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So I like the idea of a Thousand Sons marine that goes around collecting psykers before the blackships can get ahold of them (or sometimes even after they've gotten ahold of them if said blackship is poorly defended enough). He'd only hold onto the relatively sane and in-control psykers for fear of problematic warp events causing him to have a bad day, and he's supplement these forces with non-psychic human soldiers.

This got me thinking of ways to represent such a force on the battlefield. A bunch of cultists and the occassional chaos sorcerer doesn't really feel right, so I started looking at imperial options. What I'm leaning towards is a librarian enclave formation mixed with some inquisitorial (and possibly AM) forces to give myself a solid mix of both psykers and regular troops with some chaos abominations (represented by crusaders, assassins, flagellants, etc.) mixed in. So my questions for the good people of these noble forums are these:

*How viable is an imperial psyker spam army like this? A librarian enclave mixed with lots of henchmen with psykers thrown all over the place seems like a great way to build up a warp charge battery and give myself a diverse set of tools to use.

*Any suggestions for imperial "rubric marines?" Something with imperial rules that I could use my Thousand Sons models as?

*Thoughts on MSU psychic henchmen spam? An inquisitor to unlock an inquisition detachment is pretty cheap, and each detachment lets you throw a few also-cheap squads of henchmen out there. For less than 50 points, you can get a three-man henchmen squad with some storm shields, power swords, and a psyker. At 1500 points, you could be looking at about 30 units containing psykers. Each psyker generates a warp charge and has access to two psychic powers. A given psyker isn't likely to survive a perils, but if you're worried about that, just throw a single die at each power you cast. You still have about a 50/50 chance of getting off a WC1 power, and that's potentially a lot of psychic dakka. All these small units can still run after throwing psychic brain bullets at things, and multicharging a bunch of these units at once means fighting a fair few crusaders at once. Consider taking one relatively beefy squad (guardsman blob? All crusader squad? ) and attaching all those inquisitors you have floating around to it, and you can potentially create a neat little deathstar with potential access to tons of different buffs. If you see an enemy unit approaching that you'd rather not face in melee, you can break all of those attached inquisitors off and have them hide in other units somewhere. Or just have them hide out in a chimera together and witchfire out the hatch like crazy if you don't mind risking them to a bad explosion.

This probably isn't a tournament-worthy army concept (if only because of all the detachments involved), but I like the idea of using a slightly less extreme version of it to represent a sort of "X-men with body guards" style army.

For rubric marines, maybe look into Legion of the Damned. They have their own Codex right now, so they can be fielded without having to buy a whole marine FoC along with them. Rule-wise, they totally fit; flaming bolts that ignore cover, supernatural 3++ save, slow and purposeful. You can't really ask for any better.

As for psyker spam, Inquisition is one possible one, but you can also look to Warzone Damocles (forget if it's Mont'Ka or Kauyon) for the Wyrdvane Psyker formation. It's basically the Librarius Conclave for imperial guard, which is not only cheap but can help represent non-marine psykers.

 MechaEmperor7000 wrote:
you can also look to Warzone Damocles (forget if it's Mont'Ka or Kauyon) for the Wyrdvane Psyker formation.

That's in Mont'Ka, though I think the Commisar's 'I'll kill you first!' quality might not gel with the fluff as described above.

hmmm, right.

Well there's still Legion of the Damned for Rubric Marines.

Grey Knights make excellent Thousand Sons-esque Psyker Marines, while LotD do indeed make great Rubric Marines.

SJ

Considered IA13 allied with CSMs?

 ChazSexington wrote:
Considered IA13 allied with CSMs?

I have, and while the IA13 stuff is cool, it doesn't really fit what I'm going for. The psykers are actually pretty meh in that book (from what I remember when looking at it like, a year ago). They have limited choices of powers with limited applications. Some sort of imperial pyker (like the aforementioned henchmen an inquisitors) give me a much larger set of psychic powers to choose from. Which seem fitting for my fluff. Also, you can't really mix IA13 pyker in with other units, so no, "Hey telepath! Use your powers to synchronize your unit's fire while the pyrokineticist lays down some suppresive fire," shenanigans.

Additionally, the CSM rules for Thousand Sons are... pretty frustrating. Compared to a chaos sorcerer with a mark of Tzeentch, an imperial librarian isn't forced to roll half (and only half) of his powers from the Tzeentch table, can be a super-psyker if you take advantage of the librarian enclave, doesn't have to challenge, and doesn't mutate (despite the slap in the face to fluff such mutations would be) should he actually win said fight. So using imperial rules just feel like a better fit.

Good suggestion though. IA13 is cool stuff.

I would concur with a mix of Librarius Conclave, Legion of the Damned and Wyrdvanes. Guard infantry squads make passable cultists, especially if you use conscript blobs.