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yukishiro1 wrote: A lot of that stuff is no more efficient to kill with 3D than 2D, especially when the 2D is ignoring modifiers.
Well, using D3 on Scarabs pulls out CP. If you have D2 and the Orrey they won't spend it. DA is one squad. DG means two shot kills rather than three - an unsupported plasma FF definitely kills one - a TVC might kill one.
The rest all have no damage mitigation and take 1/2 shots from D3 as opposed to 2/3.
I am gonna throw this into the discussion on shooting for Tsons. Personally, while there is much acknowledgement about the power of a volkite Contemptor dreadnaught, I would argue that its not the best fit into a Tsons army.
Hear me out first. Now, Tsons are already very good at killing infantry. Our standard gun the infenal bolter is Str 4, AP 2. It kills everything from terminators to drukhari well. Maybe its not as great against orcs, but we can always raise the str of our weapons by 1 with our infernal master and suddenly, then its fine against orcs too.
Tsons are also great at dishing out MW because of our psychic phase. We have smites for ages plus damage spells. So, what the Volkite Contemptor brings to the table (some MW output) is not something we need anyway because we are experts at MW.
What we DO need is anti tank capability. Because what happens if we run into a World eaters rhino rush. What happens if we meet some sisters of battles in a few Rhinos. What happens if we run into Knights. Or any kind of heavy vehicle list. MWs are inefficient to kill a vehicle.
However, a Volkite Contemptor also sucks at killing most vehicles. It wounds a lot of vehicles on a 5+ and it has 0 AP. All it has is the MW, which a Tsons army already can do anyway.
What I would prefer in a vehicle for my Tsons, is truly dedicated anti tank guns that can kill Rhinos and stuff properly. So, Str 7 to 10 weapons with a high AP. Because that is what a Tsons army lacks.
Like I think most Tsons army will have some rubrics, and some Occults. Once you have a decent amount of these, you have so many inferno bolter shots and soul reaper cannon shots it should easily cover shooting at infantry. I would rather put shooting buffs on a 10 man Occult squad (like the +1 str) rather than a volkite contemptor. The 10 man Occult Termie squad has 8 Combi inferno bolters and 2 soulreapers and 2 hellfire Racks. Thats 32 inferno shots, 10 soulreaper shots and 4 missile shots.
So, I would argue that vehicles that can take high str, high AP guns, like Vindicators, Predator Tanks, Forgefiends, etc are a better fit for us Tsons than a Volkite Contemptor. Because they help to shore up something our MW output is inefficient against - vehicles.
So, I am slowly warming up to the forgefiend now. It may not be the best thing out there. But in terms of anti tank shooting, its probably one of the best we already have in our codex. A vindicator is a good choice too. The issue with a Vindicator though is that its demolisher cannon is very swingy. You could get 6 shots on one round and then 1 shot in the next. The forgefiend is a lot more consistent in terms of number of shots. In fact, it will get max shots against any squad with more than 5 models. A Ceberus forgefiend will get 9 shots against a 6 man squad... that's a scary 27 potential damage against that squad. It will still average 6 shots on average even against a Rhino or vehicle, which is a potential 18 damage and pretty decent. The Hades Autocannon is great too. 8 shots with max 16 damage. Its better in that it can handle T8 as well, but it sucks against damage -1.
The thing is, all the shooting a Occult squad can bring to the table is kinda wasted if you can't crack that Rhino first. Shooting all those infernal bolter shots into a T7 vehicle just feels so bad. So yeah, we need proper anti tank. And I would say that a Volkite Contemptor is not really proper anti tank.
This message was edited 3 times. Last update was at 2021/08/17 01:30:27
TVC was the popularized response to Raiders. You're right that we have other tools to pop boats. Generally we want to pop in the psychic phase and shoot the occupants instead of shoot and charge like other armies, which makes TVC late to the party.
TVC is great when you get lucky on 6s though.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Eldenfirefly wrote: A vindicator is a good choice too. The issue with a Vindicator though is that its demolisher cannon is very swingy. You could get 6 shots on one round and then 1 shot in the next.
Vindicators are great. Tough to put down. Give it a melta and havoc ( and siege ). Amy damage is secondary. If you really want to make a couple Vindicators work you could keep the IM reroll on the table along with a CP, but the FF will still outshoot it except in edge cases, I think.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2021/08/17 04:05:59
Vindicators, while cheap WILL let you down when you roll that 1 for number of shots and/or amount of damage. I'm leaning towards dreads and as much as I hate the Forge fiend model, I think they might do the trick. Would anyone happen to know of a unit can be ported with facade and then still shoot. I swear I remember there being an issue/faq stating that units that are removed from combat in that manner couldn't shoot. Thanks in advance.
Variable shot weapons really shouldn't exist, there's enough variation already in the basic three-step (sometimes four-step) attack sequence, it doesn't need more added into it at the beginning. Maybe stuff like spawn because it's fluffy, but a battle cannon? It's just dumb. It was a bad, early, failed attempt to come up with something like blast templates, and it should just be retired. If you want something to have more shots against larger units, just do that directly by adding the shots. I.e. a blast weapon could shoot double shots against units of more than 10, but one less shot against units of less than 6, to create a tradeoff.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/08/17 05:18:06
The drill is not way better than a raider, it's a weird jumble of stuff pulling in different directions that's almost impossible to use effectively. It's a deep strike delivery tool, but you can't use it T1 and it has such a large footprint that it makes it difficult to get where you really want to get it. And starting it on the table largely defeats the purpose of it. It has 5 melta shots, but only 12" range, so you'll basically never get the melta bonus on something you really want to shoot. It has massively damaging melee against vehicles...but again, how do you actually get it there if you're using it to DS? That's a less than 50% chance, even with the reroll, even if you can get it into anything it actually wants to be hitting. And it only hits on a 4+ anyway, with only 3 attacks, so it may well just whiff completely. All of these things are things you're paying points for but won't typically get to use.
What makes the raider great is that it's cheap and does the things it does very, very well. The drill is like the exact opposite of a raider, it does a bunch of different things not all that well and is expensive because it pays for all of them.
Didnt Land Raider even get a price cut recently? IF Vindicator's good side is its durability, 5++ TSLC is even more durable. Lascannons should be ok reliability wise as you get four shots. Anyway, at some point in semi-casual I used one to suck shots off Magnus. As a firebase with excalted reroll and preciense it was of course quite good.
The idea of Occults in it and camping mid field seems solid, if not ultra competetive.
Didnt Land Raider even get a price cut recently? IF Vindicator's good side is its durability, 5++ TSLC is even more durable. Lascannons should be ok reliability wise as you get four shots. Anyway, at some point in semi-casual I used one to suck shots off Magnus. As a firebase with excalted reroll and preciense it was of course quite good.
The idea of Occults in it and camping mid field seems solid, if not ultra competetive.
well double vindicator with plow is 280pts for 22 T8 wounds
one LR is 285 for 16 wounds
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/08/17 13:28:06
Didnt Land Raider even get a price cut recently? IF Vindicator's good side is its durability, 5++ TSLC is even more durable. Lascannons should be ok reliability wise as you get four shots. Anyway, at some point in semi-casual I used one to suck shots off Magnus. As a firebase with excalted reroll and preciense it was of course quite good.
The idea of Occults in it and camping mid field seems solid, if not ultra competetive.
well double vindicator with plow is 280pts for 22 T8 wounds
one LR is 285 for 16 wounds
Technically 265 points, as the CA21 points are supposed to be AFTER our codex
Your point stands-if you are going for a tough tank that shoots, double vindi beats land raider.
If you do not need the transport, you are paying a lot for something unused in the raider.
I'm guessing you can use it as a "bunker" of sorts for scarabs who will disembark forward T1, but honestly, losing scarabs to a blown raider feels bad, and with how expensvie a raider+scarabs are, there won't be many other targets out there.
can neither confirm nor deny I lost track of what I've got right now.
Idk, all of 8th ed I ran my Defiler with twin las and a forgefiend with double gattling and they always did the job for me. Now the Defiler seems to be a side grade to me now (IE he is going to be able to still pull the same weight he used to just through different ways) and the forgefiend seems much better at anti vehicle shenanigans. There is a reason people used to use mass plasma as an option to deal with tanks. I do want to try a predator or land raider now though since they get that nice 5++ save.
Interestingly, up till now. I don't think there are any broken combos or strategems or such at all in the codex. There is certainly ways to build a list with all sorts of synergy and such, but nothing outright so OP I can see like the enriched rounds from Admech or that killer succubus from Drukhari.
I mean, we could smite out 20 MW in a phase, but it would take us tons of smites and witchfire and cabal points. Its not from one smite. So, you can't call that OP. Tsons are supposed to be able to do that. Nothing else really stands out even when mixed in whatever strategems I can find.
Being able to bring back 2 terminators and full heal a third is possibly really powerful, but I don't think that is still broken territory quite yet either because its not a 100% thing, we need a spell to go off on an unmodified 9. And if our opponent knows we can do that, he could just focus son wiping the whole unit. I mean, Occult terminators are tough, but anything dies if you dump enough damage on it.
I am kinda happy Tsons is not openly broken, but still has lots of interesting play.
Although it had a third rhino instead of the battlescanctum.
Mission: Scorched Earth (from the 2021 Grand Tournament Pack)
My Secondaries: To The Last, Strangle Hold, Mutate Landscape
My Opponents: To The Last, Strangle Hold, Abhor the Witch
Score:TS 100 AS 79 (although technically my army was not battle ready)
Terrain was simlar to the recommended GW tournament set up.
A solid game. There was plenty of play left in both lists as we both made a load of tactical mistakes. We both played very cagey trading units tactically to score the mission until the later turns where the thousand sons built up momentum and board control.
On playing against sisters
The 5+ denies were annoying but not everywhere. The Bloody Rose doesn't want to give up exploding 6s in melee so that detachments is only denying on a 6+ as opposed to the Ebon Chalice which was denying on a 5+. At the end of the day they only have so many denies (it's not like their entire army is range of all your casters all the time), our buffs can be cast out of deny range because of the Prism of Echoes. Sorcerous Facade tended to be cast out of deny range too. The Cabbalistic Focus pact was used to ensure scoring mutate landscape each turn.
The Dogmata ability to make a unit immune to psychic powers wasn't as bad as I thought. It only has a range of 6" and needs a 3+ to go off. If it doesn't go off they can easily lose celestine to smites. There is a stratagem to make it automatically go off but the net effect of that is your opponent loses a CP a turn (almost like a meta debuff). Your opponent could castle their entire army behind this null unit but in practice this would give up way too much board control.
On playing thousands sons
Flamer rubrics are fantastic. They are always a threat, they are expendable, they are deadly, they are surprisingly fast (being able to advance and smite/shoot is amazing). 12" range flamers with AP-2 are no joke, they make for a good anti tank solution by sheer volume of fire. They also ensure the unit is always a threat, even when the unit is reduced to 3 models that's still a smite and 2d6 shots. Being immune to moral and objective secure is another wicked combo. If all of that wasn't enough they have access to two additional shooting phases via the Overwatch and Inescapable Forewarning stratagems. 10/10
The Exalted Sorcerer with Prism of Echoes, Rehati and disk was solid, ensured that any unit that needed a buff could get a buff. 10/10
Smite, Smite, Smite. We have so much play with smite, with all our bonuses to cast, and sheer volume of casters I found the army was able to get 4-5 smites off a turn, with some of those being super smites.
Cabbal points, this list had 27, honestly you can never have enough of these. All of the rituals are useful. I'm considering taking Icon of Flame everywhere to get more, they make the army sing.
Command points, this list started with 8, it wasn't enough. Our command points have so much utility. Every psychic phase chances are you will at least be spending 1CP on a re-roll, 1CP on an ignore perils and 1CP to make smite to an automatic 3 damage. You'll want 1CP for Overwatch and 2CP for Inescapable Forewarning. I thought there wasn't any point in taking Helm of the Daemon Eye as I would get 1CP back every Psychic phase (and you can only get a max of one CP a battle round), turns out I rarely had enough Cabbal Points to use Echoes From The Warp. Taking this into account I can't see myself ever spending 2-5 CP pregame on (Risen Rubricae and/or Webway Infiltration). Even taking a second detachment, or gratuitous Relic/Warlord traits could be problematic.
Cult of Duplicity is stupidly strong with flamer rubrics, also using Pact From Beyond to guarantee it goes off is great. It's cast in the psychic phase so you can clear screening units with smite before getting your flamers stuck in to juicier target. Being able to threaten anything on the table turn 4-5 means nothing is safe, your opponent has to zone you all game (which gets harder ant harder as they lose units), you can't just leave a straggler holding an objective.
List changes
I think an infernal master is a must for the re-roll alone. There was plenty of times where I wished I had an extra re-roll, or could re-roll a super smite. Might even save some points to summon a tzeentch herald with gaze of fate (for a second re-roll).
The terminator sorcerers were good (deepsrike smites are useful), but I'm not sure you really need three of them. In some ways 3 exalted (or 2 + Ahriman) is more than enough (if you can keep them alive). You could then use those points to get more rubrics or give all your rubric Icons of Flame.
Don't think I'll bother with Scarabs, they aren't noticeably more survivable than rubrics (repentia/zeraphim will kill 10 scarabs almost as easily as 10 rubrics). There's plenty of stuff in the game that can kill scarabs even with all their buffs. Their shooting output aside from range isn't as good as flamer rubrics. They also prevent you taking to the last on Exalted Sorcerers.
I'm considering some 10 man units of rubrics but the problem I'm having is it stops me taking To The Last on my Exalted Sorcerers.
The Thrydderghyre Exalted sorcerer didn't do anything all game. While I still think it's interesting I might drop it in future if I keep taking To the Last as a secondary.
I probably don't need to take as much temporal surge as I did. Still it did give me loads of options in the end game.
Closing Thoughts
If our last codex was a severed stump... this new codex is truly a hand with more fingers than I could ever have hoped for.
EDIT: Something important I forgot to mention.
A lot of our Cabbalistic Rituals and Stratagems use the following wording:
"when a psychic power is successfully manifested"
From the core rules:
"So long as the Psychic test was successful and the psychic power was not denied by a successful Deny the Witch test, the psychic power is successfully manifested and its effects, which will be described in the power itself, are then resolved."
This is really important as it means you only spend the Command Point/Cabbal Points after you know the power hasn't been denied.
Hope all this is useful.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2021/08/18 22:35:34
Dakka does have White Knights and is also rather infamous for it's Black Knights. A new edition brings out the passionate and not all of them are good at expressing themselves in written form. There have been plenty of hysterical responses from both sides so far. So we descend into pointless bickering with neither side listening to each other. So posting here becomes more masturbation than conversation.
ERJAK wrote: Forcing a 40k player to keep playing 7th is basically a hate crime.
Daedalus81 wrote: Weird that your opponent didn't opt for assassinate. Did they miss the most points on secondary or primary?
Primary turns 3 onwards I had hold more and was shutting down stranglehold (so he scored 9). Only two of my characters were killed so he would have scored less with assassinate. 45 rubrics is a very hard nut to crack to get to those characters.
Yes, you're always going to spend 7 autocasting (don't want to risk your Sorcerous Facade failing), 8 to make something undeniable (mostly used on your warpcraft secondary), 4 for an extra d3, 4 for an extra CP, 8 to re-play doombolt or firestorm, 5 to add +1 to make something important pass, or to nudge your 4-5th smite into a pass or a smite into a super smite. Same with the +2 for 9 cabbal points. Basically it's easy to spend 45 cabbal point a turn and get lots of value.You also have less as you lose units, or if you have units in reserve.
Something that's not quite as obvious is your odds of super smite with a regular 2d6 cast is 8.3%, with +1 (brother hood of sorcerers) it's double at 16.6%. With +2 it's triple at 27.7% with +3 it's more than 4 times as likely at 41%. You can add +1/+2 after seeing the result. When you can re-roll the mortal wound dice with an infernal master, witch-warrior or a summoned changecaster with gaze of fate you can make things evaporate.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/08/18 15:29:43
What on earth is that list XD I am so freaking confused how you managed to get that thing to work.
You didnt even bother with the flamer strength spell!?
Why does EVERYONE have temporal surge?
This may have worked mostly on a WTF factor and the opponent getting confused at what is going on, but still. a freaking PERFECT game against a meta worthy sisters list?
My mind has officially melted.
can neither confirm nor deny I lost track of what I've got right now.
I built this list in BS, and it comes in at 2101 points, any idea why the numbers are off? Also, whats the cult on the main body of the force?
Copy paste error, there were only two terminator sorcerers in the list. Looks like the list I posted in this thread had three, there should only be two. I wondered why I never had 27 cabal point (should be 25 max). I just assumed it was cause the two terminators were in reserve and things died. Good thing I just counted units every psychic phase.
BoomWolf wrote: Mushkilla...
What on earth is that list XD I am so freaking confused how you managed to get that thing to work.
I was playing a lot of Tzeentch flamer spam summoning list in 8th (so long Fly fall back and shoot) so I know how good 12" flamer are with deepstrike (worked surprisingly well, not tournament winning, but could hold its own).
Conceptually this is very much the same, just with a load more smite, better buffs, better flamers, no need to use summoning to get around the rule of three, and objective secure. Not to mention unlike summoning Sorcerous Facade isn't limited to wholly within 12" of a character that hasn't moved.
You didnt even bother with the flamer strength spell!?
You don't need it against all lists (eg: sisters), when I do need it I swap either smite or sorcerous facade out on the exalted with Prism of echoes/Rehati so it can be cast at 24". Same reason I don't have Twist of Fate I can swap it out with Unholy Sussurus if I need it. Mind this list was very much a compromise of not overwhelming myself with all the Thousand Sons rules (eg: I should probably have taken the redeploy warlord stratagem and an infernal master).
Laziness and redundancy. It's hard enough too remember what powers your sorcerers have. Having all rubrics be the same makes it easier. It's also got a really short casting range. Even though you can only cast it once per phase it's such a clutch spell for playing the mission/warpflaming stuff. I'll probably not have it on the exalted in future.
This may have worked mostly on a WTF factor and the opponent getting confused at what is going on, but still. a freaking PERFECT game against a meta worthy sisters list?
My mind has officially melted.
My opponent had actually played against my old Tzeentch Flamers list quite bit. He said this Thousand Sons list was going to be terrifying. I didn't quite see it myself to be honest. I assumed playing sisters was going to be one of our harder match ups. But those flamers just do so much work.
That being said there was still plenty of play in both sides. I did get lucky (Ahriman lived when he should have died, classic Arhiman). I think the sisters list can't sit back and play its usual game making trades (which is what it did) it has to push way more aggressively and go for a dirty mutual annihilation that ends up being low scoring. The problem is playing aggressive into that much smite and 36D6 S4 -2 flamers is pretty intense.
This message was edited 6 times. Last update was at 2021/08/18 21:26:36
Flamer rubrics are fantastic. They are always a threat, they are expendable, they are deadly, they are surprisingly fast (being able to advance and smite/shoot is amazing). 12" range flamers with AP-2 are no joke, they make for a good anti tank solution by sheer volume of fire. They also ensure the unit is always a threat, even when the unit is reduced to 3 models that's still a smite ant 2d6 shots. Being immune to moral and objective secure is another wicked combo. If all of that wasn't enough they have access to two additional shooting phases via the Overwatch and Inescapable Forewarning stratagems. 10/10
Hope all this is useful.
Well, you proved that its better to take warpflamer rubrics than infernal bolter rubrics! You also had 90W worth of rubrics protecting your characters. Its a lot more wounds and bodies than I saw some lists that youtube channels were running. Great list for making rubrics into a deadly unit!
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/08/18 22:45:43
can neither confirm nor deny I lost track of what I've got right now. 
Timmon 
-- AAR's as fiction: Haruukian 415th 
And one 
Orks 5000p 
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