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Hello!
I am making a 40k equivalent to this unit: https://www.forgeworld.co.uk/en-AT/Khenentai-Occult-Blade-Cabal-2017
Using the current stats and abilities of Rubric Marines as a baseline, what rules/abilities would you add to make this an interesting or fun unit to field? Since 8th breaks down individual items for us, they should be somewhere in the ball park of 26 ppm, assuming 2 power swords is 8 points and a rubric is 18.
They would be fielded in bricks of 5 including the aspiring sorcerer, who would also wield a Force Blade (possibly a stronger psyker than the rest at the time of the rubric, or what have you)
A few (seperate) ideas were;
Keep the force weapons rule on them, or just leave them as power swords, give them an extra attack with those weapons only, have the blades cause mortal wounds on 6's, Choose between different fighting styles based on prosperine cults, act as melee tanks in a capacity, or just not give them anything.
TLDR OP wants dual-swordsman rubrics but can't decide on a way to make the idea fun. Thank you in advance!

Force swords give no bonus for having two of them, so without a special unit rule you are going to pay a huge premium for zero bonus. 8e values simplicity so combine the two as a new weapon type with one entry and skip the middle man. They can't swap out the blades anyways, so why not?

If you want to base them on Rubrics as the baseline here's an idea that rolls up a bunch of the fiddly bits (including Mindsong).

RUBRIC KHENETAI
Rubric Khenetai M5" WS3+ BS3+ S4 T4 W1 A2 Ld7 Sv3+
Khenetai Blademaster M6" WS3+ BS3+ S4 T4 W1 A3 Ld8 Sv3+
This unit contains 1 Khenetai Blademaster and 4 Rubric Khenetai. It can include up to 5 additional Rubric Khenetai.
* Each Rubric Khenetai is armed with an inferno bolt pistol and Khenetai dueling blades.
* The Khenetai Blademaster is armed with an inferno bolt pistol and Khenetai dueling blades.
WEAPON
Inferno bolt pistol 12" Pistol 1 S4 AP-2 D1 -
Khenetai dueling blades Melee Melee User -3 D3 You can re-roll failed hit rolls in the Fight phase for this weapon.
WARGEAR OPTIONS
* The Khenetai Blademaster may replace his inferno bolt pistil with a warpflame pistol.
* For every five models in the unit, one Rubric Khenetai may replace his inferno bolt pistol with a warpflame pistol.
ABILITIES
Death to the False Emperor (see Chaos Index)
All Is Dust: Add 1 to the saving throw for Rubric Khenetai if the attack has a Damage characteristic of 1.
Favoured of Tzeentch: All models in this unit have a 5+ invulnerable save.

Thanks for the advise. I really like this idea, it's easy to remember and field.
I don't know how I would add the pistols in - Is there a good way to get inferno pistols, or would just regular bolt pistol holsters look decent?

Just use the model as-is. Just use the holsters or don't even bother putting them on the model - the official FW shots don't show their bolt pistols, for example.

TzeentchNet wrote:
Just use the model as-is. Just use the holsters or don't even bother putting them on the model - the official FW shots don't show their bolt pistols, for example.

Makes sense. Will try them out this week and report back.