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So, now that we have entered the era of Psykerhammer, do Thousand Sons deserve a second look?

They add a few more Warp Charges to the tally, which is a nice bonus, and more chances to roll powers now that Psychic Focus doesn't lock them into crappy Tzeentch powers. Each squad in a new chance to get Molten Beam, Perfect Timing or Invisibility or what have you. And sacrificing an Aspiring Sorcerer to bring in a Lord of Change or Bloodthirster is not a bad deal. Their ML of 1 doesn't mean they can't cast the big spells, And if you have a Tzeentch sorcerer tagging along, them and their ride get Objective Secured.

Ahriman also gets more fun as he no longer has to waste one of his power slots. He gets Tzeentch's Whistlefart for free, sure, but can still roll for 4 powers to buff things. Having him in a 1kSons squad with Prescience and Foreboding can make for some nasty shooting, and piling Endurance and Foreboding on them when expecting fire or assault can make them insanely durable.

The wording of the CSM book is such that you must roll on the aligned table. Chaos psychic focus doesn't roll so you still haven't satisfied that requirement and still must roll on the table.

The Chaos codex states RAW:

If the Psyker has a Mark of Chaos, or is a Daemon of a particular Chaos God, they must roll at least one, and may roll up to half, of their powers on the table that corresponds to their patron deity

The Aspiring Sorcerer in the Thousand Sons squad must physically roll at least one power from the Tzeentch Discipline.

What this now means is that he will either roll (1-2) Boon of Mutation, (3-4) Doombolt or (5-6) Breath of Chaos (as he could of done before) but now he automatically gets Tzeentch's Firestorm as well due to Psychic Focus (or what-ever they're calling the mono-discipline bonus)



That is a nice little addition, but while they giveth with one hand, they taketh with another. Should you peril, you risk blowing up a load of your elite rubric marines along with the sorcerer. The negatives out-weigh the benefits IMO.



As for Ahriman. Having no way to re-roll failed Psychic tests (no spell familiar... such a major oversight) and no save against wounds taken from perils makes him a guaranteed casualty - an expensive one at that.



I'm seriously worried by this new rule book

You can still FNP them, if that matters. Heck FNP even includes the beforehand "loophole" in FNP being used on wounds that dont cause ID but prevent any saves.

However you still cant take it against the Perils #1 result if you fail the test, since thats not a wound thats a straight up "He's dead Jim" result even with EW lol.

 Vineheart01 wrote:
You can still FNP them, if that matters. Heck FNP even includes the beforehand "loophole" in FNP being used on wounds that dont cause ID but prevent any saves.

However you still cant take it against the Perils #1 result if you fail the test, since thats not a wound thats a straight up "He's dead Jim" result even with EW lol.

That's the problem though, Ahriman and the 1K Sons Sorcerers don't get FNP or any save at all against perils. It literally is a case of suicide to use the powers

Saying something is useless because if it perils, when you're rolling single charge powers, and then only if you roll a 1 on a separate D6 after this somewhat unlikely occurrence is kind of dubious. Especially as they also have to be wounded, and have their invulnerable save against the additional St6Ap1 hits. You're just as likely to become mega-sorcerers for a turn.

I know the local 1ksons players is quite excited by the changes, though he's planning on using 5 man 1ksons units to maximize on warp charges and individually weak, but useful in-number/context Tzeentch powers, rather than what he used to do with 20 man blobs with Ahriman and an additional sorcerer using Crimson Slaughter rules to get divination, as that is also no longer needed.

Perils? Just want to point out that there's a 15% chance each time you peril on Ahriman that he transforms into Ultraman. It's also impossible to Peril on a Warp 1 power if you only use a single dice so spamming sorcerers with lots of powers can drain your opponent's DtW pool fast and still let you cast stuff.

 Wulfmar wrote:
The Chaos codex states RAW:

If the Psyker has a Mark of Chaos, or is a Daemon of a particular Chaos God, they must roll at least one, and may roll up to half, of their powers on the table that corresponds to their patron deity

Actually the 6th ed Codex: Chaos Space Marine says...
"A Psyker with the mark of Tzeentch must GENERATE at least one of his powers from the Discipline of Tzeentch."

The 7th ed The Rules says...
"If a Psyker has a mark of chaos or is the daemon of a particular chaos god that model automatically knows the Primaris power of the discipline that corresponds to their patron deity, in addition to any powers they know."

Now it cat be argued that by taking the mark of Tzeentch, Tzeentch's Firestorm is automatically GENERATED for the Psyker, and that Psyker if they are, for example mastery level 1, can roll on, say, malific, he only gets the power. In other words Chaos Psyker's never get psychic focus, they get Chaos Psychic Focus.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also you only perils on a double 6, except on malific and sanctic. A spell familiar will get you out of that bind.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I'm sorry let me rephrase. Chaos Psyker's with a mark of chaos never get psychic focus, they get Chaos Psychic Focus instead.

no, becaue you can get way more psycic powers for the points by taking unmarked librarians.... and cultists for ablative wounds, points to what you get is still lame.

sadly

Ok after obsessing about this all evening I have come to a profound conclusion.

Merriam-Webster defines generate as "to produce (something) or cause (something) to be produced"

No where in that definition does it say random. So, when a Chaos Psyker takes a mark of chaos, he does NOT have to roll for a power on the appropriate discipline table. He GENERATES the Primaris power appropriate discipline table when buys the mark of chaos.

I'm not sure why many quote pg 70 'must roll one power from...' as definitive when the exact same restriction is described elsewhere (pg 30) as only 'must generate one power from...'. Its inconsistent within the book because these terms used to be synonymous, now they aren't. It could go either way but knowing GW and CSM probably not in 1kSons favor. They will be stuck on the Tzeentch powers and be just as useless as before. Note that they are waaay too expensive to spam for WC dice like other armies do. Ahriman is pretty boned for doing anything other than casting witchfires; pretty lack luster for his price tag. Funny how the most powerful Astartes psyker is a schlub on the table top.

Last weekend I played my 1850pts Thousand sons army against imperial knights with a very small contingent of guard....
And I won. We played one of the maelstrom of war missions. I fully expected my 4 hq sorcerers and 4 thousand sons units to be obliterated by the third turn against 4 imperial knights and two guard tank units. However summoning saved me. Every objective I claimed was with summoned daemons. It was a close game. 9vp to 7vp.

Drdustynutts wrote:
Last weekend I played my 1850pts Thousand sons army against imperial knights with a very small contingent of guard....
And I won. We played one of the maelstrom of war missions. I fully expected my 4 hq sorcerers and 4 thousand sons units to be obliterated by the third turn against 4 imperial knights and two guard tank units. However summoning saved me. Every objective I claimed was with summoned daemons. It was a close game. 9vp to 7vp.

my hat goes off to you, sir

Do you know that you peril on all doubles if you summon daemons with csm and not just double 6-s? Unless you have a crimson slaughter artifact that makes your psycher daemon.

To cast a 3-wc power you need at least 7+ dice for a ~70-80% chance of sucksess. That's gona be 100% perils. You're gona kill your psychers faster than your enemy kills them.

I played a 1750 CSM mono tzeentch-army consisting largely of 1k sons with a small allied tzeentch demons attachment, against a CSM mono nurgle-army, with almost exactly the same amunt of allied demons (nurgle in his case, of course.)

The dice gods were favouring Tzeentch to the ludicrous extent where I overwatched with 4 bolters on his kitted warlord daemon prince and did 2 wounds, he failed to save both, killing it on the charge as it was already wounded.

This was only one of MANY situations where I outrolled him.
I completely shut down what little magic he had, as I had 3-4 times as many dice as he did.

And I still lost. Not by a hair either. I lost by several leagues.
I lost because with all said and done, I just couldn't do enough damage to him, even with almost all my weapons managing to bear down on him to their maximum capacity, my damage just didn't stack up to how much he could take. In the end, he just outlasted me.

Still a great battle, but Tzeentch still stands no chance when compared to Nurgle.

The dice gods were favouring Tzeentch to the ludicrous extent where I overwatched with 4 bolters on his kitted warlord daemon prince and did 2 wounds, he failed to save both, killing it on the charge as it was already wounded.

How did you overwatch with SnP on the thousand sons?

Maybe those were simple marines?

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:

The dice gods were favouring Tzeentch to the ludicrous extent where I overwatched with 4 bolters on his kitted warlord daemon prince and did 2 wounds, he failed to save both, killing it on the charge as it was already wounded.

How did you overwatch with SnP on the thousand sons?

By forgetting that SnP affects overwatch.
Well, my group isn't very serious. We make a lot of mistakes.

So I should have been in an even worse position.
Is there any beneficial reason why the Sons would want SNP? I mean we don't have the option of anything bigger than a bolter.
It allows us to fire bolters and charge, right?

Thousand sons still seem viable. My friend uses them and they are (normally) my first target... AP3 rounds make my army cry, mostly. I still don't know their points cost though. So I may have to retract it if they're ridiculous (like 400 for 5 + sorc)

 Purifier wrote:
I played a 1750 CSM mono tzeentch-army consisting largely of 1k sons with a small allied tzeentch demons attachment, against a CSM mono nurgle-army, with almost exactly the same amunt of allied demons (nurgle in his case, of course.)

The dice gods were favouring Tzeentch to the ludicrous extent where I overwatched with 4 bolters on his kitted warlord daemon prince and did 2 wounds, he failed to save both, killing it on the charge as it was already wounded.

This was only one of MANY situations where I outrolled him.
I completely shut down what little magic he had, as I had 3-4 times as many dice as he did.

And I still lost. Not by a hair either. I lost by several leagues.
I lost because with all said and done, I just couldn't do enough damage to him, even with almost all my weapons managing to bear down on him to their maximum capacity, my damage just didn't stack up to how much he could take. In the end, he just outlasted me.

Still a great battle, but Tzeentch still stands no chance when compared to Nurgle.

Sorry, but reading this makes me think you overwatched with Thousand Sons.
Never mind: Answered before I could post it.

 Ond Angel wrote:
Thousand sons still seem viable. My friend uses them and they are (normally) my first target... AP3 rounds make my army cry, mostly. I still don't know their points cost though. So I may have to retract it if they're ridiculous (like 400 for 5 + sorc)

 Purifier wrote:
I played a 1750 CSM mono tzeentch-army consisting largely of 1k sons with a small allied tzeentch demons attachment, against a CSM mono nurgle-army, with almost exactly the same amunt of allied demons (nurgle in his case, of course.)

The dice gods were favouring Tzeentch to the ludicrous extent where I overwatched with 4 bolters on his kitted warlord daemon prince and did 2 wounds, he failed to save both, killing it on the charge as it was already wounded.

This was only one of MANY situations where I outrolled him.
I completely shut down what little magic he had, as I had 3-4 times as many dice as he did.

And I still lost. Not by a hair either. I lost by several leagues.
I lost because with all said and done, I just couldn't do enough damage to him, even with almost all my weapons managing to bear down on him to their maximum capacity, my damage just didn't stack up to how much he could take. In the end, he just outlasted me.

Still a great battle, but Tzeentch still stands no chance when compared to Nurgle.

Sorry, but reading this makes me think you overwatched with Thousand Sons.

See above. I did.

 Purifier wrote:

 Ond Angel wrote:
Thousand sons still seem viable. My friend uses them and they are (normally) my first target... AP3 rounds make my army cry, mostly. I still don't know their points cost though. So I may have to retract it if they're ridiculous (like 400 for 5 + sorc)

 Purifier wrote:
I played a 1750 CSM mono tzeentch-army consisting largely of 1k sons with a small allied tzeentch demons attachment, against a CSM mono nurgle-army, with almost exactly the same amunt of allied demons (nurgle in his case, of course.)

The dice gods were favouring Tzeentch to the ludicrous extent where I overwatched with 4 bolters on his kitted warlord daemon prince and did 2 wounds, he failed to save both, killing it on the charge as it was already wounded.

This was only one of MANY situations where I outrolled him.
I completely shut down what little magic he had, as I had 3-4 times as many dice as he did.

And I still lost. Not by a hair either. I lost by several leagues.
I lost because with all said and done, I just couldn't do enough damage to him, even with almost all my weapons managing to bear down on him to their maximum capacity, my damage just didn't stack up to how much he could take. In the end, he just outlasted me.

Still a great battle, but Tzeentch still stands no chance when compared to Nurgle.

Sorry, but reading this makes me think you overwatched with Thousand Sons.

See above. I did.

Yeah, I saw that literally after I posted my reply.

 Purifier wrote:

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:

The dice gods were favouring Tzeentch to the ludicrous extent where I overwatched with 4 bolters on his kitted warlord daemon prince and did 2 wounds, he failed to save both, killing it on the charge as it was already wounded.

How did you overwatch with SnP on the thousand sons?

By forgetting that SnP affects overwatch.
Well, my group isn't very serious. We make a lot of mistakes.

So I should have been in an even worse position.
Is there any beneficial reason why the Sons would want SNP? I mean we don't have the option of anything bigger than a bolter.
It allows us to fire bolters and charge, right?

Yep, you can shoot and charge. I've had some sucksess in fun games with them due to 4++ and fearless. First they killed a vanguard vet squad thanks to bolters + mellee cleanup and than they tarpitted a dreadnought for the rest of the game. But they're nowhere near competitive or at least ballanced. Most things they do - regular chaos marines do better and for cheaper and marines ain't considered good either - mediocre at best. The only good thing is fearless that's expensive for regular marines. Besides, the icon often gets sniped out.

[quote=Do you know that you peril on all doubles if you summon daemons with csm and not just double 6-s? Unless you have a crimson slaughter artifact that makes your psycher daemon.

To cast a 3-wc power you need at least 7+ dice for a ~70-80% chance of sucksess. That's gona be 100% perils. You're gona kill your psychers faster than your enemy kills them.