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 nintura wrote:
Being competitive or just losing horrible is in fact a form of being forced... "Hey you can play this bad army and you'll lose 80% of your games, but hey we aren't forcing you to play! Instead, here, we'll make winning much more easier but it requires you to buy a whole new army. But again, that's only IF you want to win"

That's not how to look at it...

I've always resisted the urge to play cultists with my CSMs but finally gave in. They're not a great unit and definitely don't fit with how I picture a Black Legion army. Moving 100 pieces of chaff each turn is definitely not the best way to spend time.

But they do give me multiple playstyles. I can pull out my 25-lascannon gunline list if I want to go pure CSMs, or I can pull out my Cultists / Obliterator list if I want everything on my opponent's side of the board by turn 3. I also have an Alpha Legion Berzerkers list I can pull out, none of them are pushovers on the tabletop.

Having options is a good thing. The Codex does nothing to improve Rubrics, Rubrics are why people play TS, and it is sad for GW to overlook this opportunity. But that certainly not the end of it. You have Magnus, you have Occult Terminators, you have all the other CSM goodies that are out there. I don't know what other pure TS tools you were expecting from the Codex, but it's not like TS players are hurting for things to build a good list with already.

 Arachnofiend wrote:

Rubrics being stuck with the Discipline of Change seriously hurts my motivation to run them; Glamour of Tzeentch and Weaver of Fates are good powers to cast on a block of rubrics in a vacuum, but in reality you need to give those powers to Magnus. Boon of Mutation and Temporal Manipulation do nothing for Rubrics, you're never going to get Doombolt to cast successfully... that leaves Tzeentch's Firestorm. Yeah.

I know what you mean, but there are lots of situations where you DO want to cast the first two from the rubrics - magnus is dead, you're not playing him, or you want to cast for him so he can hench out on damage casts instead. Doombolt is 1WC too much imo, but it's still doable with cabal strat.

The whole rubric unit counts as a psyker, so that strat is going to be pretty easy to trigger. You'll also often have an extra reroll per turn, because of the Tzeench power that you'll be spamming every round. Temporal is still a nice clutch for a unit you plan to deplot near a pred/muta/mauler to pop it back up a damage level.

Boon is trash as far as i can see.

Firestorm is pretty much old smite but more swingy, which is handy in the new smitenerf world. Finally, we got chaos familiar, so if you really want your big rubric squad to be casting warptime or prescience, then you can, for 1cp. All is not lost (it's dust).

As a TS-player since 3.5, this thread makes me feel ashamed.

It basically boils down to "We got more options/units, but I don't like them so this codex is crap :( "

I agree, but in their defence, I think some people here are just looking to be able to squeeze a competitive tournament-level list out of this codex and that, without any doubt, involves spamming tzaangors until you're/they're blue in the face. Personally I'm pretty happy with the codex I must say.

 Nym wrote:
The Soulreaper being 1 in 10 instead of 1 in 5 is the biggest letdown...

Does anyone know if there's an email address to which we can complain about it ?

Gamefaqs@gwplc.com


Automatically Appended Next Post:

grouchoben wrote:
I agree, but in their defence, I think some people here are just looking to be able to squeeze a competitive tournament-level list out of this codex and that, without any doubt, involves spamming tzaangors until you're/they're blue in the face. Personally I'm pretty happy with the codex I must say.

Right...it's really hard to win games with all elite units. Even if they have all different kinds of weapons. SM players choose to not use scouts and suffer for it. We have the good fortune to have an effective frontline unit.

grouchoben wrote:
I agree, but in their defence, I think some people here are just looking to be able to squeeze a competitive tournament-level list out of this codex and that, without any doubt, involves spamming tzaangors until you're/they're blue in the face. Personally I'm pretty happy with the codex I must say.

This.

My biggest problems with the OP were the title and the doom calling BEFORE the dex dropped. Now that it is here at least half of the original post seems to be validated. The focus is on tzaangors. Its a no brainer why, GW knows most 1kson players have tons of rubrics and they want/need to sell models. But they went to far imho. Rubrics should at least have had 40% of the codex focus. From what Ive seen its clearly not the case. There are other factions in worse condition, that is sure. And I am appreciative of the options the new models bring. But yea, 1ksons can be added to the list of armies who dont run their name sake unit in a comp setting. Also owning a Night Lords army and formerly a Black Legion army, I understand this all to well as introducing actual marines is a move to make the army more fluffy and im losing power by doing so. Which is fine, for me. Others, maybe not to much.

And yes, the meta will shift at some point, but that will weaken the codex as it has so much focus on the horde aspect. In a few years we will hopefully get another codex with new models for GW to peddle to us. Lets hope they shift the focus back on the actual Sons and not their servants.

I don't understand why people can't see why some people wouldn't be happy with the codex.

7th edition: Hey would like to play a almost purely psychic legion? You wont have much unit/load out variety but here are 60+ different powers to play with. You have no need shooting or CC you can kill stuff in the psychic phase.

8th edition: Sorry, Psychic armies are now super gimped by the current psychic phase design. So here are some others models so you can do what every other army does. Assault/shooting with some psychic support.

I still read through the Wrath of Magnus book sometimes and get excited about its content. I see in the index and what is coming for the codex and feel disappointment. But whatever i can't be displeased with a codex apparently because "you get more options then the index".

Guess there is nothing else to do for me but accept that the vision from GW for the thousand sons will not be same as mine and move on.

Zhan wrote:
I don't understand why people can't see why some people wouldn't be happy with the codex.

Surely there's a middle-ground between being unhappy with a codex and proclaiming an army dead?

Zhan wrote:
I don't understand why people can't see why some people wouldn't be happy with the codex.

7th edition: Hey would like to play a almost purely psychic legion? You wont have much unit/load out variety but here are 60+ different powers to play with. You have no need shooting or CC you can kill stuff in the psychic phase.

8th edition: Sorry, Psychic armies are now super gimped by the current psychic phase design. So here are some others models so you can do what every other army does. Assault/shooting with some psychic support.

I still read through the Wrath of Magnus book sometimes and get excited about its content. I see in the index and what is coming for the codex and feel disappointment. But whatever i can't be displeased with a codex apparently because "you get more options then the index".

Guess there is nothing else to do for me but accept that the vision from GW for the thousand sons will not be same as mine and move on.

While this is true. Others had problems with how he presented his case. I think its pretty clear that players do have a right and a cause to be miffed. But to say the army is dead and that you cant run rubrics......that is where he caught flak.

How are psychic armies gimped in 8th ed.? I found psykers to be much more useful in that edition, actually every Psyker now can do something unlike in 7th. where usually 2-3 psykers were batteries for the one that could actually do something.
An 8th ed. TS army has 3 disciplines, so you could have 18 different psykers with different spells (and that is only for matched play). If you want your psychic army, go for it.

Its kind of a long story but in short:
Because the psychic powers deal only mortal wounds they are only useful against models/units that cost more then 15 pts per wound.
So there are no chaff killing powers so you need a part of your army dedicated to shooting/assault to deal with hordes.

Also 18 powers are not that great when more then 75% of them are supportive powers for shooting and assault (which aren't useful if you running mostly psykers and not shooting/assault units)

At the same time GW wants to limit the amount of mortal wounds you can dish out a turn (Rule of 1 and BETA smite rule).
So if you manage to squeeze out 15 mortal wounds a turn you can kill 3 whole SM infantry squads (amazing) or do 15 wounds on a land raider (Which pretty meh compared to what lass cannons do).

 Thousand-Son-Sorcerer wrote:

Sgt. Cortez wrote:
Don't fall to DakkaDakka hyperbole. You will be able to play rubrics in your games just fine, this isn't 7th Edition after all where the game was mostly decided in list building.
Just like with most armies a tournament list will be a boring spammy fluff abomination, but if you don't like that style, don't go to tournaments.

Right now I do fine against armies that don't have a codex, armies that do I struggle at best.

This is the problem, as other armies get their codices we will fall further and further behind, until we are in the bottom 5 or 6 armies in the game if that. That is IF we run Rubrics, if we run Tzaangors we will probably be one of the best armies in the game.

What I don't get is how much my own experience can be so different from this crazy hyperbole people present on here. Just yesterday I played a game against a list that was 4 leman Russ tanks and a blood Angels detachment with 10 DC. Not tournament competitive, but including enough of the things people whine about (the guard super command point warlord, 2 battle cannon russes and a punisher, 10x DC who can auto charge) that you'd think it'd be an auto loss. But it was just a normal game of 40k, and I won mostly on one rubric squad killing more DC on overwatch than they lost in the combat, then falling back and the other rubrics demolishing the remaining DC, and Ahriman warptiming my daemon prince into the middle of the tanks.

Thousand sons got a new cool thing they do in 8th (2+ save vs small arms fire) and they're getting back the cool thing they did in 7th (flexible psyker sergeant). That's got me excited. I get to finally dust off my Defiler and use it with the new Stratagems, and in a fluffy game I might even drop a cp to give it an AP-3 twin heavy Bolter. That's got me excited. I just got my necrosphinx from eBay and I'm modeling a spare sorceror on its back to make my non-ugly mutalith.

Why does something have to be the best thing in the book to be awesome?

 techsoldaten wrote:

 nintura wrote:
Being competitive or just losing horrible is in fact a form of being forced... "Hey you can play this bad army and you'll lose 80% of your games, but hey we aren't forcing you to play! Instead, here, we'll make winning much more easier but it requires you to buy a whole new army. But again, that's only IF you want to win"

That's not how to look at it...

I've always resisted the urge to play cultists with my CSMs but finally gave in. They're not a great unit and definitely don't fit with how I picture a Black Legion army. Moving 100 pieces of chaff each turn is definitely not the best way to spend time.

But they do give me multiple playstyles. I can pull out my 25-lascannon gunline list if I want to go pure CSMs, or I can pull out my Cultists / Obliterator list if I want everything on my opponent's side of the board by turn 3. I also have an Alpha Legion Berzerkers list I can pull out, none of them are pushovers on the tabletop.

Having options is a good thing. The Codex does nothing to improve Rubrics, Rubrics are why people play TS, and it is sad for GW to overlook this opportunity. But that certainly not the end of it. You have Magnus, you have Occult Terminators, you have all the other CSM goodies that are out there. I don't know what other pure TS tools you were expecting from the Codex, but it's not like TS players are hurting for things to build a good list with already.

Yes it is the end of it. Most people were hoping for SOMETHING for Rubrics, anything for them we got NOTHING the iconic unit of TS. The simple fact is we are getting MAYBE 7 pages of info and 99% of it is geared towards Gors horde army.

Why not make the Change disipline geared towards being cast by Rubrics? Would have been easy enough. Low WC spells which give moderate effects. Maybe 1 MW at a time or rerolling invul saves of 1, small buffs little things. Lesser versions of the Dark Heriticus powers.

Why do we have no way to recover CP when we are one of the lowest model count armies? Lower then DG in model count and they have a CP recoup method.

the_scotsman wrote:

 Thousand-Son-Sorcerer wrote:

Sgt. Cortez wrote:
Don't fall to DakkaDakka hyperbole. You will be able to play rubrics in your games just fine, this isn't 7th Edition after all where the game was mostly decided in list building.
Just like with most armies a tournament list will be a boring spammy fluff abomination, but if you don't like that style, don't go to tournaments.

Right now I do fine against armies that don't have a codex, armies that do I struggle at best.

This is the problem, as other armies get their codices we will fall further and further behind, until we are in the bottom 5 or 6 armies in the game if that. That is IF we run Rubrics, if we run Tzaangors we will probably be one of the best armies in the game.

What I don't get is how much my own experience can be so different from this crazy hyperbole people present on here. Just yesterday I played a game against a list that was 4 leman Russ tanks and a blood Angels detachment with 10 DC. Not tournament competitive, but including enough of the things people whine about (the guard super command point warlord, 2 battle cannon russes and a punisher, 10x DC who can auto charge) that you'd think it'd be an auto loss. But it was just a normal game of 40k, and I won mostly on one rubric squad killing more DC on overwatch than they lost in the combat, then falling back and the other rubrics demolishing the remaining DC, and Ahriman warptiming my daemon prince into the middle of the tanks.

Thousand sons got a new cool thing they do in 8th (2+ save vs small arms fire) and they're getting back the cool thing they did in 7th (flexible psyker sergeant). That's got me excited. I get to finally dust off my Defiler and use it with the new Stratagems, and in a fluffy game I might even drop a cp to give it an AP-3 twin heavy Bolter. That's got me excited. I just got my necrosphinx from eBay and I'm modeling a spare sorceror on its back to make my non-ugly mutalith.

Why does something have to be the best thing in the book to be awesome?

The inferno rounds strat is one of the few I glossed past (time constraints). Can it target any model or unit? Could you say, put it on a Fire Raptor with two quad heavy bolters for MEQ munching?

Also, just thought of something. Rubrics did get a nerf coming from 7th to 8th. The baffling loss of a AP 3. Guess Dubs did not want a faction ignoring armor.

 Thousand-Son-Sorcerer wrote:

Why do we have no way to recover CP when we are one of the lowest model count armies?

I don't imagine this will make you happy, but there is a relic that lets you roll whenever an opponent uses a Strat and on a 5+ I believe you get a CP back.

I dont think the strat adds -2 to your ap but gives that weapon -2 ap.

And we do have a way to recoup CP, as a relic meaning since we need to auto take the dark crystal, it'll cost us a CP.

 nintura wrote:
I dont think the strat adds -2 to your ap but gives that weapon -2 ap.

Right, I believe the Strat turns a regular Bolter into an Inferno Bolter

The start changes it to -2AP, and efefcts only one gun.

If it effected all guns, it was a decent strat. one gun? useless. (also, only effects spesific guns from list)

 The Sentinel wrote:

 nintura wrote:
I dont think the strat adds -2 to your ap but gives that weapon -2 ap.

Right, I believe the Strat turns a regular Bolter into an Inferno Bolter

Twin HB and combi-bolters as well. Vehicle only.

Best use for that strat is probably a helbrute you plan on feeding fire frenzy. Idk if that is worth the cp, though.

 Arachnofiend wrote:
Best use for that strat is probably a helbrute you plan on feeding fire frenzy. Idk if that is worth the cp, though.

Vehicle only otherwise yea that's the best choice. Maybe the THB on a LR, but otherwise meh.

Lets be clear about a couple things here.

If you run a large minorty of your army as Rubrics your CP hurt.

You MIGHT be able to get 12 CP if your real savy, and will have a low model count. Most of the time your going to have 9, we have no way to mitigate perils outside of rerolls, and periling on a Rubric squad at minimum costs you 27 points, excluding other models.

That means you need to keep at least 1 CP per turn remaining in the game. That means you NEED to have 6 CP at the start of the game AND you can't spend any more then 1.5 CP per turn. That of course assumes no points are spent on your army prior to the first turn.

Mobility is also a key factor in the current version, it is arguably the most important stat in the game. Allowing units to reposition quickly, take objectives, counter deploy, outflank, and many other things.

So lets take those 3 factors Perils risk, CP amount, and mobility.

Bringing Rubrics increases perils risk, both in thier casting and having to cast spells on a unit you are already paying a large amount points for, not to mention they are a CP sink because they require you bank CP until turn 4 or 5. Plus thier mobility is lacking which means if you want to get them around you need to either pay even more points for a Rhino OR use CP to drop them closer to the enemy.

Let's compare Tzaangors. They are able to get a 2+ rerolling 1s to hit, with 2 AURAS that's no CP and filling a HQ slot in the process. This affects multiple units, 3 to 4 savy? Right there you are getting the effect of 3 spells auto casting no perils risk. Not to mention you still have the actual spell to use on something that dosen't benefit from the aura. Tzaangors are cheaper a lot cheaper, which nets you more CP to spend on things like more relics, pregame upgrades, things of that nature. On top of that you dont need to bank any CP so you can use the 6 cp on morale or rerolls or attacking twice in the first turn. What once was a small gap in mobility has now become a large gap in mobility, due to the CP cost of deep striking and Rubrics point cost they have less mobility because of the inability to take full advantage of the strats without emptying thier CP prior to the game starting.

TL;DR Anything Rubrics do, Tzaangors do better.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 MinscS2 wrote:

Zhan wrote:
I don't understand why people can't see why some people wouldn't be happy with the codex.

Surely there's a middle-ground between being unhappy with a codex and proclaiming an army dead?

All kinds, but that usually involves getting some sort of spread on units with a codex release. Not 4 new units either a gor or something to buff gors.

 Thousand-Son-Sorcerer wrote:


Let's compare Tzaangors. They are able to get a 2+ rerolling 1s to hit, with 2 AURAS that's no CP and filling a HQ slot in the process. This affects multiple units, 3 to 4 savy? Right there you are getting the effect of 3 spells auto casting no perils risk. Not to mention you still have the actual spell to use on something that dosen't benefit from the aura. Tzaangors are cheaper a lot cheaper, which nets you more CP to spend on things like more relics, pregame upgrades, things of that nature. On top of that you dont need to bank any CP so you can use the 6 cp on morale or rerolls or attacking twice in the first turn. What once was a small gap in mobility has now become a large gap in mobility, due to the CP cost of deep striking and Rubrics point cost they have less mobility because of the inability to take full advantage of the strats without emptying thier CP prior to the game starting.

TL;DR Anything Rubrics do, Tzaangors do better.

The Third Eye doesn't care how many CP you have and will easily net us 2 or 3 CP per game.

Shaman do not fill an HQ role. I'd love to see a battalion list that you think is effective. And you're not getting the 6" within 3 to 4 effective unit without tails on all of them, which reduces models in combat.

 Thousand-Son-Sorcerer wrote:
TL;DR Anything Rubrics do, Tzaangors do better

Don't forget, cultist and every type of horror also do it better, because the problem is how elite armies are handicapped this edition. And if you didn't have those, you'd just have a bad army. Because elite infantry only is a really bad strategy and I don't see how you feel justified whining about it when literally every other elite army has to deal with this as well, a lot of whom don't have anything alternatives in house/codex.

Did you expect them to totally overhaul the edition by the time your codex came out? Or were you thinking somehow adding different variants of rubrics would help? Spoiler warning it isn't doing much for the other armies who do have them.

This codex is, so far as we can tell, one of the best this edition. It is the best tsons could've possibly expected. Their psychic powers were expanded, new units were added, generally speaking great selection of stratagems, relics, and warlord traits. Plus they lost nothing from the old army.

Complaining about this makes you look absurdly unreasonable, because you are, there is no other way to put it.

SilverAlien wrote:

 Thousand-Son-Sorcerer wrote:
TL;DR Anything Rubrics do, Tzaangors do better

Don't forget, cultist and every type of horror also do it better, because the problem is how elite armies are handicapped this edition. And if you didn't have those, you'd just have a bad army. Because elite infantry only is a really bad strategy and I don't see how you feel justified whining about it when literally every other elite army has to deal with this as well, a lot of whom don't have anything alternatives in house/codex.

Did you expect them to totally overhaul the edition by the time your codex came out? Or were you thinking somehow adding different variants of rubrics would help? Spoiler warning it isn't doing much for the other armies who do have them.

This codex is, so far as we can tell, one of the best this edition. It is the best tsons could've possibly expected. Their psychic powers were expanded, new units were added, generally speaking great selection of stratagems, relics, and warlord traits. Plus they lost nothing from the old army.

Complaining about this makes you look absurdly unreasonable, because you are, there is no other way to put it.

Your doing a lot of running around and telling people to shut up and deal with it. What gives?

 Thousand-Son-Sorcerer wrote:
Your doing a lot of running around and telling people to shut up and deal with it. What gives?

There's a fry (from futurama) meme on the net of "shut up and give them your money!". That's just how some people are. For all the talk of haters, white knights are just as bad in that respect.

Myself? If they had called this: codex: tzeentch daemonkin, i wouldn't have had a problem. There was even precedent for it. But this is not what i'd call codex: thousand sons.

My 2 cents.

I've been thinking about collecting tsons for a while, because i really like the rubrics and SoT models.

After the massive buff that those models received, i've finally decided to do so. In particular because now I'm no longer forced to bring Magnus.

Tzangors and the new beast are nice and I will us them, but my focus will be on the marine models, and I mean that on a competitive level.

I don't think that tzangors only lists will be competitive, they are assurdly similar to genestealers. Stealer heavy lists worked for a couple of weeks, when you could actually take opponents by surprise with it. Now you still take them, but in moderate amounts.

Spoletta wrote:
My 2 cents.

I've been thinking about collecting tsons for a while, because i really like the rubrics and SoT models.

After the massive buff that those models received, i've finally decided to do so. In particular because now I'm no longer forced to bring Magnus.

Tzangors and the new beast are nice and I will us them, but my focus will be on the marine models, and I mean that on a competitive level.

I don't think that tzangors only lists will be competitive, they are assurdly similar to genestealers. Stealer heavy lists worked for a couple of weeks, when you could actually take opponents by surprise with it. Now you still take them, but in moderate amounts.

What massive buff are you refering to?

The fact that they now need 100 more points of rubrics for a 15 point upgrade?

The fact that thier durability went WAY down while thier offensive power went slightly up?

If you want to buy those models, because they are nice looking go ahead. But from a competitive stand point your better off with durable close ranged suppoer that costs half and does as much damage.

Durability went "down"? Did I miss something?

I know the invul re-roll is gone but frankly I didnt find it *that* useful.

Overall the massive utility (damn near unprecedented across the entire game) we have more then makes up for the invul re-roll.

 Torga_DW wrote:

 Thousand-Son-Sorcerer wrote:
Your doing a lot of running around and telling people to shut up and deal with it. What gives?

There's a fry (from futurama) meme on the net of "shut up and give them your money!". That's just how some people are. For all the talk of haters, white knights are just as bad in that respect.

Myself? If they had called this: codex: tzeentch daemonkin, i wouldn't have had a problem. There was even precedent for it. But this is not what i'd call codex: thousand sons.

That's because it's not, it is just tzeench deamonkin under a different name, I said quite a few pages back I was expecting the same bland formula that 8th has followed to continue with the new "thousand sons" codex, and I was right, we got some new strats, some new spells and warlord traits but like nearly every 8th codex it lacks character, but this isn't just a chaos problem, all the new books have this problem nearly.