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Hi!

The lists are ready and I would love some tips and tactics. Not sure how to kill the solitaire. I *hope* I will have the Warp Charge to fight his psychic stuff. My #1 goal is to eliminate all his psykers early so that I can take advantage of my "ok" sized pool of Warp Charge for as long as I can. I have no more demon models to summon. Probably going to do just a basic Maelstrom mission where each person has up to 3 cards a turn and can discard 1 at the end of their turn. Ahriman has breached the Webway and a battle will take place in massive corridor in the midst of a broken Eldar city. So here's what my opponent will be using, as best as I can remember it:

Primary detachment
Harlequin reroll failed invul of 1's detchment
3 troups all sporting various upgrades 1 with starweaver (transport)
3 death jesters
3 shadowseers all lvl2, 2 with Artifacts of war
1 solitaire
2 units of skyweavers (jetbikes) 1 with melee 1 with haywire
1 voidweaver (tank)
Allies (Dark Eldar)
Archon with armor of misery and a venom
1 squad of warriors x5 in a raider with nightshields
Seer council detachment
2 farseers
5 warlocks

My army:
Ahriman (Warlord)
Sorcerer: Level 3, Technomancer
9 TS- Rhino
9 TS- Rhino
Fire Raptor- Reapers
Relic Pred- Plasma Destroyer, Heavy Bolters
Sicaran- Lascannon Sponsons
Herald of Tzeentch- Disc, Level 3, Grimoire
Herald of Tzeentch- Disc, Level 3
11 Horrors
11 Horrors
5 Screamers

What do you think my odds are? I have only fought Harlies once, and I won.. It was at 1500pts and the guy didn't really know how to play. I let the Solitaire get into combat with Ahriman and it was over since I had no spells up.

thanks.... I appreciate (and need) the help because my good friend is very good at 40k.

The solitaire should go down to simple weight of fire. He's only got a 3++ and 3 wounds, so a single squad of TSons rapid firing into him has a pretty reasonable chance to put him down in 1 round. Just force him to make saves, same way most people kill TSons.

I'd suggest you don't expect much from your horrors, since the death jester will be making them run all over the table (or just straight off it) as Ld 7 isn't great.

Removing the haywire bikes would be high up on my list since they will mulch your vehicles quite quickly.

Controlling midboard as per usual will be interesting, since harlies are going to have an easy time charging.

You're going to be in trouble if the grimoure doesn't go off, and you want the raptor in ASAP, so rolling the other herald on div looking for forwarning and scriers wouldn't even be a bad plan.

Not sure I'd expect much out of your tanks, but if they cana manage to de-mech your opponent, they'd have done their job as far as I was concerned.

Thanks, I will certainly keep all that in mind. My weakness is that I often overlook a strategy and play with a fluid "reactionary" mindset.. Probably why I lose a lot. This time will be different.

In this case I'd actually say that you should take the Quad HBs on the Fire Raptor- your opponent has very little armor, and pretty much all of it is AV10. You can just unleash the Raptor's main gun (or use the Sicaran) to demech the Harlies, at which point the weight of fire from the Quad HBs will do the rest.

As an example, a Reaper battery will put ~1.82 unsaved wounds on the Harlies (assuming 5++/5+ cover, and that I did my math right for the re-roll bonus). Quad HBs will do ~2.47 unsaved, ~26% increase in firepower.

When you consider that Fire Raptors also have two waist mounts, it works out to roughly 50% more firepower for Quad HBs vs Harlies, instead of Reaper batteries.

Against AV10, I would guess that the HBs have enough weight of fire to get the job done against your opponent's list, which includes 6 vehicles, all of which are AV10. Statistically speaking, for example, you're pretty much guaranteed to kill one of his skimmer vehicles every single turn with the Sicaran, and about the same with just the Avenger on the Fire Raptor (actual numbers are slightly in the Sicaran's favor, especially when jink is involved as the Sicaran can ignore Jink saves against its primary weapon).

As far as the Solitaire goes, ~2.66 unsaved wounds will be dealt by 9 Spess Mehreens rapid firing at him with bolters. However, that is without factoring the formation bonus of re-rolling 1's, and I don't really feel like digging into that right now.

What I can say is that if you opt to just rapid fire both Thousand Sons squads into the Solitaire, he'll die, and there's nothing your opponent can do about it. Don't bother using the Sicaran or the Fire Raptor on the Solitaire, as they've got much more important things to shoot at (any skimmers, for example).

Thank you, Whiskey- that information really helps a lot

Don't worry about the death jester's leadership shenanigans, your daemons can't fail a morale test due to daemonic instability, and most of your other units are fearless. This is actually a good matchup for thousand sons because the best way to kill harlis is small arms fire and stopping them in the psychic phase. Don't forget, the Harlequin bring a lot of ap2 and pseudo rending to the table, your 4+ invulns will come in handy a lot!

Good luck!

Also don't forget that the majority of Harlie capability is in combat, and TSons are SnP, and therefore can't fire Overwatch.

In terms of target priority of enemy vehicles, I'd recommend Starweavers>Voidweaver/Raider>Venom. The Starweavers are carrying the Harlie squads, which pose the greatest threat to your army, whilst the Voidweaver is the only thing that's got any chance of actually hurting your armor, whilst the Raider could conceivably be used to pile in the Farseers/Warlocks or pick up a stranded Harlie squad.

If the former, kill it before it gets the chance. If the latter... let them get in, and then torch it- Open Topped vehicles are more likely to go sky-high, so they'll take out a lot of clowns from the explosion.

The lone Venom is on the bottom because the pile of Poison shooting won't do a whole lot to the TSons in their Rhinos, and it's carrying a single dude- while he does have the quite fantastic Armor of Misery, said item is also near-useless against your TSons, who are generally Fearless/Daemons.

As mentioned, TSons are also really good in the psychic phase. Without counting the Horrors/Screamers, I've got 15+D6 Warp Charge, versus the 15/17 +D6 WC of the Harlie force.

And again, that isn't including the Horrors, as I can't recall off-hand whether or not Horrors provide 1 WC per member, or if it's something more convoluted. If it's +1WC per member of each Horror squad... well. You'll utterly dominate the Psychic Phase and I'd be very surprised if your opponent managed to get many powers successfully manifested.

Can the Eldar Farseer use their Runes ability to re-roll dice in my Psychic phase when I'm using Blessings? Or is it just when they are targeted

and 11 Horrors means 2 Warp Charge.. if I lose one it's back down to 1.

Hey dude,

Awesome you're such a Tzeentch fan, he's my second favorite god.

I'd imagine with Tzeentch you'd want to maximize firepower as much as possible. Definitely go for MSU to not only get more sorcerers, but more Rhinos that you can give Havoc Launchers. I'd also recommend a bit of close combat with something like a Daemon Prince that you can throw invisibility on. I'd imagine you'd have a sort of Adeptus Sororitas feel to your army with the large amounts of shooting templates/blasts from your Psykers, but you could leverage your close combat.

It might also make sense to ally with Crimson Slaughter or some other CSM variant to get another sorcerer for summoning. Lost of shooting + a few close combat heavy hitters + lots of telepathy to back them up is how I picture the army playing out.

Look man I'll be honest.. I've been using Thousand Sons for over a decade but the only reason they are even in this list is because I already have them and I can say it's a "Thousand Sons" army. Tzeentch daemons are sooooo much better as a Primary army instead of Allied detachment.

Not a fan of MSU Thousand Sons. There are cheaper ways to get Warp Charge, and to have more than a 50% chance to get those gakky Tzeentch powers off, the Aspiring Sorcerers will have to throw 3 dice at their powers, and that takes away from even your idea of Invisibility on a Prince. I do have the screamer star for 2++ rerollable, so I'm not that concerned with dealing damage as I am blocking what could be a critical charge on one of my units.

As mentioned above the lists are fixed and I have no more models to summon

11 Horrors being +2 WC to the army is still good, and gives you a definitive edge in the Psychic Phase.

I don't know off-hand about the Eldar Runes of Battle, but I'd say that one of two things will happen:

1) You'll get your really important powers off due to having more psychic dice and more casting models
2) The Eldar player will manage to deny (though good luck with that against Ahriman), but so will you.

Either way, you win on the psychic front.

I sure hope so. Any idea for spell priority with Ahriman? I will go Telepathy on the first or second roll and if I don't get it he will have Shriek.. Then the last roll will probably be on Biomancy or Sanctic depending on my mood. Most of the good Sanctic powers are 1, so if I can bluff some single dice power attempts before the big powers that would be nice.

Solitaire might not like 4 Shrieks, 3 from Ahriman and 1 from the Sorcerer.. even with LD10.

I'd be looking at biomancy, since harlies are going to get you into combat and there's not much you can do about it. Annoyingly they also have hit and run and furious charge.

Iron Arm and Warp Speed are both good, but Endurance and Enfeeble are total win, dropping the harlies to Str 3 on the charge or giving you a 3+/4+++

9 attacks per TSon dead vs harlies on the charge normally, 14 when locked in combat.

14 attacks per TSon dead when harlies are enfeebled on the charge, 28 attacks when enfeebled but locked in combat.

18 attacks per TSon dead vs harlies on the charge when you've got endurance, 28 when locked in combat and you've got endurance.

Life leach isn't terrible since you can use it 3 times a round to heal back to full if you can stay out of combat. Haemorrage is trash [s]unless your opponents dice really hate him[s], swap for smite every time.

You've already got the str bonus over harlies, so hammerhand isn't going to be great unless you're punching vehicles (which is pretty unlikely to say the least) Vortex is both risky and short ranged, sanctuary could come in handy, but I suspect you'll get downed by volume of fire rather than AP3 stuff so against this list it will not be as important as usual (unless his council gets their Eldrich storm off, but then, that's why you have a lvl 4 to deny on 4+). Gate could be handy, especially for last turn objective grabbing or to get out of combat and then pewpew those annoying harlies. You've got better things to do with your dice than purge and while cleansing flame is a boatload of heavy flamer hits, it's also WC 2, causes perils on any double and ahriman doesn't have a fmailiar, meaning he's gonna be thowing more dice and taking more wounds to reliably get it off.

Also, yes, the farseer can use his runes to re-roll any deny check, not just witchfires.

 Brometheus wrote:
I sure hope so. Any idea for spell priority with Ahriman? I will go Telepathy on the first or second roll and if I don't get it he will have Shriek.. Then the last roll will probably be on Biomancy or Sanctic depending on my mood. Most of the good Sanctic powers are 1, so if I can bluff some single dice power attempts before the big powers that would be nice.

Solitaire might not like 4 Shrieks, 3 from Ahriman and 1 from the Sorcerer.. even with LD10.

Don't bother Shrieking the Solitaire. He'll die plenty fine to massed firepower from the TSons squads. If the Solitaire really bugs you, you can always sic the Fire Raptor on him instead.

Your best bet is to not use them in the first place. However, if you want to:
1. I'm not sure what the Technomancer is doing in the first place. You aren't bringing multiples of the Relic vehicles, so what's his main purpose besides contributing Warp Charges? If you want him, consider making this a Crimson Slaughter detachment and grab the relic making him into a Daemon or the Divination artifact. This definitely enhances flexibility in what you want to do. Otherwise, you should be generating enough Warp Charges to skip for something else, like:
2. Autocannon Havocs will be massively cost efficient in this list. They have potential to ID any characters here besides the Solitaire, and the minimum squad is 125 points and VERY easy to hide. I'd advise maybe even two of these squads.
3. Keep in mind Rubrics cannot overwatch because they suck. Ergo, infiltating them will suck if you cannot roll well to shoot. Melee won't be an issue, of course, for the first turn or so.
4. I wouldn't do Heavy Bolters on the Pred. Lascannons are more efficient.

I keep forgetting about the Raptor.. even though I just put it in the list above.

You see, around here, most tournaments ban Forge World minis. Wouldn't want to scare those new players off with unfamiliar rules, now would we? Oh, surprise... The Necron and Tau players won the tournament with their nasty Codex lists.

I've used it in 3 games so far, all at my house. Haha

Not sure if anyone is interested or not, but we had our game. I absolutely decimated him. Once the solitaire died, everything else dropped like paper.. even in close combat. The arrival of the Fire Raptor sealed the fate of every vehicle on the table. if you have more questions just ask. 3 life leeches per turn can really take a toll on a Seer Council, too.

Aww, man! I was reading through this thread trying to think of something clever to say. Congratulations on the win. What spells did you roll and how did the psychic portion of the game play out?

Good to know you made it. Anywayz, i'd try to fish on this tzeench beam power. It's very potent.

Well done. Good to see the Thousand Sons still doing well.

And yes, Ahriman can be a beast. Biomancy Ahriman is scary - life leech and enfeeble are nice but he gets ridiculous if you get Iron Arm - Smash makes up for his staff's AP4 and punts him up to S9 T7 with a force weapon - giving him a fair chance even against monstrous creatures...

Thanks..

I rolled Endurance, Life Leech, Gate of Infinity and Boon of Mutation. He stayed with a squad the whole time but there were times where he detached from them (once the vehicles were all dead) then just pewpewd while I threw TSons in combat. Their charges usually broke the harlequins. It was a little bit of luck, and quite pathetic to watch happen. I was pretty scared of losing before we deployed.

I do like Doombolt.. but in friendly games (this was friendly, just not among my personal gaming group where we use custom rules) Ahriman has no restriction with the Tzeentch powers and can take Divination. Doombolt is nice but of course I often end up with Boon and Breath, and Breath wastes too much of my charge to be worth it.. and with the high chance of rolling good spells between all my mastery levels, I'd rather throw more charge at them than Breath, even if it means good damage output.

thanks again.

Honestly, rolling for Biomancy is a waste. He doesn't get into combat quickly, it doesn't entirely fix his durability problem (he's still 3+/4++. He'll still go down to shooting easily), and doesn't make use of firing lots of powers and killing things compared to other Witchfire Powers you could go for instead.

Right but fishing for Endurance is nice because if I don't fet it I can have Smite for bluffing with single d6 throws

Smite isn't amazing against Harlies. AP2 vs no armor is quite a waste.


Honestly, your biggest problem I think will be lack of small arms. No overwatch, though, is going to be quite painful.

If the Council tanks up (fortune and/or invis plus 2+ cover or armor), let it do its thing and kill everything else. If it doesn't tank up, kill them. T4 3+ isn't that scary.

congrats on the win!

Smite is amazing on Ahriman because it's potentially 12 shots that hit on 2+ and wound on 3+... It's not good in the vacuum you place it in, no, but when I'm running 300pt squads and a 230pt HQ character, the more shots I can get in different places the better.

Worked out quite well, and I was happy with Life Leech (instant killed 2 Death Jesters and a Shadowseer in a single turn.

This game needs more Thousand Sons lists. Both lists looked fun.

Go you! As a harli player, sad to see the library get sacked. The basic Harlequin have trouble with 3+ saves, their main damage dealers versus those are fishing for ap2 with the caress, at the one hit from the kiss. Needless to say your invulns probably took a lot of that punch away.

It was a fun game, Bharring.

Lythrandire, I am hopeful that we will see lots of Tzeentch vs. Harlequin stuff from GW soon but you know how rumors go.

I can't even imagine what artwork they would use in a Tzeentch Codex.

If you can imagine it, its not twisted enough to be Tzeechian.

That's why Khorne and Nurgle get all the love.