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 mrhappyface wrote:
Don't drop pods have some kind of targeting system that forces them to move to the nearest space not in difficult/dangerous/impassible terrain?

Nope, only impassible.

Best way to stop deep strikers is board control, and the best unit for board control is ... Brimstone horrors. 30 points for 10 big bases. (and a warp charge).
If only you could actually buy them,.


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(well, if chaos had any interceptor, that'd be nice, but no)

I typically take a small contingent of daemons to bolster my warp charge pool.
I also tend to roll quite a lot on ectomancy because it has so much to offer (biomancy is my other 'go to' table.)
I was thinking that a great use for Brimstone horrors would be to keep a unit or two in reserve, then deep strike them in near a unit that you really wish to assault. Cast soulswitch on them with your Death Star. There you go.
I previously used mutilators for this ignoble task, but horrors are just better in every way for the job.
In the unlikely scenario that I don't get soulswitch, the horrors are still providing warp charges, objective campers, etc.
Thoughts?

I had an 1850 game using my full war cabal against a wolfstar with a full librarius conclave supported by 2 units of wulfen today.

He got invisibility but didn't get the power for rerollable saves. I rolled on a variety of tables making sure to get death hex a couple times, enfeeble, and some psychic shrieks (which didn't end up doing anything for me)

Turn 1: I had first turn and set up far enough back that his cavalry couldn't charge me. Didn't cast much this turn as there was no point. His wulfen drop podded in on his turn and the invisible cavalry moved in around them

Turn 2: I got death hex off on both wulfen units and proceeded to use doombolts and ap 3 shooting to nearly wipe both units. He made a string of lucky FNP's with one unit leaving 2 wulfen left so I charged with a terminator and rubric unit. Lost all of the terminators and rubrics but finished the last two guys off in doing so. His turn, he charged and wiped another rubric unit that I'd moved up to block him in a bit

Turn 3, I got enfeeble and one death hex off on the cavalry unit (he denied the first one). Doombolts proceeded to wreck the unit and left little standing so he conceded.

I played pretty aggressively with my psychic phase not getting many blessings off. I had to throw so many dice at important spells like death hex it didn't leave enough dice for other things I wanted like force. Would have loved the 3++ a few times, but I'm not sure it would have saved much. Giving them all hatred was rough and I basically lost every combat against his army. Having enfeeble with doombolt was clutch. I couldn't have gotten through the FNPs, multiple wounds, and invisible unit without those.

I hated still not being able to stop casts of invisibility, but we at least we can still work around it. I had fun overall although tracking everything kind of sucked. Hopefully I'll get better at that. Liked some of y'alls ideas about keeping track of who has what.

Wow, thanks for the write up. What did your opponent think?

I think we both wished the other player hadn't had psykers because it slows the game down even more when you're figuring out deny attempts as much as casts.

I do wish they would go back to the old system of taking psychic tests on your leadership.
This warp charge system is rather annoying.
One thing that I do is to take all of the dice in my warp charge pool and put them in a cup. When the cup runs out of dice, I'm done.
I also made markers for each of the blessings/ makedictions and place them next to affected units.
These help a bit to speed up the bookkeeping. It is still a bit ponderous though, because I bring A LOT of psykers.

 Chaos Legionnaire wrote:
I do wish they would go back to the old system of taking psychic tests on your leadership.
This warp charge system is rather annoying.
One thing that I do is to take all of the dice in my warp charge pool and put them in a cup. When the cup runs out of dice, I'm done.
I also made markers for each of the blessings/ makedictions and place them next to affected units.
These help a bit to speed up the bookkeeping. It is still a bit ponderous though, because I bring A LOT of psykers.

Problem with the old system was, it was WAY too reliable, unless you were casting a witchfire/malediction, in which case it wasn't reliable at all. Almost every Psyker in the game is/was Ld10, or in the case of Tzeentch, functioned as though they were Ld10, so the odds of failing any given power roll were 1/12! Even if you were only Ld9, the odds of failing a power roll were only 1/6. (This is assuming you don't have access to any kind of reroll, like Spell Familiars.) (Also, the odds of Perils of the Warp was always 1/18.)
It was a huge problem in 6th edition, having psykers just sit back and reliably give everyone on the board every possible buff. Witchfires, on the other hand, would always be immediately shut down at least 1/6th of the time, and any kind of psychic defense doubled those odds. (Going up against a psyker with Admantium Will and a higher Mastery Level than you basically meant having to get past a 3+ save before you even got to try and fire the power.)


Does it require more bookeeping? Yeah, but it's still way better than the old system.

Waaaghpower wrote:

 Chaos Legionnaire wrote:
I do wish they would go back to the old system of taking psychic tests on your leadership.
This warp charge system is rather annoying.
One thing that I do is to take all of the dice in my warp charge pool and put them in a cup. When the cup runs out of dice, I'm done.
I also made markers for each of the blessings/ makedictions and place them next to affected units.
These help a bit to speed up the bookkeeping. It is still a bit ponderous though, because I bring A LOT of psykers.

Problem with the old system was, it was WAY too reliable, unless you were casting a witchfire/malediction, in which case it wasn't reliable at all. Almost every Psyker in the game is/was Ld10, or in the case of Tzeentch, functioned as though they were Ld10, so the odds of failing any given power roll were 1/12! Even if you were only Ld9, the odds of failing a power roll were only 1/6. (This is assuming you don't have access to any kind of reroll, like Spell Familiars.) (Also, the odds of Perils of the Warp was always 1/18.)
It was a huge problem in 6th edition, having psykers just sit back and reliably give everyone on the board every possible buff. Witchfires, on the other hand, would always be immediately shut down at least 1/6th of the time, and any kind of psychic defense doubled those odds. (Going up against a psyker with Admantium Will and a higher Mastery Level than you basically meant having to get past a 3+ save before you even got to try and fire the power.)


Does it require more bookeeping? Yeah, but it's still way better than the old system.

Still, the psychic phase is the most punished phase in the game. Look at shooting. Complete freedom. Look at my Ballistic Skill, look at me go. And as if that wasn't enough, they added free rerolls for all the best of the shooting fellas, the strength and ap values of the weapons have gone through the roof and every single random guardian and their mother can shoot 4 shots apiece. Thus the game has become completely shooting based and all the best lists are judged on that merit alone. Unlike shooting, hth requires that you actually come into physical contact with your opponent, and even then it takes their weapon skill into account as well. Finally, psychic is easily the most punished phase of the game. First of all, it is VERY expensive. A dude can take an assault cannon for 20 pts, a guardian can take a scatter laser for 10 points (ffs...), yet a sorcerer/psycher has to pay 25 pts and in most cases an HQ slot just to be able to get one warp charge and have a 50% chance to only successfuly cast a WC1 power. Then said power has to go through multiple layers of enemy defense, in the sense that your opponent gets to deny, then (in case of witchfires) you have to shoot on Ballistic Skill anyways just like the shooting dudes did (but they did not have to go through the first step) and even then, what are really your options for mind bullets? Str 4 ap5 novas and templates, str 5 ap4 shots and psychic scream. Witchfires have TERRIBLE range, very bad actual damage output, they cannot be spammed unless you pay 1500 pts on very specific lists etc. The old psychic test might have not been the answer, but this one is not the answer either. Overall, you don't see lists winning Nova and LVO because they had so many psychers.

What could be done is making the psychic test roll sort of like a modified ld test. The psycher should have to pass a test on a 6 + their Mastery Level. So a more powerful psycher would be more able to dominate the psychic phase, as should be the case. A ML1 psycher could cast his powers testing on a 7, while Ahriman would have to test on a 10, making him more potent and therefore more desirable. But the problem with the psychic phase is more inherent than that. There is a reason the best powers in the game are not witchfires, but instead it's powers like prescience, invisibility and perfect timing. And the reason is simply because shooting is too strong, and psychic has to accomodate itself to the supporting role of the shooting phase. And that's bollocks if you ask me.

Is there any place for decimators ina TSons list? There's a good chance you're rolling on malefic and heretech and a tzeentch decimator would be a royal pain in the ass to deal with if you can buff its invunerable to a 4++ and/or buff it with IWND or +1 AV.
Plus cursed earth would allow you to deepstrike it with no scatter. The siege claws aren't exactly amazing but at least AV13 isn't as vulnerable in melee as it is to shooting.

*edit*
Acutally never mind, I though they re-roll invulnerables, but it's only a to hit roll. May as well deepstrike a blood slaughterer instead then. Nothing say melee deterrent like a pack of blood slaughterers lol

Had 3 games in yesterday, a 200 point kill team, 1500 point with no LoW, and an 1850 with Low allowed.

The setup was different as this was a charity event featuring 6 of our players. The way it worked was, however much you raised, you got to spend in bonuses across those three games, such as:

$1/100 points of a unit, you can redeploy before battle

You can buy back a unit for $1/100 points (Always rounding up, so if your unit costs 145 pnts, then it's $2)

$2/100 points could make them veterans for a game, giving them +1 WS/BS

$12 could buy a 10" S10/AP1 blast that you can drop anywhere, at any time, on any game (this was a blast heh, and several times throughout the day everyone would gather around to watch a blast being thrown)

$5 would let you roll on an archeo-tech table that gave you some benefits, and some of these were powerful, giving a single model a 2+ inv but if you failed, you lost it and took a S10 hit, another gave you 3 mirror images that ignored the first three hits you took in a game, while another allowed you to remove the model and place a large S7 blast marker.

Allies (or viewers) could pay $.25 to make anyone re-roll any dice. (This happened a lot. Like a lot)

So anyways, in my 200 point kill team, I took a couple rubrics and a sorc vs Tau and those dirty missile pods in their troops alongside a couple stealth suits. Things were looking bad as he just outnumbered me 2:1 or more and had longer reach but the event director walked over and dropped a 10" blast which completely wiffed... so decided to buy another which killed 2 stealth suits and a guy, giving me the advantage because he hated that Tau army. I eventually tabled him after buying my sorcerer back.

In the 1500 battle, it was 1k sons vs Grey Knights in a huge Psyker showdown! This was one of the best, most fun games I've had in a long time. I remember he rolled a 6 for the first psychic phase, looks at me and announces he has 14 dice. I add all mine up, and get 19 to counter him with. Feels good.

He had two dreadknights and started them on the table since he went first, a squad of termies, purifiers in a razorback, and a couple squads of troops. I had 2 exalted sorcs, rubrics, scarabs, Ahriman, predator. 1 exalted sorc had the Grimoire which wasn't needed because his Dreadknights were in my face turn 1, and the other had a disc and Seer's Bane as a nasty surprise. One knight came up and tried to hit my termies, managed to kill one. The other tried to drop torrent flamer and heavy psycannon on my rubrics and managed to kill one.

On my turn, I Psychic Shrieked the knight in front to oblivion before the termies even got to go. Withdrew my rubrics, gave them Invisibility so they couldn't be targetted with the large blast, and shot some stuff up. Eventually the Seer's bane Sorcerer got into combat and just made a joke of the Dreadknight. I was feeling good at this point, then he bought both Dreadknights back..... oh lord.

After about 4 hours in that game, we ended up drawing. It was bloody, brutal, and Ahriman killed himself (while killing another Knight) after rolling a perils. I did manage to get a couple of the Empowered perils rolls though, that was fun.

On to the 1850, finally getting to play Magnus. I even got first roll against the Tau player again, who brought their LoW suit with the big ass cannon. I flew Maggie up 24" right into his face and unleashed both S: D powers and....managed two wounds. At this point though, I had saved all my money up to buy archeo-tech rolls and Magnus had 2++, ignore first three hits, a Vortex grenade, +d3 mastery levels and a random telepathy power (mental fortitude). I left the termies in reserves, jumped the rubrics up 12" (looooove that book), psyker phase did the damage mentioned above, buffed my units so literally everyone on my side made my opponents snapfire while getting a 3++. Pred opened up a devilfish which dropped out all 10 of the breacher firewarrios. Two warpflamers later alongside the rest of the squad and they were all dead.

Tau turn, he fired everything he had at Magnus and after 2 S: D missiles managed two wounds (this was my fault, I was thinking all S: D wounds were unsavable and he rolled a 2 on the chart). He went to set anchors on that huge suit (I swear this thing has like 5 weapons and got over 30 shots...) and passed the turn.

I managed to kill off 2 of the broadsides and their drones from a MASSIVE psychic shriek doing something like 7 wounds leaving one broadside. Ahriman used Treason of Tzeentchd on the LoW suit and used his S: D cannon to kill the last broadside while using Warpshock to hit some of the drones. Magnus had landed because of the hits he took, so he does his psyker stuff then later assaults the big suit and annihilates it. At this point, I've only lost my Rubric sorc (perils) and he has lost nearly most of his army save for his Farsight bomb which was still in reserves. Here's where it gets interesting!

So he buys back his units, re-deploys them, and as he's putting down his broadsides, one of the bystanders walks over with a pie plate and announces he's dropping it. The tau player put everything together right next to magnus so they decided it was worth using it there. Needless to say, the broadsides die again, the drones die again, Magnus makes his 2++ but the other bystander makes me re-roll. Again. Again. Again. A total of 4 or 5 times before he runs out of quarters. I reach into my pocket and give him a fistful so he makes me re-roll again and again and again till finally everyones laughing at how many dollars have been spent before Magnus fails that 2++. He eventually does, and takes the S10 hit from losing it, and makes that save. Another re-roll is bought, and another and finally Magnus takes another wound (up to 4 at the time I think).

The bystander feels sorry for the Tau player and buys back his broadsides again lol, so I drop a pie plate in response, kill the broadsides (again!) and someone else buys them back. It was an insane amount of die rolling, but everyone was laughing. Eventually Magnus takes a dangerous terrain to land in a building and Gaze of Magnus all 3 broadsides and a couple drones. It kills 2 while leaving one alive (each broadside was equipped with both sets of missile for something like 10 shots apiece!) Farsight was on the board, so I Treason the suit again and kill off 2 of his bodyguards, and at this point, I had to call it. The guy was a great sport and allowed me to see what Magnus can do. When he's flying, he's almost untouchable. It was quite a bit of fun to be had.

Overall, we raised $600+ just from the players and bystanders (the players had went out for donations a couple weeks ahead of time so thats what we got to spend for fun stuff) and even GW donated a lot! Including about 30 tech brushes, the kill team play mat, a paint set, some of the new imperial agents books, and all kinds of stuff. Our local Jimmy Johns donated 15% of all sales from 3 pm to 10pm a few days earlier and is expected to be another few hundred.

Overall I'd rate them like this:

Magnus: 7/10. He was fun. He looks great. He takes ALL the firepower and laughs. He doesn't really do much damage for 650 points. But he's effective and scares the crap out of people.

Rubrics and sorc: 6/10. They did exactly what I expected They were very hard to kill and tied up a dreadknight in combat thanks to invisibility.

Scarabs: 6/10. See above. They were very hard to kill. Their sorc was great for giving warp charges and buffing other units.

Exalted Sorc: 9/10. These guys were fantastic, specially when upgraded to ML 3 and given discs/seer's bane. I never once used their Lord of the silver tower because I kept forgetting to.

Ahriman: 8/10. He was just super versatile and powerful while moving all the time. Being able to move 12", psychich phase, then turbo 24" to get away was just busted.

You really got to open it up. Sounds crazy with all the buying back of units and bystanders dropping attacks. Sounds like everyone was a great sport.

What charity were yall raising for if I may ask?

Lol, that was...well, chaotic! Must have had a great time!


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Lol, that was...well, chaotic! Must have had a great time!

Half the money is going towards local school classrooms for the new year, and the other half is going towards local domestic abuse shelters.

Yeah, it was chaotic but very fun. My descriptions don't do it justice, but since there was no overall winner to be announced, it wasn't really trying to win. So it didn't hurt when some random person dropped by to smack you with a pie plate.

And yeah, I certainly got to open up. 1k Sons are really tough, but it does hurt when you lose one. Magnus doesn't really do much damage unless you get a cherry shot, but man, does he absorb it. I honestly think the best way to beat him is to ignore him and play the objectives, not the army.

That's pretty cool the Exalted Disc Sorcs were your superstars. I think most people just looked at their price tag, the mandatory MoT power, and fainted

And way to get some traction out of the Rubric flamers!


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 lessthanjeff wrote:
Turn 3, I got enfeeble and one death hex off on the cavalry unit (he denied the first one). Doombolts proceeded to wreck the unit and left little standing so he conceded.

It's cool to see the MoT powers like Doombolt and Treason being decisive.

Well played, that was a very cunning way to pick apart an Invis deathstar.

Yoyoyo wrote:
That's pretty cool the Exalted Disc Sorcs were your superstars. I think most people just looked at their price tag, the mandatory MoT power, and fainted

Exalted Sorc on Disc with a Seer's Bane rolling on either Biomancy or Sinistrum is the single hardest hitter IC in the game and pretty soon people are going to realize it.

Yoyoyo wrote:
That's pretty cool the Exalted Disc Sorcs were your superstars. I think most people just looked at their price tag, the mandatory MoT power, and fainted

And way to get some traction out of the Rubric flamers!


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 lessthanjeff wrote:
Turn 3, I got enfeeble and one death hex off on the cavalry unit (he denied the first one). Doombolts proceeded to wreck the unit and left little standing so he conceded.

It's cool to see the MoT powers like Doombolt and Treason being decisive.

Well played, that was a very cunning way to pick apart an Invis deathstar.

Yeah, I will definitely say, putting a foot exalted sorc with grimoire in a rubric squad with at least 2 warpflamers is pretty effective at clearing out chaff. The 12" movement really allows you to setup for maximum damage, it's literally like having Assault marines with AP 4 flamers.

Yeah, the exalteds are expensive, but I think they do the most damage out of the army right now, they also have the most AP 2 answers. The Thousand Sons don't really have a shooting phase and what they do have is over very quickly, so you have to make that up in the Psychic phase. I remember against the Grey Knights, they had a razorback with TL Lascannon filled with Purifiers holding their one objective (mission was the one with 1 obj each) and I turbo boosted the Exalted with disc and Seer's bane to contest it. He got out and shot the Sorc but thanks to T5 and 3++, he survived while getting to Psychic Shriek them on my turn then assault at I:6! and did like 5 kills, after issuing a challenge. Got to roll on the table, but rolled Stubborn again. Playing 1K Sons with the "Hero Hammer" mindset is not far off from the truth I feel.

Should be ini 5 for the exalted or am I missing something?

Huh, I just realized that Black Legion is the ONLY legion outside TSons that can take TSons units. I can't think of any advantage this would have but I found it funny lol.
Hatred isn't much of a boon for these guys, especially considering you'd loose blessing of tzeentch and seer's bane is better than anything a BL exalted sorcerer could get.

topaxygouroun i wrote:
Should be ini 5 for the exalted or am I missing something?

Im trying to remember where I got the extra initiative? Maybe I'm recalling it wrong, but I dont have my book with me though or maybe it was a boon because in my 1500 I purchased a roll on the table to fill out points.

It's 31 on the Boon table.

Pretty strong on a Seer's Bane Disc Sorc. You could probably dismantle a Wraithknight before it swings.

Maybe but isn't it's LD a 10 as well? 9 attacks on average would mean 4-5 hits and they have Inv saves. You'd have to have some luck, but it's possible.


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Question? Does Treason allow you to fire all weapons or just one? We played it as just one because it says "you may make a shooting attack"

 nintura wrote:
Maybe but isn't it's LD a 10 as well? 9 attacks on average would mean 4-5 hits and they have Inv saves. You'd have to have some luck, but it's possible.

You definitely want some goons around to soak return CC damage. But keep in mind a Wraithknight is only WS4, so with Oracular Guidance from Force, 9 attacks are closer to 7 hits.

Treason states "make a shooting attack... as if it were a friendly unit". So it depends on the model's own rules.

 nintura wrote:
Maybe but isn't it's LD a 10 as well? 9 attacks on average would mean 4-5 hits and they have Inv saves. You'd have to have some luck, but it's possible.

That's without considering buffs like warp speed, diabolic strength, prescience or debuffs like death's hex on the wraithknight, of which you should have plenty and plenty dice to cast them. Also force, which makes your attacks do d3 wounds on a wraithknight or even normal protection spells like invisibility or Wrap Fate. You are a mighty Exalted Sorcerer of Tzeentch dammit! Raw arcane power flows at your command and the earth itself splits assunder beneath your feet! The worthless worms you call your enemies will learn to fear your power! UNLIMITED POWEEEEER! Act like it!

Really, the Seer's Bane is the most imba weapon ever written and the exalted sorcerer is the perfect platform to deliver its wrath. Have faith, brother.

Not sure how Seer's Bane is really that much better than a regular Daemon Weapon It only has the LD vs LD and using LD as S v T. I mean, it's an obvious advantage, but it's not heads and shoulders better. I think for the cover of my 1k Sons notes, I'm going to print the picture of the Emperor in Star Wars yelling "Unlimited Power"

 nintura wrote:
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Question? Does Treason allow you to fire all weapons or just one? We played it as just one because it says "you may make a shooting attack"

If i remember correctly, it's all weapon systems except for "one use" weapons.

 nintura wrote:
Not sure how Seer's Bane is really that much better than a regular Daemon Weapon It only has the LD vs LD and using LD as S v T. I mean, it's an obvious advantage, but it's not heads and shoulders better.

It's str 10 against toughness for instant death, and it has force for instant death nonetheless. It's ap2 on itself, while things like the black mace are only ap4 and you need a DP to make them work. It is, really really broken.

Aaaaaand he would still be leadership 10, aka you wound him on a 4+ The only power that would reduce it's leadership and therefore make you wound better, would be terrify. That makes you wound on a 3+. After that you would need leadership debuffs from other places, like formations or relics.

topaxygouroun i wrote:

 nintura wrote:
Not sure how Seer's Bane is really that much better than a regular Daemon Weapon It only has the LD vs LD and using LD as S v T. I mean, it's an obvious advantage, but it's not heads and shoulders better.

It's str 10 against toughness for instant death, and it has force for instant death nonetheless. It's ap2 on itself, while things like the black mace are only ap4 and you need a DP to make them work. It is, really really broken.

The black mace isn't a daemon weapon is it? I thought all DW's were the same. Roll a d6 etc etc, AP 2.

 nintura wrote:
Not sure how Seer's Bane is really that much better than a regular Daemon Weapon It only has the LD vs LD and using LD as S v T. I mean, it's an obvious advantage, but it's not heads and shoulders better. I think for the cover of my 1k Sons notes, I'm going to print the picture of the Emperor in Star Wars yelling "Unlimited Power"

Seriously? lol It's a force weapon. That alone makes it better. But that thing is so nasty it doesn't even need force half of the time. Effective strength 10 is enough to instagib the vast majority of units.
And it's AP2 at iniative, which is otherwise reserved for a select few units and in the case of csm, khorne relics. And unlike khorne you have a 3+ re-rollable invulnerable save. It's crazy good.

Plus you can buff it easier than strength based weapons. You need psychic powers to improve the unit's strength or reduce your opponents toughness. This could even be guaranteed 2+ to wound if you bring the leadership reducing artefacts from EC and NL.
It's insanely good.

Wounding on 4's is hardly a bad thing!

You can also fish for Precognition, which is probably the single best buff in the game for an Exalted Sorc.