 1 from that result. Example: An enemy with 5 attacks swings at you. You halve those (I assume rounding down, because if the model can only allocate up to half its attacks to you, it can't allocate 2.5 attacks) to 2 attacks, then subtract 1 from Dysmanifestation, resulting in one attack coming at you.
2) You subtract 1 from the enemy's attacks, down to 4, then halve those, down to 2 attacks coming at you (using the example above), meaning Dysmanifestation didn't really make a difference.
Which is the right way to do this? If it's the first option, then a Cult of Change Daemon Prince can get very tanky indeed.
Brian888 wrote: I need a reality check on this. I'm looking at the Conniving Plate on a Daemon Prince of the Cult of Change who knows the Cult power Dysmanifestation. How would the order of operations work on this? For an enemy with an even number of attacks it's a wash, but for an enemy with an odd number of attacks I see two potential outcomes:
1) You halve the attacks against you in CC, then subtract 1 from that result. Example: An enemy with 5 attacks swings at you. You halve those (I assume rounding down, because if the model can only allocate up to half its attacks to you, it can't allocate 2.5 attacks) to 2 attacks, then subtract 1 from Dysmanifestation, resulting in one attack coming at you.
2) You subtract 1 from the enemy's attacks, down to 4, then halve those, down to 2 attacks coming at you (using the example above), meaning Dysmanifestation didn't really make a difference.
Which is the right way to do this? If it's the first option, then a Cult of Change Daemon Prince can get very tanky indeed.
The spell modifies the attack characteristic. It gives no benefit.
yukishiro1 wrote: Yeah you can't realistically use MW to kill vehicles against a decent opponent, unless they actively want your MWs to go into the vehicle. The big flaw with psychic MW spam is that it's almost all tied to the closest visible target, along with being short ranged to begin with.
Good thing the game doesn't revolve around killing things.
With the game being objective based and the amount of terrain on tables, vehicles that don't get close are not as effective (there just aren't that many firing lanes with obscuring).
With duplicity your opponent needs to screen the front and back. The catch is we can clear screens in the psychic phase with mortal wounds if we need to (smite away a screen so you can temporal surge or sorcerous facade past them).
Every squad of rubric in my list (each squad has 7 warpflamers) can do a reliable 11W to any 3+ save vehicle. 14W if you use veterans of the long war.
0. A psyker in your army needs to have attempted doombolt
1. Aspiring Sorcerer Use Psychic Maelstrom (8)
2. Exalted Sorcerer Doombolt (6)
3. Great Sorcerer 1CP
4. Exalted Sorcerer smite (5) Malefic scroll for 1CP
That's 6 MW
Then 7 warpflamers wounding on a 5+ against a 3+ does 5+ wounds.
With sorcerous facade that forces your opponent to screen everywhere. Which means they spread out which makes it easier for you to pick off what you need to to win the mission.
We are really good at trading (because we can make almost any psyker unit spike), we can also play really cagey and thanks to our secondaries do very well playing defensively.
So yes our psychic damage is limited to the nearest visible thing. In practice it works well enough as we have a tone of mobility tricks. That's been my experience anyway.
Just to note that you used over 250+ points, 2 CP, and 8 cabal to kill a 11 wound vehicle, which will likely not be with more than half of that - not to mention the potential for failed casts. When those flamers roll up on T8 ( Custodes probably the ones getting their book in Dec ) and you didn't spend your spell on Pyric Flux those flamers will bounce and they'll spend a CP to make the MW bounce, too.
MW and flamers are great, but leaning too much on them will eventually lose you games.
Daedalus81 wrote: Weird that your opponent didn't opt for assassinate. Did they miss the most points on secondary or primary?
Primary turns 3 onwards I had hold more and was shutting down stranglehold (so he scored 9). Only two of my characters were killed so he would have scored less with assassinate. 45 rubrics is a very hard nut to crack to get to those characters.
Yes, you're always going to spend 7 autocasting (don't want to risk your Sorcerous Facade failing), 8 to make something undeniable (mostly used on your warpcraft secondary), 4 for an extra d3, 4 for an extra CP, 8 to re-play doombolt or firestorm, 5 to add +1 to make something important pass, or to nudge your 4-5th smite into a pass or a smite into a super smite. Same with the +2 for 9 cabbal points. Basically it's easy to spend 45 cabbal point a turn and get lots of value.You also have less as you lose units, or if you have units in reserve.
Something that's not quite as obvious is your odds of super smite with a regular 2d6 cast is 8.3%, with +1 (brother hood of sorcerers) it's double at 16.6%. With +2 it's triple at 27.7% with +3 it's more than 4 times as likely at 41%. You can add +1/+2 after seeing the result. When you can re-roll the mortal wound dice with an infernal master, witch-warrior or a summoned changecaster with gaze of fate you can make things evaporate.
Mushkilla, I was very interested in how your list worked. I think you can save some cabal points each turn by doing the following. Take a exalted sorcerer on disk with the aethenaen scrolls. (let you roll 3d6 take 2 highest on a psychic power for the rest of the game). So, you use the scroll on Sorcerous Facade. 3d6+1, take the 2 highest I think results in a 80% chance you will get your Sorcerous Facade power off on a 8. If you still roll lower, you can use a CP to reroll that to make it a 96% chance it will go off. So, your exalted sorcerer can zip around in your backline to the rubric marine squad you need to teleport that squad to where you need it to be. That saves having to use 7 cabal points to autopass Sorcerous Facade each turn.
The other thing is to take a character with seeker after shadows warlord trait. That gives the character again a 3d6+1 take the highest 2 dice when performing psychic actions. Unless you face armies with a 4+ deny strategem (which is actually quite rare). Then you can comfortably roll the psychic and most of the time, you will end up with a high score which is extremely hard for your opponent to deny. So you can again save on the cabal points to use on cabalistic focus to force through a psychic.
The only must use cabal rituals each turn would then be the following:
Malevolent charge - 4 cabal points (to add d3 MW)
Echoes from the warp - 4 cabal points (to gain a cp)
Psychic Maelstorm - 8 cabal points (to cast doombolt again)
So, 16 as a minimum. Its obviously not requite as reliable as using Cabal points to force through the psychic action or to autocast Sorcerous Facade. But its pretty close. I mean, if you have the cabal points to spare, then sure, go for it. But for me, I like to plan with less. And this would continue to reliably work even as your forces get whittled down so that you have less cabal points to work with.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Just thought of one way to save on possibly even Psychic Maelstorm. Give 4 or 5 of the Rubric Marine Squads the Doombolt power. The rest can have temporal surge. So you have the 4 or 5 Rubric squads that you will yeet somewhere every turn, and then these will blast something with doombolt plus a smite. If you are hiding most stuff, you may not need to cast psychic maelstorm. Only if he brings stuff into close enough range for you to come out of hiding with your main force to blast him, then you will recast doombolt. If its a standoff "trading" then you just yeet that one rubric squad per turn with doombolt for 5 turns.
Also, for your second detachment, you can take the cult of change. Then take the Capricious crest relic, so once each battle round, within 18 inches of the relic, you can change one of your roll of 1 in a psychic test to a 6, and you can change one of a 6 in your opponent's psychic test to a 1 (Just to check, a deny the witch test is also a psychic test right?). This makes it even harder for your opponents to deny your psychic and it makes your psychic tests even more reliable.
Between the infernal master's gaze of eternity, a cp reroll, aetherean scroll, seeker of shadows warlord trait, and now this relic Capricious Crest. You will have such a super reliable psychic phase.
This isn't a dedicated anti tank unit, it's a flexible multi role unit. It gives you objective secure, it's relatively resilient, it's good against most targets.
Think about it this way, it takes on average 5 raiders (475pts) with dark lances to take out an T7 3+ 11W model. 3-4 times the points cost of the target. That doesn't make the raider bad. Because it performs multiple roles.
It takes 3 ironstriders with twin cognis lascannons (220pts) to take out a T7 3+ 11W model. They are a dedicated anti tank unit, that don't perform well against infantry and are not objective secure.
Now of course I'm simplifying. There's nuances I'm ignoring, range, speed, stratagems, doctrinas, etc. But hopefully it helps put things in perspective. Are warpfalmer rubrics the best anti tank in the game? No. But they are still surprisingly effective.
not to mention the potential for failed casts. When those flamers roll up on T8 ( Custodes probably the ones getting their book in Dec ) and you didn't spend your spell on Pyric Flux those flamers will bounce and they'll spend a CP to make the MW bounce, too.
You are right. There are points of failure, but our psychic phase is pretty reliable with rituals and stratagems.
Pyric Flux is going to go off reliably though, it's cast on a 5 (so 4+ with our bonus), and I run it on a sorcerer with the prism of echoes (so cast at 24" ) so denies aren't an issue. I'm not running an infernal master yet, but it might be necessary as a redundancy for and extra source of +1S.
The other interesting thing with large flamer units (something I learn't from running lots of tzeentch flamers) is that they are super consistent once you get to 5d6+ number of shots. The bellcurve means you get very little variance. The volume of shots also means you get very consistent results in terms of wounds. Making your turns very reliable, you can count on things being dead. On the other hand when you are down to 2d6 you get loads of variance which makes it very hard for your opponent to plan around a squad of rubrics that has been reduce to three models, it can still roll high and take out a unit of sisters, keeping them relevant throughout the game and allowing for clutch swings when you are on the back foot.
Wether the combination of a reliable psychic phase and low variance shooting is enough to make the army play consistently against a variety of lists I don't know.
The other thing is to take a character with seeker after shadows warlord trait. That gives the character again a 3d6+1 take the highest 2 dice when performing psychic actions. Unless you face armies with a 4+ deny strategem (which is actually quite rare). Then you can comfortably roll the psychic and most of the time, you will end up with a high score which is extremely hard for your opponent to deny. So you can again save on the cabal points to use on cabalistic focus to force through a psychic.
I really like this. Especially seeing as we can't do warpcraft secondaries with our rubrics (aside from mutate landscape).
Just thought of one way to save on possibly even Psychic Maelstorm. Give 4 or 5 of the Rubric Marine Squads the Doombolt power. The rest can have temporal surge. So you have the 4 or 5 Rubric squads that you will yeet somewhere every turn, and then these will blast something with doombolt plus a smite. If you are hiding most stuff, you may not need to cast psychic maelstorm. Only if he brings stuff into close enough range for you to come out of hiding with your main force to blast him, then you will recast doombolt. If its a standoff "trading" then you just yeet that one rubric squad per turn with doombolt for 5 turns.
That's a really nice fine tuning point. Especially if I find end up using doombolt a lot.
Also, for your second detachment, you can take the cult of change. Then take the Capricious crest relic, so once each battle round, within 18 inches of the relic, you can change one of your roll of 1 in a psychic test to a 6, and you can change one of a 6 in your opponent's psychic test to a 1 (Just to check, a deny the witch test is also a psychic test right?). This makes it even harder for your opponents to deny your psychic and it makes your psychic tests even more reliable.
Between the infernal master's gaze of eternity, a cp reroll, aetherean scroll, seeker of shadows warlord trait, and now this relic Capricious Crest. You will have such a super reliable psychic phase.
Another great point. Although currently I'm exploring running a single detachment for more CP. The downside is missing out on a second cult and in my case an infernal master.
Here's my current list for context (though I'll probably work in seeker after shadows as you suggested).
Spoiler:
HQS Exated Sorcerer, disk, Rehati, khopesh - 155
Warlord Trait: Forbidden Lore
Relic: Prism of Echoes
Powers: Glamour of Tzeentch, Weaver of Fates, Pyric Flux
Ahriman, disk - 180
Powers: Doombolt, Firestorm, Temporal Surge
Manchild 1984 wrote: are 15 Terminators a good way to start a list? I don't see a weakness compared to other dexes.
They are great! They are tanky, shooty, can fight well in melee, protects your key characters, they are immune to morale, core, has an aspiring sorcerer. Nothing I dislike about them.
Quoting Mushkilla:
"For context this is the load out I was talking about:
This isn't a dedicated anti tank unit, it's a flexible multi role unit. It gives you objective secure, it's relatively resilient, it's good against most targets."
Hmm, I will start off experimenting with Min 5 rubric squads first. I mean, if the idea is to teleport one unit a time as a throwaway unit, I kind of want to keep them cheap. Not sure if adding 3 more rubrics will making them more survivable. Not if they will be out in the open or deep in enemy territory, available to be shot at and charged by his army. Sacrificing 130 points per turn as a throwaway unit is ok, sacrificing 220 points as a throwaway sounds kind of steep to me.
Also, for discussion sake, would like to also add this: At 220 points, wouldn't you be better off just outright using a squad of Occult terminators? If you skip the Hellfire missiles, a squad of 5 Occults with a Soulreaper cannon is 205 points, which is cheaper than the 220 points you are spending here. The unit has an aspiring sorceror as well. It has 1 less wound, but a better armor save of 2+, and 3W means that it tanks 2D attacks much better. Also, the unit will have 16 inferno shots and 5 soulreaper cannon shots. A 8 man flamer unit will average 22 autohit shots? The Occult squad has the option to shoot another unit much further away at up to 24 inches, and it can reliably kill or do heavy damage to a unit in melee if it makes the 9 inch charge too. The 8 man Flamer unit will likely doombolt+smite the nearest unit, then flame it to bits. The Occult squad has more options. It can doombolt+smite the nearest unit, shoot a further unit, then charge in and maul something to bits.
Both units are obsec, immune to morale, core, have all is dust. But if you teleport in a Occult squad, you have the option to make a 9 inch charge and murder something in close combat, get onto an objective. You could do the same with a rubric squad too I suppose, but chances of a rubric squad winning combat is far smaller compared to an Occult squad. An Occult squad can beat up a lot of things in close combat if it gets to strike first in a charge.
And you can spend 1 CP to make the Occult squad -1 damage, which makes it really tanky.
And footprint wise, a 8 man Rubric squad likely has a bigger footprint than a 5 man Occult squad. I mean, honestly, I am totally up for your strategy of teleporting around throwaway rubric flamer squads each turn. I will totally try it out in my next game. But when you increase the squad size to the point where its more expensive than an Occult squad, I don't understand why not then just use an Occult squad instead.
I think I may have had an epiphany regarding Scarab occult. It's the 5++ that makes them less than stellar. As I recall, at the moment, any termie unit worth it's salt have a 4++ or are meant for shooting. The inferno bolters are good, but too big a squad and the blast wrecks them. The strat to reduce damage by 1 cost 3 and even then you still only have the 5++. You could weaver them I suppose, but they're just not resilient enough. Had a game tonight and tried a 5 man squad with a soul reaper and was well pleased. Gave em Surge to deepstrike and move into a table quarter to ensure engage. I also tried a pair of vortex beasts and was impressed. The fact that they're monsters meant I could port them with facade, give them the 4++, protect my winged prince, throw out a few mortal wounds and possibly get a charge off. for the points, I think they work. I'm running a lot of MSU and for the first time going this route, it went well.
Played against IG and DG yesterday, both tournament players of my team with GT list.
20-0 both, easy. Rubrics in cover, terrorist sorcerer and exalted sorcerer as damage dealers. Ahriman full buffer turn1 on volkite and turn2 moving into middle board for termies buffing. Daemon prince trying to fly from obscured to obscured to charge everything he can in turn 2/3 with conniving plate. No crystal and no sorcerous facade, all my team grouped for proper screening and no holes in my defense
Kebabcito wrote: Played against IG and DG yesterday, both tournament players of my team with GT list.
20-0 both, easy. Rubrics in cover, terrorist sorcerer and exalted sorcerer as damage dealers. Ahriman full buffer turn1 on volkite and turn2 moving into middle board for termies buffing. Daemon prince trying to fly from obscured to obscured to charge everything he can in turn 2/3 with conniving plate. No crystal and no sorcerous facade, all my team grouped for proper screening and no holes in my defense
What did you use for screening? And how many rubrics and Occults squads did you run? Did you run warpflame rubrics or inferno bolter rubrics ?
When building my list, I realized I had the same problem as in 8th, no front line (bladeguards, 80 cultist, custodes, Chimeras+10 guardsman, Poxwalkers... So Drukhari could tabble me turn 2 if I would advance turn1 into the middle (beastmaster+anima vitae, hellions and then 20 wyches and 15 incubi...) So I decided to play cult of magic instead of duplicity for not dividing my army and try to make them advance slowly in ruins for the all is dust + cover protection.
I've got 4x5 rubrics, I send 2x5 of them in left and right flanks, avoiding turn2 charges with proper distance, but with enough space for moving 6" into the middle in turn 2 in case the opponent move too fast and I can nuke the full combo with range 18".
In case the opponent is good and respect your damage, he will wait longer or he will screen his army with vehicles so your magic power is not so good, but then you can abuse from the power of your terminators (I've got 10) buffed from ahriman for pushing.
The point is, if you move too fast and you are charged turn1 or turn2 by a melee army, you lose 100% because, in fact, we have no front line/screen.
Warpflame rubrics are very respectful and good but I'm not playing them at the moment, this kind of game is more for duplicity, as you can divide your forces and jump those marines and just destroy everything. Is very good but I'm playing this army more conservative as I'm afraid of being tabled actually. Maybe I find a way soon to play some warpflamers and worth his points
I am going to try out a deathball of 10 termies, 2 5 man termies and rubrics and sorcs to fill the slots. Msu creates better action economy. But you can make that 10 man suuuuper hard to kill.
I have found that buying a terminator sorcer the aether stride WL trait and witch warrior makes a fantastic jump around blaster. Hopping over units for better Astral blasts and baleful devolution then temp surging back to safety.
Say i roll a 8 for my psychic test for firestorm, can i use a cabal ritual to boost that up by 2, for trigger the 5+ mortal wounds version or does it have to be a natural 9+ before adding any modifiers like the +1 from brotherhood of sorcerers?
odorofdeath wrote: Say i roll a 8 for my psychic test for firestorm, can i use a cabal ritual to boost that up by 2, for trigger the 5+ mortal wounds version or does it have to be a natural 9+ before adding any modifiers like the +1 from brotherhood of sorcerers?
Unmodified 9. Our +1 from cabal or AA are modifiers.
Do you guys think it's a misprint between the GK and TS deny stratagem.
The GK stratagem is 3d6 drop the lowest - the TS on is 3d6 flat. Cost the exact same. Seems odd to me ESP considering the dynamics between the armies. TS supposed to be better at casting and GK better at denying.
IanMalcolmAbs wrote: Do you guys think it's a misprint between the GK and TS deny stratagem.
The GK stratagem is 3d6 drop the lowest - the TS on is 3d6 flat. Cost the exact same. Seems odd to me ESP considering the dynamics between the armies. TS supposed to be better at casting and GK better at denying.
No, they are worded completely differently.
The Grey Knight's stratagem gives a 3d6 discard the lowest on any psyker.
The Thousand Sons stratagem requires two psykers to be in deny range of the enemy psyker and within 6" of each other. So is harder to pull off. But as a result you get a 3d6 deny.
IanMalcolmAbs wrote: Do you guys think it's a misprint between the GK and TS deny stratagem.
The GK stratagem is 3d6 drop the lowest - the TS on is 3d6 flat. Cost the exact same. Seems odd to me ESP considering the dynamics between the armies. TS supposed to be better at casting and GK better at denying.
No, they are worded completely differently.
The Grey Knight's stratagem gives a 3d6 discard the lowest on any psyker.
The Thousand Sons stratagem requires two psykers to be in deny range of the enemy psyker and within 6" of each other. So is harder to pull off. But as a result you get a 3d6 deny.
Well the army is literally all psykers so - not really harder to pull off. Probably needs to cost 2 CP.
Well the army is literally all psykers so - not really harder to pull off. Probably needs to cost 2 CP.
You say that, personally I much prefer the grey knights stratagem. It's easier to pull off making it more reliable.
The Sorcerous Master special rule means measure denies from our aspiring sorcerer models not from the unit, so it's harder to pull off than you think. The great powers of the game like doom are often 24" range so I find the trigonometry of the thousands sons stratagem makes the deny effectively much shorter range.
As an aside. Just because a stratagem is the same in two books doesn't mean they should be costed the same.
Auspex Scan in a book which has large units and lots of shooting is much stronger than in a book with small units and weaker shooting. Same for unit cost. A counter assault unit in a shooting faction is arguably more valuable than a counter assault unit in an assault based faction.
In the case of Grey Knights, making them counter psykers even harder than they already do probably isn't good for game balance.
You need to consider the faction holistically when pricing stratagems and units.
Well the army is literally all psykers so - not really harder to pull off. Probably needs to cost 2 CP.
You say that, personally I much prefer the grey knights stratagem. It's easier to pull off making it more reliable.
The Sorcerous Master special rule means measure denies from our aspiring sorcerer models not from the unit, so it's harder to pull off than you think. The great powers of the game like doom are often 24" range so I find the trigonometry of the thousands sons stratagem makes the deny effectively much shorter range.
As an aside. Just because a stratagem is the same in two books doesn't mean they should be costed the same.
Auspex Scan in a book which has large units and lots of shooting is much stronger than in a book with small units and weaker shooting. Same for unit cost. A counter assault unit in a shooting faction is arguably more valuable than a counter assault unit in an assault based faction.
In the case of Grey Knights, making them counter psykers even harder than they already do probably isn't good for game balance.
You need to consider the faction holistically when pricing stratagems and units.
Totally disagree. Stratagem does the same thing. Needs to cost the same and vice versa. Most GK spells are 18 or less. It is possible to maybe snipe for a corner with a spell but...Typically with 1 super deny - it is going to go on something that is important and therefor will have the practically superfluous requirement of having 2 psykers within 6" of each other in a book that practically every entry is a psyker unit.
Not complaining specifically. GK have the edge in some other areas. It just seems so silly that the same stratagem +1 does not cost more. I guess they feel the requirement to exist on the table is big but it's not. What is big is practically auto denying a power for 1 CP.
The only psychic army that can match GK is Tsons. Honestly, I don't think you should quibble that much. Both strategems will have a high chance of denying a psychic. Besides, just about every youtube video I have watched has seen GK armies stomping Tsons armies. Maybe you should try out some GK vs Tsons games before coming to a conclusion about whether this strategem is unfair or a misprint or something.
Not every codex's strategems is the same. Like hey, I think Tsons would love enriched rounds from Admech or Galvanic volley fire that increases the number of shots by a squad by so much. Instead, our Infernal Fusilade strategem increases our number of bolter shots by ... 10 shots max even with a full squad. So are we supposed to cry about how unfair that is? lol
Automatically Appended Next Post: btw, what do you guys think about Nortilith crown? Its only 85 points and it gives a 6 inch aura that increases to 12 inches. We don't care much for the 5++ invul aura unless we run some cultists. But the other effect of the aura is that chaos psykers can reroll psychic tests.
Given the number of psykers we have in a Tsons army... that strikes me as pretty powerful. Imagine turning all our psykers within the Nortilith crown's aura into mini-Ahrimans.... lol
I mean, they can target and kill it, but its just 85 points. Its like the cost of a Rhino but with 14W and T8 instead.
Do we need to pay 1 CP for a fortification like Nortilith Crown? Or is a Tsons army also considered chaos and so we don't need to pay that 1 cp.
It breaks purity, so you'd really never want to use it, getting the occasional reroll isn't worth losing rituals. Even if you could, the aura isn't very useful, because it locks you down too much re: where your psykers can be to get the effect.
yukishiro1 wrote: It breaks purity, so you'd really never want to use it, getting the occasional reroll isn't worth losing rituals. Even if you could, the aura isn't very useful, because it locks you down too much re: where your psykers can be to get the effect.
Ah, it breaks purity? Sad to know. Ah well, I guess that's only an option for soup chaos Tsons lists then. I have to say, having a massive 12 inch radius aura of psychic rerolls for a Tsons army sounds pretty powerful... lol That's easily a 27 to 28 inch diameter circle. Which would pretty much cover like two thirds of the board. lol
It has to be deployed in your deployment zone, and the deployment rules are really finicky re: where you can actually put it down due to having to be 3" or more from other terrain. And if you somehow do get it in a good spot, your opponent can always just kill it.
It's one of those things that looks good on paper but when you start actually trying to use it in practice, it just doesn't really work. If might be interesting if you could plunk it down in the middle of the table or something, but you can't.
Sooo... I was going through the TS part of the Kill team compendium and was wondering: which would be the best place to start a proper TS tactics thread for KT ?
I know not everyone is into the game mode and the army options still aren't very complex. But still, it would be nice to talk about it ! Especially since we look pretty strong from a bird's eye view (full reroll on the Tzaangor blades, the ability to shoot twice globally for a CP, mean looking psy powers, etc ...).
So where do you think we should post it ? Make a new thread in Tactics ?
For fluff and collection reasons, I probably won't be using Magnus, lots of daemon princes, or most of our other MCs and vehicles. My collection looks loosely like:
* Ahriman and some other sorcerers
* About 15 rubricae.
* 20 Tzaangor
* A whole bunch of cultists.
* 2 rhinos
* 1 land raider
Seems like I don't have much in the way of high-strength hammer blows, so my plan is to go Cult of Duplicity and use Sorcerous Facade, the Umbralethic Crystal, and strats to movement block the enemy with cultists/tzaangor while the rubrics and sorcerers pull off secondaries.
Around turn 2 or 3 when my speedbumps run out of steam, the sorcerers and rubricae will collapse in on the advancing enemy. Hopefully one good turn of focus-fired warp flamers and witchfire powers will leave me at enough of an advantage to win a more straight-forward fight from there.
To those of you with more experience with the army than a newbie like me, is this plan viable in a casual-but-sometimes-optimized environment? Or do I really need to invest in some heavy hitters?
P.S. My hope with the land raider and maybe rhinos is to use them to physically block line of sight to the rubricae while they Mutate Landscapes and Burn Empires. A landraider seems like it can be pretty tough if you spend a couple CP on it in your opponent's shooting phase.
Wyldhunt wrote: For fluff and collection reasons, I probably won't be using Magnus, lots of daemon princes, or most of our other MCs and vehicles. My collection looks loosely like:
* Ahriman and some other sorcerers
* About 15 rubricae.
* 20 Tzaangor
* A whole bunch of cultists.
* 2 rhinos
* 1 land raider
Seems like I don't have much in the way of high-strength hammer blows, so my plan is to go Cult of Duplicity and use Sorcerous Facade, the Umbralethic Crystal, and strats to movement block the enemy with cultists/tzaangor while the rubrics and sorcerers pull off secondaries.
Around turn 2 or 3 when my speedbumps run out of steam, the sorcerers and rubricae will collapse in on the advancing enemy. Hopefully one good turn of focus-fired warp flamers and witchfire powers will leave me at enough of an advantage to win a more straight-forward fight from there.
To those of you with more experience with the army than a newbie like me, is this plan viable in a casual-but-sometimes-optimized environment? Or do I really need to invest in some heavy hitters?
P.S. My hope with the land raider and maybe rhinos is to use them to physically block line of sight to the rubricae while they Mutate Landscapes and Burn Empires. A landraider seems like it can be pretty tough if you spend a couple CP on it in your opponent's shooting phase.
You should be ok. Keep the buffs up on the landraider and it will take a ton of heat for you. Also, load those rhinos up with max guns and they'll do some good work.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Oh one other thing. I don't think you have enough to make Facade worthwhile since rhinos will be carrying you. Maybe consider a different cult.
Are Rhinos with a bunch of guns legit? My only experience with them was back in 5th ed when they were only like 40 points. So for like a hundo points now you can have a Rhino with 2 combi bolters and a havoc launcher?
odorofdeath wrote: Are Rhinos with a bunch of guns legit? My only experience with them was back in 5th ed when they were only like 40 points. So for like a hundo points now you can have a Rhino with 2 combi bolters and a havoc launcher?
I think for Tsons, running empty Rhinos is actually a feasible tactic. Even a Tsons empty Rhinos is great. Its got enough good guns at AP 2 to be decent in shooting, and its got a 5++ save plus possible smokescreen if you are willing to use 1CP for it. And it helps to shield your characters if need be and it has great mobility (12 inch move). Stop thinking of the wasted transport space and consider it like a cheap tank and its great. Nobody says we absolutely have to put units into our Rhinos. And imagine your opponents having to actually consider whether to shoot an empty Rhino or not. I know most opponents would not really want to shoot that if they had better targets for their anti tank guns. lol
odorofdeath wrote: Are Rhinos with a bunch of guns legit? My only experience with them was back in 5th ed when they were only like 40 points. So for like a hundo points now you can have a Rhino with 2 combi bolters and a havoc launcher?
As a poor man's Razorback, Chaos Rhinos can sorta do an ok job with that loadout. With 1KSons they get an Invul, so they're actually far better in that role than most people would think.
I wonder if a Tsons list with 4 Rhinos would be interesting. Just to have the 4 Rhinos rush up to the midboard and then clog it up with 40W T7 5++. If they take an extra combi melta, that's 6 inferno shots and 1 melta shot each turn from 1 Rhino. And these guns will keep firing even if the Rhino is engaged in combat. Meanwhile, as the Rhino provide a metal box wall, this will allow the list's psykers to smite and cast witchfire safely from a distance into whoever they are engaged in combat with.
Ultimately, if they die, they die. They are just Rhinos. But I am pretty sure our opponent would feel bad devoting his firepower towards killing them.
The only psychic army that can match GK is Tsons. Honestly, I don't think you should quibble that much. Both strategems will have a high chance of denying a psychic. Besides, just about every youtube video I have watched has seen GK armies stomping Tsons armies. Maybe you should try out some GK vs Tsons games before coming to a conclusion about whether this strategem is unfair or a misprint or something.
Not every codex's strategems is the same. Like hey, I think Tsons would love enriched rounds from Admech or Galvanic volley fire that increases the number of shots by a squad by so much. Instead, our Infernal Fusilade strategem increases our number of bolter shots by ... 10 shots max even with a full squad. So are we supposed to cry about how unfair that is? lol
Automatically Appended Next Post: btw, what do you guys think about Nortilith crown? Its only 85 points and it gives a 6 inch aura that increases to 12 inches. We don't care much for the 5++ invul aura unless we run some cultists. But the other effect of the aura is that chaos psykers can reroll psychic tests.
Given the number of psykers we have in a Tsons army... that strikes me as pretty powerful. Imagine turning all our psykers within the Nortilith crown's aura into mini-Ahrimans.... lol
I mean, they can target and kill it, but its just 85 points. Its like the cost of a Rhino but with 14W and T8 instead.
Do we need to pay 1 CP for a fortification like Nortilith Crown? Or is a Tsons army also considered chaos and so we don't need to pay that 1 cp.
I think the situation is: Thousand Sons has army wide buff in casting psychic powers, and have very strong shooting. GK has army wide buff to denying Psychic Powers, and have certain stratagem in further enhancing their denying ability, they also has stronger melee capabilities and basically everybody is carrying mastercrafted power sword that is the ban of Rubric Marines.
So, I think Thousand Sons actually will do good against a much wider spectrum of opponent than GK, as their army wide buff will be much more useful than GK in most situation. However, if you are talking the specific match up of Tsons VS GK, then GK do have a slight edge. Well, the point is if GK sword units rushed into Tsons line (especially the Reapier Brotherhood), then Tsons are in great trouble, on the other hand, if GK failed that 9" charge, then GK is doomed in the face of hundreds of AP-2 shots.
With the rhinos don’t forget the havoc launcher. With melta that is six bolted one melta and d6 s5 blast shots. I think that is 95 points. Yea I think just two would be really good blocking lanes.
If only we could put tgors in them. Pray to tzeentch for that restriction to be an oversight not intended and for an faq.
DreadfullyHopeful wrote: Sooo... I was going through the TS part of the Kill team compendium and was wondering: which would be the best place to start a proper TS tactics thread for KT ?
I know not everyone is into the game mode and the army options still aren't very complex. But still, it would be nice to talk about it ! Especially since we look pretty strong from a bird's eye view (full reroll on the Tzaangor blades, the ability to shoot twice globally for a CP, mean looking psy powers, etc ...).
So where do you think we should post it ? Make a new thread in Tactics ?
Maybe rather in the specialist forum ?
I would say start a thread in the Other GW games section would be the best place for Kill Team Id wager.
How viable is running an all or mostly dark-mechanicum list with the new codex? You know a lot of forgefiends, maulerfiends, hellbrutes, that sort of thing.
Can it be done in a reasonably competitive manner?
How viable is running an all or mostly dark-mechanicum list with the new codex? You know a lot of forgefiends, maulerfiends, hellbrutes, that sort of thing.
Can it be done in a reasonably competitive manner?
I think all the daemon engines have been improved and with hellbrutes now having a 5++, they are definitely viable. For thematic purposes, you could certainly try it out. Actually, if you want to at least have a good go at winning with VP. I think we can stick to a few strategies.
1. Have your psykers protected by a tough deathball (be it daemon engines or hellbrutes). You can even hide this deathball behind obscuring cover for most of the game. Venturing out only on turn 3/4 onwards. Once Tsons characters have 4 to 5 turns to do their thing, you should have done decent damage on your opponent in MW already.
2. This deathball then allows you to do two thing. One, have a fast psyker on a disk (Ahriman, exalted Rehati sorcerer) fly forward, cast multiple withfire spells and then temporal surge back into safety. This allows you to lob witchfire spells beyond 18 inches while staying in safety behind obscuring and protected by your deathball.
3. You can also have a dedicated psyker (like a shaman) do psychic actions every turn. Whether this is warp ritual, mental interrogation. It should be one of the warpcraft secondaries. Because if you are playing Tsons and not taking a warpcraft secondary... well.. lets just say it would be a waste.
4. Take cult of duplicity as one of your cults. This lets you cast sorcerous facade and yeet a rubric squad each turn where ever you want. One min rubric squad yeeted into your opponent's rear objective and cast doombolt for 3MW, and then follow up with a 3MW + 1d3 MW smite by spending 2 CP on two strategems: Malefic scroll and Great Sorcerer. That's 6+d3 MW damage plus shooting every turn if you yeet a rubric squad every turn. It allows you to keep the pressure on all parts of your opponent's zone. Unless he can spread out to cover his entire deployment zone, it is going to hard to stop this strategy. This strategy also allows you to take secondaries like engage on all fronts.
5. Depending on your army list, the deathball core mentioned in point 1 allows you to take the "To the last secondary". Because your most expensive units are likely to be your ahriman or Rehati sorcerors, and your deathball unit. Once you lose that deathball, you probably lose the game anyway. A Tsons army without its castors is just rough. And the zooming, teleporting exalted sorcerer means you don't need to risk this deathball in the open. Just keep it safe and let your MW do the work over time.
5. The rest can then be spent on whatever you want for flavour (in this case, it can be your dark mechanicum thematic daemon engines and hellbrutes).
So here's something I would suggest based on the above strategies.
Cult of Duplicity Patrol
Ahriman on disk -
Daemon Prince
Full Warpflamer Rubric squads x 3
Occult terminator squad with soulreaper cannon
Tzaangor Enlightened Shaman
Chaos Spawn
Maulerfiend with cutters x 2
Cult of whatever you want patrol
Infernal Master
Rubric squad = hold home objective
Tzaangor squads - hold home objective
2 Hellbrutes with Multimelta, infernal combi bolters
Mauler fiend with cutters.
So, with this list, you can have 2 Hellbrutes and 3 Mauler fiends. Your to the last is Ahriman, the DP, the Occult squad which you can keep behind obscuring as your deathball. The shaman does rituals like warp ritual. The cult of duplicity squads can be teleported into the back field for engage on all fronts and to trade inflict MW and trade. And your three Mauler fiends and the single chaos spawn can also run up the board for engage as well. And if they die, no harm done. They are meant to die. The 2 Hellbrutes can either stay with your deathball to further protect it, or move forward shooting and fighting when you have whittled your opponent down.
And the whole army has 3x Maulerfiends and 2 Hellbrutes for a "dark mechanicus" theme.
Even if you traded away all three rubric warpflamer squads, all your 3 Maulerfiends, 2 hellbrutes. As long as you sat on two objectives all game and did your three secondaries, and survive with your deathball. You should get pretty high VP and 40 in primary.
I suppose you could cut some points some places and go with forgefiends instead, but this complicates your to the last secondary. You would need to upgrade to a DP with wings. But its still doable. Just need to be creative and even more ruthless about cutting points from other parts of the list. I like the 3x Mauler fiend idea better. Because Maulerfiends are big and in your face. Your opponent can ignore a forgefiend but there is no way he can ignore a Maulerfiend charging into his army.
I played another game on the Weekend.
My List was like:
Magnus
Ahriman
Exalted
Prince with plate
2x5 termis
4x5 marines
15? Gors
I Played against Space Wolves and won 8x to 42.
I think Magnus is awesome….. ofc he is expensive, but he ate much Fire and killed 2 termi troups just with smite. (Yeah, i did not buff him cause i wanted that termis dead)
I shocked my termis into his side and dealt decent damage, but i thought they would be better in close combat….. 5 wulfen? Killed both troups in 2 rounds. They did there Job and got a lot of attention.
Was a Great game and i need a lot of Games to learn the new gimmicks!
How viable is running an all or mostly dark-mechanicum list with the new codex? You know a lot of forgefiends, maulerfiends, hellbrutes, that sort of thing.
Can it be done in a reasonably competitive manner?
Probably not.
That said, when CSM is eventually cound to come out, it will probably do a darkmech army MUCH better.
Assuming their tactics will extend to tank too, some of them are bound to be relevant to daemon engines (unlike ours), and they have MUCH better support for them avilable.
We just have the improved statline first, but they WILL match.
Its the "classic tanks" where I think we might outshine them. units that do not have a natural invul and will greatly benefit from it.
(also, I am really leaning towards some HB rapiers just for kicks)
In another note, any tips against drukari? I am struggling to figure out a stratagy against them.
So, I finally got a game in on Saturday with the new dex.
In summary, it was against Deathwing (all terminators) and the scenario was battlelines.
My list was Ahriman on disk, a Exalted, an Infernal Master, a Terminator Sorcerer, 5 x Rubics with soulreaper, 9 x Rubrics with soulreaper, 5 x Rubics will all flamers, 10 Tgor, 2 x 5x Scarab Terminators, 2 x Hellbrute with LC/ML combo, and a Leviathan with 2 x Storm cannons and volkite. He had a bunch of terminators with like 4 or so terminator characters and some deathwing knights.
This was a bad match up for him with all the -2 making his terminator saves less useful and all the mortal wounds I put out. I used duplicity and basically marched up to the middle objectives with my back objective held by Tgors and 5 man reaper squad. I teleported a terminator squad into his back field and just crushed him on the primaries. We didn't even tally up the score at the end. My impressions so far.........
I think both Rubrics and Scarab Terminators are good. Small arms fire is not going to really hurt them, especially in cover, and the -2 on the bolters makes their shooting pretty good. I really liked the 9 man squad as it made it so I had 14 bolter shots plus the cannon and pistol. I used the +1 shot strat on them and that was 21 shots coming out (although I rolled really poorly hitting like 18 of 21 shots but only wounding with 3). The flamers were a good little distraction unit, I am not sure if I would go bigger. However, even the terminators were not all that great in close combat.
The unit that I think showed the most promise was the leviathan. The ability to make the storm cannons -2 with the strat makes a HUGE difference. Anything that does not have -1 damage is going to get chewed up. And I was not even able to use the +1 Strength Pact to make them Strength 8 and wound marines on a 2 (due to deathwing only wounded on 4's). If you have access to a Leviathan I would suggest using it for long range firepower.
I will say I did quite a bit of damage with the MW spam, however, I don't think you can rely on MW spam as your sole "heavy" firepower. Even with the deathwing, which had no screen units, getting all the "closest target" MW spells into position was challenging. Armies with cheap screens will be difficult to get multiple units into position. Also, the MW spam really can't be used against back line targets. Finally, once you are at smite number like 3 or 4 failing the tests becomes a significant worry. I would always bring some long range shooting, like Hellbrutes or other dreadnoughts, daemon engines with long range guns, or maybe even predators.
I also liked Duplicity with the move shenanigans. However be careful as you will fail one of those test sooner or later leaving a unit out of position. But I think this will be my go to cult. I am bring Time for my next game to try other things, but Duplicity just has so much utility. I really liked being able to teleport out of combat and then shoot (as it is my understanding that teleporting out is not falling back, but correct me if I am wrong).
I will say though that I burned though CP really fast, so I am not sure how much I would bring multiple detachments or many additional relics etc.
Ahriman is a beast, and personally I don't think you would ever do a competitive list without him. The re-roll psychic test is so clutch.
The Infernal Master is also really good. I actually used the -2 to advance and charge Pact, and it was quite helpful making one of his knight units need to use a CP re-roll to make a charge (thereby not allowing another failed charge later to be re-rolled). I was going to use +1 strength to shooting, but against Deathwing there was no point. I know everyone is jazzed with the re-roll one dice Pact, but I think he has more utility then that and that -2 to charge could prove vital against CC armies.
The Cabal system was neat, but if we had something really good to soup with I would be ok giving it up. Hopefully Daemons will be good and I can make another Tzeentch daemon/TS list.
Personally I think we have a very good dex. I think we are going to be tough opponents for any kind of elite army. However, I don't know how well we will counter DE or Admech. Hope everyone found this helpful.
xeen wrote: So, I finally got a game in on Saturday with the new dex.
Personally I think we have a very good dex. I think we are going to be tough opponents for any kind of elite army. However, I don't know how well we will counter DE or Admech. Hope everyone found this helpful.
Great write up thanks for sharing!
Totally agree with the armies hunger for CP. I feel like its: Webway Infiltration/Risen Rubricae, Extra Relics/Traits or an Extra detachment. Pick one.
xeen wrote: So, I finally got a game in on Saturday with the new dex.
Personally I think we have a very good dex. I think we are going to be tough opponents for any kind of elite army. However, I don't know how well we will counter DE or Admech. Hope everyone found this helpful.
Great write up thanks for sharing!
Totally agree with the armies hunger for CP. I feel like its: Webway Infiltration/Risen Rubricae, Extra Relics/Traits or an Extra detachment. Pick one.
Oh definitely. Right now I think that realistically you can't go into the game with less than 8 CP. So that gives you about 4 to play with for Relics, WL traits, detachments, etc. I always lose one bringing my Leviathan too, so I start down one (I think it is so worth it however). I haven't been using Risen Rubrics or Webway just because I have been using Duplicity.
Yup, I agree too. We are very CP hungry. But our relics and warlord traits are great and its so tempting to take a second detachment as well... so hard to choose.
Anyway, can I just rant about our stupid Rhinos transport restrictions?
Tsons Rhinos : Can only carry basically one thing only: Rubric marines. Cultists and Tzaangors not allowed. Although seriously, would it be that OP to have ten Tzaangors in a Rhino ? Tzaangors hit on 4+ and have only 2 attacks of -1AP, 1 damage weapons.
Meanwhile... Admech transport the Dunerider ... carries 12 infantry (2 better). And Admech has literally tons of stuff that is all considered infantry. You can even stuff 12 Rust stalkers or 12 Pteraxli into a Dunerider. Like, how much scarier are 12 Ruststalkers charging out of a Dunerider compared to 10 Tzaangors? And even all space marines Rhinos are not allowed to carry jump pack marines (CSM rhino included). But you can stuff 12 Pteraxli into a Dunerider? Have you seen the size of those Pteraxli ? zzzzz
Somehow, GW thinks that having 10 cultists or Tzaangors in a Rhino is more game breaking than having 12 Rust stalkers or Pteraxli in a Dunerider ???
Eldenfirefly wrote: Yup, I agree too. We are very CP hungry. But our relics and warlord traits are great and its so tempting to take a second detachment as well... so hard to choose.
Anyway, can I just rant about our stupid Rhinos transport restrictions?
Tsons Rhinos : Can only carry basically one thing only: Rubric marines. Cultists and Tzaangors not allowed. Although seriously, would it be that OP to have ten Tzaangors in a Rhino ? Tzaangors hit on 4+ and have only 2 attacks of -1AP, 1 damage weapons.
Meanwhile... Admech transport the Dunerider ... carries 12 infantry (2 better). And Admech has literally tons of stuff that is all considered infantry. You can even stuff 12 Rust stalkers or 12 Pteraxli into a Dunerider. Like, how much scarier are 12 Ruststalkers charging out of a Dunerider compared to 10 Tzaangors? And even all space marines Rhinos are not allowed to carry jump pack marines (CSM rhino included). But you can stuff 12 Pteraxli into a Dunerider? Have you seen the size of those Pteraxli ? zzzzz
Somehow, GW thinks that having 10 cultists or Tzaangors in a Rhino is more game breaking than having 12 Rust stalkers or Pteraxli in a Dunerider ???
True ...
Let's hope it'l get fixed in an faq. In the meantime I'll see if my opponents let me house rule it to take the Gors in the Rhinos. Shouldn't be hard, they were just nerfed and no one really cares about Tzaangors anyway
I think it's more of a fluff sort of thing. Remember that Legions were massively arrogant, often viewing themselves as above baseline humans. So it does make sense that they'd stop mutants or cultist from using things that would be reserved for the marines.
But that leaves a gap. Why don't the chaos marines have rickety, crappy transports to bus around their meat shields. Pretty much an Ork trukk for Chaos. Cheaper, squishier than a rhino and possibly having a larger transport cap to dump those cultist onto objectives.
Yeah, and even cultists are not allowed on Rhinos. Like, cultists are normal intelligent men. Why would they not know how to ride in a Rhino lol. You just sit in it, the door opens, and you run out of the Rhino. Its not rocket science...
And from a size point of view, a cultist model is definitely smaller than a Marine...
I don't think Tzaangors are that dumb either. If they know how to wield a Tzaangor blade, surely they are intelligent enough to sit in a Rhino until the door opens...
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cody.d. wrote: I think it's more of a fluff sort of thing. Remember that Legions were massively arrogant, often viewing themselves as above baseline humans. So it does make sense that they'd stop mutants or cultist from using things that would be reserved for the marines.
But that leaves a gap. Why don't the chaos marines have rickety, crappy transports to bus around their meat shields. Pretty much an Ork trukk for Chaos. Cheaper, squishier than a rhino and possibly having a larger transport cap to dump those cultist onto objectives.
Well, its not like the Rhino is some elite transport either. Its literally one of the most common transports around. I would agree to this logic for a Landraider. But a Rhino? Rhinos are a dime a dozen. Cultists are basically like renegade guardsmen. A Chimera transport is every bit as good as a Rhino. And guardsmen ride around in Chimeras all the time. I honestly don't see that much difference between a Chimera or a Rhino other than the fact that they wanted a vehicle specifically for Astra Militarium.
Tsons already have so few units in our roster. It makes zero sense to restrict their interactions even further. Is there any codex out there that literally only allows one single unit into its common transports? Urrgh, thinking about it makes my head spin...
And what kind of gotcha moment or OP strategies are we going to do with having 10 cultists or Tzaangors in a Rhino anyway. Like ohhh.. we got some obsec in a Rhino. Err.. Gotcha ?
Yea the rhino thing is dumb. I am still hoping it is an oversight as GW has done similar stuff in the past and it is reasonable the did not remember tgors are not arcana marines.
cody.d. wrote: I think it's more of a fluff sort of thing. Remember that Legions were massively arrogant, often viewing themselves as above baseline humans. So it does make sense that they'd stop mutants or cultist from using things that would be reserved for the marines.
But that leaves a gap. Why don't the chaos marines have rickety, crappy transports to bus around their meat shields. Pretty much an Ork trukk for Chaos. Cheaper, squishier than a rhino and possibly having a larger transport cap to dump those cultist onto objectives.
To be fair it's said in the fluff that even sorcerers respect enlightened Tzaangors as they are pretty much some of the closest mortals to Tzeentch (barring exalted). Plus, Tzeentch is all about ambition and social ascension so it wouldn't surprise me if TS marines wouldn't at least tolerate the birdmen. Especially since most of the legion is made of unfeeling automates. The empty suits couldn't really complain
Had a game against Space Marine Phobos list with a load of units with Concealed Positions.
My list was similar to before (i.e a load of flamer rubrics), I'm running two squads of 10 and 4 squads of 5. This time I had a Cult of Magic patrol.
The game was very one sided. Thousand Sons are really good against power armour armies.
Two interesting things came out of it:
I was defender. I used Risen Rubricae to deploy a line of 10 flamer rubrics in a line 9" from my opponents deployment zone (this was my first unit placement). This shut down the deployment shenanigans completely. I then used the Master of Misinformation to redeploy them in my deployment zone at the start of the game (so as not to sacrifice them). When you have an army that's built around being able to set up within 9" of your opponent and you suddenly can't things don't end well. Well worth 2CP.
The other discovery was you can use the Psychic Maelstrom ritual to cast Astral Blast with a non Cult of Magic unit. This is awesome, as I can now Sorcerous Facade a unit of Rubrics and then cast Astral Blast with them. Makes splashing Cult of Magic very appealing.
The other discovery was you can use the Psychic Maelstrom ritual to cast Astral Blast with a non Cult of Magic unit. This is awesome, as I can now Sorcerous Facade a unit of Rubrics and then cast Astral Blast with them. Makes splashing Cult of Magic very appealing.
Well...that's interesting. It will probably get FAQ'd off, but seems like open season for the moment.
The other discovery was you can use the Psychic Maelstrom ritual to cast Astral Blast with a non Cult of Magic unit. This is awesome, as I can now Sorcerous Facade a unit of Rubrics and then cast Astral Blast with them. Makes splashing Cult of Magic very appealing.
Well...that's interesting. It will probably get FAQ'd off, but seems like open season for the moment.
Don't necessarily think it would. From a fluff perspective they are creating a weird time loop (makes sense). From a rules perspective it's clear (big part of the ritual is it allows you to cast something you don't know). So unless they think it's too strong? A lot of the competitive community has written this book off already, so doubt that will be the case.
dreadlybrew wrote: Malevolent charge on an auxiliary target of Astral blast is still my favorite use against characters
Right which you miss out on using Psychic Maelstrom (as you can't use multiple rituals on the same unit). So I guess there's still an advantage to going Cult of Magic as a main Cult.
Frankly, I don't care if we set the meta on (warp)fire or not, just that we're not in the "and finally" tier of factions. Everything I have seen so far makes me think that this modest goal has been achieved. I haven't had a chance to try our new book yet but i remain hopeful.
Mushkilla wrote: A lot of the competitive community has written this book off already, so doubt that will be the case.
I think they're writing it off for the wrong reasons ( secondary vulnerabilities ), but it's our job to prove them wrong.
I need to get painting... Battle for Salvation is like a month away!
Yeah that's a good point. To be honest remove Abhor the Witch and allow non-character psykers to do warpcraft secondaries and we'd be in a good place.
I think the other concern for competitive players is sisters. If drukari and admech see further nerfs I think we'll see more sisters lists.
Speaking of sisters. I picked up three other tricks against Celestine:
Mutalith - can bypass the bodyguard rule. If you do two mortal wounds against Celestine's squad you can remove a model (because of the Lifewards rule wounds have to be allocated to the Geminae), which if your opponents not careful can leave Celestine out of bodyguard range. This forces them to put Celestine at the back of the chain rather than at the front (furthest from the bodyguards). As soon as she's out of bodyguard range she's targetable with shooting.
Infernal master - mortal wound ability (same as above).
Astral Blast - even though Celestine will be immune to the effects of psychic powers thanks to the dogmata she can still a valid target for astral blast. What this means is she wont take d3 mortals from it. But units within 3" of her unit will still take a mortal wound. So you can inflict a MW on the bodyguard then trigger malevolent charge and do an extra d3. In theory that could allow you to whittle down the Sacristans (even when they are out of line of sight).
Although honestly in my games against sisters I've just ignored Celestine. It's really hard to kill the dogmata that is making her immune to psychic powers as they will always be hidden. On the plus side her hymn is only 6" range and to activate it reliably cost CP (sadly that strat also lets them activate the hymn outside the command phase which means they can move first). That being said if the Dogmata is ever exposed she's easy enough to kill with a targeted witchfire with only 4 wounds. Sure she can be brought back, but that cost CP and miracle dice. If your burning your opponents miracle dice your are one step closer to winning.
I concur with the above statement that we will be good against power armor armies/elite armies with lower model counts and not a lot of screening. However, I think Orks, Guard, and Tyranids will be tough for use. Any thoughts on dealing with hoard armies effectively? I think Duplicity is probably going to be the top Cult, as being able to move units around to get around screens or get out of combat with large hoard units will be essential against Orks, Guard, and Tyranids.
Horde actually seems to be not much of an issue for me, infernos tend to cut right through them and whittile them down to non-destructive numbers really quickly.
Fast attacker drukari is currently my pain. I just can't figure a way around them.
Stay back and shoot-they claim the middile and win on primary.
Try to get into the middile yourself, and they just pounce at you and murder you VERY quickly, and proceed to win on primary.
Not to mention "herd the prey" is basically unstoppable, as they can easily exterminate any unit foolish enough to try to hang in their backfield.
In other notes, I think I might have UNDER estimated the newcome infernal master.
The fact he is a one-spell-one-prayer that really has no need to get close makes him a great candidate for warpcrating
Slap a shadow seeker trait on him, and interrogation is basically never failing and unstoppable-so either enemy chars have to stay hidden, or you farm them for points. while you still throw around some very valuable buffs-and the ritual to extend range can make it out of range to even attempt a deny.
I'll resume my reviews soon enough as I get more clear time (medical lab employees do NOT have much free time these days), and update some things in them too. (prince, sorry but you are ranking down. you are great, but you just dont *fit*)
Fast attacker drukari is currently my pain. I just can't figure a way around them.
Stay back and shoot-they claim the middile and win on primary.
Try to get into the middile yourself, and they just pounce at you and murder you VERY quickly, and proceed to win on primary.
Not to mention "herd the prey" is basically unstoppable, as they can easily exterminate any unit foolish enough to try to hang in their backfield.
I haven't had the chance to play against DE with Sons yet. Sounds similar to sisters in terms of pounce/trade strategy. What secondaries are you taking?
In other notes, I think I might have UNDER estimated the newcome infernal master.
The fact he is a one-spell-one-prayer that really has no need to get close makes him a great candidate for warpcrating
Slap a shadow seeker trait on him, and interrogation is basically never failing and unstoppable-so either enemy chars have to stay hidden, or you farm them for points. while you still throw around some very valuable buffs-and the ritual to extend range can make it out of range to even attempt a deny.
Seeker After Shadows and Psychic Interrogation is so underrated. Fun fact the conditions for Psychic Interrogation can still be satisfied characters that ignore the effects of psychic powers.
"One PSYKER CHARACTER unit from your army can attempt to perform this psychic action in your Psychic phase if it is within 24" of any visible enemy CHARACTER models."
It doesn't actually target anything. You just need to be within 24" of a character model to be able to perform the action. So if your opponent is going to put Celestine in the middle of the table, or run a Culexus against you can easily score 15 on that secondary. Assuming they don't just hide all their characters.
If Psychic Interrogation is forcing the Culexus to hide in the back then taking that objective is making it a lot easier to score your other points. That's a damn fine idea.
Had a game against Grey Knights. Just sharing. Lost but it was a close game. Final score 78 to 72. And I am new to Thousand Sons. Enjoyed it alot and learnt alot of stuff. Will continue to tweak my army.
So, after getting shot off the board despite trying so hide as much as I could against a prior admech army. (Though I still managed to score over 60 VP). I went for minimum rubric squads instead of warpflamer squads because I wanted even more bodies on the table. So my list was as follows:
Cult of Change Batallion
DP with sword, Aetherstride, Capricious Crest
Ahriman on disk
1 unit of 10 Tzaangors
2 units of 10 cultists
1 unit of Rubrics with 1 Soupreaper
Tzaangor Shaman with Seeker after shadows
1 unit of 5 Occult Termines w Hellfire, soulreaper
2 Hellbrutes with Multimeltas and infernal combi
2 units of 5 spawn each (So 10 spawn total!)
Tsons Patrol of Duplicity
HQ: Infernal Master
3 units of 5 rubrics (barebones).
1 unit of Occult w hellfire, Soul reaper
My strategy was to stay on 2 objectives, try and get 10 each turn, whittle down the opponent, then on turn 4 or 5, try and go for a 15. The army has a lot of wounds to chew through and if many units are within support range of each other, anyone coming close would suffer a ton of MW and shooting and even melee damage.
So I took the secondaries: To the Last, Retrieve Octarius Data and Mental Interrogation.
My reasoning was that my army is built for To The Last. If I play conservative, its not easy to get to my To the Last Units, which were the 2 Occut squads and Ahriman. I put my 2 cultist squads into reserve for ROD, and Grey knights are a very elite army, so it should be hard for him to screen out effectively. Finally, my first time taking mental interrogation (I usually take warp ritual).
So I maxed out To The Last. all 3 units survived. I maxed out ROD. Psychic interrogation, we played it that I maxed it out. But we both didn't read the secondary close enough. Actually, I can only mental interrogate a character. I assumed that because grey knights units are all psykers, I could interrogate any psyker. But just because they are psykers doesn't make them a character. In hindsight, I would have just taken just warp ritual instead now. I spent 8 cabal points every turn to make sure the ritual cannot be denied. So, there was literally nothing my opponent can do to stop my rituals.
So, Tsons are amazing at secondaries play. Primaries was where I lost. And this was likely from my inexperience.
My opponent had experience with both playing Grey knights as well as Tsons. So, he respected my army's psychic power and firepower. Similarly, I had seen enough youtube videos to know that Grey knight psychic power can be as devastating as Tsons, and once they get into close combat, they can really chop up stuff. So I screened with my Chaos Spawn and my Tzaangors or just Rubric marines. I built up multiple layers of lines and defense. It worked in a sense. His entire army was built for close combat, yet he didn't dare to come close to charge or fight at all. Because anything that charged the screens would die horribly the next turn for sure because it would be in range to be smited and shot and charged to death.
The reason I lost was on primary. He spread out more aggressive, and focused on trading units to knock me off objectives. I had one objective most of my army was on, and we had two objectives that were being traded on. He kept me off those two objectives just enough such that I scored 5 on turn 2 and 3. I would throw a Tzaangor squad on one or a rubric marines on another. And he would focus enough fire power and smites or charge in a sacrificial dreadknight and kill off whatever was on that objective. Only on turn 3 did I manage to move my entire army onto two objectives such that he didn't dare to risk challenging them any more. Meanwhile, I gave him free rein of the rest of the board, although my cultists did come in to do ROD.
I could have yeeted sacirifical rubric squads each turn for more damage, but I already had easy targets on the contested objectives and didn't see the gain of sacrificing rubric squads for zero gain. He had three separate "death balls" that one rubric marine squad even with doombolt and smite and shooting cannot possibly kill.
So, in the end, I lost because of primaries from my own inexperience. Should have pushed forward aggressively on the flank most of my army was in aggressively one turn earlier. Would have probably swept that flank.
In the end, I lost only one rubric marine squad and the cultists. I killed two dreadknights, a big squad of 10 strikes? 10 interceptors ? And that was it. We talked out the last turn because it didn't matter. He teleported in a big squad of 10 which did nothing in shooting and failed their charge anyway. And it didn't matter if I killed that squad or not anyway.
So, I actually might keep the cultist squads in my list. having the option to put cheap screens in front of my army feels good. You shoot them off, no one gets the objective. You charge in and kill them, next turn my whole army jumps on you. Cultists seem about the same as Tzaangors really because the firepower in the game right now is so lethal and 10 tzaangors are just as frail as 10 cultists.
I liked the two units of 5 spawn. I threw weaver on them every turn and when I pushed them onto an objective. He didn't even try and push or shoot them off. 20 wounds on a 4++ is too hard to chew threw.
The hellbrutes were there to keep him honest and counter charge in melee. But they were very slow, moving at 6 inches. I might drop 1 hellbrute. Or maybe I just didn't play them aggressive enough because I kept them as a counter charge melee unit.
Still learning how best to play Tsons. We are really good with secondaries. And I do think primaries we can be decent too. I am just glad I wasn't tabled the way many Tsons armies got tabled by Grey Knights on the youtube battle reports.
Automatically Appended Next Post: A bit more on Rubrics and Occults. I think both are great. But I like to take "to the last" secondary, but the issue with taking big ten man squads of rubrics and Occults is that these units become your "to the last" units. And then you start to play them very conservatively. Occults are still ok played from range because they have great range output. But rubrics are meant to be trading pieces and you want to aggressively push them onto an objectives you want. So, you don't want a big unit of rubrics which you can't use that way.
I suppose we could find another secondary but so far, I think "to the last" is a good secondary for Tsons. If we keep a big block of rubric with our characters safe (either far back or behind obscuring), its extremely hard to kill it and that protects our characters too. And because we can have Exalted or Ahriman on a disk, or flying DP, our characters can zip out 12 inches (or more), cast a bunch of psychic, and then get temporal surge back into safety again. This also extends the range of our psychic attacks.
So, unless you can hide your whole army from us or keep it so far back that even a 12 inches move plus 18 inch range psychic cannot hit you... its impossible to avoid taking some sort of psychic damage from us.
So, to the last is a great secondary for me, and it fits well with a big bloc of rubric or occult that protects our characters too. But what happens is it makes me not want to take risks with them. As long as that big bloc doesn't die, my characters can't die, and I am guaranteed 15 points at the end of the game. So, I might play too conservatively.
I think I will try throwing a squad of 5 spawn with 4++ plus two squads of min rubrics onto an objective next time to see how that goes. That's 40 wounds with invul saves to chew through. And if a single rubric survives to stand on that point, they lose it. And if they get obsec on the point as well, they will have to fight 5 spawn and 10 rubrics plus outnumber the whole shebag in order to take it away from me.
Hmm, I might need more rubric squads in my list ... lol
The more I look at my lists and play, the more this stands out to me as the answer. Which I find really exciting--the core Troop unit of the book, that thematically should be en masse, is actually a really great choice??! Yes please! In both this book and GK, whose core Troops also got an incredible boost, I think GW did a good job for once.
First thanks for the write up, all information is appreciated about actual games instead of just theory-hammer. However, I think it is hard to gleam to much from a game against the Grey Knights. Grey Knight v. Thousand Sons match ups are probably one of, if not the, most unique match ups in 40k due to the specialization of both being essentially all psyker armies.
I like your idea on using Until the Last, however, as you said it does make a player more conservative with those units, and we don't really have a lot of units on the board. Using Until the Last with Time Cult would be really good however, bring 1 to 2 models back basically every turn.
I would suggest Warpflamer Rubrics. Even just a squad of 5 puts in some serious work. Since they can advance and shoot they have a pretty big threat range, especially with Temporal Surge. And they are nice front line units against melee armies due to the fact that their overwatch can be devastating. I am thinking of my builds being 2-3 Scarab Terminator 5 man squads, with 2-3 5 man warp flamer units for pushing up the field, with one 10 man rubric bolter squad holding the back objective using the +6 range power to shoot at 30". I plan on filling in with like 4 castors of various varieties, some hellbrute AT fire power, and some screens.
I have a few games set for this weekend, so hopefully I will be able to report back next week with some good feed back.
Yeah, I feel that although To the Last secondary encourages conservative play with a big bloc and your characters, it is also the best way to ensure a Tsons army doesn't make bad mistakes. If you start throwing in 10 man occult squads aggressively onto midboard objectives or into enemy deployment zones. Let's just say, one thing for sure I have observed about a Tsons army. Once your regular units die, your characters soon follow suit, and once your characters are stuck fighting in combat or dead, your power goes down drastically.
So To the Last dovetails very well with how we want to play a typical Tsons army. We want one big squad surviving right to the end of the game along with at least most or all of our characters hiding behind that big block safely for 5 turns, doing their psychic every turn. Literally everything else can die, and our psychic offensive output will hardly be affected even on turn 5. That's pretty powerful considering that's our main thing.
And its a very easy 15 points. Because our characters can fly advance out 12 inches, then temporal surge back to safety. And the big bloc is protecting many characters. Even if it doesn't fight, its doing its job. The termie block is almost impossible to kill in one turn. And if its depleted because you poked it head out to shoot, you can bring back an Occult with the strategem, or with the time spell, or you can simply duck back behind cover and stay there safely all game. And I doubt if any artillery firing out of line of sight is able to delete a big block of Occults no matter how many rounds of firing it tries.
The other nice thing with To the Last is a lot of armies will take Abhor the Witch against us. Conservative play is key to preventing them from maxing out that secondary.
In some ways Abhor the Witch could be an advantage for us as it forces our opponent to come to us to get their secondaries. Hopefully meaning we win if both players do nothing all game, making us the defender and our opponent the attacker, giving us a tempo advantage.
Personally, I still hate Abhor the Witch as it forces us to play very defensively which limits our play styles.
All that being said my main problem with To the Last is it's very hard for us to make our characters the to the last targets if you want to run large rubric squads or scarabs. I do like keeping a larger flamer squad of rubrics back until turns 3-4-5 where they become exponentially more powerful and harder to kill. Also with duplicity you can save the 1-2 last models of the squad by teleporting to safety if your opponent isn't careful. So with some practice you can definitely make it work.
Fast charger armies will counter this gameplay but with 4x5 rubrics and chaos spawns, the opponent can have some troubles for reaching the DP+termis
I've found Sorcerous Facade (duplicity) and 1-2 rubrics in strategic reserve works quite well against fast assault armies. But that might just be because I run mostly flamer rubrics.
Although having one or two large squads to act like wrecking balls or anchor points does have it's merit.
My mate plays with a 10 man occult termie unit and occasionally a 10 warpflamer unit too. Though i'm not sure if he uses Risen or not.
With unwavering and glamour that's one hell of a brick to remove. Yeah it can't move too much, but if you get on a point damn you're staying on that point.
I’ve been using a cult of Mutation in crusade and have been thinking about giving that aetherstride/disc with a Stave Abominus a whirl, also seeker of shadows on a terminator sorceror with Exalted Mutation has been good, but I’m starting to see that a sorceror in a rhino could be better.
Runt Nosher wrote: I’ve been using a cult of Mutation in crusade and have been thinking about giving that aetherstride/disc with a Stave Abominus a whirl.
Sounds like it could be a pretty effective horde-clearer.
Now that the dex has been around for a bit, and people have gotten to play around with it. Are rubric squads with all flamers and a reaper good or not?
My confession: I love flamers, I would adore an army filled to the brim with fiery goodness :-)
...but I've been told several times now that such squads are just not competitive, that you die at range well before getting into toasty toasty flamer goodness. Then, if that wasn't bad enough, you die to close-combat directly after toasting the enemy once.
My store is pretty casual, but still I don't want to just get shot off the board or diced into puree every match.
Also: I'm fairly certain I've asked this question before, so sorry about that. It's just that the idea still appeals to me and I'm hoping someone will chime in with a story of running about a million flamer marines and having it work out just dandy.
Warpflamers were considered pretty weak in the previous Codex - but with the 9th edition Codex release, Warpflamers are considered the competitive option. So, go nuts! Make sure you run Duplicity and use Risen Rubricae for maximum fiery goodness.
So after years of avoiding 1k Sons the new codex finally got me to buy in(I already have about 1200pts). The Alpha Legion player in me screams to play Cult of Duplicity.
I currently have a bunch of Rhinos, Heldrakes, a couple of Helbrutes, Predators, Demon Princes, and 2 Maulerfiends from playing vanilla CSM. I also have Arhiman on disc, 2 10 man Rubric squads(Icon, Soul Reaper) 10 unbuilt Rubrics, 10 Tzangors with blades, and 5 Scarab termies. I'll probably build the 10 Rubrics all with flamers to teleport to the enemy backfield. I know I'll probably pick up Magnus and an Exalted Sorcerer on disc. Anything else I should grab to flesh out?
Cheap, has sneaky punch and probably one of the better "trade up" unit in TS' repository.
One thing I do have my eye on and seeing if I can make it work, is a full unit of Tzaangor Enlighted with bows.... 6x strength 5, ap -1, 1 dmg shots that ignores Look Out Sir! and always hits on 2+ at 30" range. Seems ripe for some salty plinking.
Now that the dex has been around for a bit, and people have gotten to play around with it. Are rubric squads with all flamers and a reaper good or not?
My confession: I love flamers, I would adore an army filled to the brim with fiery goodness :-)
...but I've been told several times now that such squads are just not competitive, that you die at range well before getting into toasty toasty flamer goodness. Then, if that wasn't bad enough, you die to close-combat directly after toasting the enemy once.
My store is pretty casual, but still I don't want to just get shot off the board or diced into puree every match.
Also: I'm fairly certain I've asked this question before, so sorry about that. It's just that the idea still appeals to me and I'm hoping someone will chime in with a story of running about a million flamer marines and having it work out just dandy.
Thoughts?
Soulreaper is great.
Warpflamer is great.
The two very much do not belong in the same squad though.
...but I've been told several times now that such squads are just not competitive, that you die at range well before getting into toasty toasty flamer goodness. Then, if that wasn't bad enough, you die to close-combat directly after toasting the enemy once.
The thing people miss with warpflamers are:
1) They are now 12" range, this means you can use them when coming in from reserve. Works wonders with duplicity.
2) They are assault making your rubrics movement 7-12" that's an average of a 50% movement increase. It's also unpredictable which makes it hard for your oppoent to plan around. Do they position themselves to be safe by being more than 24" away (assuming you always roll a 6 for advance). Or a more risky position at 22"? On the flip side you aren't taking any risk. You only need to move the rubrics if they roll high enough to get within range.
3) They make it very hard for you opponent to quantify their damage output. On average 4 bolter rubrics in rapid fire range score 5.3 hits with a maximum of 8 hits. 4 warpflamer rubrics score 14 hits with a maximum of 24 hits.
4) Overwatch and Inescapable Forewarning. You can't just charge them, you can't just deepstrike next to them.
5) 9th is very terrain heavy and played on a much smaller board 12" range isn't the handicap it used to be.
What you have is basically a units that is almost impossible for your opponent to account for, honestly it's just a nightmare. Sometimes the threat of something is more powerful that the thing itself. Warpflamer rubrics change the way your opponent plays. They're Dirty Harry constantly asking your opponent if they are feeling lucky?
EDIT: Also personally I think spending a CP to take the flamer relic is just a bad choice. We are CP starved enough as is. 1CP is worth so much more than d6 S5 flamer shots.
Mushkilla wrote: EDIT: Also personally I think spending a CP to take the flamer relic is just a bad choice. We are CP starved enough as is. 1CP is worth so much more than d6 S5 flamer shots.
Agreed ! When I faced off against space wolves I brought a squad of 10 warpflamer wielding Rubrics. Twice I toasted squads of bladeguards and blood claws (maybe ? don't remember the name) with the help of empyreal flames and twice I didn't even need the warpflame pistol of the aspiring Sorcerer. Even less so the relic I spent 1 CP to give him
whembly wrote: One thing I do have my eye on and seeing if I can make it work, is a full unit of Tzaangor Enlighted with bows.... 6x strength 5, ap -1, 1 dmg shots that ignores Look Out Sir! and always hits on 2+ at 30" range. Seems ripe for some salty plinking.
The math on this....
Against T3 with a 5++ (some Guard and Xenos?) you'll get 2.22 wounds.
Against T3 with a 4++ you'll get 1.67 wounds.
Against T4 with a 3+ you'll get 1.67 wounds, or 1.11 if they're in cover.
Against T4 with a 2+ you'll get 1.11 wounds.
Against T4 2+ in cover you'll get 0.56 wounds.
So I played two crusade games on Saturday. The first was against a newbie, so it was not worth much for learning the codex (Necrons and I crushed him as he was new). The second match up was against Eldar. My list was Exalted on Disc, Terminator Sorcerer, 10 man Rubric Squad with bolters/reaper, 5 man Rubric Squad with Flamers, Maulerfiend, 5 man Terminator Squad with missiles and reaper, and 10 cultists as I had 2 power left (I actually put them in reserve, brought them into my opponent's backfield where they just sat and did actions all game to get me Agendas). He had a Farseer, Spiritseer, two 6 man Dire avenger squads, a waveserpent, 5 man wraithguard with swords, 5 man reaper guys, and a psyker warithlord. Basically what I did was play the objectives (which is very thousand sons) and due to my ability to teleport I was able to get three out of five objectives turn 1. I really just sat back and racked up points as my terminators marched up the middle and destroyed stuff and my disk sorcerer MW crushed his wraithguard/wraithlord. I played really risky at the end of the game moving off objectives trying to kill his characters since they are worth arcane points in the crusade, so he actually scored quit a bit the last turn and brought it to 5 points, but I still prevailed. While it is hard to get gleam to much from a crusade game here are my thoughts:
1. As has been discussed here, playing the objectives is huge. This is probably 9th advice in general, but I think the ability to spread around is important.
2. Scarab Terminators are pretty good even at only 5 man squads. Anything short of dedicated anti-tank is going to have problems taking them down. They basically absorbed shooting from most of his army several turns, and he only was able to kill them because I bum rushed his characters due to Crusade agendas. I have not tried a big squad yet, but I think even if I did I am still bringing a 5 man as well. They are really good with either duplicity, orb, deepstrike or whatever to get them behind enemy lines. Then they are more than a match for almost everything that you encounter in the backfield. Also at only 5, it is only 1 CP to -1 damage them, which is really good.
3. 10 man squad of Rubrics with bolters are also good. Again these guys are tough to take down with small arms. It was only when I was out of command points and he used the "heavy bolter" profile of his reapers when he really did damage to these guys. he only killed 4 of them with that volley and they were cursed with -1 to their save from one of his psyker powers. Using empric guidance to give them 30" range allows them to fight from the backfield pretty easily.
4. 5 man flamer Rubrics were a bit underwelming. I did not roll well for number of shots and to wound so that could possible be it. However, just the treat of them on the flank lead my opponent to be more cautious with some of his units keeping him pinned up in his deployment zone, so I guess they weren't a complete bust.
5. Duplicity is good, but can be unreliable. To start I love duplicity. I love the maneuverability of it. In the game I played it allowed me to swarm the objectives early, and then late in the game move my large rubric squad from the backfield to go after his units to try to finish him off (they did some good work, but I rolled really really bad. I think it was like 13 hits, then I only wounded 3 times against T3!). However, the casting value of 8 makes it a tad more unreliable. There are going to be times you will fail that spell. You can cabal it to auto pass etc, but late in the game that might not be an option. I am stuck with it for the duration of the crusade so I will get plenty of experience with it. However, I think there is definitely an argument to take a different cult and use the orb or deepstrike etc. to improve mobility.
6. Even with all of our casting shenanigans, there will be times that you won't get your powers off. He had four denies, but two from the farseer had re-rolls. He did deny me a couple of times, including one of my mortal wound spells to finish off the Wraithguard. It is another reason why I don't think we can just rely on MW for AT and we need to bring some kind of AT. I also rolled poorly one round and failed to get a few powers off. I think we will need to account for at least one bad psyker phase a game, hopefully it will not be turn one.
7. The deny strat is awesome. That strat that allows 3d6 deny is money for shutting down whatever enemy spell is the linchpin of the opponent. In this case it was the move again spell Eldar have. His strategy in the games he was playing was to double move the wraithguard right up into his opponents face. I knew this coming in and held that strat for his double move spell and denied it even though he rolled like a 10 or something. This kept him pinned in his deployment zone.
8. The cabal system does not scale well. The cabal system was clearly meant for 2000 point games. At only 50 power I think I generate like 9 cabal points. You really need 12+ for it to make a big difference. As this is our army wide rule, it is going to disadvantage us in smaller games. I wish there was something like as long as you have more than one sorcerer left, you generate at least 3 extra cabal points or something. Oh well.
whembly wrote: One thing I do have my eye on and seeing if I can make it work, is a full unit of Tzaangor Enlighted with bows.... 6x strength 5, ap -1, 1 dmg shots that ignores Look Out Sir! and always hits on 2+ at 30" range. Seems ripe for some salty plinking.
The math on this....
Against T3 with a 5++ (some Guard and Xenos?) you'll get 2.22 wounds.
Against T3 with a 4++ you'll get 1.67 wounds.
Against T4 with a 3+ you'll get 1.67 wounds, or 1.11 if they're in cover.
Against T4 with a 2+ you'll get 1.11 wounds.
Against T4 2+ in cover you'll get 0.56 wounds.
TL;DR These bows are really not that great.
Oh I'm not looking at it as this super awesome sniper unit.
It's a distraction carnifex that can plink way at a character or target a unit that has some variety of -1 to hit powered up that this unit ignores. It's also a fast 12-wound platform for objective grabbing or failing that, a chaff unit to slow down the enemy at bit. My idea is something like playing against DG's Foul Blightspawn with the Vat relic.... that dude only has 4 wounds and if the DG player wanting to protect him and tries to engage the Enlighten rather than the rest of my army... that's a win.
It's either this unit or a 5-man Spawn unit which both have different roles and has a place in TS lists imo.
We were both trying out the new Tsons and tweaking our lists. But it was a great game! We both learnt lots, especially about Tsons vs Tsons matchups.
Mission was surround and destroy, with 6 objectives.
I took Retrieve Octurus Data, Mutate Landscape, and Stranglehold.
My army:
Cult of Change Batallion:
DP without wing, aetherstride, the capricious crest relic.
Ahriman on Disk
3 Rubric squads of 5
1 Tzaangor squad of 10
1 cultist squad 10
2 Chaos Spawn units of 5 each.
1 Rhino with 2 combi bolters.
Duplicity Patrol
Infernal Master (Helm of the Daemon's Eye)
3 Rubric squads all with doombolt, no upgrades
1 Occult Termie squad of 10 with 2 soulreaper, hellfires, and Rites of Coalecence
1 Tzaangor Shaman (Seeker after shadows)
Turn 1, I went first. Tried to advance while screening out possible teleports in. We both spent 2 CP for risen Rubrecae to forward deploy one Min5 rubric squad each (just to further screen out possible teleport strikes). I had the Tzangor squad and cultist squad in strategic reserve to come down and do ROD from turn 2 onwards. So, I move the forward deployed Rubric squad onto the right midpoint objective. Then I took a deep breath and threw a Rhino with a rubric squad in it, a unit of 5 spawn and Temporal surged the 10 man Occult squad all onto the left midpoint objective.
He was well hidden, but the temporal surged had enabled my 3 termie models out of 10 to see his cultist squad of 30. I made sure the 3 models included 2 soulreaper cannons. Put presage on the Termie squad, used the 1cp strategem to double Soulreaper shots and let loose. After the smoke cleared and he failed morale, I think only 9 cultists out of 30 was left.
Got the Stranglehold, Got mutate landscape and did ROD.
His turn 1, He crystals his 10 man termie squad into shooting range of my termie squad. Repositioned his army towards clearing me from the left midpoint objective. My Rhino ate some of the witchfire, down to 4 wounds. Then everything else went into my poor Occult termies. Interestingly enough, his 3 chaos whirlwind scorpius failed him utterly. he shot 1 barrage into the termie block, killed 2 termies, and then 2 barrages into the same rubric squad which tanked everything while only losing 1 model. His occult shooting was amazing though. Killed a few more Occults, so I was down to just 3 left in that squad. He then charged his flying DP and a 5 man chaos spawn unit into my spawn unit. Spawn on Spawn action !
The DP finished off the last 3 Occults. I had just lost 445 points in one unit. Ouch! The Spawn killed 3 spawn.
My Turn 2:
Moved up further. Tzaangor squad came down to do ROD. Did Shaman did mutate landscape and again spent 8 cabal points to make it undeniable. I was already on 3 objectives for sure, so stranglehold was assured. So, I focused on that contested left midfield objective. Fly up my DP (aetherstride), rubric squad unloaded. Brought up my second squad of 5 Chaos spawn. I had an amazing 2nd turn psychic, to be fair. Really amazing. Just about everything went off, and he failed to deny a single psychic...
I witchfire his DP away (8MW from some spells). And I still had enough left to throw some at his Occult squad. Rolled a supersmite and did 6MW (instant killed 2 termies). Still had enough psychic to Sorcerous Facade a min squad of Rubric near to one of his back objective which had a 5 man rubric defending it. Doombolt plus smite killed 2, I think shooting maybe kiled a third?
So, between some shooting from my remaining rubrics, and the psychic. He also lost a few Occults. Then I charged my 4++ Chaos Spawn unit of 5 into his Occult Squad, the Rhino into it plus his Ahriman, and my DP and a squad of Rubrics into his 5 man chaos spawn unit. When the smoke cleared, he was down to 3 Occult terminators (locked in combat with a Rhino and my Chaos Spawn), his spawn unit was dead, and his Ahriman was also locked in combat with my Rhino.
So I got Stranglehold, mutate and ROD again.
Turn 2, he looked at what was left and conceded. I was kind of surprised. But he explained that he had no melee assets left (His DP and Spawn unit was dead, and he said he couldn't do much with 3 Occult terminators and they would be smited to death by turn 3. And he admitted that the 3 Scorpius Whirlwinds had totally failed him.
The takeaways from this Tsons on Tsons clash. Tsons army doesn't really need vehicles, except for maybe one kind - Rhino/s. This reinforced my earlier match where I shared that I brought 2 hellbrutes which did nothing much, and an even earlier match where my Forgefiend and Vindicator spent 3 turns firing at a raider and failed to kill it. Anyway, we don't need vehicles to kills stuff. His combined shooting, psychic and melee took out my full strength Occult squad in one turn, and my counter punch killed 7 occults as well.
The one vehicle that was very useful, was the lone Rhino I took. It helped to absorb doombolt and smite, it delivered rubrics onto the midfield, it moved 12 inches, and it had a 5++ save on a T7 Chassis. He didn't even want to shoot at it. And after that, it charged into his Occcults and Ahriman, helping to tie them up. I have a new found love for Rhinos now. Even one squad of Rubric in a Rhino is good enough. I don't know if I want to add more. Will stick to one for now.
Multiple rubric squads were very useful. I had 6 squads. It didn't matter they only had inferno bolters. That was enough. It was the obsec, being hard to kill, being able to possible be teleported, being able to cast psychic that made them so darn good. Their shooting and possible melee was just icing on the top.
Not taking To the Last this time was a gamble that paid off. It allowed me to boldly move my Occults onto the midfield. Sure I lost them in one turn, but they ate up just about his entire army's offensive output on that turn. And when you throw a Rhino with rubrics, a 10 man occult squad plus a 5 man Chaos spawn unit onto a point. That is a massive statement of intent. Not many armies can clear off so much from one objective. Not many armies would even try. I might have possibly been too aggressive with my Occults, but if you want your opponent to risk his assets, you have to risk yours as well. He killed my Occult squad and 3 Spawn, but lost 7 Occults in return plus his DP and his Chaos Spawn squad. Fair trade.
ROD was ROD, and mutate Landscape was good too. If you are playing pure Tsons, there is literally no way they can stop you if you take mutate landscape or warp ritual because you just spend 8 cabal points each turn to make the ritual undeniable.
So, it was a great match and we both learnt tons. He will tweak his list further (and undoubtedly drop the Scorpius Whirwinds). I learnt to drop all anti tank from my list as well one match before already. Gonna stick to this list for now and run with it, possibly with just minor tweaks. He advised that I go full batallion of Duplicity instead of spending 2 CP for an additional patrol. Might consider it. I do use the Capricious crest... but the question is whether its worth having to spend 2CP to run an additional patrol just to accomodate that relic.
One last thing. A lot of our relics and warlord traits are great, but actually, they are a luxury. Tsons blow through CP like water. By turn 2, both of us were out of CP ... lol. So, erm yeah, if you can take less, take less. You will find that many of them are just good to have, they won't change the game you are playing that much.
Hello I am just starting a Thousand Sons army and my local meta is 1000 pts games. Going to run 2 characters, one scarab squad and fill the rest with 5 man rubric squads. My question is which of the spells are a must take in every army
Sadd wrote: Hello I am just starting a Thousand Sons army and my local meta is 1000 pts games. Going to run 2 characters, one scarab squad and fill the rest with 5 man rubric squads. My question is which of the spells are a must take in every army
My personal opinion.
The most important defensive spell is Weaver of Fates and Glamour of Tzeentch that will be cast on your Occults.
The most important utility spell is Temporal Surge.
The most important damage spell is Doom Bolt (and smite, which everyone has anyway).
That's about it unless you want to consider cult spells. Every other spell is just like Tsons relics and warlord traits. (Good to have, but not exactly essential). Anyway, if its a situational spell. you can always pay 1 CP to swop it in if you need it.
How have people felt about rhinos in general for TSons? Seems most are running Cult of Duplicity so the mobility may not be as helpful for getting rubrics up the field.
On the one hand - with the 5++ and once emptied the rhinos make very unattractive targets. Good for tying up units in melee and screening on the cheap. Maybe helps with deployment and against indirect fire in a pinch.
On the other hand - in general - most TSon lists are running light on vehicles. Unless bringing a daemonforged army - it seems rubrics and scarabs are the strong preference. This makes the rhinos easy targets for any/all anti-tank in an opponent list. Further, aside from potential help with TTL the rhinos don't help with scoring any secondaries for the most part.
The opportunity cost for a rhino (vanilla) vs a rubric squad (vanilla) is a difference of 25 points - is it just better in general to take the rubric squad instead of the rhino? In my current list I was taking 3 rhinos with infernal bolters but I'm wondering if I should just translate to 2 additional min rubric squads with warpflamers instead...
xeen wrote: So I played two crusade games on Saturday....
Thanks for sharing! Cabal Points might not scale well, but I've found MW spam is even more potent at 1000pts. Assuming you run at least 3 exalted (or 2 plus Ahriman). You are right hitting 12 cabal points is crucial (Psychic Maelstrom and Malevolent Charge). Having only 6CP is tough though.
On the other hand - in general - most TSon lists are running light on vehicles. Unless bringing a daemonforged army - it seems rubrics and scarabs are the strong preference. This makes the rhinos easy targets for any/all anti-tank in an opponent list. Further, aside from potential help with TTL the rhinos don't help with scoring any secondaries for the most part.
This is my main problem with Rhinos they give my opponents AT weapons something to do. I think the more scarabs you run the less of a problem it is as AT weapons tend to be put into scarabs too.
As long as you are not standing out in the open turn one with your Rubrics they are tough enough. So Rhinos don't do very much for surviability.
They don't add much movement if you pop out turn one and they remove your ability to spell cast and shoot if you stay in them until turn two. I think they also remove your cabal point generation as well.
It could just be that non open topped transports are just generally overcosted currently.
They would be a lot more interesting if Tzaangors could ride in them.
MortarionsFriend wrote: How have people felt about rhinos in general for TSons? Seems most are running Cult of Duplicity so the mobility may not be as helpful for getting rubrics up the field.
On the one hand - with the 5++ and once emptied the rhinos make very unattractive targets. Good for tying up units in melee and screening on the cheap. Maybe helps with deployment and against indirect fire in a pinch.
On the other hand - in general - most TSon lists are running light on vehicles. Unless bringing a daemonforged army - it seems rubrics and scarabs are the strong preference. This makes the rhinos easy targets for any/all anti-tank in an opponent list. Further, aside from potential help with TTL the rhinos don't help with scoring any secondaries for the most part.
The opportunity cost for a rhino (vanilla) vs a rubric squad (vanilla) is a difference of 25 points - is it just better in general to take the rubric squad instead of the rhino? In my current list I was taking 3 rhinos with infernal bolters but I'm wondering if I should just translate to 2 additional min rubric squads with warpflamers instead...
I tried using one Rhino in a game and loved it. I don't know if spamming Rhinos might be too much, but one Rhino definitely feels like it added to my army's versatility. The thing is to already take enough rubric marine squads and then add one Rhino. If you are scrimping on rubric squads to add a Rhino, then I think that's not the way to go. I already had 6 rubric squads in my list, so having the Rhino as well was a great addition, not an alternative at all.
The Rhino helped to absorb witchfire and smites, and I imagine it would draw some anti tank fire too. The reason it complements a Tsons army is that it gets onto a midboard objective for sure. Unlike chaos spawn with a 7 inch move, where you might fail an advance and end up not on an ojbjective. The Rhino move 12. If need be, a move advance will almost certainly put it onto a midpoint objective. And once it is sitting on an objective, with a squad of rubrics in it, that's a neat package that gives your opponent a ton of problems. They got to kill a Rhino with a 5++ save which can spend a CP to blow smoke for -1 to hit as well. And even if they do, a squad of rubrics pops out onto the objective. And rubrics are not that easy to kill either.
Their massive move with advance also means you can probably hide them behind obscuring turn 1. So they are almost assured of being able to move onto a midpoint objective on their movement phase. Now ordinarily, move blocking would be a thing. But its less of a problem to Tsons armies somehow. I imagine most opponents would not want to get so close on turn 1 to a Tsons army and all of its smites, and all that just to move block one solitary Rhino.
So yeah. After trying out one, I think they are excellent. The trick is not to see them as an alternative to rubrics. They are not. Bring as many rubric squads as you want or need. And then find the points from elsewhere to cut in order to bring a Rhino or two.
After thinking abit more about the whole target of anti-tank issue. My opinion is that the entire Tsons army is tough to shoot at. Normal 1 damage weapons are really tough to get through because the whole army effectively has a 2+ or better save against 1 damage weapons. This leaves multi damage weapons or anti tank weapons. Now the issue is that with enough rubric marines, its a really inefficient to rely on anti tank weapons to remove rubric marines. They are only 21 points each. Say I throw two Rhinos with min rubrics onto two objectives and I teleport a third rubric or Occult squad onto yet another objective. How many anti tank guns do you need to have to be able to clear all that (since your anti infantry 1 damage guns are going to be mostly ineffective). And because rubrics are obsec, until you totally kill off the whole squad, I will still hold that objective. Unless you also throw your own obsec on to the point.
Our Occult terminators are the natural targets for all anti tank weapons anyway since they are the most dangerous. But they are also extremely tanky if we stack glamour of tzeentch and weaver of fates on them and/or put them in light cover. I think I will purposely make my Occult bloc a big target in future games if only to draw all the firepower. I mean, sure they will get shot up, etc, but if it took your whole army one or two turns to do it, while the rest of my army could perform its mission unobstructed, then I am perfectly fine. If I have 6 other rubric squads and other stuff more (like two full squads of chaos spawn, cultists and Tzaangors), then losing that one big Occult squad doesn't really stop me from performing my mission objectives. And when it comes to shooting at a big 10 man Occult squad buffed with defensive spells, there is literally no way an opponent can get a lucky big damage roll spike. They literally need to slog through 10 models with a high save and -1 to hit.
In the midst of that, the humble Rhino will likely be ignored. Especially if destroying it will have a squad of rubrics spilling out onto the objective. And if you want to devote yet more anti tank shots onto a cheap Rhino, I don't think I would mind. Once the Rhino is sitting on a midfield objective with a squad of rubrics in it, it has literally already performed its job. Everything else it does after that is icing on the cake.
I've played about a dozen games with the new tsons varying lists and testing stuff out.
My normal list is
Exalted
Infernal master
Demon prince
5 min sized rubrics with soulreapers and icons
1 10 man so
2 5 man sits
2 forge fiends with hades autocannons and jaws.
The name of the game is castle.
Standing in a way that forces your opponent to come to you and just eat fire and easy to shift mortal wound targeting.
I tested out switching the 2 forgefiends for helbrutes but I think the hades autocannons are just far more reliable turn after turn than helbrute anti tank weapons. They boy get 5 attacks in melee and can benefit from the same strategies and spells. If the helbrutes got more shots or could take the hades autocannons I would edge them ahead because of core and re rolls nut forgefiends are faster and tougher and heal.
Never take rod with tsons. Psychic actions are your friends. If they are foolish enough to bust out a psyker do as best you can with wrath of magnus.
Working on a tsons patrol to bring with my DG, and honestly, I know people have been singing nothing but praise, but HOW much worth it for Ahriman over a normal sorcerer?
I see a 90 point sorcerer who is able to cast 2 and take warlord traits etc, and compare that to 160pt ahriman, and while rerolls to cast, and +1 power/cast is great, is it really worth 70! more points? Thats almost another sorcerer. Im finding my points are very tight, and it seems that while ahriman would do it better, a normal sorcerer is able to do what I want for much cheaper.
ninjafiredragon wrote: Working on a tsons patrol to bring with my DG, and honestly, I know people have been singing nothing but praise, but HOW much worth it for Ahriman over a normal sorcerer?
I see a 90 point sorcerer who is able to cast 2 and take warlord traits etc, and compare that to 160pt ahriman, and while rerolls to cast, and +1 power/cast is great, is it really worth 70! more points? Thats almost another sorcerer. Im finding my points are very tight, and it seems that while ahriman would do it better, a normal sorcerer is able to do what I want for much cheaper.
Put Ahriman on a disc so he is 180, and then you can compare two sorcerers to one Ahriman.
Ahriman has a 4++, M12", WS2, A5, W6, and FLY. He has re-roll 1s aura. He can cast and deny 3. He re-rolls psychic tests, so on the most expensive powers at WC8, he will succeed 83% of the time.
A Sorcerer has 5++, M6", WS3, A4, W4, and can benefit from cover for Sv2+. He can take a force sword, which is a bit better than a staff imo. He can cast 2 and deny 1. On the most expensive powers at WC8, he will succeed 58% of the time. He can take Command upgrades.
While the Sorcerers get an additional cast, their casts are less reliable. Ahriman has better movement and his casting is more reliable. The extra deny isn't really a benefit, since TSons have more than enough DtW against any army except GK. I'm not sure who is more survivable, since the Sorcerers together have an extra two wounds and a potentially better armor save...but Ahriman has a better invuln. You'll get six hits in CC with the Sorcerers, and 4-5 with Ahriman, so that's roughly comparable. Ahriman CANNOT do psychic actions, bc losing 3 casts is too much, so the sorcerers win that one.
I'd say Ahriman wins out on casting, bc 3 casts that are more reliable is better than 4 casts with a larger chance of failure. He can even fish for super smite with his psychic re-roll. He also has extra movement so that he can set up his targets better.
Otoh, a Sorcerer with Witch Warrior becomes more reliable at dealing mortals.
Survivability is unknown, bc I don't want to run all those numbers at the moment, but I would guess it's pretty close.
Action utility goes to the Sorcerers, since there are two units and together they can do a psychic action and still get two casts, or three casts with the Thrall upgrade.
Melee goes to the Sorcerers by a hair, and can go a lot more if you put extra points into the Battle-psyker upgrade.
Taking two Sorcerers, one for the backfield and one for advancing with your main brick, isn't a bad idea.
Reliability is more important than number of casts. Otherwise, you don't even need to bring a sorceror. Just bring a normal rubric marine squad. Then you get one cast right there, plus you get obsec and 10W and the ability to shoot. Number of casts are not the key thing actually. You can easily get over 10 casts in your army if you bring enough rubric marine squads. But smites get harder and harder to cast. And if its a crucial spell like temporal surge, or weaver of fates, you only get one try at it regardless of who you cast it with. That's why a psyker like Ahriman is so good. Because he can reroll his psychic. That increases the chances of his psychic going off by a ton. If you have crucial spells that you need to go off, having Ahriman cast them will ensure they go off far easier than if you used a normal sorcerer or psyker.
If your opponent brings something that is out in the open, and visible to multiple of your castors and rubrics. It is already probably dead from the multiple smites and shooting you can throw into it. Its when you run into smart opponents. Those that know how to hide their units, those that know how to screen them with vehicles or chaff. That's when Ahriman can do something far more reliably than a typical sorceror.
Take a situation. Opponent has hidden his star unit behind a midboard obscuring terrain like a wall and its more than 18 inches away. You can't see him, your smites can't reach him. So, even with an army of castors, you can't hurt him. Ahriman is on a disk. He can zip out 12 inches from your lines, and then from an angle, he might then be able to get line of sight and a bead on this hidden unit. It leaves Ahriman exposed. But he has 3 casts. So throw two witchfire/smite and then on your third cast, you temporal surge Ahriman back into the safety of your lines. You could of course take a Rehati exalted sorceror on disk for 150 points that can do the exact same thing. But if this exalted sorceror fails at his casts, its painful, you only get two witchfire casts at the opponent. Each cast has to go off. Even more crucially, temporal surge MUST go off. Else, your exalted rehati sorceror is exposed and will likely be killed. So in this kind of situation, would you rather use an exalted Rehati sorcerer for 150 points to do the above, or would you rely on Ahriman at 180 points with his reroll psychic for all three casts? I would take Ahriman every time for that 30 points more.
Thanks for the thoughts guys. For context, my DG back up is just a LoC and 3 PBCs.
So, my Tsons allied force was going to be
sorceror (Lord of forbidden lore)
sorceror (Loyal thrall, seeker after shadows)
4x 5 man Rubrics with flamers
10 man Termy unit, 2 cannons 2 missile racks,
2 rhinos
Idea of list is to hide sorcerors behind termy brick, and rubrics in rhinos. This list presents really hard to shift targets (Shoot at termies, shoot at Rhinos, or shoot at plague burst crawlers. Ideally give them no other option).
Trying to fit Ahriman into this list is hard, but I really like the idea of giving reroll ones to termy unit and ofc better casts.
Problem is, putting ahriman on a disk makes him a TTL target, which is currently only termies and PBCs. (PBCs better TTL target than Ahriman right?)
So. That's where I'm at. To fit Ahriman, Id drop one sorceror, drop the rhinos, and add some 3 man spawn units for another semi threat.
ninjafiredragon wrote: Thanks for the thoughts guys. For context, my DG back up is just a LoC and 3 PBCs.
So, my Tsons allied force was going to be
sorceror (Lord of forbidden lore)
sorceror (Loyal thrall, seeker after shadows)
4x 5 man Rubrics with flamers
10 man Termy unit, 2 cannons 2 missile racks,
2 rhinos
Idea of list is to hide sorcerors behind termy brick, and rubrics in rhinos. This list presents really hard to shift targets (Shoot at termies, shoot at Rhinos, or shoot at plague burst crawlers. Ideally give them no other option).
Trying to fit Ahriman into this list is hard, but I really like the idea of giving reroll ones to termy unit and ofc better casts.
Problem is, putting ahriman on a disk makes him a TTL target, which is currently only termies and PBCs. (PBCs better TTL target than Ahriman right?)
So. That's where I'm at. To fit Ahriman, Id drop one sorceror, drop the rhinos, and add some 3 man spawn units for another semi threat.
You can free up some points changing the Lord of Contagion for a normal DG chaos Lord or Malignant plague castor. You lose contagion anyway and its not like you need that reroll 1 to hit. You might as well swop him for one more castor. If TTL is a concern, just bring Ahriman without a disk. In any case, if you don't absolutely need his reliability, you can just being an exalted sorcerer for 10 more points than a sorcerer.
Personally, if I was going DG TSons soup, I would make DG the main detachment with the warlord and bring a Foul Blightspawn with stench vats. That character with that relic basically stops a ton of melee lists out cold. A lot of powerful melee units can still dare to charge your Occults bloc because they strike first in a charge. But if there is a Foul Blightspawn with stench vats behind them removing charge and making them fight last.... that's a whole different story altogether. I honestly don't see much that you gain by making Tsons your main detachment since you don't appear to be bringing any relics of note. The warlord traits you are taking are also not super essential either. Just my humble 2 cents worth.
Seeker after shadows is great, but its not essential. In an all Tsons build, the reason why we dare to go for secondaries in warpcraft is because we have cabal points to make a psychic ritual undeniable.
ninjafiredragon wrote: Thanks for the thoughts guys. For context, my DG back up is just a LoC and 3 PBCs.
So, my Tsons allied force was going to be
sorceror (Lord of forbidden lore)
sorceror (Loyal thrall, seeker after shadows)
4x 5 man Rubrics with flamers
10 man Termy unit, 2 cannons 2 missile racks,
2 rhinos
Idea of list is to hide sorcerors behind termy brick, and rubrics in rhinos. This list presents really hard to shift targets (Shoot at termies, shoot at Rhinos, or shoot at plague burst crawlers. Ideally give them no other option).
Trying to fit Ahriman into this list is hard, but I really like the idea of giving reroll ones to termy unit and ofc better casts.
Problem is, putting ahriman on a disk makes him a TTL target, which is currently only termies and PBCs. (PBCs better TTL target than Ahriman right?)
So. That's where I'm at. To fit Ahriman, Id drop one sorceror, drop the rhinos, and add some 3 man spawn units for another semi threat.
If you're going to soup and lose cabal you may just want Ahriman instead to make up for that loss in flexibility / reliability.
BoomWolf wrote: The biggest thing of note, is that you can use Risen Rubricae AFTER using the redeploy from Master Misinformator.
It's SO much better to infiltarte after seeing you are first compared to infiltrate hoping you are first then backing off if you are not.
Ah, damn. I didn't even catch that one!
Automatically Appended Next Post: So, as I think about it I don't think I am going to use that. GW made a goof and wasn't consistent here. Similar stuff like UM and Blood Axes got ruled the other way.
I was hoping they would faq the Tzaangors and cultists not allowed into Rhinos as a thing but they didn't... So its intentional that Tsons's glorious Rhino literally exists only for the purpose of transporting only one thing... rubric marines.... orzz.....
Would have been so easy to change Arcane Astartes into Tsons infantry in the Rhino Transport rules.... just like how they did it to allow the Defiler to actually use its smokescreen launchers.
Been running Sons in a crusade and the I'm finding min sized squads are really working for me. Not needing to take morale checks is essential and making your opponent have to account for every wound on your models is huge. I suppose it goes without saying that mortal wound spam in smaller point games might be a little too potent as most armies either don't bother with a Psyker or can't bring enough deny's to the table. My MVPs so far have been a five man squad of flamers. I give them surge for additional movement when needed (get into range or get onto a point to hold) or in full games, I have the unit champ mentally interrogate or net me another CP through cabal points. The real magic happens when combined with Wrath of The Wronged. To date, I've been able to burn down two Deff dreads, a snazz wagon and cripple a Redemptor dread. If you're not running Duplicity, I suppose Rhinos have a solid place, but I find the Vortex beast too good not to include. My opponents hate 'em. Not only can the fight semi decently, they can be ported around the table, heal/be healed and just tick wounds of targets. I'm hard pressed not to field two of em.
I've learned Tsons don't want to be in combat, they're just not great at it. They excel at range...like almost criminally so.
It feels like a lot of Tsons witchfire spells are all traps. Unless you are using them to snipe a character, you are better off using smite most of the time. They will average maybe 1 MW pretty often.
The only standout is Doombolt because it is a flat 3 MW.
Baleful Devolution is ok too, but it needs 8 to cast, and it only works on units of 6 and above.
Tzeentch Firestorm needs a 9 cast to be decent and you can't even modify that psychic roll. So, most of the time, it goes off on a 6+ and you just do 1 MW even if you rolled 9 dice.
Dark Blessing is unreliable. Infernal Gaze is unreliable. Desecration of worlds can be mitigated by simply not moving, and anyway, MW on 6s per model isn't a big deal unless its a huge unit so its situational too.
Infernal gaze and Tzeentch firestorm is only good if you plan to snipe a character. This depends on whether you have that kind of opportunity. And it almost demands then that you spend Malevolent charge on that spell. I guess its good to have one of these in your pocket.
If you want reliable max witchfire damage, it feels like you cast doombolt, use cabal points to cast it again. Then maybe a Tzeentch firestorm or Baleful Devolution and hope for many 6s. And finally, everything else pumped into all smites, hoping for super smites and add d3 MW with 4 cabal points and spend 1 CP to make a smite a flat 3MW. Keyword being "reliable". Casting psychics that depend on rolling lots of 6s is just not reliable.
dark blessing is not even good for sniping though, it does not have the range, and is FAR too unreliable at doing anything.
Gaze and firestorm, especially when put on a singular mobile platform, are rather reliable in at least hurting the target without having to stand right next to it.
The4thEnemy 800197 11220389 wrote: My MVPs so far have been a five man squad of flamers. I give them surge for additional movement when needed (get into range or get onto a point to hold) or in full games, I have the unit champ mentally interrogate or net me another CP through cabal points.
Unfortunately, rubrics can't perform mental interrogation (or any of the other 2021 warpcraft secondaries) as they are not characters.
Question, the cult of knowledge power says you can reroll "a wound roll of 1" for each "attack" made against the target unit. so if i shot that unit with a predator, i could reroll a wound roll of a 1 for each of it's weapons since they all make separate attacks right?
odorofdeath wrote: Question, the cult of knowledge power says you can reroll "a wound roll of 1" for each "attack" made against the target unit. so if i shot that unit with a predator, i could reroll a wound roll of a 1 for each of it's weapons since they all make separate attacks right?
each individual hit/wound/save cycle is a separate "attack", as officially, you resolve each shot's results before starting the next one. so, yes, if you get, say, 4 hits with the hull heavy bolters, and roll 2 ones on the wound rolls, you'd be able to re-roll both of those.
edit: i realise you are thinking at the "per weapon" level, but it applies to each hit with a weapon, not just one wound roll for each gun. if you had a pred that got 6 autocannon hits and 6 heavy bolter hits, and managed to roll 1 for every wound roll, you'd be allowed to re-roll all 12 wound rolls (obviously, you'd roll the autocannon, resolve it, then do the heavy bolters and resolve them, not both weapons at once).
If I may I take your idea and expand on it — is there any available FW tank that is all about fire, so we can also give it +1S from Flux and be a little less dependent on core rerolls?
Edit. Nevermind, wouldn’t work with the wording of Pyric Flux
odorofdeath wrote: Question, the cult of knowledge power says you can reroll "a wound roll of 1" for each "attack" made against the target unit. so if i shot that unit with a predator, i could reroll a wound roll of a 1 for each of it's weapons since they all make separate attacks right?
each individual hit/wound/save cycle is a separate "attack", as officially, you resolve each shot's results before starting the next one. so, yes, if you get, say, 4 hits with the hull heavy bolters, and roll 2 ones on the wound
rolls, you'd be able to re-roll both of those.
edit: i realise you are thinking at the "per weapon" level, but it applies to each hit with a weapon, not just one wound roll for each gun. if you had a pred that got 6 autocannon hits and 6 heavy bolter hits, and managed to roll 1 for every wound roll, you'd be allowed to re-roll all 12 wound rolls (obviously, you'd roll the autocannon, resolve it, then do the heavy bolters and resolve them, not both weapons at once).
ok, so took out a 1k list against my mates GK. i pretty much just ran what i had, he did the same, but the end scores were 36-64 in his favour.
I ran:
arhiman (paid for the WLT...for all the good it did him)
infernal master (warlord, extra pact relic armour)
10 rubrics
20 tzanngor
5 scarabs
shaman.
he had:
grand master in dreadknight
KALDOR DRAGO, MEME OF THE IMPERIUM!
2x 5 stike marines
4 paladins
termie apothecary.
basically it was the grand master. it managed to pull off a T1 charge onto my scarabs and Ahriman, then 1-shotted ahriman before he could cast a single spell (they'd moved up to take a ojective, he just stacked charge bonuses and got lucky on the roll to get the dread in on his 1st turn). suffice to say, the dreads 3++ saved him while ahrimans 3++ didnt. after that he skipped out of combat with the scarabs, basically absorbed all the witchfire and regular fire i could throw at him, then charged and tied down the rubics. he was eventually killed by a Perils of the warp, but not before he'd slaughtered all the rubics. my scarabs and the WL were stuck on a midfield objective, deepstrike charged by the paladins and killed over turns 3-4, and the tzanngor managed to get up the other flank, and even push the GK off a objective for a turn, but basically i was haemorrhaging units and he...wasnt. up until i was tabled, i had a slight lead on VP but he was able to camp all 4 objectives immediately after i died and score the 20 odd point lead he took.
1st time running a 1k list, and only 2nd proper matched play game i've ever done, so overall not a bad result, but my autopsy notes:
GK just seem to be a hard counter to TS. they have the DTW to reduce our casting to insignificance, as do we, but they have the melee to still deal damage to us in a way we cant reply to.
my 20 bird tzanngor squad lived long enough to get up the table.....but couldnt really do much when they got thier. they caused a 10VP swing in my favour form denying the objective, but couldn't actually hold it long enough to matter. I'd have done better to hold them back and just let them obsec the rear objective, or just run a 10 bird squad for that and use the points elsewhere.
i left my rubrics on the home objective, and this was a mistake, i tied 250 points of shooting to a position i couldn't really shoot well form, and one where they got charged and whittled down by a threat they just couldn't deal with. I'll need to get more and can run some MSU squads,
Arhiman did nothing of note in his short time on the field. I;d loaded him with witchfire spells to burniate, but he wasnt in range to cast on his turn and the dreadknight was able to make the charge form 18" thanks for move/advance/charge shenanigans, and i put his JUST to far forward to avoid being tagged.
scarabs did the most work, they were easily the best preforming unit. rites of coalesce easily regened 5 wounds in the first 2 turns, letting me ignore "chip" damage to them that might have whittled them down over time.
I burned though my CP in 2 turns flat. I'm normally one of those players who end up with quite a lot of CP in the bank at the end of the game, so either i went a bit spend crazy of tsons are CP hungry to the extreme.
but the problem was that dreadknight. quite simply, i did not have a answer to it. it can shoot better than my whole army, it could punch out any unit i pitted agianst it in melee, and had enough wounds to just sponge up witchfire. clearly, before i face these GK agian i need to find some AT firepower, something that can actaully HURT it. going into the game my plan was to use Twist of fate to deny his 3++, then hit him with enough high AP firepower to burn him away...but that spell was on ahriman....who never got to cast it.
Well, you know to position Ahriman more safely next time. Thousand Sons are definitely an army that's weaker at 1k points than 2k since you obviously have less cabal points to play with and very little room for things that aren't sorcerers.
I don't think you're going to find a solution for the Grand Master at 1k points better than stripping his invuln, it's a pretty skew unit at that army size.
I am learning the ropes of these 9th Ed dusty boys the hard way myself, after pulling models out that I hadn’t used in years I was excited to hear/see there was some good stuff to work with. I just came out of a tourney, have played against some pretty modern Ork and Drukhari lists regularly and also some out there bugger-off-style armies with double soul burner petard everywhere or fire Raptors lately, so this is my opinion from playing some hard stuff in the last month I guess.
The thing I’m noticing is the classic, do well at holding out for a turn or two and not having enough bodies to last past turn 3 against the best stuff every codex has to offer. Most of the little tricks and gimmicks in the Relic section are just that and I think you’ll see a lean into squeezing out more CP’s and the free teleport than anything else. Same as magic, the buffs are good and basically you rely on them being in place, so those very odd turns the one piece of your card castle doesn’t fall into place it can leave a huge opening for a wily opponent to step into. Our stratagems are great and do so many things, but CP’s go to flat 3 smite, perils of the warp protection and wrath of the wronged mostly, sometimes the -1D.
My list has devolved into trying to bring as many fast HQ’s as I can. Currently getting ready to use Ahriman, 2 x Exalteds all on discs and a winged prince. I have 15 Scarabs and they have been effective no matter what but I’m starting to think maybe I only need 10. I’ve been testing backfield Soulreaper Rubrics and warpflamer squads vs each other a lot and I think the backfield squads need to go. Warpflamer squads just project so much influence being on the table, and having 4x5 allows you to set two into the webway against Drukhari, which is pivotal I think. I have also slowly written Spawn and Tzaangors out in favour of Rhinos. They get a lot done, mostly blocking off lanes and chaffing.
You really need to out-chaff the chaff with TSons or you’ll never get to pick your targets with MW that need dying. Secondaries like engage on all fronts I think are bad because they force our low number unit army apart. I’ve been liking raise banners and strangle hold mostly, I’ll use the Umbralefic Crystal to jump on the 3rd objective and support it with the rhinos and all my fast characters.
Lately I’ve been thinking how to get cheaper units to camp, that have the speed to stay behind all of the obscuring terrain that’s so easy to find on tables in my area. The build I’m working on still has 200~ pts to spend and I’d love input from anybody who has been having similar results. I really think it’s these last few points and my secondary objectives getting straightened out that will turn my game around; something a bit more consistent to work with at least:
Patrol of Duplicity:
Ahriman on Disc
Exalted on Disc
3 x 5 Rubrics w/ 4 x Warpflamers
Patrol of Time:
Exalted on Disc
Daemon Prince
1 x 5 Rubrics w/ Soul reaper, Icon of Flame
2 x 5 Scarabs w/ Soul Reapers and Missiles
2 x Rhinos w/ combi-melta and havoc launcher
This list still has 193 points to use, literally 1 pt short of 2 x 10 Tzaangor and a set of 3 enlightened. So far, I haven’t found the guns on the Rhinos to be useful much, and for 30 points it might be worth shaving them. With those or any other points savings I could also grab another squad of terminators; I just really do think I need to be in more areas around the table, and basically just spending the whole game stopping the enemy from getting near my wizards while they pummel them with MW’s. Should I switch out the DP for an Infernal Master and boyfriend sorcerer? Maybe Cult of Magic instead of Time to really try and blow faces off? I’m chopping up a bunch of stuff to convert a few spawn too. I’ve loved the 3 x ectoplasma Cerberus pattern Forgefiend with the new rules but it doesn’t get to shoot very often, kind of the same as the terminators, it would be nice to be able to affect more interactions in a round than trading a 155 pt vehicle for 60 pts of hellions, but the threat of it is immense, maybe that and the 3 enlightened to round things out? Lots of options to still play through it feels like, even if it is only kicking around ideas with the last 5% of my choices that aren’t spoken for haha.
Runt Nosher wrote: I am learning the ropes of these 9th Ed dusty boys the hard way myself, after pulling models out that I hadn’t used in years I was excited to hear/see there was some good stuff to work with. I just came out of a tourney, have played against some pretty modern Ork and Drukhari lists regularly and also some out there bugger-off-style armies with double soul burner petard everywhere or fire Raptors lately, so this is my opinion from playing some hard stuff in the last month I guess.
The thing I’m noticing is the classic, do well at holding out for a turn or two and not having enough bodies to last past turn 3 against the best stuff every codex has to offer. Most of the little tricks and gimmicks in the Relic section are just that and I think you’ll see a lean into squeezing out more CP’s and the free teleport than anything else. Same as magic, the buffs are good and basically you rely on them being in place, so those very odd turns the one piece of your card castle doesn’t fall into place it can leave a huge opening for a wily opponent to step into. Our stratagems are great and do so many things, but CP’s go to flat 3 smite, perils of the warp protection and wrath of the wronged mostly, sometimes the -1D.
My list has devolved into trying to bring as many fast HQ’s as I can. Currently getting ready to use Ahriman, 2 x Exalteds all on discs and a winged prince. I have 15 Scarabs and they have been effective no matter what but I’m starting to think maybe I only need 10. I’ve been testing backfield Soulreaper Rubrics and warpflamer squads vs each other a lot and I think the backfield squads need to go. Warpflamer squads just project so much influence being on the table, and having 4x5 allows you to set two into the webway against Drukhari, which is pivotal I think. I have also slowly written Spawn and Tzaangors out in favour of Rhinos. They get a lot done, mostly blocking off lanes and chaffing.
You really need to out-chaff the chaff with TSons or you’ll never get to pick your targets with MW that need dying. Secondaries like engage on all fronts I think are bad because they force our low number unit army apart. I’ve been liking raise banners and strangle hold mostly, I’ll use the Umbralefic Crystal to jump on the 3rd objective and support it with the rhinos and all my fast characters.
Lately I’ve been thinking how to get cheaper units to camp, that have the speed to stay behind all of the obscuring terrain that’s so easy to find on tables in my area. The build I’m working on still has 200~ pts to spend and I’d love input from anybody who has been having similar results. I really think it’s these last few points and my secondary objectives getting straightened out that will turn my game around; something a bit more consistent to work with at least:
Lots of options to still play through it feels like, even if it is only kicking around ideas with the last 5% of my choices that aren’t spoken for haha.
I am using Chaos Spawn to help to bulk up my Tsons army. They have a lot of wounds and are a chore to chew through if you cast Weaver of Fates on them. I bring 10 in my army (2 units of 5 each). That's 40 T5 wounds for just 230 points. If you are running them from cover to cove, you probably don't even need weaver of fates on them until the one crucial round they get into combat. They move 7 inches, to they are pretty fast (and you would always advance them anyway because they got no shooting).
xerxeskingofking wrote: but the problem was that dreadknight. quite simply, i did not have a answer to it.
You need your Tzaangors to body block or screen out deepstrike and gate. They should be the first models you pick up, not a HQ. Losing Ahriman certainly doesn’t help but GK have a universal shrug at 5+ against mortals. So maybe it’s better to focus on support powers and debuffs, leverage the shooting phase.
But aside from that, are these lists even balanced? I don’t think the PL add up. That difference is magnified over points. I think you are playing almost 150pts down.
If you are going to rematch with those same models, and aren’t balancing the armies otherwise, take pure flamers on your Rubrics so you can fire Overwatch and Forewarning.
basically it was the grand master. it managed to pull off a T1 charge onto my scarabs and Ahriman, then 1-shotted ahriman before he could cast a single spell...
This should never have happened. You had plenty of screening units. If you let your two most important units get charged turn one you're going to have a bad time regardless of who you play against.
clearly, before i face these GK agian i need to find some AT firepower, something that can actaully HURT it. going into the game my plan was to use Twist of fate to deny his 3++, then hit him with enough high AP firepower to burn him away...but that spell was on ahriman....who never got to cast it.
This is a massive misconception. You don't need AT to kill a dreadknight banking on a Twist of Fate against an army that has lots of psychic defence is a recipe for disaster. You can make it undeniable, but then you are going to be falling behind on psychic objectives, not to mention it needs an 8 to cast so it only has a 58% chance of going off. Its short range is also problematic as it will mean you are always in deny range and are going to be punished if you don't kill the dreadknight.
Your list had only 8 cabal points which is going to be tough. Ideally you want 12 at 1k as it gives you enough to use Psychic Maelstrom and Malevolent Charge. Your list did have 7 casts which is ok. So with your current set up:
9 + 4d3. That's 17MW before super smites. 11.3MW after a 5++ against mortals. In practice you might fail to cast one of those smites and some might get denied. But if your opponent is throwing his Dreadknight forward you will still do a lot of damage.
You're not casting any buffs this turn. But that's the army, working out where to spend our three resources: Command Points, Cabal Points and Casts. Getting comfortable with these sorts of combos can make a big difference to the effectiveness of our psychic phase. It's not just cast a bunch of powers and hope you roll well (like our old codex in 8th). There's now an element of composing the right spell.
Let's assume things go badly and you only do 7 wounds, you should be able to finish it off with your shooting.
A unit of 5 scarab occults with Wrath of the Wronged will do 6-7W.
If you were running warpflamers you can have even more fun; 9 warpflamers with Wrath of the Wronged will average 7.87W against a dreadknight.
Anyway the point is we have anti tank built into our faction.
Runt Nosher wrote: Most of the little tricks and gimmicks in the Relic section are just that and I think you’ll see a lean into squeezing out more CP’s and the free teleport than anything else.
100% CP are so valuable for us. The only relics I'm using are on a Dilettante (prism of echos and aethenaean scroll) for a reliable Temporal Surge that can be cast at 12-18". Much harder to deny and allows me to have less power slots filled with Temporal Surge.
Our stratagems are great and do so many things, but CP’s go to flat 3 smite, perils of the warp protection and wrath of the wronged mostly, sometimes the -1D.
I've mostly stoped using the Ignore Peril stratagem in favour of using Temporal Manipulation to heal the damage, saves a bunch of CP (I do however still use it when rubric peril).
Warpflamer squads just project so much influence being on the table, and having 4x5 allows you to set two into the webway against Drukhari, which is pivotal I think.
Secondaries like engage on all fronts I think are bad because they force our low number unit army apart. I’ve been liking raise banners and strangle hold mostly...
I'm having the exact same experience. My most taken secondaries are: Raise the Banner, Strangle Hold, Warp Ritual, Psychic Interrogation, Grind Them Down, Wrath of Magnus, Mutate Landscape and depending on the list To the Last.
Yhea, I know I screwed up with ahriman, he wasn't the foremost person but he was able to make the charge on him and then concentrated his attention on him. It was 100% my mistake, and I know that I coulda/shoulda positioned him better, but oh well, it happened, I can only learn and move on.
I didn't post the full lists with all upgrades and extras, but we were both about 950 points, and it was a max stretch force for both of us throwing what we had on the table, so some of my choices were dictated by model availability rather than ideal composition. I had 10 cabal points to start as the pankenatic armour Grants one and I had a icon of flame on the rubrics as well.
I had plenty of screen bodies, but they were concentrated in one squad, which was a mistake. Next time I'll split them I two and use one to hold the rear and free the rubrics to move up, one to take the GM in DK charge. I definitely felt like I didn't have enough squads to do what I wanted to.
xerxeskingofking wrote: Yhea, I know I screwed up with ahriman, he wasn't the foremost person but he was able to make the charge on him and then concentrated his attention on him. It was 100% my mistake, and I know that I coulda/shoulda positioned him better, but oh well, it happened, I can only learn and move on...
It happens. In someways it's nice as you know where things went wrong, it's much worse when you lose and you have no idea what you could have done differently. This codex is also a real puzzle box and this army doesn't play itself so it can take a while before you start seeing wins.
Thanks for sharing your experience btw. It's always great to hear how other thousand sons players are doing!
Crusade game against Space wolves. I got demolished, however, once it looked like he was going to win on primaries I focused on Crusade Agendas instead of trying to come back to win, so the overall score was not really relevant. My take away from this game is in line with xerxes experience with the Dreadknight, we have to be careful when dealing with fast moving close combat units. The Space wolf player also caught me with a charge from his wolf cavalry, and wolfkin. I cast smite from just about max range, but he was able to close on me fast and kill my psykers as I did not screen them right because I was trying to get greedy with the MWs. I think if we can't concentrate enough MW to kill fast moving units like wolf cavalry, jump packer, dreadknights etc., it is better to wait a turn back and let them get closer to ensure concentration of MW to kill them (plus shooting).
My other take away is Rubrics and Scarabs are very hard to kill with D1 weapons, regardless of any how powerful those weapons are otherwise. My Rubrics survived a whole bunch of attacks from his lighting claw jump back guys, with full re-rolls due to the SW strat.
I then played a 2000 point game against dark angles. My list was as follows:
Magnus, Exalted Sorcerer, DP with wings, Infernal Master, 9 x Rubrics with bolters and reaper, 5 x rubrics with bolters reaper, icon, 5 x warpflamer rubrics, 10 x Tgors, Tgor Shaman, 7 x Scarab terminators, 2 x hellbrute with LC/ML.
He played greenwing, with all primaris with a bunch of the different infantry (like the guys with heavy rifles, some plasma, etc.) a bunch of support characters, 2 x primaris dreadnoughts with plasma cannons, and a big squad of the jump guys with the pistols, and a small squad of the jump guys with plasma.
I played cult of time which was a first for me. I ended up losing 69-67. What cost me the game was I picked the secondary "octarious data" which I only was able to do once, so 0 points. Literally any other secondary I would have got 3 points at least and won. I also had mutate landscape and engage which I scored like 9-12 on each of those.
We played on a board that was preset, and was heavy ruins so it was basically a city fight. Magnus and the terminators took one flank, with the hellbrutes and the rest was on the other. I maxed primary points, but he maxed Abhor the Witch, and his dark angle hold the rear objective one.
Overall I ended up killing almost all of his units save a few characters hiding in the back. My thoughts on the game:
Magnus is fun, but not competitive. He did survive the whole game, that -1 damage really does help him compared to previously, but quite frankly, his offensive output is not worth 450. Yes on paper he can do crap tons of MWs. But, in real games there are going to be times when he wiffs bad. I did not get a super-smite the whole game with him, even re-rolling to try. One time I failed his smite completely and the other times I rolled a 1 or a 2 for damage. I also had a round of combat where he rolled 6 1's to hit. His problem is that if he wiffs, that is 450 points wiffing. Also, he still only has 3 casts (unless you use a command point which in our army there is a lot of competition for). One will almost always be Glamer on himself, so really he has two casts. So what is that, his smite plus doombolt? Then he has no shooting attack at all, so does nothing in the shooting phase, and his close combat is good-ish but if you fail even just a few hits or wounds, the damage output really falls. And my opponent really did not have anything really scary to shoot him and he still only survived with 1 wound left and I healed him twice. I would never take him in a competitive list, only for fun.
I did not care for cult of time. Personally I like the maneuverability of duplicity, plus the WL trait that lets you redeploy. Bringing back one terminator a round was good (I brought back 3 over all), but with no Magnus I would just take more squads and then the time trait is wasted if losing models from multiple squads. Also in the game I played being able to re-deploy with units would have allowed me more opportunities to deny him primary.
I am liking the big squad of Rubrics with bolters in the backfield. They are hard to shift to protect the rear objective, with the spell that increases range they have a good threat range (or cast support actions), and you can actually get a bit of mileage out of the +1 shot strat if you really need to put a few extra wounds on a target. I am also liking the 5 man flamer squad. If I had the models I would probably only go one big squad in the back, and then 2 x 5 warpflamer squads.
For Scarabs, I am not a fan of the big unit. I would rather have several 5 man, so they can attack on many different fronts, and then -1d is only 1CP which makes a huge difference. Also 5 of them are more than a match for many units in this game, and being objective secured really allows them to do the business in the backfield trying to deny your opponent primary points.
For secondaries I don't like the normal action ones. We don't have enough units on the board to make it reliable to do the actions across different parts of the battlefield as most of our units need to be shooting every turn. I do like engage however, with duplicity. I think I am going to try more of the kill stuff secondaries. I also find the suggestions of using Strangle Hold intriguing, as that fits with the strategy of tying to deny your opponent as much primary as possible.
Anyway these are just some thoughts based on my games, I hope they are helpful. I am going to get a lot of games in this weekend hopefully (wife is out of town) so hopefully I will have some more information to provide next week.
This one feels really light, but the Sicaran seems threatening enough to attract the attention and makes the opponent to come to me, where the Hellbrutes can crush face.
The army that I'm struggling to listbuild respond, are those Grey Knights 5x Dreadknights... I know a ton of GK players playing such lists. It's so bad, I may have to resurrect my Drukhari list.
This one feels really light, but the Sicaran seems threatening enough to attract the attention and makes the opponent to come to me, where the Hellbrutes can crush face.
The army that I'm struggling to listbuild respond, are those Grey Knights 5x Dreadknights... I know a ton of GK players playing such lists. It's so bad, I may have to resurrect my Drukhari list.
If you are using Volkite Contemptors I would recommend squeezing in an Exalted Sorcerer somewhere with the Oratory relic (lets core ignore hit, wound, and damage modifiers). My Understanding is Contemptors are core, so they would benefit from the relic then you could cast Presage on one and use the -1 AP strat on him for a ton of damage. I was thinking of this, but I don't own the contemptors.
This one feels really light, but the Sicaran seems threatening enough to attract the attention and makes the opponent to come to me, where the Hellbrutes can crush face.
The army that I'm struggling to listbuild respond, are those Grey Knights 5x Dreadknights... I know a ton of GK players playing such lists. It's so bad, I may have to resurrect my Drukhari list.
If you are using Volkite Contemptors I would recommend squeezing in an Exalted Sorcerer somewhere with the Oratory relic (lets core ignore hit, wound, and damage modifiers). My Understanding is Contemptors are core, so they would benefit from the relic then you could cast Presage on one and use the -1 AP strat on him for a ton of damage. I was thinking of this, but I don't own the contemptors.
Good call on the Enlightened Orrery relic... I can give that to the Shaman or Infernal Master.
EDIT #2: Actually, the Orrey doesn't seem like a great fit. That relic is good for close combat TS lists as the CORE units need to be within 6" of the targeted unit.
EDIT: I got forgeworld Word Bearers that I'm going to paint 'em as Sons.... I don't like the actual TS contemptor models (those egyptian's helmets are bizarre). The Word Bearer ones looks more "sorcery" to me with the book on the shoulders and would look great in blue and gold.
xeen wrote: I thought the relic needed to be within 6 inches of bearer of the relic?
Transcribing from my book...
At the start of each of your Command phases, you can select one enemy unit that is visible to the bearer. If you do, then until the end of the turn the bearer has the following ability: 'Fated Doom (Aura)': While a friendly THOUSAND SONS CORE unit is within 6" of the bearer, each time a model in that unit makes an attack against the enemy unit you just selected....
xeen wrote: I thought the relic needed to be within 6 inches of bearer of the relic?
Transcribing from my book...
At the start of each of your Command phases, you can select one enemy unit that is visible to the bearer. If you do, then until the end of the turn the bearer has the following ability: 'Fated Doom (Aura)': While a friendly THOUSAND SONS CORE unit is within 6" of the bearer, each time a model in that unit makes an attack against the enemy unit you just selected....
Yea, you can use with shooting. You select one enemy, then the aura kicks in. If the unit is "within 6" of the bearer". So you can put the Contemptors together, with the Exalted in the middle, and the exalted picks an enemy unit, and as long as all the contemptors are within 6" of the exalted they will ignore modifiers against the selected unit. They will also be able to re-roll 1's.
Hey guys, my first post here after years of lurking!
I'm liking the idea of a Sicarian Battle Tank backed up by an Infernal Master with Presage and Malefic Maelstrom and the possibility for extra AP via Strat. When I compare it to a Leviathan with double Storm Cannons though, I'm having a hard time deciding which i like more. Defensively they are exactly the same, with the exception of the Leviathan having -1dmg, making it way more survivable (both have access to Smoke Screen for -1 to hit as well). The Sicarian is significantly faster on the top bracket, but as it takes damage the difference (to a similiarly damaged Leviathan) is minimal. The Leviathan is smaller and can manouver in tighter spaces, and also wins out in melee capability, should it get charged. Shooting wise you basically get:
So just the Storm Cannons on the Leviathan already puts out more shots in total than the Sicarian HBs + Cannon, all of them at the same S as the Cannons 6 good shots. And then you add the Volkites. Do you feel like the extra -1AP and +1D from the Sicarians 6 good shots outweighs the superior number of high S shots, or are the extra 30pts worth it to use a Leviathan instead?
Personaly I don't own any of the models (no FW at all) but I have long been itching for a FW dread (or a few..). I also like the look of the Sicarian though, and could definately see myself getting one. Gamewise I'm mostly facing Tyranids (in TTS, havent had a physical game for the duration of the pandemic), and specifically against them I would definately prefer the Leviathan for the number of high S shots to sneak through their numerous invulns. I'm more interested in what you would prefer as more of a TAC choice.
xeen wrote: I thought the relic needed to be within 6 inches of bearer of the relic?
Transcribing from my book...
At the start of each of your Command phases, you can select one enemy unit that is visible to the bearer. If you do, then until the end of the turn the bearer has the following ability: 'Fated Doom (Aura)': While a friendly THOUSAND SONS CORE unit is within 6" of the bearer, each time a model in that unit makes an attack against the enemy unit you just selected....
Yea, you can use with shooting. You select one enemy, then the aura kicks in. If the unit is "within 6" of the bearer". So you can put the Contemptors together, with the Exalted in the middle, and the exalted picks an enemy unit, and as long as all the contemptors are within 6" of the exalted they will ignore modifiers against the selected unit. They will also be able to re-roll 1's.
Hmmm I don't know where I got the idea that I also needed a TS unit within the enemy too for it to kick in.
+ELITE1+
10 Scarab Occult Terminators [21 PL, 1 Cabal Points, 445pts]:
– aspiring sorcerer: inferno combi bolter, force staff. Power = temporal surge
– legion command: rites of coalescence
– 2x terminators with soulreaper cannons and kopesh and hellfyre missiles
– 2x terminator w inferno combi bolters and kopesh
– 5x terminator w inferno combi bolters and kopesh
+TRANSPORT1+
Chaos Rhino [4 PL, 80pts]
+TRANSPORT2+
Chaos Rhino [4 PL, 80pts] 2000 total PTS
the goonhammer guys take on the list:
Spoiler:
Moving onto our second event brings us to the greatest triumph for the Thousand Sons from the weekend, and with easily the most unusual of their lists. Many of the successful builds are trying lots of different techy combinations of units but not this one. As befits an inexorable legion of identical, soulless automata, this army just throws five identical full-sized Rubricae units onto the table, all with the Temporal Surge power (the new Tsons name for Warptime) and a single soulreaper cannon. A couple of units can ride forward in Rhinos for some early protection against enemy mortals or guns, there’s a full-sized Scarab Occult unit to act as a central anchor (leaning on Unwavering Phalanx to soak shooting) and a couple of characters hiding behind them throwing out pain (from Ahriman) and buffs (from the Sorceror) and that’s it!
So how does it function? Well, with a combination of grinding damage and durability and mobile ObSec everywhere. Thanks to being Cult of Time, this army has access to two different ways to stick models back into its units (Warped Regeneration and Time Flux), both of which are particularly great when deployed on Scarab Occult Terminators in particular. Recognising that, the Terminator squad is set up with the Rites of Coalescence upgrade to ensure that in the window where Regeneration can be used, they’re never going to have a wounded model and thus always get a whole one back. Taking down this squad in one go is extremely difficult, especially with Glamour and Weaver applied, and if you fail the squad will almost always bring back two full models, as they can rack the smite Warp Charge up to 9 then use a Cabalistic Ritual to auto-cast at the threshold needed for the Stratagem, while a friendly caster applies Flux. If the opponent (probably sensibly) decides to shoot somewhere else? There are going to be casualties somewhere, so this army is going to pick up huge value from these abilities regardless, which on top of just being straight up good defensively makes it a pain to shift.
It’s not idle on the offence while that’s happening either – Mortal Wounds and D1 shots with AP will kill anything eventually, and this army has lots of both. All these durable, grindy units are also ObSec (including the Scarabs) and have some mobility tools as a final trick to help them dominate the game – Risen Rubricae to start a unit in some sort of safe spot mid-table out the gate, Temporal Surge everywhere for extra movement, and the Umbralific Crystal when more drastic measures are needed, or there’s a flank that’s just going to crumble in the face of the Scarabs.
All told, this list is far, far nastier than you might think if you haven’t yet re-adjusted your evaluation of Rubricae, and has a bunch of tricks up its sleeve to really get the most out of them. It’s also notable that Liam took it to first place by beating Grey Knights in the final, as currently 40Kstats has Grey Knights as heavily favoured in that matchup. With the Knights of Titan making the slightly bigger metagame splash, a Thousand Sons build that can push back against them is going to be extra valuable, so congratulations to Liam for his success with probably the most unique build out of any we’re looking at this week.
Wow that is a cool list, and I am glad it won. Temporal Surge on everyone with time seems like a good idea as it provides the mobility of Duplicity with the resilience of Time. It is also interesting to see only two HQ units. He is still generating a lot of Cabal points from the Rubrics. I would love to try this, but don't have the Rubrics for it.
+ELITE1+
10 Scarab Occult Terminators [21 PL, 1 Cabal Points, 445pts]:
– aspiring sorcerer: inferno combi bolter, force staff. Power = temporal surge
– legion command: rites of coalescence
– 2x terminators with soulreaper cannons and kopesh and hellfyre missiles
– 2x terminator w inferno combi bolters and kopesh
– 5x terminator w inferno combi bolters and kopesh
+TRANSPORT1+
Chaos Rhino [4 PL, 80pts]
+TRANSPORT2+
Chaos Rhino [4 PL, 80pts] 2000 total PTS
the goonhammer guys take on the list:
Spoiler:
Moving onto our second event brings us to the greatest triumph for the Thousand Sons from the weekend, and with easily the most unusual of their lists. Many of the successful builds are trying lots of different techy combinations of units but not this one. As befits an inexorable legion of identical, soulless automata, this army just throws five identical full-sized Rubricae units onto the table, all with the Temporal Surge power (the new Tsons name for Warptime) and a single soulreaper cannon. A couple of units can ride forward in Rhinos for some early protection against enemy mortals or guns, there’s a full-sized Scarab Occult unit to act as a central anchor (leaning on Unwavering Phalanx to soak shooting) and a couple of characters hiding behind them throwing out pain (from Ahriman) and buffs (from the Sorceror) and that’s it!
All told, this list is far, far nastier than you might think if you haven’t yet re-adjusted your evaluation of Rubricae, and has a bunch of tricks up its sleeve to really get the most out of them. It’s also notable that Liam took it to first place by beating Grey Knights in the final, as currently 40Kstats has Grey Knights as heavily favoured in that matchup. With the Knights of Titan making the slightly bigger metagame splash, a Thousand Sons build that can push back against them is going to be extra valuable, so congratulations to Liam for his success with probably the most unique build out of any we’re looking at this week.
I think what's also amazing is that he beat Drukhari, sisters of battle on his way to the final match, and in his final match, he faced and beat pretty comprehensively a mean Grey Knights army! (And statistically, Tsons seem to have a really bad win rate against Grey Knights). I guess this can't be said enough, bring enough Rubric Marines, and don't overtake too many characters. I mean, his list had literally only 2 characters!
Great podcast! I listened to it on spotify! I have to say, this also reinforces my view that Rhinos are great for a Tsons list despite the fact that we can only transport rubric marines in them and nothing else. In the podcast, Liam was saying how the Rhino enabled his rubric marines to have an effective move of at least 15 inches, if not more. That is actually massive when you consider that rubrics are obsec and immune to morale and not easy to kill too. So, he could disembark 10 rubric marines from a Rhino 3 inches, move 6 inches, temporal surge another 6 inches for a total of 15 inches and still get to cast his psychic, shoot and charge. And 10 rubric marines are 20 wounds ! lol. You would never expect that our "slow" infantry can move that fast, but they can and this is what distinguishes us from Death Guard.
I had a recent game where I disembarked my rubrics from a Rhino, followed by a move + advance and that was enough to get me onto an objective already.
Hey ! So, last time I tried the Guided by Whispers + Warpweave Mantle combo and it pretty much made my Exalted on disc Warlord uncatchable in melee. Sadly it felt like my warlord still wasn't worth it on the VP side. So I thought: why not try to max out a psychic secondary using Dilettante and Chronos Tutorum to give him Seeker of Shadows ?
So my question would be: Should I go for Interrogation, Psychic ritual or Mutate landscape ? Which one would be the easiest to max out ?
DreadfullyHopeful wrote: Hey ! So, last time I tried the Guided by Whispers + Warpweave Mantle combo and it pretty much made my Exalted on disc Warlord uncatchable in melee. Sadly it felt like my warlord still wasn't worth it on the VP side. So I thought: why not try to max out a psychic secondary using Dilettante and Chronos Tutorum to give him Seeker of Shadows ?
So my question would be: Should I go for Interrogation, Psychic ritual or Mutate landscape ? Which one would be the easiest to max out ?
Honestly, I feel that most of our characters are too valuable to risk being charged in melee or being shot at. And melee wise, only the DP is worth it in melee, unless you are facing a big unit of 1W infantry, in which case our infernal bolters would have done the job from afar. DP can be sent on suicide fly in to kill a key character, or to counter charge and hold up an enemy advance that risk breaking through. So, best strategy rather than to equip a Exalted on disk for escape is to just keep that character behind a safe big bloc of Occults Termies and then not have to worry about being charged at all.
I would always try and take either Psychic Ritual or Mutate Landscape depending on the map. On a 4 objective or 5 objective map, Psychic ritual is probably better. On a 6 objective map, definitely Mutate Landscape. You can only either take one or the other, so you can't take both. Because both are warpwcraft.
Don't take mental interrogate. I thought that would have been good against a grey knights or Tsons matchup. But mental interrogate has to be done by your characters only, and you can only do it on enemy characters. Psyker units like our rubrics, Occults and all the other grey knight units don't count. So its a trap, don't take it. A good player just needs to hide all his characters behind obscuring and you will never get to use it. Probably only worth considering against an army like Slanaash daemons horde with lots of big greater Slaanash daemons. Even then, I don't know. If all his characters charge into combat and none survive until turn 4 or 5, then there is nothing left to interrogate either. All in all, I would never take it against a good player.
I was just going to mention this also. Even Wrath of Magnus can be mitigated by a good player. Its not that gauranteed 15 VP people assume it will be. You have to look at your opponent's list too. What if he is taking a vehicle heavy list? So only the vehicles are in front and everything is either in a transport or hiding at the back behind obscuring. Even with cult of duplicity, if he screens well enough, you may not be able to teleport to the rear to witchfire some models while in front, its all vehicles like transports or dreadnaughts that might also be hiding behind obscuring too. So you spend a ton of witchfire killing just one vehicle. Also, turn 1 if you go first, everything is hiding behind obscuring, it might be impossible to get within range to witchfire something for that secondary. I played against a really good player who kept his dreadnaughts and redemptors in front (that were using obscuring terrain well too and he screened well at the back too. Even with cult of duplicity teleportation, it was a huge struggle to kill even two models each turn. I ended up suiciding my DP just so that I could charge it in and assassinate his librarian so that instead of 2 models, I just needed to kill 1 model each turn to get an assured 3 VP. Anyway, that game made me realise even wrath of magnus can be a trap. Its not that sure 15 points people seem to think it is. You have to look at your opponent's list and imagine what how he will play it.
The only use case for Interrogation imo is against armies with multiple big monster characters that need to move forward to do their job and that you don't expect to kill quickly. Even then I'm doubtful it'd score better than PR/ML.
Arachnofiend wrote: The only use case for Interrogation imo is against armies with multiple big monster characters that need to move forward to do their job and that you don't expect to kill quickly. Even then I'm doubtful it'd score better than PR/ML.
There are quite a few maps with 6 objectives. So mutate landscape is often the best choice. Its so good. Its much better than DG's spread the sickness. For one thing, you don't take mortal wounds when you do it. Second thing, you can always force it through with cabal points even against a deny heavy army.
Most key, you can initiate mutate landscape even though there are enemy units on that objective. So, lets say there is a point, your opponent has a unit of obsec on it. You can still move a rubric marine squad onto the objective, cast mutate landscape and you will still get the point. Then blow the enemy obsec unit off that point and now you control it for primary VP too. Or let's say turn 5. You have mutated the easy 4 objectives in your own deploeyment and no mand's land. You can fly in a exalted sorceror on disk, a flying DP, or cheapest, fly in an enlightened shaman on to his point in his deployment zone, then cast mutate landscape, and its 15 VP in the bag. You don't care at that point if he kills your character.
To be honest I really don't think the list is competitive in the slightest (competitive in the sense that the objective n°1 is to win) but I really like the Whisper Mantle combo. And I assure you that an Exalted on disc flanked by a bunch of Enlightened Tzaangors with bows and spears can be a right pain in the opponent's side, or at least demand a bit of resources to be dealt with. All the while attracting attention away from the "main force". 12" fast flying units that can wrack points with engage and snag off badly secured objectives are not to be trifled with !
Now, as for Interrogation. I hadn't even caught on that you needed LOS to do the action. It does make it far harder to pull off. I also saw that I had completely forgotten about Pierce the Veil. But to have a Psycker 6" away from the opponent's edge of the board AND from his units seems like a big ask. Especially if you must do it 4 times total. (Maybe it's doable with a Tzaangor Shaman in addition ?). But the best choice definitely look like Mutate or Ritual.
Pierce is for sure the worst of the psychic objectives, it has way too many failure points to be remotely reliable. I agree with Elden basically that you should default to Mutate first, then if the map is bad for that objective you take Psychic Ritual.
And one 
