Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

DP as warlord is a strong choice for sure although if going with him I think you either go for the +1 inv or the run and charge and focus more on combat.

I think it's amazing how many viable warlord traits there are for our Daemon Princes.

I can see myself opting for either +1 to cast, advance+charge /w reroll, +1 invuln or -1 Damage taken (although +1 invuln is probably better most of the time.)

 MinscS2 wrote:
I think it's amazing how many viable warlord traits there are for our Daemon Princes.

I can see myself opting for either +1 to cast, advance+charge /w reroll, +1 invuln or -1 Damage taken (although +1 invuln is probably better most of the time.)

I am at a loss why would you be happy about that?

TS are led by Sorcerers not DPs, if anything there should be 1 or 2 that the DP can benefit from.

 MinscS2 wrote:
I think it's amazing how many viable warlord traits there are for our Daemon Princes.

I can see myself opting for either +1 to cast, advance+charge /w reroll, +1 invuln or -1 Damage taken (although +1 invuln is probably better most of the time.)

It's a tough call honestly, I actually think the casting bonus might make the most sense. The DP isn't like magnus, they can use troops to keep from getting gunned down so durability is less an issue, and keeping behind said screen also makes the advance+charge's extra speed less useful.

 Thousand-Son-Sorcerer wrote:
I am at a loss why would you be happy about that?

TS are led by Sorcerers not DPs, if anything there should be 1 or 2 that the DP can benefit from.

Tactics thread, if you want to argue about why DP have no place in tsons go post it in general. I'm sure everyone could use a laugh.

I'll run my Daemon Prince with +1 Invulnerable save.

Our Daemon Prince is a psychic monster, but he's also a murder machine in close combat. And that's where I want him, eventually. So far, my Daemon Prince has never been killed by small arms fire. It's always been because I can't roll 5++. Going from 5++ to 3++ makes him twice as durable. Needless to say, it's going to be a pain for anyone to deal with.

And being able to heal him with Temporal Distorsion is the icing on the cake really.......

(just for the record, I've seen a Space Marine character with a Stormshield hold a Bloodthirster in CC for 3 fight phases last week... 3++ saves are crazy).

Because more viable choices is a good thing?

I don't think any other army matches us in just how many of the warlord traits are viable.
And given that traits, like spells, are not chosen during list-building-we have an added layer of flexibility to match our enemies.


The problem is not that we don't have traits fitting our other "sorcerer-class" hqs, its that they are just bad in comparison to the princes as the princes are borderline OP, with ahriman being the sole exception but he is stuck with a trait other than he wants.


Looking at non-prince warlord, who are our options?

Ahriman-waste of a trait to have 3++ on a hidden caster.
Magnus-got one of the few poor traits.
Any sorcerer type just wants magistar, as it's that much better for him.


The only option I'm seeing, is either a prince for flexible choices, or a terminator sorcerer to get a power spell off with familiar+magistar

Only problem I have with a prince warlord is how much of a suicide bomb my prince often is. I very rarely end up in a situation where I don't want the prince to for across the board and start whacking some vehicle with S9 diabolic attacks.

I don't think a DP should be warlord because of how exposed he's going to be. To me the best candidate is the Terminator with +1 to cast.

Considering the termi's main job is to be used alongside a deepstrike scarab squad and/or webway shenanigans, is he not equally or even more exposed?

No, because you almost certainly dropped him behind 10SOTs, 30tzaangors, or 20 rubrics. DP runs around basically by himself most of the time.

Is there any recap of all the leaks? Where can I find it?

kaintxu wrote:
Is there any recap of all the leaks? Where can I find it?

Most of it is available on page 19 or 20 on the rumor thread. You'll find WL traits, relics, stratagems there. Psychic powers are scattered about, unfortunately.

the_scotsman wrote:

kaintxu wrote:
Is there any recap of all the leaks? Where can I find it?

Most of it is available on page 19 or 20 on the rumor thread. You'll find WL traits, relics, stratagems there. Psychic powers are scattered about, unfortunately.

Cheers pal.

So, the main questions that needs to be asked about Rubric Marines is:

Squad size?
In rhino, webway or foot?
Flamers, soulreaper cannon, both or neither?
What powers for the Boss Nob?
Are they viable at all, at 20 points per model?

pismakron wrote:

Squad size?
In rhino, webway or foot?
Flamers, soulreaper cannon, both or neither?
What powers for the Boss Nob?
Are they viable at all, at 20 points per model?

Seeing as our Rubrics can't take a Soulreaper Cannon below 10, I'd say running 5 of them is only viable with Warpflamers now.

Are they viable at all ? Well, I'd say no, but other people swear by them. You may have noticed however that not a single winning list in any major tournament since 8th edition came out had Rubrics in it...

pismakron wrote:
So, the main questions that needs to be asked about Rubric Marines is:

Squad size?
In rhino, webway or foot?
Flamers, soulreaper cannon, both or neither?
What powers for the Boss Nob?
Are they viable at all, at 20 points per model?

1) 5, 10, or 20. See below

2) Yes, yes, no. In my opinion Rubrics should never be exposed to incoming fire turn 1 when you can either have them in rhinos (which are actually properly priced to hold a ~200 point squad, and are much better in Thousand Sons than any other codex thanks to CSM double combis+Warpflame Gargoyles), or in a Land Raider (if you happen to be bringing one, I think between Prescience, Glamour and Weaver we've got a pretty solid setup for one and if you've got one you might as well protect a rubric squad with it). I think they're not terrible with the deep strike strat, but they're always going to be second fiddle to Tzaangors using that and SOTs just being SOTs. the DS strat is a good one to use for rubrics if you want to run rubrics.

3) 5 with flamers, 10 with 1 cannon, 20 with 2 cannons deep striking. I think those are the three ways I like rubrics at present. With the sorceror improved, the 5 flamer weapons in a rhino loadout is pretty solid (I'd not put 2 squads in that rhino though just to ensure you're not putting loads more points in one transport and creating an easy target). 10 with a reaper is the other obvious rhino choice, better at operating as a midrange unit. If you're setting up around a screen+long range gunline (predators, horror screen, land raider, shootbrutes/contemptors, etc) then I'd lean towards the 10-squad. If you're creating an army that's going to have more high risk/high reward elements like deep striking tzaangor blobs, wing princes, warptiming daemon engines, etc, then the flamer squad is good to support that.

4) For a squad that's going to be out in the open, in cover, near the gunline shooting at 24" range primarily (the 10 man squads from above) I'd take Boon of Mutation and Temporal Distortion on them. All those powers are good to cast every turn (you should expect to have to reroll a peril about once every two games, if you have a reason to cast both of these every turn). buff up a backline caster aiming for the +cast and +move boosts, and repair your damaged vehicles and wounded characters. If you're going for the more assault focused squads, you can go one of two routes. Route one would be increasing the squad's firepower a bit with Firestorm, route two would be picking up a backup cast of Glamour in case nobody is nearby to get it on them. I'd say go for route 1 with the 5 man flamer squads, route 2 with a big deep strike blob who will mostly be massively overkilling things anyway.

5) Depends on your definition of viable in my opinion. in tournament play, where everyones only going to be taking the best possible units, I think the most likely setup for a thousand sons battalion is a 30-blob of tzaangors and 2 10-man cultists. If we see rubrics, we'll see SOTs, as they deep strike natively and come with a modicum of melee power. In normal play, where anything above about the bottom 50% is generally OK to built into your army, properly set up rubric squads will be fine and you can answer questions like "why would i take rubrics when I can take very slightly better SOTs" with "because I like Rubrics". Sots have better offense, and don't spend CPs to deep strike, but die more quickly to anti-elite weaponry and don't get obsec/fill you troop slots. I don't think they'll get totally shoved out by tzaangors, because I think the effectiveness of tzaangors drops off enormously after the first 30-blob that you warptime into combat and double-tap with. I think they'll get shoved out by cultists, like all CSM troop choices currently are.

For my army I’m doing a squad of 10 with flamers in the webway, asp sorc will get a power that’s low to cast.

Viable? Yes if you have a plan for them. I think the bolter rubrics aren’t worth it because you can get better firepower from say noise marines and noise marines have a stratagem increasing their firepower.

I think flamers are the way to go because if properly supported they force your opponent to act on them. 10 flamers left alone will start deleting infantry units. They are expensive but whatever charges them will have to try from outside of 9 inches or risk taking a lot of casualties. Add to that a squad of terms and a big unit of cultists or tzaangors with a DP and all of a sudden you have threat overload.

And that’s not counting what the rest of your army will be doing, with all those units in his face turn 1 he has some real choices to make

Flambrics for me are a tough sell comparing them to flamers of tzeentch.

5 points more, and 1 less AP, yes. But flamers get:

-12" range, meaning shoot out of deep strike without needing a psychic power AND you can not avoid their overwatch

-Pistol weapon type, meaning you do charge them? They overwatch you, theeeen they just keep shooting you like nothing happened.

-S:User daemon weapons, meaning you can boost their strength with a herald and give them +1 to wound with a WC5 power, and reroll 1s to wound with a warlord trait. Or heck, boost their strength with a mutalith! Who says it only buffs melee - not when you're a Tzeentch Daemon!

6 flamers plopping down out of deep strike in a daemon army do some serious damage.

Their biggest downside is that we're back at the 'i like rubrics better' point - they look like a 3rd grader's art class project.

Really excited about the DP warlord. I think 3++ is unavoidable, which is sad because I really wanted that +1 to cast.

As for keeping it protected, it's easy: Play two of them! Just like my Trik and Trak here:

 MinscS2 wrote:
I think it's amazing how many viable warlord traits there are for our Daemon Princes.

+1 invuln or -1 Damage taken (although +1 invuln is probably better most of the time.)

Ya that's a tough one. Since he can hide the usual multi-damage weapons will show up in combat. And the typical 1 damage weapons will have a much harder time wounding. Also -1D doesn't occur until you fail so you can't apply a straight formula very easily.

If you applied 6 wounds to each setup then -1D lets through 3W vs 2D and 6W vs 3D. 3++ allows 4W and 6W respectively.

My gut is that 3++ will be more swingy and you can get him to 3++ with a spell anyway, so -1D could be better, but it depends what you'll face.

Rubrics are in a tough place, they don’t actually have that high damage output but they are super resilient, for me they are probably better as midfield objective campers while units like horrors Tzaangor and scarabs deepstrike in the opponents face,

I’d probably never run more than 10 in a unit with a soul reaper and 2 flamers that way you have half decent defense against charging units but still keep most of your ranged output.

 Nym wrote:


Seeing as our Rubrics can't take a Soulreaper Cannon below 10, I'd say running 5 of them is only viable with Warpflamers now.

Are they viable at all ? Well, I'd say no, but other people swear by them. You may have noticed however that not a single winning list in any major tournament since 8th edition came out had Rubrics in it...

You'll also notice that none of those lists, if they were pure Thousand Sons, had any useful stratagems, relics, traits, or spells beyond Warptime/Prescience.

Daedelus - And death hex/ nullzone are a real thing these days.

grouchoben wrote:
Daedelus - And death hex/ nullzone are a real thing these days.

Both are horribly short ranged and WC8 - with the exception of TS where we can place Death Hex at 18".

Both are pretty irrelevant for Rubrics if your opponent is dedicated to getting a psyker in range and THEN hitting you with anti-tank weapons good for them. If you've been caught in melee, well, game over man.

Yeah, I don't know how viable rubrics will be as a unit that really carries weight in a tournament. I think they do a job, fill a troop slot, and are definitely more viable post-codex (with loads more hit rerolls running around, a Troop slot+obsec, and ability to cast real psychic powers) than they were pre-codex or in the csm book. 5-man soulreapers in the csm codex or no, you aren't going to take them in an elite slot.

My thoughts on a webway rubric brigade:

Both TA sorcs come down with them. Get the three in 6 for CF. Get Glamour, Prescience, and Weaver on them. Position the TA sorcs to intervene if you want them to.

You then have two blocks of SoT to bring in and 3 Maulerfiends to rush up the table with Ahriman and Warp Time / Heal / Diabolic.

Good list, though have you only paid for 6 of the rubrics' guns?

Though I have to see its sooo sad to see these "thousand sons supporting cultists/tzaangors" lists. I mean come on, 30 rubrics and 50 cultists?

(/s)

For DP warlord i'm thinking running it as counter-charge and support for Tzaangors with bows for rerol 1's.

So i'll run 2 DP
1. DP #1 Warlord with +1 to cast, backfield, gives rerol 1's for my tzaangors on disk and buffs them with Prescience, for enemy units who come close - counter charge protection.

2. DP #2 move forward to support 30 tzaangors from webway and try to warptime them.

the_scotsman wrote:
Good list, though have you only paid for 6 of the rubrics' guns?

Though I have to see its sooo sad to see these "thousand sons supporting cultists/tzaangors" lists. I mean come on, 30 rubrics and 50 cultists?

(/s)

Paid for them all, but had a bunch of typos and some other errors on the sheet so I had to move a bunch of stuff around.

I find it dubious to claim 200 points of cultists that do literally nothing, but stand around, as "being supported" by 393 points of rubrics and 204 of SoT.

I'll probably never be runing mono TS - but alongside Tzeetch daemons.

Will probably just take Ahriman + maybe a DP for TS HQ with a Tzeetch Daemons LOC warlord.