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GW is still forcing possessed down our throats and now warpsmiths. We're also getting some dubious rules.
So I figured it might help to take another look at how we could possibly make the most out of them. I'm not to concerned about points and the likelyhood of getting certain psychic powers. Don't think of this as an attempt to make them competitive. I just want to explore different scenarios that could make those units work.

So let's start with possessed. Despite the formation boni being pretty decent, they still suffer from not having grenades and assault vehicles.
The most obvious candidates for overcoming this would be to use either a spartan or a kharybdis. Both are assault vehicles with frag launchers, so the turn they assault they benefit from grenades. The kharybdis let's you pick your target easier and brings pinning weapons, the spartan can be have legacies and dirge casters for additional rules.
Unfortunately the new psychic powers do little to help these guys. They could get them into assault turn one, but you'd still have to cover the board in pinning wounds and/or skull cannons to make up for the lack of grenades, so you risk hitting your own guys.
The kharybdis and spartan will always let you assault provided they don't blow up before they reach their target. That said, if you luck out and get cursed earth or forewarning with MoT and warp fate, they have a rerollable 3++. At that points the lack of grenades isn't that big of a deal anymore.

As for the warpsmith, I doubt many people take them outside of the formations so I'll stick to them. With the hellforged pack you can just put him in a fortification, but with the cult of destruction you'd want some way to get close with his obliterators. That way you can get to choose from all of their weapons and if anything decides to charge they'd have to deal with a lot of flamers. You could use the same options as for the possessed, but I think a land raider proteus might make a good transport for such a unit. You're not trying to assault and combined with the double shooting oblits it's quite a nice little firebase. Should you get the boon of the iron beast you could even park the proteus in front of the oblits to block line of sight and still fire one of it's side sponsons. Or just stay hidden behind the proteus and shoot via earthly anathema. They're also daemons, so they're also capable of a decent rerollable invulnerable save. Alternatively you could port them around with worldwrithe, they won't need a big platform to sit on, even with the warpsmith. You could mark them tzeentch and park them on a landing pad along with some other ranged units.


The raptor talon and annihilation force both benefit from the dimensional key, but the only way to get that off turn one with any reliability is to fish for one of the new movement powers. Worldwrithe or soulswitch would both work. In addition, unlike the raptors, the terminators can use both the dreadclaw and kharybdis. Both of which come down turn one and would count the termies as arriving by deepstrike for the formation. You'd have to get out right away, but on the flipside you could deepstrike any size of terminators relatively accurately with a kharybdis. They wouldn't benefit too much from psychic powers though given how any psyker wouldn't get the opportunity to cast before they fire. You get to stretch the formation benefit over several turns and eliminate the need for one of the reserve rolls.

The raptors leadership debuff plays right into the heldrake formation and spamming pinning weapons. The following would probably not add up to much but it sounds kinda fun. Taking a hell talon with a cluster bomb or two and the auloth legacy gives them pinning. That would help with causing a unit to become pinned for the heldrake vector strike. Add a purge detachment and a relic achilles using the CS supplement and slowly but surely your filling the board with pinning tests and multiple stacking leadership debuffs along with dangerous terrain tests everywhere, especially with geomancy. Add some telepathy into the mix and put youur opponent on lockdown. Not to forget the warlord trait that causes pinning tests. In this scenario the lack of grenades isn't that big of a problem either.

I realize that most of this is still simply to expensive or random to be viable, but I'd appreciate any opinions or input you might have regardless.

I think the terminator annihilation force is bloody fantastic, its a shame that we are limited to only combi-weapons but being able to shoot twice gives CSM some nice little combinations like a sorcerer and the burning brand! being able to shoot 2 AP 3 flamer shots at your enemies is amazing.

I've played against a warpsmith + oblis with my blood axesangels and they were ok. They exploded a dread and killed a unit of sang guards with plazma. Though, due to my msu style of offensive play the second shooting never came into play and they never had mobility issues cause i was always somewhere nearby. But the ld10 did help and his own melta and flamer were ok. Though, they died horribly to an exploding bunker and grav.

All in all, i think this formation's ideal composition is 2-2-1. Keep 2-2 close together, 1 can do whatever he wants. 3 in a squad is a bit too expensive for oblis imo. And that unit is gona be a more tempting target for getting charged or shot down with ap2. It won't work wonders, they'll still suck compared to grav cents but they'll be passable.

Warpsmith in a helforged pack is not forced to stay close to the engines, so you can use him the way he's more useful - like closer to the opponent. He still has a lot of s5 ap2 attacks, a melta and a flamer and can curse machines with many shots for great effect. I'd put him in a spawnstar or dogstar - probably together with another character. Spawns/dogs help with his mobility issues cause they can slingshot him.

As for possessed...no. Just don't invest into them unless you houserule the guyz to cost like 15 ppm. If you're forced to take them, just keep them minimum and use to run around on foot scoring points and acting as a crappy distraction or msu-killing unit. s5 and 3 attacks on the charge can still kill something that you meet in objective games. Fearless and 5++ sometimes help out. I mean, you can still have possessed perform above expectations...if you have 0 expectations about them.

Oh, yep, termie annihilation force - i've had mixed results with them so far. 1 game they were a 500 pt handicap that did absolutely nothing. 2-d game they wrecked eldar face with dropping when and where needed and killing stuff with brand and plazma.

With things lacking grenades you need to hit your target with a pinning weapon or destroy the target unit's transport on the turn you plan to charge.

If you can't do this you have to pre-engage the target with another unit (something fast, cheap and tough like spawn).

Or position to keep out of cover on the way in.

Are there any other tactics to get around the lack of grenades?

I might be wrong but charging an occupied or pinned unit through dt still lowers your ini.

The proetus would help against grav but you'd really want earthly anathema in that case. It also helps to crack a transport so the oblits can unload on the contents. A unit of two doesn't have enough firepower imho, least not vs non-msu.
As for the annihilation force, you get one unit that kicks ass with brand that even makes somewhat sense to stick in a claw, but the other units are just "normal" termicide units. With the claw you can all but ensure that the expensive unit with brand comes in where and when you need it to, mitigating some of the risks from the formation. At most you'd get a 200ish point handicap, of course on the other hand that means paying for a kharybdis or dreadclaw if you're more ballsy.

Actually, using the terminator annihilation force like this with soulswitch could be interesting. Come down turn 1, unload with the termies, then switch with a different unit. That would probably be the easiest way to get a unit close enough for soulswitch to allow a first turn assault. And the terminators wouldn't be wasted since they already shot everything they wanted to at that point. Well minus the lord/sorc, but he could still shoot the brand at somethign else given how you get to place the unit within 6", so no need to run really.
You could bring a cabal to fish for soulswitch and have one of them roll on heretech. Assuming you make them all lvl3 you stand a good chance of getting it and between the cabal power and the heretech primaris your opponent is likely to get hit pretty hard. Then later assault due to soulswitch.

The lack of grenades is why I proposed a spartan or kharybdis. They come with frag launchers that act as faux grenades. Charging from either of those allows them to charge as though they had grenades, completely eliminating that fault...for one charge. Well, unless you somehow climb back in for another assault that is.
And pinning allows you to charge at full ini because the pinned unit counts as having gone to ground. Other than, charging an engaged a unit doesn't seem to stop you from being initiative 1. I can't seem to find anything that would allow you to fight at normal initiative, but I was certain that would work.
You could also blind them. You'd still be at initative 1, but so would they be. Same with concussive. The only other source I can think of right now that would allow you to fight at initiative is the skull cannons from KDK or daemons.You just need to hit a unit with those too, and considering they are large blasts, they are pretty reliable. You do run the risk of scattering onto your own units of course.

You can put Blight grenades on Nurgle-marked sorcerers/lords, even with Termi-armour. They are also assault-grenades.

Yea, but only models equipped with a grenade benefit from the effect.

 Roknar wrote:
Yea, but only models equipped with a grenade benefit from the effect.

We only care about the Lord and Sorcerer, as they're putting out the most damage. Anyone else is to be bullet catchers.

Err, I don't think you can deep strike in on turn 1 even with Terminator annihilation force. CSM simply doesn't have that kind of option. So, nope, fastest is turn 2 and dependent on reserve rolls. :(


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Roknar wrote:
Yea, but only models equipped with a grenade benefit from the effect.

We only care about the Lord and Sorcerer, as they're putting out the most damage. Anyone else is to be bullet catchers.

Actually that's really true! So true that I am wondering if putting a basic level 1 sorceror into a basic CSM troop of 5 in a Rhino might be worth it from a semi spamming point of view. Its a little under 200 points, but now you have a 6 man squad that has a force weapon in it so it can actually do something in combat. Its ob sec, and even if the Rhino flat's out, the sorceror can still cast a witch fire like psychic shriek.

And if they want to kill the Sorceror, they got to first kill one Rhino and 5 CSM dudes. By my guest if you wanna go through so much trouble to kill a 65 point sorceror lol.

Only question is it might get a bit expensive to spam. Like 4 of these Rhinos with lv 1 sorcerors would be slightly under 800 points already. But still, its interesting because warband allows for this, and everything is obsec too. So you can have a 4 Rhino wall of metal pushing up 18 inches blocking line of sight and providing cover while your sorcerors can still get off their psychic shrieks.

Eldenfirefly wrote:
Err, I don't think you can deep strike in on turn 1 even with Terminator annihilation force. CSM simply doesn't have that kind of option. So, nope, fastest is turn 2 and dependent on reserve rolls. :(

That's only true for the basic codex. Forge world gives us two different kinds of drop pods that come in first turn, one of which has a guidance system. You can disembark immediately and count has arriving by deepstrike, so the terminators get to fire twice. Hlaf of them come in automatically on turn one, but its way too expensive to be taking multiples so people usually only take one.

Eldenfirefly wrote:


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Roknar wrote:
Yea, but only models equipped with a grenade benefit from the effect.

We only care about the Lord and Sorcerer, as they're putting out the most damage. Anyone else is to be bullet catchers.

Actually that's really true! So true that I am wondering if putting a basic level 1 sorceror into a basic CSM troop of 5 in a Rhino might be worth it from a semi spamming point of view. Its a little under 200 points, but now you have a 6 man squad that has a force weapon in it so it can actually do something in combat. Its ob sec, and even if the Rhino flat's out, the sorceror can still cast a witch fire like psychic shriek.

And if they want to kill the Sorceror, they got to first kill one Rhino and 5 CSM dudes. By my guest if you wanna go through so much trouble to kill a 65 point sorceror lol.

Only question is it might get a bit expensive to spam. Like 4 of these Rhinos with lv 1 sorcerors would be slightly under 800 points already. But still, its interesting because warband allows for this, and everything is obsec too. So you can have a 4 Rhino wall of metal pushing up 18 inches blocking line of sight and providing cover while your sorcerors can still get off their psychic shrieks.

I disagree. It's true that the HQ's benefit the most from grenades, but they are hardly pointless on our infantry. Between formations and marks possessed can get up to iniative 7. That's more than any of our characters and will see them strike before pretty much any other unit. But even initiative 5 is good. Any unit that gets to strike first takes less casualties in return and I don't know what kind of 40k you two are playing, but units do damage too, especially with re-rolls. Plus now with squad leaders rolling two boons every time, they benefit from the extra initiative more than ever. You can't get a spawn or prince out of a dead character.

hmmm maybe edition hold over confusion on my part with the preoccupied models.


But destroying transport->pinning check->go to ground->no initiative penalty.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Just checked rule book, page 55 difficult terrain and ongoing combats. I was right. Yay!

nareik wrote:
hmmm maybe edition hold over confusion on my part with the preoccupied models.


But destroying transport->pinning check->go to ground->no initiative penalty.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Just checked rule book, page 55 difficult terrain and ongoing combats. I was right. Yay!

Thanks, I was looking at page 47 and they only talk about units that went to ground there. Knew I was missing something lol.
I also appeared to have been smoking something when I said that blind would cause the opposing unit to be at iniative 1 XD.

My personal observations so far are:

* I like the Chaos Warband. The real reason I like Favored Scions, other than it letting me turn Bike Aspiring Champions into "mini-HQs", is that it gives me insurance against transforming my guys at the wrong time. Especially since *any* attack that kills a Character, be it winning a Challenge or wiping out a small Bike squad with Psychic Shriek would trigger a roll for a Chaos Boon.

* Ectomancy is a really good discipline for Chaos to have, even if it's a copypaste. The two powers of note are Soulswitch and Ghoststorm. I'm not using the powers to directly push my guys into melee, as much as I'm using them to help mitigate the normal slowness that plagues a CSM army. One thing I found Ghoststorm useful for was repositioning vanilla CSM squads that suffered a destroyed Rhino into point-blank melta range; even if an opponent pops your Transport, you still project a 24" zone of Melta. If you want to be "cheeky", you can also do stuff like plopping a Dirge Caster Rhino in the best area to shut down enemy Overwatch, though again, I don't view Chaos that much as an "Assault Army."

* If you're using the Black Legion rules, I consider the Last Memory of the Yuranthos a really useful relic to have. Since your guys do not get Hit and Run by default, you don't want to get stuck in close combats, and you definitely don't want the combat to end in your assault phase (be it breaking them or them using Hit and Run at the time). Since Novas can target enemy units in melee, it gives you another chance to get out of combat, and have the rest of your turn back. That, and it's only 5 points more than buying another Mastery Level, which helps once you've maxed out at ML 3. If you're using Ectomancy as your go-to Discipline, you don't care as much about the Primaris anyway, so you don't care "as" much about losing it ("It's two Heavy Bolters. It's not Psychic Shriek"). The main caveats are to keep the bearer from being engaged in melee, and to have protection against the Chaos Boon table (either through running the Sorcerer in the Warband, or putting it on a Daemon Prince. I prefer the former due to points costs myself, but YMMV).

* Chaos Bikers get an extra CCW over their Loyalist brethren. If you're going to give them Special Weapons, I would actually recommend replacing the Twin-Linked Bolters on your Bikes instead of replacing the extra Close Combat Weapon you get. Besides it being an amusing conversion, if you're using Meltaguns on your Bikes, chances are the target you're shooting at won't be harmed by Bolters anyway, and this lets you maintain those extra two attacks if you want to pop a transport then go after its occupants in the same turn.

* (From playing against another player) Hounds of Abaddon has the potential to be a fairly decent disruption formation, if you have the means to suppress your opponent's firepower or bring incredible speed to bear. Khorne Berserkers get a discounted Icon of Wrath giving them pseudo-Fleet. 120 points gives you a unit that can once-per-game run-and-charge, and when it rolls an 8 or higher for charge range (not too hard thanks to the Icon), it gets 21 S6 attacks; Vanilla Chaos Marines get that for 105 points base, at the cost of not having Fearless and reduced Weapon Skill. For comparison's sake, a Lictor costs 50 points for 6 S6 attacks.

* There are a few odd entries where it's "Any model may take", allowing for Champions to get special items. The two are that Berserker Skull Champions can get a Chainaxe at 3 points instead of 8, and a Chosen Champion can choose a Special Weapon. The second will matter more in practice; however, ever since 7th removed the rule that Characters automatically get Precision Shots, this is more of a rule oddity than anything else with some fringe potential for fishing for extra Boons.

* Helbrutes are surprisingly useful in dense games. Since 2 out of the 3 crazed results give them Rage, and they get the bonus attacks from the Errata, they have the potential to be nasty customers; I also found that when it came to Fire Frenzy being a thing, they either didn't draw any fire for fear of double-tapping Plasma Cannons, or they drew inordinate amounts of fire letting the rest of my army do their thing. When I get a 3rd one and some more Dreadnoughts, I want to test out a Mayhem Pack + Terminator Annihilation Force combo.

I've had a few days to think more about the Warpsmith conundrum, and while I was contemplating a "Walkerspam" armylist, I remembered that the Warpsmith gets his own Meltagun and he can fire it alongside another weapon. This means if he swaps out his own weapon for a Combi-Meltagun, he's basically his own "Double-Tapping" squad. He's 25 points more than the equivalent squad of "5 Marines, Meltagun & Combi-Melta Champion", but he gets BS 5 and a 2+ armor save thrown into the mix. If you're aiming to throw as many Metal Boxes down the field as possible, and have a "secondary" source of Rhinos, this effectively turns him from a 110-point tax to being a 25-point tax.

If you're running a Chaos Warband, and were planning to take a unit of Autocannon Havocs or two anyway, then you get the option to take a Dedicated Transport for them. It's not like they were going to use it anyway! Just run him in the vehicle solo and join the rest of the army in mass-rushing your opposition.

The other option is using Daemonkin, since they have the option to run their Rhinos as Fast Attacks. If you're running the Cult of Destruction as a standalone ally to a Daemonkin army, you can do far worse. Plus, worst comes to worst, their transports provide Blood Tithe points, and in the off-chance you can do some silly combo like "Deep Strike Bloodletters, then disembark the Warpsmith to join their unit", then any transports he does pop with his Melta double-tap would also provide Blood Tithe Points, and more efficiently than the "minimum 8 models" units that Daemonkin have to put up with.

I was wondering, which is better for a first turn assault? Specifically with the dimensional key in mind.
Worldwrithe or Electrodisplacement?

Taking enough sorcerors would give you a pretty good chance to get either spell, but you will likely end up spending most of your rolls in either discipline. Which also means you're just as likely to roll any other power in their respective disciplines.

With that in mind, geomortis seems like the more interesting choice.
The key causes a 24 inch diameter of difficult and dangerous terrain. Torturer of worlds also causes a 36 inch bubble of difficult terrain and blocks running/flat out/turboboost.
That's...huge. It also heavily favours spawn. They benefit the most from ley leech and if you cast rupture onto a unit they are about to assault they don't suffer from the dangerous terrain tests. Earthly anametha is just awesome
So now enemy units are slowed quite significantly and take dangerous terrain tests en masse in several phases. All the difficult terrain could make counter charges difficult. I'd even be tempted to add a yuranthos and/or gargoyled fire raptor to add aoe soulblaze to the mix. Individually none of of those tests is going to do much, but with every other unit in the army taking several tests like that something is going to stick just from weight of dice.

I'm not so convinced about worldwrithe though. Unless you get lucky and there is a valid piece of terrain you can move onto, you can barely reach the opponents deployment zone and have to charge from there and that's assuming straight ahead. And the sorcerer needs to actually see the piece of terrain which limits his movement. with electro displacement you can just move into line of sight with some model. Plus you need enough space to actually put down the piece of terrain and you have to pay for it.

Ectomancy on the other hand is more aggressive with melee buffs and quite a bit of psychic dakka, including a haywire nova. Soulswitch doesn't depend on the layout of the map and you can move up a unit of bikes or so 12 inch to make them easier to reach, giving you more fexibility. It also makes it much harder for that unit to be tarpitted. You're also no as likely to test for dangerous terrain. Ghost storm helps with mobility in general.

So while geomortis would slow down the opponent, ectomancy would give you increased mobility instead. That would make me lean towards ectomancy, but ley leech and earthly anathema are pretty tempting. Ley leech on nurgle spawn escort would be nice for a front line unit, but my primary goal would be to get into assault for the key. Ectomancy seems like the better choice for that.

Opinions?

I like ectomancy more as an all-around mobility discipline for short-range shooting. If I were hypothetically to run the Terminator Annihilation Force, the powers would also let me extract my Terminators to a better position after firing or compensate for bad scatters. Geomortis looks cool if you can get a decent concentration of AP 2 in one unit, be it an Obliterator unit, a Tri-Las Predator, or (if using Forgeworld) a Deimos Vindicator. Worldwrithe helps with mobility, your other powers slow the enemy down, and you can grant Ignore Cover and Ignore Line of Sight. Snipe a few Broadside Battlesuits from your table edge and neuter Tau of several of their SMS bearers.

Incidentally, I can see the TAF bonus working better if you take them in units of 4 with combi-plasma. Deepstrike in, fire 2 combi-plasmas. Use the shooting phase to fire your next two at a different target. You're basically getting a better Split Fire. However, I would probably contemplate this formation more as an ally to another army (giving Daemons ds shooting and 2+ armor has its uses).

I'm playing around with a similar idea in my head.
Taking the TAF and giving the unit with sorcerer a claw. I'm fine with dreadclaw accuracy. So long as you don't mishap it's fine if you drop somewhere in the vicinity given how you get to disembark up to 6 inch all around it. Plus, it's one less unit to worry about for reserves.
So you'd come down and use the brand. Then you'd have a unit of biker/spawn/raptors in the middle of the board to switch with. That should let you use the key turn 1. And since it doesn't matter which psyker casts either ghost storm or electro displacement, you still have the option to shunt the termies forward and considering it's 18 inch plus the 6 inch you get from electro displacement you could pretty much relocate them anywhere you want, further mitigating that first scatter and ensuring the assault.

It also shouldn't be a problem to sneak in a roll on the malediction table to count as a technomancer, preventing it from getting nommed and allowing it to also summon in a unit of daemons in their midst. That would give you three units in your opponents face turn 1, one of which could even assault. Four if you count the claw, which could take off and heat blast later again or threaten an objective, nobodies going to bother shooting it.

You could do something similar with worldwrithe on paper, but I think in practice it's much more difficult to actually reliably pull of a first turn assault with it the more i think about it. Unless you're trying to get a first turn assault with a knight equivalent that is. Can't really do that with ectomancy.

On that topic, can you get a first turn assault with blood slaughterers and ghost storm? Since it's not voluntarily charging, yet counts as charged, the two should cancel each other out right? Resulting in being locked in combat, just without a charge bonus.