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Since pretty much all of Magnus's rules have leaked, it has been confirmed that he costs as much as Belakor & Fateweaver combined.
So that begs the question: Which is better?

All are FMCs, FW & Bels have a total of 9 T5 wounds and 7WCs between them and have the benefit of being 2 targets.
Magnus on the other hand has 7 T7 wounds and 5WC, plus he harnesses WC on 2+, so he is as potent as both the above combined at casting powers.

Magnus is also going to be amazing in CC, whereas only Belakor would ever land to be in CC, and only sparingly.

So what do you guys think? Is the versatility of FW + Belakor worth it? or is Magnus going to be the new master of the skies?



side note: Imagine a list will all 3 and a ton of Pink/Blue Horrors.
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Competitive I would say FW + Be'lakor (unless you are going for Magnus + DP's for 3+ WC harness) both of them are a tool box for your army rather than the hammer that Magnus is. With the new formations I would wager that Ahriman + sorcerors is a far better hammer.

This here is just a little theory list IF we get what KDK got and we can mix daemon and CSM into a unit (i.e. lose daemonic instability for TS detachments)
Max out a unit of pink horrors and add Ahriman + sorcerors to the unit. Grab the artifact that makes the unit jump and the artifact which prevents DtW and you now have a rolling death star that has 18+ base WC, casts on a 3+, ignores DtW on some roles (no you can't stop my invis or SD beam), produces new units every time it is shot at, then shoot out witchfire and blessings all over the place.
Also, you could cast cursed earth using the unit and suddenly the horrors get +1 invul and the sorcerors do too via blessing of Tzeentch.

Competitively I don't think magnus will be mixed with either of those two. Magnus is 650 points on his own, mixing him with FW or Bel is gonna be way too much to fit into a useful army

I like Magnus, but not being a GMC he suffers from everything other MCs do, one Stomp or D on a 6 and he's toast.

 jreilly89 wrote:
I like Magnus, but not being a GMC he suffers from everything other MCs do, one Stomp or D on a 6 and he's toast.

GMCs are just as toasted as anything else when being 6'd by the D table, and if you get Magnus stomped that's your fault. He should never even hit the ground.

Magnus is awesome but he fulfills a very different purpose than fateweaver+bel'akor. Magnus is a flying tactical nuke that lays waste to thing things with psychic powers while being completely impossible to kill, but isn't much good for buffing the rest of the army. Bel/Fate are okay on offense but are much more about buffing your deathstar than anything else.

Whichever strat fits your list better is what you want to go for.

All you need competitively is a ton of pink dollars.

I must be missing something, because everyone is treating Magnus as if he is a Jump Monstrous Creature. As I read it he can fly. As such, he is functionally invulnerable against most armies. He is immune from perils, and puts out much more psychics then Fateweaver and Belekor combined.

From my point of view if the enemy has enough shooting to threaten magnus then he just stays airborn. His Shooting is psychic shooting so he can run off the table just like fatey, only because he ignores perils, and is incredibly more durable, he doesn't need to worry about it nearly as much.

He doesn't need to worry much about S : D, because most of it is in CC where he will never be unless he chooses to be, and the rest of it will need 6's to hit. He doesn't need to worry about Stomp, because as I said he will never see combat unless he wants to.

I think most Demon lists will be Magnus + Fatey for the rerolls, and then you get 2 super gunboat FMC's. Add in as many heralds / Sorcerers / infinite horrors as you can to summon and or be W/C Batteries, and you've got a winning list in psychic phase the game. Fatey is incredibly good for his points. Probably Scatbike good, but Magnus is much, much, much better. Taunar good or Wraith Knight good, or possibly even better depending on his other psychic powers.

You look at his stats, and it really looks like Magnus was costed before they added in the ability to ignore perils. 800 points would make much more sense. 900 - 1100 wouldn't be out of the question depending on his other psychic powers.

 koooaei wrote:
All you need competitively is a ton of pink dollars.

Other than the actual cost of the models, someone please explain why Magnus + 11 units of Pink Horrors in an Unbound list is such a bad idea.

Most people don't play unbound.

Because it's silly and playing "whatever you want" is silly.

tag8833 wrote:
As I read it he can fly. As such, he is functionally invulnerable against most armies.

Do you play in a universe where no armies use guns?

Even so, most armies still need to snapshoot to take him down. From the looks of it, anyone sending to the ground willingly seems to be misplaying or needs him to smash his fist into something.

CaptainSomas wrote:
Even so, most armies still need to snapshoot to take him down. From the looks of it, anyone sending to the ground willingly seems to be misplaying or needs him to smash his fist into something.

Is he really going to do enough damage while flying to warrant the 650 price tag?

 CrownAxe wrote:

CaptainSomas wrote:
Even so, most armies still need to snapshoot to take him down. From the looks of it, anyone sending to the ground willingly seems to be misplaying or needs him to smash his fist into something.

Is he really going to do enough damage while flying to warrant the 650 price tag?

He has a D-beam, and D-shot and can take control of one of your units to shoot at you. Plus a magnitude of other witchfires that can do damage loads of different type of units.
If you brought big stuff, Magnus will pay for himself in the first 2 turns, easily.
If you brought lots of gribblies instead, Magnus could probably get his points back by turn 3-4.

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Maybe. He has potential, at the very least. His Warlord trait is nice for messing with faster armies and Gaze of Magnus looks like a pretty good nuke. If he is in a grand coven detatchment, he gets a 6th power. Unfortunately I haven't seen what the Change Discipline has, and the Tzeentch powers are...eh. Blessing of Tzeentch makes his invuln to a 3. I find him as a wait and see.

So in the special detachment he gets a 3++ and if you casts a blessing on himself (like say, Force) it adds +1. Dude's got a 2++ re-rollable!

 Galef wrote:
So in the special detachment he gets a 3++ and if you casts a blessing on himself (like say, Force) it adds +1. Dude's got a 2++ re-rollable!

Which detachment gives hima 3++ before blessing of Tzeentch?

 Galef wrote:

 CrownAxe wrote:

CaptainSomas wrote:
Even so, most armies still need to snapshoot to take him down. From the looks of it, anyone sending to the ground willingly seems to be misplaying or needs him to smash his fist into something.

Is he really going to do enough damage while flying to warrant the 650 price tag?

He has a D-beam, and D-shot and can take control of one of your units to shoot at you. Plus a magnitude of other witchfires that can do damage loads of different type of units.
If you brought big stuff, Magnus will pay for himself in the first 2 turns, easily.
If you brought lots of gribblies instead, Magnus could probably get his points back by turn 3-4.

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The StrD powers are less impressive then you thin, they are single shot and eat a ton of warp charges (even on manifesting 2+ you need to through like 6-7 dice the cast the WC5 beam). StrD also just has a bunch of weaknesses that no one thinks about (is only significantly powerful against multi-wound models, bounces off invul and cover if not a 6). Even the beam has the issue of only being a single shot so can only get a single hit on single model units (which is what StrD would be the best against). StrD is only notable for hitting MCs and super heavies so if your opponent doesn't have that it's a waste.

Treason is also incredibly situational. It requires your opponent to have brought a shooting unit worth taking control of. IF they have a a unit of Stormsurges then its great. Your opponent is a melee army or is extre msu then it's worthless

After that he isn't shooting any better then Fateweaver, he just does it on 2+ manifestation.

The big difference between FW and Magnus in the psychic phase it that Magnus is getting off twice as many witchfire and has access to more powers. He can throw 5 powers and needs less WC to use them. FW needs WC from so many other units to use all 4 of his, basically getting his points cost up there with Magnus.

I am not saying Magnus is better than FW, just that he easily does more damage. I'd take Magnus for "fun" but in a Tournament setting FW + Belakor is prorbably the more tactical choice. Magnus is a "throw him at the opponent" boogey man.

 CrownAxe wrote:

 Galef wrote:

 CrownAxe wrote:

CaptainSomas wrote:
Even so, most armies still need to snapshoot to take him down. From the looks of it, anyone sending to the ground willingly seems to be misplaying or needs him to smash his fist into something.

Is he really going to do enough damage while flying to warrant the 650 price tag?

He has a D-beam, and D-shot and can take control of one of your units to shoot at you. Plus a magnitude of other witchfires that can do damage loads of different type of units.
If you brought big stuff, Magnus will pay for himself in the first 2 turns, easily.
If you brought lots of gribblies instead, Magnus could probably get his points back by turn 3-4.

-

The StrD powers are less impressive then you thin, they are single shot and eat a ton of warp charges (even on manifesting 2+ you need to through like 6-7 dice the cast the WC5 beam). StrD also just has a bunch of weaknesses that no one thinks about (is only significantly powerful against multi-wound models, bounces off invul and cover if not a 6). Even the beam has the issue of only being a single shot so can only get a single hit on single model units (which is what StrD would be the best against). StrD is only notable for hitting MCs and super heavies so if your opponent doesn't have that it's a waste.

Treason is also incredibly situational. It requires your opponent to have brought a shooting unit worth taking control of. IF they have a a unit of Stormsurges then its great. Your opponent is a melee army or is extre msu then it's worthless

After that he isn't shooting any better then Fateweaver, he just does it on 2+ manifestation.

A d beam on a flying unit? That is easily going to be 4-5 auto D hits. Fatey can't take your best shooting unit and turn it on your own self ether. Oh that ignore cover white scars command squad with grav guns? Yeah...it just blew up a whole unit - and I got 4 more powers to cast which go off almost automatically - it starts getting out of hand real quick. FFS he can use it on a storm surge and fire all of the d missiles off just to waste them.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Galef wrote:
The big difference between FW and Magnus in the psychic phase it that Magnus is getting off twice as many witchfire and has access to more powers. He can throw 5 powers and needs less WC to use them. FW needs WC from so many other units to use all 4 of his, basically getting his points cost up there with Magnus.

I am not saying Magnus is better than FW, just that he easily does more damage. I'd take Magnus for "fun" but in a Tournament setting FW + Belakor is prorbably the more tactical choice. Magnus is a "throw him at the opponent" boogey man.

I think probably works best with FW and leave belkor at home. FW allows you to skimp on your warpdice until you roll a 1 and then once your reroll is gone you can start to throw +1 warp-charges at spells. Also with D shots the reroll is pretty powerful too.

 Xenomancers wrote:

A d beam on a flying unit? That is easily going to be 4-5 auto D hits. Fatey can't take your best shooting unit and turn it on your own self ether. Oh that ignore cover white scars command squad with grav guns? Yeah...it just blew up a whole unit - and I got 4 more powers to cast which go off almost automatically - it starts getting out of hand real quick. FFS he can use it on a storm surge and fire all of the d missiles off just to waste them.

Its only easily 4-5 to hits if your opponent lets you get it. Its pretty easy to deny getting more then 1-2 hits on a unit such as by place other units in the the way so that magnus can't move there or deploying in a square so you can't hit them all. Also he has Bolt of Tzeentch which is a Sd6+4 ap2 beam so against most units that will do just as good except costs WC1 instead of WC5

And again for treason, I said its extremely situational. Yes its really good against stormsurges (i said that) but not everyone has stormsurges.

 CrownAxe wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

A d beam on a flying unit? That is easily going to be 4-5 auto D hits. Fatey can't take your best shooting unit and turn it on your own self ether. Oh that ignore cover white scars command squad with grav guns? Yeah...it just blew up a whole unit - and I got 4 more powers to cast which go off almost automatically - it starts getting out of hand real quick. FFS he can use it on a storm surge and fire all of the d missiles off just to waste them.

Its only easily 4-5 to hits if your opponent lets you get it. Its pretty easy to deny getting more then 1-2 hits on a unit such as by place other units in the the way so that magnus can't move there or deploying in a square so you can't hit them all. Also he has Bolt of Tzeentch which is a Sd6+4 ap2 beam so against most units that will do just as good except costs WC1 instead of WC5

And again for treason, I said its extremely situational. Yes its really good against stormsurges (i said that) but not everyone has stormsurges.

I would agree with you if he didnt also have acess to Nova and high rate of fire ignore cover abilities too, to deal with MSU. You might not need the D beam but at WC5 with success on 2+ you have a better chance of getting it off rolling 6 dice than a warp charge 3 power on 8 dice. Plus he can't perils - so you have to take that into account when measuring his power.