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I normally run ahriman as a repair and protect unit, his job is to make sure the defiler can do his and help heal anyone who perils. I seem to like to roll double 6's on smite a lot, so it's a good kind of pain, but I still don't like my guys blowing up. If I was going to replace a spell it would probably be glamor of tzeench or smite by command point.

However you do bring up a good point. The thoughts of Ahriman on disk flying up with 3++ save and 3 offensive powers seems very tempting. Hmmmmmm but I still want someone to hang with deffy and cast on him. And deamon prince is already filled with spells. Unless I just use deamonforge and say he is good enough....

the_scotsman wrote:
I hate the ecto cannons on the forgefiend personally. And the forgefiend in general tbh. Defiler just seems to do his job a million times better, if i were running a fiend it'd be a mauler with tendrils.

Also, I think you're discounting the offensive powers. I've run Gift of Chaos on Ahriman whenever I've run up against a T3 army and it invariably explodes something. It's the perfect use for a Gaze reroll and can be used to nuke a squad or a character singlehandedly. The range increase up to 12 really helps it out. I'd take an offensive power over Temporal on ahriman every day.

Yea the ecto cannons are absurdly priced. 26 points...1 point cheaper than a Multi-Melta.

...wait MM are 27 points in our book...

Ditto on Gift. I used it against Guard this weekend. The mortal wound spill over is glorious.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:
I hate the ecto cannons on the forgefiend personally. And the forgefiend in general tbh. Defiler just seems to do his job a million times better, if i were running a fiend it'd be a mauler with tendrils.

Also, I think you're discounting the offensive powers. I've run Gift of Chaos on Ahriman whenever I've run up against a T3 army and it invariably explodes something. It's the perfect use for a Gaze reroll and can be used to nuke a squad or a character singlehandedly. The range increase up to 12 really helps it out. I'd take an offensive power over Temporal on ahriman every day.

Yea the ecto cannons are absurdly priced. 26 points...1 point cheaper than a Multi-Melta.

...wait MM are 27 points in our book...

Ditto on Gift. I used it against Guard this weekend. The mortal wound spill over is glorious.

Problem is, there are so many buffs we just need to take. Weaver of fates, Glamour of tzeentch, prescience, flickering flames, temporal mastery, warpspeed, death hex, gaze of fate. All of them are solid spells which act as force multiplier to our army. I just can't find any space for offensive spells on the main casters. I sometimes give the big offensive spells to the aspiring sorcerers, because it doesn't make sense to smite with them.

Sometimes i feel that this buffs are cool but i need to kill something in Psychic phase, not just buff...

Well, that's where we differ from other armies. We don't have a lot of native force multipliers (Primarch of the Thousand Sons and Lord of the Thousand Sons), so we make up for it in spells. A lot of spells.

 ArtyomTrityak wrote:
Sometimes i feel that this buffs are cool but i need to kill something in Psychic phase, not just buff...

It used to be my favorite thing in the previous edition. With dual DP's and all the pyro and other spells. Large auras with 2d6 str 4 hits taken on everyone, psychic screams, blasts and templates. Awesome fun. I even played the damn artifact that made yourself explode if you failed a test. But for some weird reason, GW seems to have abandoned standard damage spells with str values. Now it's all d3 MW's and because of that the spells are stupidly expensive to cast. A freaking Hive tyrant can have a more effective psychic dakka phase than us with its 2 damage spells on a 5+ :( I really think most of the damaging spells are seriously overcosted. And I suspect the whole Thousand Sons lore casting values were calculated with the thought that we do get bonuses to cast already in mind. Which ironically cancels the bonus that our characters get bonuses to cast.

Problem is, there are so many buffs we just need to take. Weaver of fates, Glamour of tzeentch, prescience, flickering flames, temporal mastery, warpspeed, death hex, gaze of fate. All of them are solid spells which act as force multiplier to our army. I just can't find any space for offensive spells on the main casters. I sometimes give the big offensive spells to the aspiring sorcerers, because it doesn't make sense to smite with them.

Yea I actually gave it to my SOT sorc.

topaxygouroun i wrote:

 ArtyomTrityak wrote:
Sometimes i feel that this buffs are cool but i need to kill something in Psychic phase, not just buff...

It used to be my favorite thing in the previous edition. With dual DP's and all the pyro and other spells. Large auras with 2d6 str 4 hits taken on everyone, psychic screams, blasts and templates. Awesome fun. I even played the damn artifact that made yourself explode if you failed a test. But for some weird reason, GW seems to have abandoned standard damage spells with str values. Now it's all d3 MW's and because of that the spells are stupidly expensive to cast. A freaking Hive tyrant can have a more effective psychic dakka phase than us with its 2 damage spells on a 5+ :( I really think most of the damaging spells are seriously overcosted. And I suspect the whole Thousand Sons lore casting values were calculated with the thought that we do get bonuses to cast already in mind. Which ironically cancels the bonus that our characters get bonuses to cast.

Are you referring to Psychic Scream and Smite, then? Because there is only the one offensive power in the tyranid power list. We have access to Firestorm, Doombolt, Gaze, Gift, Bolt and Gateway, on top of Smite. 5 of them are 24" range on Tson casters, and 4 of them are pick targets rather than nearest.

In a recent game of mine I was up against an MSU sisters list, with lots of Canonesses, Imagifiers, etc sharing transports with 5-woman squads in immolators and rhinos, and I ended up taking Firestorm on an AS, Gateway on a prince with the +1 cast trait, Gift and Doombolt on Ahriman, and Gaze of Destruction on my terminator sorceror. Every major psyker in the army had the option to spend their whole turn going full psy-dakka, and I still had the space to have Warptime, Gaze of Fate, Diabolic Strength, Boon of Mutation, Weaver of Fates, Glamor of Tzeentch, and Prescience on the board.

probably not 100% optimal, but I was still throwing out buckets of mortal wounds on characters, and Gift just nuked someone from orbit 3 turns in a row.

I am. Looks strange, I know, but a flyrant has several advantages. First and foremost, no matter how many spells do we have available, our DP will only cast two of those. And since they all do some sort of d3 mortal wounds, they're basically the same. Only a flyrant can cast two of those on a 5+. For us we can have smite but then we need to move to a 7+ for the next cheaper one?

Additionally, it feels to me that a flyrant is a more flexible platform than a DP. A flyrant can Deep strike within double spell range, but a DP needs to have troops cover due to low wound count and character. So it's more possible that a flyrant will ignore the "hit closest target" part of Smite than a DP can, due to it being able to move ahead of its army.

Finally, I have this feeling that a DP is counter intuitive in its use if we discuss offensive spells. It gets +6" range which suggests he wants to be blasting stuff from range, but he has no ranged weapons to double down on that and it pays for stats that really scream "get me into hth asap!". A flyrant on the other side can get 24 shots @ str 6, conveniently at the same range as the smite and the scream and it can -given the correct hive fleet of course- flee combat and start blasting again. Not to mention his shadow in the warp which helps ensure that his spells don't get denied. It just seems to me like a Hive tyrant with wings was better thought of as a potential psychic dakka platform than a DP is. DP looks kinda awkward to put witchfires on, that's all.

Of course if you look at it army wise, we have way more offensive casting capabilities, this is not up for debate.

I think any successful tson army is going to need 2 things.

1. An ability to remove the chaff so our mortal wounds can start hitting the real meat of the enemy.

2. Chaff of our own to protect our characters so they can blast away with their powers.

A normal hq of Ahriman dp and term sorceror are about 450 points. They can easily annihilate their points worth in elite infantry such as terminators and custodes, but are wasted if their powers are targeting anything worth less than 20 points

topaxygouroun i wrote:
I am. Looks strange, I know, but a flyrant has several advantages. First and foremost, no matter how many spells do we have available, our DP will only cast two of those. And since they all do some sort of d3 mortal wounds, they're basically the same. Only a flyrant can cast two of those on a 5+. For us we can have smite but then we need to move to a 7+ for the next cheaper one?

Additionally, it feels to me that a flyrant is a more flexible platform than a DP. A flyrant can Deep strike within double spell range, but a DP needs to have troops cover due to low wound count and character. So it's more possible that a flyrant will ignore the "hit closest target" part of Smite than a DP can, due to it being able to move ahead of its army.

Finally, I have this feeling that a DP is counter intuitive in its use if we discuss offensive spells. It gets +6" range which suggests he wants to be blasting stuff from range, but he has no ranged weapons to double down on that and it pays for stats that really scream "get me into hth asap!". A flyrant on the other side can get 24 shots @ str 6, conveniently at the same range as the smite and the scream and it can -given the correct hive fleet of course- flee combat and start blasting again. Not to mention his shadow in the warp which helps ensure that his spells don't get denied. It just seems to me like a Hive tyrant with wings was better thought of as a potential psychic dakka platform than a DP is. DP looks kinda awkward to put witchfires on, that's all.

Of course if you look at it army wise, we have way more offensive casting capabilities, this is not up for debate.

DP's melee-ness does not deter me from using offensive powers. In fact, it makes him among the best platforms in the game to use Infernal Gateway on, because he's so likely to be able to position himself in that 3.01" sweet spot closest to a model that will pop to other units.

Infernal Gaze (sorry, had the name wrong) is only WC5, if you want two easy to cast powers. Gateway is 8 (7 if your prince has the +1 cast warlord trait, which I'll generally take on him if I want to give him Gateway instead of just sticking with the basic Gaze of Fate+Diabolic) but has a much higher reward - D3/D6 damage to closest model and all units within 3" of that model, rather than just a single D3/D6 to the closest model.

Also, bear in mind that there is nothing stopping you from using psychic powers freely while engaged in melee. It just usually dictates who your closest model is, because you're probably base to base with something. I've even dropped a couple highly effective Gateways while I was base to base with an enemy vehicle in the middle of a big scrum. D3 damage to myself was a small price to pay for hitting absolutely every enemy unit surrounding a Baneblade.

I do agree that DPs are not our best witchfire slingers. they're just our best users of the big high-risk-high-reward witchfire spell, because they want to be in close and they have access to the daemon table. Unless you're running Magnus, that is, he loves Gateway with that +2 to cast. Ahriman or the termie sorc are probably our best witchfire casters, because they get bonuses to cast and have good mobility to use our other high-reward witchfire spell, Gift of Chaos.

Just remember that you don’t need a demon for access to demon spells. If you’re prepared to spend a command point you can switch out one spell per turn for any of the 3 spell lists.

So if you really just want to gun for a spell or 2 and don’t want to run a DP you can. (He brings so much else to the table I think you should still do it but I’m saying if you wanted to you can.

Yeah, I think I've remembered to use that stratagem all of twice in all the games I've played. Once to swap a babysmite out on a SOT sorc for Warptime when my warptime caster died, and once to swap smite out for Gaze of Fate on an exalted sorc who was just sitting around on my backline once my Herald of Tzeentch died.

It is a good strat though. I should be trying to make use of it more.

the_scotsman wrote:
Yeah, I think I've remembered to use that stratagem all of twice in all the games I've played. Once to swap a babysmite out on a SOT sorc for Warptime when my warptime caster died, and once to swap smite out for Gaze of Fate on an exalted sorc who was just sitting around on my backline once my Herald of Tzeentch died.

It is a good strat though. I should be trying to make use of it more.

It's a good trick for those not expecting it. "Oh you didn't take warptime? Phew, I can deploy without worrying about that".

That would only ever work once though XD

I bet I can get it to work a few times in a tournament - but yeah in your regular play group that's a one timer.

One does wonder though, is it proper to yell leeroy when doing it, or is that reserved to seers bane exalted that deepstrike into changing to warptime only?

Any thoughts on Be'lakor? I have always liked the model and would love to find a way to put him into a tson army, but with only access to the basic 6 chaos spells he doesn't seem to have much synergy going for him. I mean, other than he would be a serious threat on the table that your opponent would have to face. But I just can't seem to find anyway to use him in any army, he just seems.... To not have any synergy. Am I looking at it wrong?

 BoomWolf wrote:
One does wonder though, is it proper to yell leeroy when doing it, or is that reserved to seers bane exalted that deepstrike into changing to warptime only?

That is probably THE most Leeroy Jenkins thing you could do in Warhammer.

Not seeing any synergy between Belakor and tsons at face value.

His bonus is in multidiety daemon lists. That said he is good.
High invulnerable characters seem to be everywhere and Belakor ruins these with Death hex.
But tsons cast it more reliably.

That said I am pondering bloodletters bombs mixed with tsons shooting so maybe he has a place after all.

Azuza001 wrote:
Any thoughts on Be'lakor? I have always liked the model and would love to find a way to put him into a tson army, but with only access to the basic 6 chaos spells he doesn't seem to have much synergy going for him. I mean, other than he would be a serious threat on the table that your opponent would have to face. But I just can't seem to find anyway to use him in any army, he just seems.... To not have any synergy. Am I looking at it wrong?

Actually, he only gets 3 of the DH Hereticus spells, and not the good ones. And at 280pts (what the hell where they thinking really ????), he's just absolutely worthless... Especially since he breaks detachments by not being affiliated to any of the chaos gods.

Urgh. There is no reason for him to be 100pts more than a DP

Yeah, that's what I was thinking. But death hex + Be'lakor could slaughter anything it runs up against. So It was a thought. Oh well.

 Farseer_V2 wrote:
I bet I can get it to work a few times in a tournament - but yeah in your regular play group that's a one timer.

I dunno, maybe you just start playing crazy mind games with your opponent once they realize the Chaos Familiar stratagem is a thing. Is he gonna switch to warptime? Is he just messing with me? What should I do?

Seems very Tzeentchy, making the mind games all go just as planned...

 BoomWolf wrote:
One does wonder though, is it proper to yell leeroy when doing it, or is that reserved to seers bane exalted that deepstrike into changing to warptime only?

Yeah, I ran the time to d-d-d-d-d-duel exalted in my last game, and that's pretty much what he did. Charged a space wolf character, hit and wounded with all his attacks, then he proceeded to make all his invuln saves and smushed him with a thunder hammer.

Not a great first performance, but dice are dice sometimes.

the_scotsman wrote:

 BoomWolf wrote:
One does wonder though, is it proper to yell leeroy when doing it, or is that reserved to seers bane exalted that deepstrike into changing to warptime only?

Yeah, I ran the time to d-d-d-d-d-duel exalted in my last game, and that's pretty much what he did. Charged a space wolf character, hit and wounded with all his attacks, then he proceeded to make all his invuln saves and smushed him with a thunder hammer.

Not a great first performance, but dice are dice sometimes.

That there, exactly the kind of scenario could use a Death Hex.

topaxygouroun i wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:

 BoomWolf wrote:
One does wonder though, is it proper to yell leeroy when doing it, or is that reserved to seers bane exalted that deepstrike into changing to warptime only?

Yeah, I ran the time to d-d-d-d-d-duel exalted in my last game, and that's pretty much what he did. Charged a space wolf character, hit and wounded with all his attacks, then he proceeded to make all his invuln saves and smushed him with a thunder hammer.

Not a great first performance, but dice are dice sometimes.

That there, exactly the kind of scenario could use a Death Hex.

Which is exactly what I should have thought to give him, but I felt that to be truly leeroy he had to have warptime and dah-bolical.

Captyn_Bob wrote:
Not seeing any synergy between Belakor and tsons at face value.

His bonus is in multidiety daemon lists. That said he is good.
High invulnerable characters seem to be everywhere and Belakor ruins these with Death hex.
But tsons cast it more reliably.

That said I am pondering bloodletters bombs mixed with tsons shooting so maybe he has a place after all.

Khorne with tzeentch, you are disgusting

Pfft I'm mixing in Nurgle as well. Delightfully perverse.

My point is, Belakors niche is in mixed god daemon detachments. And not really anywhere else.

What's the consensus on Maulerfiends? I'm curious.