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 p5freak wrote:


And how many armies do have FNP for every unit, and can deny 20 psychic powers ?

Deathskulls
Szarekhan
Sisters
Grey Knights
Graia

DE don't really have anything, but they're the strongest army in the game right now.

And it isn't 20 spells. More like a couple you really want to shut down. And the thing is if you don't want to take a psyker for denies then you get an easy way to score secondaries.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 p5freak wrote:

Right, i forgot that tsons can only do damage in the psychic phase. Tsons are like tau, their shooting phase is the psychic phase.

And where is the hyper efficient melee for Thousand Sons? T'au are a book in need of a rework, but regardless they get gak done with their guns.

If you are in melee its pretty easy to position yourself to smite your way put of it.

Thousand sons don't get to play the no support game. You have to have a wall of marines, smite, doombolt and Astral blast your way out of melee then shoot the rest. We have 4 units ok with melee, scarab occult termies, maulerfiends and to some extent forge fiends, heldrakes (i never count them out) and tzaangors.

Aside from that you can easily smite off 10 models, teleport away, or fall back. Losing 1 cast to fall back isn't the end of the world.

dreadlybrew wrote:
If you are in melee its pretty easy to position yourself to smite your way put of it.

Thousand sons don't get to play the no support game. You have to have a wall of marines, smite, doombolt and Astral blast your way out of melee then shoot the rest. We have 4 units ok with melee, scarab occult termies, maulerfiends and to some extent forge fiends, heldrakes (i never count them out) and tzaangors.

Aside from that you can easily smite off 10 models, teleport away, or fall back. Losing 1 cast to fall back isn't the end of the world.

Scarabs are good, but they're not setting the world on fire like units that can fight twice or get an equivalent number of attacks for half the cost. Like Incubi with Drazhar nearby who do 2.2 D3 wounds and 8.9 D2 wounds deny All is Dust and stripping Scarabs down to invulns. Those 5 Incubi will strip out 5 Scarabs without blinking while the Scarabs just barely could kill them in return - a unit that's less than half their value.

No, it isn't easy to smite out of combat, because your army should be across the board, many spells will not be in range / or be closest, models may not have the requisite MW spell, 10 models is 10MW at a minimum, and vehicles and engines will reduce overall MW output.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

Scarabs are good, but they're not setting the world on fire like units that can fight twice or get an equivalent number of attacks for half the cost. Like Incubi with Drazhar nearby who do 2.2 D3 wounds and 8.9 D2 wounds deny All is Dust and stripping Scarabs down to invulns. Those 5 Incubi will strip out 5 Scarabs without blinking while the Scarabs just barely could kill them in return - a unit that's less than half their value.

Similar results with repentia at half the price again. In edition of hyper efficient trading melee units scarabs can struggle.

Nothing in the TS book trades well in melee except spawn.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

dreadlybrew wrote:
If you are in melee its pretty easy to position yourself to smite your way put of it.

Thousand sons don't get to play the no support game. You have to have a wall of marines, smite, doombolt and Astral blast your way out of melee then shoot the rest. We have 4 units ok with melee, scarab occult termies, maulerfiends and to some extent forge fiends, heldrakes (i never count them out) and tzaangors.

Aside from that you can easily smite off 10 models, teleport away, or fall back. Losing 1 cast to fall back isn't the end of the world.

Scarabs are good, but they're not setting the world on fire like units that can fight twice or get an equivalent number of attacks for half the cost. Like Incubi with Drazhar nearby who do 2.2 D3 wounds and 8.9 D2 wounds deny All is Dust and stripping Scarabs down to invulns. Those 5 Incubi will strip out 5 Scarabs without blinking while the Scarabs just barely could kill them in return - a unit that's less than half their value.

No, it isn't easy to smite out of combat, because your army should be across the board, many spells will not be in range / or be closest, models may not have the requisite MW spell, 10 models is 10MW at a minimum, and vehicles and engines will reduce overall MW output.

Incubi are less durable, and have no guns or psychic powers.

No duh their melee is better point for point.

 JNAProductions wrote:
Incubi are less durable, and have no guns or psychic powers.

No duh their melee is better point for point.

The point is that TS need to be avoiding melee to make the most of many units. It is a detrimental status unless we walk into it knowing we'll come out clean and because of that we lean more on shooting and psychic.

Yeah, it feels very strange to compare Scarabs to dedicated assault units and bemoan their inefficiency when the Scarabs are participating in two additional phases compared to that unit. It'd be insane if the Scarabs looked good in that comparison.

EDIT: Okay yeah that's fair. Certainly if you're trading Scarabs 1:1 into a dedicated melee unit you made a mistake at some point, you had two whole phases to make that more favorable before charges happened.

 Arachnofiend wrote:
Yeah, it feels very strange to compare Scarabs to dedicated assault units and bemoan their inefficiency when the Scarabs are participating in two additional phases compared to that unit. It'd be insane if the Scarabs looked good in that comparison.

Right, so you would want to tie the conversation back to it's origin where there was a claim that MW were OP and unfair and then place the analysis in that context.

I keep pondering different lists and styles to play Tsons. Its not easy. Coming from being a DG player, DG was easy. You moved up slowly and methodically, took the incoming fire while using terrain as much as you could. Once you sat on an objective in the midfield, nobody was going to shift you off it, unless they could kill your DG terminators. You were short ranged (outside of your Plague burst mortars), but it was fine because you liked to be in Melee anyway. Once in melee, stufff fighting you simply melted or you outlasted them.

Tsons are a lot more complex. They feel like they want to stay at range because their melee isn't that great (in fact, its often a lot of their unit weakness). However, their biggest strength psychic powers need them to be within 18 inches. But getting into 18 inches generally means your opponent is in range to move + charge you next turn.

They are resilient to shooting (though not as resilient as DG. But their shooting while pretty good I would say, isn't super OP like the way Admech is. And its not particularly long range unless you build for it. Inferno bolters are 24 inches. So are Soulreapers. Warpbolters are 12 inches. And like I said earlier, psychic withfire is 18 inches.

They do have selected units that can fight well. But they have no fight last mechanic. So, they need to get the charge in. They are not good at taking charges. This means that against truly dedicated melee units, they will likely come out much worse in the encounter.

They are not quite good for trading units, because Tsons units are expensive. (Only units like Spawn are cheap).

They are not mobile. Not unless you take cult of Duplicity, the crystal relic. But even then, its one or two units. Tsons units are mostly 5 to 6 inch move.

When I build a Tsons lists and start thinking about missions objectives. I end up with objectives where I don't have to move much and stay on my side of the board (or at most center). So warp ritual and wrath of Magnus is almost auto take if possible. I would take warp ritual even if there was no objective in the middle of the board I think.

It feels like against a good player, who understands how deadly our psychic phase is, and who will have Rhinos, vehicles or cheap chaff in front to screen out smites. We will end up playing an outlast game. Where we whittle each other down. And thus, having our own screening and counter charge units become extremely important, because we will definitely have charges aimed at us in the course of the battle.

Its challenging. I like a challenge.

PS: It feels like we want to overwhelm one portion of the board methodically, removing it completely of enemies before moving to the next portion.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Btw, I just thought of another thing that makes the Infernal Master so good. (He literally shows up in every list I design).

Take the Seeker after Shadows warlord trait on the Infernal Master. He gets 1 more Cabal point (nice bonus). But the main thing is that he now gets to roll 3d6 and pick the 2 highest dice for psychic actions.

This transforms your Infernal Master into the best psychic action character for you by far. And because infernal pacts go off in the command phase while pychic actions are taken in the psychic phase. He gets to do both of his thing (and move+advance around to boot).

And there is even a 4 cabal point psychic ritual to gain back 1 CP. If you just want to keep him far back behind obscuring where he is safe. Then he can just glimpse of eternity for a free reroll plus do the 4 cabal point ritual every turn. The reroll = 1 CP reroll effectively. The cabal ritual = 1 cp back. Net net, this one 90 point guy sitting in the back rank doing his thing for 5 turns will net you effectively 10 CP. There is literally no better deal in the game right now I can think of.

And if you pick the warp ritual secondary and move him forward to do the ritual. He makes an excellent warp ritual person too. Because he is rolling 3d6 pick the highest. Not only is it extremely likely to go off. You will likely roll high with it, making it hard to deny the warp ritual. You only need to do warp ritual 3 times out of 5 rounds to get max points for it. I think statistically, if you roll 3d6+1 and pick 2d6+1 highest against a person rolling 2d6 who has to beat your roll to deny, statistically, you should definitely win 3 out of 5 times. (Likely 4 out of 5 times in fact). I think if we use this warlord trait, we don't even need to spend the cabal points to make our ritual undeniable. He will suck up that 1 deny our opponent will be saving up to deny that ritual (allowing the rest of our psychic more free rein) and yet, most likely that deny will fail.

Same thing for mental interrogation. The Infernal Master makes a great mental interrogator with that warlord trait. But I like warp ritual better. Its possible for your opponent to hide his characters out of range of mental interrogation. Warp ritual takes place once you get to 6 inches from the center of the battlefield.

Such an excellent character.

By the way, can I clarify something? Can a Rubric Marine squad do a psychic action and then still shoot? It happens in different phases, from what I understand, and by the time we get to shooting, the psychic action is already completed.

Psychic actions are different from actions, so there is no limit on being able to shoot.

Also don't forget re: CP generation, we are still limited to 1/battle round.

Eldenfirefly wrote:

They are not good at taking charges.

This is where warpflamer rubrics help a little. Overwatch is not as strong as it was (mostly cause it's easy to circumvent by charging in an expendable unit first kinnda wish the overwatch stratagem gave the unit overwatch for the whole phase), but it's good enough to kill most glass cannon melee units on the charge. It means your opponent always needs at least two melee units in position, one to soak overwatch one to do the damage. Even if it means you just kill some chaff it does make getting in close combat with us a little more challenging.

What's more is a lot of melee units come in from reserve these days, eg: zeraphim, bloodletters etc. Inescapable forewarning can do a decent amount of damage with warpflamers.

Eldenfirefly wrote:

They are not quite good for trading units, because Tsons units are expensive. (Only units like Spawn are cheap).

You can make them better at trading by increasing their damage output. A unit of 5 rubrics with 4 warpflamers only costs 14 more points than a unit of 5 rubrics with a soulreaper and does almost twice the damage (before taking into account Pyric Flux). Combine this with the ability to shoot in your opponents reserve and charge phase, a bunch of buffs and you can do ok.

Eldenfirefly wrote:

Tsons units are mostly 5 to 6 inch move.

One of the key advantages of warpflamer rubrics is they are on average 50% faster (7-12" rather than 6") than regular rubrics because they can advance and shoot. It's basically a speed boost.

Having played against deathguard and smited my way out of a 10 man of poxwalkers, and still had enough mortal wound and magic power to fiddle the board a little, and still suped up my 10 man terminators deathball I can confirm with average rolls you just need to survive melee to punk out 1w melee models.

You want the wall of magic. Its an archetype and I scored max secondaries without venturing into their side of the board.

do aspiring sorceres in rubric and termie squads now have regular smites?

 odorofdeath wrote:
do aspiring sorceres in rubric and termie squads now have regular smites?

Yup!

I think 1 sicaran venator fits nicely for AT counts as 5 lascannon shots(sponsons) at 3+bs 2+av 5++ 48" range.

Seems nice at 225 points.

Did a 3 round tournament today. It went pretty well with WWL. Would have placed second if I took the last game. My first game we ran out of time, because he was pretty new so I don't think I matched to a strong list second round, either.

I didn't take 10 Scarabs and I don't think I will. There is just no way to have the CP for them - I found myself constantly running out and I was getting 2 per round. It would also have made my list way too rigid.

Loss was to Custodes on mission 32, which is their bread and butter. Basically came down to him holding the center for Stranglehold and the mission secondary plus abhor. I nearly tabled him, but not in time to get the center back. I would have liked to have Death Hex ( or w/e its name is now ), but I don't generally carry it and against Custodes I don't pack enough AP for it to matter. We have so little AP4 and none beyond 24". People who complain about a lot of MW might be missing this part of the picture.

You could have used a command point to familiar *new name in the codex* so you had twist of fate. Litterally all you need to do is take away the save, then shoot them.

dreadlybrew wrote:
You could have used a command point to familiar *new name in the codex* so you had twist of fate. Litterally all you need to do is take away the save, then shoot them.

Also, if you had some Spawn and another CP, you could select the AP-4 Spawn power and use them as a can-opener (after Twist of Fating them).

I feel like there's going to be a big learning-curve with this codex. There are a ton of options in there, and the challenge is going to be remembering what you can do.

I know the name of the thread is cabalistic riturals but do yall think there is a world where Tsons could soup well? Losing the cabal points is a blow, but could it still be worth it?

I am currently thinking about a Tsons primary army and then a triple PBC Death guard detachment to add some long range support.

Other ideas include chaos daemon detachment for big beater deamons to throw at enemy.

Or is the only way right now to play them seemingly in pure Tsons?

I think soup would be more of a thing if there were more useful soup options. TS have big, glaring weaknesses - lack of melee capability, lack of action monkeys, lack of effective trading units, etc - but they are weaknesses largely shared by their souping options. I don't think anything you can get from other chaos soup options is really worth the cost at this point, and it's a big cost. If chaos had the options imperium or even aeldari has it'd be a different story.

If you do want to take some other stuff, at this point IMO the best option is probably to save some reserve points to summon some daemons, as that doesn't break purity. Furies are good action monkeys, saving 90 points that can either be used for two squads of furies or a changecaster with gaze of fate and one of bolt of change or infernal gateway isn't a terrible strategy, though you have to be super careful with your characters' movement to make sure you don't screw yourself.

If you main TS, souping is rough.

If you main another chaos, souping a tiny bit of TS in the form of a caster and few tanks might be useful

 ninjafiredragon wrote:
I know the name of the thread is cabalistic riturals but do yall think there is a world where Tsons could soup well? Losing the cabal points is a blow, but could it still be worth it?

I am currently thinking about a Tsons primary army and then a triple PBC Death guard detachment to add some long range support.

Other ideas include chaos daemon detachment for big beater deamons to throw at enemy.

Or is the only way right now to play them seemingly in pure Tsons?

I think we can definitely find something to soup with Thousand Sons. The issue isn't losing cabalistic rituals. The issue is that we lose the Tsons secondaries and some of them are really good. Like Wrath of Magnus should be an auto 12 vp, and in some cases, easy 15 vp. And Tsons are amazing at warp ritual secondary, especially since we can use cabal points to prevent any denies to warp ritual going off. I would still love to explore some souping at some point. Especially with Deathguard. I think there are some benefits between souping Tsons and DG.

 ninjafiredragon wrote:
I know the name of the thread is cabalistic riturals but do yall think there is a world where Tsons could soup well? Losing the cabal points is a blow, but could it still be worth it?

I am currently thinking about a Tsons primary army and then a triple PBC Death guard detachment to add some long range support.

Other ideas include chaos daemon detachment for big beater deamons to throw at enemy.

Or is the only way right now to play them seemingly in pure Tsons?

I got a tournament coming up and I'am bringing this:


I like the duplicity teleport flexibilty in combination with warpflamers. The bring some objective scoring possibilities that compliment the wardog's. Not going to win the tournament but still a good fight.
I already painted the spawns and the helldrake so I'am using them but normally I wouldn't include them in my list. Spawns are still a good deal and helldrake can help the teleporting rubric marines at the flank and attracting firepower away from the wardogs.

Cultists can be playable in any way? I didn't see any of you talking about that unit (like predator, the other that had no mention at all) and I have 30 anvil industries converted cultist that I want to play.

So far I've played a 2k game, and 2 crusade games 500 and 750.

2k vs death guard, 500 qnd 750 vs orks.

In all three scenarios my opponents felt like the game was over turn 2 because rubrics and exalted sorcs put out so many mortal wounds.

The thing about lower point games is that if you take 3 rubric squads and an exalted sorc your mortal wound output is the same at 500 points as it is at 2000. From 17 to 20. Then you get dope shooting.

In my experience farming cabal points I've found that they are incredibly useful but its a little agonizing for your opponents because it mostly just flexes your wizard power all over them.

I just got my hands on the book and started making lists. It is quite a headache trying to figure out which spells go wherer etc.

But what are your guys thoughts on the Vortex beast? I must say that I really liked that bugger and was thinking about a list with two beasts in.



The list really lacks heavy fire power but I´m hoping that mortal wounds will compensate. I also have some heavy hitters in close combat with the dual prince and dual vortex beasts.

dreadlybrew wrote:
So far I've played a 2k game, and 2 crusade games 500 and 750.

2k vs death guard, 500 qnd 750 vs orks.

In all three scenarios my opponents felt like the game was over turn 2 because rubrics and exalted sorcs put out so many mortal wounds.

The thing about lower point games is that if you take 3 rubric squads and an exalted sorc your mortal wound output is the same at 500 points as it is at 2000. From 17 to 20. Then you get dope shooting.

In my experience farming cabal points I've found that they are incredibly useful but its a little agonizing for your opponents because it mostly just flexes your wizard power all over them.

This is the exact interesting thing I realised making different lists are thinking through matchups with them. You don't need four or five characters to achieve your "ideal" mortal wound output. You just need more rubric squads. The benefit of a character like a sorceror or such is you can stack witchfire spells on them. If you stack a character with buff spells, it doesn't increase your mortal wound output at all. Not to say he won't contribute. But if your objective is to do say 20 MW. Adding an additional exalted sorcerer with just buff spells over the one you already have doesn't help your mw output at all. In the first place, there are only aa few witchfire spells worth taking. Doombolt and Tzeentch firestorm. Infernal gaze averages 1 to 2 wounds. And dark blessing is just too short range ( 6") and iffy (you have to beat toughness). Others are all situational. (like only work on a unit of 6+ models or if it moved/advanced/charged). If you want to delete stuff with MW, then the workhorse witchfire is Doombolt and tzeentch firestorm and basically just smite spam. You don't need multiple characters just to spam smite. You can do that fine with Rubric squads. And regardless of how many such squads or characters you have, after a few smites, the casting cost is so high you will fail even with the +1.

Your typical ideal MW phase is to have 4 to 5 smites through, with 4 cp to add d3 more MW, and then the two witchfire doombolt and tzeentch firestorm going through. Beyond that is getting a 10 or 11 cast smite off or possibly add infernal gaze. And you could probably do that with 4 or 5 units/characters, and its probably cheaper to do that with just 2 characters and 3 units rather than 4 characters and 1 unit.

And beyond these, adding more castors is just for other stuff like buffs or rituals. Because by this stage, casting cost of smite is too high already and you have no more good witchfire spells left anyway. And spamming too many characters inevitably results in you having too small an army to protect your heroes and do missions.

I've been playing cult of magic so I also get Astral blast which has a lot of utility and eases the diminishing returns of smite a little.

I also am not counting out baleful devolution. That spell has some kick to it but im giving it to my witch warrior.

So far super buffing the terminators is creating such a beastly attack sink that the opponent can't really deal with the rest of the rubrics.

Souping away cabal points sort of feels bad because they are a cool new toy but if you are souping make sure you are putting in 6 to 8 damage worth of soup

dreadlybrew wrote:
You could have used a command point to familiar *new name in the codex* so you had twist of fate. Litterally all you need to do is take away the save, then shoot them.

Custodes have 0+/1+ saves in cover.

Telemons are 2+, which means AP3 knocks them barely down past the invuln.

And lest you forget, twist is max 12", which is stupid close when you need to take out two telemons.