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So i just managed to assemble my Magnus and i wanted to try it out straigt away!

My list:
CAD - Thousand sons

Sorcerer - MoT, ML3, SoC, Spell familiar, Bike (One with force axe)

2x Cultists MoT, Autoguns

Magnus

Allied detachement - CSM

Jugger lord, AoBF, Sigil

Cultists

Unit of 5 Spawn

Cyclopia Cabal formation
3x ML3 sorcerers. Spell familiar, SoC, Bike

Tau list: - im not 100% familiar with all the upgrades so just roughly

Buffmander with 3 rocket suits

3x min squads of Path finders
2x Min squads of Fire Warriors

2x Riptides with FNP

1x SS with the 4+ invul

And the formation of Ghostkeel and 2 units of stealth suits

And I believe that was it.


Tactic:

So obviously im relying on the spawn deathstart with all the sorcerers and juggerlord and magnus flying around and thats pretty much it - first game with Magnus so i just need to test it out and get myself familiar with all the powers and how to use them efficiently.

Im running Thousand sons dettachment as that will give Magnus 3++ re-rolling 1s -which i believe is enough, with sorcerers i will be fishing for invis and as soon i will get it then biomancy for FNP and iron arms/ warp speed for some beefy sorcerers and the MoT one probably keep on Tzeentch discipline. Juggerlord is there to make sure if i wont get spells i need i will have at least some AP2 beast..

For Warlord traits i was fishing Strategic for +1 to sieze in case in case i wont get 1st turn. Because my prediction was that going second with this list againts Tau is pretty much auto loose.

We managed to play 2 games as the first one went really quickly.


1st Game

Mission - The spoils of the war

Tau won 1st turn - so that was the hard scenario for me - i did managed to get +1 to sieze trait but no luck.

Also ive rolled pretty much worst possible scenario of spells - basically i went all possible 11 powers on telepathy and i didnt get invis - my Friend was so nice to pick one of the sorceres and take out of the powers and swap it for invis - as otherwise the game would be over. Anyway - i got about 3 Hallucinations, 3 Mental fortituted.. so yeah, not ideal

I wasnt sure if i want to keep Magnus on the table or not, in the end i decided to put him in reserves. I kept on table only the deathstar - i tried to hide them behind the bulding in corner of the map, denying LOSto all markerlights. But it was imposible to deny vision to SS and 1 riptide and also the buffmander with suits.

ive put jugger lord first to tank those ignore cover suits, but i messed up order of following models and next one to look out sir was unfortunatelly sorcerer, in the end i lost jugger lord, 1 sorcerer and couple of spawn - which wasnt as bad, but then we agreed that second round of shooting will be much more devastating because he will be in position with most of his army to be able to shoot next turn and even with invis on its going to be pretty much over - so we called it done

In hindsight i should have kept Magnus on the table on the other side of table to divide my opponents shooting - he didnt had enough of shooting to take him down on 1 side of table, also not having Magnus on the table is really huge and risking the reserve roll is also not worth it imo - if Magnus wont come in on second turn hes as good as dead anyway.

2nd Game

I forgot to roll new powers - so i kept those amazing ones from previous game

We went with same mission but this time i won roll off for 1st turn.

Turn1
I kept magnus and deathstar in the middle and went for the middle ground with both - casted bunch of stuff - most important ones - Treason of tzeench on SS and again with Cabal formation spell (We werent sure if thats possible to do) - but in the end i didnt do much, i was in range for the D shooting but in the end i managed to kill couple of crisis suits and take out few path finders (With 2 rounds of shooting from SS basically - so you can guess how lucky it was), but at least one group of PFs failed morale and ran out of table and gave me first blood - i didnt do much else, but mostly due to me not knowing all the powers, I basically loaded up Change discipline properly only second turn - so i wasted quite a few WC.

Tau didnt actually do much, did maybe few wounds on spawn, maybe took out 1. Wiped out 1 lonely group fo cultists on right side of the table on objective and then charged with SS into the deathstar hoping for 6s for stomps - luckily didnt happend but unfortunatelly i didnt do much to SS either.

Turn 2
Finally started to do some magic with magnus - summoned chariot - chariot wiped ot group of Fire warriors, managed to cast baleful devolution on riptide and insta kill it and create spawn , and MAgnus also finished off Buffmander and 1 crisis suit by change primaris. In close combat with SS nothing happened, SS did few wounds with stomps and i believe I rolled 1 for deamon weapon and didnt do much either.

Tau tried to kill Chariot but failed due to bad rolling and some lucky saves and in close combat again nothing happened believe it or not - SS was slowly taking out wound but i wasnt able to do anything. I believe at this point i did 2 or 3 wounds in 3 rounds of combat.

Turn 3
I went on ground with Magnus, spawned another Chariot - wiped out another group of fire warriors and group of stealth suits. Didnt do much else due to some amazing rolling with Magnus (Even sader considering that im not being greedy when casting - but was rolling 2-3 1s all the time etc.) Close combat deatch star vs SS - again not much, SS at this point 5 wounds left.

Tau killed of one of the chariots - in Close combat i finally managed to do some wounds - 3 actually - SS again few wounds via stomps, at this point i lost already couple of sorcerers and Juggerlord and all remaining models were on 1 wound (All due to stomps) - Also to note i had force on with all the sorcerers all the time but they didnt do single wound in this game

Turn 4
Magnus charged in to finish off SS and my opponend conceded - at this point i was in lead for objectives due to some lucky draws (harnes the warp - rolling 1 for it though, grabbing some objectives with cultists and chariots) and unlucky for my opponent.


Conclusions

As i thought - when going second - it will be very hard to come back, depends on terrain and deployment zones but i think its not impossible if those 2 factors will play little bit in your favor.

But when going first i was in pretty good spot even considering those terrible powers. I underestimated SS and how it can tarpit my deathstar, but quite frankly that was more due to my rolling than anything else, also if there would be one beefy biomancy sorcerer that should be easy, but probably next time i will try to avoid it and take few wounds off it with spells before i charge in - also to get round of shootig with SS into his own army would be great

All in all, I was very happy with Magnus. I saw alot of opinions about him being overpriced etc. but hes not really - hes amazing and very versatile. Also very durable just with that 3++/rerolling 1s, i think 2++ re-rollable is really overkill for him. With Siphon magic i was able to achieve about 10 extra WCs turn which is amazing too.

Looking forward to any comments and ideas about my list and how to make it better Also all tactical tips are welcomed




Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also to note about Magnus - basically my 1000pts Deathstar was locked with SS for the game and didnt do anything

Magnus killed Riptide, midcontroled SS and killed Crisis suits, some pathfinders and them finished off buffmander and suit. Spawned 2 chariots (could have been 3) which killed another 3 units of infantry. So he killed over 800points (Counting chariots too) and also summoned 200pts by end of turn 3.. He would do much more but my opponent conceded then..

Why not get a voidshield generator to help vs 1-st turn disadvantage?

Thats actually very good idea, i will try it out next time! I will need to proxy it though.. but if its going to perform i might scratch build one

I would take out autoguns ofc - that was there just for fun and then probably some sigils and maybe even 1 ML.

Thanks for the tip!

Having played with Magnus, would you advise targeting him or your Cabal first? I get the feeling that taking out all of his support first might be a more effective manner of dealing with lists he's in.

Exactly, basically you are killing two birds with one stone - you are killing the deathstar which is threat by itself + you are taking away WCs from Magnus.

By himself his psychic wont be that scary - on average 8-9 WCs - and all those important spells are 3 or even 5 WCs, so realistically he will be casting about 2-3 spells/turn if you manage to get rid of the deathstar