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I've been playing around with the following list idea. Tell me if you think it would actually work:

Chaos Daemons - CAD:

4 Heralds of Tzeench. 3 with level 2 psychic mastery; 1 with level 3.
6 - 11 man squads of pink horrors of tzeentch
Soul Grinder of Chaos with daemon of tzeench and phlegm bombardment

Chaos Space Marines - Allied CAD

Ahriman
2 - 5 man Thousand Sons squads with icons of flame in rhinos with dozer blades and havoc launchers.
Predator with autocannons and lascannon side sponsons

Feels like it would be worth investigating the new Demon Incursion formations. There are some really good fluffy Tzeentch ones that give you a lot of cool benefits. The CSM part of your army is very non-competitive, just FYI - presume you are more thinking about a list to play with friends rather than at tournaments though, so you probably don't mind.

 Kholzerino wrote:
Feels like it would be worth investigating the new Demon Incursion formations. There are some really good fluffy Tzeentch ones that give you a lot of cool benefits. The CSM part of your army is very non-competitive, just FYI - presume you are more thinking about a list to play with friends rather than at tournaments though, so you probably don't mind.

My thinking was that Ahriman can use the same witchfire repeatedly. And he's ML 4.

And that would be a lot of warp charges.

I don't know why you gave you 1kSons Icon of Flame. Why would you want to pay points for soul blaze?

Also you have WAAAAY too many pink horrors. They don't do anything but make warp charges and heralds are more efficient at it.

Ok:

How about this:

Chaos Space Marines CAD:

Ahriman
2 - 5 man Thousand Sons Squads in rhinos; no upgrades
3 - 2 man obliterator squads with mark of tzeentch and veterans of the long war

Chaos Daemons Allied CAD:

4 Heralds of Tzeentch with level 3 psychic mastery, disk of tzeentch and exalted locus of conjuration.
2 - 10 man squads of pink horrors of tzeentch

The Thousand Sons squads are doing absolutely nothing for you and having a pair of rhinos and no other vehicles isn't the best choice.

The better choice is to use cultists but then, if you wanted a remotely competative list, you wouldn't be playing thousand sons, would you?

In my experience, 5 man TSons squads are pretty bad and will get shot off the table fairly quickly. A unit of 9+ on the other hand can make for some OK'ish midfield presence.

The Oblits are good, one of the better units in the dex and MoT is actualy an option against MoN if your meta is strong on plasma and grav and light on Str 8/9 stuff. I'd be tempted to run a unit of 3 and 2 units of 1, simply so ahriman can always infiltrate the unit of 3 where they can cause trouble from turn 1 onwards.

The heralds don't have anywhere to go and the way you've written it, I'm not sure if you gave them all the ELoC or just 1? Regardless, you probably don't need 4, 2 or 3 should be sufficient. Find the points for some screamer bulletcatchers and melee deterants and you'll improve the life and usefullness of the heralds immensely. IMHO, 5+ screamers are required to ensure that the heralds are safe enough for the first couple of turns, but that's a bit meta dependant.

Always find the points to bump your horrors to 11 or 12 man squads. 11 gets you another warp charge for 9 points each with is the best ratio in the game. 12 lets you sustain a casualty, either from shooting or sacrifice and not lose a warp charge.

Something else to remember, you've got a small number of T3 and T4 models, anyone with any sort of volume of fire is going to tear you a new one.

You've also got all your anti tank concentrated into 6 models, all of which are exceedingly easy to kill and can only use their main anti tank guns every other turn. Once those oblits are dead, anything inside a tank is very, very safe.

Keep in mind, Ahriman MUST be your warlord with your set up since it's only the primary detatchment that allows for cult units to be taken as troops with the appropriate lord/sorc with mark. Whil this means no warp storm, it also means a fixed warlord trait (unless you wanted to make one of your thousand sons sorcerors the warlord for some bizare reason (like rolling ahriman on Sanctic to try and fire off 3x vortexes).

One last thing, you'll soon find that;
- while ahriman is ML4 and can cast a witchfire 3 times, you're not going to have enough dice to actually do anything else if you try this
- ahriman is actually very squishy being on T4 3+/4++ without eternal warrior
- if you want to use any of the powers that you roll with your heralds, ahriman is going to be short on dice
- the lack of a spell familiar is ahriman is a killer
- witchfires that aren't doombolt or shriek are usually pretty poor at actually doing damage
- if you try and spread your warp charge thin to get everyone contrubuting, you're going to have almost no reliability since there's no way to cast on a 2 or 3 unlike eldar, SM or guard.
- 20 warp charge doesn't go as far as you'd like
- witchfires can be denied much easier than you'd expect
- Horrors are a total waste of casting witchfires because BS3

Drasius:

In your opinion, what would a more competitive 1850 list look like?

For me, the only real non-negotiable is as follows:

It must include Ahriman and at least 2 - 5 man squads of thousand sons.

And I'd prefer if all models are tzeentchy.

Depends on your definition of competative really. IMHO, any list with TSons in it isn't competative at all. They're just way, way too fragile for their points with no hitting power to back it up. A glass cannon without the cannon part.

Ahriman has his moments, but for my money, a regular ML3 sorceror provides just as much benefit for ~60 points less and 1/3 of the time, will even get an improved version of Ahrimans warlord trait.

The list that I usually run looks something like this:

Crimson Slaughter CAD
180 - Sorceror, MoT, Sigil, ML3, Balestar, Melta Bombs
282 - 9x TSons, Melta Bombs, Rhino
259 - 8x TSons, Melta Bombs, Rhino
170 - Heldrake
175 - Forgefiend
145 - Vindicator, Dozer Blade, Posession, Combi Bolter
145 - Vindicator, Dozer Blade, Posession, Combi Bolter

Daemon Allies
150 - Herald, Disk, ML3, Exalted
120 - Herald, Disk, ML3
99 - 11x Horrors
125 - 5x Screamers

1850

The Balestar because prescience lets the forgefiend hit something as well as be half decent anti air, ignores cover is the only thing that allows TSons to contribute to killing rather than area denial, misfortune helps out with my lack of AP2 and scriers helps get the stubborn heldrake on the board when I need him.

Larger units of TSons in rhinos because they're too slow without the rhino and too fragile in smaller squad sizes and the 58 point sarge is too heavy a tax to run MSU.

Heldrake because heldrake. Covers my anti air to a certain degree as well as ensuring that people clumping up in terrain to get cover against AP3 bolters get toasted. Pretty bad in the all-MC-all-the-time meta we currently have though.

Forgefiend as mentioned for anti air and a bit of ranged anti tank. With prescience and daemon forge, you can manage more than a few HP on AV14 when desperate. He's expensive, but can fill a few roles that I'm missing.

Vindicators to solve my lack of AP2 and more anti tank. You could quite easily replace these with some MoT Oblits, but I'm already running semi mech and I get better results with these guys.

The heralds provide much needed mobility and warp charge and mobility. They've got screamers for bodyguards. Exalted reward can go to either grimoure or portalglyph, depending on matchup.

Horrors are mandatory troops and warp charge caddies. They gtg on an objective and try not to die.

Screamers for bodyguards for the heralds and the board control and abillity to realistically threaten tanks or soft MSU targets almost anywhere on the board.

Overall, things rarely go to plan, but generally speaking, the vindicators and daemons are always the standouts, the forge fiend and heldrake are both hit and miss and the TSons are almost always underwhelming.

If I was to make suggestions on building a list with your wants;

230 - Ahriman
282 - 9x TSons, Melta Bombs, Rhino
259 - 8x TSons, Melta Bombs, Rhino
170 - Heldrake
170 - Heldrake
234 - 3x Oblits, MoT, VotLW

Daemon Allies
150 - Herald, Disk, ML3, Exalted
120 - Herald, Disk, ML3
108 - 12x Horrors
125 - 5x Screamers

1848

Feel free to drop some stuff and bulk out the screamers if you find them too squishy at only 5 models

Alternate list with only CSM;

230 - Ahriman
282 - 9x TSons, Melta Bombs, Rhino
282 - 9x TSons, Melta Bombs, Rhino
170 - Heldrake
170 - Heldrake
234 - 3x Oblits, MoT, VotLW
234 - 3x Oblits, MoT, VotLW
234 - 3x Oblits, MoT, VotLW

Plus 14 points on whatever you want. You're going to be quite short on warp charge though with only 6+d6, but Ahriman is going to be the only one casting anyway.

IMHO, both lists are serviceable but not competative. No CSM list should be without at least 1 heldrake, probably more if you really want to be effective.

Given that you're going to need to crack open gladius transports to get at their gooey centres, Oblits are near mandatory since they can pop vehicles with Las and melta and can actually damage MC's with plasma and assault cannons. With the reduction of str 8 in favour of volume of fire str 6/7, MoT is slightly less suicidal compared to MoN.

Once you've sunk ~800 points into a pair of heldrakes and 6 oblits, you can't really afford to waste another 700 points on your HQ and 2 troops who are sub par when you could have spent 450 points on a pair of unmarked ML3 sorcerors and min cultists.

Belakor is another solid option, but IMHO, he requires more investment into horrors than you can afford if you want to run Ahriman in the same list and have them be worth their points, otherwise you're paying a lot of points for ahriman to provide warp charge and not much else because once you throw 4-6 dice at invis, a couple at shriek, maybe a couple at shrouding, you've already burnt 8-10 dice and have virtually nothing left for ahriman. If you're not making extensive use of invis/shriek/shrouded, then belakor isn't worth the points either.

At the end of the day, you can do whatever you want in a casual game since winning is secondary to having fun and running a list with models you think are cool. If you want to be competative, you're looking in the wrong codex and should go back to your space marines.