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 Lathe Biosas wrote:

 BorderCountess wrote:
Here's a fun party trick for the Rubricae Phalanx:

Rubric Marines with an Exalted Sorcerer attached. Enemy shoots at the unit. Assign wounds to the Aspiring Sorcerer. When the shooting stops, use Revenge of the Rubricae to shoot back, since a Psyker model just died. Exalted Sorcerer then gets to revive the Aspiring Sorcerer.

Rinse and repeat.

Sooo.... how would one go about negating that? I'm sure Tzeentch wouldn't mind you sharing that with me.

Don't shoot the Rubric Marines?

Seriously, the only to way to stop it is for the Exalted Sorcerer to roll a 1 on the resurrection roll, which instead inflicts D3 mortal wounds on his unit.

 Lathe Biosas wrote:

 BorderCountess wrote:
Here's a fun party trick for the Rubricae Phalanx:

Rubric Marines with an Exalted Sorcerer attached. Enemy shoots at the unit. Assign wounds to the Aspiring Sorcerer. When the shooting stops, use Revenge of the Rubricae to shoot back, since a Psyker model just died. Exalted Sorcerer then gets to revive the Aspiring Sorcerer.

Rinse and repeat.

Sooo.... how would one go about negating that? I'm sure Tzeentch wouldn't mind you sharing that with me.

Use Precision weapons to snipe out the Exalted Sorcerer, I suppose.

Or just kill the rubricae with a unit that they aren't particularly good at hurting. They're only allowed to shoot at the thing that killed the psyker model, so plinking away at them with a vehicle can leave them reluctant to waste the CP. You can also possibly mindgame it a little. Once the aspiring sorcerer takes a save, he has to keep taking saves. So if you nickle and dime him with shots from units that have a good chance of doing 1 wound to the squad but not 2, you can get him to commit to hurting the sorcerer and then follow-up with one of those bad targets (like a vehicle) to finish the sorcerer off. At which point, he either uses the strat against your vehicle or is stuck not using the strat on that unit for the rest of the turn.

Just got my first game in with the new 'dex. Impressions:

* Army feels good overall. I was ready to be cranky about the new army rule (I don't like having a chance for my psykers to fail to be psychic), but your chances of getting at least the baby version of the ritual off are pretty good. I played coven and didn't fail a single cast all game thanks to the reroll strat. Just be ready to roll the 3rd die every time and accept that you're going to blow up some rubricae from time to time.

* I ran Ahriman and used his special rule to dump 2x10 rubrics, an exalted sorcerer + Ahriman, and a daemon prince into reserves. They all arrived together and were a really gnarly pile of models that my opponent couldn't really remove. That said, I'll probably be avoiding Ahriman *unless* I want to build my list around a giant haymaker like that. A regular or exalted sorcerer is probably better in most other situations.

* I've been running a lot of 10-man squads. I think I need to convert up some sorcerers and start running 2x5 instead. Outside of a couple very specific combos (phalanx bolter rubrics coming out of a rhino using Infernal Fussillade, flamer rubrics using overwatch), there just aren't a ton of rules that add much efficiency for large units. And I really felt my lack of board presence/screening/numbers.

* Bolters being AP-2 to flamers' AP-1 is an interesting move. I don't hate it. Between their range and all the ways we have to buff bolter shots, they actually feel like a real choice despite how good overwatching flamers are.

* I miss my cultists. Not only were they a big part of my fluff, they also gave me an easy way to add screening action monkeys to the list.

* Tzaangor do feel better now on the whole, but they're a completely different animal now. Outside of the mutant detachment, there isn't really a way to make them durable at all, and their offense and defense continue to be non-existent. The shaman, being able to sacrifice some of them to power himself up is cute, but even with a lucky roll, he generally won't be hitting anything hard enough to make much of a difference. *Maybe* in coven on a turn that you give his psychic weapons DW?

I feel like tzaangor are good tools for going for No Man's Land objectives/secondaries with their uppy downy. The shaman is probably best used as a cheap objective sitter in the back.

* I didn't really use them in this game, but list building was way more interesting now that vehicles aren't a liability. (Cabal points.)

* Daemon prince on foot walking around with a squad or two of rubricae felt really nice. He buffs their defense (stealth) and can bail them out of melee. They keep him from getting 360 no-scoped by lascannons before he gets across the table.

https://assets.warhammer-community.com/eng_09-07_warhammer40000_codex_faqsanderrata_thousand_sons-c4mg5pt4or-ma7qejzdsq.pdf

So the mutant detachment is dead. At least we get firing decks now. Also infiltrating Rubrics/SoT got better with being able to take characters.

Well, I've jiggled and I've wiggled, and I still have "an army" out of two starter sets. It's a worse army, and has too many psykers, because GW butchered our army rule, but I've only got so many models (and Fabius Bile, he can sub-in as a Sorc).



So, it's still doable. This army has waaayyyy too many psykers with the "hit it with a nerfing sledge hammer hard" *balance* update, but whatever. It still might do a thing. Why am I such a cheap bastard on GW stuff? This is why. (I'm an Australian, so we pay GW ++tarrifs for no reason, regardless of our $$-value compared to the £, on tiny plastic toys).

:huffing copium now:

(Actually might be 10pts over, I don't think my app updated Vortex yet. So, umm, another Shaman instead of an Exalted Sorc (bile's little ducky bloke)? Might actually look cool in the big Tzaangor blob, so it looks like they had a trained scout captain sorc leading them or something. Back banners and bray horns and all. Lol. Gives the other two shamans independence for being annoying as well. Wiping the sticky off objectives is fun. Could also drop all three Shamans for 3x3 Bow Enlightened, for stuff that actually does stuff, but I don't have those models, and won't buy them. But you really don't need the extra psykers any more)

Anyway, there's plenty of ways the above army could go (as always with my suggestions on builds). As mentioned, drop all 3 shamans for 3x3 Bow Enlightened. Or drop 2 for 2x3 Bows, and keep one for the big screening blob, or just a "not-lone character thing". Sometimes terrain is a hassle to move around.

But there's also, drop 10 Tzaangor for 2x Sekhatar Robots (just fits in, and littering the board with objective takers is never bad).

Could even go a bit silly and drop a shaman and 10 Tzaangor and double down on melee with a Maulerfiend. We have so few command points options, that having one is nice. And no-one expects a TSons melee army.

If you want a "tactical" army, I'd almost do both. Cull whatever you want, and chuck in some Robots and a Maulerfiend. Not sure if it's better, but it is different'er.

Just trying to get a bit of discussion on TSons going. Yeah, 40% win rate, down from 54%'ish in one foul swoop of the nerf hammer.

Did you all pass out from the amount of copium needed?

(And on the horribly cheap bastard side of things, I reckon I could make some sprue-piece guns and shoulder winglets, blu-tack them onto my Von Ryan's leapers/ Spawn, and "call them" Mr Robotos. Same base size, so there's also cheapo options as well. Micro distraction Carnifexes/Lictors, with rocket-launchers. I'm sure that's what the profile says)

I *mostly* dodged the nerf bat after the latest updates. I hadn't gotten around to collecting any mutaliths or enlightened yet, nor do I generally use infernal masters, and I don't own Magnus, so I dodged most of the "big" points hikes. I do sometimes field a landraider and large squads of terminators, and I intend to use the robots once they're available somewhere. So overall, I theoretically came out okay in terms of points.

Phalanx lists are that much less desirable with MSU rubric squads getting more pricey. That adjustment is kind of annoying, tbh. Not because it's actually that big a deal, but because it only seems to exist to encourage us to put more eggs into fewer baskets, which means they're incentivizing us to play wombo-combo lists where we delete everything we point at and field frustratingly durable bricks of terminators.

Not being able to attempt a ritual an extra time is just kind of feelsbad. I was initially worried about the returns of psychic tests basically just equating a % chance of feeling bad. But then I actually tried the rule and found that it was functionally fine because you could typically just keep attempting the cast with extra psykers, which in turn encouraged you to field lots of wizards in your wizard marine army. This change basically takes away that safe guard. If you lose the game because you randomly couldn't move your squad in the shooting phase, then that's that. Sucks to be you.

Yeah. Although the lower magics are "sometimes" about a command point worthy use of stuff (10 flamers with -2AS is still pretty awesome. Same with 10 man termie squads with a Termie Sorcerer for "actually good bolter fire and rockets and assault cannons". But at 465pts, you'd want this to be exquisite-death-murder, not just fun/awesome. That's Knight level pts, and you don't need to teleport, if everything is dead).

In Grand Coven, especially with my sort of list, everything psychic already has devastating wounds. So I get 1 turn of +1 to-wound on psychic (pretty big), 1 turn of +6" range (somewhat irrelevant), and a thing that does literally nothing (admittedly does make Dark Blessing shooting from the winged DPs smash a bit harder, especially the Vortex one).

That's so much of the feels bad. Army rule borked, and detachment rule un-synergistic (but with a couple of cool enhancements and strategems). Approximately 2/3rds of my detachment rule does very little, and my army rule is "occasionally have a free strat, because you don't have SM captains". It's sort of weird, yet it doesn't feel too unpowerful, just borked. Points OR army rule nerfs might have been fine, but heavy nerf hammers to both seems stupid.

Yeah, I pretty much agree with most of that.

When I first read the codex, I was kind of iffy on it because the detachments all seemed to have these weird... gaps? Underwhelming parts? Not quite sure what word to use here.

Like, the Grand Coven (which I've been playing almost exclusively) has a lot of great strats and some solid enhancements, but the detachment rule itself is something I almost forget about because the one turn of +1 to-wound is usually the only benefit to really matter. Phalanx has these weird anti-synergies like the psychic bolter strat that would have been great if you had Grand Coven style psychic buffs but only really synergizes with the rhino special rule in Phalanx. Or the enhancement to infiltrate rubric squads that only works if you *don't* attach any characters to those squads.

Basically, I had a moment of worry that these weird "holes" in the detachments might mean the faction was bad, but then on the tabletop it actually worked out fine because between a pretty great army rule and some mostly-okay detachment rules, there was enough "good" there to not be bothered about the seemingly strange design decisions with the detachments.

Having not played my Sons since the changes, I'm hoping that this remains the case. But I'm worried that we might have entered the realm of a feelsbad failed psychic test making the weird detachment rules feel less forgivable.

"Oh, my magic marine who belongs to the magic faction whose whole thing is magic just failed his magic test? Well at least I can *checks notes* hurt a vehicle semi-reliably once per game if I'm in the right detachment."

EDIT: Meanwhile, loyalist marines are over there getting +1 to-wound with entire squads worth of weapons instead of just the sergeants and characters plus full rerolls automatically. I get that our mechanic also gives us the possibility of a bonus move and a doom bolt, and those aren't nothing. But it also feels weird that our versions of the marine mechanics need to be locked behind a once-per-game limitation and a psychic test's failure chance while the marines can just do it automatically and army-wide.

Obviously it would be bad if our mechanics did more than Oath with no drawbacks, but failure chance just seems like such a frustrating mechanic for trying to balance something. "It's overpowered, so we made it randomly not happen sometimes" is just kind of a lose-lose approach to balancing something. I think I'd be happier about the recent changes if instead of the power straight up failing after an unsuccessful cast, we just got the lesser version of the power instead?

I am still bitter about the Terminator Sorcerer change. What is a nice buff to an over-costed Scarab Occult squad, is a massive nerf to the army and builds as a whole.

Would you rather your own mini-85pt Oath for the entire army? Or make Termies not useless, but even more expensive? Graham's Worship did the latter.

It was the one thing that would have made the army still work, even with all the nerfs, but still tactical and cool-af. And they changed that.... (Bizarre stealth nerf, masquerading as a buff).

Also kind of a pity we didn't get a few more Chaos thingies in our list in the Codex. Would have venom crawlers and obliterators unbalance the list? No. But they'd be there, with no new model needed. Just for extra options, that would be great. Oblits fit well into the morphing form Tzeentch'y side (you could even let a Termie Sorc lead them, for sheer over-costed awesome), and more daemon engines are good daemon engines from the TSons perspective (and robots too, I guess).

Venom crawlers would probably make sense, but aren't obliterators infected with a virus? Implying that they're contagious in some fashion? Not sure how well the Sons would take to something like that in their midst after dealing with the flesh change (and the ongoing body horror of unwanted mutations.)

My big unit that I miss is just my cultists. My fluff actually focused pretty heavily on the idea of my warlord cultivating populations of loyal mortals so he could basically farm psykers. A generic cultist model squad with a rule for buffing rituals if they perform an action would have been very on-brand.

Not really sure if TSons hate or embrace the flesh-change. Sure, Ahriman hated it, but considering they are worshippers of the Lord of Change, with plenty of daemon-engines and spawn and basic ability-names backing that idea, I'm not so sure if all TSons sorcerers are totally against the concept. They may see Oblits as a more stable form of it, or a boon of Tzeentch, not necessarily a bad thing.

And yes, we all miss our cultists.

Still, checking Reddit a bit, some people are having some success with multiple Terminator blocks + DP stealth in Phalanx (I cast "Gun!"), there's some ideas for Warpforged lists + many robots (the robots are pretty good, and even some rerolls help), and Coven lists are starting to shift a little closer to what mine is than the standard mega-sorc or Magnus builds (mine's not good, it's just an example).

So I'm pretty sure TSons have a way to go yet, and recent win rates are an adapting-to-nerfs outlier. We can still whinge about them, correctly, but I don't think we're quite in trash tier yet. C/D tier, needing a boost (or anti-nerf), but it's probably not as bad as we bitch about. Still bad, but there's wins available. Top tier tournament wins? Probably not. So a slight tweak is necessary.

(I wonder if the nerfs were because Guilleman's Waankers corporate division didn't see any change in TSons lists after the Codex release in their app data tracking, without realizing no-one uses their app for TSons any more, because it requires a subscription the moment they release a codex?)

 Wyldhunt wrote:

Or the enhancement to infiltrate rubric squads that only works if you *don't* attach any characters to those squads.

It got FAQed. You can now infiltrate with characters.

Interesting! Good to know!

I really like the winged prince in the Coven. Give him the +1 damage and the turn he arrives with his boosted attack you pop [Devastating Wounds] and now you have all those 9 shots with [Sustained Hits d3] with two damage. Use the re-roll strat when something really needs to just die. It is a one trick, but has certainly been worth it for just one damage output. Then he really does need to be dealt with as the D2 sweep can be pretty deadly.


Although I do agree our detachments are very pigeon holed. The Coven should really have a rule for the one ability like, "psychic attacks gain [Devastating Wounds], and if they already have [Devastating Wounds] they can re-roll the wound Or re-roll 1's to wound" which I don't think would be game breaking. It is annoying that we don't have a catch all detachment that helps all units (like CSM's Vet of Long war where all units can benefit from the rule, or Eldar's windrider host where is is just the army rule improved). The Grotmas detachment, which sucks soooooooo much, would be cool if they changed it to model's inside the zone of control get to re-roll 1's to wound with all weapons (I know now that is ones outside, but I think this is better), and psychic weapons are the ones that get +1 to wound as well. That would be so much more impactful, make you really want to expand the zones (which now you kind of don't and want the re-roll 1's for the [Devastating Wounds] most units have) and would affect all units. I don't know just something to think about.

Anyone try the vehicle detachment? I am thinking it might make LC hell brutes viable.

White Dwarf 517 has a mini-game: Cavalry Engagements. A 500pt mini game, where you don't get your strats, or your enhancements, and you don't even need a character to lead your force. And every unit needs to be mounted (on a disc, in our case. There's hopeless marine bikes, and bloodletters on daemon mounts and stuff, but for us, it's Tzeentch'y Disc things).

But guess what? TSons actually back-scale to 500pts better now. Here's a prospective list:

Big Disc Biker Gang 500pt - Thousand Sons - Grand Coven

3x Shamans.180pts
2x6 Fatecaster Bow Enlightened. 220pts
1x6 Divining Spear Enlightened. 90pts
10pts for Sticky Objectives on a Shaman.

3 cast attempts per turn, 3+ to-hit on units (or spread the shamans out as objective holders), and some pretty reasonable firepower/ damage/ lethals/ MW/ dev wounds. Probably not Eldar quality, but might not be too bad.

Plenty of other 3 model unit options, or Sorc on disc stuff to fiddle with. But getting 1-2 lower magics off a turn, and one strat per turn, does look fun. Big disc-biker gangs, or split them up as required. 500pts is a new artifact and artform in a way. Thankfully we've got two units and two characters to fill slots.

More Enlightened might be optimal, but who else does magic at these points values?

sambojin wrote:
Not really sure if TSons hate or embrace the flesh-change. Sure, Ahriman hated it, but considering they are worshippers of the Lord of Change, with plenty of daemon-engines and spawn and basic ability-names backing that idea, I'm not so sure if all TSons sorcerers are totally against the concept. They may see Oblits as a more stable form of it, or a boon of Tzeentch, not necessarily a bad thing.

In general, I think they still fear it. After all, the Flesh Change turns you into a Chaos Spawn.

Obliterators are Astartes infected with the technovirus. I'm actually okay, lore-wise, with not having them in the list. Besides, didn't Nurgle have a hand in that?

I haven't played against the Sekhetar Robots yet. Has anyone used them in a game?