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Brian888 wrote:
How effective is Heretech at dealing with mass vehicles?

It looks decent as 50% of the Heretech table is 18" Haywire witchfires/beams. But if you chose powers just off of the Tzeentch table, there are a few things there that could handle vehicles but also handle other non vehicle targets.

What's so bad about DoT anyways? Boon of mutation is dud (and the primary isn't so hot, so doesn't really mitigate it,) but everything else looks good. The only downside I see is that it doesn't have invisibility, endurance, prescient, etc.

Brian888 wrote:
How effective is Heretech at dealing with mass vehicles?

Quite. 50% per roll to get a hull point stripping power, 33% to get a power that takes away d3 hull points instead. The big one (#6) doesn't even allow saves. I played a game vs Ad Mech where one of my sorcerers got both the d3 hull points powers. I put him in a rhino, turbo boosted 18". On his turn he got the omnisiah blessing to get his guys to reroll to hit rolls. Next turn I disembarked. I cast 2x treason from different sorcerers on a unit of grav dudes, shot his Imperial Knight twice with reroll to hits. Killed the knight. Then my sorc came out, tossed his powers at a dunecrawler. 2x d3 hull points. Dunecrawler died dead. The second power stripped 3 hull points. That means 3d6 str 4 rending hits against another target nearby. I chose one of his chicken walkers. Took 2 more hull points from the rending debris. Not bad at all.

topaxygouroun i wrote:1. Sorcerer (60), ML2 (25), Termi armor (20), MoT (15). It is 120 and it is lacking fearless and the ap3 bolter. Other than that, we are more or less in agreement.

Termie armour is 25, but regardless of that, the sorc in the scarabs costs 90, irrespective of what his replacement would cost. If I'm taking a TS detatchment, I'm taking at least 1 if not more actual sorcs with ML3 and a familiar, so I don't care about the logistics of replacing a sorceror in there, they were always going to be a HQ bunker anyway which makes his lack of fearless irrelevant too and nobody cares the slightest bit about the loss of 1 AP3 bolter.

topaxygouroun i wrote:A scarab occult champion knows the Force spell and can give his unit the Blessing of Tzeentch. And he also has access to divination, when a normal sorcerer doesn't. And the new discipline of Tzeentch has great powers. A ML1 sorc is not more versatile than a ML2 scarab champion. A spell familiar is a nice thing, but then again adding spell familiars to 6+ sorcerers in a whole list can end up being very expensive. When our lists generate 25-30 WC, we can afford having one or two sorcerers without a spell familiar.

So does any HQ sorc (who is casting it with a familiar), div doesn't do much for the sons since prescience is generally overshadowed by the oracular guidance buff (though it is very handy if you're not taking them in a cabal or if you're not taking a full cabal and have Aux choices worth buffing) and many of the other buffs on Div aren't useful in a Sons army (forewarning, scriers, precog in a Full Cabal, foreboding in certain circumstances) and if I really wanted div, I would have much rather used the "spare" 90 points from not having to take a 90 point sarge to upgrade a HQ sorc to an exalted. The new Tz dicipline has ... OK powers for a sorc with a familiar, for a sorc without one, they're a bit useless since they're probably too expensive to cast more often than not. Of the new spells, Siphon is of limited use for a ML2 caster (depending on their other spell), Devolution is a bit expensive at ML2 and treason is very expensive at ML3 for casters without a familiar (or even with a familiar, WC3 is no joke). As for adding familiars to 6 casters, well, if we could be assured that certain casters wouldn't roll powers with high WC costs, then yes, we could probably shave a familiar or two, but unless you can do that or even gaurentee which casters get which power, then going without a familiar is, IMHO, quite a risky choice. Again, running a full cabal at 1850 with non-insane choices generates 21 dice, not the 25-30 you keep talking about.

lessthanjeff wrote:I'm throwing my dice behind scarab occult termies doing pretty well. I've used them in several competitive games using a full war cabal at 1850 going against standard tau, white scar, and space wolf armies. The terminators were instrumental in all the games for taking down thunderwolf cavalry, stormsurges, and white scar bikers galore. They are great when used effectively against the correct targets. If you guys don't like them, that's fine, but you don't have to be condescending to others who are saying they are finding uses for them.

Again, I'd like to make this very clear: Nobody is saying that Scarabs aren't great in a full cabal. It's the quality of Scarabs outside of a full cabal that seems to be the sticking point here. When they can't re-roll their saves, they're just like any other terminator (bad), except they don't have any of the other slightly redeeming features that various other termies do like being cheap, T5 & FNP, troops, combis, T1 deepstrike, [chain]fists, free axes/mauls etc. while also being very expensive due to the mandatory psycher sarge. I have little doubt that you've had a good run with a full cabal, I think that it's the only cometative option the Sons have going for them (something I know you and I have discussed on other threads).

topaxygouroun i wrote:Why do you raise arguments about non marked IC's in a Thousand Son army discussion? Unmarked characters are not part of the Thousand Son army so your example is largely irrelevant. It is about as valid as stating that Scarabs are bad because a Jugger Khorne lord has bigger damage output. Also, you just say completely abstract matters that make no sense. What unit is your bike sorc running in? Is he going around solo with no invul save? Are you giving him a unit? If you are, do you add its cost to your alternative or do you just assume you get that for free? Also what will the cost of the whole unmarked detachment you are taking along your sorcerer? Or you are playing unbound? Long story short, you are arguing with zero reasoning and you are just comparing single models taken completely out of context. You are the one hurting the new players, because there are literally zero conclusions with meaning that can be extracted from your input. And at any rate, your example is pretty bad. I would still have a sorcerer akin to the scarab champion layout rather than the model you describe.

Raising the merits of unmarked sorcs vs Tz marked sorcs is valid because they're coming out of the same book and the cyclopia cabal is a very prominent formation that's had success in other builds, is available in the traitor legions book and is a thematic choice for a Sons legion without the crippling restrictions of being forced into the terrible MoT. Personally I prefer to keep to a pure Sons army, but the mechanical benefits are, if you'll excuse the pun, legion. The biker sorc can be compared quite easily to a Disc sorc, they can both hide in a foot unit and use being T5 to avoid being ID'ed by str8/9 weapons or go hide off on their own and play move-psycher-turbo shenanigans with LoS blocking terrain. As for adding the cost of a unit, that is irrelevant if he is discussing the difference between HQ sorcs as you can safely assume that he's either running solo or bunkering in with the same unit as the other sorc he's being compared to since he's talking about unmarked sorrcs who can join any unit. The whole cost of the detatchment would be anything from 180 for 3 basic sorcs through to ~435 for 3x ML3 sorcs on bikes with familiars, add another 75 if you want them all with sigils. He's not hurting new players at all because the comparisons he's making are real and relevant as you can quite easily run a pseudo "Thousand Sons" army out of the base CSM dex fairly easily, hell, you've been able to do it with the GK book for years and it eaven easier now with mix and match detatchments using the GK and SM books. As for saying his example is bad because you don't like it, I think you're meant to give some sort of reasoning behind why you'd prefer your version rather than his before you can decide if it's bad or not.

Yoyoyo wrote:

 Drasius wrote:
snip

You are guilty of making up your mind before really examining the actual information.

Costing the different units mentioned as a retinue:

6W of 4++ Possessed : 186pts
6W of 4++ Warp Talons : 226pts
6W of 4++ Termies : 218pts
6W of 4++ Scarabs (removed 2x ML) : 200pts

They don't come out that badly priced from my perspective. The cost of adding one-use Combis on 6x normal Termies will cover Missiles and a Soulcannon. We have to add the mandatory 2x MLs which amount to an extra 50pts, and that's reasonable considering it's 45pts for 2WC in Heralds Anarchic.

Ok. All that aside, yes, there is an issue against AV11+ and 2+. That's exactly the kind of issue to address constructively in a tactics thread.

And you are guilty of removing points cost from a unit that can't opt not to take part of the unit in a unit comparison. Scarabs are 250 base with no way around that. I wish it wasn't so as there's plenty of better things to spent those points on, but that's how it is. Even then with your points fiddling indulged, they're still coming out worse than possessed and almost on par with warp talons! How is that meant to be any indication that they're good? Can you imagine trying to sell that to anyone with a straight face? "Hey mister, take some some Scarab Occult Terminators, they're slightly better than Warp Talons at surving AP2 fire per point (but still worse at killing MEQ per point) if you don't count more than half the points cost for the sorceror that you have to take!" 6 combis is 32 or 37 points, depending on if the termies are 1 unit of 6 or 2 units of 3, so I'd say it covers the cannon or the missiles and a flamer. the WC however also gets you 2 additional extreme MSU units who also generate their own powers on either div, change or maelific. Div is mostly a wash given that they both have access, but I'd give the point to the Scarabs as they can benefit from foreboding and precog better. Maelfic and change however both offer up some very large benefits from additional units from summoning, incursion and boon of flame through to volume of fire with flickering fire or even str D if you get lucky (though it will be very costly at WC3 without a re-roll and only BS4) and possibly even possession (again, espensive at WC3 with no re-roll, but turning a 45 point Herald into a 230 point LoC never gets old)

AV is somewhat solved by taking Heretek on at least 2/4 of the mandatory sorcs in a full cabal as you've got reaonable odds of getting at least 1 of flayerstorm or curse and 2+ is somewhat addressed by some combination of shriek/smite/life leech/bolt/devolution on all your non heretek sorcs in a full cabal, and by other units such as vindicators, laspreds, forgefiends, Cult of Destruction or other formations if you're not taking a Full Cabal.

SonsofVulkan wrote:I think what Drasius meant is that comparing Occult to 2 of the worse/over-costed units from a very weak 6th ed codex does not make Occult any better, they are just better than 2 bad units.

This. Being shot or being stabbed are both bad choices, even if one is technically better than another.

Brian888 wrote:How effective is Heretech at dealing with mass vehicles?

Depends on how well you roll. If you get both flayerstorm and scrapcode curse on 2 sorcs, you're pretty much good to go since that's 4d3 hp a turn if you get all 4 off (and you should). Rolling with only 2 powers instead of 3 and a free primaris does put a damper on things though since you can't really trade out for the primaris easily in case you roll the same, non flayer/curse power again and the primaris is pretty trash to boot. To put some numbers behind it, with 2x ML3 MozT sorcs rolling Heretek, each one has a 40% chance of rolling neither Flayerstorm nor Scrapcode curse (so, 16% chance that neither sorc gets either power at all) as opposed to 2x ML3 unmarked sorcs, who would have a 20% chance of rolling neither flayer/curse (so about a 4% chance that between them they don't roll flayer or curse at all). Also depends on how mass is mass and what else you've got in your list. If you're up against the gladius and you're using it as a support element to other things, or if it's your only answer to 6 or less vehicles, you should be fine. If you're up against the gladius and that's your only way of cracking AV11+, you're probably going to have a bad time unless you're rolling virtually every caster on Heretek (which is a totally valid option).

Edit:

 Lansirill wrote:
What's so bad about DoT anyways? Boon of mutation is dud (and the primary isn't so hot, so doesn't really mitigate it,) but everything else looks good. The only downside I see is that it doesn't have invisibility, endurance, prescient, etc.

The primaris is absolute trash, and that's rather important in determinaing if a discipline is good since it's the only thing you can count on.
Boon is pretty junk too, but it's got a very, very specific niche.
Doombolt is absolutely fantastic and props up the rest of the discipline.
Siphon is pointless on a ML1 caster (yes, even in the Grand Coven) and not good unless you've got a fairly sizable amount of casters and a decent sized warp dice pool along with a higher level spell (ie WC2 or 3) on the same caster. Magnus is the shining exmaple of where it works well, the thousand sons aspiring sorcer the poster child for when it's total crap.
Breath of Chaos is pretty bad for a WC2 power. As good as an AP2 flamer sounds, WC2 is expensive, flamer range is very close and poison 4+ isn't that reliable. All together it's extremely underwhelming.
Baleful Devolution isn't bad, but only being able to kill 1 target unless they LOS! a bunch means you also need to pick your targets. Again, much like Breath, this sounds great but you're doing 0.9 wounds to a MC per casting and that's really not that great for a WC2 power. Really, you're either relying on that 6 to wound against MC's or this is the one time you want to target a character in a squad and hope he LOS!'s a bunch of wounds. At least it's AP2, but then, so's doombolt and shriek and they're both WC1...
Treason is ... Situational. WC3 is a lot, so it's going to depend heavily on what's in range and what that's in range of itself. If they've got a unit of dec cents with split fire and a bunch of GK termies standing around, jackpot. Against a DA/SW barkstar, KDK/WE or similar, then you're out of luck. You really have to be doing some serious damage to justify WC3 when things like invis and endurance are WC2 and the other WC3 powers are basically a demolisher cannon [Psychic Maelstrom], a vortex [Vortex of Doom] and a fleshbane, haywire AP3 massive blast [Eldritch Storm].

So primaris, boon and breath are trash tier, siphon is army composition dependant, treason and devolution are situational and doombolt is flatout awesomesauce. Compare this to bio/telepathy/div or one of the 4 copy-paste marine schools and it's absolutely terrible, compared to even the other god specific power tables and it's still pretty underwhelming.

To put some numbers behind it, with 2x ML3 MozT sorcs rolling Heretek, each one has a 40% chance of rolling neither Flayerstorm nor Scrapcode curse (so, 16% chance that neither sorc gets either power at all) as opposed to 2x ML3 unmarked sorcs, who would have a 20% chance of rolling neither flayer/curse (so about a 4% chance that between them they don't roll flayer or curse at all).

I agree to this so much. That's why I am modelling 3 x bike sorcerers to play as a cyclopia cabal. Being able to roll 9 powers on heretech should nullify any need for anti AV from another source. Also having bikes will help to negate the short range of the powers. And of course an extra 2 free WC for a bonus treason won't go amiss. I hesitate to use them though because I haven't found a serious model to represent those-that-must-not-be-named in a tzeentchian army and I don't want to run them alone.

I disagree about tzeentch though. Even though it is worse than other disciplines, rolling the mandatory spell once per caster can yield many surprisingly efficient results, like getting treason on your mandatory rubric aspiring sorcerer (no risk on perils for more precious casters) or getting a doombolt on your scarab champ (increases the reasons for the unit to deepstrike instead). And while siphon is bad on a ml1 sorc, it is decent even on a ml2, and really great on a ML3 sorc and we aren't really playing any ML1 sorcerers other than the mandatory rubric tax. Of course I will agree that it was a spell written with Magnus in mind. Oh and breath of chaos gets much better in an army with an astral grimoire. Yeah, I know, everybody needs the grimoire, but you might as well use it on the guy with the ap2, no cover attack.

How does something like this look for getting Magnus on the board.

Daemon Allied Detachment:
Fateweaver
11 Blue Horrors
9 Screamers

Heralds Anarchic:
5 ML 1 Heralds on discs, 1 Paradox

TS CAD
ML2 Sorc, MoT
2x 10 cultists, MoT
Magnus

Comes in right around 1850 (it's either a little high or a little low... can always drop down to just 8 screamers easy enough if need be.) 23 WC. Can't say that I'm terribly *excited* by the list, but if I actually like a list that tends to mean it's going to play for crap. It may work better if I go regular CSM so that I don't need to take the MoT. Only downside to that is I have a harder time giving Magnus a 3++ or 2++.

I'd say rolling on Tzeentch first will determine the second table. If you roll a Witchfire off there, go ahead and grab Shriek as well. If you roll the one thing that needs a blessing, go for Divination as I'm pretty sure half of those are blessings. That helps with the bonus towards the invul too.

IMHO, Fatey and Maggie in the same list is a no-no since you've now got almost 1000 points in stuff that doesn't ever want to land, and as such, can't score while both are warp charge hogs but have a terrible cost: WC generation ratio. I just finished writing up a bunch of stuff around the same thing in the other thread.

You've basically got 3 units that matter here, the screamerblob, Magnus and Fateweaver. You can probably lock the screamerblob in combat fairly easy and without the grimoure, they're going to be taking instability tests more likely than not. Magnus is going to be pretty hard to bring down while slinging spells around and Fateweaver ... provides a re-roll I guess? I just don't see what fatey brings to your list.

As for focusing on getting Magnus a 2++ or 3++, how often is he really going to be taking a bunch of wounds with him flying, being T7 and having a 4++rr1's at minimum? I'd wager that Magnus will be ignored in that list 9 times out of 10 unless everything else is dead or locked in combat. It's the same principla as fighting a deathstar - you ignore it and kill the support elements and all you have is 31 T2/3 squishies (20 of whom are not fearless) and a single blob of screamers without a grimoure.

Yoyoyo wrote:
Well, what do you have that could victoriously engage a multiwound 2+ model? Any ideas?

Massed AV11+ is more challenging, fun puzzle. But don't forget after blowing up all those free Rhinos, you still have something like 40-50 marines to mop up. In which case, the Scarab Terminators are finally playing to their strengths.

The sorcerer with seer bane can do it but then again most SW IP are ran in super friends such as with a bunch wolves with 4++ from Azrael and a libby conclave that can cast veil. S10 hammers will ID sorcerers on disks. So if a semi-death star with occult termies get stuck with a SM deathstar, the outcome is pretty bad since they also have HitnRun.

Solution is to also run a deathstar like the one I suggested with a bunch of termies with PF and cyclopia cabal to match the Libby conclave. And with the cycl cabal you have much better chances of getting a bunch of good here tech powers to deal Gladius.

Also against vehicles you can bring in a Iron Warrior CAD of 6 single obliterators as troops.

If your going to insist on only using TS models from WoM book then your handicapping yourself in the name of fluff.

Edit: Oh man I couldn't bother to keep arguing and defend good logics, but Drasius did for me lol. 4 or 5 pages back I argue that one should take cyclopia cabal to enhance a TS army, and people scoff at it but hopefully now more people understand it.

 Drasius wrote:
You are guilty of removing points cost from a unit that can't opt not to take part of the unit in a unit comparison.

Guilty as charged. I'm sure you understand why -- I'm looking to explore the unit from a different perspective. Counterpoints :

1) I don't know why you decided Possessed or Warp Talons were better? They're both on a 3+, so they'll die twice as quickly to AP-. The only unit I listed that fits the criteria I want are the Chaos Terminators, who also bring a 2+. They are basically equally durable for points once you exclude the price of the 2x MLs.

2) I don't think failing to field an extra 50pts of Daemon MSU will be terribly decisive. Regarding powers, would you really take Flickering Fire over a Primaris like Shriek? It's not like the D-attack is not "situational", either. BS4 misses 33% of the time, it often bounces off Invul saves, and even with 9 dice it fails almost 9% of the time. Would you rather throw a D-attack at a 4++ Stormsurge (11% chance of a Killshot. 22% chance of D3 wounds) or a Malediction like Treason with a 100% chance of effect once manifested? Or were you planning to risk Paradox on a single roll on Change? And how exactly is a footslogging T3 infantry character with a 5++ getting a 18" D-shot off against a worthwhile target?

3) "There are better alternatives for points". That's true. However, that's irrelevant unless you mean similar alternatives. Otherwise you might as well buy a FW Wraithknight. Nobody here is interested in proxying a GK army.

 lessthanjeff wrote:
I'm throwing my dice behind scarab occult termies doing pretty well. I've used them in several competitive games using a full war cabal at 1850 going against standard tau, white scar, and space wolf armies. The terminators were instrumental in all the games for taking down thunderwolf cavalry, stormsurges, and white scar bikers galore. They are great when used effectively against the correct targets. If you guys don't like them, that's fine, but you don't have to be condescending to others who are saying they are finding uses for them.

Great to hear actual experience add to the termie debate...

Seconded, I'm enjoying your reports lessthanjeff.

topaxygouroun i wrote:
Being able to roll 9 powers on heretech should nullify any need for anti AV from another source.

I think you can lean on Ahriman at least offensively. He's less dice efficient but multi-casting witchfires means lesser need to generate them elsewhere. He's also BS5 and won't miss under Guidance, that's actually an issue for the Cyclopia casters. Ahriman should be able to fire off 3-5 witchfires with the Grand Coven bonus, 97% hit rate. Cabal should get 4-5 witchfires, 66% hit rate. Meanwhile you can conserve rolls for other disciplines, and might also pick up Siphon or Doombolt if you're lucky.

Where unmarked casters shine is defensive buffs. That's really the one thing missing from the Tzeentch discipline.

Yoyoyo wrote:
Guilty as charged. I'm sure you understand why -- I'm looking to explore the unit from a different perspective. Counterpoints :

1) I don't know why you decided Possessed or Warp Talons were better? They're both on a 3+, so they'll die twice as quickly to AP-. The only unit I listed that fits the criteria I want are the Chaos Terminators, who also bring a 2+. They are basically equally durable for points once you exclude the price of the 2x MLs.

2) I don't think failing to field an extra 50pts of Daemon MSU will be terribly decisive. Regarding powers, would you really take Flickering Fire over a Primaris like Shriek? It's not like the D-attack is not "situational", either. BS4 misses 33% of the time, it often bounces off Invul saves, and even with 9 dice it fails almost 9% of the time. Would you rather throw a D-attack at a 4++ Stormsurge (11% chance of a Killshot. 22% chance of D3 wounds) or a Malediction like Treason with a 100% chance of effect once manifested? Or were you planning to risk Paradox on a single roll on Change? And how exactly is a footslogging T3 infantry character with a 5++ getting a 18" D-shot off against a worthwhile target?

3) "There are better alternatives for points". That's true. However, that's irrelevant unless you mean similar alternatives. Otherwise you might as well buy a FW Wraithknight. Nobody here is interested in proxying a GK army.

 Lansirill wrote:
What's so bad about DoT anyways? Boon of mutation is dud (and the primary isn't so hot, so doesn't really mitigate it,) but everything else looks good. The only downside I see is that it doesn't have invisibility, endurance, prescient, etc.

Firestorm: manifest + not get denied + roll for strength + roll to hit + roll to wound + get past armor = never gonna happen

There are so many variables in there and if any of them go bad, your doing little to no damage. Meanwhile if you want the spell to have an actual impact your going to have to have every one of those rolls go your way.

Boon of Mutation: Waste of points.

Its a waste of points. Its a "buff" that prevents your 200 point models from turning into a 250 point DP but doesn't stop them from turning into a 35 point spawn.

Breath of Chaos: "Phenomenal cosmic power, itty bitty living space"

Its great for taking out more elite troops especially ones that rely on cover, problem is you will be dead by the time you get close enough to use it because the thing your going after is going to either charge you or shoot you before you can get it off.

Doom Bolt: Eye bolts of DOOOOM!!!

This one is very good, and that maybe part of the problem, its good vs everything except flyers and AV 13/14

New Spells

Siphon Magic: Ugh do we really need that many warp charges?

It neuters a ML 1 caster more then they already are, ML 2 CAN benefit from it, but would be better off getting a real spell, ML 3+ can really benefit from this spell. So whats the problem? Not a single Thousand Sons unit has higher then a ML 2 Sorcerer attached to their units. The Rubric Aspiring Sorcerer is ML 1 and SOT Sorcerer is ML 2. So you can easily end up with multiple sorcerers with a spell that is totally useless to them.

Baleful Devolution: Same problem as Firestorm only worse.

Seriously, it's very similar in everything they simply swapped the roll for strength for a roll for shots, so manifest a WC 2 spell to get 1-6 shots of S 6 AP 2, its not worth it I can get 4 shots at S 4 AP 2. The saving grace is AP 2 but then cover, what you will find is again it looks good on paper but in practice it wont do much due to the large numbers of dice you have to roll. Keep in mind most of your sorcerers are not going to have Spell Familiars so you will have to throw 5 dice at this most of the time.

Treason of Tzeentch: Because when you have a crap discipline throw something in that's so good people can't complain about the tree.

This is a good spell, its situational yes, but being able to trade a 58 point unit to fire a 400 point unit is a pretty good deal, too good in fact. This is bad in the worst possible way, it artificially restricts what other people are willing to bring, not only that it restricts the most coveted models. The models that people spend the most time and money on they will now look at and wonder if they should bring it because they might find themselves on the receiving end of it and cant afford to do that.

Baleful Devolution-how exactly is it "same problem but worse" than firestorm?

Sure, its d6 shots, but its still S6AP2 that ID on 6s to wound (the spawn is an extra bonus), and a focused witchfire so you can use it to snipe out models if the situation calls for it.

Your reasoning why treason is bad is...silly.
Not only it means its powerful, it also punishes the super powerful units that are massive point sinks-and these units NEED balancing factors to keep them in check.
So tzeentch table is a slight balancing factor. its actually GOOD game design to put things like that, though coming from GW its probably an accident.

Siphon is an odd one. total derp on low level casters, and freaking awesome on high level casters. and yes, you need more warp charges. especially in a grand coven that casts an extra spell per psyker. (all them random force activations for +1 invul wont be free!)
So still a 33% to get a derp spell due to that for the sarges.
But level 3s with a familiar, ahriman or magnus will turn this into a monster spell that must be denied. one simply cannot allow the utter madness of warp generation this allows (especially if you throw a handful around)


I had a run at another board on how to make this spell list much better with just minor edits, and you wouldn't belive how little work it actually took.
Move siphon to primaris (so firestorm takes it's slot), make firestorm a large blast barrage, and make boon a 12" spell without the hit part at the start. that's really all you need to turn this table from iffy to a goldmine.

Edit. Looks like Heretech is good to go, my mistake.

Scarabs certainly don't compare favourably to everything, but at the end of the day, make up your mind. Surprise, you accidentally wandered into a tactics thread for Thousand Sons. If you want to cherry-pick the strongest choice from every codex in 40k, go for. Some 5-source tourney players do. But if I show up in a DE thread saying "DE suck, take scatterbikes" it's not a valuable contribution. This is not constructive. Being critically-minded is not the same as being negative and condesceding and whiny, and some of you have crossed that line more than once.

Witchfires with no weapon profile do not roll to hit per the faq. Good news for psychic scream.

I guess that works for :

- Spontaneous Combustion
- Purge Soul
- Crush
- Haemorrage
- Shriek
- Scrapcode/Flayerstorm
- Warpquake

Pretty cool, I didn't realize that many spells were affected.

Then the enemy should make sorcerers with treason priority 1.

If I bring a flyer any enemy unit that has sky fire or interceptor is priority 1, usually.

Or i could choose not to take flyers because my enemy can neuter them.

I'd rather take my flyers and attempt to.take out his sky fires.

While I can understand your point of hesitating to take the best units for fear of being treasoned just face the enemy and apply your strategy to eliminate his or her sorcerers.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Yoyoyo wrote:
Edit. Looks like Heretech is good to go, my mistake.

Scarabs certainly don't compare favourably to everything, but at the end of the day, make up your mind. Surprise, you accidentally wandered into a tactics thread for Thousand Sons. If you want to cherry-pick the strongest choice from every codex in 40k, go for. Some 5-source tourney players do. But if I show up in a DE thread saying "DE suck, take scatterbikes" it's not a valuable contribution. This is not constructive. Being critically-minded is not the same as being negative and condesceding and whiny, and some of you have crossed that line more than once.

I agree. While a lot of points are valid, delivering it with such condensation will be off putting and your message lost because no longer is it about termies but the off putting tone one chose and it's perception.of an a feeling of superiority..

Most of us forget important things like this when we debate.

 Skerr wrote:
Then the enemy should make sorcerers with treason priority 1.

If I bring a flyer any enemy unit that has sky fire or interceptor is priority 1, usually.

Or i could choose not to take flyers because my enemy can neuter them.

I'd rather take my flyers and attempt to.take out his sky fires.

While I can understand your point of hesitating to take the best units for fear of being treasoned just face the enemy and apply your strategy to eliminate his or her sorcerers.

Most opponents aren't actually accustomed to facing so many sorcerers amassed. At least not yet. Most of them get confused when trying to target sorcerers and some times they even have different priorities in mind (for some psychic scream is public enemy #1, for some others it's the seer's bane holder, for some it's the invisibility sorcerer etc). Not everyone will go after the treason sorcerer, and there are good chances that the treason dude is flying, invisible etc. to begin with. Sure strategy matters, but there are many powers that can hurt the opponent other than just Treason.

Yoyoyo wrote:
Edit. Looks like Heretech is good to go, my mistake.

Scarabs certainly don't compare favourably to everything, but at the end of the day, make up your mind. Surprise, you accidentally wandered into a tactics thread for Thousand Sons. If you want to cherry-pick the strongest choice from every codex in 40k, go for. Some 5-source tourney players do. But if I show up in a DE thread saying "DE suck, take scatterbikes" it's not a valuable contribution. This is not constructive. Being critically-minded is not the same as being negative and condesceding and whiny, and some of you have crossed that line more than once.

He really didnt have to make that comparison to show that Occult sucks. We already debated that so many times its like beating a dead horse to death, Occult is not good... You can play whatever you want, but if a CSM player comes into this thread looking to play TS, I hope we did him a favor by saving his money from buying boxes of Rubrics and Occults.

We've got tons of psychic support to make them work, and they are in a unique detachment that helps supports those psykers.

That's different than comparing them in a vacuum to a unit like Cantopek Wraiths, who won't deal very well with Death Hex + AP2 Instant Death + AP3 shooting + Power Swords anyway. In the case where Wraiths charge you through terrain, first you get TL AP3 Overwatch, then Power Swords that attack at initiative. Hey look, suddenly that's not so bad. We'd have to crunch numbers to be sure.

Even Firestorm can find its niche in blasting Cantopek Scarabs. I'm all about discovering potential use. It's not going to hurt you to be a bit more innovative. Replacing Sorcabal dogs with jump termies isn't exactly the hitting the outer limits of creative thinking.

Why don't we get over the desperate psychological need to label everything "good" or "bad" and get back to finding the best ways to employ the units we have.

 BoomWolf wrote:
Baleful Devolution-how exactly is it "same problem but worse" than firestorm?

Sure, its d6 shots, but its still S6AP2 that ID on 6s to wound (the spawn is an extra bonus), and a focused witchfire so you can use it to snipe out models if the situation calls for it.

Your reasoning why treason is bad is...silly.
Not only it means its powerful, it also punishes the super powerful units that are massive point sinks-and these units NEED balancing factors to keep them in check.
So tzeentch table is a slight balancing factor. its actually GOOD game design to put things like that, though coming from GW its probably an accident.

Siphon is an odd one. total derp on low level casters, and freaking awesome on high level casters. and yes, you need more warp charges. especially in a grand coven that casts an extra spell per psyker. (all them random force activations for +1 invul wont be free!)
So still a 33% to get a derp spell due to that for the sarges.
But level 3s with a familiar, ahriman or magnus will turn this into a monster spell that must be denied. one simply cannot allow the utter madness of warp generation this allows (especially if you throw a handful around)


I had a run at another board on how to make this spell list much better with just minor edits, and you wouldn't belive how little work it actually took.
Move siphon to primaris (so firestorm takes it's slot), make firestorm a large blast barrage, and make boon a 12" spell without the hit part at the start. that's really all you need to turn this table from iffy to a goldmine.

On baleful devolution the fact that you have to roll so many times to try and get to a point so that you can actually roll to hit means that your going to end up failing most of the time. So keep in mind you roll: manifest, number of attacks, hit, wound, they get any cover saves. Think of it this way if you cast it 3 times you should average 12 shots of those 12 shots 2 might actually do damage if you have a 33% failure rate with each set.

Balance is an interesting word isn't it? Means having the same on both sides maybe you can explain how two armies that have access to 2000 posts but one army can take 200 points of the enemy army and shoot it more then the enemy can is balanced? Next point is people spend hundreds of dollars and weeks of time putting together and painting those models, and now there is an army that can shoot more then they can. They are left with 3 options stick the models in a position where they can't see their own army, not play their cool new expensive models, or play someone else, which would you choose?

Siphon is a waste, most of the time you will get it on a sorcerer that can't use it, and the ONLY way to really take advantage of it is to bring a particular formation. I'm sure people that bring a Tzaangor War Herd are just squealing when they get Siphon on their sorcerer.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

topaxygouroun i wrote:
Witchfires with no weapon profile do not roll to hit per the faq. Good news for psychic scream.

Yes but keep in mind you have to get 1 charge over the required number of charges to hit the model you want if you the number of charges needed to manifest then you hit the closest model.

Would a handful of un-upgraded heralds in a Heralds Anarchic formation be a reasonable way to get some warp charge? I balk at the idea of just throwing things out that say 'free kill points' and are just going to squish... but, on the other hand, forcing a unit to waste a turn of shooting to (at best) take out 4*10+5 (because that's magically different from writing 45, right?) points seems pretty reasonable, and it's hard to beat 2 WC for the points. It's usually not too hard to find a few corners to hide a single infantry model in, so... it might actually work. Plus then I'm not trying to squeeze in a half-hearted attempt at a deathstar that I don't really want.

 Lansirill wrote:
Would a handful of un-upgraded heralds in a Heralds Anarchic formation be a reasonable way to get some warp charge? I balk at the idea of just throwing things out that say 'free kill points' and are just going to squish... but, on the other hand, forcing a unit to waste a turn of shooting to (at best) take out 4*10+5 (because that's magically different from writing 45, right?) points seems pretty reasonable, and it's hard to beat 2 WC for the points. It's usually not too hard to find a few corners to hide a single infantry model in, so... it might actually work. Plus then I'm not trying to squeeze in a half-hearted attempt at a deathstar that I don't really want.

It has worked really well for me especially when you use them as bait to get people where you want them.

Did the math for you on Devolution.

- manifest should be 90-96% with rerolls.
- # of attacks will average between 3 to 4.
- accuracy is 97% on BS5 models with Guidance rerolls.
- if you fish for 6's, the chance is roughly 42-52% of success.
- let's say there is 5+ save.

Calculated for four events:

- 90% manifest
- 97% accuracy
- 47% of at least one 6
- 67% of unsaved wound

There's about a 31% chance to one-shot a Riptide for 4 dice. That's pretty good considering Devolution instantly removes a ~200pt model and creates a 30pt Spawn. This will drop precipitously on models without good accuracy and without dice rerolls. It will jump if you happen to generate Precognition to reroll wounds.

For comparison, the odds are roughly equal to explode a LR with three BS4 meltaguns, and that's a pretty well-regarded weapon.

- 67% to hit
- 59% to pen
- 33% to explode
- 13% total
- 30% cumulative.

Yoyoyo wrote:
Did the math for you on Devolution.

- manifest should be 90-96% with rerolls.
- # of attacks will average between 3 to 4.
- accuracy is 97% on BS5 models with Guidance rerolls.
- if you fish for 6's, the chance is roughly 42-52% of success.
- let's say there is 5+ save.

Calculated for four events:

- 90% manifest
- 97% accuracy
- 47% of at least one 6
- 67% of unsaved wound

There's about a 31% chance to one-shot a Riptide for 4 dice. That's pretty good considering Devolution instantly removes a ~200pt model and creates a 30pt Spawn. This will drop precipitously on models without good accuracy and without dice rerolls. It will jump if you happen to generate Precognition to reroll wounds.

For comparison, the odds are roughly equal to explode a LR with three BS4 meltaguns, and that's a pretty well-regarded weapon.

- 67% to hit
- 59% to pen
- 33% to explode
- 13% total
- 30% cumulative.

I love it take the absolute best possible situation and extrapolate that to everything instead of taking the most likely situation like I did. Know what your right it's an amazing spell. The best part is the end where you compare the 175 point model to a 105 point unit that is shooting at a more durable target.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
As a side note how would Boon of mutation work with BoT? Would you only have to cast it once to gain BoT for the rest of the game?

Baleful dev is good to snipe characters and MCs T6 and below. But against Gladius vehicle spam, it's still lacking. Only doombolt is a solid spell against gladius.

Also It's seems that if a WS gladius army bring a culexus and put him in a rhino and reach TS gun line, shooting phase will be devastating.

Yoyoyo wrote:Scarabs certainly don't compare favourably to everything, but at the end of the day, make up your mind. Surprise, you accidentally wandered into a tactics thread for Thousand Sons. If you want to cherry-pick the strongest choice from every codex in 40k, go for. Some 5-source tourney players do. But if I show up in a DE thread saying "DE suck, take scatterbikes" it's not a valuable contribution. This is not constructive. Being critically-minded is not the same as being negative and condesceding and whiny, and some of you have crossed that line more than once.

Thousand Sons have access to everything bar the other cult units in a Thousand Sons CAD, so comparing Scarabs to any of the other units in the dex is perfectly valid. The comparison to other units from outside the dex in the same role was meant to point out the sort of things that HQ escorts will have to face down with a focus on commonly seen HQ escorts for opposing HQ units. If I show up in a DE thread and say "wyches suck, take kabalites" then that's not only solid advice and relevant (though severely outdated and should be common knowledge), it's also the same as coming here to the Sons thread and saying Scarabs suck, take regular termies, possessed, hell, even mutilators instead..

As for not being constructive and instead being condecending, whiny and negative, well, you're the one throwing out veiled insults, not me. I give credit where it's due, unfortunately that basically only extends to a Full War Cabal, Ahriman on disk, Astral Grimoure, Seer's Bane on Exalted Sorceror, the Staff of Arcane Compulsion and Doombolt being good with Exalted Sorcs, Siphon, Devolution and Treason being situationally good. There's only so many times that you can point out the handful of good things about a dex when the bad seriously outnumber the good.

Yoyoyo wrote:We've got tons of psychic support to make them work, and they are in a unique detachment that helps supports those psykers.

That's different than comparing them in a vacuum to a unit like Cantopek Wraiths, who won't deal very well with Death Hex + AP2 Instant Death + AP3 shooting + Power Swords anyway. In the case where Wraiths charge you through terrain, first you get TL AP3 Overwatch, then Power Swords that attack at initiative. Hey look, suddenly that's not so bad. We'd have to crunch numbers to be sure.

Even Firestorm can find its niche in blasting Cantopek Scarabs. I'm all about discovering potential use. It's not going to hurt you to be a bit more innovative. Replacing Sorcabal dogs with jump termies isn't exactly the hitting the outer limits of creative thinking.

Why don't we get over the desperate psychological need to label everything "good" or "bad" and get back to finding the best ways to employ the units we have.

The thing is that while we've got a lot of dice and a lot of spells, you can't cast every spell you have, not even close. Sure, you could pour all 20ish WC you've got into buffing a unit of Scarabs and make them pretty damn good, but you can say the same for lots of stuff and we need a large portion of dice to go towards mind bullets to make up for our lack of anything outside of anti-MEQ. It's different from how almost every other psychers are used in other armies and the idea of just being able to buff a single unit needs some rethinking unless you're running a deathstar.

Wraith's don't deal well with death hex and a relic? Sure don't. Scarabs don't much like death hex/null zone and plasma or grav either, but Wraiths are half the points of Scarabs and will often have a 4+++ and heaven forfend if the mandatory spyder brings a gloom prism for what, 5 points? Also, Wraiths ignore the effects of terrain and almost certainly come with whip coils to be init 5. I crunched the numbers on 3 Harvest Wraiths vs a min unit of Scarabs the other day (for a completely different reason) and gave the sorc force every turn. It took 15 rounds of combat for the scarabs to kill the wraiths for the loss of 3 Scarabs. I then bumped it up to 6 Wraiths to be roughly equal points and the Scarabs were all dead in 4 rounds for the loss of a single wraith. The addition of an Exalted sorc on disk with Seer's Bane and death hex would certainly do some damage, but that's also another 270 points which is another 6 Wraiths, so it'd be close but I think that the fact that you can only reliably death hex a single unit and their increased volume of attacks would mean the wraiths won.

Yes, discovering new things is great, but we shouldn't be saying that things are great without trying them out. Yes, replacing the houndstar with a scarab star isn't interesting, it's also not what I'm advocating. I've already made my position clear - Full Cabal is the way forward IMHO. It's how I'm running my Sons and it's how I'd advise everyone else to do so if they want to get the most out of their army too since there Scarabs are actually good, in fact, they're better than good, they're fantastic.I'll be making minor tweaks to my own list to see if I need to drop a bunch of options on the 4th sorceror to get a Heldrake or something to get me the perils re-roll, but I suspect from what I've seen so far that the reduction in the amount of dice I use to cast to compensate for being even more dependant than before on the psychic phase has meant fewer perils and with an effective entourage to take hits and challenges, losing 1 wound per caster per game isn't so much of a big deal, though it still hurts when the one guy with invis sucks himself into the warp first turn.

Yoyoyo wrote:Did the math for you on Devolution.

- manifest should be 90-96% with rerolls.
- # of attacks will average between 3 to 4.
- accuracy is 97% on BS5 models with Guidance rerolls.
- if you fish for 6's, the chance is roughly 42-52% of success.
- let's say there is 5+ save.

Calculated for four events:

- 90% manifest
- 97% accuracy
- 47% of at least one 6
- 67% of unsaved wound

There's about a 31% chance to one-shot a Riptide for 4 dice. That's pretty good considering Devolution instantly removes a ~200pt model and creates a 30pt Spawn. This will drop precipitously on models without good accuracy and without dice rerolls. It will jump if you happen to generate Precognition to reroll wounds.

Edited
Your calcs are a bit off there [90.23% to cast on 4 dice x 97.22% to hit on BS5 with Orracular Guidance x 46.95% chance of at least one 6 x 66.67% chance of a failed 5++ = 27.45% of instant death on an MC]

For the sake of thoroughness:
- you get ~23.54% for a BS5 sorc with familiar
- you get ~21.97% for a BS4 sorc with a familiar and orracular guidance
- you get ~18.83% for a BS4 sorc with familiar
- you get ~19.78% for a BS4 sorc without familiar, with orracular guidance but using 5 dice
- you get ~16.74% for a BS4 sorc without familiar, with orracular guidance but using 4 dice
- you get ~14.35% for a BS4 sorc without familiar using 4 dice

Again, for the sake of thoroughness, shriek has ~5% chance to drop a riptide per attempt through shear wounds alone with the average being a bit over 1 wound pushed though per attempt.

All of that assumes the riptide hasn't nova'ed his shield when a sorceror is in range though and most tau players will know all about shriek and will probably have their shield up.

Ok, let's do the worst case situation.

- manifest is on 5 dice, 81%
- attacks are the same (3 to 4)
- accuracy is 67% (no rerolls)
- same chance of fishing for 6's
- 5++ save

So, the chance to insta-kill drops to about 17% on 5 dice. About the same as rolling a 6, or in other words, Deathblow on ranged D. Look at the information, and make your own judgement.

 SonsofVulkan wrote:
Also It's seems that if a WS gladius army bring a culexus and put him in a rhino and reach TS gun line, shooting phase will be devastating.

We are getting a break regarding the Culexus, check out page 9 of the FAQ.

Q: I have a question regarding unit special rules that affect all or some units within a certain range of a model or unit. How do these interact with units inside Transports, and what happens if the unit with the rule is inside a Transport?

A: When a unit embarks on a vehicle it is taken off the battlefield and does not interact with anything on the battlefield. However, certain rules may create exceptions to this rule, with the most obvious examples being Fire Points, psychic powers and Transports. If a unit’s rules are meant to apply even when embarked on a Transport, they will specify this.

So, we can target the transport at least. The best way to kill him is probably just hijack an enemy shooting unit.