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I was wondering what the community thought? I've recently been told that he is ubur cheese because of the possible 3 psykic shriek potential he has. I admit that it is awesome but personally see units like serpants, duel dk and a riptide to be stronger. Of course this is my opinion, so what you guys think?

Never even heard him talked about as cheese.

It was brought up in 'how to tackle grey knights' or something in tactics :p. But I too don't see how it can be catogoroesed as cheese when you look at how other codex options are much better :p

"is Ahriman cheese?"

No he is a cumquat.

He suffers from can be shot to death quite easilly syndrome

also can get insta shut down by mr cluxsus.

I never said that he was cheese... I said that he is broken as he can psychic shriek THREE times!

SGTPozy wrote:
I never said that he was cheese... I said that he is broken as he can psychic shriek THREE times!

Hehe, well, he costs more than 3 Sorcerers who can also Shriek 3 times, and the sorcs have spell familliars, he does not, this means that he has has about twice the chance of failure compared to the sorcs when casting.

He is good for alpha striking from a Rhino for example, especially when backed by a ML3 sorc, but he is not that good. I would take a normal Sorc with a Spell Familliar on a Disk any day instead of him.

That's what I mean. I know that he isn't cheesy but that ability is broken.

Give him a back-up squad of MoT Termies w/Combi-meltas, Psy Shriek + 2 Santic powers and laugh... If he lands Gate he's utter filth.
There's literally only what, 2 powers he doesn't really want from Santic?

The key to really making him broken cheddar though is building the list itself around exploiting him... ally him + a min-sized 1ksons squad in Rhino + some MoT Termies to a Daemon army designed to farm WC's and abuse Summoning. Add in the Portalglyph as well for even more WC farming.

dethric wrote:

SGTPozy wrote:
I never said that he was cheese... I said that he is broken as he can psychic shriek THREE times!

Hehe, well, he costs more than 3 Sorcerers who can also Shriek 3 times, and the sorcs have spell familliars, he does not, this means that he has has about twice the chance of failure compared to the sorcs when casting.

He is good for alpha striking from a Rhino for example, especially when backed by a ML3 sorc, but he is not that good. I would take a normal Sorc with a Spell Familliar on a Disk any day instead of him.

feth no he does not.
A ML3 sorcerer with a 4+ invul and spell familiar costs 150, so he's not even as expensive as '2 sorcerers who can cast psychic shriek'.
Yes I get that sorcerers have more options and you'd probably want another mark, but you shouldn't exaggerate his cost.

Ahriman isn't really cheesy but he definately got a nice buff in 7th edition.

I think he means 3 lv1 sorcs.

 Desubot wrote:
I think he means 3 lv1 sorcs.

Yeah I know he means that. Doesn't change the fact that his comparison is just bad.
He's talking about sorcerers with spell familiar being superior to Ahriman, then goes on to tell Ahriman costs more than 3 sorcerers while 'forgetting' to mention these sorcerers are marginally worse than Ahriman.
3 ML1 sorcerers with spell familiar are cheaper than Ahriman (5 points cheaper), there's truth to be found in that statement, but he is ignoring every other aspect of Ahriman and putting their ability to cast psychic shriek in a vacuum.

Yes certain configurations for sorcerers will be better than Ahriman, but he's making him out to be far worse than he actually is.

Marginally worse?

The point was the compare in equal points.

a single lv3 wiz vs 3 lv 1 wiz that both gets to shoot 3 shreks.

maxing out the sorcerers isnt helping anything.

That is for 3 lv1s no familiar is just 180 vs 230

Ahri can get ID and picked out, while the 3 lvl 1s you have to mulch through. also it is 3 to 6 wounds in sorc favor.

Ahri gets 1 extra warp charge. we can bring sorcs up to 225 with spell familiars and they get a better chance to cast with 1 less.

DaPino wrote:

 Desubot wrote:
I think he means 3 lv1 sorcs.

Yeah I know he means that. Doesn't change the fact that his comparison is just bad.
He's talking about sorcerers with spell familiar being superior to Ahriman, then goes on to tell Ahriman costs more than 3 sorcerers while 'forgetting' to mention these sorcerers are marginally worse than Ahriman.

Yes certain configurations for sorcerers will be better than Ahriman, but he's making him out to be far worse than he actually is.

I would not call it forgetting, I would call it "skipping to mention", the basic sorc also has a worse statline than Ahriman and I skipped that too. but that does not change that 3 sorcs can do what is called "broken" for less points. The comparision was just to illustrate that the same thing can be done cheaper with another platform, with better result on the casting itself. 3 Unmarked Sorcs with SoC but without familliars costs a bit more than Ahriman, but can still do the same "tripple shriek" stunt, with about the same results.

For some math: Psychic Shriek forces you to take a LD test on 3D6, and subtract your LD, 3 of those should mean 9D6-3x9 wounds versus a LD9 platform, this should land about 9*3.5-27, which is 31.5-27=4.5 wounds, assuming that Ahriman passes all psychic checks. On 2d6 he has 3/4 chance to do that, so the chance of him passing all three is 27/64, which is 42% chance, so 42% chance of causing about 4.5 wounds on average, on a 230 point platform. Although what is good about Psy Shriek is the variance, the best case is that 9 sixes are rolled, and 27 wounds are cause, which is glorious (about 1 in 10 millions, 1/(6^9) . (I think the math is sound..)

Ahriman is not cheesy, in fact he struggles to make his points back. He needs:

1) A very durable bodyguard squad. He is ever so fragile.
2) A bodyguard squad that can stay out of close combat.
3) 3 squads to infiltrate. If you roll a 5 or 6, you need 3 squads that will really benefit. If you only have 1 or 2, you aren't using all of Ahrimans power.
4) A way of casting 3 witchfires every turn, from turn 1. I find 3 dice is a good balance between reliability and danger of perils for WC 1 spells like shriek. That's 9 WC, and he only supplies 4 by being ML 4, so he needs supporting sorcerers to donate their WC, or he needs to use all of the D6 extra WCs you get.

If you do all this, he is ok. His thousand sons squad can disembark turn 1, rapid fire into some marines, killing all 10, and then shriek a squad of centurions or terminators to death, and then the rhino can flat out in front of them and block most returning fire.

^^That is what happens when everything goes right, also assuming you have first turn.

Who voted yes?

Anyways, yes, it is possible to turn him into a psychic siren, but the odds of that are super remote. Even moreso the circumstances for him to use it best, and then even moreso the powers going off without a hitch.

It's like asking why people invest in the stock market when the lottery can pay out so much better...

I love my Ahriman, she really holds the centre of my line, but I wouldn't call her broken even when she is backed up by four Thousand Son squads and a Divination sorcerer

 Furyou Miko wrote:
I love my Ahriman, she really holds the centre of my line, but I wouldn't call her broken even when she is backed up by four Thousand Son squads and a Divination sorcerer

She?...

This one you mean?

Ppffft. My Ahriman rolls on biomancy. Put him, 8T-sons in a rhino with a ML3 sorc with santic. Ahriman has 2/3,chance to grab iron arm.. He wrecked a lord of skulls in one turn on the charge one game. And two turned a stompa.

 raiden wrote:
Ppffft. My Ahriman rolls on biomancy. Put him, 8T-sons in a rhino with a ML3 sorc with santic. Ahriman has 2/3,chance to grab iron arm.. He wrecked a lord of skulls in one turn on the charge one game. And two turned a stompa.

Isn't it a 50% chance since he has to roll on the Tzeentch table at least once...

That's right, lol. My bad. Either way, if you get iron arm or eternal warrior you sovle half his problems.

Santic sorc is looking for sanctuary and or hammer hand,. I've also had success with rolling the sorc on div or telepathy as well.

Ahriman is good and all but far from insanely broken, he can fire off 3 witchfires a turn. no biggy the worst powers in the game in terms of brokenness are blessings anyway

 changerofways wrote:

 Furyou Miko wrote:
I love my Ahriman, she really holds the centre of my line, but I wouldn't call her broken even when she is backed up by four Thousand Son squads and a Divination sorcerer

She?...

I don't actually run a Thousand Sons army. I run an Order of Dusk army using Thousand Sons rules. So yes. She. My 'Arhiman' is actually Magistra Aeronwy Gesh of the Order of Dusk.



So take your self-righteous sarcasm and stick it in your scrapbook.

Why is this the first time I've heard of the idea of traitor sisters?

I suppose because few people run sisters. That's a great idea, though.

 Furyou Miko wrote:

So take your self-righteous sarcasm and stick it in your scrapbook.

PLEASE READ MY FAN FICTION!

EdIt (she looks like she is trying to get people to read her book )

Just jumping in because i played a game earlier today and my opponent was using him. While he does do damage, but I caused more damage with a warsmith (30k iron warriors vs 40k chaos), so while he is worthwhile if you get unlucky he will still go down.

Ailaros wrote:Why is this the first time I've heard of the idea of traitor sisters?

I suppose because few people run sisters. That's a great idea, though.

Because she's not a traitor Sister. There are no traitor Sisters. Sisters DO NOT fall to Chaos. Ever. It's in the codex.

She is a chaos witch who happens to have murdered an entire convent of Battle Sisters and taken over the planetary system they were guarding, thus having access to plenty of suits of Sororitas power armour into which to bind daemons.

Desubot wrote:

 Furyou Miko wrote:

So take your self-righteous sarcasm and stick it in your scrapbook.

PLEASE READ MY FAN FICTION!

EdIt (she looks like she is trying to get people to read her book )

She prepared Explosive Runes this morning. Also, that would require a link. :p

...how sure about that are you? I remember something about them and Slaneesh...

EDIT: here we go http://warhammer40k.wikia.com/wiki/Miriael_Sabathiel I WILL GIVE THOUGH IT SAYS ONE! ONE! Has ever fallen.

That one being from a third party card game. :p and still in contradiction of the codex fluff.

I mostly used the Canoness to build Aeronwy because it was easy to merge with the Empire Wizard, amid power armoured women are fairly hard to come by in my area.

dethric wrote:

DaPino wrote:

 Desubot wrote:
I think he means 3 lv1 sorcs.

Yeah I know he means that. Doesn't change the fact that his comparison is just bad.
He's talking about sorcerers with spell familiar being superior to Ahriman, then goes on to tell Ahriman costs more than 3 sorcerers while 'forgetting' to mention these sorcerers are marginally worse than Ahriman.

Yes certain configurations for sorcerers will be better than Ahriman, but he's making him out to be far worse than he actually is.

I would not call it forgetting, I would call it "skipping to mention", the basic sorc also has a worse statline than Ahriman and I skipped that too. but that does not change that 3 sorcs can do what is called "broken" for less points. The comparision was just to illustrate that the same thing can be done cheaper with another platform, with better result on the casting itself. 3 Unmarked Sorcs with SoC but without familliars costs a bit more than Ahriman, but can still do the same "tripple shriek" stunt, with about the same results.

For some math: Psychic Shriek forces you to take a LD test on 3D6, and subtract your LD, 3 of those should mean 9D6-3x9 wounds versus a LD9 platform, this should land about 9*3.5-27, which is 31.5-27=4.5 wounds, assuming that Ahriman passes all psychic checks. On 2d6 he has 3/4 chance to do that, so the chance of him passing all three is 27/64, which is 42% chance, so 42% chance of causing about 4.5 wounds on average, on a 230 point platform. Although what is good about Psy Shriek is the variance, the best case is that 9 sixes are rolled, and 27 wounds are cause, which is glorious (about 1 in 10 millions, 1/(6^9) . (I think the math is sound..)

The maths isn't quite right as it neglects the fact that if any of the rolls are less than 9, then 9 is not taken off from those 3d6. For example, if a 6, an 8 and a 15 were rolled, only 9+8+6 would be taken off, rather than 3 lots of 9.