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@lessthanjeff : Eldar Jetbikes also get shut down by Torturer of Worlds, no turboboosting. The power doesn't exactly leap off the page when you first see it, but it's a pretty nifty effect for WC1.

@Kuklops : Against GSC, the faster you crush their units on the board, the less you'll be getting charged out of Cult Ambush. Honestly, it seems to me like the game will probably be decided by who goes first. Subterranean Uprising is required to deploy on the board, so if you get a free turn, you can wipe those units and defang a T1 charge. If they charge before you can act, you'd better hope nothing gets by your five lonely Rubrics.

If you live past the first turn: snipe out the Icon ASAP, summon Daemonettes and Flamers to screen your Sorcerers, manage wounds lost to perils using Life Leech/Endurance or Ley Leach. You might want to grab some Pyro powers on Ahriman so you can triple-flame or triple-nova 20x Purestrains if needed. Force Sticks and Seer's Bane are perfect weapons to use on Aberrants, they're much less trouble for you than most armies. GSC units suffer terribly from explosions, so Doombolt is preferable to haywires (especially vs open-topped). Your Exalted Sorcerer and Ahriman strike at I5, so they can reduce incoming charge damage a bit. Either way prepare for attrition, you will be outnumbered by 5:1 or more. It's going to look like the Battle of Thermopylae.

Be aware there's a few videos online of GSC in action, those may help you get a grip on their rules and units more quickly.

The Exalted Sorcerer cannot take Meltabombs, so you'll need to move them to a regular Sorcerer. I'd also trade a Disc for 2x Spell Familiars.

Cheers, I hope you have fun. Good luck!

On a side note, just to confirm, if a Chaos Lord takes the Seer's Bane, they become ML 1 by default, for the purposes of activating Force?

 Bach wrote:
On a side note, just to confirm, if a Chaos Lord takes the Seer's Bane, they become ML 1 by default, for the purposes of activating Force?

Why would that happen?

It wouldn't. If you want a close combat guy, just take an exalted sorcerer with disc and Seer's Bane. If he gets warp speed, prescience, invisibility or similar buffs he gets pretty nasty.

I finally got a game in against a Dark Angels Battle Company with the full war cabal list I posted in one of the earlier pages. The gist of his list was 6 tactical squads in assault cannon razorbacks, 2 assault squads with flamers in drop pods, 2 grav dev squads in rhinos, 3 or 4 units of black knights, unit of scouts, librarian, chaplain, captain, a darkshroud, and a landspeeder. I may have missed some things.

My powers were not a great start as I had 4 Breath of Chaos and 2 Boon of Mutation from my 10 forced rolls on the tzeentch table. I also failed to get shrouding which I really wanted and invisibility which just would have been nice a few times. On heretech I also kept getting the vehicle buff powers and switching them to the primaris but I did get 1 doombolt, 3 snapcode curses, and a flayerstorm.

We played ITC mission 5. Opponent got the infiltrate warlord trait and won roll-off for first turn while I got night attacker for my trait.

He set up aggressively along the deployment edge. I set up in two clusters basically hugging cover as best I could since I knew I'd need the 3+ cover save until I could get spells going. Tried to set up out of range of as many razorbacks as I could but between his scouting knights, infiltrating grav devs, and drop pods there wasn't much I could do.

Turn 1 he came in full force with drop pods right in front of me to flame as much as he could followed by barrages of grav weapons and plasma talons. He did underestimate my durability and only removed 8 or 9 models (which to be fair was a 4th of my army) and only 1 warp charge. I hit back fairly hard by pulling off a sneaky multicharge on two black knight units thanks to the astral grimoire and one other semi long charge on the opposite flank into another black knight unit with his librarian. The rest of my army wasn't able to advance enough to address the grav devs yet but I was able to clear a razorback, a drop pod, and one of the assault squads with psychic powers and shooting. Assaulting wiped one of the black knights units with the librarian and wounded the other 2 units of knights before they hit and ran out.

Turn 2 he brought in another drop pod behind me and almost sniped out my warlord, then he finished off one full rubric unit, wounded another one, and removed a couple more terminators. I was finally getting in range of his parking lot of rhinos and razorbacks though and started cracking them open hastily and then psychic screaming and shooting the occupants. Flayerstorm proved very valuable as each casting was often killing a couple units on its own. I did more multicharges to hit drop pods and units every chance I got which let me compete with the obscene number advantages he had over me.

Turn 3 things started to go south for my opponent. He was getting wounds in here and there but my saves were too strong and he was losing a lot of shots with each passing turn. He kept getting a couple wounds into units but it was never quite enough to pick off the characters so my psychic dice stayed relatively stable meaning my damage had if anything increased as I was getting in range of more targets for powers and charges. In my turn, I was able to kill everything else off in my backfield and had advanced far enough up on one flank that I was in combat with his razorbacks.

Turn 4 opponent started to realize he was getting tabled. He poured all his shots into the wounded terminator units but he could never get more than a couple wounds through each turn which often meant I was able to jump ic's from one unit to another as needed. Flayerstorm and snapcode curse continued to be stars as did the force staves and melta bombs. Each unit that popped out was hardly more than a speed bump other than the full BS overwatch he was getting to do.

Turn 5 he conceded. I had 10 models left on the table I think and many of them had taken wounds but I kept spreading them around with positioning and look out sirs whenever I could. Those ten models may seem like nothing but when just about every one of them has psychic shriek, scrapcode curse, or flayerstorm they'll do the damage they need to.

Reflections: I was nervous at the start of the game because he did hit me hard the first turn despite my defensive positioning but he couldn't keep up the pressure with me wiping 4 or 5 units a turn. You really have to utilize every phase and aim for lots of 1 to 2 dice casting attempts to keep up. If you can't make charges too you'll fall behind. It went about as I expected though with beams and spells like flayerstorm letting me deal lots of damage to multiple units at the same time since they're so crowded against each other.

If I could do it again, I would have prioritized getting shrouding and flayerstorm more. Positioning is incredibly important for setting up how look out sir will work and for designing multicharges that allow the melta bombs and staves to hit vehicles while the swords hit the squishy marines. Hope that report is helpful for any of you guys deciding how to deal with a battle company.

I'm still impressed with the scarab occult terms as they're solid in all phases of the game myself.

Thanks lessthanjeff! Nice report.

Could you spesify how you managed to eliminate black knight with a scarab charge, meaning that an overwatch fire with twin link plasmas should do at least a wound or two, and BK hacking 3 slash per model with str5 & rend should also net some wounds. Did you roll good saves or was it purely the re-roll or basic armor 2 when not rended that kept your termies in game?

Also, did you have any warpflamers with rubrics?

Timmon

How were you playing the 'reroll failed saves of one' rule?
Did you lose the rule after your lost a unit (no longer being maxed out) or did you keep the rule all game long regardless?
There seems to be some contention about this, so I was curious how you played it.

I know I lost 1 terminator from charging the knights and there may have been a second from the other unit. They were snapshooting at least since I'd shot at all 3 units with ap3 bolters even though it wouldn't get through the rerolling jink. The scariest charge was the multicharge I put into two units but I'd knocked out 1 model from them with psychic powers. A squad of rubrics was supposed to have charged one of the units but they failed so the terms had to take it upon themselves to make up for it.

Their close combat scared me far less than their shooting and while he was getting 3 attacks per model there weren't any rerolls or anything on it meaning he was only averaging a dozen or so hits. His warlord's unit was enfeebled the first turn which also diminished their output a little. Basically we just found he couldn't get substantial damage through my terms because even when he did get rends I didn't fail many of the 3++ invuls rerolling 1's. When I hit back, I had hatred against him and the ap3 for the scarab occult and ap2 on my sorcs just cut through him. I think I only killed 3 in the multicharge combat which left 2 of his to run around and be annoying but they were reduced enough in output that I didn't have to worry about them again for a while.

Overall it was the rerolling saves that kept them in the game so long. They're fantastically durable in the full war cabal.

I absolutely did not use any warpflamers on the rubrics. I can't justify that cost. No upgrades on the terms either although I'd probably use the missiles if I had the spare points.

Edit: We didn't play that the reroll was lost after a unit died. I didn't hear about any contention on that matter. Seems to me that they're intending your army has it and it doesn't go away. Don't the vindicators and predators clarify in the wording that you lose their bonuses when models are lost while ours makes no mention of that?

 lessthanjeff wrote:
I finally got a game in against a Dark Angels Battle Company with the full war cabal list I posted in one of the earlier pages.

...

I'm still impressed with the scarab occult terms as they're solid in all phases of the game myself.

Exalted. Nice report, good insights, completely agree with you on scrapcode and flayerstorm being essential and gamechanging. Nice work to keep all your characters alive, especially against a canny opponent and doubly so when they need to use beams since it often means being up front or slightly odd unit positioning. Well done on a well deserved win.

What would you guys say is a good 1000pts starting army?

 lessthanjeff wrote:
I finally got a game in against a Dark Angels Battle Company with the full war cabal list I posted in one of the earlier pages. The gist of his list was 6 tactical squads in assault cannon razorbacks, 2 assault squads with flamers in drop pods, 2 grav dev squads in rhinos, 3 or 4 units of black knights, unit of scouts, librarian, chaplain, captain, a darkshroud, and a landspeeder. I may have missed some things.

My powers were not a great start as I had 4 Breath of Chaos and 2 Boon of Mutation from my 10 forced rolls on the tzeentch table. I also failed to get shrouding which I really wanted and invisibility which just would have been nice a few times. On heretech I also kept getting the vehicle buff powers and switching them to the primaris but I did get 1 doombolt, 3 snapcode curses, and a flayerstorm.

We played ITC mission 5. Opponent got the infiltrate warlord trait and won roll-off for first turn while I got night attacker for my trait.

He set up aggressively along the deployment edge. I set up in two clusters basically hugging cover as best I could since I knew I'd need the 3+ cover save until I could get spells going. Tried to set up out of range of as many razorbacks as I could but between his scouting knights, infiltrating grav devs, and drop pods there wasn't much I could do.

Turn 1 he came in full force with drop pods right in front of me to flame as much as he could followed by barrages of grav weapons and plasma talons. He did underestimate my durability and only removed 8 or 9 models (which to be fair was a 4th of my army) and only 1 warp charge. I hit back fairly hard by pulling off a sneaky multicharge on two black knight units thanks to the astral grimoire and one other semi long charge on the opposite flank into another black knight unit with his librarian. The rest of my army wasn't able to advance enough to address the grav devs yet but I was able to clear a razorback, a drop pod, and one of the assault squads with psychic powers and shooting. Assaulting wiped one of the black knights units with the librarian and wounded the other 2 units of knights before they hit and ran out.

Turn 2 he brought in another drop pod behind me and almost sniped out my warlord, then he finished off one full rubric unit, wounded another one, and removed a couple more terminators. I was finally getting in range of his parking lot of rhinos and razorbacks though and started cracking them open hastily and then psychic screaming and shooting the occupants. Flayerstorm proved very valuable as each casting was often killing a couple units on its own. I did more multicharges to hit drop pods and units every chance I got which let me compete with the obscene number advantages he had over me.

Turn 3 things started to go south for my opponent. He was getting wounds in here and there but my saves were too strong and he was losing a lot of shots with each passing turn. He kept getting a couple wounds into units but it was never quite enough to pick off the characters so my psychic dice stayed relatively stable meaning my damage had if anything increased as I was getting in range of more targets for powers and charges. In my turn, I was able to kill everything else off in my backfield and had advanced far enough up on one flank that I was in combat with his razorbacks.

Turn 4 opponent started to realize he was getting tabled. He poured all his shots into the wounded terminator units but he could never get more than a couple wounds through each turn which often meant I was able to jump ic's from one unit to another as needed. Flayerstorm and snapcode curse continued to be stars as did the force staves and melta bombs. Each unit that popped out was hardly more than a speed bump other than the full BS overwatch he was getting to do.

Turn 5 he conceded. I had 10 models left on the table I think and many of them had taken wounds but I kept spreading them around with positioning and look out sirs whenever I could. Those ten models may seem like nothing but when just about every one of them has psychic shriek, scrapcode curse, or flayerstorm they'll do the damage they need to.

Reflections: I was nervous at the start of the game because he did hit me hard the first turn despite my defensive positioning but he couldn't keep up the pressure with me wiping 4 or 5 units a turn. You really have to utilize every phase and aim for lots of 1 to 2 dice casting attempts to keep up. If you can't make charges too you'll fall behind. It went about as I expected though with beams and spells like flayerstorm letting me deal lots of damage to multiple units at the same time since they're so crowded against each other.

If I could do it again, I would have prioritized getting shrouding and flayerstorm more. Positioning is incredibly important for setting up how look out sir will work and for designing multicharges that allow the melta bombs and staves to hit vehicles while the swords hit the squishy marines. Hope that report is helpful for any of you guys deciding how to deal with a battle company.

I'm still impressed with the scarab occult terms as they're solid in all phases of the game myself.

Great batrep! It's good to see 1k sons holding their own vs a tough opponent and even winning a game. How would you rate your 1k son squads? Btw, what's flayerstorm?

Thanks guys, it was fun to knock out. So far my full war cabal is undefeated and I've only been playing against tournament lists.

For beams, I usually try to keep sorcs just behind a couple models that are spaced enough to put the beam in-between. Making sure I was lining those things up during the movement phase instead of not thinking about them till it comes to casting time helped a lot.

Flayerstorm is a heretech spell that takes d3 hull points and for each hull point removed you can do d6 str 4 rending hits to another unit within 12".

A 1000 point list would be rough for 1k sons imo. I can't even get something I like at 1500. 1850 is doable but 2000 is preferable.

I don't rate the rubric marines that highly, but I'm pretty happy with the scarab occult. They're very durable with the reroll 1's on saves and have a strong presence in the psychic, shooting, and assault phases while being very durable.

Great batrep, way to go.

It's nice to see those "useless" AP3 bolters and Power Sword Terminators being used to good effect!

I rather agree with your assessment of the rerolls.
I only wish that literally everyone else in my local meta didn't see it the other way. Oh well...

Anyway, that was an excellent, concise batrep. Congaratulations on a hard fought victory.
It seems as though everything that we dread as 1000 sons players happened,
( Losing first turn, rolling lousy powers, lots and lots of bullets/plasma/grav) but you managed a decisive win.
Well done.

Glad to see the success of the full war cabal. I only need one more box of terminators to run it .

Did you use an auxiliary choice to get the full detachment bonuses?

I was disappointed in my powers but I ended up doing alright depending on a lot of primaris powers too. The heretech primaris ended up better than I expected. It's not great, but throwing 1 di at it with spell familiar rerolls several times a turn often meant I got to steal 1 or 2 twin linked assault cannons each turn in prime positioning to hit rear armors or snipe out special weapons from units.

That sucks if your meta is playing the rerolls 1's that way. Maybe we can get a response from GW if that's coming up a lot.

I was not running an auxiliary in my list though. There isn't much I would have benefited from on it since I usually was 1 or 2 dice casting and had few perils as a result. Most of my psykers didn't have more than 1 or 2 spells I wanted them to cast either so I preferred saving the points on adding a predator or hellbrute or something.

 Chaos Legionnaire wrote:
It wouldn't. If you want a close combat guy, just take an exalted sorcerer with disc and Seer's Bane. If he gets warp speed, prescience, invisibility or similar buffs he gets pretty nasty.

I was considering allying in a Raptor Talon and giving a Chaos Lord comes with a jump pack and giving it Sigil, Mark, and Seer Banes, comes in at 140 some odd points. Much cheaper than an Exalted sorceror and I can charge out of deep strike.

There is little reason to have that formation as 1ksons though.

I mean, yea, we ARE 1ksons, but other legions just do this formation better.

Nothing in our legion abilities really helps chaos lords, raptors or warp talons at all. and the MoT is practically tax on most of them.

Warp talons rocking a 3++ isn't too bad. Not good tho.

 BoomWolf wrote:
There is little reason to have that formation as 1ksons though.

I mean, yea, we ARE 1ksons, but other legions just do this formation better.

Nothing in our legion abilities really helps chaos lords, raptors or warp talons at all. and the MoT is practically tax on most of them.

I "get" why he'd want to do it, even if it's a gimmicky jank. He's trying to use the Leadership penalty from the Raptor Talon to turn Seer's Bane into a de-facto Fleshbane weapon that can hit where you want it to.

Franarok wrote:
The exalted are better if plan give the demon staff to make him a melee beast.
If you want do a death star of psikers, the exalted are better too. The extra shoot....well, with luck you can blow an expensive vehicle.

You're probably right, but the prospect of getting a 2++ with rerollable 1's on a sorcerer in exchange for 1 less WS, attack and initiative score is awfully tempting (especially since attacks and initiative can be boosted with Sinistrum anyway).

I won't lie. I like the idea of a chaos lord in my army too. I think it's just the appeal of a 3++ melee character with a daemon weapon. Putting him on a disc makes him fast, hard-hitting, and tough (although a 2+ armor option would be nice). I'd rate it higher than the space marine characters you often see in bike units but that may be the cool factor swaying my perception. The problem is it just doesn't fit into any of the formations. It's something I may play with in a CAD attached to some spawn for a lower point game (like the 1000 point list someone was asking about earlier).

 MagicJuggler wrote:

 BoomWolf wrote:
There is little reason to have that formation as 1ksons though.

I mean, yea, we ARE 1ksons, but other legions just do this formation better.

Nothing in our legion abilities really helps chaos lords, raptors or warp talons at all. and the MoT is practically tax on most of them.

I "get" why he'd want to do it, even if it's a gimmicky jank. He's trying to use the Leadership penalty from the Raptor Talon to turn Seer's Bane into a de-facto Fleshbane weapon that can hit where you want it to.

Oh, didn't even consider that.

Nice trick, yea. and it gives access to much needed speedy meltaguns-but the cost is just abnormally high for a trick.

Just want to make sure I have this nailed down:

A CSM psyker with the MoT has to take at least one roll on the Tzeentch table. Does he also get the Tzeentch primaris for free, even if he takes the rest of his rolls on other tables?

A daemon of Tzeentch gets the Change primaris for free, and can roll its powers entirely on the Change table or on other available tables (or some combination thereof).

Is that accurate? Thanks.

yeah you get the Tzeentch primaris for free. It's so bad tho.

The daemon primaris has been contentious. The draft FAQ states that if a Daemon Psyker generates all their powers from a single discipline, he gets the Psychic focus In addition to the chaos Psychic Focus (so two Psychic focuses)
This is quite good actually and something I consistently forget to do.

Thanks!

 Chaos Legionnaire wrote:
I rather agree with your assessment of the rerolls.
I only wish that literally everyone else in my local meta didn't see it the other way. Oh well...

Anyway, that was an excellent, concise batrep. Congaratulations on a hard fought victory.
It seems as though everything that we dread as 1000 sons players happened,
( Losing first turn, rolling lousy powers, lots and lots of bullets/plasma/grav) but you managed a decisive win.
Well done.

To come back to your issue with whether you lose the reroll 1's when a unit dies, I was building some sisters of silence and adeptus custodes and noticed their rule also made it more clear that the benefit would end as they lost units. Their formations say "whilst three units from this formation are on the battlefield..." while ours does not stipulate that. It was a restriction on the list-building stage and not on what is currently on the battlefield. Couldn't you otherwise say formations like an aspect host lose the +1 bs if a unit dies? I'd show your local players some of those examples again or make a thread in YMDC to get a consensus to show them.

An excellent suggestion. Thanks!

Had quite the game with a Full Cabal against a slaaneshi Incursion today and Warp Lure put in some serious work against his block of fiends and heralds with cursed earth and grimoure. The ability to punch though a 2++ and just deal out wounds was great. Termies held up well against rends and I managed to get the jump on a pair of chariots with the Astral Grimoure who thought they had outmanuvered me. Invis let me get rid of the silly challenge shenanigan slaaneshi herald too. I took a bit of a gamble on rolling pyromancy of all things to try and get some anti hoard and it worked out OK with inferno of all things doing some OK work when required, but really, rolling twice on sinistrum after getting invis and iron arm early was pretty win. Enfeeble also contributed nicely too, letting the bolters and swords wound on 2's.

I was surprised by how well the termies held up, I was expecting a large amount of trouble, but overall, I think they did quite well. The rubricae on the other hand went down like a sack of potatoes exactly as expected, but I did use them as a screen so I guess I can't complain too hard about that.

Awesome, I haven't gone against a daemon army with mine yet. Sadly, I haven't been able to get much more use out of the rubrics myself either. Like you said, screening and leaving them back to hold objectives so the termies can do the work is the best I've been able to accomplish. Wish our primaris was better.

We do seem to do well against deathstar lists which I expect to be even more common with the new release of celestine. I expect she'll be added to many a star to tank wounds and give hit and run..