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If he's in a rhino and in charge range you should be able to charge the rhino and block the exit points then wreck the rhino by glancing rear armour and he'll die since he can't disembark. Dependant on rolling high enough to get around to the hatch on the other side, but you can also use another unit. Net exactly efficient, but against a fairly hard counter, it works well enough.

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up in a DE thread and say "wyches suck, take kabalites" then that's not only solid advice and relevant (though severely outdated and should be common knowledge), it's also the same as coming here to the Sons thread and saying Scarabs suck, take regular termies, possessed, hell, even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..

Fair enough, though possessed and mutilators only do close combat. Scarabs have TL ap3 shooting which IS good, regardless of whether we have it in abundance or not and they do have a ML2 sorcerer attached. You can't say "mutliators/possessed/talons are better than scarabs" in a vacuum. That's not a fair comparison and it only covers 33% of the function of the scarabs.

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.

You kinda forgot Magnus in your list there But I understand that you don't consider him due to low point games. Also Blessing of Tzeentch is a great buff in the book. Still not as good as the buffs deathguard get, but for me it is the second best blanket rule in the traitor legions.

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.

I have 6 games with a maxed War Cabal under my belt and I have started seeing some interesting things that make sense in that particular list even though they might sound stupid if taken out of context.

1. You don't really need invisibility. Depending on the opposition, most of the times just sticking your sorcs to the terminator units gets the job done. I was in need of invisibility only in one game, where my opponent stole initiative with an ad mech list featuring an IK, dunecrawlers, lots of plasma and grav. I lost 5-6 terminators on the first turn, so I needed to consolidate and hide my casters better. Other than that, in a maxed war cabal our stuff is pretty evenly spread on the battlefield, so invisibility doesn't actually accomplish much, it only gives our opponent a directive about their next target (the other scarab unit).

2. Having Rhinos on your rubric units is really really worth it, even though it may choke you on points. A maxed war cabal is a slow list with a small unit count. Being able to turbo boost 18" onto an objective, disembark and occupy multiple objectives at once and having an extra layer of protection against ap2 shooting for the first turn is great. Also there will come the time when your rubric aspiring will roll a treason or a doombolt, and in that case you want them to be able to position themselves quickly. It is a nice addition to fighting grav drop lists if they get first turn as well. Deepstrike the terminators, put your sons in rhinos, hide behind/inside buildings. Also, melta bombs on the aspirings are a good investment, with 5 pts you give your tax and objective holder units another role. In higher point games, (2000+) it might be a good idea to add 2x warpflamers to each rubric unit. Yes it is expensive and bad. Yet in this list it offers solutions you otherwise have to seek on your psychic power rolls.

3. In my opinion, things to upgrade once you get to the higher point games are the following: 1. Rhinos on the rubrics. 2. Astral grimoire. 3.Melta bombs. 4. Hellfyre missiles. 5. Warpflamers on the rubrics. 6. Swap a sorcerer for an exalted with seer's bane. 7. Swap a sorcerer for a Daemon Prince. 8. If you already have Astral Grimoire, add an Iron Warrior Cult of Destruction with 3+1+1 oblits.

4. Oracular guidance has some nice hidden side effects. As such, rolling on ectomancy for the scarab champs in order to get a couple of warpshock powers might be better than getting another psychic scream. You trade damage potential for consistency. In a bigger game, a unit of 5 scarabs shooting 3 x inferno combi bolters, a soulreaper cannon, the hellfyre missiles and two -almost TL- heavy bolters with split fire is beginning to justify its points shootingwise. Same goes with baleful devolution. Oh and oracular guidance also works on hth (might seem apparent but some of my opponents completely missed it). Great for the seer's bane exalted sorc.

5. A War Cabal has less use of utility disciplines like divination or telepathy and more of disciplines like Sinistrum. In telepathy, scream is awesome and invis is great usually, but as I said before in this list it is not that good. All the other telepathy powers really suck for us. As for divination, Prescience loses significance because of guidance. Perfect timing is nice, but our shooting isn't anything to write home about. We have ignore cover in our screams, we don't really need PT. Precog is nice on the seer's bane holder, but there's no guarantee that we are getting one. The rest of the powers are useless in our list. Sinistrum on the other hand has some great applications. Death hex can solve the deathstar problem for us. Warp lure can help us deal with enemy librarius convlaves. Diabolic str is also great on the seer's bane guy but also on any force staff holding character. Armour of hatred is sick - depending on your definition of the dreaded "affecting"- can give multiple Blessings of Tzeentch in a single WC1 spell. Warp fate acts as a better favoured of tzeentch and grants Blessing at the same time, and even the primaris isn't half bad.

I missed your previous post Drasius. Transcription error on my part there, it should have been much closer even with integers.

Going back a little, check page one of the draft FAQ for Necrons.

Q: Do Cantopek Wraiths and C'tan suffer the initiative penalty when charging through terrain, despite their special rules which allow them to treat other models and terrain as if they were open ground when moving?

A: Yes.

Anyways. Small mercies.

Scarabs are not in an ideal position to tangle with 3++ (except for the Force Staff). But they've got a 50% chance to generate Warp Fate, Diabolical Strength or Death Hex. Those are a huge enablers to not only them, but actual anti-wraith such as Seer's Bane. So that 50pts is maybe worth losing access to a few combis or chainfists, and a Herald hanging in the backfield.

I'm guessing your Scarab vs. Wraith combat projection was free of any psychic powers, to establish a baseline?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Drasius wrote:
I crunched the numbers on 3 Harvest Wraiths vs a min unit of Scarabs the other day 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.

Seems low. I'm thinking, try giving the Sorc the 5pt Sword. Extra attack and an extra CC profile.

3A(67% for WS5)(67% for S6 vs. T5) = ~1.3W. After a 3++ save and 5++ RP, it's about 0.3W.

So even without the Termie squad, who are awful against a 3++ layered save, that's more like 10x rounds for the Sorcerer to chop himself out.

Now say you get a buff like Diabolical Strength, add Cabal rerolls.

5A(77% for Cabal)(83% for S8) = ~3.2W. After saves, it's about 0.7W.

In this case, the Sorc is chopping out the squad after 4x CC phases. So that sword + psychic buff make a huge difference.

 Drasius wrote:
If he's in a rhino and in charge range you should be able to charge the rhino and block the exit points then wreck the rhino by glancing rear armour and he'll die since he can't disembark. Dependant on rolling high enough to get around to the hatch on the other side, but you can also use another unit. Net exactly efficient, but against a fairly hard counter, it works well enough.

We talking about gladius, His rhino would be a few inches behind a bunch of rhinos out of LOS. Standard dawn of war deployment, if a War Cabal player decides to turtle everything in a corner, they will still get hit by turn 2. Turn 1 WS scout move 12", turbo 18". War Cabal shooting range is 24" top and heretech powers are 18", so only 1 turn to crack as many rhinos before getting blasted by grav spam with tactical doctrine. Culexus in a rhino has a potential 30" anti-psyker range after vehicle movement, disembark, and D6 run.

It is possibly the worse matchup ever, and it doesn't help when its the widely use SM lists in GTs. And I'm not sure how many Hellfrye and ACs a player can fit into a 1850 War Cabal list, not that many I don't think. So pretty much relying on a bunch of 18" heretech powers or doom bolt if your lucky enough to roll on it. And Treason will not work because of the Culexus.

First of all, the assassins have their own faction. Therefore, no matter the gladius or not, unless I am missing some special rule, the culexus cannot embark on a rhino per the new faq, as its faction doesn't have any transports and he can't roll in a battle bro's transport.

Even if I am missing something and he actually can though, a 30" culexus is really pushing it.That's 6" for the rhino, 6" for the disembark if there is no terrain to roll for difficult, and 6" run at the best of cases. So that's a total of 18" at the very best of situations. Then there's the 12" range, but in order to do this the rhino has to move in a straight line towards its target, the assasin has to disembark in a straight line and he also has to run in a straight line too, or the circle radius gers reduced really fast. Sure, it is potentially possible. It is very much likely not the case though.

Oh and the culexus may be cancelling the blessings, but he's not cancelling the Blessing of Tzeentch, since it's not a psychic power. And he's not cancelling Favoured of Tzeentch either (in a maxed war cabal). So we still get our immortal terminators. Sure it is our single worst matchup though.

topaxygouroun i wrote:
First of all, the assassins have their own faction. Therefore, no matter the gladius or not, unless I am missing some special rule, the culexus cannot embark on a rhino per the new faq, as its faction doesn't have any transports and he can't roll in a battle bro's transport.

Even if I am missing something and he actually can though, a 30" culexus is really pushing it.That's 6" for the rhino, 6" for the disembark if there is no terrain to roll for difficult, and 6" run at the best of cases. So that's a total of 18" at the very best of situations. Then there's the 12" range, but in order to do this the rhino has to move in a straight line towards its target, the assasin has to disembark in a straight line and he also has to run in a straight line too, or the circle radius gers reduced really fast. Sure, it is potentially possible. It is very much likely not the case though.

Oh and the culexus may be cancelling the blessings, but he's not cancelling the Blessing of Tzeentch, since it's not a psychic power. And he's not cancelling Favoured of Tzeentch either (in a maxed war cabal). So we still get our immortal terminators. Sure it is our single worst matchup though.

Meh Bring Chaos Lord, put lord on DOT, Stab Culexus in face.

 Thousand-Son-Sorcerer wrote:

topaxygouroun i wrote:
First of all, the assassins have their own faction. Therefore, no matter the gladius or not, unless I am missing some special rule, the culexus cannot embark on a rhino per the new faq, as its faction doesn't have any transports and he can't roll in a battle bro's transport.

Even if I am missing something and he actually can though, a 30" culexus is really pushing it.That's 6" for the rhino, 6" for the disembark if there is no terrain to roll for difficult, and 6" run at the best of cases. So that's a total of 18" at the very best of situations. Then there's the 12" range, but in order to do this the rhino has to move in a straight line towards its target, the assasin has to disembark in a straight line and he also has to run in a straight line too, or the circle radius gers reduced really fast. Sure, it is potentially possible. It is very much likely not the case though.

Oh and the culexus may be cancelling the blessings, but he's not cancelling the Blessing of Tzeentch, since it's not a psychic power. And he's not cancelling Favoured of Tzeentch either (in a maxed war cabal). So we still get our immortal terminators. Sure it is our single worst matchup though.

Meh Bring Chaos Lord, put lord on DOT, Stab Culexus in face.

Not easy with all these WS 1 shane-shena-shaneninaningans he has going for him. Not enough attacks to get through his 4++. Maybe with a daemon weapon. Or charge him with a Daemon Prince But I believe shooting him enuff with TL bolters or Oracular guidance might get the job done. Is the assassin an Eternal Warrior? And does Votlw give hatred against him? Then perhaps even simple dudes can kill him. He doesn't seem to be killing a lot of stuff in hth.

I'll try to get a game in against a White Scars Battle Company soon with either my magnus or my full war cabal list. I have a tendency to like to mix things up a lot so it's rare that I play the same army for even a couple games in a row so I took a short break with other armies but I'll give it a go soon. The only white scars player in my club other than me runs a bike spam grav list but there are a couple dark angel players that often run essentially the same thing.

Drasius, my complaint was not with your comments as you've been logical and analytical but with SonofVulkan who has been coming off more as condescending and dismissive.

topaxygouroun i wrote:Fair enough, though possessed and mutilators only do close combat. Scarabs have TL ap3 shooting which IS good, regardless of whether we have it in abundance or not and they do have a ML2 sorcerer attached. You can't say "mutliators/possessed/talons are better than scarabs" in a vacuum. That's not a fair comparison and it only covers 33% of the function of the scarabs.

Str4 ap3 shooting isn't much to write home about. After rolls to wound and cover saves, they still achieve roughly the same as normal bolters. Our options for evem MOAR! ap3 at least come with a str bump, but the points cost asssociated is quite harsh.

topaxygouroun i wrote:You kinda forgot Magnus in your list there But I understand that you don't consider him due to low point games. Also Blessing of Tzeentch is a great buff in the book. Still not as good as the buffs deathguard get, but for me it is the second best blanket rule in the traitor legions.

I really didn't. I don't consider him because I don't think that he's worth his points, neither in "low" point games like 1850 where you struggle to power him while also maintaining any sort of board presence or high point games like >2k where there should be multiple options on the other side of the board capable of taking him out in a single turn. Blessing is a decent enough buff for doing what you were probably already doing, but it would have been significantly better if it worked like orracular guidance and activated on casting any spell instead of a blessing. It would have allowed us to both buff ourselves defensively while devoting our limited WC to offensive witchfires like a blaster caster wants to do. But alas, wishlisting does nobody any good since we can't change anything.

topaxygouroun i wrote:I have 6 games with a maxed War Cabal under my belt and I have started seeing some interesting things that make sense in that particular list even though they might sound stupid if taken out of context.

1. You don't really need invisibility. Depending on the opposition, most of the times just sticking your sorcs to the terminator units gets the job done. I was in need of invisibility only in one game, where my opponent stole initiative with an ad mech list featuring an IK, dunecrawlers, lots of plasma and grav. I lost 5-6 terminators on the first turn, so I needed to consolidate and hide my casters better. Other than that, in a maxed war cabal our stuff is pretty evenly spread on the battlefield, so invisibility doesn't actually accomplish much, it only gives our opponent a directive about their next target (the other scarab unit).

2. Having Rhinos on your rubric units is really really worth it, even though it may choke you on points. A maxed war cabal is a slow list with a small unit count. Being able to turbo boost 18" onto an objective, disembark and occupy multiple objectives at once and having an extra layer of protection against ap2 shooting for the first turn is great. Also there will come the time when your rubric aspiring will roll a treason or a doombolt, and in that case you want them to be able to position themselves quickly. It is a nice addition to fighting grav drop lists if they get first turn as well. Deepstrike the terminators, put your sons in rhinos, hide behind/inside buildings. Also, melta bombs on the aspirings are a good investment, with 5 pts you give your tax and objective holder units another role. In higher point games, (2000+) it might be a good idea to add 2x warpflamers to each rubric unit. Yes it is expensive and bad. Yet in this list it offers solutions you otherwise have to seek on your psychic power rolls.

3. In my opinion, things to upgrade once you get to the higher point games are the following: 1. Rhinos on the rubrics. 2. Astral grimoire. 3.Melta bombs. 4. Hellfyre missiles. 5. Warpflamers on the rubrics. 6. Swap a sorcerer for an exalted with seer's bane. 7. Swap a sorcerer for a Daemon Prince. 8. If you already have Astral Grimoire, add an Iron Warrior Cult of Destruction with 3+1+1 oblits.

4. Oracular guidance has some nice hidden side effects. As such, rolling on ectomancy for the scarab champs in order to get a couple of warpshock powers might be better than getting another psychic scream. You trade damage potential for consistency. In a bigger game, a unit of 5 scarabs shooting 3 x inferno combi bolters, a soulreaper cannon, the hellfyre missiles and two -almost TL- heavy bolters with split fire is beginning to justify its points shootingwise. Same goes with baleful devolution. Oh and oracular guidance also works on hth (might seem apparent but some of my opponents completely missed it). Great for the seer's bane exalted sorc.

5. A War Cabal has less use of utility disciplines like divination or telepathy and more of disciplines like Sinistrum. In telepathy, scream is awesome and invis is great usually, but as I said before in this list it is not that good. All the other telepathy powers really suck for us. As for divination, Prescience loses significance because of guidance. Perfect timing is nice, but our shooting isn't anything to write home about. We have ignore cover in our screams, we don't really need PT. Precog is nice on the seer's bane holder, but there's no guarantee that we are getting one. The rest of the powers are useless in our list. Sinistrum on the other hand has some great applications. Death hex can solve the deathstar problem for us. Warp lure can help us deal with enemy librarius convlaves. Diabolic str is also great on the seer's bane guy but also on any force staff holding character. Armour of hatred is sick - depending on your definition of the dreaded "affecting"- can give multiple Blessings of Tzeentch in a single WC1 spell. Warp fate acts as a better favoured of tzeentch and grants Blessing at the same time, and even the primaris isn't half bad.

1) I find that I get a reasonable amount of use out of invis to protect my warlord from grav/plasma focusing. With 4 casters, I can freely put my warlord and 1 other caster (usually the one who rolled invis if it wasn't a scarab or the warlord himself who rolled it) in a Scarab unit and have them be safe and let the Scarabs in the other 2 units as well as anny rubricae (who tend to get focused down first since nobody wants to waste fire on a 2+rr1's unit) eat the dangerous stuff until I can deal with them one way or another.

2 ) I definately see the appeal of rhinos, I remember learning the hard way when I was first starting how vital they are for rubricae, though in 1850+ having only 2-3 rhinos on the board as the only vehicles is just going to get them smoked in your DZ turn 1 in my experience. I'm not too sure about DS'ing the Scarabs, I have atrocious luck with rolling far more 1's than is reasonably expected on mishaps (to the point where I started keeping a log of them to make sure it wasn't confirmation bias. It wasn't :( ) Definately agree with melta bombs on the aspirings though, probably on the HQ sorcs too since I've found that dealing with drop pods is rather annoying if they come down out of position of your Heretek casters and a late game dread (or even an early game one if your Heretek powers fail you) can cause real problems but a 42% chance to pop a pod or a 14% chance to pop a dread is a significant increase over having to wail on them until the end of the game with a force staff, especially for 5 points.

3) Not sure I agree with you on 5 and 7 and I've already discussed 1, but as to the rest, yep completely agree in my experience. Adding warpflamers just doesn't seem like it's worth the 14 points and loss of bolters. There's very few things with 4+ armour that I'd be wary to charge with a squad of rubricae though I suppose if you're putting them in a rhino and somehow those rhinos survive then drive-by's can be a thing. I'm really not sold on the idea of a prince though since he can't hide in a unit of immortal terminators, but given the small army size, taking to the air and summoning without perils with the benefit of a re-roll and being able to freely jink would be a fairly solid plan I suppose - though you said before you don't like summoning, so I'm not sure what you're rolling him on? Heretek for the added mobility?

4) I'm not quite so sold on Ecto, the other powers you can get don't set my world on fire bar ghost storm and I'm not a fan of casting WC2 powers on non-famailiar casters. Infernal claws has a decent synergy with them though, a boost to str and attacks is never unwelcome. As for Warpshock, someone else was trying to sell me on it a while ago so I ran some numbers (for a BS4 caster, see table below) and wasn't overly impressed. These are without orracular guidance, so the things that have to roll to hit would be increased by ~17%, even more if you're using a BS5 sorc with orracular guidance (~46% increase for powers that roll to hit over plain old BS4)


5) I find the tele powers like dominate and terrify to be very useful personally while shrouding means that in a ruin you're getting a 2+ cover which is quite a large step up in survivability compared to your invul against AP2 guns and also offers some protection against death hex/null zone if you can't deny it. I'm certainly not arguing Sinistrum is bad, far from it, that's what my 4th caster rolls on most of the time, but I'm just saying I get more out of the telepathy powers that aren't invis or shriek to the point where it's not so bad if I roll them. Mental fortiude is obviously a non starter though hallucinate, while pretty bad for WC2, can have some minor usage against things your termies want to bash since if they're pinned, you strike at Init and -1 WS/BS/Attk is always nice (though I wish I had paroxysm instead). I'd still trade those 2 out for shriek, but if you're going to be stuck in a unit with shriek anyway 'cause none of your Scarabs rolled invis, I'm not thaaat sad if I roll anything but a 2. Definately agree with you on the many favourable aspects of Sinistrum, even though rr1's and takes some of the awesomeness out of Warp Fate. As you say, warp lure is far better than many give it credit for. The ability to tell a conclave that they're only manifesting with tiggy on a 6 is great.

Yoyoyo wrote:

Q: Do Cantopek Wraiths and C'tan suffer the initiative penalty when charging through terrain, despite their special rules which allow them to treat other models and terrain as if they were open ground when moving?

A: Yes.

Anyways. Small mercies.

Not sure how I missed that. I shall definately be informing our 'cron player at the next opportunity. Thank you.

Yoyoyo wrote:Scarabs are not in an ideal position to tangle with 3++ (except for the Force Staff). But they've got a 50% chance to generate Warp Fate, Diabolical Strength or Death Hex. Those are a huge enablers to not only them, but actual anti-wraith such as Seer's Bane. So that 50pts is maybe worth losing access to a few combis or chainfists, and a Herald hanging in the backfield.

I'm guessing your Scarab vs. Wraith combat projection was free of any psychic powers, to establish a baseline?

I gave the sarge force every turn since that's assured and crons almost certainly won't stop it with their d6. Otherwise it's too difficult to account for what he rolls on (though sinistrum or bio would be the obvious choices) and what power he gets.

Yoyoyo wrote:Seems low. I'm thinking, try giving the Sorc the 5pt Sword. Extra attack and an extra CC profile.

3A(67% for WS5)(67% for S6 vs. T5) = ~1.3W. After a 3++ save and 5++ RP, it's about 0.3W.

So even without the Termie squad, who are awful against a 3++ layered save, that's more like 10x rounds for the Sorcerer to chop himself out.

Now say you get a buff like Diabolical Strength, add Cabal rerolls.

5A(77% for Cabal)(83% for S8) = ~3.2W. After saves, it's about 0.7W.

In this case, the Sorc is chopping out the squad after 4x CC phases. So that sword + psychic buff make a huge difference.

True, but the primaris on Sinistrum is an ap3 blast, not really something that we need help with. I have been thinking long and hard about that 5 points for the sword though, but then I'd need to buy yet another box (or 3) of scarabs, so it's pretty far down on my list of things to try. I guess I could use the other termies to put my hellfyre racks to use and test them out though... I might see if I can snap their hands off and magnetise them so I have the option. Glad I haven't painted them yet now.

While it's true that he's getting out in ~4 rounds vs 3 Wraiths, once we make it points equivalent (6 wraiths), even with the sword and diabolic strength, they manage to tie up the Scarabs for 9 rounds and take out everyone but the sarge (though I suppose that he's the only one that really matters since he's the only one that generate WC). Still a decent result all things considered since they're even points I guess.

SonsofVulkan wrote:We talking about gladius, His rhino would be a few inches behind a bunch of rhinos out of LOS. Standard dawn of war deployment, if a War Cabal player decides to turtle everything in a corner, they will still get hit by turn 2. Turn 1 WS scout move 12", turbo 18". War Cabal shooting range is 24" top and heretech powers are 18", so only 1 turn to crack as many rhinos before getting blasted by grav spam with tactical doctrine. Culexus in a rhino has a potential 30" anti-psyker range after vehicle movement, disembark, and D6 run.

It is possibly the worse matchup ever, and it doesn't help when its the widely use SM lists in GTs. And I'm not sure how many Hellfrye and ACs a player can fit into a 1850 War Cabal list, not that many I don't think. So pretty much relying on a bunch of 18" heretech powers or doom bolt if your lucky enough to roll on it. And Treason will not work because of the Culexus.

The culexus can't disembark the turn he embarks and can't start in a transport, so he won't be able to scout with the rest of the group since scouting happens before T1. If I'm facing the gladius, I'm probably rolling almost everyone on Heretek so I'd say it'd be reasonable to assume that I can drop 4-5 rhinos/razors a turn. We only have 1 guy that plays gladius up here (and he does play WS with grav of course) but he doesn't run it very often. I'll have to aske him to bring it in and see how my full war cabal does against it.

You're right that you can't fit many hellfyres or soulreapers into a full cabal at 1850 (I'm not running with any at all at the moment) but the flayer/curse/mortis/bolt options should be able to clear rhinos well enough if you don't completely fluff your rolls. The culexus is a major pain however, needing ~40 TL bolter shots or ~15 krak missiles to drop him which is, quite frankly, unreasonable for a Full cabal to dedicate that much shooting to 1 model, but you really don't have much choice since you've got very little way to hurt him otherwise. He's certainly quite the pain for us to deal with, but then, that's his sole purpose, so it's kind of to be expected.

Edited because I derped and forgot to put the link to the table in.

Still can't see how a Culexus can ride any transport? His faction doesn't have any and faq says he can't ride on his battle bros' wheels.

topaxygouroun i wrote:
Still can't see how a Culexus can ride any transport? His faction doesn't have any and faq says he can't ride on his battle bros' wheels.

The faqs say he cannot /start/ on an allied transport but he can still embark on turn 1.

Umm the Culexus doesn't start in a rhino, he jumps in a extra empty rhino that a Command squad on bikes gets. Then the rhino moves 18" flat out, so yes he will be behind the rest of Scouting gladius forces, which is good so his transport is protected/out of LOS. Depending on how War Cabal deploys, WS will probably be in range on T2, with the assassin's potential 30" anti-psyker range. His blessing nullifier does affect TS's blessing of Tz rather indirectly, a TS unit gets +1 to invuln only if they are affected by a blessing, once that blessing gets shutdown by the assassin they go back to 4++. 4++ against mass grav will chew up Occults.

Yes like I say Heretech is the best answer but its 18" range, so only the exalted sorcerers on disk can safely cast and then turboboost back. The gladius player can also pop smoke turn 1 the mitigate the damage instead of going flat out. Depending on the ITC/Nova mission, its gonna be hard to score against gladius. In several battles against Eldar scatterbike/spider spam, I lost over 60% of my gladius army and still won primary/maelstrom in ITC missions.

 SonsofVulkan wrote:
Umm the Culexus doesn't start in a rhino, he jumps in a extra empty rhino that a Command squad on bikes gets. Then the rhino moves 18" flat out, so yes he will be behind the rest of Scouting gladius forces, which is good so his transport is protected/out of LOS. Depending on how War Cabal deploys, WS will probably be in range on T2, with the assassin's potential 30" anti-psyker range. His blessing nullifier does affect TS's blessing of Tz rather indirectly, a TS unit gets +1 to invuln only if they are affected by a blessing, once that blessing gets shutdown by the assassin they go back to 4++. 4++ against mass grav will chew up Occults.

Yes like I say Heretech is the best answer but its 18" range, so only the exalted sorcerers on disk can safely cast and then turboboost back. The gladius player can also pop smoke turn 1 the mitigate the damage instead of going flat out. Depending on the ITC/Nova mission, its gonna be hard to score against gladius. In several battles against Eldar scatterbike/spider spam, I lost over 60% of my gladius army and still won primary/maelstrom in ITC missions.

You are mistaken. The blessing of Tzeentch is perfectly clear that it lasts until the beginning of your next psychic phase. It is irrelevant to the duration of the blessing. You can check it on your book.

topaxygouroun i wrote:

 SonsofVulkan wrote:
Umm the Culexus doesn't start in a rhino, he jumps in a extra empty rhino that a Command squad on bikes gets. Then the rhino moves 18" flat out, so yes he will be behind the rest of Scouting gladius forces, which is good so his transport is protected/out of LOS. Depending on how War Cabal deploys, WS will probably be in range on T2, with the assassin's potential 30" anti-psyker range. His blessing nullifier does affect TS's blessing of Tz rather indirectly, a TS unit gets +1 to invuln only if they are affected by a blessing, once that blessing gets shutdown by the assassin they go back to 4++. 4++ against mass grav will chew up Occults.

Yes like I say Heretech is the best answer but its 18" range, so only the exalted sorcerers on disk can safely cast and then turboboost back. The gladius player can also pop smoke turn 1 the mitigate the damage instead of going flat out. Depending on the ITC/Nova mission, its gonna be hard to score against gladius. In several battles against Eldar scatterbike/spider spam, I lost over 60% of my gladius army and still won primary/maelstrom in ITC missions.

You are mistaken. The blessing of Tzeentch is perfectly clear that it lasts until the beginning of your next psychic phase. It is irrelevant to the duration of the blessing. You can check it on your book.

It states if a unit with VoTLw is affected by a blessing it's invuln is improved by 1 until the next psychic phase.

Once the unit No longer affected by the blessing they clearly lose status effect. go ahead and make a thread in YMDC

I do not need to make any thread. The wording is crystal clear. Once a unit is affected by a blessing, it also gains the Blessing of Tzeentch. The Blessing of Tzeentch lasts until the beginning of the next psychic phase. It is not clear that they lose the status effect. Instead it is clear that they do not, since Blessing of Tzeentch has its own duration and is irrelevant of the duration of the blessing itself.

Has anyone been using summoning?

topaxygouroun i wrote:

 SonsofVulkan wrote:
Umm the Culexus doesn't start in a rhino, he jumps in a extra empty rhino that a Command squad on bikes gets. Then the rhino moves 18" flat out, so yes he will be behind the rest of Scouting gladius forces, which is good so his transport is protected/out of LOS. Depending on how War Cabal deploys, WS will probably be in range on T2, with the assassin's potential 30" anti-psyker range. His blessing nullifier does affect TS's blessing of Tz rather indirectly, a TS unit gets +1 to invuln only if they are affected by a blessing, once that blessing gets shutdown by the assassin they go back to 4++. 4++ against mass grav will chew up Occults.

Yes like I say Heretech is the best answer but its 18" range, so only the exalted sorcerers on disk can safely cast and then turboboost back. The gladius player can also pop smoke turn 1 the mitigate the damage instead of going flat out. Depending on the ITC/Nova mission, its gonna be hard to score against gladius. In several battles against Eldar scatterbike/spider spam, I lost over 60% of my gladius army and still won primary/maelstrom in ITC missions.

You are mistaken. The blessing of Tzeentch is perfectly clear that it lasts until the beginning of your next psychic phase. It is irrelevant to the duration of the blessing. You can check it on your book.

I don't have my rulebook with me but I thought you could not move flatout if a unit embarked?

 Drasius wrote:
The primaris on Sinistrum is an ap3 blast, not really something that we need help with.

I don't think you'd usually be intentionally looking for this power, unless you have some kind of cunning plan. But after exploding transports, dropping a small blast on the survivors would probably be alright.

While it's true that he's getting out in ~4 rounds vs 3 Wraiths, once we make it points equivalent (6 wraiths), even with the sword and diabolic strength, they manage to tie up the Scarabs for 9 rounds and take out everyone but the sarge (though I suppose that he's the only one that really matters since he's the only one that generate WC). Still a decent result all things considered since they're even points I guess.

I think so. Scarabs are a psychic unit. As you said -- we can't *actually* remove those 50pts of MLs, so we need to account for that potential.

- Diabolical Strength we covered, went better than expected.
- Warp Fate can buy Scarabs 9x CC phases against full-strength Wraiths. Since the Sorc will be slowly killing them with the Force Stick, statistically it can go for 7 full game turns. This combat only becomes decisive by failing Warp Fate (on 5 dice, 57% chance over 4 game turns) or bringing in another Force Weapon from your list.
- Death Hex doesn't help the Force Staff, or survivability, but it is useful to more than one unit. With the Spyder removed, Cannon Rubrics and Sword Scarabs can remove 7.5W over two shooting phases (24", 12"). The Scarabs then charge and remove another 4.6W in two CC phases.

This last case isn't equal points, but there's something I want to illustrate. Death Hex is a better force multiplier than Prescience in this situation, which a ML1 Herald can't access. Scarabs have a WS5 Force Weapon, Oracular Guidance, and access to 11 disciplines. With a good power, they're tangling with one of the strongest Formations in the game.

I'm not disputing they will crumple without psychic support or army synergy. Likewise, failing to generate good powers dooms them here. But run the stats on equivalent points of Possessed + a ML1 Herald, I don't think it's going to go nearly so well.

I've never been big on going for invisibility myself. I always feel like it just changes target priority for your opponent rather than saving a unit from being lost. In close combat there are some situations where they can't just turn and attack something else instead, but that means I only really hope for it against melee deathstars. This is compounded by the full war cabal running duplicate units so it's not like an army of space marines running a single unit of grav devastators that they'd be preserving. I'm definitely on board with shrouding and psychic scream though.

I have been impressed by magnus the two games I've run him. I hadn't expected him to get his points back as easily as he did and the last couple turns of the game I've been finding it's safe enough for him to go ahead and land and help with objectives too. Summoning in chariots also make it easier for you to avoid losing too much board control on the table and combined with his fast flying speed means it's easier to get to far off objectives that the full war cabal struggles to reach on its own.

Deamon wrote:

topaxygouroun i wrote:

 SonsofVulkan wrote:
Umm the Culexus doesn't start in a rhino, he jumps in a extra empty rhino that a Command squad on bikes gets. Then the rhino moves 18" flat out, so yes he will be behind the rest of Scouting gladius forces, which is good so his transport is protected/out of LOS. Depending on how War Cabal deploys, WS will probably be in range on T2, with the assassin's potential 30" anti-psyker range. His blessing nullifier does affect TS's blessing of Tz rather indirectly, a TS unit gets +1 to invuln only if they are affected by a blessing, once that blessing gets shutdown by the assassin they go back to 4++. 4++ against mass grav will chew up Occults.

Yes like I say Heretech is the best answer but its 18" range, so only the exalted sorcerers on disk can safely cast and then turboboost back. The gladius player can also pop smoke turn 1 the mitigate the damage instead of going flat out. Depending on the ITC/Nova mission, its gonna be hard to score against gladius. In several battles against Eldar scatterbike/spider spam, I lost over 60% of my gladius army and still won primary/maelstrom in ITC missions.

You are mistaken. The blessing of Tzeentch is perfectly clear that it lasts until the beginning of your next psychic phase. It is irrelevant to the duration of the blessing. You can check it on your book.

I don't have my rulebook with me but I thought you could not move flatout if a unit embarked?

If the vehicle did not move before the embarkation, it can move normally and even turbo boost. It may not Tank shock or Ram though. If the vehicle moved before the embarkation, it cannot move any more for the turn.

This may sound funny but Rubrics actually do pretty well against a Culexus.

Once the Sorcerer gets killed, they only recieve 0.66W every CC phase and they're Fearless so they'll never run. This doesn't include Favoured of Tzeentch either.

So Rubrics can basically take a Culexus out of the game, if not kill it, for about 3-4 turns. Which is hilariously unexpected.

Yoyoyo wrote:
This may sound funny but Rubrics actually do pretty well against a Culexus.

Once the Sorcerer gets killed, they only recieve 0.66W every CC phase and they're Fearless so they'll never run. This doesn't include Favoured of Tzeentch either.

So Rubrics can basically take a Culexus out of the game, if not kill it, for about 3-4 turns. Which is hilariously unexpected.

Took me a min but I found it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=myd8i_a6oEc

Its TS vs Vindicare but it gives you a round about idea of how things would go.

 MagicJuggler wrote:
That only applies to Daemons though, who don't have to generate on their Gods' tables. CSMs still have to generate (meaning roll for) a power on Tzeentch, preventing you from getting Psychic Focus in another discipline.

Yes but psychic focus is not the only way to generate a primaris. It just gives you the primaris for free. During generation you can swap a rolled power for that disp's primaris. Alot of people get this rule wrong.

Yoyoyo wrote:
This may sound funny but Rubrics actually do pretty well against a Culexus.

Once the Sorcerer gets killed, they only recieve 0.66W every CC phase and they're Fearless so they'll never run. This doesn't include Favoured of Tzeentch either.

So Rubrics can basically take a Culexus out of the game, if not kill it, for about 3-4 turns. Which is hilariously unexpected.

Your math is kinda off (again), Culexus has 4 base attacks that hits on 3s and wounds on 4s that ignores armor save which equates to .8333W, so he could possibly kill at least 1 Rubrics per turn.

Rubrics without the sorcerer has 1 base attack each, so 4 attacks that hits on 5s and wounds on 4s, after 4++ save equates to .1666W.... going to take way more 3-4 turns to kill a culexus. That is if TS can even get the chance to charge him with all the bodies and vehicles that gladius can put between them.

 SonsofVulkan wrote:

Yoyoyo wrote:
This may sound funny but Rubrics actually do pretty well against a Culexus.

Once the Sorcerer gets killed, they only recieve 0.66W every CC phase and they're Fearless so they'll never run. This doesn't include Favoured of Tzeentch either.

So Rubrics can basically take a Culexus out of the game, if not kill it, for about 3-4 turns. Which is hilariously unexpected.

Your math is kinda off (again), Culexus has 4 base attacks that hits on 3s and wounds on 4s that ignores armor save which equates to .8333W, so he could possibly kill at least 1 Rubrics per turn.

Rubrics without the sorcerer has 1 base attack each, so 4 attacks that hits on 5s and wounds on 4s, after 4++ save equates to .1666W.... going to take way more 3-4 turns to kill a culexus. That is if TS can even get the chance to charge him with all the bodies and vehicles that gladius can put between them.

We got Astral Grimoire now. If we really need to assault something, we can. Not sure if we would want to though. Personally I would feel better charging the culexus with a pandaemoniad blue horror unit or something.

 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.

Is Boon of Mutation really that bad, though? On a scarab sorcerer, you've got about a 92% chance of not suffering the S4 AP- wound. Once you're rolling on the actual boon table, you only have a slightly-less-than 6% chance of turning into a Spawn. Otherwise, you have a little-over 17% chance of nothing happening, and a roughly 75% chance of getting something good (potentially very good, if you roll a 64 on the boon table).

Still, costs considered, the fact it has ANY risk involved besides the spawning makes it cringeworthy...

Boon is a nightmare logistics wise. It is already hard to keep track of all the powers per sorcerer, sorcerers per unit, warlord traits, tactical objectives etc. Then they go and add a spell to give random buff to specific sorcerers. As far as boring and time-consuming goes, it ranks up there along with soul blaze. And in all my games I just act as if my models don't have soul blaze anyways. So many extra useless dice and unit counters... makes the game long and boring.

To me, the cost that is hard to stomach is the warp charge one. I've generally got higher priority spells to use those dice on. Maybe in the first turn when there isn't much else in range?

Table wrote:

 MagicJuggler wrote:
That only applies to Daemons though, who don't have to generate on their Gods' tables. CSMs still have to generate (meaning roll for) a power on Tzeentch, preventing you from getting Psychic Focus in another discipline.

Yes but psychic focus is not the only way to generate a primaris. It just gives you the primaris for free. During generation you can swap a rolled power for that disp's primaris. Alot of people get this rule wrong.

It's not necessarily the point so much as that the power you get in exchange (Firestorm) is so hilariously terrible. If Thousand Sons got Flickerfire as their Chaos Primaris, I seriously doubt there would be complaining (especially when you could put it on a War Cabal Ahriman!).