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 hiveof_chimera wrote:
Keep your main detachment of csm dropping the Nurgle bikes, add in sorcerer formation and KDK has a formation called gore pack. Gore pack is 1-4 units 2W,WS5,5++ hounds that gain preferred enemy psykers, and move through cover. Although it does require 2-4 bike units with MOK it does gain shred HoW, move through cover and preferred enemy psykers.

Ya, I love the gorepack! I guess that would be better than the Chaos Daemons detachment for the bell? The only thing is the bell is so strong.. That -1 global leadership essentially multiplies the damage of the shrieks by 8. It's hard to pick which one is better.

The biggest issue I see is that they are a glass cannon. Killing the bikes to get to the librarians would not be that hard for some eldar armies, especially if they get the alpha strike.

You might also have problems with the amount of dice you produce. 15+d6 dice may seem like a lot, but you need to still throw 2 at every shriek, even with spell familiars. 8 shrieks would be 16 dice per turn.

You would also have a hard time with psychic heavy armies that can deny those shrieks. GK, for example, could deny a few each turn. Daemons could do the same.

Other than that, it's brutal, and puts to use a great power.

 labmouse42 wrote:
The biggest issue I see is that they are a glass cannon. Killing the bikes to get to the librarians would not be that hard for some eldar armies, especially if they get the alpha strike.

You might also have problems with the amount of dice you produce. 15+d6 dice may seem like a lot, but you need to still throw 2 at every shriek, even with spell familiars. 8 shrieks would be 16 dice per turn.

You would also have a hard time with psychic heavy armies that can deny those shrieks. GK, for example, could deny a few each turn. Daemons could do the same.

Other than that, it's brutal, and puts to use a great power.

Thanks!! So, they way I've though about it, is as follows:

5 dice for the spell familiar sorcerers. You'll usually get 3-5 shrieks per turn.
6 dice for Ahriman. Same probability as the single die shrieks.
2-3 for Shrouding. This will give that juicy 2+ jink save (and can still shriek, thanks faq)
1 for shroud of deceit.

I think a 2+ cover save with majority T6 is pretty damn good defense. But I haven't tried it in practice. If I'm not going first, I'd try to hide my army as best as possible.

 crimson_caesar wrote:
5 dice for the spell familiar sorcerers. You'll usually get 3-5 shrieks per turn.
6 dice for Ahriman. Same probability as the single die shrieks.
2-3 for Shrouding. This will give that juicy 2+ jink save (and can still shriek, thanks faq)
1 for shroud of deceit.

I think a 2+ cover save with majority T6 is pretty damn good defense. But I haven't tried it in practice. If I'm not going first, I'd try to hide my army as best as possible.

I wrote a mathhammer segment last week on the psychic phase. If you really want to read a deep dive, you can go there.

1 dice for each sorcerer will give a 75% chance of success with one dice and a spell familiar. If you are using 2 dice, that chance jumps to 93.75%. This means that each turn, you can expect at least one of the shrieks to fail.

Throwing 2 dice as shriek form Ahriman will also produce a 75% chance of success. This means that each turn when you are throwing 8 shrieks out, only 6 will actually be cast.

The other problem is the denial. Powers cast with 1 success are fairly easy to counter. 3 dice to counter on a 6 will have a 42% chance of success. If they need a 5+ to counter, the odds shoot up dramatically with a 55% chance of success on just 2 dice. This means against non-psychic armies you will be getting ~5 shrieks off a turn, and with psychic armies you can expect ~3 to go off.

Also, check up on the shriek FAQ. There is a long thread which includes discussion if you can even shriek at all when jinking. I would rather you could, as it would help my army a great deal -- but I can't plan on my army being able to do so.

I think you have some great ideas here, but to make it work, you might want to consider some changes. Taking more horrors and dropping other elements would give you more dice to power the psykers. 5 squads of 11 horrors each gives 10 psychic dice.

Oh wow, thanks for pointing out to this thread. I just assumed that hit automatically meant it just hit no matter what. Well as you say, the list can be adjusted to accommodate this. Just take some nurgle spawn or flesh hounds from KDK. Probably the Nurgle spawn. With some small cover (5+) and shrouding, you'd get a 3+ cover! pretty good anyway with the T6 and 3 wounds.

Yes, you are probably correct about the psychic dice. Worst case you can throw the limited dice at the powers, and have a good shot at getting 7/8 or even 8/8 off. But there are always moments when you fail massively. It's warhammer haha. The list can have a spectrum of competitiveness to it: the core is the cabal with ahriman. The pink horrors are an excellent idea to improve the list. I'll rewrite the list to include the horrors and drop the marines? It would be a struggle to get every sorcerer its own unit within the constraints. I'll come back with a list sometime later.