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I've been kicking this idea around for a bit since 7th came out, and it seems like a pretty fun little glass-cannon.

Take a single herald of tzeentch, mastery 3, stick it in an allied CSM rhino.
Just 130 points, and it makes for a pretty crazy dakka-bus. Basically a cheaper, more survivable burning chariot.
With ML3, the herald gets all the tzeentch witchfire powers, so a 4D6 heavy bolter, a pretty good AP2 beam, a really good AP1 blast, and a meh D6+1 str blast. BUT, he can shoot up to all four of them, and he can shoot them all at different targets. If you want to get fancy, you can add a greater locus for +1 strength to all that jazz, or take a portal glyph and try to generate d6 horrors that can also hop in the rhino for an additional 2D6 heavy bolter shots (only needs two fireports!)

It's still a junky rhino hull, so it's not the be-all-end all, but it is better than the chariot, and jamming that many witchfires out of a single unit seems pretty cool to me.

Ahriman has obtained a smash ball! Ahriman uses "Witchfire Blitz"! It's SUPER EFFECTIVE!!!

"Anything you can do, I can do better!" -- Ahriman, Chief Librarian of the Thousand Witchfire Sons

But a herald doesn't cost 230 points.

I am definitely doing this, because it sounds like a lot of fun.

How many dice would the herald need to have to make this happen?

 Eldarain wrote:
How many dice would the herald need to have to make this happen?

Reliably? 21.

 McGibs wrote:
I've been kicking this idea around for a bit since 7th came out, and it seems like a pretty fun little glass-cannon.

Take a single herald of tzeentch, mastery 3, stick it in an allied CSM rhino.
Just 130 points, and it makes for a pretty crazy dakka-bus. Basically a cheaper, more survivable burning chariot.
With ML3, the herald gets all the tzeentch witchfire powers, so a 4D6 heavy bolter, a pretty good AP2 beam, a really good AP1 blast, and a meh D6+1 str blast. BUT, he can shoot up to all four of them, and he can shoot them all at different targets. If you want to get fancy, you can add a greater locus for +1 strength to all that jazz, or take a portal glyph and try to generate d6 horrors that can also hop in the rhino for an additional 2D6 heavy bolter shots (only needs two fireports!)

It's still a junky rhino hull, so it's not the be-all-end all, but it is better than the chariot, and jamming that many witchfires out of a single unit seems pretty cool to me.

Except that Tzheralds can only generate up to half their powers from the Lore of Change, so a Lv3 only gets 2 rolls and has to take his 3rd power from either Divination or Malefic Daemonology.

Experiment 626 wrote:

 McGibs wrote:
I've been kicking this idea around for a bit since 7th came out, and it seems like a pretty fun little glass-cannon.

Take a single herald of tzeentch, mastery 3, stick it in an allied CSM rhino.
Just 130 points, and it makes for a pretty crazy dakka-bus. Basically a cheaper, more survivable burning chariot.
With ML3, the herald gets all the tzeentch witchfire powers, so a 4D6 heavy bolter, a pretty good AP2 beam, a really good AP1 blast, and a meh D6+1 str blast. BUT, he can shoot up to all four of them, and he can shoot them all at different targets. If you want to get fancy, you can add a greater locus for +1 strength to all that jazz, or take a portal glyph and try to generate d6 horrors that can also hop in the rhino for an additional 2D6 heavy bolter shots (only needs two fireports!)

It's still a junky rhino hull, so it's not the be-all-end all, but it is better than the chariot, and jamming that many witchfires out of a single unit seems pretty cool to me.

Except that Tzheralds can only generate up to half their powers from the Lore of Change, so a Lv3 only gets 2 rolls and has to take his 3rd power from either Divination or Malefic Daemonology.

Daemons from Codex;Chaos Daemons don't have those restrictions, they can roll all powers on a discipline if they want to.

EDIT: I was wrong, somehow had it in my head this was different from Chaos Marines, or MUST they roll half their powers on their god's discipline?

I don't think this will really be worth it. It takes way too many dice to cast all those powers. If we were allowed to join each others units like all other battle brothers you could put a Nurgle Herald in with some plague marines and cruise around shooting 2 plasma guns + smite out of the top... but alas.

 Shandara wrote:

Experiment 626 wrote:



Except that Tzheralds can only generate up to half their powers from the Lore of Change, so a Lv3 only gets 2 rolls and has to take his 3rd power from either Divination or Malefic Daemonology.

Daemons from Codex;Chaos Daemons don't have those restrictions, they can roll all powers on a discipline if they want to.

P68 of daemon codex, can only take up to half of respective god tables.

Experiment 626 wrote:

 McGibs wrote:
I've been kicking this idea around for a bit since 7th came out, and it seems like a pretty fun little glass-cannon.

Take a single herald of tzeentch, mastery 3, stick it in an allied CSM rhino.
Just 130 points, and it makes for a pretty crazy dakka-bus. Basically a cheaper, more survivable burning chariot.
With ML3, the herald gets all the tzeentch witchfire powers, so a 4D6 heavy bolter, a pretty good AP2 beam, a really good AP1 blast, and a meh D6+1 str blast. BUT, he can shoot up to all four of them, and he can shoot them all at different targets. If you want to get fancy, you can add a greater locus for +1 strength to all that jazz, or take a portal glyph and try to generate d6 horrors that can also hop in the rhino for an additional 2D6 heavy bolter shots (only needs two fireports!)

It's still a junky rhino hull, so it's not the be-all-end all, but it is better than the chariot, and jamming that many witchfires out of a single unit seems pretty cool to me.

Except that Tzheralds can only generate up to half their powers from the Lore of Change, so a Lv3 only gets 2 rolls and has to take his 3rd power from either Divination or Malefic Daemonology.

Another reason Ahriman is awesome.

Mastery level 4 = 2 rolls on Tzeentch
Only three possible Tzeentch powers to roll for

- Tzeentch Firestorm = Primaris
- Doombolt = high chance to get with 2 rolls
- Breath of Chaos = high chance to get with 2 rolls
- Psychic Shriek = Primaris

Total Casting Power: Six witchfires per turn

...and he gets another roll to spend on whatever he wants.

Kyutaru wrote:

Experiment 626 wrote:

 McGibs wrote:
I've been kicking this idea around for a bit since 7th came out, and it seems like a pretty fun little glass-cannon.

Take a single herald of tzeentch, mastery 3, stick it in an allied CSM rhino.
Just 130 points, and it makes for a pretty crazy dakka-bus. Basically a cheaper, more survivable burning chariot.
With ML3, the herald gets all the tzeentch witchfire powers, so a 4D6 heavy bolter, a pretty good AP2 beam, a really good AP1 blast, and a meh D6+1 str blast. BUT, he can shoot up to all four of them, and he can shoot them all at different targets. If you want to get fancy, you can add a greater locus for +1 strength to all that jazz, or take a portal glyph and try to generate d6 horrors that can also hop in the rhino for an additional 2D6 heavy bolter shots (only needs two fireports!)

It's still a junky rhino hull, so it's not the be-all-end all, but it is better than the chariot, and jamming that many witchfires out of a single unit seems pretty cool to me.

Except that Tzheralds can only generate up to half their powers from the Lore of Change, so a Lv3 only gets 2 rolls and has to take his 3rd power from either Divination or Malefic Daemonology.

Another reason Ahriman is awesome.

Mastery level 4 = 2 rolls on Tzeentch
Only three possible Tzeentch powers to roll for

- Tzeentch Firestorm = Primaris
- Doombolt = high chance to get with 2 rolls
- Breath of Chaos = high chance to get with 2 rolls
- Psychic Shriek = Primaris

Total Casting Power: Six witchfires per turn

...and he gets another roll to spend on whatever he wants.

Ahriman's best use is to roll 3 powers on Santic & default to Psychic Shriek.

Fish for Gate of Infinity & Sanctuary/Hammerhand.
Run him with a group of Termies, 3x Psychic Shriek your little heart out, and put up (hopefully) a further +1 invuln save, or else (hopefully) make do with just a +2S boost to keep enemy assaulters a little more honest.

All three powers, Gate, Sanctuary & Hammerhand are only WC1 powers, so throwing 3 dice is good odds of casting with less odds of Perils.

Why would anyone take 2 rolls on the tzeentch table? The primaris is awful but I guess its free now, I still wouldn't bother wasting dice on it. Doombolt is fine, but breath is not worth WC2 and boon's rewards aren't worth the auto hit it causes, let alone the warp dice. Don't forget he can cast the same witchfire 3 times a phase now, all you really need is psychic shriek or smite. Use your other rolls to get buffing powers when your out of range for witchfires. He'll be lucky to cast all those since he doesn't have a familiar. 3 witchfires need 2 dice apiece which and one of them is likely to fail.

JubbJubbz wrote:
Why would anyone take 2 rolls on the tzeentch table? The primaris is awful but I guess its free now, I still wouldn't bother wasting dice on it. Doombolt is fine, but breath is not worth WC2 and boon's rewards aren't worth the auto hit it causes, let alone the warp dice. Don't forget he can cast the same witchfire 3 times a phase now, all you really need is psychic shriek or smite. Use your other rolls to get buffing powers when your out of range for witchfires. He'll be lucky to cast all those since he doesn't have a familiar. 3 witchfires need 2 dice apiece which and one of them is likely to fail.

When you're casting six witchfires a turn, do you really care if a few fail? I wouldn't throw more than the minimum dice on most of them. 1 or 2 WC for a chance at free damage and almost no chance at perils? Sign me up.

A significant amount of them will fail. Ahriman doesn't have a familiar so if you're only throwing 1 or 2 dice as you say, you are looking at 25 to 50% failures on average. All of a sudden getting off half of the already mediocre witchfires is looking a lot less appealing to me. Especially since if you want to be throwing 2 dice at most them you'll have to either get a lot of 6's for your warp dice or bring other psykers just to feed warp charges. If you're bringing more psykers with csm you have to ask yourself why you aren't using one with a familiar to do all this casting.

Additionally I wouldn't call it 'free' damage. Ahriman is quite expensive for what you get and besides his point cost, those witchfires come at the cost of not casting better spells from telep or bio.