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Brian888 wrote:
The leaked Ynnari rules make me feel a little better from the psychic phase standpoint. The Yncarne is only ML3 and Yvraine is only ML2 (although that can go up), and each of them only has access to the new Revenant discipline and Sanctic Daemonology, WITHOUT having the special Grey Knights protection against increased periling. Have fun eating those perils, space elves!

But that's the point. They get as much solo psychers as possible. Those peril and the scatbikes, d-batteries and wraithknights shoot twice. The only special characters they need are sacrificial ones. Also, those to put in front of their squads to get free shooting in the opponent's turn.

Or they get a bunch of inquisitorial detachments with min warbands. Use a nova power and all the stuff around gets a free round of shooting. Plus a free warlord trait from inquisitors.

By "special characters" I meant Yvraine and the Yncarne. They seem to be pretty crucial to the army's success, so it will likely hurt (a lot) if they get killed by perils.

Thought id revive this as i've got an 1850 tournament coming up.

Is Ahriman too nuch of a luxury in a full war cabal? If i take him and ml3 on all the other sorcerors, there is no wiggle room in points. No aodg for the sorcs, no spell familiars, no grimoire. Unless i start dropping ml from the sorcs.

Anyone running a war cabal, how necessary are the grimoire and spell familiars?

Familiars are mandatory IMHO, Grimoure is about as close to manatory as you can get since the rest of the force is so slow unless you roll a psychic movement power, though if you're taking Ahriman, some of that is gained back with infiltrate, though if you roll a 1 on your d3, then you're right back at square one again.

Timmon wrote:
Here's the list. 10 points under limit, I think I had a flamer with some of the rubrics. Didnt use it though.

+++ Thousand Sons Detachments 1850 (Warhammer 40,000 7th Edition v2013) (1840pts) +++
+ Formation +

········War Cabal
············Exalted Sorcerer [Mastery Level 3, Spell familiar]
············Exalted Sorcerer [Disc of Tzeetch, Mastery Level 2, Seer's Bane]
············Rubric Marines [4x Rubric Marine]
················Aspiring Sorcerer [Force Stave, Warpflame Pistol]
············Rubric Marines [4x Rubric Marine]
················Aspiring Sorcerer [Force Stave, Inferno Bolt Pistol]
············Rubric Marines [4x Rubric Marine]
················Aspiring Sorcerer [Force Stave, Inferno Bolt Pistol]
············Scarab Occult Terminators [Scarab Occult Sorcerer, 4x Scarab Occult Terminator, Soulreaper Cannon]
············Scarab Occult Terminators [Scarab Occult Sorcerer, 4x Scarab Occult Terminator]
············Scarab Occult Terminators [Scarab Occult Sorcerer, 4x Scarab Occult Terminator]
············Sorcerer [Astral Grimoire, Force Axe, Mark of Tzeentch, Power Armour, Veterans of the Long War]
············Sorcerer [Force Axe, Mark of Tzeentch, Power Armour, Veterans of the Long War]

Created with BattleScribe (http://www.battlescribe.net)


The Damned have 3++, so yes AP3 was irrelevant for those, sheer weight of fire killed them off, really had nothing more to shoot at that point. Later, most of the tacticals just melted with AP3. Also, oracular guidance helps quite a lot with shooting too.

Timmon

These kinds of lists are exactly what I'd love to do with my Thousand Sons when I eventually get enough of them to field a full army, but I'm struggling with how to make it useful.

How do you deal with the lack of mobility and anti-armor here? Is the re-roll on saves that worth it (I'm guessing it would be on the termies, but the power armored duders I feel would just run around not doing anything).

The big reason my lists keep going back to the basics of a CAD setup is because in my eyes if you're not getting Favored of Tzeentch the +1BS isn't worth the loss of obsec and the loss of tzaangor or cultist bodies to fill out the lists.

Why you would want fewer, bigger units in my opinion is twofold. One, you can get the one soulreaper on a 10-man rubric squad and one rhino to carry 10 of them. The Soulreaper seems bad until you consider how much more you get out of your 2 firepoints in the rhino with the Soulreaper. You get a witchfire in the psychic phase, then Soulreaper+1 bolter in the shooting phase, which is good for those early turns where you don't have a good enough target to commit to 10 inferno bolters. Secondly, having a big squad means you can blob up and get the maximum bang for your buck out of the Grimoire and psychic buffs. I've played with double-reaper double-missile 10 man terminator squads in a CAD before, and all you need is one decent defensive buff power like endurance or invis to make them basically unassailable.

The last problem I have with War Cabal is the big waste IMO that is the basic Tax Sorceror with MoTZ. 100 points for a single ML with a spell familiar! Do the extra saves you get with the rerolls really account for the loss of efficiency you get wasting so many points on 3-4 of these useless suckers?

the_scotsman wrote:
These kinds of lists are exactly what I'd love to do with my Thousand Sons when I eventually get enough of them to field a full army, but I'm struggling with how to make it useful.

How do you deal with the lack of mobility and anti-armor here? Is the re-roll on saves that worth it (I'm guessing it would be on the termies, but the power armored duders I feel would just run around not doing anything).

The big reason my lists keep going back to the basics of a CAD setup is because in my eyes if you're not getting Favored of Tzeentch the +1BS isn't worth the loss of obsec and the loss of tzaangor or cultist bodies to fill out the lists.

Why you would want fewer, bigger units in my opinion is twofold. One, you can get the one soulreaper on a 10-man rubric squad and one rhino to carry 10 of them. The Soulreaper seems bad until you consider how much more you get out of your 2 firepoints in the rhino with the Soulreaper. You get a witchfire in the psychic phase, then Soulreaper+1 bolter in the shooting phase, which is good for those early turns where you don't have a good enough target to commit to 10 inferno bolters. Secondly, having a big squad means you can blob up and get the maximum bang for your buck out of the Grimoire and psychic buffs. I've played with double-reaper double-missile 10 man terminator squads in a CAD before, and all you need is one decent defensive buff power like endurance or invis to make them basically unassailable.

The last problem I have with War Cabal is the big waste IMO that is the basic Tax Sorceror with MoTZ. 100 points for a single ML with a spell familiar! Do the extra saves you get with the rerolls really account for the loss of efficiency you get wasting so many points on 3-4 of these useless suckers?

Lack of mobility is generally fixed with grimoure, infiltrate or just accepting that you're going to trudge forward slowly. Lack of anti tank if fixed by rolling on heretek until you get enough haywire to drown all your opponents vehicles. The re-roll on saves is the only thing that makes them playable IMHO, and yes, it's not worth much on the rubricae who are just flat out tax.

Having run a CAD for the last ~4 years and watched my win-rate slowly decline from ~60% to <20% and then suddenly surge back up when running a full cabal, I honestly believe that the only way to make them work is with the cabal, a full cabal.

The soulreaper isn't worth it. Yes, you can fire it out the hatch of a rhino, but that rhino is going to be dead turn 1/2 depending on how much other armour you're bringing and then it doesn't matter. Not to mention that it's not allowing the squad to do anything they weren't already doing - forcing MEQ to stay in cover and not much else. As for blobbing up, there are much better things to cast buffs on than a unit of rubricae (except ignores cover, that's pretty win, but we can't even do that anymore with the changes to crimson slaughter).

As for the tax sorc, well, just don't take him as a tax! The HQ's are the only thing that makes the list work, they do all the heavy lifting while your Scarabs make them immune to small arms fire and your rubricae are the tax you pay and serve as charge deterants and backfield objective grabbers, preferably out of LoS where they don't fall over to a stiff breeze. I've said it before and I'll undoubtedly say it again, the basic workable core of a full coven is:

170 - Sorc, MoT, ML3, Familiar, Grimoure
140 - Sorc, MoT, ML3, Familiar
140 - Sorc, MoT, ML3, Familiar
140 - Sorc, MoT, ML3, Familiar
150 - 5x Rubricae
150 - 5x Rubricae
150 - 5x Rubricae
250 - 5x Scarabs
250 - 5x Scarabs
250 - 5x Scarabs

1790/1850

Your choice what to spend those remaining 60 points on, but the smart money says its either 3 sets of missiles for the termies, an AoDG for each of your sorcs or an Exalted upgrade for your warlord.

I honestly don't think the missiles are worth a damn.
They come back to the point of "making things in power armor scared shitless of leaving cover", but it does not really do much else, besides hurting MCs a bit I guess.

Exalting the warlord might be a good idea, as it makes him tougher to take down, and meaner in CC (its a chaos lord with a force stave basically)
Alternatevly go ham and Ahriman him (give the grimoure to another dude), though you'd probably prefer ahri on a disk, and that's 30 more points...and I'm not sure I'm sold on dropping the grimoure in favor of disk ahriman.

You drop the grimoire and the familiars to fit in disc ahriman. The familiars is not such a bad trade off because ahriman will suck up 12 dice or so in the psychic phase by himself.

Keeping the grimoire in there means dropping a mastery level. Which is why i say Ahriman might be too much of a luxury

BoomWolf wrote:I honestly don't think the missiles are worth a damn.
They come back to the point of "making things in power armor scared shitless of leaving cover", but it does not really do much else, besides hurting MCs a bit I guess.

The missiles let you take the last HP off vehicles when you roll like a 'tard on your haywire powers.

Ericthegreen wrote:You drop the grimoire and the familiars to fit in disc ahriman. The familiars is not such a bad trade off because ahriman will suck up 12 dice or so in the psychic phase by himself.

Keeping the grimoire in there means dropping a mastery level. Which is why i say Ahriman might be too much of a luxury

I find that I'm already short on spell capacity due to the fact that my sorcs have to do all the heavy lifting, do you really think that giving up the efficiency that spell familiars allow for is worth it to get 3x shriek/doombolt/flayerstorms out of Ahriman with less reliability? Someone with more experience running Ahriman than me is going to have to chime in, but everytime I've run Ahri, I've been underwhelmed (except when he rolled doombolt, Iron arm, Warp Speed and Endurance and solo'ed 70% of a marine army on his own, that was awesome)

Its a tricky one. It does give you more flexibility in power choice in that if ahriman rolls a heeretech witchfire, hes casting it as many times as 3 sorcerors with the same power with 3 more dice (ahrimam using 3 dice, sorcerors using 2). So your other sorcerors can pick up stuff from other tables or double down on heretech against things like a gladius army

But the loss of efficiency means less powers overall and as you say Drasius, they are doing the heavy lifting.

Whats your usual power setup? Im at the theoryhammer stage right now and im a massive Ahriman fanboy so trying to squeeze him in and think its wodth testing, but ultimately i think youre right when it comes to war cabal

What about the sword?

I've run Ahriman with the Full Cabal a few times recently. Sadly, I have to confirm what's already been stated. Ahriman needs 10-12 WC's to get his business done and that's provided that you rolled some decent powers on him. In the full Cabal, I've actually kept him on foot, stuck in a Scarab unit. That way if you only roll one Infiltrate, it can be that unit or if multiple, grab the other Scarabs with Sorcs attached to flank him. Grimoire isn't bad to toss in there if you need the mobility. I've also run him on a disc, bouncing between LOS terrain and units as needed.

The nicest thing about having him is being able to nab just the right Witchfire for the army you're facing and then blasting like a machine gun. As stated above, it removes a little of the random aspect since if he gets, say haywire powers for vehicles, you now have the choice to roll Biomancy on some Sorcs or grab even more Heretek if needed.

I feel like every game I've badly lost with my TS has been lost during power generation before the game. Ahriman can help fix that, somewhat.

That's certainly a positive with him.
If you're willing to sacrifice a single mastery level, you can get the grimoire or 2 familiars in an ahriman cabal

 Elroniel wrote:
I've run Ahriman with the Full Cabal a few times recently. Sadly, I have to confirm what's already been stated. Ahriman needs 10-12 WC's to get his business done and that's provided that you rolled some decent powers on him. In the full Cabal, I've actually kept him on foot, stuck in a Scarab unit. That way if you only roll one Infiltrate, it can be that unit or if multiple, grab the other Scarabs with Sorcs attached to flank him. Grimoire isn't bad to toss in there if you need the mobility. I've also run him on a disc, bouncing between LOS terrain and units as needed.

The nicest thing about having him is being able to nab just the right Witchfire for the army you're facing and then blasting like a machine gun. As stated above, it removes a little of the random aspect since if he gets, say haywire powers for vehicles, you now have the choice to roll Biomancy on some Sorcs or grab even more Heretek if needed.

I feel like every game I've badly lost with my TS has been lost during power generation before the game. Ahriman can help fix that, somewhat.

IIRC ICs joining units happens at deployment and giving infiltrate happens before that so you would need to roll a 2+ to give him and his unit infiltrate.

Fhionnuisce wrote:
IIRC ICs joining units happens at deployment and giving infiltrate happens before that so you would need to roll a 2+ to give him and his unit infiltrate.

Hmm, that might totally be the case. Either way, even being able to get a Scarab unit by itself upfield a little, then string a few back to catch up a Sorc or Ahriman would work similarly. While I greatly enjoy being able to spread out my forces, TS seems to play best when everyone is rather tight for overlapping buffs, psychic support, and multiple units to combine fire.

Will be testing this nect week and let you know:
Ahriman - disc
5 rubrics
5 rubrics
5 rubrics
5 scarab occult
5 scarab occult
5 scarab occult
Sorceror - ml3, familiar
Sorceror - ml3, familiar
Sorceror - grimoire

Sacrificied 2 mastery levels and a familiar to fit in Ahzek. Lets see how it goes

So now that the full 8th edition rules have effectively been leaked, let's get this party going again!

What evil strategies and combinations does the new information suggest to you?

Right off the bat, it seems to me that if you're taking Magnus, you're going to want to abuse the hell out of Warptime from the Dark Hereticus list. It's an easy cast for him, and the resulting 32" threat range (when he's at full wounds) means a fair shot at him pulling off a turn 1 charge. It also means he can summon some daemons and STILL move 16".

Two of the three Warlord Traits (+1 A or a save-after-the-save of 6+) look especially tasty for Magnus as well.

Magnus is definitely the premiere psyker and offers the strongest support bonus.

Tzaangors got a big boost, they are now S4 T4 5++ and will benefit from the rr1s on Invul saves. They are probably the stronger pick over Cultists.

Flamers of all types and the Soulreaper Cannon are looking much stronger (if pricey). Rubrics got a lot of help, SOT are still solid.

Psychic phase won't be nearly as overpowering (Warptime has obvious utility).

Finally a tangential point. Rhinos and Land Raiders finally may be viable. Definitely something to consider.

The more I think about Warptime, the happier it makes me. Let's say you manage to advance Magnus far down the board in turn 1. In turn 2, your SOT squad can deep-strike near him (and 9" away from the enemy), but they can't move...until Magnus Warptimes them towards the opponent, who's now facing a SOT charge on turn 2 preceded by a shooting phase of lethal SOT dakka.

Rubrics are much better, my opinion of SoT is lower than 7th.

Our main issue is that multi-psykers are practically pointless. you can only cast three spells, as there are only three spells, and ahriman/magnus alone does that.

Exalted would have been crazy good if not for the issue with multi-psykers not actually casting spells, as they are basically a sorcerer with better statline for slightly cheaper.

Smite isn't doing much on our mini-casters, so they are not good at all for all they cost. with some luck, when they eventually nuke themselves it will be in CC.

Tazz are pretty good.

Flamers, are too expensive in my book. soulreapers however are awesome.

Rhinos are pointless. no fire points mean no drive-by, disembark before movement means they don't actually add reach unless you outright ram yourself into enemy lines and hope not to be killed until next turn.

 BoomWolf wrote:
Rubrics are much better, my opinion of SoT is lower than 7th.

Why do you say that?

Our main issue is that multi-psykers are practically pointless. you can only cast three spells, as there are only three spells, and ahriman/magnus alone does that.

Yeah, it's a real issue in matched play. Not so much in the other modes, it seems. Hopefully we'll get a work-around for that when we get our inevitable codex (whether it's an exception to the matched play rules, or just a lot more powers to choose from and utilize).

Brian888 wrote:
So now that the full 8th edition rules have effectively been leaked, let's get this party going again!

What evil strategies and combinations does the new information suggest to you?

Right off the bat, it seems to me that if you're taking Magnus, you're going to want to abuse the hell out of Warptime from the Dark Hereticus list. It's an easy cast for him, and the resulting 32" threat range (when he's at full wounds) means a fair shot at him pulling off a turn 1 charge. It also means he can summon some daemons and STILL move 16".

Two of the three Warlord Traits (+1 A or a save-after-the-save of 6+) look especially tasty for Magnus as well.

Leave Magnus at home hes too big and cant hide. 50 points of guardsman average 1 wound per turn...with lasguns. You fly him up 32" and he wont see turn 2. Leave him in the back and hes useless since his range tops out at 18" which are un aimed so less then that.

Smite and Infernal cant target units so trash will be put in the way to absorb mortal wounds. Warp time has a 3" range so thats a thing. Prescience is good but has a casting Value of 7 so your going to get it a little more then half the time with Ahriman and most of the time with Magnus but again he will die in 2 or 3 rounds.

Best strat is another army till more releases come.

If you insist on playing TS 20 man squad of SOT with Soul Reaper Cannons and Hellfyre Missles. Pray Ahriman can get prescience off most of the time shoot the crap out of everything in sight with your rerolling Inferno Combi-Bolters.

A more sure thing is to bring a Daemon Prince probably wont have Prescience but rerolling 1s to hit is nice and guaranteed. Plus he is almost the same price as Ahriman with Dual Malefic Talons.

Basically as TS play your going to want to keep your casting to a minimum sice you have no real way to mitigate perils. Or Spam Cultists and bring a bunch of Sorcs on disks and try to position them so you can hit what you want except if you do that your going to lose a Sorc a turn probably.

Thousand Sons faction focus today.

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2017/06/02/warhammer-40000-faction-focus-thousand-sons/

I think as usual Tsons will have to rely on being tricky. Tzaangors are great chaff with their 5+ inv and -1 AP in CC for just 7 pts. Once the forgeworld stuff comes out I think the dreadclaw will help out immensely. A dreadclaw loaded with warpflamers and a sorceror will allow you to drop in and flame a unit out of existence with warptime. Drop in a terminator squad next to them and you should be able to clear an objective or relieve a flank.

Ahriman is pretty cheap at 131 points, but as previously noted the DemonPrince will give the biggest buff. I think a pure Tson army will be hard because of the limits on psychic shenanigans but a core Tson with some allied Tzeentch marines will give you alot of options.

Right now we are great at the mid range firefight, but for long range support we need help. Havocs are good, The forgefiend with Hades autocannons next to a DemonPrince is surprisingly good as well. Set up a fire base and use tzaangors to go for objs backed by spawn and Tsons and use the terminators to reinforce where needed.

 Thousand-Son-Sorcerer wrote:
Leave Magnus at home hes too big and cant hide. 50 points of guardsman average 1 wound per turn...with lasguns. You fly him up 32" and he wont see turn 2. Leave him in the back and hes useless since his range tops out at 18" which are un aimed so less then that.

I think that's an oversimplification. Magnus can reliably move at least 34" (with only a 2" charge result) in a turn, and most likely will move and charge around 38". That's over 3 feet. With a threat range like that, I don't think we can simply say that he'll get shot up long before he gets to the enemy lines (and once he's in there, he basically no longer has to worry about getting shot).

Whatever the issues in higher point games, you won't need more than one psychic table if you're only fielding 1-2 HQs. TS have some very good troops available, plus Occult. And vehicle support has improved in 8th, so there's potential there.

So probably the best thing for the time being is to play at low points, to get a grip on how they've changed versus the other factions. They will scale better once their dedicated codex is published.

Brian888 wrote:
I think that's an oversimplification. Magnus can reliably move at least 34" (with only a 2" charge result) in a turn, and most likely will move and charge around 38". That's over 3 feet. With a threat range like that, I don't think we can simply say that he'll get shot up long before he gets to the enemy lines (and once he's in there, he basically no longer has to worry about getting shot).

He does have to worry about getting shot at. Any unit you charge will just fall back and now your in the middle of the enemy army. Everthying that can hurt him, which is everything now, will be shot at him. He WILL die in 1 turn of shooting with around 2000 points being shot at him.

His uber smite has a range of 18" and targets the closest unit so for you to use it your going to have to fly up super close and stand next to the unit you want to kill. The best use of him i could see is moving up and standing next the unit you want to blast and then backing out with warp time. Problem is you have to start within 14" of where you want to be which is pretty damn close. And if Warp Time fails charge the closest unit and hope the enemy is stupid.

If an opponent wastes an entire turn shooting 2000pts at a 415 unit that charged them while the remainder of your army positions itself to threaten them further, that's a victory more than a defeat.

 Cephalobeard wrote:
If an opponent wastes an entire turn shooting 2000pts at a 415 unit that charged them while the remainder of your army positions itself to threaten them further, that's a victory more than a defeat.

If you think losing a 415 point model that gives reroll 1s to saves and hits in a 9" aura on the first turn is a victory you dont know what victory is. You would be losing 20% of your army in 1 turn.

 Thousand-Son-Sorcerer wrote:

 Cephalobeard wrote:
If an opponent wastes an entire turn shooting 2000pts at a 415 unit that charged them while the remainder of your army positions itself to threaten them further, that's a victory more than a defeat.

If you think losing a 415 point model that gives reroll 1s to saves and hits in a 9" aura on the first turn is a victory you dont know what victory is. You would be losing 20% of your army in 1 turn.

Assuming they managed to kill him, AND that he didn't take anything down with him.