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Okay I was on there today and saw this.

"Ahriman makes a perfect warlord for these infantry-heavy armies, allowing units to Infiltrate as a way of compensating for their lack of natural speed. 20 Rubric Marines in their deployment zone on turn one is not something any enemy wants to have to deal with."

Here's the link to the page.
https://www.warhammer-community.com/2016/12/01/armies-of-the-thousand-sons/

So do you think this is a good plan?

Infiltrating anything if you can is usually a good plan.

If you really want to use them like that, I'd only do two squads at 10 with the Assault Cannon. The average roll of a D3 is two, so you won't want too many points tied up in expensive squads that won't make it across the field quickly.

Infiltrating Havocs with Lascannons is a good thing? No, just because you can infiltrate doesn't mean you should. TS are not a CC oriented unit and by infiltrating them you end up with a unit that starts out way too close to the enemy, and can easily be charged and bogged down for the rest of the game.

Offering up an unwieldy 500 point squad with 1x ap- attack each in CC and no overwatch isn't what I would call fantastic strategic planning, but to be fair, it's also going to take a while to eat through 500 points of rubricae and the aspiring sorceror means that non MEQ's need not apply. Not worth getting in 1 round of fire before you're getting charged though. Not worth taking 20 rubricae either, but that's a completely different discussion.

Probably fine for super casual games against the sort of tactical genius on display against the GW rules design team though.

 Thousand-Son-Sorcerer wrote:
Infiltrating Havocs with Lascannons is a good thing? No, just because you can infiltrate doesn't mean you should. TS are not a CC oriented unit and by infiltrating them you end up with a unit that starts out way too close to the enemy, and can easily be charged and bogged down for the rest of the game.

If one do this, best to do it with Termicide squads. Death Guards Termies... T5 and FNP just takes Termicide to the next level

Something like this.

CAD:
Ahriman
Sorcerer in termie armor with Astral Grim

Cultist
Cultist

DG Termie Annihilation Force
Sorcerer: burning brand and however you want to upgrade it.
3x3 Termies: MoN, 3x combi-meltas and maybe 1 PF.




Automatically Appended Next Post:
Then you bring

IW CAD
Sorcerer: whatever
6x1 Obliterators

 Drasius wrote:
Offering up an unwieldy 500 point squad with 1x ap- attack each in CC and no overwatch isn't what I would call fantastic strategic planning, but to be fair, it's also going to take a while to eat through 500 points of rubricae and the aspiring sorceror means that non MEQ's need not apply. Not worth getting in 1 round of fire before you're getting charged though. Not worth taking 20 rubricae either, but that's a completely different discussion.

Probably fine for super casual games against the sort of tactical genius on display against the GW rules design team though.

This exactly. Why the hell didn't the play testing either determine that Rubric Marines are too expensive, or that they needed at least a bit of CC ability. You know like the ability to take a CC weapon.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 SonsofVulkan wrote:

 Thousand-Son-Sorcerer wrote:
Infiltrating Havocs with Lascannons is a good thing? No, just because you can infiltrate doesn't mean you should. TS are not a CC oriented unit and by infiltrating them you end up with a unit that starts out way too close to the enemy, and can easily be charged and bogged down for the rest of the game.

If one do this, best to do it with Termicide squads. Death Guards Termies... T5 and FNP just takes Termicide to the next level

Something like this.

CAD:
Ahriman
Sorcerer in termie armor with Astral Grim

Cultist
Cultist

DG Termie Annihilation Force
Sorcerer: burning brand and however you want to upgrade it.
3x3 Termies: MoN, 3x combi-meltas and maybe 1 PF.

IW CAD
Sorcerer: whatever
6x1 Obliterators

Which would work if you rolled a 3+ on the number of infiltrator units you get. But then you lose 1/3 of your games before the game has even started.

 Thousand-Son-Sorcerer wrote:

 Drasius wrote:
Offering up an unwieldy 500 point squad with 1x ap- attack each in CC and no overwatch isn't what I would call fantastic strategic planning, but to be fair, it's also going to take a while to eat through 500 points of rubricae and the aspiring sorceror means that non MEQ's need not apply. Not worth getting in 1 round of fire before you're getting charged though. Not worth taking 20 rubricae either, but that's a completely different discussion.

Probably fine for super casual games against the sort of tactical genius on display against the GW rules design team though.

This exactly. Why the hell didn't the play testing either determine that Rubric Marines are too expensive, or that they needed at least a bit of CC ability. You know like the ability to take a CC weapon.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 SonsofVulkan wrote:

 Thousand-Son-Sorcerer wrote:
Infiltrating Havocs with Lascannons is a good thing? No, just because you can infiltrate doesn't mean you should. TS are not a CC oriented unit and by infiltrating them you end up with a unit that starts out way too close to the enemy, and can easily be charged and bogged down for the rest of the game.

If one do this, best to do it with Termicide squads. Death Guards Termies... T5 and FNP just takes Termicide to the next level

Something like this.

CAD:
Ahriman
Sorcerer in termie armor with Astral Grim

Cultist
Cultist

DG Termie Annihilation Force
Sorcerer: burning brand and however you want to upgrade it.
3x3 Termies: MoN, 3x combi-meltas and maybe 1 PF.

IW CAD
Sorcerer: whatever
6x1 Obliterators

Which would work if you rolled a 3+ on the number of infiltrator units you get. But then you lose 1/3 of your games before the game has even started.

Nah even if you roll a 1, you can just deep strike the rest. You can say the same if you try to do it with rubrics, except they are much more expensive and can't kill vehicles and can't DS. There are plenty of points left for you to take a bunch of other stuff, its a pretty cutthroat list that exploits Ahriman's warlord trait.

Amusingly enough, I feel Black Legion are a better stand-in for Thousand Sons armies anyway.

Infinite hatred works all the time rather than just the time.

Last Memory gives you access to a ML 4 Exalted Sorcerer. Hand of Darkness is an amusing stand-in for Seer's Bane. You still get access to Tzaangors, and have the option for unmarked Cultists/vanilla sorcerers to support you...

It's kind of sad really how hard it is to find a compelling reason to take an actual Thousand Sons detachment.

 SonsofVulkan wrote:

Nah even if you roll a 1, you can just deep strike the rest. You can say the same if you try to do it with rubrics, except they are much more expensive and can't kill vehicles and can't DS. There are plenty of points left for you to take a bunch of other stuff, its a pretty cutthroat list that exploits Ahriman's warlord trait.

So at the start of turn 1 you infiltrate the Rubric marines, and have 2 units of cultists, and 3 sorcs on the table to start? You realize that at the start of the second turn the only thing your going to have on the table is going to be the unit of rubrics and they will be locked in CC.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 MagicJuggler wrote:
It's kind of sad really how hard it is to find a compelling reason to take an actual Thousand Sons detachment.

Especially since this is all brand new. This is part of the reason why I don't understand why people are all praising GW right now.

As a note concerning the 20 man Rubric Squad. The only thing I can think is that they expect you to get Astral Grimore and Helm of the Third Eye in there some how and take some flamer upgrades, use the flamers to (hopefully) not get charged, and kill as much as you can. Problem is that runs just over 800 points without Ahriman for a "deathstar" that people would literally laugh at. Deathstar really doesn't feel right either, "Mobile" is probably a better description, spins in circles and doesn't get much done.

I think this is less of a good plan and more of a sales plan.

At least they're trying, but honestly they probably need a new design team.

Well to be fair, that one one unit can be made nigh unchargeable. The idea would be to add some flamers for overwatch and the staff of arcane compulsion to reduce charge range by 2.
Then you would hope for lord of flux and/or torturer of worlds. And to round it out you could add in a word bearer with a baleful icon to force charge re-rolls and disordered charges.

It's not really viable or anything, but they're certainly not "easily" charged. An average roll would need to be roughly within 3 inches of the unit to be successful and then still needs to be re-rolled, and that's not counting casualties from overwatch.

Games Workshop doesn't focus around the tournament meta for a good reason.

If newcomers to 40k thought they'd only be playing against waves of Scatterbike spam, free Rhinos, magic deathstars and formation-boosted gunlines, it would quite sensibly discourage a lot of people from ever picking up the game.

If you're truly intent on fielding 20 Rubrics, it would be very wise to add a lC like Cypher to run them out of combat and give them a 2+ cover save in Ruins.

 Thousand-Son-Sorcerer wrote:

 SonsofVulkan wrote:

Nah even if you roll a 1, you can just deep strike the rest. You can say the same if you try to do it with rubrics, except they are much more expensive and can't kill vehicles and can't DS. There are plenty of points left for you to take a bunch of other stuff, its a pretty cutthroat list that exploits Ahriman's warlord trait.

So at the start of turn 1 you infiltrate the Rubric marines, and have 2 units of cultists, and 3 sorcs on the table to start? You realize that at the start of the second turn the only thing your going to have on the table is going to be the unit of rubrics and they will be locked in CC.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 MagicJuggler wrote:
It's kind of sad really how hard it is to find a compelling reason to take an actual Thousand Sons detachment.

Especially since this is all brand new. This is part of the reason why I don't understand why people are all praising GW right now.

As a note concerning the 20 man Rubric Squad. The only thing I can think is that they expect you to get Astral Grimore and Helm of the Third Eye in there some how and take some flamer upgrades, use the flamers to (hopefully) not get charged, and kill as much as you can. Problem is that runs just over 800 points without Ahriman for a "deathstar" that people would literally laugh at. Deathstar really doesn't feel right either, "Mobile" is probably a better description, spins in circles and doesn't get much done.

I don't know what your saying. I'm not advocating rubrics they are garbage, I'd go with infiltrating DG termies. I start on the board 6 units of single obsec oblits and infiltrate whatever depending on the mission and type of army your against.

 n0t_u wrote:
I think this is less of a good plan and more of a sales plan.

At least they're trying, but honestly they probably need a new design team.

I don't what they need but something needs to change.

Sales Plan...


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Roknar wrote:
Well to be fair, that one one unit can be made nigh unchargeable. The idea would be to add some flamers for overwatch and the staff of arcane compulsion to reduce charge range by 2.
Then you would hope for lord of flux and/or torturer of worlds. And to round it out you could add in a word bearer with a baleful icon to force charge re-rolls and disordered charges.

It's not really viable or anything, but they're certainly not "easily" charged. An average roll would need to be roughly within 3 inches of the unit to be successful and then still needs to be re-rolled, and that's not counting casualties from overwatch.

yeah but its impossible to get that, because you only get 3 units to infiltrate so you could only add two ICs to the TS unit.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Yoyoyo wrote:
Games Workshop doesn't focus around the tournament meta for a good reason.

They create the tournament meta.

Yoyoyo wrote:
If newcomers to 40k thought they'd only be playing against waves of Scatterbike spam, free Rhinos, magic deathstars and formation-boosted gunlines, it would quite sensibly discourage a lot of people from ever picking up the game.

So the solution is lie to them so they spend 500 dollars on models and books to start an army only for that person to realize that they have been mislead, sell their army and bad mouth the company whenever its brought up?

Yoyoyo wrote:
If you're truly intent on fielding 20 Rubrics, it would be very wise to add a lC like Cypher to run them out of combat and give them a 2+ cover save in Ruins.

Im not intent on running that they are im trying to figure out how they thought it was a good idea.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 SonsofVulkan wrote:
I don't know what your saying. I'm not advocating rubrics they are garbage, I'd go with infiltrating DG termies. I start on the board 6 units of single obsec oblits and infiltrate whatever depending on the mission and type of army your against.

Oh your saying don't bring Rubrics at all okay. Well they are suggesting 20 rubrics as a viable tactic that is what I'm talking about.

Oh ok I didn't bother reading that forum, but I know Ahriman's warlord trait can be beneficial to many traitor's hate armies.

Noice marines, DG termies/havocs, zombie cultists

One thing to remember is that Infiltrate doesn't force you to deploy outside of your deployment zone, so Infiltrate can be useful on long range units like LasHavocs if you deploy first, as it'll allow you to counter-deploy your opponent and help guarantee you can get a good firing line onto his key units.

 SonsofVulkan wrote:
Oh ok I didn't bother reading that forum, but I know Ahriman's warlord trait can be beneficial to many traitor's hate armies.

Noice marines, DG termies/havocs, zombie cultists

Its not a forum, its an article that gives suggestions on different types of builds for TS armies.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Matt.Kingsley wrote:
One thing to remember is that Infiltrate doesn't force you to deploy outside of your deployment zone, so Infiltrate can be useful on long range units like LasHavocs if you deploy first, as it'll allow you to counter-deploy your opponent and help guarantee you can get a good firing line onto his key units.

Which would be fine but they specifically say "having a 20 man unit of Rubric Marines in you enemies deployment zone" as if its a good Idea if they had said "being able to place your rubric marines where you need them" or something like that it would be different, but all you have done is put that unit WAY out of position.

Even then it could potentially be useful.

The only situation I can think of is if your opponent has castled up on one side of their deployments zone leaving an objective free on the opposite end that you can infiltrate on. Otherwise yeah nah it isn't that good.

But then again Rubrics (no matter the squad size) aren't good anyway. Typical GW marketing/not knowing how to best play their own game.

 Thousand-Son-Sorcerer wrote:

 Roknar wrote:
Well to be fair, that one one unit can be made nigh unchargeable. The idea would be to add some flamers for overwatch and the staff of arcane compulsion to reduce charge range by 2.
Then you would hope for lord of flux and/or torturer of worlds. And to round it out you could add in a word bearer with a baleful icon to force charge re-rolls and disordered charges.

It's not really viable or anything, but they're certainly not "easily" charged. An average roll would need to be roughly within 3 inches of the unit to be successful and then still needs to be re-rolled, and that's not counting casualties from overwatch.

yeah but its impossible to get that, because you only get 3 units to infiltrate so you could only add two ICs to the TS unit.

True, but GW consider 5+ invulnerable saves to be hot gak. So getting that 5+ on infiltrate is totally viable for them. Still, most of the time you'll be getting two infiltrating units, which is enough for the staff and the rubrics, so they're still hard to charge as long as can find a ruin to hide in. Someone mentioned cypher, that's not bad either, not all of them would need to be in cover either, it takes a while to chew through 2+ cover saves backed by 3+ invulnerable.

Don't get me wrong though, I'm not advocating this as a good idea. All said and done this unit will run you roughly 1k points, for a few glorified bolters. And I've found it's hard enough to infiltrate a single model in the enemy deployment zone, forget 20+ rubrics that need terrain to boot.