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Ahriman has a fixed warlord trait to infiltrate 1d3 units of infantry.

Ahriman by himself is a unit of the type: Infantry, thus, even if he rolls a 1, he may choose to give himself infiltrate.

Infiltrated units may start 12" away from any enemy unit as long as the infiltrated unit is not within 12" of another enemy unit.

Infiltrated units may start 18" away from any enemy unit, even if it has Line of Sight, as long as the infiltrated unit is not within 18" of another enemy unit that has LoS, or 12" of any other enemy unit..

Units may make a 6" move in the movement phase, prior to the psychic phase.

Ahriman may roll 3 times on Sanctic daemonology.

Ahriman may manifest a witchfire he knows 3 times if he has sufficient warp charge.

Vortex of Doom is a witchfire.

Vortex of Doom has a range of 12".

You do not have to target all witchfires at the same unit.

Vortex of Doom is Warp Charge 3.

You can get >30 + d6 warp charge using Tzeentch daemons and Ahriman in <1500 points of battle forged goodness.



Ahriman has 3 wounds.

Any roll of a double will cause a Perils of the Warp check if Ahriman casts a Sanctic power.

Only 1/2 of the perils checks should cause damage.

Perils doesn't stop a power succeeding.

Opponents must successfully Deny at least the amount of times you succeeded on your casting check to nullify the power.

Ahriman has a 50/50 shot of getting Vortex of Doom.

Logically, half the time, you're going to remove any unit you point at within 12". Since you're rolling on Sanctic anyway, there's a not unreasonable chance you've got GoI as well, meaning you can now deepstrike into range and then Blast up to 3 units within 12" with your Str: D pie plate of pain, just don't expect to live through the experience more than once.

Gimmicky? Like you wouldn't believe. Cheap as hell? Like you wouldn't believe. Hilarious? Like you wouldn't believe.

put him inside a Rhino and you won't even need to leave it

This is hilarious.

I love how sanctic powers allows you to get 20 Plague marines into the enemy deployment zone turn 1. Doubly fun if you get there before they can fire a single weapon.
Combine this with vortex of doom to kill the BBEG of their army with post haste!

Also instead of taking Ahriman, I would take cheaper psykers with no mark.
You might not get it 100% of the time, but one of the Tactical warlord traits allows for automatic 3 infiltrating units, which is "more better" and "free-er"

EDIT: I JUST READ THE FAQ. I thought you were bsing at first, but nope Ahriman could throw out 3 Vortexes of Doom and a Breath of Chaos in the same turn. Bye bye everything that relies on armor and cover.

You'd have to rely on getting that warlord trait where Ahriman gets it automatically.

Kyutaru wrote:
You'd have to rely on getting that warlord trait where Ahriman gets it automatically.

Yes, but at the same time, you don't need Ahriman to get infiltration.
The chaos warlord trait is d3, where the generic one is 3, no roll and more or less for free.

If you want to spam VoD or any witchfires, then Ahriman is still your man nonetheless.

Yeah, hope for two units, Infiltrate him with a unit inside a Rhino. I'd take as many other Psykers as you can get in the rest of the army, just to boost your warp charge pool. After playing a game and using Vortex, to reliably get that power off you need to throw 7-8 dice at it per shot. And be prepared to take some Perils, because you will perils if you fail and if you roll any doubles. So risky, but hilariously devastating as well.

You'll never get in range unless you exploit a rhino's pivot if you deploy 18 inches away.

Even so, I run a similar trick with my necrons this edition with a ctan shard with grand illusion and lord of fire and I have imotekh with a 4+ seize. And then 2 gloom prism spiders giving me 2+ deny the witch bubble.

So chances are I redeploy d3 units, infiltrate my warlord + d3 units depending on my warlord traits and I get to assault and shoot you. While possibly denying your witchfire...

Just an example where you'd probably be better specialising for mobility and flexibility than balls to wall charging in.

If you can't get in range turn 1, you can always have another psyker gate of infinity you there.

If you're generating warpcharge you might aswell make them all roll on sanctic and make them teleport for the lols whenever you have any warpcharge left over.(Or hope for some buffs like a sane person)


On a side-note, Tzeentch psykers just got an indirect buff sort-of. If you roll Doombolt and blow up a transport, and get that lucky 12 inch explosion range..
str 4 explosions to people outside of the vehicle now.
12'' means 24'' diameter str 4 blast which just sounds amazing.

(Small blast is 3'' Diameter)

Have fun rolling perils every turn. My buddy took santic with eldrad and periled two times per phase. He stopped casting by turn four because Eldrad was on his last wound and he didn't want to risk a 1 result (ghost helm only stops the wound I believe)

 Daemon Prince wrote:
If you can't get in range turn 1, you can always have another psyker gate of infinity you there.

If you're generating warpcharge you might aswell make them all roll on sanctic and make them teleport for the lols whenever you have any warpcharge left over.(Or hope for some buffs like a sane person)


On a side-note, Tzeentch psykers just got an indirect buff sort-of. If you roll Doombolt and blow up a transport, and get that lucky 12 inch explosion range..
str 4 explosions to people outside of the vehicle now.
12'' means 24'' diameter str 4 blast which just sounds amazing.

(Small blast is 3'' Diameter)

If you're going to gate, what's the point in infiltrate then?

This entire strategy involves a whole number of random things happening.

1) That you'll roll on all your psychic powers that you want
2) That you don't peril and blow your psyker up when you try and use it
3a) That your opponent has setup in such a way that you're 12" away from a good target.
3b) That you rolled enough infiltration that you can infiltrate your psykers 18" away in rhinos so you can pivot shenannigans him
4) That your opponent isn't farming warp charge also with decent DtW bonuses to prevent you from witch firing him or gate of infinitying...
5a) That your opponent doesn't seize the initiative before blowing your psykers away.
5b) That your opponent doesn't seize and triple vortex of doom you.

Against my current list which wasn't actually made to be anti-psyker, I reckon I'd kill your psykers in the first turn with minimal losses. Maybe that's just necron cheese, but if I was going to do this tactic, I'd do it as a minimalistic kamikaze run from one psyker rather than a big sink hole of points that are probably going to kill themselves faster than your enemy can.

Hate to burst your bubble, but you can only attempt to cast a power once per unit per psychic phase. So your super duper wizard can only cast vortex once per phase.

 Parchaeus wrote:
Hate to burst your bubble, but you can only attempt to cast a power once per unit per psychic phase. So your super duper wizard can only cast vortex once per phase.

Arihman has specific permission to cast the same Witchfire up to three times in a phase.

Personally, I much prefer to take only 2 rolls on Santic and then grab up Psychic Shriek from Telepathy when using Ahriman. Much safer, still equally as deadly on the whole to non-AV targets and much, *much* easier to multi-cast everything!

Actually, I'm finding that best 'shooting' power Ahriman can get from Santic is actually Cleansing Flame...
Slap him in a Rhino if he doesn't land GoI, and then drive/Deep Strike him into the most populous area of your opponent's army and laugh! Vs. a horde army such as IG or Orks, it's utterly murderous what three casts of 2D6/S5 auto-hits w/Ignores Cover can do. And as an added bonus, those auto-hits will also nail FMC's too - handy vs. the likes of a Flying Circus list.

I've actually had Ahriman nuke two Nurgle DP's in a single turn with a pair of Cleansing Flame blasts!

IMO you are way better off doing this with grey knights. We are the masters of santic powers. We perils 1/6th the time as others using it. GKL is stock lvl 3 for a cheap price.Take a 10 man termy and put like 4 GKL in it you should get 2 vortex and probably a few cleansing flame and GOI. You'll be throwing out flame from that squad all game. Sounds like fun actually.

This looks amazing. Might have to try it out.

Have to agree on cleansing flame. I utterly *adore* that power. Vortex is pretty "meh" in actual use.

Best haul with just one GKL was 3 venoms, 2 on foot 5 man squads holding objectives, and a ravager. Got FttF and took a ballsy deepstrike right in the middle of their army

 Xenomancers wrote:
IMO you are way better off doing this with grey knights. We are the masters of santic powers. We perils 1/6th the time as others using it. GKL is stock lvl 3 for a cheap price.Take a 10 man termy and put like 4 GKL in it you should get 2 vortex and probably a few cleansing flame and GOI. You'll be throwing out flame from that squad all game. Sounds like fun actually.

Sure Grey Knights are the masters of Santic, but Ahriman also has some truly sickening synergies with it as well, mainly due to his ability to triple tap with a Witchfire power.

Cleansing Flame with him is highly risky, but he's also got W3 and can thus shrug off Perils better than a stock standard Sorcerer can. He's also Mastery Lv4, meaning he's better at pushing his powers through against other psyker units as well.

His most optimal use though is still to aim for GoI and/or Sanctuary though, as those are both WC1 powers, (and Blessings to boot!), which allow him to safely attempt them on 3 dice...
Throw in Psy Shirek and a unit of MoT Termies + a Rhino with room to spare and then you pull off either;
1. You get Sanctuary, and thus can rock out with the Termies, boosting them to a 3++ all day long. Add in Combi-Meltas for some anti-tank goodness.
2. You don't get Sanctuary or GoI, and can simply truck about in the Rhino, laying out 3x Psy Shrieks and/or potentially a Cleansing Flame when needed if you land it.

Either way, you've got yourself a unit that can essentially auto-delete pretty much anything that isn't a vehicle/walker!

Experiment 626 wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:
IMO you are way better off doing this with grey knights. We are the masters of santic powers. We perils 1/6th the time as others using it. GKL is stock lvl 3 for a cheap price.Take a 10 man termy and put like 4 GKL in it you should get 2 vortex and probably a few cleansing flame and GOI. You'll be throwing out flame from that squad all game. Sounds like fun actually.

Sure Grey Knights are the masters of Santic, but Ahriman also has some truly sickening synergies with it as well, mainly due to his ability to triple tap with a Witchfire power.

Cleansing Flame with him is highly risky, but he's also got W3 and can thus shrug off Perils better than a stock standard Sorcerer can. He's also Mastery Lv4, meaning he's better at pushing his powers through against other psyker units as well.

His most optimal use though is still to aim for GoI and/or Sanctuary though, as those are both WC1 powers, (and Blessings to boot!), which allow him to safely attempt them on 3 dice...
Throw in Psy Shirek and a unit of MoT Termies + a Rhino with room to spare and then you pull off either;
1. You get Sanctuary, and thus can rock out with the Termies, boosting them to a 3++ all day long. Add in Combi-Meltas for some anti-tank goodness.
2. You don't get Sanctuary or GoI, and can simply truck about in the Rhino, laying out 3x Psy Shrieks and/or potentially a Cleansing Flame when needed if you land it.

Either way, you've got yourself a unit that can essentially auto-delete pretty much anything that isn't a vehicle/walker!

High risk high reward I suppose. Statistically you are gonna perils almost every time you roll at vortex because it requires 6 dice to average a successful cast of vortex. rolling 6 dice you have a 98.4% chance to roll a double. If you roll 7 dice you auto peril on santic. So really - if you were trying to cast 3 vortex on turn 1 there is a realistic chance that you will kill yourself on the first turn.

Though you would be better off using psycic sherks already

you wouldn't be able to do this trick without the rhino or LOS blocking terrain up the wazoo

and at that you have to manage to roll a 4 5 and 6 just to cast it without perilsing.


getting it off will be cool but the chances are astronomical.

You could get around all the unnecessary infiltration + rhino shenanigans by taking a bunker with escape hatch and getting an 18" movement (12" hatch + 6" deploy).

Thats to assume they have something in that range.

a 6" range from a static position is pretty slim pickins.

But the idea of 3 potential D vortex floating around makes me giddy (which is why i prefer the good old aquila strong point )