Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

So I took a broodcoven the other day and gave the patriach biomancy in which he rolled life leech. That meant on the turn they arrived from ongoing reserves they landed near some marines (playing against dark angels) and he did quite a bit of damage with all that AP2.

I was thinking would it be a strong anti space marine list to take bulk level 2 magus with biomancy, arrive easily within range of smite and all other biomancy powers are still useful.

Alternatively you could take biomancy and telepathy swapping what you roll with smite and psychic shriek so you have two warp charge 1 powerful psychic powers for killing marines right there in range. To protect the magi you could stick them with a meat shield of neophytes, and always return to the shadows if the opportunity presents itself.

Obviously you can't take bulk magi and the decurion so that's the only issue.

What do you guys think, how would you expand on these tactics, what would you run them with. Let's say for example you take 5 magi with smite and shriek?

You could run the doting throng for the zealot and stick them acolytes so they can decent in close combat potentially, you might give up a smite or a shriek on one magus to get invisibility or other blessings which you can reroll

Let me know what you think

Witchfires are generally a poor way to use psy dice and cover is usually a thing. Even with marines being Ld 8 generally, even shriek only does ~2.5 MEQ kills per casting (though the nature of 3d6-ld means it's pretty swingy) going down to ~0.5 kills at Ld 10. Smite everages about 1 kill after cover and life leach is ~0.8 MEQ kills. Compare to buffing your super fragile guys with endurance/invis and this is why witchfires are generally regarded poorly.Combine this with the inability for a unit to cast the same spell more than once per turn and you rapidly run out of worthwhile spells to cast as well as dice to cast with due to each psycher not being self sufficient with power dice. I certainly wouldn't be over investing in witchfiring psychers under the 7th ed ruleset if you wanted to be competative.