Miniatures Warhammer 40K Tabletop XXVIII: Drasius Can't Have Nice Things [Archive]

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Cheesegear

2016-12-20, 08:13 AM

**8th Edition is coming in Q2, 2017. It is unwise to start a new army at this time.**

Warhammer 40,000 in the Playground

I'm new to the hobby. Which army should I start?
It really depends on what you want to play. And how your meta-game shapes up. Find out what everyone else is playing near you, and play anything not those armies for best results. Otherwise, if you're starting from scratch with no-one really to play with - or, you've got a friend who is also starting from scratch - buy the Dark Vengeance starter box.

What's Dark Vengeance?
Dark Vengeance contains a rulebook and a bunch of dice.

It contains roughly 850 Points worth of Dark Angels. However, it only contains around 500 points worth of Chaos Space Marines. Of course, if you're playing DV as it's meant to be played, you're never using all of the models at once so the points difference doesn't really matter.

However, in practical terms, the Dark Angels are only barely legal and lack enough Scoring models. And, while the CSMs are legal, they're almost 300 points behind and lack anything that packs a decent punch. You will also need the relevant Codecies for your faction as it will dramatically change the way you play the game as opposed to using the reference sheets that come with DV.

How much does it cost?
The Dark Vengeance box, one Codex, one other box of your choosing, and a Starter Paint Set costs you about the same as a Playstation 3 and one game*. In both cases, you'd be good to go for about a month. This author thinks of most boxes as console games, and Flyers and Land Raiders are the AAA-Title Collector's Edition game. The difference being that in this hobby you can use all your 'games' at the same time, and continuously.

Is WH40K expensive? Yes. I suppose it is. We all know it is. But, practically speaking, it's no more expensive than any other hobby.

*Priced in $AU where everything is more expensive - although the ratios should be the same.

Okay, I've got everything. What next?
Play some games. Playing some actual games, is a far, far better learning experience than anything you could glean from the internet. Although we really would appreciate some stories and how you're finding your army.
Find out what works for you, find out what doesn't (just because the internet likes something, doesn't mean you will too). You, more than anyone know who your opponents are and what they're putting on the table. You are in the best position to find out what you need to bring to the table.

However, if you're still stuck. Just ask.

How many points do I need? What size board do I need?
There are ways that you can play 200, 400 and 500 point games using altered rules. But, if you want to play the game as-is, the recommended minimum is 750.

The game 'balances out' at 1500. Most games should be played at this level since pretty much all armies get a fair shake.

However, in other meta-games, find out what the local tournament standard is. Most people in your area should be playing at that points level. While you're at it, here's How to write an army list. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=8702512&postcount=1358)

As for board size; a 4x4' table can accommodate up to 1250 with reasonable room left for movement. But, after that you should probably look at finding a 6x4' area. The floor is never a bad start.

I did what you said and I still lost. What gives? :smallfurious:
First, this game is all about dice. Dice are random (most of the time anyway), sometimes you just get bad rolls all game and there's nothing you can really do about it. It's best to accept it, otherwise you're not going to have a very fun time.

Sometimes your opponent can make a minor change in his list - like changing from Plasma Cannons to Lascannons. That can totally alter the flow of the game and what happens when they next play you.

Sometimes the terrain placement is just bad (or the terrain itself is bad) and right from Deployment you can find yourself getting shot at and there's nothing you can do about it. Really, this can only stress how important terrain can be to how the game gets played.

And, lastly, maybe you just 'did it wrong'? Maybe you used [X] to shoot [Y] when they should have been shooting [Z]. Maybe you Charged, when the better move could have been moving backwards and Rapid Firing instead? There are all sorts of ways you can be out-played. You didn't just lose because your opponents' Queens are overpowered.

Terrain? You said this hobby was only as expensive as any other.
Yes and no. Most of your 'starting' terrain can be household items. Books. Soda-cans. Small boxes. Whatever.

If you look around the internet, you can also find a few tutorials on how to make some really decent-looking terrain. Made out of what you essentially would have otherwise thrown in the bin.

Only GW Terrain actually costs you any significant money. Making your own should only cost a few dollars tops - and your time and effort.

How much terrain do I need?
Up to 12 pieces is the official word. However, that can get crowded pretty fast if you've got big pieces.

A better guide is roughly anywhere between 25-33% of the board should be covered by terrain. On a standard 6x4' table, you would want anywhere between 6-8' square of terrain. It seems like a lot. But if you divide that up to 7-12 pieces, it doesn't look like much. Or you could just put a 2x3' block in the centre of the board. :smallsigh:

I don't like using Special Characters, and I think Allies are dumb.
Your opponents probably don't. Special Characters are pretty powerful and there's no real reason that you shouldn't be using them if your opponents are. That's not to say that all Special Characters are good - they aren't - and certainly don't get the impression that just because it's a Special Character that you need to use it - you don't. But some of them are still good and they do make certain armies a lot better.

However, Allies, on the other hand. Are often a required part of the game. Some armies just don't have the units required to fend off other units. Does this make the game unfair? Kind of. But, GW doesn't update their entire range at once (it's a big range), and so some units are always going to be better than others. But, allowing Allies is a big step to evening the playing field.

So which Allies should I pick?
Depends on your army, and what units you already have. Ask in the thread.

I can't paint.
Like any skill worth having, you get better if you practice. 90% of a good paint job is just brush control - how much paint you put on your brush and where you put it. The other 10% is just colour theory (yeah, it's a thing). The most important tool this author has is a $5 Colour Wheel (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=20355942&postcount=1425). :smallwink:

But, on a more serious note, the only real reason that you need to paint is if you want to participate in tournaments. Well, that and painted models just look better - if you've practised, of course.

Unfortunately, painting is a practical skill, not knowledge. The only person who can get you better at painting is you. Wraith has put together how you can go about Painting your army without losing your mind. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=8722344&postcount=1421)

Which army is the best?
That's a loaded question. It depends what points limit you're playing at (at 1500 there really isn't one). But, there is no 'best' army. Plasma beats Terminators beats Mech beats Plasma. 40K is much like Rock, Paper, Scissors. None of the armies are 'best', as each army can be countered. Some armies are better than others, but there is no 'best'.

However, as you play the game you will notice that your Codex doesn't have the units that beat another Codex. That's not to say that you haven't won any games, and it's not to say that your opponents' armies haven't lost several games to armies that just aren't yours. It just means that your army can't beat your opponent's army with what you've got available to you. That's why Allies need to be in the game.

Wait, so there are bad Codecies?
Yes. But, every Codex should be usable between 1000-1500 points. So, no matter what army you pick, you'll be okay within those points limits, or, you should be. If you find that your Codex/Army isn't doing well against certain opponents, and there's nothing you can do; You may need Allies.

Helpful Army Building Guides
7th Edition Guides
Blood Angels (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=18559882&postcount=120)
Chaos Space Marines (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=17547175&postcount=1006)
- Traitor's Hate/Black Legion (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=21512711&postcount=24) and Traitor Legions (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=21512720&postcount=25) by LeSwordfish
Chaos Daemons (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=18615478&postcount=343)
Cult Mechanicus (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=19564617&postcount=969)
Dark Eldar (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=18231371&postcount=779)
Deathwatch (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=21105269&postcount=563)
Grey Knights (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=18892643&postcount=999)
Harlequins (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=21117961&postcount=617)
Imperial Agents (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=21504500&postcount=1399)
Khorne Daemonkin (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=19029512&postcount=1236) by Grim Portent
Necrons (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=20054321&postcount=401) by Requizen
Skitarii (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=19433696&postcount=665)

Space Marines (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=19496134&postcount=821)
- Space Marines, Part II: Chapter Tactics and Special Characters (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=19522424&postcount=849)
- Space Marines, Part III:
- - Shadow Force Solaq (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=19991666&postcount=259)
- - Kauyon Detachments and Formations (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=20044717&postcount=378)

Space Wolves (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=17946320&postcount=453) by Squark
Tyranids (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=17664323&postcount=1310) by Wraith

Tau Empire (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=15454276&postcount=563) by Tome
- Farsight Enclaves (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?341687-Warhammer-40K-Tabletop-XX-quot-Barrage-is-the-new-Precision-Shot-quot&p=17347839&viewfull=1#post17347839) by Tome

Orks
-WAAAGH!!! Ghazghkull (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?359820-Warhammer-40k-Tabletop-XXI-Preferred-Enemy-%28Dice%29&p=17723456#post17723456)

(Misc.) Fighter Aces (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=18500576&postcount=1350) by Vaz
A Guide to Fortifications - Stronghold Assault (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=17823987&postcount=287)

Kill Team
Guide to Kill Team Specialists (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=21252937&postcount=1293)

Building on a Budget
Orks (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=19212984&postcount=139)
Dark Angels (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=19240362&postcount=203)
Chaos Space Marines (Nurgle) (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=19362421&postcount=492)
Blood Angels (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=19273122&postcount=258)
Grey Knights (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=20242483&postcount=981)
Tau Empire (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=20284052&postcount=1252)
Eldar Craftworlds (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=19470100&postcount=779)
Tyranids (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=19306045&postcount=329)

Forge World
Siege Assault Vanguard (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=17668255&postcount=1326)

Imperial Armour
(IA1/2E) Imperial Guard Armoured Battle Group (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=16838329&postcount=972) by Issabella
(IA2/2E) Space Marine Vehicles (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=16977518&postcount=1084)
(IA3/2E) Elysian Drop Troops (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?341687-Warhammer-40K-Tabletop-XX-quot-Barrage-is-the-new-Precision-Shot-quot/page3&p=17310139#post17310139) by Issabella
(IA9 / 10) Space Marine Chapter Tactics and Special Characters (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=16807713&postcount=890)
(IA12) The Dark Harvest (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=16994548&postcount=1096) - Necrons
(IA12) The Minotaurs and Krieg Assault Brigade (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=17033958&postcount=1143) - Space Marines and Imperial Guard

30K/Heresy Guides
30K Relics (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=18500576&postcount=1350) by Vaz
Solar Auxilia (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=18471119&postcount=1234) by Vaz
Taghmata Omnissiah Army List (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=18522411&postcount=1421) by Vaz
Questoris Knights (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=18471124&postcount=1235) by Vaz

30K/Legion Rules
Legion Crusade Army List (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=17232158&postcount=1308)
Legion Special Rules (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=17243267&postcount=1322)
The Primarchs (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=17250802&postcount=1330)

Previous Threads
* Warhammer 40K Tactics (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=29297)
* II: Tactics for the Tactics God (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=101608)
* III: Hats for the Hat Throne (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=119333)
* IV: The Enemy of Your Enemy is Still Your Enemy. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=133984)
* V: Everyone Is On Fire. Some Moreso Than Others. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=141538)
* VI: Chaos Bringing Eternal Darkness? I brought my flashlight. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=149084)
* VII: Common Sense is not RAW. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=156779)
* VIII: "You're Gonna have To Face It, You're Addicted To Maths (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=165820)
* IX: "Mech Is King? I Never Voted For It!" (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=175990)
* X: "Everybody expects the Inquisition!" (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=184538)
* XI: "More Threads than your Tactical Squad has Room for!" (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=193025)
* XII: "Now in Rapid Fire range!" (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=199750)
* XIII: "Ironclads, Furiosos and Soul Grinders, oh my!" (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=208838)
* XIV: "Pray for 6s!" (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=221858)
* XV: "More People Should Be Punched In The Head." (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=232277)
* XV: "Terminator? I hardly know 'er!" (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=248423)
* XVII: "Tyranids Don't Have Friends." (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=265917)
* XVIII: "Fortune Favours the Careless!" (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=282842)
* XIX: Understand the Gravity of the Situation (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?303801-Warhammer-40K-Tabletop-XIX-quot-Understand-the-gravity-of-the-situation-quot)
* XX: Barrage is the new Precision Shot (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?341687-Warhammer-40K-Tabletop-XX-quot-Barrage-is-the-new-Precision-Shot-quot)
* XXI: Preferred Enemy (Dice) (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?359820-Warhammer-40k-Tabletop-XXI-Preferred-Enemy-(Dice))
* XXII: I C'Tan Has Cheese? (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?388399-Warhammer-40K-Tabletop-XXII-I-C-Tan-Has-Cheese#post18535364)
* XXIII: I Do Not Like Green Tides and 'Hann (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?411374-Warhammer-40K-Tabletop-XXIII-I-Do-Not-Like-Green-Tides-and-Hann)
* XXIV: ...And They Shall Know No Fluff. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?444969-Warhammer-40K-Tabletop-XXIV-And-They-Shall-Know-No-Fluff&p=19863366&viewfull=1#post19863366)
* XXV: Friends Are Better Than Wraithknights
* XXVI: Frequently Asked, Frequently Ignored (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?476885-Warhammer-40K-Tabletop-XXV-Friends-Are-Better-Than-Wraithknights)
* XXVII: Tyranids Finally Found a Friend (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?503224-Warhammer-40K-Tabletop-XXVII-Tyranids-Finally-Found-A-Friend)

Here's a bunch of Battle Reports (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=18936242&postcount=1125) for you to read. Plenty of army lists in there.

Cheesegear

2016-12-20, 08:21 AM

Last Time in The Eternal Darkness...

Magnus got pwned on camera, and Thousand Sons got tabled.
Pretty sure Bobby Baratheon was still chasing critique on his army list (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=21505382&postcount=1403).
Cheesegear said Khorne Daemonkin have bad Marines (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=21510522&postcount=1469), but mainly because of how Veterans of the Long War works in Traitor Legions.
Miniwargaming made an extremely obvious one-sided battle (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JwH7iajH3Gg&t=823s) between an Eternal War army and a Maelstrom army, and then played Eternal War.
LeSwordfish did a Guide on Thousand Sons (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=21511069&postcount=1478).
Plastic Sisters of Battle.

We return you to The Darkness.

lord_khaine

2016-12-20, 08:35 AM

Hmm.. i though the armless joke were in the lead?

hamishspence

2016-12-20, 08:43 AM

Cheesegear said Khorne Daemonkin have bad Marines (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=21510522&postcount=1469), but mainly because of how Veterans of the Long War works in Traitor Legions.

It would appear that World Eaters do best with things like Havocs, and not being Berserkers but taking "ordinary" CSM with heavy weapons and the like instead.

So, basically going "old-school" to 2nd ed or even 1st ed.

Cheesegear

2016-12-20, 08:57 AM

It would appear that World Eaters do best with things like Havocs, and not being Berserkers but taking "ordinary" CSM with heavy weapons and the like instead.

Far from it. The whole point (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=21503129&postcount=1396) is that in World Eaters, the addition of Veterans of the Long War giving them so many bonuses - specifically Furious Charge and Fearless - is that Chaos Space Marines are now equivalent to Berzerkers for 4 Points less per model, with access to Meltaguns. The only thing Berzerkers have over regular Chaos Marines is the WS5, which doesn't matter.

Then you go to a Chaos Warband, where Chaos Marines remain Objective Secured (i.e; Good), while the Maelstrom of Gore, is not...And Chaos Marines are still 4 Points less than Berzerkers. If you're running the Blood Host Detachment - where a Warband is still Core - you still get the free movement, and a Lord can still go into a Chaos Marine unit with the Talisman. On foot, still works perfectly. But you can still go in Rhinos if you want to, because Vehicles are still important sometimes.

hamishspence

2016-12-20, 09:05 AM

Wasn't that exactly the point I was trying to make - that the best World Eaters armies now will have CSM instead of berserkers - because of Traitor Legions?

Wraith

2016-12-20, 09:34 AM

Just for easy reference since it's on the front page (and not at all so that I can just subscribe to the new thread...) here's the link to Plastic Sisters of Battle (http://www.belloflostsouls.net/2016/12/40k-breaking-plastic-sisters-more-sighted.html).

New St. Celestine and Seraphim bodyguards (http://pro.bols.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/sisters1216-01-e1482225772267.jpg)
Monstrous Creature-sized Mechanicus Arch-Magos-Thing (http://pro.bols.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/mech1216-01-e1482225752972.jpg)
Return of the coolest Inquistor Lady equipped with Condemnor Boltgun (http://pro.bols.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/inq-1216-01-e1482225799517.jpg) (Seriously BoLS - read a freakin' codex once in a while, it's not THAT hard...)

Have to admit, despite the potential for skub-related shenanigans, Celestine looks pretty good and has met with virtually universal approval from everyone I know.

Gauntlet

2016-12-20, 09:40 AM

The AdMech arch-magos guy reminds me (in pose) of the Necron Tomb Stalker from Forgeworld, just with a tech-priest stuck on the front instead of a head.

Drasius

2016-12-20, 09:48 AM

Thousand Sons
Everything has to be Mark Of Tzeentch. Ah. Oh dear. An awful lot of things don't care about that. Probably comment that only things with a natural invulnerable or that are going to sit on a skyshield should be bothered with. You get +1 invulnerable save when blessed Only if you have VotLW, so it doesn't work with Tzaangors and cultists, the two units that you'd like to take to increase your numbers 'cause they're cheap fodder. That's kind of good, but since half your powers are Tzeentch and don’t have many blessings You always have Force available to you at least, and it needs to be a blessing that affects the whole unit, which rules out a lot of them as they just target the psycher. Shrouding will proc the blessing on every unit within 6" because while the spell only targets the psycher, the bubble hands out shrouded however, which confers to units., you don't get it actually that often. You and Space Wolves hate each other - and this time, that sucks, since Space Wolves are way more likely to be capitalising on that than you are.

You can take Rubric Marines as Troops. Rubric Marines aren't very good, though one squad of them as your AP3 caddies can be pretty good.

Thousand Sons cast powers. You really need something to boost your Warp Charge a bunch, like a ton of allied daemons. That’s why most Thousand Sons lists you see are like 25% Sons and 75% Daemons Of Tzeentch. Daemons are better, so… just take more of them. Like all of them. Thousand Sons aren’t good. That’s the honest part: if you want to play Thousand Sons, figure out some way to use a different ruleset. Deathwatch have lots of librarians and AP3 ammo. Sternguard in a First Company Formation have Fearless and lots of AP3 ammo. Grey Knights are all psykers.

Warlord Traits
1: Adamantium Will isn’t good - it doesn’t help except maledictions or witchfires, and you should have a trillion dice to deny with anyway.
2: Eternal Warrior. That's very nice, especially since you should also have a good Invulnerable.
3: Crap.
4: One extra Psychic Power. That's not bad.
5: You get Deep Strike - or, more importantly, if you have it, you don't Scatter. That's good, but if you didn't plan for it you won't get much out of this.
6: The ground near you is Difficult to enemies. You don’t want to be charged so this is helpful, but it’s not going to do that much. There's a 10 point relic that does the same thing but better cause it works even against enemies with move through cover. This is a terrible trait.

Artefacts
Astral Grimoire: Give something nearby the Jump type. That's actually a pretty neat trick - don't bother deep striking, just take some Jump terminators. Works on friendly units, so almost an auto take, possibly even worth allying in some Sons just for this. Lulzy if not very fluffy with World Eaters. Also helps solve some of the Sons horrendous mobility issues.
Seers Bane: It's at-initiative AP2! It's also basically Strength 10, rolled against your opponent's Leadership - so, wounding on 2/3/4+. However, it still uses Toughness for Instant Death, which means Instant Death'ing a lot of things. This is not bad at all, but Forty Points is way too much, especially in a force that kind of doesn't want to be in close combat. How come this is the only At-Initiative AP2 in the entire book? It's also a daemon weapon, so it also means that it's only really suitable for Exalted Sorcs since 1 peril and then a 1 on your daemon weapon roll and your normal sorceror is dead, not to mention the increased WS, A and I on the Exalted that you pay through the nose for.
Helm Of The Third Eye: Again, good, since you really don't want to be charged. This can also give your Rubricae the chance to Overwatch, which you want. Decent on Scarabs since they have twin linked inferno bolters, but yeah, unless you're taking the flamers on the rubricae (don't), then this isn't worth it.
Staff Of Arcane Compulsion: This is actually neat: You really don’t want to be charged, and this and cover together give your opponent a -4 to the roll.
Coruscator: It gives your Inferno Bolt Pistol Blast and Soul Blaze. That’s not at all worth twenty points.
Athaenian Scrolls: Can prevent Deny The Witch rolls. That's useful if your opponent is really good at them, but so few opponents are. It could be useful against Eldar, but in that matchup you’re really just trying to be alive at the end of turn two. It's even worse than it looks at first since it doesn't even ensure that you get blessings off unmolested since the Target can't deny and you're the target for blessings. Lame.

New Units
Exalted Sorcerors
Over what you'd spend on an equivalent Sorceror, these guys have Fearless, a one-shot lascannon and +1 Ballistic Skill, for sixty points. That's an awful lot - however, it does mean you can bring a bunch of Fearless ICs without needing Lords. It's 40 points over a Sorc and you get +1BS, +1W, +1A and +1I as well as the crappy orbital knockoff. It's usually worth it since that extra wound can be life or death for someone who's going to be casting as often as a Sons unit is. Strongly consider this, even if only for your warlord having an extra wound. It's also to be noted that they have a bunch of wargear unavailable to them that a normal sorc can normally take (most notably terminator armour and a sigil, amongst other things). They also don't make Thousand Sons troops like a normal sorceror (or Ahriman) does in a normal CAD, so if for some bizare reason you wanted one and some rubricae as troops but didn't want a thousand sons specific detatchment, then you're **** out of luck.

Tzaangors
Cultists with WS4 and the Mark Of Tzeentch for +3 points a model. They're the only way to get a lot of Cultists in the special Thousand Sons detachments, but wow, do you really give a **** about the weapon skill of your cultists? 3ppm worth of ****? Just take ordinary cultists - spoiler alert, the special Thousand Sons detachment is bad. They also get T4 which is ... a thing, I guess? But yeah, they're not great. also, they aren't forced to pay the champion tax, so at min size, as long as you don't take the pistols, it's "only" 2ppm more (50 vs 70) and if you are taking cultists in a Thousand Sons detatchment, it's only 10 points difference (60 vs 70).

Rubric Marines
They're still super goddamn expensive, especially because they have to take a Sorcerer - and the Sorcerer is tied solely to the distinctly underwhelming Tzeentch table. Neither 4++ or AP3 is bad, but you're paying so much for it. You can now take Warpflamers (so goddamn expensive) or Soulreaper Cannons (so goddamn expensive, and only one per ten(!) models.) There's really not much you can do with these guys: however, one squad of them isn't too bad. Note that the Warpflamers have the retarded Warpflame rule that makes Tz daemons shooting bad. Handing out +1 fnp is bad and you should feel bad Mmmkay? Having said that, if you hit someone with enough flamers, it won't matter. Did I mention that Tzeentch daemon Flamers (the unit) have the exact same weapon, are jump infantry, have 2 wounds and are only 23 ppm instead of 30, come in a min unit of 3, don't have a 58 point sargent tax and can deep strike? Remember that these guys die like flies to bolters, and even rr1's doesn't help them as much as it should. They're just bad, alright?

Scarab Occult Terminators
The sorceror gets one of his rolls on a table that doesn't suck. However, terminators aren't very good, and these guys are very expensive terminators that don't do much to suck less. At least they aren't Slow And Purposeful too. Being stuck with force swords instead of your choice of power weapon (and by that, I mean axes) makes them pretty bad. Can be effectively immune to non ap2 weapons in their formation though, so that's something. I'm also of the opinion that the weapon upgrades are a trap since you want them in CC and adding some more AP3 really isn't what this army needs. Others disagree though, so actually think about if you need the additional shooting and then decide for yourself. Also note that their hellfyre missiles don't come with frag, nor allow you to fire your bolter like cyclones do for loyalists. Oh, and they've got half range too, because chaos.

Magnus The Red
He's a flying monster that can cast pretty much anything... so long as it's from the Tzeentch or Change table. That sucks. He also has a Str-D beam, but that's warp charge five! What's the Warp Charge cost of Vortex Of Doom? He gets a good warlord trait, though. He’s not a Gargantuan so can’t stomp and can be stomped, is affected by poison as normal. What? His Warlord trait is the second worst one! Also, removed from play affects him as normal (as we saw hilariously in the GW video), so stay away from gargantuans, their stomps can reach out of combat. Basically, he should be flying turn 1 and never coming down whilst spamming the 5 (or 6) best spells for the situation, which are probably the same 5 (or 6) spells every turn. Flickering fire (WC3), treason, prismatic gaze, gaze of Magnus, siphon, Tzeentch's warpflame and doombolt are the ones that should see regular use, with bolt of change, boon of flame and baleful devolution coming out when needed.

All the below formations have the Favoured of Tzeentch rule: if you take the maximum number of units, you get to re-roll 1s on the Invulnerable Save. The maximum number of units is nine, usually, which makes this kind of a rip-off, since that's a ludicrous amount of points, usually on things that aren't very good.

War Cabal
Rubrics, Termies, at least two of various kinds of sorcerers. If you successfully cast a power, you get re-rolls to hit of 1. Not even a little bit worth losing Objective Secured. You can make this work (sort of) at max number of units in 1850, but it's a tight squeeze with almost no options available for anything. Needs further testing, but I suspect that this is the best of a bad bunch of options.

War Coven
A bunch of sorcerers - at least four. You pick a BRB discipline, and get 3+ to cast it. “Oh wow, this is comparable to a cyclopea cabal” you think? No. No, it is not. You pay the Mark Of Tzeentch tax on everything, you have to take at least one power apiece from the Tzeentch table, and if you’re taking four sorcerers you probably don’t want them all rolling on the same table, in which case at least a few are getting nothing.

Tzaangor Warherd
Tzaangors are bad. Fleet and run-and-charge make them less bad, but they’re not going to do much in close combat. Also note that the sorceror doesn't get the run and charge allowance, so if you want him to join one of the tzaangor units (to hand out fearless for example), you're going to have to give him a disk so he can't run when the tzaangors do and ensure that he remains in coherency and then the unit is allowed to charge. Not worth the hassle IMHO, but does provide bodies. I think I'd rather daemon allies instead.

Sekhmet Conclave
Fear is bad. +1 Toughness is decent… if only there was some other way in the chaos book to have Toughness 5 Terminators… for less per model… and without needing to huddle each other… and with proper options… ah, if only. You can take Magnus and be T8 this way as well as being the other core option. For larger games of 2500+, you can have an army of terminators that are T5 and essentially immune to anything not AP2, but then, at 2500, you'd better expect some serious AP2 firepower from the other side, so...

Ahriman’s Exiles
It’s a war coven, but if all the sorcerers are Exalted and Ahriman is included, you cast on a 3+. Ahriman is pretty good, but you’re paying a minimum of 180 points to Exalt the other sorcerers, and it has all the other problems of the Coven. 160 actually, but then why are you not taking ML3 and a spell familiar? Basically, Exalteds are 200 base, no exceptions. At least they don't all have to cast from the same school...

Rehati War Sect
It’s Ahriman’s Exiles, but with Magnus instead of Ahriman, and you can take Daemon Princes instead of the sorcerers. Everything has to be Mastery Level 3, and you get “cast on 3+” and Magnus’ “can target every unit” rule. Again, that’s an awful awful lot of taxes for some underwhelming rules.

Grand Coven
This is the Thousand Sons mega-detachment. You don’t get anything not from the Thousand Sons formations list - so no Warband. You can take single Vehicles as Auxillary choices. In exchange for taking either the (bad) cabal or the (bad) conclave as core, you can re-roll Perils and attempt to manifest an additional power each per turn. This isn’t worth it at all.

You can do better with the Black Crusade detachment, since you can take a single squad of Rubricae as an auxillary choice, and then you can take good things for the rest of the army. At which point you're not really taking Thousand Sons are you? Look, its not possible to do this well.

Tactical Objectives
11: Kill Nine models. This is way harder than “kill a unit” since you can’t just pop a rhino.
12: Psychic Supremacy: Deny The Witch. You should have enough psychic dice to just throw them all at the first power, or you could play more conservatively like normal and still have a pretty decent chance. Fear the smart opponent who has psykers (so you can’t discard this) but chooses not to cast. If they're not casting, I'm still winning.
13: Destroy an Armies Of The Imperium unit. Either easy or basically impossible?
14: Score D3 points if your opponent controls no objectives. This will be really hard, since you have bugger-all for fast units - unless you’re allying a ton of daemons.
15: Destroy an enemy unit in the psychic phase. The best thing you can be doing is casting a trillion witchfires, so this is actually reasonably possible.
16: Manifest three or six powers of different types. This is actually reasonably possible, since the Tzeentch table has five types, and the witchfires count as different types.

Aside from the fact that you're handicapped by being Thousand Sons, this table isn't bad at all.

Thousand Sons aren't good. You can make them better with a hefty allied force of Daemons, but since they're worse than Daemons... look, try and find some other rules somewhere you can use for them instead. You can do anything you want from the Space Marine book.

(I'm going to do some reshuffling - split the original into two posts, with Traitor's Hate and the formations in one, and the legions in the other.)

Comments in green.

*.*.*.*

2016-12-20, 10:16 AM

+++ New Roster (Warhammer 40,000 7th Edition v2013) (1500pts) +++

++ RH Vraks Renegade Unending Host (Renegades & Heretics: IA13 / IA:SoV v2005) ++

+ HQ +

········Renegade Command Squad (Warlord) [Flak Armour, Krak Grenades for Squad]
············Arch Demagogue [Carapace Armour, Close Combat Weapon, Covenant of Khorne, Frag Grenades, Laspistol, Master of the Horde, Warlord]
············Disciple w/ Banner of Hate [Banner of Hate, Close Combat Weapon, Frag Grenades, Lasgun]
············4x Disciple w/ Lasgun [4x Close Combat Weapon, 4x Frag Grenades, 4x Lasgun]

+ Troops +

X4
········Renegade Infantry Platoon
············Platoon Command Squad [Krak Grenades for Squad, Militia Training, Sub-flak Armour]
················Demagogue [Close Combat Weapon, Frag Grenades, Laspistol, Melta Bombs]
················11x Renegade w/ Autopistol [11x Autopistol, 11x Close Combat Weapon, 11x Frag Grenades]
················Renegade w/ Chaos Sigil ]
················Renegade w/ Plasma Gun]
················Renegade w/ Plasma Gun
············Renegade Infantry Squad [Krak Grenades for Squad, Militia Training, Sub-flak Armour]
················Renegade Champion [Close Combat Weapon, Frag Grenades, Laspistol, Melta Bombs]
················11x Renegade w/ Autopistol [11x Autopistol, 11x Close Combat Weapon, 11x Frag Grenades]
················Renegade w/ Chaos Sigil
················Renegade w/ Plasma Gun
················Renegade w/ Plasma Gun
············Renegade Infantry Squad [Krak Grenades for Squad, Militia Training, Sub-flak Armour]
················Renegade Champion [Close Combat Weapon, Frag Grenades, Laspistol, Melta Bombs]
················11x Renegade w/ Autopistol
················Renegade w/ Chaos Sigil
················Renegade w/ Plasma Gun
················Renegade w/ Plasma Gun

1500 on the dot, how would you guys suggest getting this list to 2500?

Cheesegear

2016-12-20, 10:48 AM

If you go down the L&D route (which I now dub "True Hydra") you are unlikely to be able to afford much of anything that can remove obsec.

Which you shouldn't. The Alpha Legion Warband is already doing the majority of the heavy lifting with the Infiltrating Objective Secured Rhinos. Except if you aren't playing Maelstrom, there's no point in doing that, since you can't Ascendency/Supremecy yourself on Turn 1. Since, in Eternal War, you don't get points for covering the board on Turn 1, there's no point. Second, you don't need to remove anything. If you can plant your Objective Secured Power Armour on an Objective with your opponent's ObSec'd Power Armour, then nobody scores any points and the game continues until one you draws something you can use.

Denying your opponent points, is the same as scoring them yourself.

and it doesn't matter how any cultists you spawn if they are all slap fighting at a real unit.

You are using Cultists wrong. Just like he did in the video. Because he was playing Eternal War and there's no other way to use them, except for exactly how he did. Cultists do not engage Objective Secured units. They engage other things that aren't Objective Secured, and contest Objectives and Go To Ground and don't do anything.

Say it with me again, the aim of the Mission for the Alpha Legion was to run his Cultists into the Death Guards' Boltguns. There was never any other outcome. The guy played to the Mission the only way he could, and was shafted. This meant, clearly, that he was not able to use Respawning Cultists in the way that you're supposed to.

Sure you have your warband to do some lifting, but how heavily can you lean on them to actually kill things?

That's what Havocs are for. That's what Fist of the Gods is for. That's what Heldrakes are for. Alpha Legion shouldn't use The Lost & The Damned in the Insurgency Force. Say it with me, again; The Mission they played was already heavily in the Death Guard's favour, you can't **** up Death Guard, it's basically impossible, and Alpha Legion are one of the finessiest Legions in the book, which are totally easy to screw up, as you've just seen.

The game looked one-sided because it was a disaster from start to finish. Just like most of miniwargaming's videos and why I hate them.

Too many people who are theorycrafting this list are focusing too much on cultists on not enough on murder.

And you aren't wrong. Unfortunately, 2-for-1 Cultists is a fun gimmick, and casuals are gonna casual real hard. The problem is, murder doesn't win Maelstrom. It just doesn't.

I still think it will be tough for AL in maelstrom without fearless though.

THAT'S WHAT CHAOS LORDS AND DARK APOSTLES ARE FOR IN THE FORMATION. EXCEPT NO-ONE IS USING THEM RIGHT. I FEEL LIKE I'M TAKING CRAZY PILLS.

LeSwordfish

2016-12-20, 10:57 AM

Cheese, you're killing me, please for gods sake link the new threads in the old one.

QUOTE]
every 1ksons psyker has a blessing due to having force weapons. you can use that power any time you want even if you are not in combat if you want that 3+ invul for your dudes.[/QUOTE]

Ah, my mistake. I will upgrade that ability from "semifunctional" to "a bit duff" then - it's disappointing that I need to be spending precious warp charge to get a worse version of the sort of buff everyone else gets for free.

1 also lets you reroll one dice on a DtW tests. and given the amount of good maledictions lately (and quite a few armies use witchfires despite what you think. shrike is the go-to answer of many armies to big scary monsters.), its not horrible, just poor.
3 is pretty lousy indeed, but you should let people judge for themselves rather than announce it, perhaps they would see a use you do not. what it does is give the warlord and unit the ability to move through cover like necron wraiths. no movement penalties and no charge penalties through terrain.
6 also makes every run/turboboost/flatout/charge within 12" of your warlord cause dangerous terrain tests, that's freaking sweet as it makes charging you and/or eldar dancing shenanigans risk deaths.

1) I've got a psyker in every unit, and so anything maledicting me, i can just throw a thousand dice at it, quite possibly with a +1 for higher mastery level anyway. Anybody outpsyking me is eldar, in which case why even play?
3) I don't think there's much point in just copying out the codex. What do you have in the codex that would benefit from this?
6) I guess, yeah.

Good points re the artefacts: though what "scary 1ksons melee unit" can you suggest?

You forgot the come stock with AoDG, so its 45 points over a sorcerer. also, you forgot inferno bolts (meh), divination picks (not great for 1ksons actually), but most important you forgot +1W, +1I and +1A. this is basically a chaos lord and a sorcerer rolled into one and geared up. he's GOOD at CC. he's a psyker, and he gives important AT shot at unlimited range. he's good. very good.

Ah okay, I clearly did miss a bunch. I'm not sure I agree that he's GOOD at close combat - I wouldn't say that about an ordinary Lord with a power maul and Aura. And he has one lascannon shot. For the same price I could get a whole squad of Havocs, who can shoot four lascannons, and can do it more than once. He's much better than I originally expected though, credit where it's due.

you forgot +1T and that you don't have to buy a team leader. if you care not for the pistol (you don't), a squad of 10 costs only 10 more than a squad of tzeentch cultists. fair enough.

Cultists don't need +T or +Invuln, though, do they? They need to be cheap and numerous? But again, yeah, better than I thought. Sorry.

Unfortunatly accurate. except Tzeentch powers being underwhelming. the update made the tzeentch table quite impressive.

Treason is just the Cabal power, except they get to cast it with bonuses, get it for free, and they get to roll everything on other tables. Siphon is potentially useful for grabbing a few extra warp charge to power up a psyker, but it requires 2-4 psykers near you to cast before you have a good chance of getting your investment back. Everything else just seems underwhelming.

as for sucking less, the sargent has a true sorcerer statline, at cheaper than what a terminator sorcerr tends to cost. their inferno bolts are not amazing, but helpful, and having fearless is a nice touch. these are decent at the very least.

"Mark Of Tzeentch" is pretty suboptimal - i'd definitely rather have access to combi-weapons, better close combat weapons, and a better mark.

even the WC5 D beam. and do you seriously claim THATS too expensive? a D beam is outright bonkers. no power in the game comes close to it in how destructive it can be. that ALONE outguns a wraithknight be far

I don't care that it's a Beam - It only hits each thing once. And sure, it outguns a wraithknight! It bloody should, given that he's twice the price and considerably less tough than a wraithknight! And the Wraithknight doesn't need to cast it's guns.

also, if you view MoT as such a tax, maybe this just isn't the army for you.

Well, yes. The two questions i'm trying to answer are: If I want to play an effective chaos list, what do I play? Not Thousand Sons, and no, you don't put Mark of Tzeentch on everything. And: If I want to play Thousand Sons, how do I make them effective? Well, you have a massive, horrible, uphill battle, with problems caused by the fact that bad things- like Mark Of Tzeentch - are bound into the list at a basic level.

well, yea. they are tarpits. you use this to stick them where you need them.

Oh, I can make a suggestion for where you can stick this. Sorry, couldn't resist. But if it's not fearless, it's not a tarpit. They charge, lose two guys, and get Sweeping Advance-d out of existance. I want Tarpits, I can have Tarpits that are fearless and keep coming back from reserve, or Fearless and Feel No Pain.

Manifesting an additional power and rerolling perils are worth FAR more than you think, especially with the new tzeentch table and the Siphon Power within it. it makes chaining siphons for warp dice engines a thing, it makes zealous spending on throwing treason at the right place at the right time a possibility and it makes throwing tons of withcfires that denying simply can't be done an option. when playing a super-caster-heavy list, these bonuses are great. and 1ksons are meant to be super-caster heavy. especially considering the abilities that trigger off casting like +1 to saves, or the war cabal's rerolling shots.

You need to actually roll Siphon - and something useful to siphon powers for - to use it as a bonus power. Same with Treason - which better psykers can just pick up for free. Look at what everyone else in the book gets!

an enemy with psykers that refuses to cast? seems like a win to me.

What if I have, say, one librarian? I wasn't going to get anything off successfully anyway, so why not deny you a free VP?

Cheesegear

2016-12-20, 11:10 AM

I've got a psyker in every unit, and so anything maledicting me, i can just throw a thousand dice at it, quite possibly with a +1 for higher mastery level anyway. Anybody outpsyking me is eldar, in which case why even play?

Pretty sure Grey Knights can Out-Psyk Thousand Sons.

Good points re the artefacts: though what "scary 1ksons melee unit" can you suggest?

Warp Talons?
*vomit*

I don't care that it's a Beam - It only hits each thing once.

Vortex of Doom is the most destructive Power in the game, at WC3. If that Vortex can stick around for a few turns, the opponent is in trouble. If Grey Knights can cast it twice the same game, there's generally merry Hell in the other guys' Deployment Zone. What makes Vortecies so destructive, is that they stick around even after the Psyker that casts it dies. Can Magnus still do damage once he's dead? ...Didn't think so. I saw him turn into an ice sculpture and then the game was effectively over.

Also, . FLESHBANE, AP3. THAT'S A GOOD IDEA. NO WAIT. MAKE IT A 10" BLAST, TOO.

I can have Tarpits that are fearless and keep coming back from reserve

...See, you get it.

What if I have, say, one librarian? I wasn't going to get anything off successfully anyway, so why not deny you a free VP?

Yeah, sometimes I have nothing good to cast, so why risk Perils'ing myself? If I can deny my opponent a VP at the same time, bonus. My opponent not achieving an Objective, means that they've held onto the card for a turn longer than they should have, which means their deck doesn't cycle, putting them cards behind. If your opponent can prevent you from scoring points, they can prevent you from winning. The only reason for me [I]to cast a Power while my opponent has "Deny the Witch is worth a point." is if casting my own Power would get me a point (e.g; Harness the Warp).

LeSwordfish

2016-12-20, 11:24 AM

Warp Talons?
*vomit*

Daemon Prince and Warp Talons with Mark of Tzeentch, plus a jump pack lord with the AP2 staff. Prince casts Cursed Earth and then chucks a buff at them for a 2++ invuln. Assuming you get both Cursed Earth and a buff, which requires rolling on 2-3 tables so you probably don't. Maybe you could go all-out on the trick and take Magnus?

EDIT: Wait, no, i'm dumb in like four different directions, since they get the 2++ from Cursed Earth without the extra TS buff...

Drasius

2016-12-20, 11:26 AM

What would be a good unit to slap an Astral Grimoire into if you're sticking pure 1kSons? Mutilators? Makes them nice and fast, which is one of their biggest downsides, and then you can Psychic buff them up a reasonable amount.

From the other thread, but I'll reply here 'cause it's the new one.

Jam it in any unit you like that will offer the best protection to the sorceror carrying it while also letting him stay within 12" of the squad that he wants to turn into jump infantry. Oddly enough, Rubricae are half decent for this job as there's not too much other than a heap of scatbikes or Firewarriors that will be able to torrent down a 10 man Sons squad before the Sorceror (who's at the back obviously) can jump to another squad. Remember that the carrier doesn't have to be in the squad, just within 12" of at least 1 model. Muties can work, as can Oblits, Termies, Rubrics, Scarabs, even a big blob of cultists or vanilla CSM's.

If you were asking what the best unit to turn into jump infantry for a phase was, well my personal choice would be khornate CSM with Kharn in there, though one of the better options would be terminators since land raiders are naff and deep striking is too risky, but jump terminators? That's scary when they're 31ppm with axes. But yeah, any slow killy unit is ideal for this and Muties take the cake for both, though when you consider that they're basically worse paladins, I think I'd stick with the termies unless you're fighting things that can't double them out.

Technically it also works for daemons (and KDK), but I can't think of a slow non-vehicle assault unit in that dex - Maybe bloodletters? though to classify them as assault instead of chaff is probably pushing it. Oh, wait - Possesed totally qualify, though then you're actively taking a unit of possessed by choice and that's rarely the right move, though IIRC, they're mandatory in the KDK decurion/bloodhost thing.

Allied Sons Detatchment
105 - Sorceror, MoT, Grimoure
60 - 10x MoT Cultists

Inquisitorial Detatchment
25 - Inquisitor

190 points. The inquisitor saves you points over a TSons CAD if he's the warlord, otherwise just get a second CAD if you want to have your other forces as CSM.

Your other option is a Cyclopia cabal and fish the new powers for soulswitch, but that comes with risks that you don't roll it, you fail to cast it or that it gets denied, so yeah.

World Eater Butcherhoarde

165 - Kharn
140 - Lord, Talisman, MoK, Power Axe, Sigil
200 - 10x CSM, MoK, 7x CCW, 2x Melta
200 - 10x CSM, MoK, 7x CCW, 2x Melta
121 - 3x Termies, MoK, 3x Axes, 3x Combis
125 - 5x Havoks, MoK, 4x Autocannons
155 - 5x Raptors, MoK, 2x Melta, Power Axe
32 - 1x Spawn, MoK

Thousand Sons CAD

195 - Sorc, MoT, ML3, Familiar, Termie Armour, Grimoure
70 - 10x Tzaangors
60 - 10x Cultists, MoT

1458

392 points to play with, more if you drop the Cultists for an inquisitor to be your warlord (keep the Tzaangors so you're majority T4 at least).

Drasius

2016-12-20, 11:35 AM

Daemon Prince and Warp Talons with Mark of Tzeentch, plus a jump pack lord with the AP2 staff. Prince casts Cursed Earth and then chucks a buff at them for a 2++ invuln. Assuming you get both Cursed Earth and a buff, which requires rolling on 2-3 tables so you probably don't. Maybe you could go all-out on the trick and take Magnus?

EDIT: Wait, no, i'm dumb in like four different directions, since they get the 2++ from Cursed Earth without the extra TS buff...

If I'm not mistaken, he's refering to a crappy deathstar based around a bunch of exalted sorcs on disks. The one with the Seer's Bane has 8-12 attacks on the charge at Str 10 AP2 I5 (wounding against Ld but ID against T), then followed by [Number of Sorcs] x 5 which will be str 6 ap4 and you'd assume instant death from force. One of the sorcs could also be str 9 ap2 if you're lucky and roll iron arm, maybe even have +3 attacks and +3 I if you really lucked out and got warp speed too. The idea is that you take them from Ahrimans Exiles usually.

Still, just the guy with the seer's bane is a competant enough threat to make many things short of a dedicated assault unit think twice about charging a unit that is normally completely harmless in melee (rubrics) or completely harmless in melee against 2+ armour (Scarabs). Jamming a Seer Exalted into a unit of scarabs along with using the grimoure on them from another sorceror is probably the way to go if you're running the war cabal and need 2 sorcs and a unit each of rubrics and scarabs. Still expensive and not as good as most true deathstars though, but good enough to be scary in casual games.

Edit: Also, can't have a 2++ with MoT since it only allows you to have a 3++ max, though if you can get to a 2++ without needing the MoT, then that's fine, but at that point, why are you taking the MoT anyway?

What makes Vortecies so destructive, is that they stick around even after the Psyker that casts it dies. Can Magnus still do damage once he's dead? ...Didn't think so. I saw him turn into an ice sculpture and then the game was effectively over.
...

My opponent not achieving an Objective, means that they've held onto the card for a turn longer than they should have, which means their deck doesn't cycle, putting them cards behind. If your opponent can prevent you from scoring points, they can prevent you from winning.

It's almost like action advantage is a thing outside of DnD! Whou would have thought?[/sarcasm]

boomwolf

2016-12-20, 11:43 AM

Cheese, you can't really take that game as indication to anything.
The 1ksons list was poorly written and poorly used even before you consider the mission they played.

The mission was an alter of war where woofs gets bonuses and 1ksons wins by simply having at least one psyker alive by game end.

That's it.
All you need is to survive. Not to do fancy things with Magnus.

But he took Magnus, and ahriman (two warp charge devourers),no warp engines at all (not even the son's psyker spam siphoning) few bodies because if that and big squads rather than MSU. And then he focused on all the wrong powers

Honestly I doubt you could do any worse with the sons. He made every possible mistake and then some (IIRC some woofs charged out of a rhino?)

Requizen

2016-12-20, 12:24 PM

Starting to plan my Adepticon army for the Champs. Currently, what I know is that it's 1850, 2 Detachments max, up to 700 points of LoW in any combination. Which means big ol' Imperial Deathstars are mostly out, Chaos Deathstars are maybe still in, Eldar is of course in, and GSC is going to be amazing. Tau will probably not be great since you can't run double 'Surges, but Riptide Wings are still a thing and very much worth the detachment slot. Missions will be ITC/ETC style, so ObSec isn't as critical as it was last year.

Not sure if I want to run a star of some sort or just like an uber-standard Decurion+DCult+Harvest stuff. There'll be a couple RTTs in the meantime to do some testing. I think I might just try a star so the games are easier to play.

Drasius

2016-12-20, 12:37 PM

Having had the misfortune to play against some 'Crons recently, I'd say no uber deathstar since it's just too easy to avoid and any player worth being your opponent will do just that. Decurion, DCult, Harvest and the remainder of your points on tomb blades would be my best guess for a strong list.

hamishspence

2016-12-20, 12:44 PM

I'd like to see Cheesegear's Chaos Daemons list building guide updated to include stuff from War Zone Fenris. Brimstone Horrors, presumably, may make a difference - and the new Daemon "decurion" type detachment.

Forum Explorer

2016-12-20, 02:51 PM

DaedalusMkV

2016-12-20, 03:19 PM

Tehnar

2016-12-20, 03:31 PM

I don't see how anyone in the era of remove from play effects can anyone claim Magnus is good. He is literary one rolled 6 on the D table away from you being down a warlord and 650 points.

LeSwordfish

2016-12-20, 03:44 PM

A Guide To Treachery: Part I
Guides to Traitor Legions and Traitor's Hate.
With contributions from Cheesegear, Grim Portent, Boomwolf, and Drasius.

This got too long for one post, so I've split it up in two. First part is general advice, and the Traitor's Hate book. Traitor's Hate contains some generic Chaos formations, including the Black Crusade Detachment, Renegade Knights, and Tactical Objectives. Traitor Legions contains all the same formations, but not the Detachment, Knights, or Objectives, plus a considerable amount of stuff for individual chaos legions.

You need at least one of these books to make Chaos Space Marines competitive. Without at least one, you're going to struggle to win even casual games.

New Generic Formations
These are in both books.
Chaos Warband
Pretty much a CSM Demi-Company. It’s a whole bunch of stuff with Objective Secured, what else do you need to know? Well, lots actually. It’s a Core choice for just about all the forthcoming detachments, so knowing how to do it cheaply is important.

Chaos Lord - 65
Chaos Chosen - 90
Chaos Space Marines - 75
Chaos Space Marines - 75
Chaos Bikers - 70
Havocs - 75

Thats a total of 450 points, and you get five MSU Objective Secured units, with the only real “tax” being the chosen - pay twenty more points and take Suicide Terminators. Not bad! You can probably make that contribute to your army properly for less than 600 points total, and then you get to take whatever else interesting that’s actually thematic for your Legion. Unless you’re going all-out on something unusual like Raptors, or you really really want a Sorceror instead of a Lord (though you can take one as well) this should be your standard force instead of a CAD. Your non-troops (including Transports like Land Raiders) gain Objective Secured, and you get double rolls on the boon table. This makes it easy to avoid the few detrimental boons, and max out on useful bonuses.

If you’re taking this, please for god’s sake find 30-odd points for a single Spawn - that’s enough to turn this into any of the Legion Detachments or the Black Crusade, and you get a whole extra set of special rules. Please. Don’t make me beg you. Thirty points.

The Lost And The Damned
You want cultists? We got cultists! You can throw a poop-ton of cheap bodies at the board, and they come back from Outflank when they die. However, they’re not Objective Secured, so they lose a lot of utility and turn into meatshields, and every time they die they give up a kill point… it’s the only way to get Cultists, though, so if you want them… you don’t have much choice. Minimum cost is 305 points, so you could always take this AND a Warband.

Helforged Warpack
You get Daemonforge multiple times, and assorted buffs to one thing in the Warpack, including the Character special rule, which is pretty good since then you can Challenge scary thunder hammers etc, and a 4++ - Helbrutes get more out of this, since they're the only ones without a 5++ anyway. Those aren’t bad, but the Warpsmith is a hundred points of tax, and do you really want to pay that much for them? On the plus side, you were taking three or more -fiend units if you were taking any, right?

Heldrake Terror Pack
Heldrakes are good and this is the only way to do it. The Merciless Pursuit rule is broken, as in doesn’t function at all. Debuffs to leadership are only sometimes good. The rules don't honestly matter: Heldrakes are great, and this lets you put two in any army you want, without worrying about any tax units.

Cult Of Destruction
Pretty good! Shooting/attacking twice is nice, but limited. You have to stick close to your Warpsmith, so you're footslogging or in a Land Raider, and you have to shoot the same unit twice with different weapons. Neither of those is a crippling loss, though. You’ll want at least one maxed unit for the Warpsmith to buff, so that’s a minimum of five models… if you were taking that many anyway, (and hell, they’re not bad, you might as well be) 110 points to shoot twice is actually pretty fair.

Fist Of The Gods
It’s the only way you can get the Chaos armour, and you pay the Warpsmith Tax. Chaos has a pretty full Heavy Support slot, though, so I guess you can use this to open slots for Obliterators. Unless you need that, or really want tanks, avoid.

Raptor Talon
Charging out of Deep Strike is fun, but will probably not actually work. You don’t have anything to make Deep Striking more reliable* and similarly nothing for reserve rolls, and if you do pull it off, your charge is Disordered! (Remember not to take Mark Of Khorne, since Rage and Furious Charge are useless in a disordered charge.)

This formation is just so weedy compared to the C:SM ones that do the same thing. Negatives to leadership is neat - Fear is useless, sure, but maybe you can Sweeping Advance? Unless you really want lots of raptors, I’d suggest taking them in the Warband instead - get Objective Secured.

*As Drasius points out, Warp Talons can benefit from Icons carried by friendly Daemon units. You can Summon a unit with an Icon, and then reduce scatter using that, or you can cast Cursed Earth, which boosts their Invulnerable too.

Terminator Annihilation Force
Compare this to the First Company Formation and weep. You get Hatred - you have this against 50% of armies already - and can shoot a bonus time against a single unit if you Deep Strike in. I guess you could take combi-meltas, pop a transport, and then combi-bolter a unit that comes out, but you’re paying a lot of points to Alpha Strike, like, a single Chimera. Alternatively, shooting the Burning Brand twice is not bad.

You still don’t have anything to make Deep Striking better. Again, I would just max out the terminator slots in your Warband.

Favoured Of Chaos
Posessed are bad, and this doesnt make them better enough. Remember in most detatchments, you can take a Daemon Prince as a Command choice.

Black Crusade Detachment (Traitor's Hate Only)
You should seriously consider taking this instead of your own Legion’s Detachment. Free boon rolls are really that good. You can make this all a Legion detachment anyway, or you can mix and match Legions for the formations within it.

If you’re not dedicated to a Legion, you should really take this. Chaos just can’t keep up in a CAD without Legion rules, and it gives you the free VoTLW which is de rigeur for Legion troops. It's also the only Detachment that can take Huron Blackheart, Fabius Bile, or any named character not in the codex like Necrosius.

Cheesegear points out that a Dark Apostle allows you to re-roll boon rolls, which allows you to get the best out of your free rolls, and your free double-rolls (two boons with re-rolls gives you a roughly 1/4 chance of turning into a Daemon Prince). That requires an allied CAD or a Lost And The Damned, which is 200 points minimum, so... if you think that's worth it, then go ahead. Opinions differ, though.

You can also take a bunch of Sorcerors as command choices for taxless Sorcerors. The Cyclopea Cabal does the same thing, but is tied to the Black Legion - which do you want more, the Cabal's special power, or your own legion and detachment bonuses.

Chaos Space Marine Tactical Objectives (Traitor's Hate Only)
You have to use these instead of the "Capture And Control" ones, though if you're running a Legion you can use those instead - with the Legion ones, you get a choice.

11: Destroy a unit. You can do this, right? The usual easiest way to do this is pop a light vehicle, though Chaos can sometimes pull it off with a Sweeping Advance.
12: Manifest a power. Should be fairly easy. You brought Spell Familiars, right?
13: At the start of each turn, randomly roll an objective, which you have to capture. Easier than a normal one, since if it randomly picks one underneath a Warlord Titan you get to roll again next turn.
14: Make a Boon roll. If you took the Black Crusade detachment, then congratulations, enjoy your free VP. Otherwise, it’s killing characters with characters - you can do that, right? Champions Of Chaos says you have to.
15: Take an objective from your opponent. You need fast Objective Secured.
16: Make a boon roll on your Warlord, which means getting your Warlord into challenges. Go bully some guard sergeant or something. The rest is random, though re-rolls (Dark Apostle) and the Chaos Warband can help you get the good stuff. Is an extra 3 VP worth getting your warlord turned into a Daemon Prince?

This table is great if you’re taking the Black Crusade detachment, (2/6 as “free” VPs is as good as it gets). If not, it’s still pretty decent.

Renegade Knights (Traitor's Hate Only)
They're Knights, but spiky. That doesn't translate to any new rules, except that you can take two of the same gun, and - a major bonus for me - you don't have to memorise which is the paladin and which is the Errant.

Knights are pretty decent, but everyone knows how to kill them by now. Chaos don't have much access to super-heavies or Str-D, and knights bring both of those. You can also use these rules to ally them to Necrons or Orks, both of whom have pretty sub-par super-heavies.

Knights love being given Ignores Cover. Love it. Perfect Timing doesn't work, so roll on Geomortis. Alternatively, you can have fun following them around with sorcerers casting on Heretech.

Thunderstrike Gauntlet: Unwieldy is really bad on a knight, since that means your Str-D is going at the same time as Chainfists and Thunder Hammers and all those scary things. Swapping at-init attacks for a AP- large blast is probably not worth it, although if you only ever use your knight for fights it can win then... sure. You bully.
Reaper Chainsword: Chaos don't have much access to Str-D. Knights are speedy enough to get some good use out of this, so I would seriously consider keeping it in case you need to chainsword a wraithknight or something. It also keeps your knight cheap - two guns and you're seriously stacking on the points cost for something that is not as tough as you might want.

Avenger Gatling Cannon: Messes up marines like nobody's business. Take two to wipe just about anything with a 3+ save off the map - and with Rending, you can have a proper shot at 2+ save units or light vehicles too. Probably the best general-purpose gun, and pairs well with the carapace weapons.
Rapid-fire Battle Cannon: It's a battle cannon that shoots twice at 72". That means it's high enough strength to Instant Death toughness 4, and with two shots you might be able to sneak wounds through good cover too. I would suggest that the Gatling Cannon is better - unless you think you'll be making more than six or so hits per Large Blast.
Thermal Cannon: If you can't be Str-D at range, Str-9 melta does the job pretty well. Chaos quite like high-strength AP1, since they only have so many ways to crack tanks at range. If you'd rather crack terminators/tanks than anything else, this is the gun for you.

My personal recommendation would be either the Gatling Cannon or Thermal cannon or both.

Ironstorm Missile Pod: You don't have much Barrage, and its lovely long range. Str5 Ap4 isn't much to write home about, though. It's a whirlwind. Do you want a whirlwind? Don't answer that, you don't.
Icarus Autocannons: You don't have much access to Skyfire, and this brings you Skyfire on a tough target. It's also the only gun a knight can take that can fire backwards, so if you expect to need to charge backwards, this is how you do it. However, Drasius points out that against most fliers, the Stormspear will do about as well - when it hits, it hits hard.
Stormspear Rocket Pod: Three-shot krak missiles. One thing knights are really good at is taking out tanks, and this will add a lot of firepower to that role.

Meltagun: Helps you crack tanks. However, that heavy stubber is really only for shooting things you want to charge, so, it's not necessary.

Renegade Knight Household: You get preferred enemy against Imperial Knights, and they get it against you. This sounds balanced, until you realise that if you’re taking triple-knights, then they can be taking triple-knights, and their formations are much better than this, and they get their own formation bonus AND Preferred Enemy, which makes this a joke.

Traitor's Hate also includes the rules for Khorne Lords Of Skulls and the Trinity Of Blood. Both are noted down below in the World Eaters legion section.

Some General Notes on Legions
You can make any detatchment or formation a Legion formation, including Combined Arms Detachments and Allied Detachments. If you’re in a Legion, you’ll have restrictions on what Marked units you can have. This will really hurt some units, who really want either Marks or Icons. You also get Veterans Of The Long War for free on everything that will take it, which is neat. You also get extra special bonuses on everything with VotLW - remember that this includes Daemon Princes and all named HQs, but not Spawn, Cultists, Tzaangors, or Vehicles. You're also restricted in what Characters you can take - only the ones in the codex are listed. This means no Cypher, no Forge World characters, and no Huron or Fabius.

Marked Psykers can roll all powers on their god’s tables. There’s a few good’uns hidden in there - particularly on the Nurgle table - and rolling all powers gets you a better shot at them. Honestly, though, nothing compares to the usual best powers from the BRB. As usual, plan ahead and have some idea of what you want to do.

Many legions move things to Troops. Remember that this happens even if you’re using Formations - you no longer give up VPs for Big Guns Never Tire or Purge, and some things (like Deathwatch) will work differently for you. The best of this is Objective Secured when in a CAD, though.

You can choose between the Legion tactical objectives, and the generic CSM ones in Traitor's Hate. You can't choose to go back to the standard ones.

Black Legion
All the Black Legion formations, traits, etc are unchanged from the Black Legion book way back when. The only difference is the Legion rules - you get Veterans Of The Long War for free now, instead of having to pay for it on everything.

Most notable thing about Black Legion is you can take Marked units if you want. The usual restrictions on making things troops applies, so you can totally take a Nurgle Lord and all of your troops can be Plague Marines. You also get Terminators and Chosen as troops choices - though both are pretty expensive for what they do.

You get Hatred against everything, and super-hatred against Armies Of The Imperium. That’s not bad, if you can get into combat, but it's small potatoes compared to most of the other legions.

Warlord Traits
1: Cool, I guess.
2: Re-roll Boon rolls. You can stack this with the Warband to get effectively four choices, but you don’t really need that.
3: A single flamer? This is a joke, right?
4: It Will Not Die - Finally something worthwhile.
5: Reasonable, I guess.
6: Stubborn Aura. Not too bad, but more or less everything will be Fearless, LD10, or both.

Nothing is a stand-out. Roll elsewhere.

Artefacts
The Crucible Of Lies: I wouldn’t pay 25 points to re-roll invulnerable saves of 1, let alone 25 points AND a point of Toughness
Eye Of Night: A one-shot weapon for the cost of a whole squad? You’re taking the ****.
Hand Of Darkness: A one-attack weapon for slightly less than the cost of a whole squad? You’re taking the ****.
Last Memory: Sunburst guaranteed isn’t bad, a bonus Mastery Level isn’t bad, and you can make Sunburst better for more Warp Charge. Neato.
Skull Of Kern’Gar: Eternal Warrior! Yes. Best. Remember Black Legion can Mark things, so you can get the coveted 3++/Eternal Warrior combo.
Spineshiver Blade: A Powersword/Mark Of Slaanesh/Daemon weapon. Pretty good if you have something else for AP2.

Formations
Chosen Of Abaddon
One-four squads of Terminators/Chosen and an equal number of Lords/Sorcerors to lead them. You then get Fearless for all those squads (which the Lords already give), and what is basically a free Gift for each lord/sorceror. That’s… not much. That’s almost not anything, really. If you’re taking four squads of terminators or chosen they should be objective secured, if you’re taking four sorcerors they should be in a cabal, and if you’re taking four lords you’re an idiot.

Bringers Of Despair
One squad of terminators and Abaddon. Terminators get +1WS and BS (okay, I guess) and Abaddon can re-roll one Look Out Sir per phase. When the opportunity cost is that these guys could be Objective Secured… Look, these are formations from an old book, okay? Chaos Didnt Get Nice Things.

The Hounds Of Abaddon
A lord, Beserkers, marines, and Fast units. Everything has to be Mark Of Khorne for free, and you get one turn Run-Charge and bonus strength on a long charge. It’s not bad at all, but World Eaters are definitely better (Furious Charge as standard) and Khorne Daemonkin are probably better too.

Daemon Engine Pack
A little better than the Helforged Warpack, but you can only take two -fiends.

Cyclopia Cabal
Tax-free sorcerers, who all get a free psychic power - one that's not even bad. However, if you're taking one of the Detachments you can totally take a bunch of sorcerers as command choices instead, and they get your legion and the detachment rules, which could well be better than the power and the Black Legion rules.

The Tormented
Nope, Posessed still aren’t good.

Black Legion Warband
Chaos Warband without Objective secured. Thus, a bad warband. You don’t have to take Havocs, though, so… it’s cheaper. You can also take Chosen instead of ordinary marines, so if you want to spam chosen you can. I'm not sure why you would, though.

Black Legion Speartip
It’s the only MFD that can take the Black Legion formations, but you have to take the Black Legion warband instead of the Chaos Warband. That means no Objective Secured whatsoever, which hurts. You do get to start rolling to Deep Strike from the first turn, though… so if that’s what you want to do, this is how you do it. No, you don’t get to have an All Deep Strike army, because both Core choices have ordinary CSM in. Raptor Talons can deep strike and assault on turn one, if you're rolling hot.

If you’re not really keen on first-turn deep striking (with no bonuses whatsoever, aside from one auto-pass), then the Black Crusade is just better.

Tactical Objectives
11: Destroy a unit. Well, duh. What you're doing anyway.
12: Force a unit to fail a Morale/Pinning/Fear check. There’s not that much that’s susceptible to this, and you don’t have as much ability to capitalise on it as others.
13: Remove all Independent Characters. This is going to depend on your opponent’s army very much - maybe you just need to kill the warlord, maybe you need to winkle a full Conclave out of three separate squads.
14: Roll a D6, capture that objective. Unlike some, you roll the dice only once and it stays the same for the whole game. Just do whatever you’d do to capture a normal objective.
15: This is a nice easy objective to get the good bit of, because almost everything has Veterans.
16: Manifest a power, get more points for manifesting a Conjuration or even more for Sacrifice. You should be able to get the lower end easily. D3+3 is a glorious bounty for blowing up your Sorcerer, and you get a free Daemon Prince for it.

Is this easier than the generic CSM ones? Depends on your opponent’s list (how many ICs do they have? are they going to fail Leadership?) and your own powers (do you have Conjuration powers?). If you’re taking the Black Crusade, the answer is a solid No.

Black Legion have the most stuff, but actually only have a few things they want to do. If you don’t want “terminators deep striking turn one” or “terminators as troops”, you won’t get much from Black Legion.

The rest of the legions are in the post below.

LeSwordfish

2016-12-20, 03:46 PM

A Guide To Treachery: Part II
Guides to Traitor Legions and Traitor's Hate.
With contributions from Cheesegear, Grim Portent, Boomwolf, and Drasius.

This is the second part of this post. The first part contains generic things all legions have access to, plus the Black Legion rules. Traitor Legions contains all the formations listed in part 1, but not the Detachment, Knights, or Objectives. It also contains the Legions rules, which are below.

Alpha Legion
This is more like it! You get no Marks whatsoever, which is fine. Ordinary Marines, Chosen, and Cultists get Infiltrate, which is fantastic. (Chosen are also troops). This makes Chosen pretty useful, since you can take a ton of special weapons and have them in place really easily.

Your Warlord also basically can’t be killed until your last Character is killed. Remember you generate a new trait each time. This is great because it makes Slay The Warlord nearly impossible to get, without exerting too much effort on making your Warlord unkillable. Alpha Legion are thus pretty good psykers, since you can keep all your sorcerers really cheap.

Warlord Traits
1: Infiltrate. Oh right, you need this to join one of your units of Chosen or something. This is pretty good, but actually not as great as it sounds. Did you build your warlord in the expectation of getting it? What are you actually planning on doing with Infiltrate? Being 18” away and hoping to charge turn two is not terrible, but you kind of need to build for it, and it’s random.
2: You can swap with another character at the start of your turn. It’s great for getting out of nasty combats, but actually since its the start of your turn your opponent has probably had at least one turn of doing whatever they want to you. And it’s not like you’d be losing your Warlord VP any time soon.
3: Autopass a reserve roll each turn. Fantastic, since you get loads of Outflanking.
4: Stealth. Not bad.
5: Cultists get boosted. If you’re going all-out on cultists, this is great.
6: Acute Senses and Outflank. Like #1, it’s only good if you built for it.

This table is decent. You’ve got a 2/6 chance of being able to Outflank, so you could set up to do that and pop up in someone’s backline.

Artefacts
Mindveil: Dang, this is really nice. Move 3d6 instead of moving normally. Can get you longer-range charges if you want, or can be used as better-than-Hit-and-Run. Chaos don’t have much access to Hit and Run, so be a bastard and use this for that.
Blade Of The Hydra: You can put out a hell of a lot of attacks with this, which makes Rending really good. It’s pretty good.
Viper’s Bite: Str5 AP2 boltgun. That’s pretty decent but you can probably think of something better to take.
Drakescale Plate: 2+ armor saves rule. 2+ invuln against flamers is near-completely useless, because none of the ones in the rules are AP2 to get through your armour anyway. Still, 25pts for Artificier Armor isn’t too bad. Remember, a Daemon Prince of Tzeentch with this re-rolls 1s, giving it a 2+rr.
Icon of Insurrection: Cultists get Zealot. That’s good - Cultists benefit a lot from fearless. Remember that the Dark Apostle in the Lost And The Damned is doing the same thing, and you can actually cover an awful lot of ground with Fearless auras.
Hydra’s Teeth: Blast, Ignores Cover, and Poisoned 2+ on a bolt weapon. Ignores Cover is pretty bad on a ap5 weapon. You can probably get more out of the Viper’s Bite, though hey, only you know whether you see more guardsmen or Terminators.

Insurgency Force
You have to take a Warband, and they aren’t even bad. Everything gets Shrouded during the first turn, which is legit fantastic since you Infiltrate up into cover, survive shooting with 2+/3+ cover saves, and then you’re in position to shoot - or charge, if you got the first turn. The FAQ has changed the other rule - it now gives you +1 on your Lost And The Damned re-roll.

This is a fantastic formation. You can take a trillion cultists, make them all Fearless with Dark Apostles and Artefacts, and keep bringing them in from Outflank. Just make sure you’ve got some heavy guns to deal with anything the cultists can’t distract- that can be what your Warband is for! You might want to take a Cult Of Destruction or something for Lascannons.

Remember Typhus’ “plague zombies” rule states “all cultists in the army”, and the Poxwalker Hive states “any friendly unit”. If you want, you can give all those cultist squads Fearless and Feel No Pain for a 330pt Combined Arms Detatchment. However, Slow And Purposeful will really hurt that in a maelstrom game, and if you’re going all-out on cultists you might need them to do some shooting.

Tactical Objectives
11: Capture A Building. The one time you run into an opponent with a building, this will probably be really hard.
12: Have a unit of Cultists destroyed. This will be happening a lot.
13: Destroy a unit with any of a set of special rules. This should actually be fairly easy, since these rules are pretty ubiquitous - remember that a fair few unit types always have deep strike. It’s still harder than “destroy any unit”, though.
14: Most things in your army will have Infiltrate, so this is just doing what you do anyway.
15: Capture objectives in your opponent’s deployment zone, with 1VP for one or D3 for two. This is fairly difficult, although you’ve got the tools to do it if anyone can. Warbands infiltrate with Objective Secured and Rhinos.
16: Kill characters. Kill lots of them. One should be easy, and the rest are just gravy.

This is a good list, especially since Alpha Legion are one of the groups who really want to run their own detachment rather than the Black Crusade.

Alpha Legion rule, especially in Maelstrom. They take a bit more piloting than Death Guard, but can get more out of it.

Iron Warriors
No marks, again. Obliterators benefit a whole bunch from Marks of Nurgle or Tzeentch.

Imperial Fists hate you, and you mega-hate them. Its nice and fluffy when it comes up, and pretty powerful too - they’re much less likely to be geared for close combat than you are. You get Feel No Pain (6+) which is nice - but the real benefit is that Obliterators and Mutilators are troops choices, and they and Havocs are Tank Hunters. This is great! You probably want some cheaper, more numerous units as troops (you can get five 3+ dudes for the cost of one Obliterator), but getting Objective Secured on things is never bad. Both can deep strike in onto objectives if you want - as Drasius points out, this is great for Mutilators, since you either have to shoot them or watch them tear up small units and vehicles.

Warlord Traits
1: Feel No Pain (4+). Cool!
2: Fearless. This is where you realise that Iron Warriors really wants you to take the underwhelming Warpsmith as your Warlord.
3: You can give a piece of terrain +1 Cover Save. This is great, since you have a lot of units that just want to sit back in cover.
4: Obliterators can fire the same gun twice in a row. Depends very much on how many Obliterators you're taking, and what you want to do with them.
5: Counter-Attack and Split Fire when in cover. That’s pretty nice.
6: Vehicles near you have It Will Not Die. Nice, but why are you spending points on vehicles instead of Tank Hunting, Objective Secured Obliterators.

If you have a Warlord Warpsmith and Vehicles, 3/6 are good. If you have a bunch of Obliterators and Havoks in cover, a different 3/6 are good. If you have both… you’re probably playing a really big game, and this is a useful table to take. Otherwise, I wouldn’t recommend it.

Artefacts
Warpbreacher: You can give a nearby - really nearby - vehicle - Daemonic Possession. This isn’t a bad ability to hand out, since sometimes you really do need a vehicle to not be stunned or shaken for a turn. That tiny range is really restrictive, though, and you could just buy Daemonic Possession for the tank anyway.
Nest Of Mechaserpents: In a challenge, if you land your first two attacks, the rest have Instant Death. That’s not bad, though how many things exist that are worth Instant Death-ing that you have more than 25% chance of landing two specific attacks on?
Axe Of The Forgemaster: Armourbane, master-crafted power axe. If you’re thinking of taking a powerfist, this is actually better, though you pay for it on a Terminator. 5+2d6 is 12 on average, compared to 11 for a powerfist, and it’s not a specialist weapon, and it’s Master-crafted so those attacks are going to hit. You can boost the strength still further by putting it on a prince.
Fleshmetal Exoskeleton: 2+ Armor save and It Will Not Die. Pretty fantastic, especially on a Tzeentch prince.
Cranium Malevolus: Every nearby vehicle, every one of your shooting phases, takes a haywire hit. This isn’t bad, but I think you should seriously consider what your warlord should do - if you’re sitting back on an objective with everything else, how often will you see tanks within 2d6”
Siegebreaker Mace: Master-crafter Power Maul, that can make a single str10 Ap1 hit instead of a normal attack. This makes the Black Legion equivalent look like a bad joke, especially since it’s cheaper. A power maul isn’t a great base, though.

Grand Company
You can take Fortifications as an auxillary slot. This is nice, since you get Fearless for sitting on them, and Stubborn otherwise. You also get to re-roll scatter on Ordnance or Barrage weapons… so, Vindicators? And your fortifications, I guess.

If you want to do Fortifications - and you’re Iron Warriors, so its very thematic - this is a great detachment for it. If you don’t… re-rolling scatter on your Vindicators? How many are you taking? Would be great if you could somehow get Basilisks, but those days have passed. If you're not doing Fortifications, you can probably get more out of Objective Secured Obliterators in a CAD.

Tactical Objectives
11: Destroy a unit near your table edge. Good, nice and easy.
12: Destroy a unit controlling an Objective Marker. Again, its what you’d be doing anyway.
13: Destroy something with Obliterators. If you’re taking a bunch of them, this is pretty trivial.
14: Keep controlling an objective marker until the end of your next turn for D3VPs. Yet again, it wants you to sit back and hold your own.
15: Damage a building or fortification, or destroy for D3VPs. This isn’t too hard, but who takes buildings?
16: Destroy vehicles. You should be doing this anyway.

This is a really good table - it’s just a shame Iron Warriors fall behind in the rest of Maelstrom. They don’t have much that can move fast (are you going to Flat Out your Vindicators onto objectives) and have lots of things that want to sit still and close together.

If you’re taking Obliterators, making them troops is great. If you’re taking tanks and warpsmiths, you can get good things for them. Can you take both in one force? Probably, so long as you’re not playing 1000 points or something. Iron Warriors really want to sit back and shoot, which doesn’t work in Maelstrom. In Eternal War, though, it can totally work.

Night Lords
You get Fear, Night Vision, and Stealth, and Raptors are Troops. Raptors only get so much from Stealth, though, thanks to Dangerous Terrain tests, and already have Fear. You'll probably want some standard squads hiding at the back in cover. Stealth is also great on Bikes, winged Daemon Princes, and Heldrakes, since they can jink whenever they want.

Remember all three of those rules are passed to squads by an Independent Character, making Night Lords pretty good allies.

You also inflict -2 to Fear tests. If anything worth assaulting wasn't immune to fear, this would be pretty nice! Ultimately, Night Lords are bullies: they'll wreck anything weaker than them, but struggle against any kind of dedicated close combat. They're not World Eaters, you have to actually pick your battles.

Warlord Traits
1: Nice
2: Not bad, but not great.
3: You probably already have this against most things. Probably re-roll.
4: Pretty good! Remember your 5+ cover (Stealth/Stormbolt Plate) is better when re-rolling than a 4+ invulnerable. Just.
5: Cool.
6: Rampage. Meh.

You know who really benefits from this table? A daemon prince: just about any is great on him. Otherwise, you'll get more from Strategic.

Artefacts
Scourging Chains: Pretty good, but you only get one per model.
Claws Of The Black Hunt: Rending is very nice on Lightning Claws, as is master-crafted. That's a lot of points, though.
Talons Of The Night Terror: I mean, if you WANT to be better at killing guardsmen... Or put them on a Daemon Prince where they're AP2
Vox Daemonicus: Messing with enemy reserves is fun. It's also yet another source of -Leadership, so if you want to be really sure your enemy is failing their fear test, this is here. So many things ignore leadership entirely, though.
Curze's Orb: Worth ignoring in my opinion. I guess it could save you from your own Plasma Pistol?
Stormbolt Plate: YES. BEST. Artificier Armour with +1 cover save, for only twenty points. An auto-include on your warlord.

(The Stormbolt Plate goes really well with a Daemon Prince of Nurgle- Stealth, Shrouded, and an additional +1 means a 3+ cover save outside cover. If you're running Night Lords, I'd give serious consideration to making this guy your warlord. It also goes nicely on a prince of Tzeentch, for the 2+re-rollable.)

Murder Talon
You get the usual Warlord Trait re-roll, re-roll failed charges (which is great!), and guaranteed Night Fight. Technically you get a +1 cover during Night Fighting as well, but that just replaces two sources of Stealth.

You can take a Raptor Talon as Core! But that leaves you without any Objective Secured. In maelstrom games, raptors are speedy enough to really compete - but remember a CAD would give them Objective Secured as well. I'd frankly suggest using a CAD instead, maybe with a Talon attached for charging-from-deep-strike. Or not: you're not very good at Deep Striking anyway. Do you really want Night Fighting?

The Heldrake Terror Pack gives you yet more leadership debuffs, and heldrakes aren't even bad. You can definitely build Night Lords for massive leadership debuffs, it's just a shame that doesn't DO anything.

Tactical Objectives
11: Points for doing what you have to do. Pick some weedy sargeant and charge with your Lord.
12: If you're not constantly achieving this, what kind of Night Lord are you?
13: Completely destroy a unit with a unit that was in cover or arrived from Deep Strike reserve. Sure, you can charge with a Raptor Talon, but why not just crack a tank with a squad of Havoks in cover?
14: Destroy enemy units in the assault phase. Again, it's a bully list: easy against squishy targets, much harder against MEQ.
15: Again, Destroy units. If you can move fast enough, this shouldn't be too hard, since Maelstrom tends to have a lot of small units extending themselves onto objectives.
16: Force your opponent to fail Morale, Pinning, or Fear tests. You don't have access to much Pinning, but you should be able to bring enough negative leadership modifiers to bear to force this through, unless everything is Fearless, Stubborn, ATSKNF, etc.

This one all comes down to your and your opponents' armies. Do you think you can reliably be cracking heads? Do you think you can reliably be forcing a ton of failed Fear tests?

Night Lords want their opponents to be constantly failing leadership tests. Depending on your meta, how useful will that be?

Word Bearers

You can take Possessed as troops. *pinches forehead, sighs* Okay, well, maybe the rest is good. You can give things Marks, which is nice in some cases. You get boosts when trying to cast Conjuration powers. That’s good! You’re a little less likely to Perils yourself to death, and the best thing Chaos Space Marines can do is summon a better army… I kid, I kid. You also get Zealot when near Dark Apostles. Dark Apostles aren’t particularly good.

Ultramarines hate you, and you mega-hate them. Like the Iron Warriors but way better - lots of Space Marines are Ultramarines, and they’ll probably be using Doctrines to re-roll to hit anyway, and you can be more prepared for Close Combat than them.

Warlord Traits
1: Zealot, or get the Hatred part of Zealot upgraded to mega-hatred (as in, you keep re-rolling in later turns). You’re almost certainly Fearless or Zealot already, you probably hate a lot of armies… I mean, if it’s not a waste, then keep it.
2: +1 Mastery Level. This isn’t bad at all.
3: Choose a nearby unit, and give them one of a few Special Rules. Nice!
4: Adamantium Will and Fearless. Stop giving me Fearless! I’m probably already Fearless!
5: Modify the second dice of Boon Rolls. This is really good, especially with re-rolls or the Warband’s Pick Two rule, since you effectively pick two of six boons.
6: Immediately roll on the Boon table. Pretty good.

This is a pretty good table, especially for a sorceror. For gods sake don’t roll on it with a Lord or Apostle unless you have a re-roll, though.

Artefacts
Skull Of Monarchia: I’m not convinced that most combats last long enough to justify extending “Hatred”, but it’s cheap as chips, and Shred against Ultramarines is good.
Crown Of The Blasphemer: Get a Sigil Of Corruption with Adamantium will for five points. Pretty good.
Malefic Tome: One extra power from Malefic Daemonology. Very good, and nice and cheap.
Scripts of Erebus: Once per game, immediately generate an extra D6 power dice. This is another really good one.
Baleful Icon: Force enemies to re-roll successful charge rolls, and deny them bonus attacks. Another fantastic one?
Cursed Crozius: Ap3 Power Maul with Preferred Enemy (Imperials). You’re paying a fair bit for it, but once again its very good.

For the limited set of things they want to be doing, these are pretty good. You'll miss the Artificer armour, though.

Word Bearers Grand Host
Everything gets Crusader, and you get a tweaked version of the Black Crusade where you can only give it to each character once. This is kind of just a slightly worse version of the Black Crusade detachment (how many Imperial armies do you face? Would you rather Hate them or Crusade against them), and is so still pretty good. Re-rolling on the Word Bearers Warlord Trait table could genuinely be a dealbreaker.

Tactical Objectives
11: Successfully charge with a unit with Zealot. If you’ve got lots of Zealot, this is what you want to be doing anyway.
12: Completely destroy a unit with a unit of Daemons. Well, you’re not taking posessed, so how much Summoning do you plan to do? Alternatively, remember that Obliterators, Mutilators, Forgefiends and Maulerfiends, and Warp Talons, all have the Daemon special rule. Or just take allies.
13: Kill a character. You have to try this.
14: D3 for a successful Conjuration: D3 points for doing what you’re trying already.
15: D3 for taking an objective from your opponent. Again, what you’re trying already.
16: Get Victory Points for rolling Boons. You can get this for free if you’re in either the Black Crusade or Grand Host. You’re very unlikely to get the higher levels, though.

If you’ve got a bunch of Zealot, and a bunch of Summoning, then sure. Otherwise Traitor’s Hate is better.

Oddly, Word Bearers have no particular need to take Dark Apostles or Possessed, their two most thematic units. Summoning on 3+ is nice if you’re going to be summoning, and you’ve got a ton of good relics to make it better. If all you want is “Warband + Something + Allied Cabal” to summon, you could do “Warband + Something + A Bunch Of Sorcerors” and not be much worse off for it.

World Eaters
World Eaters have some pretty direct competition from Khorne Daemonkin. Both Cheesegear (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=21510522&postcount=1469) and Grim Portent (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=21502294&postcount=1393) have written up posts on what's better where, but the short part is: for marines, World Eaters. For Daemons-with-marines, take Daemonkin.

You have to take the Mark Of Khorne on everything. That’s not great: a lot of things just don’t care about it. You don't get any psykers - hahah no, just kidding, take a Cyclopea Cabal. You can take Kharn (a big plus point over Daemonkin) and Khorne Bezerkers are troops- Bezerkers are way more expensive than Mark Of Khorne marines, for pretty much no benefit.

You get Fearless, Furious Charge, and Adamantium Will. Daemonkin can pay Blood Tithe points for two of those. Fearless is a big deal, though.

Warlord Traits
1: Rampage. Not bad.
2: Can pick +1 attack any time you’d get a Boon. This is pretty cool, especially since its a choice.
3: You can Charge a unit locked in combat during your opponent’s Charge phase, and you get all the Charge bonuses. This is pretty good - sit your warlord behind a sacrificial unit, and then if they get charged, throw out a counter-charge.
4: Re-roll all to hit and to wound in a challenge. Pretty good, since you should be in challenges all the time.
5: Eternal Warrior and Feel No Pain when locked in combat. Eternal Warrior is always good, but it won’t save you from lascannons. Remember Daemonkin can pay Blood Tithe points for Feel No Pain - on everything.
6: Roll 3d6 and pick the best two for everything nearby when charging. That’s very good indeed, especially with how many ways you have to get a re-roll.

Nobody could accuse Khorne of being subtle.

Artefacts
Talisman of Burning Blood: +3 to Move, Charge, and Run distances. Very good indeed, nearly an autoinclude. Take this and the Maelstrom of Gore in the Butcherhorde, and you're moving 15"+2d6+2d6 with re-rolls. That should get you a first-turn charge, even if your opponent thinks they're being sneaky hiding six inches or so behind the line.
Berserker Glaive: Two-handed, master-crafted relic blade Daemon Weapon, that gives Feel No Pain and It Will Not Die, but takes away the Independent Character special rule. Feel No Pain and IWND just aren’t good enough to justify being on your own outside a unit, but Daemon Princes have fun with it.
Brass Collar: Deny the Witch on 4+, and if you Deny, the psyker suffers Perils. This is useful psychic defense, sure - i’m not sure it’s that good (since you’ll probably only have d6 dice) but it’s better than nothing.
Gorefather: Two-handed Armourbane Power Axe that does Instant Death on sixes. You should consider taking this instead of a powerfist.
The Crimson Killer: A Plasma pistol with Soul Blaze instead of Gets Hot. Way better than a plasma pistol, but you weren’t taking one of those anyway.
Bloodfeeder: Power Axe that replaces all your attacks with 2d6 hits. That’s a whole bunch. On every roll of a One, though, you take a wound with no armour saves. Rolls of One where? On the 2d6? To hit? To wound? It’s a lot of points above a normal axe.

Lord Of Skulls (Also in Traitor's Hate)
Jesus, nine hundred points for one model? It’s not worth that at all.

Trinity Of Blood (Also in Traitor's Hate)
Three of them in a formation is a joke. 2700 points! You could get a Warlord titan for that. However, Forge World allows you to replace Lords Of Skulls in formations for the much more reasonable Khytan.

Maelstrom of Gore (Also in Traitor's Hate)
Kharne and a bunch of Beserkers. Once per game, you can attack twice in a turn, once at the start of the movement phase. You also get Fleet and +3 Charge. This is good formation rules, but the extra cost of Beserkers is pretty high, and with the loss of Objective Secured too, almost certainly not worth it.

Butcherhorde
You get to re-roll failed charge rolls on everything, which is great. You also get a 2d6” “Scout” move, but you can assault afterwards (If everything in the unit is from the same detachment). That’s also great, and means you can reliably get the charge with speedy units like bikes.

Tactical Objectives
11: Make a Deny The Witch test. You're going to have nearly no dice for this, and Adamantium Will only works in some situations.
12: Completely destroy a unit on an objective marker. This is how you’re going to be taking objectives.
13: Make three successful charges. You should be doing this all the time anyway.
14: Kill someone in a challenge, with D3 if it’s the warlord. Again, something you’re doing all the time.
15: Destroy a unit, or allow one of your own to be destroyed, and get D3 for both. Getting your own unit destroyed is harder than it seems, because it’s specifically in your turn, so you need to badly lose a combat. You can at least pick up the “destroy a unit” bit.
16: Get a victory point for each destroyed unit. Should be easy to get the low versions of it, and if you’re lucky, you can really clean up.

Again, nobody ever said Khorne was subtle.

The World Eaters really want to be always in combat, all the time. You should be doing everything you can to gear towards that, and in match-ups where that's not possible (jetbike eldar), you lose. Probably Daemonkin are better - Summoning things by killing things is really really good.

Thousand Sons
Everything has to be Mark Of Tzeentch. Ah. Oh dear. An awful lot of things don't care about that, except things with a natural invulnerable. Units with VotLW get +1 invulnerable save when blessed - remember that Mark Of Tzeentch can't take you past 3++. That's not bad, since you can use Force, but then you're wasting Warp Charge points for the kind of bonus everyone else gets for free. Remember it needs to bless the whole unit - and remember a fair few of your sorcerers have to roll on the Tzeentch table exclusively, which has precisely 0 powers that will do this.

You and Space Wolves hate each other - and this time, that sucks, since Space Wolves are way more likely to be capitalising on that than you are.

You can take Rubric Marines as Troops. Rubric Marines aren't very good, though one squad of them as your AP3 caddies can be pretty good.

Thousand Sons cast powers. You really need something to boost your Warp Charge a bunch, like a ton of allied daemons. That’s why most Thousand Sons lists you see are like 25% Sons and 75% Daemons Of Tzeentch. Daemons are better, so… just take more of them. Like all of them. Thousand Sons aren’t good. That’s the honest part: if you want to play Thousand Sons, figure out some way to use a different ruleset. Deathwatch have lots of librarians and AP3 ammo. Sternguard in a First Company Formation have Fearless and lots of AP3 ammo. Grey Knights are all psykers.

Warlord Traits
1: Adamantium Will isn’t too bad, but only works on Maledictions and Witchfires. You should have enough dice (and your warlord should have a high enough mastery level) to pull DtW off anyway.
2: Eternal Warrior. That's very nice, especially since you should also have a good Invulnerable.
3: Crap.
4: One extra Psychic Power. That's not bad.
5: You get Deep Strike - or, more importantly, if you have it, you don't Scatter. That's good, but if you didn't plan for it you won't get much out of this.
6: The ground near you is Difficult to enemies. You don’t want to be charged so this is helpful, and it can cause Dangerous Terrain for jump/jetbike units but it’s not going to do that much. Remember you can get the same thing with a relic.

Artefacts
Astral Grimoire: Give something nearby the Jump type. That's actually a pretty neat trick - don't bother deep striking, just take some Jump Obliterators. It works on allies, so you can use it with very many things, which is kind of funny.
Seers Bane: It's at-initiative AP2! It's also basically Strength 10, rolled against your opponent's Leadership - so, wounding on 2/3/4+. However, it still uses Toughness for Instant Death, which means Instant Death'ing a lot of things. This is not bad at all, but Forty Points is way too much, especially in a force that kind of doesn't want to be in close combat. How come this is the only At-Initiative AP2 in the entire book?
Helm Of The Third Eye: Again, good, since you really don't want to be charged. This can also give your Rubricae the chance to Overwatch, which you want.
Staff Of Arcane Compulsion: This is actually neat: You really don’t want to be charged, and this and cover together give your opponent a -4 to the roll.
Coruscator: It gives your Inferno Bolt Pistol Blast and Soul Blaze. That’s not at all worth twenty points.
Athaenian Scrolls: Can prevent the target of the power from denying - I.E. only works on Maledictions and Witchfires. That's useful if your opponent is really good at denying, but so few opponents are. It could be useful against Eldar, but in that matchup you’re really just trying to be alive at the end of turn two.

New Units
Exalted Sorcerers
These guys are a nice combination of Sorcerer and Lord, with an extra wound, point of initiative, etc. They also get a one-shot lascannon, which is almost the only anti-tank in an entire all-Sons army. They don't have access to several good bits of wargear that normal sorcerers like, and don't make Rubric Marines troops.

Tzaangors
Cultists with WS4, T4, and the Mark Of Tzeentch for +3 points a model. They're the only way to get a lot of Cultists in the special Thousand Sons detachments, but really for what you do with Cultists, do you need any of those bonuses? You can't use any of the special things for cultists - like the Lost And The Damned, or Typhus - with them.

Rubric Marines
They're still super goddamn expensive, especially because they have to take a Sorcerer - and the Sorcerer is tied solely to the distinctly underwhelming Tzeentch table. Neither 4++ or AP3 is bad, but you're paying so much for it. You can now take Warpflamers (so goddamn expensive, and they have the horrible Warpflame rule) or Soulreaper Cannons (so goddamn expensive, and only one per ten(!) models.) There's really not much you can do with these guys: however, one squad of them isn't too bad.

Scarab Occult Terminators
The sorceror gets one of his rolls on a table that doesn't suck. However, terminators aren't very good, and these guys are very expensive terminators that don't do much to suck less. At least they aren't Slow And Purposeful too. They can't take combi-weapons or any close combat weapon other than powerswords.

Magnus The Red
He's a flying monster that can cast pretty much anything... so long as it's from the Tzeentch or Change table. That sucks. He also has a Str-D beam, but that's warp charge five! What's the Warp Charge cost of Vortex Of Doom? He’s not a Gargantuan so can’t stomp and can be stomped, is affected by poison and "remove from play" effects as normal. Make him fly, keep him flying forever. Don't ever come down, keep spamming spells. Drasius's list of the best five spells: "Flickering fire (WC3), treason, prismatic gaze, gaze of Magnus, siphon, Tzeentch's warpflame and doombolt are the ones that should see regular use, with bolt of change, boon of flame and baleful devolution coming out when needed."

All the below formations have the Favoured of Tzeentch rule: if you take the maximum number of units, you get to re-roll 1s on the Invulnerable Save. The maximum number of units is nine, usually, which makes this kind of a rip-off, since that's a ludicrous amount of points, usually on things that aren't very good.

War Cabal
Rubrics, Termies, at least two of various kinds of sorcerers. If you successfully cast a power, you get re-rolls to hit of 1. Not even a little bit worth losing Objective Secured. The full version just about fits into 1850 with few upgrades or allies, and bad as this is that might actually be the best option?

War Coven
A bunch of sorcerers - at least four. You pick a BRB discipline, and get 3+ to cast it. “Oh wow, this is comparable to a cyclopea cabal” you think? No. No, it is not. You pay the Mark Of Tzeentch tax on everything, you have to take at least one power apiece from the Tzeentch table, and if you’re taking four sorcerers you probably don’t want them all rolling on the same table, in which case at least a few are getting nothing.

Tzaangor Warherd
Tzaangors are bad. Fleet and run-and-charge make them less bad, but they’re not going to do much in close combat. The sorceror can't run-and-charge so slows them down. You could get some decent Daemon allies instead.

Sekhmet Conclave
Fear is bad. +1 Toughness is decent… if only there was some other way in the chaos book to have Toughness 5 Terminators… for less per model… and without needing to huddle each other… and with proper options… ah, if only. It kind of works at 2500+ points (with a T8 Magnus) but only kind of, and AP2 still shuts you down.

Ahriman’s Exiles
It’s a war coven, but if all the sorcerers are Exalted and Ahriman is included, you cast on a 3+. Ahriman is pretty good, but you’re paying a minimum of 160 points to Exalt the other sorcerers, and it has all the other problems of the Coven.

Rehati War Sect
It’s Ahriman’s Exiles, but with Magnus instead of Ahriman, and you can take Daemon Princes instead of the sorcerers. Everything has to be Mastery Level 3, and you get “cast on 3+” and Magnus’ “can target every unit” rule. Again, that’s an awful awful lot of taxes for some underwhelming rules.

Grand Coven
This is the Thousand Sons mega-detachment. You don’t get anything not from the Thousand Sons formations list - so no Warband. You can take single Vehicles as Auxillary choices. In exchange for taking either the (bad) cabal or the (bad) conclave as core, you can re-roll Perils and attempt to manifest an additional power each per turn. This isn’t worth it at all.

You can do better with the Black Crusade detachment, since you can take a single squad of Rubricae as an auxillary choice, and then you can take good things for the rest of the army. At which point you're not really taking Thousand Sons are you? Look, its not possible to do this well.

Tactical Objectives
11: Kill Nine models. This is way harder than “kill a unit” since you can’t just pop a rhino.
12: Psychic Supremacy: Deny The Witch. You should have enough psychic dice to just throw them all at the first power, or you could play more conservatively like normal and still have a pretty decent chance. Fear the smart opponent who has a couple of psykers (so you can’t discard this) but doesn't care much about casting.
13: Destroy an Armies Of The Imperium unit. Either easy or basically impossible?
14: Score D3 points if your opponent controls no objectives. This will be really hard, since you have bugger-all for fast units - unless you’re allying a ton of daemons.
15: Destroy an enemy unit in the psychic phase. The best thing you can be doing is casting a trillion witchfires, so this is actually reasonably possible.
16: Manifest three or six powers of different types. This is actually reasonably possible, since the Tzeentch table has five types, and the witchfires count as different types.

Aside from the fact that you're handicapped by being Thousand Sons, this table isn't bad at all.

Thousand Sons aren't good. You can make them better with a hefty allied force of Daemons, but since they're worse than Daemons... look, try and find some other rules somewhere you can use for them instead. You can do anything you want from the Space Marine book.

Death Guard
Everything has to take Mark Of Nurgle, which costs you a lot of points. However you get Fearless, Relentless, and Feel No Pain, three of the best rules in the game. Death guard are... The best. You lose a point of initiative, but who cares? Even power swords will have difficulty killing you, you're so tough.

You can take Typhus. However, any nameless chump has Feel No Pain now.

-- Chaos Lord - Terminator Armour [Power Axe], Mark Of Nurgle, Blight Grenades - 125

You lose the Daemon Weapon rule, the Destroyer Hive, and you have to pay 20 points for a worse version of Plague Zombies. You’re also not a psyker. You’re nearly half the cost though. Do you really want those extra rules? You get a better Warlord Trait, and access to power swords, 4+ invulns, Palanquins, Bikes… or you could enjoy being half price, or you could get a Sorceror too. If you want those extra gubbins Typhus brings, he’s not all that bad, but you can definitely be more efficient.

You can take Plague Marines as troops. Trouble is, why would you? For six points over an ordinary marine, you get Blight Grenades and Poisoned weapons - neither of which is at all bad, but do you really need them? I'm actually asking: if you think you need a truckload of poisoned attacks, Plague Marines are there. Blight Grenades are great, though - if you have points spare, they're at least as useful as meltabombs. Remember you can throw them to Blind things. You also get double special weapons with five models, so you can play MSU and Not Die.

Warlord Traits
1: +1 Feel No Pain. Will almost always be helpful.
2: It Will Not Die. Again, always good.
3: Lord Of Contagion. These hits are AP4, which actually makes them really good. However everything else on the table is even goddamn better, so consider re-rolling.
4: +1 Wound. Nice, but over the course of the game probably not as good as some of the others.
5: Eternal Warrior. The table that keeps on giving. Perhaps the best trait out there?
6: Re-roll. Again, it's good, but everything else is better.

None of these are bad, and 4/6 make your Warlord VP even harder to take. Particularly if you have a re-roll, this is a great table to roll on.

Artefacts
Puscleaver: Dirt cheap. Give it to a Daemon Prince, then it's AP2 and re-rolling to wound.
Plague Skull: One use only and ap-? No thank you.
Pandemic Staff: If you have more points to spend than the Puscleaver, take this on a prince instead: it'll wound on 2+ re-rollable against most things anyway, and you get a shooting attack too.
Dolorous Knell: Fear isn't really worth it.
Poxwalker Hive: This is decent under certain circumstances. Firstly, you can use it on Marked units of cultists (even ones without MoN). It’s more or less the same as Typhus’ rule if you only have one unit of cultists, but if you have several you probably want them off doing things, not hanging round with your character, queued up to get buffed. If all you want is a dirty great block of zombies on an objective without taking Typhus, then go wild! 20 points is probably less than one point per model.
Plaguebringer: 35 points for a poisoned daemon powersword? I'm not a fan.

Plague Colony
-WS is useless, -I is reasonable (it brings them down to your level) and though -T is great - you're now re-rolling to wound with all your poisoned weapons - you're then spending over a thousand points on seven MSU units without upgrades, which is a lot, and none of it has Objective Secured. That means you're paying 210 points over the cost of an equivalent group of Mark Of Nurgle marines.

Vectorium
Honestly, just about everything in the codex loves a Mark Of Nurgle. Take what you want, it's all good. The Chaos Warband is a really solid base for an army, and you should give serious consideration to taking a single spawn to make the Warband into a Vectorium, then just piling on more Objective Secured Fearless things. Especially useful are bikes, which take and hold Maelstrom objectives.

The Black Crusade is about as useful as the Vectorium, since +FNP and quasi-stealth are both good. How often will you be far enough away to get that +1 cover? Drasius also points out you can take a horde of small units of Spawn to beat things to death with 3 T6 wound units.

Tactical Objectives
1: Note that this says "table half" not deployment zone. If you've built your army sensibly, this will be trivial.
2: Note that this says "Phase" and is so actually harder than it sounds. For every Feel No Pain roll you make, you fail two (on average), which means at least fourteen models have died, which is actually a pretty bad phase for you. Zombies can grind it cheaply, though.
3: If you're not taking Plague Marines, you probably don't actually have that much poison. Hopefully you've got something casting powers, right? Try and get Nurgles Rot off on something weedy.
4: Nominate a character and score an extra victory point if they survive. This one shouldn't be too hard - either take your warlord, or someone who sits at the back trying not to get in trouble.
5: Very situational.
6: Unlike the other, this says "turn". D3+3 victory points is a hell of a bounty: it's well worth going all-out on this, though of course it depends on your opponent's list.

The Traitor's Hate objectives are probably easier, to be honest - especially since you should be seriously considering the Black Crusade instead of the Vectorium.

Death Guard rule. If you want a "Competitive" list, it's these or Alpha Legion.

Emperor’s Children
You can take Lucius (he’s bad, you shouldnt) and Noise Marines are troops. Everything has to be Mark Of Slaanesh, which is… there are an awful lot of things in the codex which don’t care about +1 initiative. That’s quite a restriction. In exchange, you get Fearless and Feel No Pain 6+, which are decent (yet obviously a step below Death Guard). Finally, you get a special rule by which you can make a single attack if you’re killed in close combat before you can attack. This is not good. You’re spending all those points on Initiative, you should be going first against most things anyway. I guess it’s neat for models with only a few strong attacks anyway… but such things are usually unwieldy, and wouldn't you rather not die instead of making a single powerfist hit?

Warlord Traits
1: Eternal Warrior. Great!
2: This means you’re beating Eldar and Genestealers to the hit. That’s nice, but hardly universally helpful.
3: +1 Feel No Pain. If you’ve got an Icon of Excess, this puts you up to FnP 3+, and thats pretty good.
4: Fear sux.
5: Gain attacks as you lose wounds. I prefer my warlord not to lose wounds, and I prefer my warlord trait not trying to drag him into combat after losing wounds.
6: Autopass Look Out Sir rolls. This is pretty great.

Two are good, one is decent, the others are pretty rubbish. I’d roll elsewhere.

Artefacts
Intoxicating Elixir: D3 rolls on the Combat Drugs table: this is really nice, since it’s all good on that table. 25 points is a fair amount for it, though.
Shriekwave: A Strength 8 AP2 ranged weapon that makes D6 shots! Who cares about the mental trauma rule, this rules.
Soulsnare Lash: 20 points for an AP5 weapon is a lot, even if it is Rending and Instant Death.
Endless Grin: What was I just saying about Fear? At least it’s cheap.
Bolts of Ecstatic Vexation: This is really good.
Blissgiver: Kind of like how Force weapons used to work - except note that it’s not Instant Death so ignores Eternal Warrior. It’s certainly possible to build for effectiveness with this, stacking up leadership debuffs until you sneak a wound through and make Marneus Calgar orgasm himself to death. It’s pretty good.

Shame the rest of the legion is so bad, really, the Emperor’s Children have great relics.

Kakophoni
Noise Marines bring the always-lovely Ap3 Ignores Cover, but you pay through the nose for it. This formation gives you Split Fire so you can shoot your anti-infantry Sonic Blasters and your anti-heavy-infantry Blastmasters at different targets. And then it puts Shred on top of that. If you take the full six units - that's a lot - you can get +1 Strength, and then cast the power which gives you an additional +1 strength, for Str6 Shredding Salvo2/3 bolters. That's pretty scary... but you pay through the nose for it.

Rapture Batallion
Combat Drugs are great. The Kakophoni isn’t too bad. Beyond that… well, the various detachments offer plenty of things you can buy that don’t need a Mark Of Slaanesh that’s points down the drain. This works well as allies, actually - take a spawn and get Combat Drugs for your Kakophoni, and then spend the rest of your points on things from another detatchment that don't need to be Marked.

Tactical Objectives
11: Completely destroying a unit with sonic weapons is… way hard. I guess if you could pick on some devastators or a small squad in cover?
12: Kill a character in a challege. Get points for doing what you have to. If you’re not stupid, Slaaneshi units can do this really easily.
13: Kill a unit that’s Falling Back. Shouldn’t be too hard, but kind of a waste of firepower.
14: Score points for forcing units to fail Morale etc tests. Easier for you because Sonic weapons are Pinning.
15: Your opponent chooses a marker, score D3 victory points if you control it. This is probably pretty hard to get - you need to be both fast and killy, since your opponent will just pick one they have a tough Objective Secured unit or tank on. Get bikes.
16: Same as the last one, you need to force your opponent off their most prized objective. If you took the Kakophoni, you’re pretty screwed, since any Objective Secured unit at all beats you.

11 is the Traitors Hate 11 but harder. 15 is the Traitor’s Hate 15 but harder. 12 is the Traitors Hate 14, but it has to be in close combat. You don’t want to use this table.

I’m not sure what to suggest here. There’s kind of nothing much to do with the Mark Of Slaanesh, except take lots of Icons Of Excess and wish you were Death Guard. No, +1 FnP isn’t as good as +1 Toughness.

Forum Explorer

2016-12-20, 03:49 PM

The question is moot. Vendettas aren't Tanks and can't Tank Shock.

Pretend my Chimera had survived long enough to be in the same situation then. :smalltongue:

I may have messed up in that particular game, but I was wondering if the gamble was worth it in a general sense.

Drasius

2016-12-20, 04:17 PM

Well here's a question for you guys. Is it better to tank shock with a transport holding objective secured guys, when if the enemy fails (at LD 9) you win the game for sure, but there is a melta gun in the squad? Or is it better to stay still and keep the extra shots while the guys inside move out to take the objective.

Depends, but IIRC, you might be able to do both. I can't remember for sure if you can disembark and tank shock in the same turn, but I think you can if you disembark before the tank moves. Check the rulebook though since I can't remember for sure. Other than that, if your guys can kill their guys, then get out. If your guys can't kill their guys, then you're going to lose anyway so yes, you tank shock them and pray for your ~16% chance they fail Ld9. Remember, melta is going to have to explode, stun or immobilise you, shaken and weapon destroyed don't really do much and the melta gunner will die and they move out of the way.

I don't see how anyone in the era of remove from play effects can anyone claim Magnus is good. He is literary one rolled 6 on the D table away from you being down a warlord and 650 points.

When he's flying, there's no risk from stomps and a significant reduction in risk from D and remove from play options. The list of things that can skyfire D or remove from play with any reliability can be counted on 1 hand I think. Magnus, Fateweaver, [Fortuned] Wraithknights, [Fortuned] Wraithguard and Frost Cannons on stormwoofs or whatever they're called. You can roll prismatic gaze on a Tz prince or LoC and get it that way but I wouldn't call that reliable and you can roll it on a herald as well as get prescienced in a Tz daemons list, but again, really not reliable.

Being 650 is Magnus' problem in a world where wraithknights are <300, but while we shouldn't judge everything by the standards of the most broken thing in the game, we do because you see them so often and as we all know, if you're not the best, then you're the worst.

Renegade Knights (Traitor's Hate Only)
...

Knights love being given Ignores Cover. Love it. You need to do some work to get Divination, though. Doesn't matter, Perfect Timing only works on the unit the sorc is attached to. The one on Geomortis or whatever it is is much better for the same cost anyway. Alternatively, you can have fun following them around with sorcerers casting on Heretech.

Thunderstrike Gauntlet: Unwieldy is really bad on a knight, since that means your Str-D is going at the same time as Chainfists and Thunder Hammers and all those scary things. Swapping at-init attacks for a AP- large blast is probably not worth it, although if you only ever use your knight for fights it can win then... sure. You bully. That depends, if you're always charging into cover, it's no different than the chainblade but it does allow you to stomp first and then pick off the leftovers rather than the other way around since both attacks happen at I1 you get to choose the order. Still bad because of the reasons you mentioned, but less bad now that you can't be hit by 10 melta bomb attacks at I1 or 10x EMP grenades at I2.
Reaper Chainsword: Chaos don't have much access to Str-D. Knights are speedy enough to get some good use out of this, so I would seriously consider keeping it in case you need to chainsword a wraithknight or something. It also keeps your knight cheap - two guns and you're seriously stacking on the points cost for something that is not as tough as you might want.

Avenger Gatling Cannon: Messes up marines like nobody's business. Take two to wipe just about anything with a 3+ save off the map - and with Rending, you can have a proper shot at 2+ save units or light vehicles too. It's also the only thing you can Overwatch with. Probably the best general-purpose gun. Superheavies can't overwatch (unless you take a certain knight formation that chaos doesn't have access to). The built in heavy flamer is neat though. Also pairs well with the missile or rocket launcher.
Rapid-fire Battle Cannon: It's a battle cannon that shoots twice at 72". That means it's high enough strength to Instant Death toughness 4, and with two shots you might be able to sneak wounds through good cover too. I would suggest that the Gatling Cannon is better - unless you think you'll be making more than six or so hits per Large Blast.
Thermal Cannon: If you can't be Str-D at range, Str-9 melta does the job pretty well. Chaos quite like high-strength AP1, since they only have so many ways to crack tanks at range. If you'd rather crack terminators/tanks than anything else, this is the gun for you. I find this more useful for the AP1 rather than the tank busting where the battle cannon is almost a better choice due to the ability to strip hull points with more reliability due to 2 ordnance shots than a single 18" melta shot. The battle cannon pairs especially well with the 3 shot krak missile launcher too. The requirement to get closer will expose your unshielded side more often though.

My personal recommendation would be either the Gatling Cannon or Thermal cannon or both. Almost every one that I've seen has been the double avenger cannon. Also, even with double guns, you are still str 10 ap2 due to natural str 10 and smash.

Ironstorm Missile Pod: You don't have much Barrage, and its lovely long range. Str5 Ap4 isn't much to write home about, though. This is basically a whirlwind strapped to the top of your knight. Do you ever wish you had a whirlwind available to you? If not, don't bother with this.
Icarus Autocannons: You don't have much access to Skyfire, and this brings you Skyfire on a tough target. It's also the only gun a knight can take that can fire backwards, so if you expect to need to charge backwards, this is how you do it. No, the autocannon is bad and it should feel bad. The Stormspear give almost identical results to this against air targets while also being not-terrible at kraking open tanks or finishing the job your primary weapon/s were doing.
Stormspear Rocket Pod: Three-shot krak missiles. One thing knights are really good at is taking out tanks, and this will add a lot of firepower to that role. Best carapace weapon by a mile. Regardless, magnetise them anyway because you don't always have the extra points for a carapace gun and it's super easy to pop a magnet in them.

Meltagun: Helps you crack tanks. However, that heavy stubber is really only for shooting things you want to charge, so, it's not necessary.

Oh, by the way LeSwordfish, great work on this, it's certainly not a small task and I think you've done an excellent job. Thank you.

hamishspence

2016-12-20, 04:30 PM

The list of things that can skyfire D or remove from play with any reliability can be counted on 1 hand I think. Magnus, Fateweaver, [Fortuned] Wraithknights, [Fortuned] Wraithguard and Frost Cannons on stormwoofs or whatever they're called.

There's the Gauss Pylon: 3 Str D Skyfire shots, long range.

No use at anything other than anti-air though, unless the meta involves a lot of skimmers.

Grim Portent

2016-12-20, 04:34 PM

LordDavenport

2016-12-20, 05:23 PM

Since it's come up a few times already, I think it might be possible now with Traitor Legions to negate scatter completely and make Raptor Talons reliable.

The Dimension Key, or Dimensional Key, or Key of Infinity or whatever it's called, the bad CSM relic no one takes. If taken in a WE army it should be possible to get it into assault turn 1 coupled with the Detachment and another Lord with the Talisman of Boiling Blood, a Chaos Lord should then be able to kill at least one model of basically any normal unit in the game and activate the Key, stopping all Chaos Marine units from scattering when they Deep Strike on following turns.

A NL/WE tag team list, for minimum non-deepstriking taxes without having to pay for MoK on everything, or mono WE for Fearless everything, could have a unit of WE bikers with two lords in it start on the board, move 2D6" before the game starts, move 15" in the movement phase, then assault 2d6+3" with rerolls to try and activate the key. Following turns Raptor Talons could drop in and start slashing/flaming/melta-ing things up without having to worry about scatter or getting shot by anything other than Overwatch.

So...
1) The dimensional key only starts working after you kill something in the fight subphase... so turn 2 deepstrikes at the latest.
2)This means the other player has a full turn to murder whatever is holding the key. If they do you are back to full scattering and sucking.
3)You need at least 2 HQ choices to have both the talisman and the key. In the same unit. Niether of which is an Axe of Blind Fury.
4)You have to go first for any of this to matter, or the key holders squad gets murdered by a round of shooting.
5)If everything else magically works out, you can now drop raptors/talons within 12" of the expensive command squad. While your opponent has had a turn to get 24" away from the key holder, which would mean no possible charge from the talons.

Were as space marines get drop pods with scatter reduction. Yep this seems totally worthwhile.

lord_khaine

2016-12-20, 05:27 PM

When he's flying, there's no risk from stomps and a significant reduction in risk from D and remove from play options. The list of things that can skyfire D or remove from play with any reliability can be counted on 1 hand I think. Magnus, Fateweaver, [Fortuned] Wraithknights, [Fortuned] Wraithguard and Frost Cannons on stormwoofs or whatever they're called. You can roll prismatic gaze on a Tz prince or LoC and get it that way but I wouldn't call that reliable and you can roll it on a herald as well as get prescienced in a Tz daemons list, but again, really not reliable.

And i would not even call fortuned Wraithknights or Guards very reliable. The Wraithguards are rather slow and have short range, so i doubt they would get more than one chance to shoot at Magnus. Where they then need a double 6 to remove him. Even with fortune thats a 1/18 chance per Wraithguard in the unit.

The Wraithknight has better range but fewer shots. And i actually suspect if someone did the math then they would lose in a shootout with Magnus.

Also, [Insert meme about Eldritch Storm, here]. FLESHBANE, AP3. THAT'S A GOOD IDEA. NO WAIT. MAKE IT A 10" BLAST, TOO.

Honestly cant see if your sarcastic or not, since you just complained about a power that were S D and remaining in place.

Grim Portent

2016-12-20, 05:31 PM

So...
1) The dimensional key only starts working after you kill something in the fight subphase... so turn 2 deepstrikes at the latest.
2)This means the other player has a full turn to murder whatever is holding the key. If they do you are back to full scattering and sucking.
3)You need at least 2 HQ choices to have both the talisman and the key. In the same unit. Niether of which is an Axe of Blind Fury.
4)You have to go first for any of this to matter, or the key holders squad gets murdered by a round of shooting.
5)If everything else magically works out, you can now drop raptors/talons within 12" of the expensive command squad. While your opponent has had a turn to get 24" away from the key holder, which would mean no possible charge from the talons.

Were as space marines get drop pods with scatter reduction. Yep this seems totally worthwhile.

1) I can't think of anyone who has no scatter deepstrikes on turn 1 that can assault out of them. Even the one formation in SM, which is taken for the Devastators in it rather than the Assault Marines, only gets reduced scatter from pods.

2) a full unit of bikers/spawn should be resilient enough that it's at least difficult to kill, and there is some initiative manipulation available to Chaos to make turn 1 more reliable.

3) Chaos Lords are basically the best thing that isn't a Sorcerer in CSM, taking multiples with support relics is hardly a bad thing.

4) See 2

5) You seem to have misunderstood how the relic works. You can no scatter deepstrike anywhere once it's active, it just also has a 12" bubble of dangerous/difficult terrain that affects enemies. There's also no indication that the bearer needs to stay on the board, or stay alive, once it's activated for it's no scatter effect to continue.

Blackhawk748

2016-12-20, 06:27 PM

Honestly cant see if your sarcastic or not, since you just complained about a power that were S D and remaining in place.

Eldritch Storm is..... well its just nuts. Its a freakin Apocalyptic Blast for cryin out loud

Also apparently Celestine is leading the Black Templars on Cadia, so says Dakka.

*.*.*.*

2016-12-20, 06:32 PM

Any comments on the list? I need advice on 1K worth of Chaotic reinforcements.

Bobby Baratheon

2016-12-20, 07:21 PM

Forum Explorer

2016-12-20, 07:55 PM

Eldritch Storm is..... well its just nuts. Its a freakin Apocalyptic Blast for cryin out loud

It is warp charge 4. Or 3 with the Spirit Stones active. I think Vortex of Doom is 3 base.

Blackhawk748

2016-12-20, 08:14 PM

It is warp charge 4. Or 3 with the Spirit Stones active. I think Vortex of Doom is 3 base.

Yes, but Vortex is range 12", cant be cast on 3s, is a Small Blast and then moves randomly around the field. Not saying it isnt good, but Eldritch Storm has more range, gets cast on 3s most of the time and is a Large Blast on top of the Fleshbane Haywire shenanigans. Then you chuck that extra Warpcharge you got laying around at it and its an Apocalyptic Blast that destroys most things.

Basically it shouldnt have that second option.

Cheesegear

2016-12-20, 08:36 PM

1) I can't think of anyone who has no scatter deepstrikes on turn 1 that can assault out of them.

Raven Guard Shadowstrike Kill Team
Using a Deep Striking unit, and then broken abuse of Electrodisplacement.
Genestealer Cults don't Deep Strike, but they may as well do, given how their 'Infiltrate' works.

There's also no indication that the bearer needs to stay on the board, or stay alive, once it's activated for it's no scatter effect to continue.

That sounds like it sucks, because you aren't doing anything until Turn 2, you have to hope the guy with the Dimensional Key doesn't die (because you go second, or, Heaven forbid, you just simply fail your Charge and fail hard).

World Eaters, Butcherhorde
- Chaos Warband
Chaos Lord; Lightning Claw, Power Fist, Sigil, Talisman, Veteran, Khorne - 165 Points

Chaos Space Marines (x10); [Close Combat Weapons], x2 Meltaguns, Melta Bombs, Khorne, Icon of Wrath, Veterans - 225 Points
Chaos Space Marines (x10); [Close Combat Weapons], x2 Meltaguns, Power Fist, Khorne, Veterans - 225 Points

Chosen (x5); Power Fist, Melta Bombs, Khorne, Veterans - 130 Points

Chaos Bikers (x3); x2 Meltaguns, Combi-Melta, Khorne, Veterans - 106 Points

Havocs (x5); x4 Autocannons, Khorne, Veterans - 125 Points

- Lord of the Legion
Chaos Lord; Lightning Claw, Power Fist, Sigil, Dimensional Key, Veteran, Khorne - 165 Points

- Raptor Talon
Chaos Lord; [Jump Pack], Sigil, Axe of Blind Fury, Veteran, Khorne - 135 Points
Raptors (x7); x2 Meltaguns, Melta Bombs, Veterans, Khorne - 168 Points
Raptors (x6); x2 Meltaguns, Melta Bombs, Veterans, Khorne - 149 Points
Warp Talons (x7); Khorne, Veterans - 148 Points

Total: 1841 Points

The thing is, when I'm using the Butcherhorde, with the free Movement at the start of the game, I have to ask myself, why even Deep Strike at all? The Raptor Talon doesn't have to start the game in Reserve, and if you're World Eaters and you're going second, you've probably lost anyway. If you're going first, it really doesn't matter what you do, because as long as you can make even a handful of Charges, you win the game.

Lose the Dimensional Key, it's a trap Relic. That 25 Points gives you enough points to give the two Chaos Lords Jump Packs. Now that you have three Chaos Lords with Jump Packs, you have enough Jump Lords to insert into every unit in the Raptor Talon. Start shaving points off the Chaos Marine squads to make the Raptors bigger and better. Maybe give them the Icon of Wrath to make them Jump-Fleet for a Turn (Turn 1), and Charge.

I agree, that Butcherhorde Raptor Talons are incredibly strong, but what the Hell do you need the Dimensional Key for? You're playing World Eaters wrong.

Forum Explorer

2016-12-20, 10:08 PM

Yes, but Vortex is range 12", cant be cast on 3s, is a Small Blast and then moves randomly around the field. Not saying it isnt good, but Eldritch Storm has more range, gets cast on 3s most of the time and is a Large Blast on top of the Fleshbane Haywire shenanigans. Then you chuck that extra Warpcharge you got laying around at it and its an Apocalyptic Blast that destroys most things.

Basically it shouldnt have that second option.

Sure it can. Tigerius has access to Daemology. Actually, so do Farseers. Who cares about Perils when you can spend a dice to ignore anything so long as you don't fail a LD 10 test?

Honestly I've found it pretty limited in it's use. The Apocalyptic blast is usually overkill, the normal sized blast is usually more then enough to hit everyone in a 10 man squad, and I don't want to super charge it because I need that dice, because the other powers are usually better, assuming I managed to roll Fortune, Mind War, or Doom anyways.

The few times I've super charged it is against Necron blobs, where they don't care about the AP 3 due to cover and a 4+ reanimate.

Cheesegear

2016-12-20, 10:18 PM

Yes, but Vortex is range 12"

Roll #3 on Strategic.
Grey Knights - Nemesis Strike Force, Deep Strike onto some Scout Bikes. Cast Vortex.
Use Drop Pods and a Conclave which will let you cast it on 3s.

cant be cast on 3s

Yes it can. You might take a Perils, but it can be cast on 3s.
Just not by Grey Knights.

is a Small Blast and then moves randomly around the field.

That destroys anything it touches. It does not count as Impassable Terrain or Enemy Model, which means that you are totally allowed to Fall Back into it and die.

Drasius

2016-12-21, 01:00 AM

That destroys anything it touches. It does not count as Impassable Terrain or Enemy Model, which means that you are totally allowed to Fall Back into it and die.

It does actually count as impassable Cheese. Having said that, if it lands on you when you're locked in combat, there's a lulzy effect that since you can't move out of combat, the next person to have a movement phase is completely destroyed while his enemy is then free to waltz out of the vortex with 0 damage, so casting it at danger close and praying for a "bad" scatter isn't such a crazy idea after all since it's always going to be your enemy having their movement phase after you cast it in your psychic phase. Buildings of corse are really in trouble since, ya know, they can never move out of the way.

The thing is, when I'm using the Butcherhorde, with the free Movement at the start of the game, I have to ask myself, why even Deep Strike at all? The Raptor Talon doesn't have to start the game in Reserve, and if you're World Eaters and you're going second, you've probably lost anyway. If you're going first, it really doesn't matter what you do, because as long as you can make even a handful of Charges, you win the game.

Lose the Dimensional Key, it's a trap Relic. That 25 Points gives you enough points to give the two Chaos Lords Jump Packs. Now that you have three Chaos Lords with Jump Packs, you have enough Jump Lords to insert into every unit in the Raptor Talon. Start shaving points off the Chaos Marine squads to make the Raptors bigger and better. Maybe give them the Icon of Wrath to make them Jump-Fleet for a Turn (Turn 1), and Charge.

I agree, that Butcherhorde Raptor Talons are incredibly strong, but what the Hell do you need the Dimensional Key for? You're playing World Eaters wrong.

This. There's no point giving the dice a chance to screw you over by either staying in reserves or scattering 12" in the wrong direction or onto terrain when you can simply move 2d6+15 and then charge a re-rollable 2d6+3. That's 21 - 47" threat range with the average being 32" for the squad with the talisman or 15 - 41" with an average of 26" for the squad without before you take the re-rollable charge range into account (which gives you about 3" extra charge range on average IIRC). It's not that there's no need for the raptor talon, it's that there's no need for deep striking. The key is junk because not only is it difficult to activate when you want it, it is also difficult to control your reserves the way you want too. There's only 1 legion that really has any claim to reserve manipulation outside of a comms relay (which most legions outside the Iron Warriors won't have because they're running their legion decurion type detatchment) and ironically (or not, because, ya know, chaos), it's one that can't afford to put anything in reserve - Thousand Sons since they're the only psychers that have easy access to Div sorcerors.

It is warp charge 4. Or 3 with the Spirit Stones active. I think Vortex of Doom is 3 base.

And it's still crazy, especially for a faction that is a) rolling in warp charge b ) Has default access to the ability to effectively ignore perils and c) also has easy access to a relic that cuts warp charge cost by 1 with virtually no downside.

Any comments on the list? I need advice on 1K worth of Chaotic reinforcements.

I suppose that depends on what you want this army for. You've got lots of plasma, but nothing that's especially threatening to vehicles. You could infiltrate some suicide chosen w/ meltas via cypher/alpha legion, grab some havoks, get some iron warrior obliterators (which are troops for IW and get Tank Hunter, IIRC and FNP 6+), deep strike some termicides with Black Legion (who get them as troops). A Heldrake is also a sound investment.

You also might want some fast units. Nurgle bikers or Spawn could make for some good screening units.

I haven't played much with CSM (or much at all, if I'm honest) but from the research I've done and my own observations any of these could supplement your army pretty well. If you're looking to take this to a tournament, though, I would look to one of the more experienced players. Hopefully this was at least a little helpful?

Other than don't play 2500 with renegades if you don't want 2 hours per movement phase?

Fine. You're playing FW, make use of the broken stuff like artillery carriages.

As Bobby Baratheon said, you've not really got any way to hurt tanks, so picking up some Iron warrior allies or taking a Purge detatchment is probably a good plan. This should also cover the fact that you've got nothing that shoots over 24" either.

You've also got no AA and you've got nothing that moves more than 6" a turn and with the board as clogged as it is already, you're going to be struggling to move that fast since terrain is a thing.

Aslo note that you're going to get maximum loving from ignores cover weapons and you really, really, really don't want to see a unit or two of thunderfires, whirlwinds or quad mortars on the other side of the table as you'll be packing up a large portion of your army very quickly.

Also apparently Celestine is leading the Black Templars on Cadia, so says Dakka.

Word is that the celestine and the 2 honour guard seraphim are it as far as new models go for the sisters too, but who know, these are just leaks.

1) I can't think of anyone who has no scatter deepstrikes on turn 1 that can assault out of them. Even the one formation in SM, which is taken for the Devastators in it rather than the Assault Marines, only gets reduced scatter from pods.

2) a full unit of bikers/spawn should be resilient enough that it's at least difficult to kill, and there is some initiative manipulation available to Chaos to make turn 1 more reliable.

3) Chaos Lords are basically the best thing that isn't a Sorcerer in CSM, taking multiples with support relics is hardly a bad thing.

4) See 2

5) You seem to have misunderstood how the relic works. You can no scatter deepstrike anywhere once it's active, it just also has a 12" bubble of dangerous/difficult terrain that affects enemies. There's also no indication that the bearer needs to stay on the board, or stay alive, once it's activated for it's no scatter effect to continue.

BA have no scatter deep strike available to them IIRC, though it's not often taken. Also, remember that if you're not the best, then you're the worst. Why take a unit that's not the best when you can take a unit that is the best?

And i would not even call fortuned Wraithknights or Guards very reliable. The Wraithguards are rather slow and have short range, so i doubt they would get more than one chance to shoot at Magnus. Where they then need a double 6 to remove him. Even with fortune thats a 1/18 chance per Wraithguard in the unit.

The Wraithknight has better range but fewer shots. And i actually suspect if someone did the math then they would lose in a shootout with Magnus.

Honestly cant see if your sarcastic or not, since you just complained about a power that were S D and remaining in place.

So what you're saying is that 1/18 chance with 5 wraithguard (in other words, a roughly 1 in 3 chance) to simply delete a 650 point primarch isn't something to be worried about? As for being slow, piling out of a serpent fixes that nicely and since Magnus is going to be flying, he's going to have to end up on your side of the board very quickly anyway. As for the WK, you basically can't put Magnus on the board without total LoS blocking terrain, and give his size, that's just not going to happen. You've already forced 650 points of your enemy into reserve in an army with very little reserve manupulation available to them. It's entirely possibly that Magnus flies onto the board turn 4 (if the rest of your army lasts that long) only to fire off 2 spells (since all his warp charge providers are certainly dead by now) for 2 turns and then it's game over. If you do start him on the board and give the WK's a shot at him before you can get into the air, you're looking at 4 shots, 3.5 hits (since they're guided) and therefore a roughly 58% chance that he's blown back to the warp with no saves, and that's before we even count simple hit point attrition from the d3's on a 2-5 result and failed invulnerable saves. Let me re-iterate that for you: If you start Magnus on the board, you've got a worse than 50/50 chance that you even get to move him against double WK (which are less points than Magnus BTW). Do you think that is a good deal for the Chaos player?

Do you really think that eldar of all people xenos scum need a fleshbane, haywire AP3 apoc blast on a jetbike platform? It's not even about being able to hit a whole squad, it's that it's going to cause not only that squad, but a decent portion of any squads in the general vicinity to have a critical existance failure unless they're in terminator armour or heavy cover. It's just another layer of crap on the turd sandwich that is playing against eldar.

Maethirion

2016-12-21, 02:07 AM

BA have no scatter deep strike available to them IIRC, though it's not often taken. Also, remember that if you're not the best, then you're the worst. Why take a unit that's not the best when you can take a unit that is the best?

We do, but it involves two separate rules that reduce it by 1d6 - the Archangels Demi-Company formation, which is five fairly expensive squads, two Dreadnoughts and a Terminator Captain; and the Descent of the Angels WT. The only way to reliably get that is to take Dante, so while it is doable, it's a pretty huge investment for a bit of a gimmick. Especially as you can't assault out of deep strike with that formation. The Golden Host, on the other hand, lets you do that, choose when you arrive, reroll scatter, and if you include Dante in it, only scatter 1d6.

(Unless there's another way which I've forgotten, which is quite possible)

Drasius

2016-12-21, 02:43 AM

We do, but it involves two separate rules that reduce it by 1d6 - the Archangels Demi-Company formation, which is five fairly expensive squads, two Dreadnoughts and a Terminator Captain; and the Descent of the Angels WT. The only way to reliably get that is to take Dante, so while it is doable, it's a pretty huge investment for a bit of a gimmick. Especially as you can't assault out of deep strike with that formation. The Golden Host, on the other hand, lets you do that, choose when you arrive, reroll scatter, and if you include Dante in it, only scatter 1d6.

(Unless there's another way which I've forgotten, which is quite possible)

You used to be able to throw 3 servo skulls and reduce your deeep strike scatter by another d6, but unless the imperial agents dex doesn't over-write the Inquisition codex, then that doesn't work anymore. I'm not sure why you wouldn't take Dante though, he's pretty awesome. IIRC, there's also the one with 3 'ravens full of tacticals that allows anything that DS's within range of 2 or more of them to asssault out of deep strike too, but I don't play BA so my memory of that is a little hazy.

You can also combine the astropath (you managed to give him scout or infiltrate or both, right?) and/or scouting sentinals (IIRC, there's even a formation that hands out scout to the armoured version so you don't feel like you've completely wasted your points) with auger arrays and/or scout sarges with teleport beacons in LSS's or 10th company scouts on bikes with locator beacons and/or Ravenwing bikes with locator beacons to not even worry about that whole pesky scatter business. Gee, it's almost like Army of the Impreium is one of the best special rules in the game or something...

Cheesegear

2016-12-21, 02:44 AM

(Unless there's another way which I've forgotten, which is quite possible)

Whatever the Blood Angels' version of the 10th Company Task Force is called; Scout Bikes & Locator Beacons. Except you could equally take the Raven Guard or White Scars version for the same points and be better.

How many times do I need to repeat myself? No Armies of the Imperium Scatter when they Deep Strike.

EDIT:
Blood Angels guy in my meta runs the Triple Librarian Dreads in Drop Pods, the Drop Pods land on Turn 1, with Locator Beacons on. Turn 2, the Archangels come in because there's no way that his opponent has bothered to shoot the Drop Pods when Librarian Dreadnoughts are on the table.

Grim Portent

2016-12-21, 03:04 AM

Maybe give them the Icon of Wrath to make them Jump-Fleet for a Turn (Turn 1), and Charge.

WE in their detachment already reroll charges, the Icon of Wrath is a waste of points for them because they already have everything it does as an army benefit unless you take a CAD, but why bother with a CAD when the detachment is better.

Drasius

2016-12-21, 04:41 AM

I mentioned earlier about building a spreadsheet to simulate powers for a full war coven build and I thought that I'd share a table that might help some people who are new to the psychic phase. There might be a few rounding errors, but it should be close enough for government work.

http://i687.photobucket.com/albums/vv234/Drasius_Rift/40K/Casting%20Probabilities_zpseypp766y.png~original

Since I'm here, I'll also throw up the example build I used:

195 - Sorceror, MoT, VotLW, ML3, Familiar, Terminator Armour, Grimoure
150 - 5x Thousand Sons
150 - 5x Thousand Sons
150 - 5x Thousand Sons
250 - 5x Scarab Occult
250 - 5x Scarab Occult
250 - 5x Scarab Occult
155 - Sorceror, MoT, VotLW, ML3, Familiar, AoDG
155 - Sorceror, MoT, VotLW, ML3, Familiar, AoDG
140 - Sorceror, MoT, VotLW, ML3, Familiar

1845

Probably give one of the Scarab squad sargents a power sword for the extra attack, or maybe a melta bomb on a Sorc, it really doesn't matter much. There's also the option to turn the Grimoure sorc into an Exalted for the extra wound, but losing the terminator armour and the grimoure probably isn't enough of a trade. Regardless of how we fiddle the points, we've got 21 + d6 warp charge to work with and 11 rolls on the BRB tables.

So, our options for casting are both quite wide but also rather limited. Every single ranged weapon we have is str4 AP3, so psychic powers are going to do all the work for us taking care of MC's, 2+ armour and AV. So, what does our spread of powers look like? Again, I wrote up a quick and dirty spreadsheet in excel to generate powers at random and here's an example:

http://i687.photobucket.com/albums/vv234/Drasius_Rift/40K/Random%20Selection%20of%20Powers_zpsrdq9n8s7.png~o riginal

The ones on the right are the ones we're looking at for the moment, the ones on the left is just the random generator that spits out stuff to be saved over on the right as values so we can play around with how many warp charge we're going to use. Speaking of Warp charge, that's what the table there is for, with a quick and dirty guide to how much WC to use for each power depending on both the level of the power to be cast as well as if the caster has a familiar or not. It's certainly not a definitive guide, but it's a reasonable indication and by referencing the casting probability chart if posted above, you can see that we're generally aiming for somewhere around the 75% success rate before denial comes into it.

So, From this table (only the ones on the right!):
http://i687.photobucket.com/albums/vv234/Drasius_Rift/40K/Random%20Selection%20of%20Powers%202_zpsnbrm0yca.p ng~original
Please note that I haven't accounted for trading out powers for the primaris here, nor put Tzeentch's firestorm on every sorc because it's worthless and we'll never cast it. You can safely assume that every time we roll Haemorrage or Mental fortitude, we'll be trading out for the primaris. The Heretek Sorc is a bit different though as the primaris is weaksauce and there's only 3 powers that are worth casting for us since we don't have any vehicles, so keeping a crap power on the first roll can be worth it to ensure you've got a better chance at flayerstorm or scrapcode curse and if you roll junk for both powers, just take the primaris with the second junk power and resign yourself to punching rear armour or trying to squeeze out a treason on their anti tank.

We can see that we got some decent powers. Iron arm on our warlord is always a winner, one of the scarab sarges got it too. The Sanctic sorc got hammerhand which means 1 unit of termies is going to be very dangerous, the telepathy sorc rolled invis as well, and the Heretek sorc rolled the d3 haywire hits so we've got just about all the tools for a decent crack at things. That was a pretty good roll for powers. Now, we've got at least 22 dice, so how do we spend them?

Iron arm on our warlord every turn is a high priority, same for the Scarab Sarge if he's in combat. Warp speed on the other scarab sarge again, if he's in combat would be nice, doubly so in a challenge. Hammerhand is also a big deal if you're in combat and your heretek sorc is going to be throwing scrapcode curse every turn that he's not locked in combat and the biggest problem that you will have is which unit to invis instead of if to cast it. So, that's 10 WC down just on the basics. If you're in combat, you'll probably want to cast force anyway, so maybe 3 units in combat (the 3 terminator units most likely), that's another 3 for a total of 13/21. Time for some pewpew mind bullets. Your warlord has treason and you can probably spare the 5 dice for it is there's a good shooting unit available, that's 18/21. Your termies are probably all locked in combat, with maybe your telepathy sarge still available to cast shriek, so that's 19 and he can cast bolt too while he's at it because everyone loves doombolt, that's 20. Probably spend your remaining 1 + d6 on bolt and baleful devolution from the aspiring sorcerors.

Cool, how many powers did we attempt? 13 or 14 depending on if you put a couple of extra dice into some critical powers or if you left a few for bolt and devolution. Not a bad showing, though only ~75% of those powers are going to go off mind you, so pick 3 powers at random and they didn't work. :'(

If you're not stuck in combat, then it's really time for pewpew psychic lazors! Treason and smite from your warlord, bolt from the aspiring and telepathy sorc along with shriek, scrapcode from the heretek as well as devolution and a pair of devolutions from the scarabs. That's 22 WC, throw smite from the scarab sarge who rolled haemorrage and trade it in with any remaining dice. Again, ~75% success rate and we've attempted 9 - 10 powers, so again, pick 2 or 3 at random and they failed.

Alright, let's try again with a different set of powers, again, rolled randomly but a more focussed choice , say against a Gladius or other vehicle heavy list.

http://i687.photobucket.com/albums/vv234/Drasius_Rift/40K/Random%20Selection%20of%20Powers%202_zpsnbrm0yca.p ng~original
So, how'd we go this time (again, only checking the ones on the right): Sorced Life leech and iron arm on the warlord, nice! Got really lucky and bagged scrapcode on 2/3 Scarabs and one of the sorcs (who also got siphon and the haywire beam) and got fleshmetal on one of the other sorcs. Overall, not a terrible spread at all.

So, for our mind bullets, you'd be looking at all 3 scrapcodes as well as getting siphon off first, so Sorc #1 basically gets scrapcode and electromortis for free. Fleshmetal hide is always nice for T5, and dominate is still useful, even on vehicles (they're assumed to have ld10, but that's still a ~8% chance of failing to move/shoot/flat out or assault/run if it's a walker). Unfortunately, after that, you've got 1 more electromortis beam and you're down to hurling 2 bolts and some devolutions around and since devoluteion is WC2, that's going to suck up what you have left. How many spells did we cast? 1x Siphon, 3x Scrapcode, 2x Electromortis, 1x Fleshmetal, 1x Dominate, 2x Doombolt, 3x Devolution = 13, again, looking at around 75% success, so randomly pick 3 spells and they failed.

Note how often we're casting Tzeentch spells? Not very, and only once we've run out of good things to cast. When the scarabs can roll on telepathy and just pick up shriek when they don't roll invis (and possibly even if they do), that's where your dice are going to go. The only time your aspiting sorcs cast is when you're down to that last few dice and people with good spells are locked in combat, because odds are, at least 1 of your reall sorcs (the ones with familiars) also rolled doombolt or devolution or even treason if they're locked in combat and can't pewpew things for a turn and the reduction in dice required due to a familiar is huge.

Also notice how often we're casting force to get our 3++? Not at all unless we're in combat, and sometimes not even then. If you're facing down an army with a bunch of AP2, then yeah, go nuts with casting force (or another cheap unit affecting blessing), but remember that that's 8 dice or more out of 21 (+d6) that you're not using to kill things or do psychery tricks with and given the only thing your army does now is not immediately fall over to small arms, getting your magic death rays on is what you need to be doing.

I've heard a few people suggest rolling everything on Tzeentch, so lets see how that turns out.

http://i687.photobucket.com/albums/vv234/Drasius_Rift/40K/Random%20Selection%20of%20Powers%203_zpsz5rvtwqp.p ng~original

Well, lots of repetition, but what do you expect. Only a single siphon unfortunately, an not on a real sorc and only 1 treason on a real sorc, and not the same one with siphon :( So, what have we got? All the psychic dakka! Siphon doesn't really get us anything since it's the same cost as bolt, but we do get a lot of bolts, up to 7, but realistically, we'll only get 4 since a unit can't cast the same power twice. Still, 4 bolts is nothing to sneeze at, especially backed up by 4 devolutions as well, though that's 17 warp charge gone already, but also the only good shooting spells we have. Lets make them do some shooting too then with a treason from ourwarlord on 5 dice, taking us to 22. If you've got any dice left, then it's force for the invo increase and charge deterent or maybe breath if something's close enough. If you're locking in combat however, you can pretty much just cast force on everything and then throw dice at treason because the only powers worth casting in Tzeentch are Doombolt, Devolution and Treason and without a familiar, treason is too expensive for 7 dice at a ~77% chance. So yeah, better hope you get the job done with your mind dakka, because you've got nothing with Tzeentch. I really don't see how this is better than rolling the Scarabs on bio or telepathy where there are good primaris' to default to.

But, overall, the point I'm trying to make is that 20ish WC isn't enough to cast willy nilly and have something that works. Remember the benefits of the thousand sons decurion? You can cast an extra power above your mastery level (and re-roll perils which is useful enough when you're throwing so many dice, but nothing compared to the rr1's to hit and saves that are available). You can go back and count how many times I tapped out a sorceror in those 3 examples, but I can tell you now, it was 1 and even then, the only other worthwhile thing he could cast was force. Even when I rolled almost everything on heretek and got very lucky with powers, I'm still only taking off ~6 hp a turn which is 2 dead tanks. After 5 turns, I've finally demeched the gladius from their rhinos/razors. Shame the game is now over and they've still got a bunch of marines squatting in cover on the objectives.

Edit: Forgot one of the tables, whoops!

Maethirion

2016-12-21, 05:41 AM

You used to be able to throw 3 servo skulls and reduce your deep strike scatter by another d6, but unless the imperial agents dex doesn't over-write the Inquisition codex, then that doesn't work anymore. I'm not sure why you wouldn't take Dante though, he's pretty awesome. IIRC, there's also the one with 3 'ravens full of tacticals that allows anything that DS's within range of 2 or more of them to asssault out of deep strike too, but I don't play BA so my memory of that is a little hazy.

Oh, wasn't at all saying that Dante isn't fantastic, just that by the time you've paid for the Archangels and Dante, that's a huge chunk of your points taken up. And being in a meta that plays mostly Maelstrom, having most of your units tied up in close combat makes contesting objectives a bit of a pain.
I had forgotten about the 'raven one - that's a White Dwarf formation right? I don't think I have it lying around.

Whatever the Blood Angels' version of the 10th Company Task Force is called; Scout Bikes & Locator Beacons. Except you could equally take the Raven Guard or White Scars version for the same points and be better.

How many times do I need to repeat myself? No Armies of the Imperium Scatter when they Deep Strike.

EDIT:
Blood Angels guy in my meta runs the Triple Librarian Dreads in Drop Pods, the Drop Pods land on Turn 1, with Locator Beacons on. Turn 2, the Archangels come in because there's no way that his opponent has bothered to shoot the Drop Pods when Librarian Dreadnoughts are on the table.

I was, to be fair, looking for Blood Angels specific forms of scatter-less deep strike, figuring Locator Beacons went without saying.

And true, Raven Guard or White Scars may be strictly speaking better but for me personally, I don't play in a particularly competitive meta, and I like my angels.

That list, for example, looks really fun to play, but if I ran something similar I wouldn't get games.

Cheesegear

2016-12-21, 06:15 AM

I mentioned earlier about building a spreadsheet to simulate powers

I'm not gonna lie. I made a spreadsheet for Draigo vs. Magnus. :smallwink:

There might be a few rounding errors, but it should be close enough for government work.

As someone who does spreadsheets for the government, I do approve.

Note how often we're casting Tzeentch spells?
Also notice how often we're casting force to get our 3++? Not at all unless we're in combat, and sometimes not even then.

It's nice just seeing it written down.

I've heard a few people suggest rolling everything on Tzeentch, so lets see how that turns out.

Guaranteed terrible.

But, overall, the point I'm trying to make is that 20ish WC isn't enough to cast willy nilly and have something that works.

Now do the same spreadsheet. And then do it once more. If you get 2/3 (66%), for a one day, three game tournament, then you're on point. If you want a two day, five game tournament, do it five times.
Of course, for true relevance, you're going to have to do upwards of 30 times. But that's asking too much for a Forum that's not even dedicated to 40K.

After 5 turns, I've finally demeched the gladius from their rhinos/razors.

If you're lucky, the Gladius will have de-meched themselves. Possibly in order to Charge, but the better reason would be so that one 'unit' can hold two Objectives.

lord_khaine

2016-12-21, 06:28 AM

So what you're saying is that 1/18 chance with 5 wraithguard (in other words, a roughly 1 in 3 chance) to simply delete a 650 point primarch isn't something to be worried about? As for being slow, piling out of a serpent fixes that nicely and since Magnus is going to be flying, he's going to have to end up on your side of the board very quickly anyway. As for the WK, you basically can't put Magnus on the board without total LoS blocking terrain, and give his size, that's just not going to happen. You've already forced 650 points of your enemy into reserve in an army with very little reserve manupulation available to them. It's entirely possibly that Magnus flies onto the board turn 4 (if the rest of your army lasts that long) only to fire off 2 spells (since all his warp charge providers are certainly dead by now) for 2 turns and then it's game over. If you do start him on the board and give the WK's a shot at him before you can get into the air, you're looking at 4 shots, 3.5 hits (since they're guided) and therefore a roughly 58% chance that he's blown back to the warp with no saves, and that's before we even count simple hit point attrition from the d3's on a 2-5 result and failed invulnerable saves. Let me re-iterate that for you: If you start Magnus on the board, you've got a worse than 50/50 chance that you even get to move him against double WK (which are less points than Magnus BTW). Do you think that is a good deal for the Chaos player?

Yeah, i am saying thats not much to be worried about, and i would gladly repeat it. I am straight up counting on that wave serpent to even give them a chance to shoot at Magnus, and doubt they are going to get more than that single chance for doing so, before they are either dead or he is out of range.
As for the Wraithknight Scenario, then no if your in a situation where there is not enough tall cover to give Magnus a safe first turn then its of course a little harder, but just because its not going to happen for you does not mean it wont happen for everyone else.
And i also think the reserve situation is set up more than a little biased there. Yes it is possible he wont arrive before turn 4, its more likely he will arrive at turn 2 though, ready to blow up stuff.

Do you really think that eldar of all people xenos scum need a fleshbane, haywire AP3 apoc blast on a jetbike platform? It's not even about being able to hit a whole squad, it's that it's going to cause not only that squad, but a decent portion of any squads in the general vicinity to have a critical existance failure unless they're in terminator armour or heavy cover. It's just another layer of crap on the turd sandwich that is playing against eldar.

Considering how much power you need to put into getting it off, as well as as that in a lot of cases its not better than a S8 AP 3 battle cannon, then yes, i do think Eldars of all xenos scum civilised people in a galaxy of barbarians need it. :smalltongue:

Blackhawk748

2016-12-21, 06:51 AM

Word is that the celestine and the 2 honour guard seraphim are it as far as new models go for the sisters too, but who know, these are just leaks.

Actually i think that particular part (the part of Celestine leading Black Templars) is from GW's Twitch stream. Yes they had a stream where they talked about the Fall of Cadia the other day.

Cheesegear

2016-12-21, 06:56 AM

Considering how much power you need to put into getting it off

Drasius made a handy table. 3 Farseers (which I've previously stated before, is normal for an Eldar list) brings +9 Warp Dice. Not including the 4th Farseer, or optional Seer Council. Throwing ~10 dice into a WC3 Power isn't unheard of (especially since Farseers can ignore Perils), but most of the time you're only going to put 6 or 7, and save the other several dice you have for Invisibulity, Protect or Shrouded or something.

as well as as that in a lot of cases its not better than a S8 AP 3 battle cannon

What. You do know the difference between 10" and 5", right?

boomwolf

2016-12-21, 07:11 AM

Drasius, that's a nice analysis, though I suspect the "all tzeentch all the time" table suffers from a bit of bad luck on that specific run.

In any case, what about making runs with the "evil marine" powers? some seem like they might be worth going for.

Especially ectomancy, as it can provide mobility and anti-horde powers that tzeentch powers don't cover all that well.

lord_khaine

2016-12-21, 01:12 PM

Drasius made a handy table. 3 Farseers (which I've previously stated before, is normal for an Eldar list) brings +9 Warp Dice. Not including the 4th Farseer, or optional Seer Council. Throwing ~10 dice into a WC3 Power isn't unheard of (especially since Farseers can ignore Perils), but most of the time you're only going to put 6 or 7, and save the other several dice you have for Invisibulity, Protect or Shrouded or something.

It was not a question, i know how much you need to gather 3 succeses on a 4+. Though with that many dice i would also reserve a charge to deal with the incomming peril.

What. You do know the difference between 10" and 5", right?

Yep, it is that most of the time you would be able to grace an additional unit unless they are grouped a lot up. At the cost of needing to throw in an additional pair of dice, and most likely having to give up on casting something else.

Drasius

2016-12-21, 01:34 PM

Now do the same spreadsheet. And then do it once more. If you get 2/3 (66%), for a one day, three game tournament, then you're on point. If you want a two day, five game tournament, do it five times.
Of course, for true relevance, you're going to have to do upwards of 30 times. But that's asking too much for a Forum that's not even dedicated to 40K.

If you're lucky, the Gladius will have de-meched themselves. Possibly in order to Charge, but the better reason would be so that one 'unit' can hold two Objectives.

Oh, I have, I've run this simulation over a hundred times easily with various different tables to roll on. There's a bunch of stuff hidden in the background with all sorts of lookup tables and indirect references so all you have to do is type in the name of the school you want each sorc to roll on for each non mandatory Tzeench slot and it automatically generates a roll for you from a random number. The only thing I haven't set it up to do is have a selection where it automatically swaps out junk like haemorrage for smite because I like showing exactly what I rolled, though technically it does scew the odds a little since you need to roll them one at a time and if you swap out haemorrage for your first roll, you can get it again on the second roll, but again, it's close enough for government work.

I just shared it because after building and testing, it was nice to be able to have some hard data to see if a full war cabal could have the spells required to deal with various threats on anything like a consistant basis (they do IMHO) and I thought people might like to see for themselves what I rolled and what I cast so there was some basis for the "you can't cast blessings and witchfires and force and have Magnus and Ahriman each cast alll their spells that make the peoples fall down" train of thought. I'm pretty close to pulling the trigger on 3 boxes of scarabs so I can run the aforementioned list or some slight variation of, but I'm just not quite sold on them. I might ask one of our local players (two players actually) who has far more terminators than any sane person should (one has over 100 deathwing, the other has over 100 Fists termies) if I can borrow a handful as proxies for a game or two. If I do post up more examples, I might even make up a quick check to see exactly what I fail on and include that too.

As for the gladius charging things, well, charging sons isn't always the best move since I'm forced (hehe) to have a power weapon in each squad and hatred of Imperials, so I should be able to win that one and if they're charging scarabs, they're going to be having the bad times for sure.

Drasius, that's a nice analysis, though I suspect the "all tzeentch all the time" table suffers from a bit of bad luck on that specific run.

In any case, what about making runs with the "evil marine" powers? some seem like they might be worth going for.

Especially ectomancy, as it can provide mobility and anti-horde powers that tzeentch powers don't cover all that well.

Not a huge amount since there's really only 2 offensive powers that you can cast - Doombolt and Devolution and you can power both of them 4 times on 17 WC and still have some left over for force or a single cast of treason. The only 2 improvements would be if everyone rolled doombolt, and even then, it's only 2 more casts and you might not even be in range, or if the "proper" sorcerors rolled siphon, then you'd have to choose between casting 2 of doombolt, devolution or treason because you can't afford an Aux at 1850 to get an extra spell. I think you'd end up with a mix of all 3 because you'd want to get doombolt off early on some to build up spare charge for treason (WC3 hurts when you're casting on 4's, even with a re-roll).

Generating powers is easy and it takes a fraction of a second to do, so tell me what you want each one to roll on and I'll post it up. I tried rolling bio/heretek/heretek/telepathy and that seemed to work out OK, I tried trading out 1 heretek for ecto and was disappointed with the results and found the same when trading out for Div and Sinestrum too. Sanctic was a mixed bag because it's really only Hammerhand that you want because Sanctuary does nothing that force won't except cause more perils if you use more than 1 dice and Cleansing, even on 3 dice is almost 50/50 on the chance to peril and again, you don't have an aux choice so you can't re-roll in search of a 5 or 6. The problem keeps coming back to only getting 2 rolls on the BRB tables because you're stuck with the crappy MoT. I'm loathe to give up rolling my warlord on Bio because it's just such a handy thing to have and there's only 1 bad result on there, but I guess I might have to experiment a bit more. I'm thinking about being boring and just rolling all the Scarabs on telepathy and just taking scream so I can free up the telepathy sorc for either MOAR! heretek or maybe looking at doubling up on geomortis.

Please see below for my Ramblings on the various schools/lores as it applies directly and specifically to a full war cabal:

Note: While much of this will be relevant to any TSons force, some will be specifically relevant to a maxed out war cabal who're rr'1s to save and (almost certainly) rr1's to hit.

Prescience: Twin linked doesn't do a whole lot here, the good witchfires don't roll to hit and you don't have the WC to cast the bad ones. Scarabs bolters are twin linked and everyone is already re-rolling 1's to hit in both phases if their unit casts a spell. Does activate the blessing though, but probably doesn't do enough at WC2. Heresy, I know.
Foreboding: Counter attack is OK, but very situational and half the army can't overwatch anyway.
Forewarning: Literally the entire army bar 1 model has a 4++ already. Activates the blessing, but so does force and that actually does something.
Perfect Timing: Great, but geomortis has a better version for the same WC and this list really doesn't have that much shooting anyway and it doesn't affect the psychic phase (boo!)
Precognition: I'm already rr1's and the sorcs should be at the back anyway. the rr to wound is nice though, a good consolation prize for not getting perfect timing, but very situational
Misfortune: This is why you roll on Div since you desperately need some AP2. Now you can pretend you're eldar against 1 target. WC2 takes some of the fun out of it though.
Scriers: I doubt you have anything in reserve, so it's only useful if you've got mysterious objectives that you need to identify. Probably not worth WC2 either.

You want Perfect Timing, Precog and Misfortune from here, but keep in mind, none of these are witchfires.

Smite: AP2? Yes please and the primaris to boot.
Iron arm: Great, +3T, +3 Str and smash, I can't belive this is only WC1.
Enfeeble: -1 Str and T as well as treating all terrain as difficult is also great and means your horrible excess of str4 can do some work against tougher targets or really put the hurt onto T4 and lower.
Life leech: More AP2 with decent str and can restore wounds. Winning.
Warp speed: More attacks means them taking more saves and more saves means more chances for instant death to sneak though, all at I7 too (unless you've got an Axe). Nice.
Endurance: EW and FNP4+++? Don't even care about relentless (though it will let an Exalted Sorc fire his crappy orbital knockoff on the move without having to be in a squad of SnP rubricae). If you had've rolled on telepathy you would have had invis though... but a second save after a re-roll is great, just ask Death Guard and 'Crons and EW is pretty great when all your important stuff is T4 with multiple wounds. As an added bonus, also activates the blessing, huzzah!
Haemorrage: Well, they can't all be winners. Did you see how good smite is though? Can work with enfeeble though, but at that point, so will bolters.

Anything but haemorrage is good. This is a good place to roll your warlord due to iron arm, life leech and Endurance all extending his life where possible. Also comes with a pair of decent witchfires. Great choice for Scarabs to roll on, especially if you plan on having them eat challenges for the sorceror/s.

Flame Breath: Str5 and Ignores cover isn't even terrible, especially not on a squad that probably wants to get close like the scarabs anyway, though you could just buy an AP3 version that can overwatch and not make you lose a wound for 15 points...S
Fiery Form: You've already got a 4++ (except that 1 guy who doesn't), but there's a 3++ available in sinestrum and if you get the blessing, you're now rocking a 2++rr1's, yay you!
Fire Shield: 4+ cover for the squad is nice enough... if you didn't already have a 3++ (since this activates the blessing). creates 6" of dangerous terrain for enemies though, so it's not completely useless... just mostly.
Spontaneous Combustion: Yeah, more AP3 is totally what we need [/sarcasm]. At least it's focussed so you can pop that d-bag with the grav cannon in a tactical squad. only 1 shot though and doesn't ignore cover. Have you seen life leech, doombolt or devolution? Pass.
Sunburst: 9" Novas are great since you're likely getting stuck in anyway and ignores cover is good, though you really have little need of more str4. Situational.
Inferno: A large blast bolter for 2 WC? I think not.
Molten Beam: A beam Melta Gun. Beams are great, but again, have you seen doombolt for half the WC cost? Does bring a little anti tank in an army that desperately needs it though.

You can make use of Fireshield dependant on terrain and if you're getting shrouded of a telepthathy sorc. Sunburst and Molten Beam are passable, but other lores are better.

Psychic Shriek: Everyone knows and loves this, always a winner.
Dominate: Pretty good actually, has a multitude of different functions. Cast on a non-hover flier for an 8% chance of an instant kill if it fails Ld to move. nothing better than seeing an 800+ point death star stand around because they failed their check to move. Shutting down low ld shooty stuff is also pretty win.
Mental Fortitude: Everything you own is fearless. Trade in for Shriek. Would be passable if you had a Tzaangor war heard or cultist blob, but you don't and you might not even waste WC on them if you did. Technically it procs your invo blessing, but so does force.
Terrify: Combos well with either Shriek or dominate or just stuff that likes to hang out near the board edge. Works on marines too, so that's a nice bonus. Chuckle as the marine player has to look up his Ld value since they never have to use it.
Shrouded: Pretty win because you can get a 2+ cover rr1's in a ruin (or any old generic cover if it's night fight) as well as activate multiple units blessing since while it targets the sorc, any unit within 6" is affected by a blessing, so it procs your +1 invo.
Invisibility: Nothing to say, it's the best spell you have access to and it give you your +1 save. Win.
Hallucination: Very situational, and WC2. Almost always trade for shriek.

Very useful since even rubricae can benefit from shrouded in ruins and shriek is always going to be strong. Great choice for Scarabs to roll on.

Assail: Beams are win and strikedown isn't the worst thing ever and neither is str 6. Have you seen doombolt though?
Crush: I know you've played KotOR2 as a dark side jedi and gotten force crush. If only this was as good. Str7 ap3 isn't the worst thing ever though, still not great though. Potential to explode a land raider, potential to wound guardsmen on 5's and allow them an armour save.
Objuration Mechanicum: Haywire hit and hand out gets hot? For 1 WC? Win.
Shockwave: Not even as good as sunburst, though the pinning check is nice enough, who do you play that has stuff that can even get pinned? You don't need more str4 that doesn't ignore cover though. Pass.
Levitation: Move 12", nice utility, especially lategame or every turn if you're maelstroming since you can move 12" with the astral Grimoure and then another 12" in the psychic phase with this. Does proc a blessing though there's the same thing but better in geomortis (but it's WC2).
Telekine Dome: Everything already has a 4++, you don't need a 5++, especially not for 2 WC. If you had rolled telepathy, you would have had invis instead. Every time you roll this, an astropath dies from the empathic pain.
Psychic Maelstrom: Have you seen the chart I posted earlier about how expensive a WC3 power is? Having said that, it IS a demolisher shell. Probably worth it in an army that has very little way of dealing with AV plus is doesn't auto peril you like vortex does. Not worth dealing with the rest of the table to get this though.

If you're desperate for that vindicator shot and don't mind a meh witchfire as primaris, this is OK. Levitate or Objuration mechanicum is quite handy as a consolation prize.

Summoning: WC3 and you're periling yourself pretty much any time you want to cast this. No thanks, ally in some Tzeentch daemons if you really want this, they can not only be self sufficient for minimal charge, but they can garauntee a successful summon with Paradox.
Cursed Earth: You don't have deamons and you aren't summoning them.
Dark Flame: Torrent Flamer, not even terrible in a list like this with no ignores cover weapons, but you can do better elsewhere
Infernal Gaze: We love beams, especially ones with fleshbane, but again, why are you rolling here?
Sacrifice: Not unless you've got cultists or Tzaangors around, and again, this is for Tz Daemon Allies.
Incursion: See summoning
Possession: Might be passable to turn a scarab sarge into a LoC, but it's not worth the risk.

Nope.

Banishment: If you're facing daemons, then this is pretty win, otherwise not so much, but then, you only trade out for this if you can make use of it, so don't complain, it's not like you were getting it for free anyway.
Gate: Remember how you're really expensive and have no scatter mitigation? Yeah, for desperate situations only if you've got something important in the squad (you almost certainly do if you can roll on this table).
Hammerhand: This is the reason you roll here. not only procs your blessing but handing out +2 str to a unit with power swords is just what the doctor ordered.
Sanctuary: Despite looking like this was made for thousand sons, the mark of tzeentch caps you at 3++, so it does nothing that force wouldn't already do and you're getting far better milage out of anit daemon efforts with the primaris.
Purge: Terrible witchfire, don't waste your dice.
Cleansing Flame: 2d6 heavy bolter shots that ignores cover on everything in a 9" radius? Even at WC2 and the heavy risk of perils this can be totally worth it. A shame that Exalted Sorcs can't roll sanctic, 'cause their extra wound would offset the extreme perils risk somewhat.
Vortex: Almost assured perils but also utter devestation if you hit your target. Has the ability to turn a losing game into a win all on its own. You're only going to get 2 casts though unless you've got a bio sorc with life leech keeping you up, then it's time to go nuts.

This is for diving for hammerhand only or a dip for banishment against deamons. When you really, really need to be str6 in combat, you don't really have any other options.

Corrupt Machine: Too many points of failure for the chance at firing a single gun. If that gun is a demolisher cannon though...
Boon of the Iron Beast: You can't afford vehicles :(
Scrapcode Curse: d3 haywires for 1 WC? All my yes.
Dark Invigoration: Still don't have any vehicles :'(
Fleshmetal Hide: +1T? Don't mind if I do. A nice consolation prize for not getting flayer or scrapcode.
Electromortis: Beams are good, but it's only a single haywire hit. Could be worse, could be boon or invigoration.
Flayerstorm: WC2 and worth every dice. Focused is pretty pointless, but that one time you're up against pask or someone actually takes chronus you can pick them out.

You'll be rolling here a lot since you have nothing above str4 outside of melee. Probably 2 "real" sorcs and some of the Sarabs too if you don't get scrapcode or flayerstorm early.

Rockmaw: Terrible. WC2 to force dangerous terrain with no armour saves? You've got to be kidding me. This wouldn't be worth it at WC1, probably the worst primaris in the game, even worse than Tzeentch's firestorm!
Ley Leech: Healing d3 is nice, Getting IWND is pretty superfluous, but could be worse. Have you seen life leech though?
Rupture: A single heavy bolter hit? Are you for real? Get. Out.
Torturer of Worlds: No run/flat out/Turbo, terrible until it's not. Can really put the brakes on wulfen or similar who rely on run and charge or jetbikes that want to turbo turn 5 to capture/contest objectives.
Earthly Anethema: A shame we don't have better shooting to make more use of this, but it's still good if you're running the grimoure since MTC negates the need to take terrain checks. If that's not enough, also activates the blessing. This is for winners.
Profane Ruination: Useless if your enemy doesn't have a fortification, handy if he does since you're not cracking AV14 any time soon with boltguns and power swords.
Worldwrithe: Marines hiding in a ruin? Not any more. You can probably get more out of this power than almost anyone else since you've got the WC to cast it and low AP guns on everything to punish fools hiding in terrain.

Earthly Anathema, Worldwrithe or bust. Is the high likelyhood of getting neither with only 2 rolls and a super bad primaris worth it? Probably not, our shooting isn't that great and we have other tricks for forcing melee.

Fury of the Gods: Moar ap3, but at least it's str 5. Not the worst primaris ever, especially for an army that doesn't mind spamming witchfires, but doesn't really add much.
Warp Fate: Everyone is already rr1's, so this is less useful to you than others, but you're also very low on models, so you need to ensure you make the most of your invul. Oddly enough you're one of the few armies for who this isn't a huge priority, but it is nice to have.
Emphyrageist: Beams are good, str6 is good, AP4 is OK, pinning is ... a thing. Definately worse things to roll and 20" is a long way. Again, have you seen doombolt?
Armour of Hatred: *sigh* Do you really need Ad Will? At least it procs the blessing, and denying on 3's is nice I suppose.
Diabolic Strength: It's OK but doesn't hand out smash, but you can't cast Iron arm twice in the same unit, so this is a good compromise.
Warp Lure: When you need to assert your dominance over other pesky psychers. This goes on anyone with Doom, Misfortune, Invis, Death Hex/Null Zone or Warp Fate/Veil of Time so they are going to struggle to get their critical power off. It's much less bad than it looks at first because Everyone is bringing psychers and you hate invisibility as much as the next guy. Also ensures that you control their psychic phase since they will be casting one less big spell, giving you a better chance to deny an increased amount of important things.
Death Hex: Great against things that hide their 3+ behind a 3++ (ie. wraiths, thundercav, wulfen etc). Much less scary when they're rolling 5's for saves instead of 3's. Also good vs daemons, but banishment probably gets it done better and it's assured since it's the primaris. Both of these together will make their grimoured unit weep as it's reduced from a 2++ back to a 5++

Not bad, but you won't get as much out of it as others will. Make sure you sigh really loud when you roll Armour of Hatred and Emphyrageist instead of something useful. Definately worth a dive if you're up against something that relies heavily on invulnerables over 3+ armour or worse. Can also be use to counter opposing psychers if they pull 1 or 2 critical spells, but that's pushing your luck instead of just relying on your deny phase.

Warp Shock: Now we're talking, a 6 shot heavy bolter is pretty decent for 1 WC.
Empyric Shield: Remember we mentioned this in the pyromancy bit? If you can trigger the blessing, you can get to a 2++ without needing the MoT and as such, you're not capped at a 3++ like normal.
Daemon Shriek: 9" nova, but str1 haywire. If you're close enough for this, you're close enough to charge. How many tanks are you going to be within 9" of very often anyway?
Coruscating Blaze: Uh, why is this WC2? Have you seen the primaris for this lore? Never cast this unless you're desperate or there's a bajillion units that you can roll that 4+ for.
Infernal Claws: About the only time this is worth it is on an Exalted sorc on disk with the Seer's Bane as our sorcs aren't really melee monsters. Do the hit's also carry instant death if the sorc's force weapon is activated? If yes, then this isn't even terrible because more attacks, even AP- ones mean yet another chance to fail their save.
Ghost Storm: Free 18" move is great, even if you can't charge. Still puts you on an objective when you need it, prepares you to charge something squishy turn 2 or lets you reposition from a cunning feint on the other side of the board. Also procs your blessing. Anything movement related is a big boost for such a slow army like this one.
Soul Switch: Can be useful, especially in conjunction with Baleful Devolution when it creates spawn that you can cause surprise buttsecks for the enemy with your terminators.

A better primaris than most but there's no real focus here and nothing you really need. I think you'll be too busy rolling on heretek to have a crack at this very often.

Tzeentch's Firestorm: If you're casting this, something has gone terribly wrong or you rolled nothing but CC buffs and these are the only ranged witchfires you had. Regardless, you're just wating dice and begging to be perils for nothing.
Boon of Mutation: Str4 AP- isn't a great trade for getting +1 initatiative when you're holding an axe or fleet in a unit of terminators. If you're in terminator armour anyway and rr1's means that it's more likely to spawn yourself than die from the hit, so it actually has some use. Still pretty terrible and I'd cast almost anything else before this.
Doombolt: I've been talking this up and for good reason. A Str8 AP2 beam for 1 WC is pure win. Spam this every chance you get, it's easily the best thing on the Tz table.
Siphon Magic: Situational, though it works better on someone like Magnus or Ahriman. You really need to be casting a bunch of smaller spells to get the most out of it, but anything you can do to get more WC is pretty win. You're still at the whims of the dice gods though. Plan for this during your deployment, but 18" is a fairly large distance.
Breath of Chaos: A poisoned AP2 flamer sounds great, but the poison is only 4+ and it's WC2. Underwhelming, and you really don't want scarabs anywhere near things that require ap2 to hurt let alone in flamer range. Would have great at WC1, but alas, it's not.
Baleful Devolution: A ranged, multi hit, mid str AP2 witchfire? Awesome. Instant death and creates a spawn on 6's to wound too. WC2 hurts a bit, but it's still pretty great. Once you're out of doombolts, this should get serious consideration for any WC you have left (though Shriek is better than both of them most of the time since it ignores cover).
Treason of Tzeentch: WC3, but this can turn a game as surely as a vortex. It's expensive, but when people put their characters at the back of a unit, it also means that they're the first ones to take hits when their friends suddenly feel compelled to shoot them in the back for the lulz. Pinning as a bonus too after they're finished as they contemplate what they've done. You probably can't afford to cast this more than once or twice, so make it count.

You get what you get. If you get stuck with a bunch of boons, breath's and treasons, just forget that they exist (except for the occassional treason) and concentrate on the good powers that you did roll. I really don't think that there's a cause to roll any more powers on here than you are obliged to.

Bio is great, Telepathy is great, Pyromancy isn't as bad as you'd think, neither is telekinesis, Div is OK, Sanctic is situational, Maelific is useless, Heretek is hit and miss but essential regardless, geomortis is extremely hit and miss with the two extremes of suckitude and awesomeness and nothing in between, sinistrum is yet another all or nothing discipline and ectomancy is so-so. Tzeentch is Tzeentch and you'll statistically get about 2 of everything since you have to roll on it 10 times minimum.

Roll Heretek early and keep going until you get at least 2 of scrapcode and/or flayerstorm if your enemy has any real amount of vehicle presence. If this means you need to roll 3 sorcs and all 3 scarabs on there, so be it. Remember that you can only glance a drop pod with your staves and can't touch it with axes or swords without a buff like hammerhand or similar and you need to shuck them out of transports or you'll lose the mobility game.

Also, cast your beams first, they can't jink them, but can benefit from a jink save if they have already jinked when you beam them.

Yeah, i am saying thats not much to be worried about, and i would gladly repeat it. I am straight up counting on that wave serpent to even give them a chance to shoot at Magnus, and doubt they are going to get more than that single chance for doing so, before they are either dead or he is out of range.
As for the Wraithknight Scenario, then no if your in a situation where there is not enough tall cover to give Magnus a safe first turn then its of course a little harder, but just because its not going to happen for you does not mean it wont happen for everyone else.
And i also think the reserve situation is set up more than a little biased there. Yes it is possible he wont arrive before turn 4, its more likely he will arrive at turn 2 though, ready to blow up stuff.

Given that Magnus is something you have to build an army around, the instant you take him out, you've won and the Eldar examples given have very little trouble doing that with regularity in addition to their build not even having to change - they can just keep doing the same thing and still faceroll their way to victory.

Considering how much power you need to put into getting it off, as well as as that in a lot of cases its not better than a S8 AP 3 battle cannon, then yes, i do think Eldars of all xenos scum civilised people in a galaxy of barbarians need it. :smalltongue:

Since all farseers have not just a re-roll once a turn, but a selective re-roll of only failed dice, then I would sugest that 5 dice would be enough to get the job done with consistancy since you on'y need 6 dice for a WC3 power with a non-Eldar re-roll of all dice at ~88% success rate. Hell, 5 dice with a plain-jane-non-eldar re-roll still gives you a 75% pass rate. Given that you should have 3 farseers, you've got 9 warp charge and can still easily cast guide 3 times before you even dip into your extra d6 pool. A better quiestion is why you think the Eldar need such a powerful tool in their arsenal? What's giving you trouble that you think a 10" AP3 fleshbane haywire pizza is justified?

Forum Explorer

2016-12-21, 01:58 PM

And it's still crazy, especially for a faction that is a) rolling in warp charge b ) Has default access to the ability to effectively ignore perils and c) also has easy access to a relic that cuts warp charge cost by 1 with virtually no downside.

Do you really think that eldar of all people xenos scum need a fleshbane, haywire AP3 apoc blast on a jetbike platform? It's not even about being able to hit a whole squad, it's that it's going to cause not only that squad, but a decent portion of any squads in the general vicinity to have a critical existance failure unless they're in terminator armour or heavy cover. It's just another layer of crap on the turd sandwich that is playing against eldar.

That's all true. However, outside of Magnus's new D beam, it's the most expensive spell in the game. I think even summoning entirely new units is only 3 warp charges. And it is worse then Vortex of Doom. Or summoning. Or most blessings or maledictions. I would certainly take Doom or Fortune over Eldritch Storm every time.

Do Eldar need it? No. There does need to be some sort of Eldritch Storm because it's existed for a long time now, but I don't know what it should be strength wise.

Blackhawk748

2016-12-21, 05:27 PM

Do Eldar need it? No. There does need to be some sort of Eldritch Storm because it's existed for a long time now, but I don't know what it should be strength wise.

How about not Fleshbane Haywire 10" Blast for starts? Str 8 Ap3 Large blast would have been fine.

And its not just that, you can just ignore Perils with a Warp charge, you're ML 3 base (for only 100 points i might add), you cast on 3s for a pittance, and on top of this you get to reroll any number of dice in a single Psychic Test once per turn. Seriously, that is way to much stuff for that points cost

Forum Explorer

2016-12-21, 05:34 PM

How about not Fleshbane Haywire 10" Blast for starts? Str 8 Ap3 Large blast would have been fine.

...Do you mean for the 4 charge version? Because if you mean make it Str 8 AP3 Large Blast as 3 WC, then I think that's actually better, because now you instant kill quite a few characters, and deny Feel No Pain rolls as well.

If you do mean the 4 charge version then it's hilariously bad. In comparison to the WC 3 D vortex anyways.

Of course if the 10" blast is the problem, then perhaps the solution is simply removing the option to super charge the spell.

Blackhawk748

2016-12-21, 05:38 PM

...Do you mean for the 4 charge version? Because if you mean make it Str 8 AP3 Large Blast as 3 WC, then I think that's actually better, because now you instant kill quite a few characters, and deny Feel No Pain rolls as well.

If you do mean the 4 charge version then it's hilariously bad. In comparison to the WC 3 D vortex anyways.

Of course if the 10" blast is the problem, then perhaps the solution is simply removing the option to super charge the spell.

I mean there shouldnt be a 4 charge version, that part shouldnt exist. And the entire reason Vortex of Doom isnt spammed like theres no tomorrow is because, unless you're a Grey Knight, you. will die. casting. it. Unless of course you're Eldar, cuz then you'll ignore the Perils.

A 3 WC Battle Cannon shot would have been fine, but nope, gotta give them Fleshbane and Haywire and lets toss Pinning on there too, just cuz.

hamishspence

2016-12-21, 05:51 PM

It was underpowered in 3rd ed - but has slowly crept up in power until it is the one we have today.

DataNinja

2016-12-21, 05:56 PM

It was underpowered in 3rd ed - but has slowly crept up in power until it is the one we have today.

Well, I'm sure one day they'll get the balance right. Just like how they've balanced out everything else over the editions. Right? :smalltongue:

hamishspence

2016-12-21, 05:58 PM

Well, I'm sure one day they'll get the balance right. Just like how they've balanced out everything else over the editions. Right? :smalltongue:

Sometimes designers overshoot the mark - turning something weak into something overpowered.

Maybe the gap between weak and strong will shrink though, with luck, even if balance never gets achieved.

Forum Explorer

2016-12-21, 06:03 PM

I mean there shouldnt be a 4 charge version, that part shouldnt exist. And the entire reason Vortex of Doom isnt spammed like theres no tomorrow is because, unless you're a Grey Knight, you. will die. casting. it. Unless of course you're Eldar, cuz then you'll ignore the Perils.

A 3 WC Battle Cannon shot would have been fine, but nope, gotta give them Fleshbane and Haywire and lets toss Pinning on there too, just cuz.

Summoning then. Another WC 3 spell, that already far outshines Eldritch Storm before we get into any proposed nerfs. Or the Genestealer version of summoning. And not a Witchfire, so it's almost impossible to deny.

Honestly, I think S8 is better then Fleshbane. There's what? Wraithlords, Wraithknights, Great Unclean Ones, and Talos that it'll make a difference against? Otherwise it's still wounding on a 2+, but now it has the ability to Instant Kill, which is huge. S8 vs Haywire is a tougher call, but except against Land Raiders and Super-Heavies, I'd still say the S8 is more useful, because a Pen is better then a Glance, even if the value of Pens has gone down a lot since 5th. Particularly because S8 is really good against infantry. You typically aren't using this spell on a single target after all, you want to hit as many models as possible.

I'm pretty sure Pinning will be gone soon. There's only like 4 or 5 things that even have it now.

Blackhawk748

2016-12-21, 06:08 PM

Summoning then. Another WC 3 spell, that already far outshines Eldritch Storm before we get into any proposed nerfs. Or the Genestealer version of summoning. And not a Witchfire, so it's almost impossible to deny.

I hate Summoning, i hate it for the same reason i hate The Gladius. Playing a 2000 point game with 2500 points of stuff is not ok.

Honestly, I think S8 is better then Fleshbane. There's what? Wraithlords, Wraithknights, Great Unclean Ones, and Talos that it'll make a difference against? Otherwise it's still wounding on a 2+, but now it has the ability to Instant Kill, which is huge. S8 vs Haywire is a tougher call, but except against Land Raiders and Super-Heavies, I'd still say the S8 is more useful, because a Pen is better then a Glance, even if the value of Pens has gone down a lot since 5th. Particularly because S8 is really good against infantry. You typically aren't using this spell on a single target after all, you want to hit as many models as possible.

I'm pretty sure Pinning will be gone soon. There's only like 4 or 5 things that even have it now.

Haywire is better against vehicles. Full stop. You just need to hit them to rip off a hull point, whereas you can fail to glance with a Strength value.

Yes Pinning is crap, but its still there and its still unnecessary.

Forum Explorer

2016-12-21, 10:48 PM

I hate Summoning, i hate it for the same reason i hate The Gladius. Playing a 2000 point game with 2500 points of stuff is not ok.

Haywire is better against vehicles. Full stop. You just need to hit them to rip off a hull point, whereas you can fail to glance with a Strength value.

Yes Pinning is crap, but its still there and its still unnecessary.

Fair enough. Though I will say things like Invisibility, or even just Fortune are better then Eldritch Storm, and are cheaper.

Yeah, but WC 3 to take off a single hull point is pretty bad. Getting a Pen at least does a little bit more.

lord_khaine

2016-12-22, 06:18 AM

Given that Magnus is something you have to build an army around, the instant you take him out, you've won and the Eldar examples given have very little trouble doing that with regularity in addition to their build not even having to change - they can just keep doing the same thing and still faceroll their way to victory.

Well yeah Doh.. if 1/3 of your army is invested in a single model, then losing it is going to hurt most chances of winning.

Since all farseers have not just a re-roll once a turn, but a selective re-roll of only failed dice, then I would sugest that 5 dice would be enough to get the job done with consistancy since you on'y need 6 dice for a WC3 power with a non-Eldar re-roll of all dice at ~88% success rate. Hell, 5 dice with a plain-jane-non-eldar re-roll still gives you a 75% pass rate. Given that you should have 3 farseers, you've got 9 warp charge and can still easily cast guide 3 times before you even dip into your extra d6 pool. A better quiestion is why you think the Eldar need such a powerful tool in their arsenal? What's giving you trouble that you think a 10" AP3 fleshbane haywire pizza is justified?

Well, thats changing the focus from the power Eldrich storm to the psyker casting it. Since its the Farseer that makes it so you dont need a gigantic power battery to pull it off. I only got one farseer though, so you cant give that i have 9 warp charges. But to answer the question, then i dont think its that powerful of a tool, as mentioned before its compareble to a normal battleplate pizza, and nothing gives me trouble, i just like blowing people up with my psykers.

Yeah, but WC 3 to take off a single hull point is pretty bad. Getting a Pen at least does a little bit more.

Yeah, vehicles are often big enough that you dont get to do much else besides remove that hull point, and its going to be more than a little slow getting rid of them all this way.

Blackhawk748

2016-12-22, 06:47 AM

Fair enough. Though I will say things like Invisibility, or even just Fortune are better then Eldritch Storm, and are cheaper.

Yeah, but WC 3 to take off a single hull point is pretty bad. Getting a Pen at least does a little bit more.

Blessing>Witchifires, we all know this.

If thats all it did i would agree, but it does way more than that.

Edit: so im pissed. Apparently Canonness Veryidian has got models available in England, but when i switch it to America shes not. Wtf GW??

Forum Explorer

2016-12-22, 07:08 AM

Blessing>Witchifires, we all know this.

If thats all it did i would agree, but it does way more than that.

I guess my point is that the psychic phase is already so broken that Eldritch Storm isn't even that bad in comparison. Does it need to be fixed? Sure. But it's like item 15 on the list of stuff to fix about pskyers, their powers, and casting them.

That's my argument about S8. Yeah, against vehicles only, Haywire is better then being S8. But when you add in it's effects against infantry, who honestly, you want to be aiming this spell at anyways, then being S8 is much much better.

For example, if you shot it at some Tyranid Warriors. As is, you'd do at most 1 wound per model. Not bad, and likely kill a model depending on squad size. At S8? You'll likely wipe out most of the squad, if not all of it.

Cheesegear

2016-12-22, 07:08 AM

Blessing>Witchifires, we all know this.

The conversation started because we were talking about what the best Witchfires are, specifically. Obviously, if you have Invisibility, and you're running a Seer Council, that's your first priority. But, if you have multiple Farseers plus a Warlock Conclave, well, you've already cast Invisibility, you're not going to cast it again, are you. Once you've got Invisibility, you start making choices. Protect might not be an option, because you're facing Space Marines with Grav, and, if you're playing competitive Eldar, that is your competition; So cast Eldritch Storm. It's wounding on 2s, and it's AP3, so if the Marines have been de-Meched (Drop Pod Marines will de-Mech themselves, while others might get out of Rhinos/Razorbacks to score Objectives), you're casting Eldritch Storm.

If thats all it did i would agree, but it does way more than that.

AFAIC, Eldtritch Storm isn't for killing Vehicles. But you're going to hit a lot of things in that 10" Blast, Infantry and Vehicles, and you're going to do damage to all of them. Even if you lucky '6' yourself into a Penetrating Hit, you've already made Haywire do a thing.

You know how a Frag Missile sometimes Scatters onto the Vehicle behind the Infantry, and you're like "Never mind, then." Well, the 'Frag Missile' that is Eldritch Storm, scatters onto the Vehicle behind your target, does an almost free Hull Point, and still hits the Infantry Squad because it's a 10" Blast.

Gauntlet

2016-12-22, 07:31 AM

I don't think the Geomortis Primaris power is necessarily as bad as it looks at first. It kills a sixth of a unit (without an invuln or Skilled Rider) which is bad against some people, but it's pretty good against larger units. It ignores Cover, which is always a good thing to have around and you don't have that much of it available. Against some armies (anyone with 20 model units, for example) you do a reasonable amount of damage.

You average the same number of wounds as Smite against a T4 unit with 8 or more models in it and no cover, and scale up from there if the target has more toughness, is larger or has cover.

Dangerous Terrain also happens on a model by model basis, which means it can't be Look Out Sir'ed, and special weapons etc can't hide at the back.

It's not amazing, but being able to go "one model in six dies, no armour, no cover" is a nice tool to have available.

lord_khaine

2016-12-22, 07:38 AM

AFAIC, Eldtritch Storm isn't for killing Vehicles. But you're going to hit a lot of things in that 10" Blast, Infantry and Vehicles, and you're going to do damage to all of them. Even if you lucky '6' yourself into a Penetrating Hit, you've already made Haywire do a thing.

You know how a Frag Missile sometimes Scatters onto the Vehicle behind the Infantry, and you're like "Never mind, then." Well, the 'Frag Missile' that is Eldritch Storm, scatters onto the Vehicle behind your target, does an almost free Hull Point, and still hits the Infantry Squad because it's a 10" Blast.

There hasnt been anyone saying its a straight out bad power either, if you throw it at 4 charges then it will leave a lot of dead bodies behind. But thats also what should happen if a high level psyker invest that much energy into firering off a single power.
Whats being said is more that its not nearly as broken as some of the other psychic powers in the game, and should not be called out as such when its merely good or great, depending on your point of view.
I mean we got a dicipline with a power so bonkers it has straight up been banned from most games, from what i have head.

Brookshw

2016-12-22, 07:39 AM

Question about blinding poison, am I reading this correctly and it just needs to hit to blind, but no wound is required? :smallconfused: If not I'm not sure I get why it's considered decent for gargoyles, so what am I missing?

Cheesegear

2016-12-22, 08:34 AM

Thanks to Drasius, I was inspired.

One day, three-game tournament. Since our goal for the tournament is to make people cry with Eldtritch Storm, we'll need a Seer Council for Batteries. We could add in a second CAD for Baharroth. But let's see how we do with three Farseers before a fourth - or fifth!

Farseers #1 and #2 are in the Seer Council. Seer Council harnesses on 3s. One of them is Warlord and gets Shard, and the other definitely gets Spirits Stones of Stupidname.

Farseer #1; Roll for Invisibility, then for Storm. Harnesses on 3s.
Farseer #2; (Spirit Stones) rolls on Runes for Eldritch Storm, no matter what Farseer #1 rolls. Harnesses on 3s.
Farseer #3; Roll for something good.

http://i40.photobucket.com/albums/e202/Cheesegear/Farseer%20Powers_zps9lytzj3u.png

Why no Divination? Because a Seer Council isn't Jetbikes.
Prescience - We'll have Guide, which is WC1.
Foreboding - Garbage Power
Forewarning - Seer Council has 4++ anyway.
Perfect Timing - Eh. Maybe. But since we don't want anything else, what's the point?
Precognition - No.
Misfortune - Jet Council has Bladestorm, so no.
Scrier's Gaze - The number of times it will be useful is situational at best.
So we'll ignore Divination.

Farseer #1: Shrouding, Invisibility (Wow, that was quick!), Doom.
Farseer #2: Eldritch Storm (Eldar Win before Deployment), Fortune, Doom (Storm, Fortune and Doom!? Okay. This is going to be a great game, and I can only imagine my opponent's face as I've already rolled everything I could possibly want on two Farseers. The 3rd isn't going to be required except as a battery.) & Guide
Farseer #3: Will of Asurmen, Eldritch Storm, Doom & Guide**

** Might roll on Telepathy for Psychic Shriek, depending on opponent; In that case, nothing good on TP, except for Shriek, which the other Farseers don't have.

If Eldar lose, it wont be because of the Psychic Phase. Slam dunk.

Farseer #1: Invisibility (Our Warlord is a gold mine), Executioner Guide, Fortune
Farseer #2: Doom, Will of Asuryan, Executioner & Guide (Uh oh.)
Farseer #3: Mind War, Eldritch Storm, Mental Fortitude Psychic Shriek

Well, we probably wont be casting Eldritch Storm since #3 can't cast it on 3s and at one less Warp Charge, but we have everything else except Shrouding, which, really, is the power we really want if we're not going to cast 'Storm. Shrouding isn't necessary. But, if you aren't interested in casting 'Storm, you may as well have a 2+ Jink. Not casting Eldritch Storm makes us sad, 'cause otherwise what's the point? But, we will be able to cast the rest of our buffs now that we have a number of spare dice.

Probably going to lean on the Wraithknight a bit more this game.

Farseer #1: Mental Fortitude, Invisibility (Warlord MVP for the tournament), Executioner Guide
Farseer #2: Doom, Eldritch Storm (Whoomp! (There It Is) (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ffCEr327W44)), Hallucination Psychic Shriek
Farseer #3: Dominate, Mental Fortitude, Shrouding & Psychic Shriek

No Fortune means the Council may be in trouble depending on opponent because we've shot up to the top tables and we need those re-rolls.

This game goes about the same as Game #1 did.

EDIT:
A fourth Farseer (in second slot of the CAD) might actually be helpful to roll for Misfortune, since then the unit will have Rending Witchblades. So, a quick jump to Excel gives me the following;

Game 1. Perfect Timing, Precognition, Misfortune & Prescience
2. Precog, Scrier's Gaze, Forewarning & Prescience (Battery!)
3. Forewarning, Foreboding, Precognition & Prescience (Battery!)

4th Farseer FTL. The only time he rolls the Power we want is in Game 1, which we already won. I also want to point out that the only time he ever rolled Perfect Timing was also in Game #1. In Game #2 we wont be casting Eldritch Storm because it's not on the Spirit Stones' Farseer, and the extra dice lets us cast all the other buffs. Game #3 he's definitely a Storm Battery.

EDIT 2:
If a Culexus is on the table, there's no point in buffs, and you're throwing all your dice into Eldritch Storm and Psychic Shriek.

lord_khaine

2016-12-22, 12:42 PM

Drasius

2016-12-22, 01:55 PM

Im kinda confused about the purpose of this :smallconfused:

I mean, it certainly looks fun, and it does make me want to buy some more warlocks so i can form a full council. It also shows you more or less has about a 3/4 chance to get eldrich storm in your council if you persistently roll after it. 1/6 of a chance if you put Eldrath into the council instead of a lesser lv 3 psyker.

And im also certain that if you had rolled for the warlocks then some additional options for synergy would have appeared, like ruining someones 2+ save before storming them.

Im just failing to see how this is going to make people cry over Eldrich storm? On average you will just cast it a single time each turn.

I mean, its a psychic deathstar to around 500 points or more, it would be sad if it did not do anything at all.
If anything i think people would be grateful for the variation, because i cant see this being worse to play against than a regular optimised Eldar list.

The purpose is to see that, if you rely very hevily on the psychic phase (such as a Thousand Sons army, Psychic Superfriends Deathstar, Seer Council, Screamerstar etc), can you reliably roll, if not the powers you want, at least a sufficient variety (or quantity) of powers that you need to be able to win >50% of your games in a tournament. For example, even rolling 2x ML3 Tzeentch sorcerors on heretek, I've still got a ~36% chance for neither of them to get a d3 hull point stripping power while I only have a ~16% chance to get nothing good at all, since what I really want is the haywire powers, but Fleshmetal Hide is also very usable. The same way Cheesegear planned out his Eldar example, he wants some combination of Invisibility, Shrouded, Eldrich Storm, Doom and Fortune and he has sufficient rolls to get them with a reasonable amount of reliability in each game. You don't worry about guide since it's the primaris and if your biggest worry is that you've got too many good spells to give something up for guide, then you're already half way to winning. Obviously just running your simulation just once can lead to bad data because random number's gunna random and one time you might everything you could every hope for and another you might get nothing at all. Think of it in a similar vein to how there's calculators for how many lands and such you need for a given M:TG deck to avoid mana flood/screw. Obviously, the more you rely on psychers (or more specifically, certain powers), the more you need, but as we've already established, you get severe diminishing returns on every psycher you bring casting-wise, so you don't want to bring too many, but you also need enough that you've not only got sufficent WC to cast all the powers you want, but you need a reasonable amount of psychers to roll the powers you want in the first place. After all, no point taking a list to a tournament that wins hard 1 time out of 6 'cause your lone psycher rolled that one awesome power randomly and as we all know (or should know), removing or reducing the chances for failure makes for stronger lists.

Edit:

Question about blinding poison, am I reading this correctly and it just needs to hit to blind, but no wound is required? :smallconfused: If not I'm not sure I get why it's considered decent for gargoyles, so what am I missing?

Yes, you only need to hit once to make them have to take a check, but even if you hit 12 times, they still only make 1 check, though previously it used to be they had to make a check for every hit. As for why it's considered decent, it's because gargs are a tarpit and any chance you have to make an opponent WS1 against a tarpit is pure gold since they're now hitting you on 5's unless you're WS2 or less, and for a T3 6+ save unit, that's about as good as it gets. It also means that in you next turn when you charge your carnifex or other WS3 big gribbly into them, they're now hitting on 3's. Also, not only is it free, it also means that you can hurt things that are T7+ that you wouldn't otherwise be able to hurt with your str3, such as Talos, Cronos, GUO, Buffed Nurgle Bikers, Iron Arm'ed T4 characters, Wraithlords, Wraithknights and probably some other things I'm forgetting. You can also split the attack of the unit so maybe 4 or 5 use poison to ensure at least 1 hit, forcing a check while the others attack normall to pile on the wounds (though pile on might be selling them a bit too strongly).

2nd Edit:

so im pissed. Apparently Canonness Veryidian has got models available in England, but when i switch it to America shes not. Wtf GW??

Each region gets allocated a certain amount to sell. More will come back into stock, she's not going anywhere for a while as she's going to remain a webstore exclusive for as per GW's post on their FB, don't get the pitchforks out just yet.

Cheesegear

2016-12-22, 05:10 PM

Im kinda confused about the purpose of this :smallconfused:

To show how powerful having three Farseers is. Especially in the Seer Council.

It also shows you more or less has about a 3/4 chance to get eldrich storm in your council

You have 50% chance (or slightly higher due to re-rolls for doubles, but I didn't show that) to get Eldritch Storm on the exact Farseer you want, let alone 'somewhere on the Council'. The specific Farseer who wants 'Storm (if, your intent is to build around rolling for 'Storm, which is not uncommon, because it's arguably the best Witchfire in the game!) can cast it on 3s, and at one less Warp Charge. 'Storm is not hard to cast like you seem to think.

Eldritch Storm is good because it is destructive, and Eldar get to cast it fairly easy. The combination of those two facts means Eldritch Storm is really, really strong Eldar are broken.

1/6 of a chance if you put Eldrath into the council instead of a lesser lv 3 psyker.

Eldrad isn't on a Jetbike. Therefore he's bad. JokingNotJoking.

And im also certain that if you had rolled for the warlocks then some additional options for synergy would have appeared, like ruining someones 2+ save before storming them.

So Eldritch Storm is even better. Almost like it's one of the most powerful Powers in the game because of Eldar synergy.

Im just failing to see how this is going to make people cry over Eldrich storm? On average you will just cast it a single time each turn.

How many times per turn do you need to cast a Fleshbane, AP3, 10" Blast? What? You think you need to cast 'Storm more than once? You Eldar players really are terrible people. :smalltongue:

If anything i think people would be grateful for the variation, because i cant see this being worse to play against than a regular optimised Eldar list.

It is an optimised Eldar list. Eldar have two lists; Aspect Host Warp Spiders, or Seer Council. Almost like what I did, is exactly what people do.

Blackhawk748

2016-12-22, 05:58 PM

Each region gets allocated a certain amount to sell. More will come back into stock, she's not going anywhere for a while as she's going to remain a webstore exclusive for as per GW's post on their FB, don't get the pitchforks out just yet.

*grumbles while putting away his Flamer and Pitchfork*

*Eldar Gak*

I am so glad i only have to deal with the Kahn Gladius, and it doesnt even have a Librarian.

Grim Portent

2016-12-22, 07:04 PM

Decided to get a 1k Sons Tzaangor box to try out.

https://scontent-lhr3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/15672690_1291065907633668_8889914043552463588_n.jp g?oh=05b3f54361fed76d0b52a1cf5d64595a&oe=58ED5B01

They're really nice models, decent set of options in the box, shame about the rules. :smallfrown:

Will make a nice addition to my HH Abhuman Militia army if nothing else, and they do provide some nice pistols and chainswords for my Grenadier squads.

Probably going to go with a different armour colour though. Maybe mono-gold for it rather than red with gold trim.

Blackhawk748

2016-12-22, 07:09 PM

I may nab a box for my Kings of War Herd army, cuz they look neat.

Cheesegear

2016-12-22, 10:38 PM

This picture went far less well than my first 'tournament', but, while this one wasn't amazeballs, it illustrates perfectly why x3 (or more) Farseers - or Chaos Sorcerers - is normal, and shows you why ML3 is so friggin' good. Between two ML3 Psykers, you get six rolls for the Power you want, there are six Powers, there's a not awful chance that you'll get the Power you want.
One for Telepathy
One for Runes
One for 'spot rolls' in case the other two screw up because random dice gonna random.

http://i40.photobucket.com/albums/e202/Cheesegear/Farseer%20Powers_zps8tekruof.png

This tournament, our Warlord never rolled Invisibility once, but, our 'backup' Farseer rolled Invisibility for him, 4/5 games. No, the CAD-Farseer doesn't on 3s, lucky he's got Batteries then, isn't it? If you aren't casting Eldritch Storm, that frees up your Farseers to use dice for Shroud, Fortune, Doom, Guide (roughly in that order, too). So even if you don't roll Eldritch Storm, or don't have enough Warp Dice (roll a '1' during Generation), that's fine. Cast the other 4 Powers that are actually really useful. If you aren't casting Eldritch Storm, you're free to Jink, and that means 2+ with Shroud.
(inb4; A Seer Council always attempts Invisibility first, then Eldritch Storm. Invisibility going off - or not - determines if you need Shroud and/or Fortune)

ML3 for 115 Points is dumb.

If you only have one Farseer, no. You'll never cast Eldritch Storm. But having one Farseer isn't why people hate playing against Eldar.

boomwolf

2016-12-23, 04:39 AM

Drasius

2016-12-23, 05:53 AM

Well, tzeentch daemons can pull off ML2 with 1 extra warp dice for mere 70 points, or ML3 with an extra dice for 95, so in the field of pure generation they got eldar beat.
Though the farseer uses said points better than the herald.

And for some reason, an ML3 herald on disk is 120 points compared to a farseers 115 while the farseer has a force weapon, an 4++, a 3+ and a free re-roll to cast and deny while ALSO having one of the best set of tables to generate from. And their jetbike is better than the daemons jetbike because reasons. And they can't cast on 3's. Being ML3 is nice, but access to invis telepathy Invisibility and Runes is worth far, far more than 5 points.

Besides, breaking the psychic phase is what Tzeentch daemons should be doing, it's literally thier shtick, they're manifestations of the god of magic. Eldar on the other hand really shouldn't be the best at everything, let alone being capable at being the best at everything at the same time, in the same list.

Tome

2016-12-23, 05:57 AM

The Eldar codex is broken.

In other news, water is wet. :smalltongue:

Cheesegear

2016-12-23, 06:07 AM

and a free re-roll to cast and deny [...] And they can't cast on 3's.

Cast on 3s. With a re-roll. And one Farseer gets to reduce the WC threshholds on his Powers.
Tell me how hard it is to cast Eldritch Storm. I'll wait.

And for some reason, an ML3 herald on disk is 120 points compared to a farseers 115 while the farseer has a force weapon, an 4++, a 3+ and a free re-roll to cast and deny while ALSO having one of the best set of tables to generate from.

Besides, breaking the psychic phase is what Tzeentch daemons should be doing, it's literally thier shtick, they're manifestations of the god of magic.

Eldar Farseer: I discard a Warp Dice. No Perils wound for me.
Tzeentch Daemon: I'm literally made of Warpstuff. What do I get?
Farseer: Lose a wound, nerd.

hamishspence

2016-12-23, 06:29 AM

Forum Explorer

2016-12-23, 06:41 AM

And for some reason, an ML3 herald on disk is 120 points compared to a farseers 115 while the farseer has a force weapon, an 4++, a 3+ and a free re-roll to cast and deny while ALSO having one of the best set of tables to generate from. And their jetbike is better than the daemons jetbike because reasons. And they can't cast on 3's. Being ML3 is nice, but access to invis telepathy Invisibility and Runes is worth far, far more than 5 points.

Besides, breaking the psychic phase is what Tzeentch daemons should be doing, it's literally thier shtick, they're manifestations of the god of magic. Eldar on the other hand really shouldn't be the best at everything, let alone being capable at being the best at everything at the same time, in the same list.

What force weapon? Do you mean the witchblade? That's Fleshbane and Soulblaze, not Force.

I think that's more a matter of Jetbikes being undercosted this edition. I seem to remember the upgrade being more like 20 to 30 points back in 5th. But I'd have to look that up to be certain. Though, you also paid for your powers back in 5th. So Farseers were more expensive anyways. Stat-wise and equipment wise, I don't think anything has really changed, but now you don't need to take any upgrades, and as a consequence are much cheaper.

Sure. But Eldar should be the next in line when it comes to having strong and effective psykers. As for the units, well I always felt they should be really good at their role, but awful outside of it. And that's close to true for the Aspect Warriors. But shooting is the best right now, and Scat lasers are underpriced pretty much wherever you can get them. Also Wraithknights. So you don't need Aspect Warriors to have an amazing Eldar list that is good at everything. Barring melee, but it's so fast that doesn't matter anyways.

Gauntlet

2016-12-23, 06:48 AM

Any thoughts on the new (experimental rules) 30K Knight on Forgeworld?

Does seem like the line between Knight and Scout Titan is being fuzzed a little - which isn't necessarily a bad thing - it means continuity of sizes, and less gaps.

500pts is a pretty good price point for 8 hull points with an Ion Shield at 14/13/12. It's got one less HP than a Baneblade, but gains an invuln, and costs about the same.

Four twin-linked Vindicator shots is a reasonable amount of firepower for the points. Not gonna take down other super heavies reliably, though, and you really want a source of Ignores Cover for him. Pretty reliably pops two transports or infantry units per turn otherwise, which is fine.

He's pretty underwhelming in close combat, though he still Stomps.

Seems fine as a gun platform if you can bubblewrap him and/or have other stuff capable of cracking superheavies and flyers.

Blackhawk748

2016-12-23, 06:56 AM

Eldar Farseer: I discard a Warp Dice. No Perils wound for me.
Tzeentch Daemon: I'm literally made of Warpstuff. What do I get?
Farseer: Lose a wound, nerd.

This right here is what pisses me off the most. Its why i want my Heralds and Horrors to have their old shooting attacks back. Demons Gaze, S5 AP3 Assault 3, for my Heralds and the very nice S4 AP 4 Assault 3 attacks for my Horrors. "But they're Psykers now!" Someone will say. So my Psykers cant have some sort of decent offensive punch? For feths sake Wydvane Psykers get to at least have one shot per model, but do my Pink Horrors? No, no they dont.

Drasius

2016-12-23, 07:24 AM

The Eldar codex is broken.

In other news, water is wet. :smalltongue:

If only the Eldar players would accept it instead of posting excuses, misdirections or denials (about the first bit, not the second bit, though we haven't tested that yet).

ION: Eldar water to be wetter than Imperial Water in 8th. Chaos to have dehydrated water at +50% points cost. More news at 11.

lord_khaine

2016-12-23, 11:49 AM

To show how powerful having three Farseers is. Especially in the Seer Council.

Well thats a completely different thing that what you initially said about making people cry with Eldrich Storm.
And i would not even say that what your doing is showing that its powerful to have those three farseers. All it really shows is that if you want a specific power in a table, and got 3 rolls to get it on, then you got precisely a 50 % chance of doing so. So when you got 3-4 powers you want, and three people to roll for them. Then you got a decent chance of getting most of those powers. But thats rather basic statistics.

If you wanted to show those 3 Seers are strong, then you should have made 3 different lists, one with them and one without them in it. That would give a better image of how much using them brings compared to not doing so.

You have 50% chance (or slightly higher due to re-rolls for doubles, but I didn't show that) to get Eldritch Storm on the exact Farseer you want, let alone 'somewhere on the Council'. The specific Farseer who wants 'Storm (if, your intent is to build around rolling for 'Storm, which is not uncommon, because it's arguably the best Witchfire in the game!) can cast it on 3s, and at one less Warp Charge. 'Storm is not hard to cast like you seem to think.

It is actually precisely 50% chance, the rerolls just means its not less than that. If anyone doubt the specific statistic calculation involved then i can expand on it why its so, but if its just going to bore people then i wont inflict it on innocent bystanders.
Anyway, no, Eldrich storm continue to be as hard to cast as a warp charge 3(4) power is. That Farseers and Seer councils both have a bonus to casting high cost powers are a attribute of theirs, and not something inherent to Eldrich storm.

So Eldritch Storm is even better. Almost like it's one of the most powerful Powers in the game because of Eldar synergy.

Im purely looking on Eldrich Storm on its own merit though, when i argue on the specific power level of a given power.

How many times per turn do you need to cast a Fleshbane, AP3, 10" Blast? What? You think you need to cast 'Storm more than once? You Eldar players really are terrible people.

Hey, some of us have been waiting since 4th for a chance to blow people up with that power. There is a huge backlog of killing that needs to be done :smallfrown:

It is an optimised Eldar list. Eldar have two lists; Aspect Host Warp Spiders, or Seer Council. Almost like what I did, is exactly what people do.

You made it sound like those warlocks were on foot earlier (maybe to give grav the finger?), and i though the competitive eldar list were all the jetbikes and all the wraithknights? :smallconfused:

This picture went far less well than my first 'tournament', but, while this one wasn't amazeballs, it illustrates perfectly why x3 (or more) Farseers - or Chaos Sorcerers - is normal, and shows you why ML3 is so friggin' good. Between two ML3 Psykers, you get six rolls for the Power you want, there are six Powers, there's a not awful chance that you'll get the Power you want.

precisely a 3/4 chance of getting one specific power.

Besides, breaking the psychic phase is what Tzeentch daemons should be doing, it's literally thier shtick, they're manifestations of the god of magic. Eldar on the other hand really shouldn't be the best at everything, let alone being capable at being the best at everything at the same time, in the same list.

Actually, it were Eldars stick back before demons were anything other than something you summoned from a chaos lord once in a while.

Cast on 3s. With a re-roll. And one Farseer gets to reduce the WC threshholds on his Powers.
Tell me how hard it is to cast Eldritch Storm. I'll wait.

Kinda.. feels like you forgot to add a "due to buying a relic and being part of a specific formation.

But alright.. lets see If we say a WC 3 power while casting on 3's and rerolling a failure.
Manifesting on 3+ and rerolling means you got 8/9 chance of succeding. That means with 3 dice you have an 3/9 chance if failure, or a 6/9 chance of success on manifesting the power.
If you then use an addition dice, then it means you would only fail 1/9 out of those 3/9 times. So about 3/81 of failing if using 4 dice, as far as i can tell.

I think that's more a matter of Jetbikes being undercosted this edition. I seem to remember the upgrade being more like 20 to 30 points back in 5th. But I'd have to look that up to be certain. Though, you also paid for your powers back in 5th. So Farseers were more expensive anyways. Stat-wise and equipment wise, I don't think anything has really changed, but now you don't need to take any upgrades, and as a consequence are much cheaper.

It were 30 points back in 5th, and you had to buy your powers for 20-30 additional points. I kinda miss it though, as it mean you could rely on having a specific power when building your list.
Back then Eldrath were a force multiplier of monstrous dimensions.

Drasius

2016-12-23, 02:36 PM

Anyway, no, Eldrich storm continue to be as hard to cast as a warp charge 3(4) power is. That Farseers and Seer councils both have a bonus to casting high cost powers are a attribute of theirs, and not something inherent to Eldrich storm.
...
Kinda.. feels like you forgot to add a "due to buying a relic and being part of a specific formation.

But alright.. lets see If we say a WC 3 power while casting on 3's and rerolling a failure.
Manifesting on 3+ and rerolling means you got 8/9 chance of succeding. That means with 3 dice you have an 3/9 chance if failure, or a 6/9 chance of success on manifesting the power.
If you then use an addition dice, then it means you would only fail 1/9 out of those 3/9 times. So about 3/81 of failing if using 4 dice, as far as i can tell.

Do you even understand that everyone else in the game looks at eldar successfully casting a WC4 power on 3 dice two thirds of the time (or 94.3% of the time on 4 dice) and turns green with envy? Have you played games with an army that relies on the psychic phase that's not eldar?

You made it sound like those warlocks were on foot earlier (maybe to give grav the finger?), and i though the competitive eldar list were all the jetbikes and all the wraithknights? :smallconfused:

Foot councils don't exist, just like eldrad and farseers not on jetbikes, don't be silly. Competative Eldar is called turning up with eldar. Tournament eldar is a different matter and involves basically what Cheese already spelled out: 3+ Jetseers, Scatbikes, 1 or more WK's and at least 1 aspect host with at least 2 slots being spiders. The remaining points vary, but that's the core. You could quite easily make a competative eldar list using anything you like, we've been there, we've played that game where we randomly select units and upgrades from their 7th ed book while the have-not dexs' go cry in the corner.

boomwolf

2016-12-23, 02:41 PM

The random eldar generator was quite fun actually.
If only for showing the sheer madness that is eldar.

Blackhawk748

2016-12-23, 03:46 PM

Im purely looking on Eldrich Storm on its own merit though, when i argue on the specific power level of a given power.

Except you cant do that, cuz its not a generic power like Invisibility or Vortex of Doom. Eldritch Storm is an Eldar exclusive power and you have to take into account their basic abilities when determining that. The fact that there is an artifact that reduces the WC cost of spells in the same book as that power makes it all the worse, cuz now its a WC 3 Apocalyptic blast and that is not ok.

Cheesegear

2016-12-23, 06:29 PM

The random eldar generator was quite fun actually.
If only for showing the sheer madness that is eldar.

Drasius gave me the idea. He used it to show how bad Thousand Sons are.
I used it to show how good Eldar are.

Well thats a completely different thing that what you initially said about making people cry with Eldrich Storm.

Yes, and you do that by having three Farseers, two in a Seer Council. If your goal is to cast Eldritch Storm, you bring a Seer Council, and roll on Telepathy/Runes. If your goal is to run around with multiple Jetbike units with an Aspect Host, well, you still take three Farseers, but, now you mostly just roll on Divination, maybe pick up Guide.

And i would not even say that what your doing is showing that its powerful to have those three farseers. All it really shows is that if you want a specific power in a table, and got 3 rolls to get it on, then you got precisely a 50 % chance of doing so.

No. No, no, no, no. Did you even look at the table? Do you understand what Invisibility does? Do you understand that you can have Invisibility and Eldritch Storm, and still cast them both?
Do you understand that even without Eldritch Storm (and/or Inivisibility), an Eldar player can just shrug their shoulders, and cast Shroud, Fortune, Doom or Guide instead?

Yes. My bad. You're right. I didn't show just how easy it is to actually cast Eldritch Storm, I also showed how stupid Farseers are.

What I actually did, was do both. My intent was simply to illustrate, that, actually it's easy to cast Eldritch Storm, it's not Warp Charge 4, it's WC3, and Farseers have stupid bonuses which allow them to cast it even more, and here's what that list looks like. x3 Farseers for 345 Points plus Spirit Stones means that Eldar have the dice - and points to spare for more - if they need the dice to cast Eldritch Storm.

What I also did, was also point out when the group rolls the other 5 spells. Giving you Eldritch Storm and the others. Yes, not only is Eldritch Storm really good, but, even if you don't have it / can't cast it, there's still other things you can do.

That Farseers and Seer councils both have a bonus to casting high cost powers are a attribute of theirs, and not something inherent to Eldrich storm.

Eldritch Storm being good, and Farseers being good, are one and the same thing. Because Farseers are the only Psykers in the game with access to 'Storm. Since Farseers (the only Psykers in the game who can cast it), can cast on 3s with a re-roll, and at one less Warp Charge, it means that Eldritch Storm, is cast on 3s, with a re-roll, and at one less Warp Charge.

What you're talking about is Invisibility, where Farseers, specifically, get to cast it better than anyone else. No-one else is casting Eldritch Storm.

Im purely looking on Eldrich Storm on its own merit though

It can only be cast by Farseers. Read how the Power will be cast in game - not on paper - and then you'll understand where I'm at.
Eldritch Storm is actually good because Farseers are good, and since they're the only Psyker that matters; Eldritch Storm is good and easy to cast.

Hey, some of us have been waiting since 4th for a chance to blow people up with that power.

I don't care how long you've waited. That line of thinking is the worst.

You made it sound like those warlocks were on foot earlier

As Drasius said; No I didn't. I said 'Seer Council', that means Jetbikes. :smallwink:

precisely a 3/4 chance of getting one specific power.

Except I don't care, because there's still other Powers to roll for even if you don't get it. I showed that, by accident, but now that I have, I'm glad I did.

Kinda.. feels like you forgot to add a "due to buying a relic and being part of a specific formation.

Because that's how Eldritch Storm is played. If Eldar aren't doing that, then they aren't casting Eldritch Storm. They're probably spamming Presicence and Guide, Doom and Misfortune with Scatter Lasers, possibly with Perfect Timing, depending whether or not Misfortune goes off.

Ricky S

2016-12-24, 01:33 AM

I ran a foot council with eldrad and a spare farseer in the unit. They are pretty darn durable. All are equipped with spears for armour popping and they just move up the centre of the boarding buffing themselves and everyone else. The unit is about 550 pts so is a massive points sink but can handle everything except a full knight list.

Competitively though jetbikes are definitely the way to go. They give you the mobility and fortune on a 3+ is great and on a 2+ jink is even better.

Cheesegear

2016-12-24, 02:13 AM

All are equipped with spears for armour popping and they just move up the centre of the boarding buffing themselves and everyone else.

Whenever I see a foot Council, I think 'How come that isn't Asurmen, a Farseer/Spiritseer (or 2) and Wraithblades?'

DataNinja

2016-12-24, 02:48 AM

Whenever I see a foot Council, I think 'How come that isn't Asurmen, a Farseer/Spiritseer (or 2) and Wraithblades?'

Because not everyone subscribes to the "if it's not the best, it's the worst" philosophy. Some people don't care that their models aren't the most competitive (though, to be fair, Eldar players are fairly privileged in being able to take an army of models that they like and still be, at the very least, useable).

Bobby Baratheon

2016-12-24, 03:35 AM

Because not everyone subscribes to the "if it's not the best, it's the worst" philosophy. Some people don't care that their models aren't the most competitive (though, to be fair, Eldar players are fairly privileged in being able to take an army of models that they like and still be, at the very least, useable).

https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwje-dWStYzRAhWL64MKHRCRAL4QjRwIBw&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.quickmeme.com%2Fmeme%2F3r0mr7&psig=AFQjCNFVafEPPAL8dMPW3wZRBX4kYQ-dqg&ust=1482654647395970

lord_khaine

2016-12-24, 06:07 AM

Do you even understand that everyone else in the game looks at eldar successfully casting a WC4 power on 3 dice two thirds of the time (or 94.3% of the time on 4 dice) and turns green with envy? Have you played games with an army that relies on the psychic phase that's not eldar?

Actually, i did not know how well the different bonuses added up myself before i began to calculate the odds. But all the same it feels like people most of all want to grab the headline and yell "omg! eldars cast WC 4 on 3 dice most of the time" Without adding the crucial bit, that this is done by combining a relic with a formation.
Im certain all armies have some relic or formation that makes someone else green with envy.

Foot councils don't exist, just like eldrad and farseers not on jetbikes, don't be silly. Competative Eldar is called turning up with eldar. Tournament eldar is a different matter and involves basically what Cheese already spelled out: 3+ Jetseers, Scatbikes, 1 or more WK's and at least 1 aspect host with at least 2 slots being spiders. The remaining points vary, but that's the core. You could quite easily make a competative eldar list using anything you like, we've been there, we've played that game where we randomly select units and upgrades from their 7th ed book while the have-not dexs' go cry in the corner.

Just because you dont see a certain thing, does not mean its not there.. it is rather arrogant to claim otherwise.

Except you cant do that, cuz its not a generic power like Invisibility or Vortex of Doom. Eldritch Storm is an Eldar exclusive power and you have to take into account their basic abilities when determining that. The fact that there is an artifact that reduces the WC cost of spells in the same book as that power makes it all the worse, cuz now its a WC 3 Apocalyptic blast and that is not ok.

I can follow your line of reasoning here, in claiming there is some connection. But all the same we do need to do it like that, if we want anything to compare Eldrich storm to. It is to different factors you are looking at here now, the psyker and the power, both of whom might get changed in some way. And if you want to compare a 2 factor setup, then you need to compare it to other 2 factor setups. And that means holding it up against every single other power manifested by every single other army that has access to it.
And thats an awful lot of work compared to just looking at Eldrich Storm and a Farseer independently, and then gop "huh, maybe they both are kinda good just on their own"

No. No, no, no, no. Did you even look at the table? Do you understand what Invisibility does? Do you understand that you can have Invisibility and Eldritch Storm, and still cast them both?
Do you understand that even without Eldritch Storm (and/or Inivisibility), an Eldar player can just shrug their shoulders, and cast Shroud, Fortune, Doom or Guide instead?

Yes. My bad. You're right. I didn't show just how easy it is to actually cast Eldritch Storm, I also showed how stupid Farseers are.

What I actually did, was do both. My intent was simply to illustrate, that, actually it's easy to cast Eldritch Storm, it's not Warp Charge 4, it's WC3, and Farseers have stupid bonuses which allow them to cast it even more, and here's what that list looks like. x3 Farseers for 345 Points plus Spirit Stones means that Eldar have the dice - and points to spare for more - if they need the dice to cast Eldritch Storm.

What I also did, was also point out when the group rolls the other 5 spells. Giving you Eldritch Storm and the others. Yes, not only is Eldritch Storm really good, but, even if you don't have it / can't cast it, there's still other things you can do.

Repeating a word several times just makes you sound rude. And asking what different psychic powers does is just plain patronising. If you have problems with being challenged on the content of your posts then you should not make them.

Anyway, yeah, if you got 9 rolls on different psychic tables, then you do get a lot of good powers. Thats kinda a given when you know half of whats in a given table.
But other than that, its kinda hard to understand what you mean by ES being WC 3, yeah thats the basic cost for the normal sized template. But are you talking about that one, or the apocalyptic sized one with its cost reduced by one? because its not certain getting ES on the seer with that spirit stone.

Eldritch Storm being good, and Farseers being good, are one and the same thing. Because Farseers are the only Psykers in the game with access to 'Storm. Since Farseers (the only Psykers in the game who can cast it), can cast on 3s with a re-roll, and at one less Warp Charge, it means that Eldritch Storm, is cast on 3s, with a re-roll, and at one less Warp Charge.

What you're talking about is Invisibility, where Farseers, specifically, get to cast it better than anyone else. No-one else is casting Eldritch Storm.

I expanded upon earlier in this post why you still need to seperate those two different factors. And no, its Farseers in a specific formation with a specific relic that can cast on 3's with a reroll and one less warp charge. Saying it like that spreads misinformation, since its not in any way certain that the guy who casts on 3's with a reroll and one less WC gets eldric storm. So it might be cast like that, but it might also be cast on 4's at full price and with just a reroll.

It can only be cast by Farseers. Read how the Power will be cast in game - not on paper - and then you'll understand where I'm at.
Eldritch Storm is actually good because Farseers are good, and since they're the only Psyker that matters; Eldritch Storm is good and easy to cast.

I can see what you are trying to say, i just dont agree with it. But as you set it up then its hard to determine if Eldrich storm is good on itself, or just good because Farseers. And to me, if Eldrich Storm is to good, or if Farseers are to good, thats two different discussions.

I don't care how long you've waited. That line of thinking is the worst.
Thankfully i dont care about what you think regarding my thinking.

As Drasius said; No I didn't. I said 'Seer Council', that means Jetbikes.

And... to others it means Eldrath on foot with a warlock bodyguard.. i still think the battle reports supporting that is saved somewhere.. :smalltongue:

Because that's how Eldritch Storm is played. If Eldar aren't doing that, then they aren't casting Eldritch Storm. They're probably spamming Presicence and Guide, Doom and Misfortune with Scatter Lasers, possibly with Perfect Timing, depending whether or not Misfortune goes off.

There... are more than those two specific ways to play Eldar you know? :smallconfused:
But does that mean you will then concede its not really worth casting Eldrich storm unless your part of a seer council with the spirit stone of "something"?
Because thats more or less what i have been debating from early start, that its a good power, but that there are a lot of other better choices for a Farseer most of the time.

Drasius

2016-12-24, 06:14 AM

In an effort to steer this away from decending into another 10 pages of eldar bashing, since nobody suggested any powers for my sorcerors to roll on, I took it upon myself to give them some very basic rules:
- Scarab Sorcerors 1 --> 3 roll Telepathy until one of them rolls invis, then they roll Biomancy
- Warlord Rolls for Invis unless one of the scarabs got it, and switches to Bio once someone has Invis.
- Sorcs #1 & 2 both roll Heretek because I have no other way of killing tanks and I can't be tempted by Invis anymore
- Sorc #3 rolls for Flayerstorm or Scrapcode if #1 & #2 didn't get either, then rolls for Invis unless one of the Scarabs or the warlord has it, and switches to Sinistrum once somebody has Invis - Except for Game 1 of the first tournament 'cause I forgot to change the logic, but it worked out in the end.

3 runs of 5 game tournaments. Green is keep and High priority, light green is keep and medium prioity, yellow is swap for primaris.

http://i687.photobucket.com/albums/vv234/Drasius_Rift/40K/Simulation%20Tournament%201_zpsyxn5kau3.png~origin al

http://i687.photobucket.com/albums/vv234/Drasius_Rift/40K/Simulation%20Tournament%202_zps18fbi5ij.png~origin al

http://i687.photobucket.com/albums/vv234/Drasius_Rift/40K/Simulation%20Tournament%203_zps1cpvuyi4.png~origin al

Overall, they only failed to get invis once, though 4 times it came down to the very last roll. The main issue I see with this plan is that if you doget Invis on one of the scarabs, you're casting on 4's without a re-roll, so you've pretty much got to throw 4 or 5 dice at it (or pray you roll siphon on the same guy who rolls invis - which happened 3 times out of 15 here) and your starting pool is very limited for what you need to do with it. Unfortunately, you really, really need to roll at least 2 sorcs on heretek, so that only leaves your warlord and 1 other guy and they've only got 4 rolls between them on tables that matter. I will admit that siphon isn't the complete trash I thought it was when you have 10 sorcerors, though it's still very situational on the sorceror who gets it being able to cast enough higher level powers to make it worthwhile and I would have rather it had been either a unit wide blessing or some sort of anti-tank witchfire, but it's not useless like boon or breath, so I'll count my blessings (ha!) and move on.

Invis, a handful of shrieks, a couple of flayerstorms or scrapcodes (electromortis instead on a couple of desperate occassions), probably a death hex or warp fate too along with a couple of biomancy buff or an enfeeble and you're pretty much out of warp charge. It certainly sounds like a lot, and for a normal army it is, but when your own other way to cause damage is str4 ap3 either at range or in melee, well, she's getting quite on the lean side, but I think it might be enough to work.

Cheesegear

2016-12-24, 06:44 AM

Because thats more or less what i have been debating from early start

Except you have apparently missed the part where I used the words 'competitive' and 'tournament'. Because we seem to be operating on different levels.

I'm specifically talking about this list;

Eldar, Seer Council
(W) Farseer Skyrunner; Shard of Anaris - 145 Points
Farseer Skyrunner; Spirit Stones of Anath'lan - 130 Points

Warlock Skyrunners (x7) - 350 Points

Eldar, CAD
Farseer Skyrunner - 115 Points

Windriders (x5); Scatter Lasers - 135 Points
Windriders (x5); Scatter Lasers - 135 Points
Windriders (x5); Scatter Lasers - 135 Points
Windriders (x5); Scatter Lasers - 135 Points

Wraithknight; Scatter Laser - 315 Points

Total: 1595 Points

Add a fourth Farseer, point shave the Jetbikes, add in a Crimson Hunter maybe? Insert Baharroth. Doesn't matter. This is the core list.

If you aren't talking about how Eldritch Storm plays into this list, you're not talking about what I'm talking about (or vice versa). Which I think is actually your point.

It certainly sounds like a lot, and for a normal army it is, but when your own other way to cause damage is str4 ap3 either at range or in melee, well, she's getting quite on the lean side, but I think it might be enough to work.

Yeah. That's the main problem with Thousand Sons (and to a lesser extent, Pink Horrors). S4, AP3 does fine...Until it doesn't. T5+ makes it sad. 2+ Armour makes it sad. Cover/Invulnerables/FNP make it sad. It just doesn't do enough. But there's no other options to give them, so that's what you're stuck with. And, then all your good stuff happens in the Psychic Phase, except - as we saw live on camera - you might have better things to do, like cast Invisibility or Iron Arm/Endurance, even Shrouding gets a look-in if you're already standing in area terrain. Not to mention that you might have guy or two that wants to cast Cursed Earth.

If your plan is to cast Witchfires (and, with Thousand Sons, it has to be), then you really don't need Invisibility, unless you do. Because you're playing against Ignores Cover Vindicates and have no way outside of Psychic Powers to hurt AV13, except then you rolled the wrong Powers and cried. :smallsigh:

IRN;
I'm playing against Magnus on Boxing Day. I wonder if a Raptor Wing will be enough?

Drasius

2016-12-24, 08:23 AM

Just because you dont see a certain thing, does not mean its not there.. it is rather arrogant to claim otherwise.

Not really, because you don't see foot councils in tournament grade eldar lists, which is what we were talking about. As usual, tone doesn't convey well on the 'net, so I suspect that's also feeding into this. Cheese and I are both from the same country and are generally talking about the same calibre of lists, so we are probably on the same wavelength. You on the other hand appear to have a much more relaxed meta (which isn't a bad thing, it's just different from our which means our perspectives are different). At the end of the day, if you're taking jetseer councils to friendly games, then I would venture that you are a bad person (not just you lord_khaine, anyone).

Yeah. That's the main problem with Thousand Sons (and to a lesser extent, Pink Horrors). S4, AP3 does fine...Until it doesn't. T5+ makes it sad. 2+ Armour makes it sad. Cover/Invulnerables/FNP make it sad. It just doesn't do enough. But there's no other options to give them, so that's what you're stuck with. And, then all your good stuff happens in the Psychic Phase, except - as we saw live on camera - you might have better things to do, like cast Invisibility or Iron Arm/Endurance, even Shrouding gets a look-in if you're already standing in area terrain. Not to mention that you might have guy or two that wants to cast Cursed Earth.

If your plan is to cast Witchfires (and, with Thousand Sons, it has to be), then you really don't need Invisibility, unless you do. Because you're playing against Ignores Cover Vindicates and have no way outside of Psychic Powers to hurt AV13, except then you rolled the wrong Powers and cried. :smallsigh:

IRN;
I'm playing against Magnus on Boxing Day. I wonder if a Raptor Wing will be enough?

It's one of the reasons why I'm so tempted to run that 3rd sorc on Sanctic so I can try for hammerhand, but I guess rolling Sinistrum for Death Hex will effectively achieve the same thing against many things. So many thins I want to roll on and not enough Sorcerors. Being all but forced to roll 2 out of 4 "proper" sorcs on Heretek kills me, but rolling the Scarabs on Heretek just doesn't cut the mustard, not to mention the terrible primaris there instead of the good ones like Shriek or Smite that I can throw 1 WC at and won't feel bad if it doesn't work. That delicate balance of having enough witchfires to hurt things before you get into combat (and Scarabs want to be in combat, don't let their weapons upgrades fool you into thinking otherwise) while also having enough buffs that you can stay on top and still kill things while you are locked in combat and unable to shoot your witchfires is a difficult thing.

As for Magnus, I'm thinking no. You're going to get a round of shooting to be sure, so that's 2 TL assault cannons and 2 skyhammers with shred, that's 3.5 wounds if he just has his 4++ or 2.3 if he has a 3++ from the +1 invo from casting a blessing. Assuming you can't ground him and lock him in combat with hammernators or lysander or similar, then he's going to pop both storm talons if he knows what he's doing. 4d6 flickering fire at BS7 should glance one out unless he rolls like a chump and Prismatic gaze will be enough to make the other jink or be destroyed. Bonus points if he treasons one of them before he destroys it, super secret dragon points if he treasons one, uses it to destroy the other before popping the first one with flickering fire. Then he's got IWND and being a T7 FMC to prevent him from losing too many more wounds to ground based potshots. He can also vector strike d3 at str8 ignores cover and that's probably going to be enough to pop one of the talons too, depending on where you bring them in.

Regardless, I'm keen to hear how it goes as well as what the rest of the other guys army is. Batrep pls.

Blackhawk748

2016-12-24, 08:47 AM

Actually, i did not know how well the different bonuses added up myself before i began to calculate the odds. But all the same it feels like people most of all want to grab the headline and yell "omg! eldars cast WC 4 on 3 dice most of the time" Without adding the crucial bit, that this is done by combining a relic with a formation.
Im certain all armies have some relic or formation that makes someone else green with envy.

Orks dont. Lucky Stick with Mega Armor for rr 2+ Armor? at least 2 other armies can do that. Da Finkin Cap to get a second Warlord trait? Its neat but i doubt its causing jealousy. And dont get me started on our formations.

I would also say Sisters are in a similar situation.

Cheesegear

2016-12-24, 08:50 AM

So many thins I want to roll on and not enough Sorcerors.

Sorcerers being super expensive is not helping things.

As for Magnus, I'm thinking no.

I'm tempted to run the AADF, but, given that I haven't ran that Formation in basically a year, it'll feel like hard tailoring, whereas the Raptor Wing and Culexus are things that I have actually used in the last month.

Assuming you can't ground him and lock him in combat with hammernators or lysander or similar

How does Magnus go against a Dreadknight? We'll find out.

Regardless, I'm keen to hear how it goes as well as what the rest of the other guys army is. Batrep pls.

IIRC it's a War Cabal with a Daemon Prince and Magnus.

Drasius

2016-12-24, 09:00 AM

Sorcerers being super expensive is not helping things.

How does Magnus go against a Dreadknight? We'll find out.

IIRC it's a War Cabal with a Daemon Prince and Magnus.

Having to roll a power on Tzeentch and not getting a primaris is what's killing me.

Magnus strikes first (6 times!) with an ap2 force weapon, hitting on 3's and wounds on 2's. Unless you goad him into charging you through terrain, or you can reliably roll nothing but 5++'s, you're dead before you swing unless you pop him with a gatling psylencer.

He's going to be hurting to actually power Magnus if that's the case. Should be an interesting game.

boomwolf

2016-12-24, 09:50 AM

And that's assuming he didn't psyker the dreadknight to death before the charge phase even started.

Ricky S

2016-12-24, 09:53 AM

Whenever I see a foot Council, I think 'How come that isn't Asurmen, a Farseer/Spiritseer (or 2) and Wraithblades?'

My meta really isnt that competitive so a foot council really does work wonders. Invisibility, fortune and then eldritch storm something is all I need to do for the psychic phase then hopefully be in range to chuck spears at something. Rinse and repeat.

Also footdar is weaker so it actually gives competitive games rather than just a wipe. Im winning games with a seer council, avatar, wraithlords and whatever else i feel like. Its not particularly optimised but being eldar is still damn good. Knights are the only real threat but the seer council, avatar and wraithlords are enough to take them down.

Renegade Paladin

2016-12-24, 01:03 PM

GW is running a Kill Team tournament at Warhammer World on January 14th. No one from my meta is traveling to Nottingham (obviously), but I think I'm going to run a parallel event here. Since our last big 40k event was Apocalypse, it should make for a nice change of pace.

Forum Explorer

2016-12-24, 01:19 PM

Orks dont. Lucky Stick with Mega Armor for rr 2+ Armor? at least 2 other armies can do that. Da Finkin Cap to get a second Warlord trait? Its neat but i doubt its causing jealousy. And dont get me started on our formations.

I would also say Sisters are in a similar situation.

Lucky Stick is a great artifact. And you bet it's causing jealousy, because Tyranids and Dark Eldar don't have any good artifacts at all.

Blackhawk748

2016-12-24, 01:57 PM

Lucky Stick is a great artifact. And you bet it's causing jealousy, because Tyranids and Dark Eldar don't have any good artifacts at all.

I thought Nids had at least one good one. Cant comment for Deldar.

Also i didnt say it was bad, its great. Its just that we have 8 Relics and like 3 are usable.

Forum Explorer

2016-12-24, 02:26 PM

I thought Nids had at least one good one. Cant comment for Deldar.

Also i didnt say it was bad, its great. Its just that we have 8 Relics and like 3 are usable.

IIRC the Nid relics go from awful to mediocre

D Eldar have at least 1 decent one, but it's nothing amazing (12 " Ad Will bubble). And way too many (IE more then 0) that is ignored by Fearless or TSKNF.

Blackhawk748

2016-12-24, 02:45 PM

IIRC the Nid relics go from awful to mediocre

D Eldar have at least 1 decent one, but it's nothing amazing (12 " Ad Will bubble). And way too many (IE more then 0) that is ignored by Fearless or TSKNF.

Ah ATSKNF, how many builds are you responsible for killing?

boomwolf

2016-12-24, 04:47 PM

The entire game practically.
The fact it prevents moral being a viable attack vector is the direct cause for the killiness /tankiness inflation.

Blackhawk748

2016-12-24, 10:34 PM

The entire game practically.
The fact it prevents moral being a viable attack vector is the direct cause for the killiness /tankiness inflation.

It is why its nicknamed And They Shall Know No Rules. Space Mariness ignore an entire section of the game (morale) and its why i dont recommend them as a starter army (typically i recommend Necrons, easy to paint and easy to run in a casual setting).

Really they are the reason Fear is a trash rule. I mean Necrons sorta ignore it (hello LD 10) but they are just highly resistant, not flat out immune.

Forum Explorer

2016-12-24, 10:59 PM

Reread the Dark Eldar Artifacts. They are actually worse then I remember.

Animus Vitae: a one shot only, 8" range, S4 AP 2 shot. If it actually manages to kill someone, you get +1 to your Power from Pain turn. (IE Turn 2 counts as Turn 3). (20 pts to maybe get a useful bonus. If you can get close enough fast enough. If you can actually kill the target. If they don't have any sort of cover or invulnerable. So it sucks).

Archangel of Pain: A one shot only 9" Nova that is ignored by Fearless or ATSKNF. (25 pts to do nothing most of the time)

Armor of Misery: 4+ armor, 6+ Invunerable, Fear, and enemies within 6" take -2 to their LD. (15 pts to really push your wins in CC hard. Shame melee sucks, shame 4+ 6++ sucks, shame fear sucks, and a shame it's useless against Fearless or ATSKNF)

The Dijin Blade: +2 attacks, power weapon. But it causes a wound on a 1, and you are still S 3. (30 pts to suck in melee. Take an Agonizer next time)

The Helm of Spite: Ad Will bubble of 12". Also if the enemy psyker is within the bubble, they Perils on any double. (25 pts, and actually worth it. Pretty mediocre though)

The Parasite's Kiss: A +2 poison pistol. Any unsaved wound heals one wound on the wielder. (5 pts so not completely awful. A blaster is still better.)

Blackhawk748

2016-12-24, 11:20 PM

Forum Explorer

2016-12-24, 11:42 PM

Wow, those are bad. The last two are ok though, cuz Periling on Doubles is always nice (and IIRC Deldar are fairly short range anyway) and a 2+ Poison pistol that heals you, for 5 points. I mean if it cost more it would suck, but its 5 points, thats not horrible.

Dark Eldar actually prefer to be at range most of the time, though you can make a melee Archon with a retinue, or stick him with Incubi.

The biggest problem with the pistol is that if you are taking it, you aren't taking the Helm of Spite, and if you are firing it, you aren't firing a blast pistol/blaster which is almost always better.

Also at T3, you get instant killed a lot. So getting wounds back isn't always all that good.

Drasius

2016-12-25, 12:32 AM

You're taking a 10 point Llamean as your mandatory HQ more often than not if you're taking DE and they can't take relics anyway. If you aren't taking a Llamean, then it's either a WWP delivery system and it doesn't matter or you're taking a haemonculous from the dark artisan and you're taking Sindriq's Sump. The coven artifacts are better, but still not good unfortunately.

Edit: Alternatively, you could think of the WWP and Shadow Field as relics that anyone can take because that's the level that they're on, both price- and effect- wise.

Grim Portent

2016-12-25, 08:58 AM

When making a list purely based around summoning is there any good reason to do anything but spend everything on Imp Guard Psykana Divisions?

They generate up to 6 bonus warp charges each turn, manifest on 2+ and the Primaris Psyker knows all the powers known by his Wyrdvanes. In one of my standard sized games (2k points) I can fit in 4 full divisions, missing two commissars, which collectively generate 44 dice and 20 powers not including the primaris power, that's a lot of daemons being summoned each turn.

You've got enough spare dice that each Wyrdvane unit should be able to spend 4 on casting Summoning each turn, which has an 86% chance of success according to the handy table Drasius posted earlier, perils on any doubles but that just removes one model because of attached Commissars. That should mean 10 units of lesser daemons of your choice dropping in each turn, or a mix of lessers and higher grade ones depending on what powers you rolled.

By comparison I'm not seeing much point in using Word Bearers or Chaos Daemons for a summoning army. Casting on 3+ for the former is nice but overshadowed by casting on 2+, and reduced perils is actually rather meh in comparison for the latter.

Blackhawk748

2016-12-25, 09:55 AM

Also at T3, you get instant killed a lot. So getting wounds back isn't always all that good.

I play Sisters, i know how true this is.

Edit: Alternatively, you could think of the WWP and Shadow Field as relics that anyone can take because that's the level that they're on, both price- and effect- wise.

This is true, cuz i know that the WWP is freakin amazing, cant comment on the Shadow Field as i don't know what it does.

Drasius

2016-12-25, 10:02 AM

Other than being quite expensive to collect, unfun and very time consuming to paint and play, you're also going to get rolled hard by anyone bringing ObSec armour or by a heavy alpha strike army if you don't get first turn.

Also, it'd be about even with the new Heralds Anarchic formation which can generate 82 (+d6) dice, but it's casting on 4's, so yeah, about even, though these guys don't peril on doubles, so throwing 8 dice at a summon is also a decent chance (~85%). This would be harder hit by detatchment restrictions though since you need like 8 or 9 detatchments. It'd be just as expensive, unfun and time consuming though since you basically need 41 heralds (plus summons) instead of however many IG psycher squads (plus summons), though you could cheap out and just use horrors.

Edit: Plus the Daemons will know flickering fire and have the option of rolling on the Tzeentch table for prismatic gaze which is a str D shot so they can deal with superheavies/GMC's at least a little bit, though I suppose you could say the same for the psycher battle company that's summoning horrors, but they've only got ~10 chances to roll for it and don't have it first turn whereas the heralds will have anywhere up to 41 chances to roll for it at 1850, then about the same chances per turn if they summon horrors too. Meh, it's a bit of a wash, but the daemons are more thematic and at least have an invulnerable save and extreme MSU.

Shadow Field is a 2++, but it disappears the first time you take an unsaved wound. Pair with Farseers with fortune (re-roll your saves) for ultimate trolling.

Blackhawk748

2016-12-25, 10:32 AM

Other than being quite expensive to collect, unfun and very time consuming to paint and play, you're also going to get rolled hard by anyone bringing ObSec armour or by a heavy alpha strike army if you don't get first turn.

Also, it'd be about even with the new Heralds Anarchic formation which can generate 82 (+d6) dice, but it's casting on 4's, so yeah, about even, though these guys don't peril on doubles, so throwing 8 dice at a summon is also a decent chance (~85%). This would be harder hit by detatchment restrictions though since you need like 8 or 9 detatchments. It'd be just as expensive, unfun and time consuming though since you basically need 41 heralds (plus summons) instead of however many IG psycher squads (plus summons), though you could cheap out and just use horrors.

Edit: Plus the Daemons will know flickering fire and have the option of rolling on the Tzeentch table for prismatic gaze which is a str D shot so they can deal with superheavies/GMC's at least a little bit, though I suppose you could say the same for the psycher battle company that's summoning horrors, but they've only got ~10 chances to roll for it and don't have it first turn whereas the heralds will have anywhere up to 41 chances to roll for it at 1850, then about the same chances per turn if they summon horrors too. Meh, it's a bit of a wash, but the daemons are more thematic and at least have an invulnerable save and extreme MSU.

I agree here. i mean i think the Psykana Division makes a better Warp Charge battery than horrors, and the great part about that is is that the Primaris Psyker can try to fish for Vortex of Doom, and if you're lucky you can get more than one and start spamming it.

Shadow Field is a 2++, but it disappears the first time you take an unsaved wound. Pair with Farseers with fortune (re-roll your saves) for ultimate trolling.

Oh, that is freakin neat.

Drasius

2016-12-25, 12:07 PM

I agree here. i mean i think the Psykana Division makes a better Warp Charge battery than horrors, and the great part about that is is that the Primaris Psyker can try to fish for Vortex of Doom, and if you're lucky you can get more than one and start spamming it.

The Heralds Anarchic isn't horrors, it's Heralds of Tzeentch, specifically, 3-5 of them and each one generates 1 extra warp charge per model from the formation on the field, so you take 3 ML1 horrors for 135 points and they generate 6 WC. It's currently the cheapest WC generator per point than the, now arguably superceeded, Inquisition Henchmen squads at 22.5 point per WC.

Either way, rolling the IG psychers on Sanctic or the Heralds on Tzeentch, you're not rolling summoning and if that's really all you want to do, then it's counter productive, but the Heralds lose less since they have 41 psychers available to make rolls with compared to the [X<41] of the guard, not to mention that if you're only casting ~10 times, then the guard are going to need most of their psycher squads casting while the Heralds are going to have 30 odd units sitting around doing nothing but being batteries and gtg every turn, so they lose a lot less by rolling on Tz 'cause they weren't going to be casting anything anyway.

Really though, summoning is meant to be a supplement to an army, not the only thing it does. I can only imagine the field day a marine army with TFC's would have against this list, especially with some pods to rapid fire some bolters into the squishy T3 armour: doesn't matter models. Personally, I'd probably just take a Household detatchment of ObSec Imperial Knights, go stand on objectives and fire my guns into whatever squad knows Vortex or Molten Beam or whatever else that can realistically hurt me and call it a day, but then not only do I have the models to bring a household at the drop of a hat, I'd also like to put them on the field in a non-tournament game. As always, ask yourself just how fun you think it would be to play against the list you wrote up and how many games you're going to get with it before you purchase the models. If the answer is not a lot to either of those, then you'd better really, really like the models, 'cause looking pretty on the shelf is about all they're going to achieve before long.

Saambell

2016-12-25, 02:12 PM

LeSwordfish

2016-12-25, 02:34 PM

Sigils are well worth the points - I would definitely include one on your warlord. (You could also consider a palanquin: an extra wound is lovely.) I think a ten-man squad of raptors won't serve you well, though - you'll probably get more out of two squads of five with meltaguns - fast enough to grab objectives, and some much needed anti-tank firepower. Remember at 2000 points you're going to start seeing things like multiple knights - and you have barely any anti-heavy-tank in either list.

The chosen seem an odd choice in both cases. In the Warband, they're in the only tank in the list, and will eat two thousand points worth of lascannons etc into armour 11 on turn one. In the CAD, they're footslogging with meltaguns and nothing to protect them. I would seriously consider dropping them for combi-melta terminators in both cases. They can deep strike in, have almost as good a chance at splattering a tank as the chosen, and be cheaper and more survivable as they do so.

JNAProductions

2016-12-25, 03:04 PM

So what do Necrons do for anti-air?

hamishspence

2016-12-25, 03:06 PM

So what do Necrons do for anti-air?

The Pylons and Mini-Pylons from Imperial Armor, possibly? The Gauss weaponry on their fliers might do in a pinch though.

Cheaper and simpler might be just to buy Imperial fortifications with anti-air guns and man them.

LordDavenport

2016-12-25, 03:22 PM

@Saambell: For the CAD, have you considered a second detachment of Alpha Legion? You could split off the unit of chosen, and make another one by dropping the Havoks. Then you can take a AL lord with the Mind veil and stick it in your melee foot slogging blob. Then you would have 2 infiltrating Objective secured melta squads, and your melee blob would be moving quite a bit faster.

OHHH... you could make the sorcerer AL, that is it. Then you don't have to roll on Nurgle at all. I mean, he losses FNP which is a thing, but gaining another roll could be better. *shrug*

lord_khaine

2016-12-25, 03:29 PM

If you aren't talking about how Eldritch Storm plays into this list, you're not talking about what I'm talking about (or vice versa). Which I think is actually your point.

Yeah.. i though from the start i were making it very clear that my comments were purely aimed at the actual power itself, and that the subject were how its not standing to much out against some of the top psychic powers. I mean, i have certainly heard more complaints about summoning, the S D vortex power, invisibility or that terrain moving thing thats actually banned most places.

Not really, because you don't see foot councils in tournament grade eldar lists, which is what we were talking about. As usual, tone doesn't convey well on the 'net, so I suspect that's also feeding into this. Cheese and I are both from the same country and are generally talking about the same calibre of lists, so we are probably on the same wavelength. You on the other hand appear to have a much more relaxed meta (which isn't a bad thing, it's just different from our which means our perspectives are different). At the end of the day, if you're taking jetseer councils to friendly games, then I would venture that you are a bad person (not just you lord_khaine, anyone).

Clearly it were what you and Cheese were talking about yes. A farseer with a warlock bodyguard has several times been part of the list i brough to our local escalation leagues back when i were more regularly active though. So yes, for me by defauly then a Seer council is footslogging, unless actually specificed that they are riding a bike.

It is why its nicknamed And They Shall Know No Rules. Space Mariness ignore an entire section of the game (morale) and its why i dont recommend them as a starter army (typically i recommend Necrons, easy to paint and easy to run in a casual setting).

Really they are the reason Fear is a trash rule. I mean Necrons sorta ignore it (hello LD 10) but they are just highly resistant, not flat out immune.

Yeah i do also think its an awfully bad idea to hand out outright immunity like that. Clearly its design based on fluff more than anything else. Or designed to feed into the fantasy of the "elite fearless army".

Reread the Dark Eldar Artifacts. They are actually worse then I remember.

Animus Vitae: a one shot only, 8" range, S4 AP 2 shot. If it actually manages to kill someone, you get +1 to your Power from Pain turn. (IE Turn 2 counts as Turn 3). (20 pts to maybe get a useful bonus. If you can get close enough fast enough. If you can actually kill the target. If they don't have any sort of cover or invulnerable. So it sucks).

Archangel of Pain: A one shot only 9" Nova that is ignored by Fearless or ATSKNF. (25 pts to do nothing most of the time)

Armor of Misery: 4+ armor, 6+ Invunerable, Fear, and enemies within 6" take -2 to their LD. (15 pts to really push your wins in CC hard. Shame melee sucks, shame 4+ 6++ sucks, shame fear sucks, and a shame it's useless against Fearless or ATSKNF)

The Dijin Blade: +2 attacks, power weapon. But it causes a wound on a 1, and you are still S 3. (30 pts to suck in melee. Take an Agonizer next time)

The Helm of Spite: Ad Will bubble of 12". Also if the enemy psyker is within the bubble, they Perils on any double. (25 pts, and actually worth it. Pretty mediocre though)

The Parasite's Kiss: A +2 poison pistol. Any unsaved wound heals one wound on the wielder. (5 pts so not completely awful. A blaster is still better.)

See..? now we got someone to be envious about just about everyone elses relics :smalltongue:

Now they just need some good formations so other people can be envious of them :smallwink:

Shadow Field is a 2++, but it disappears the first time you take an unsaved wound. Pair with Farseers with fortune (re-roll your saves) for ultimate trolling.

I belive this were the rage right when allies came out first. Or at least a little while after.

JNAProductions

2016-12-25, 03:30 PM

How would you change ATSKNF to make it work better but still be fun? Short of outright removing it, obviously.

DaedalusMkV

2016-12-25, 03:39 PM

How would you change ATSKNF to make it work better but still be fun? Short of outright removing it, obviously.

Completely delete the current text and turn it into "You may reroll Morale, Pinning and Fear tests. You may choose to reroll a successful test."

Still makes Marines good at Morale, but if you lose combat by 14 you're still going to just run away and being immune to Sweeping Advance has never been good for the game. Also, half the armies in the game having blanket immunity to Fear has been the reason that rule has never been worth actual points, so we needed to do away with that nonsense.

Forum Explorer

2016-12-25, 03:54 PM

I think the Warband is better by far.

Also you might want to think about breaking up the blobs into 10 man units. That way you have more board control, can take more special weapons, and are harder to tarpit.

Drasius

2016-12-25, 03:54 PM

So I'm making plans for a Death Guard Army. My one goal I wanted out of Chaos Marines was to take advantage of the Max 20 Man unit size. Death Guard or World Eaters are my options for that. I'm going Death Guard though. Got two possible lists:

Vectorium:
Warband(core):
Lord: Terminator, FistClawMoN,VotLW, Blight Grenades 152 Points
Sorc: Terminator, ML3, MoN, VotLW, Familiar 165 Points
Chosen: MoN, VotLW, 4x Melta, Rhino 180 Points
Raptors: 10 Man Squad, 2x Melta, MoN, VotLW, Fist 255 Points
Havocs: MoN, VotLW, 4x Autocannons 130 Points
CSM: MoN, VotLW, 20 Man Squad, Autocannon, Plasma 355 Points
CSM: MoN, VotLW, 20 Man Squad, Autocannon, Plasma 355 Points
CSM: MoN, VotLW, 20 Man Squad, Swap Boltgun for CCW 345, Claw 145 Points
Spawn(aux):
Spawn: MoN 36 Points
TOTAL: 1973 Points
Would like to maybe drop 10 points to be able to add a second Spawn, or I need to find something to spend 25 points on. Maybe a Sigil on one of my Characters...
OR:

HQ
Lord: Terminator, Fist, Claw, VotLW, MoN 147 Points
Sorc: Terminator, VotLW, MoN, ML3, Familiar 165 Points
Core
CSM: MoN, VotLW, 20 Man Squad, Autocannon, Plasma 355 Points
CSM: MoN, VotLW, 20 Man Squad, Autocannon, Plasma 355 Points
CSM: MoN, VotLW, 20 Man Squad, Autocannon, Plasma 355 Points
CSM: MoN, VotLW, 20 Man Squad, Swap Boltgun for CCW 345 Points
Elite
Chosen: MoN, VotLW, 4x Melta 145 Points
Heavy Support
Havocs: MoN, VotLW, 4x Autocannons 130 Points
TOTAL: 1997 Points
A much slower list, yet more blobs. In both lists, the Lord goes with the melee blob, while the Sorc either joins the same, or sticks with one of the shooting blobs. Not sure yet if to roll all spells on Nurgle or to fish a spell or two on Tele for Invis for a Invisible blob of 20 Marines. As a head's up for my local meta, its mostly a CS/Marine meta with a sprinkle of Tau and Guard really. I don't think its too heavily optimized if Guard and Chaos are main players in it, even before Traitor Legions. Also, I do note I'm Low on Anti Armour... Especially the second list. Might swap the Chosen in it for a unit of 4 spawn, for something fast and able to smack the rear of vehicles. Or maybe actually using the whole "20 man max squad size" is a bad idea.

Take advantage of a 20 man unit? The only way to take advantage of a 20 man unit is to buff them up, so something like Fabius Bile's enhancements and/or Huron's infiltrate are really the only things other than sorceror buffs that are advantages of a 20 man unit. Technically I guess the 2 specials have 10 extra ablative wounds and you only pay the chap tax once, but there is virtually no benefit at all in taking 1 squad of 20 instead of 2 squads of 10. You were right at the start when you said WE were the other way to do it because getting a free 2d6 move really puts the pressure on but again, there's very little benefit from a 20 man unit instead of 2x10, doubly so now that you're thinking about CC where having 2 power weapons or fists makes all the difference. I'm interested to hear what you think the benefits of the 20 man squad are over 2x10 or even 4x5?

As for the lists, The first list has a temie lord and sorc but no other terminators? Seems more than a bit odd, but if you were just planning on footsloggin them with 20 ablative wounds, well, that unit is going to attract pretty much everything your opponent has. As an aside, there's also virtually no reason to not take a chainfist on a lord, that extra 5 points can make all the difference now that things like knights and character dreadnaughts (and character knights) are things. Throw your squad sarge in front of the challenge and then RIP AND TEAR! with your chainfist. Also makes opening tanks easier and enables multi charges without as much worry. Also also, while sigils are great, it's a lot of wasted points on a terminator character for just +1 invo, but then terminator armour is generally bad, so it doen't come up much. Defiantely not a fan of the single rhino as LeSwordfish already pointed out. It's way too easy as first blood in even smaller games, let alone 2k.

The Raptors, while decent at 10 men, is going to be the only thing moving up quickly outside of a single spawn, so they're going to get focused down hard. Again, Le Swordfish pointed out the same thing, that 2x5 gets you twice as many specials as 1x10, meaning it's more targets and the option to DS them isn't as suicidal as one bigger squad.

As for the second list? Basically the same as the first. I don't know that I'd give up stealth and rr1's on fnp along with ObSec on non-troops choices in exchange for not taking a unit of bikes or raptors. Speaking of bikes, the real question is why your lord and sorc aren't on bikes and running with either a unit of bikes or a unit of spawn (probably bikes because of the warband being mandatory and solo spawn being great aux choices)? T6 bikes with fnp and stealth are pretty damn great and being able to take 3 small units and still take nurgle spawn means you can run a fast, very tough to kill force quite easily.

Don't get me wrong, both lists are quite a lot of durable bodies to chew through, but they're also very slow and unwieldy to manuver around and you're going to be slowed far more by terrain with those big blobs compared to smaller units. If you're playing maelstrom or kill points, yeah, you're going to be fine because the only turns that matter are turns 5 and onwards and even massive blobs of death guard can get across the 24" of no mans land in that time, but you're also going to have to do it under some serious fire. If you face guard a bunch, they're going to thank you for being so light on AV units while them pummel you with battlecannons, basilisks and possibly even some demolishers. If I saw a list like yours and I was running marines, I'd be investing in 3 vindicators ASAP. As for tau, well, they're not going to care much since they've got lots of answers already. IA 'tides, ionheads, massed FW's, pirahna firestream seeker spam, anchored stormsurge pulse driver/s and sufficient markerlights will be more than enough to ruin your day.

So what do Necrons do for anti-air?

Either not care because they're necrons and don't die or they shoot str7 twin linked tesla at it from night scythes of their own. Or yeah, as hamishspence pointed out, if FW is allowed, Pylons. Alternately, if you're playing with mysterious objectives, find a skyfire nexus and just point your basic gauss weapons skyward and let volume of fire do the talking. I'd probably go with ignoring them though unless you were already building towards a night scythe or two so you could have some mobility for late game objective grabbing outside of tomb blades/wraiths.

Blackhawk748

2016-12-25, 03:55 PM

The Heralds Anarchic isn't horrors, it's Heralds of Tzeentch, specifically, 3-5 of them and each one generates 1 extra warp charge per model from the formation on the field, so you take 3 ML1 horrors for 135 points and they generate 6 WC. It's currently the cheapest WC generator per point than the, now arguably superceeded, Inquisition Henchmen squads at 22.5 point per WC.

I knew that, i was talking in more general terms for Warp Batteries for your Heralds Anarchic, though i guess they need one a lot less than other Psykers.

Blackhawk748

2016-12-25, 04:10 PM

How would you change ATSKNF to make it work better but still be fun? Short of outright removing it, obviously.

What Daedalus said:

Completely delete the current text and turn it into "You may reroll Morale, Pinning and Fear tests. You may choose to reroll a successful test."

Still makes Marines good at Morale, but if you lose combat by 14 you're still going to just run away and being immune to Sweeping Advance has never been good for the game. Also, half the armies in the game having blanket immunity to Fear has been the reason that rule has never been worth actual points, so we needed to do away with that nonsense.

Outside of Marines whose actually flat out immune? Nids are (cuz synapse), Guard and Sisters are with Priests (but you can snipe the Priest out and it works), Orks can be with Ghazzy, but outside of that MFD (which i am not alone in hating) its only for one turn. Are GSC, i wanna say they sorta are.

So ya, if we can fix ATSKNF, Fear suddenly becomes decent, because you can take away everybody elses immunity by killing characters.

I also agree with the immunity to Sweeping Advances, everyone else has to deal with, so suck it up Marines.

Edit: Whoops, double posted. Let this be a lesson, never walk away and do something else while in the middle of posting.

JNAProductions

2016-12-25, 04:16 PM

Speaking of Sweeping Advances, would it be better if, instead of wiping out a unit completely, they did a number of unavoidable wounds equal to the difference in your Initiative roll-off?

Blackhawk748

2016-12-25, 04:18 PM

Speaking of Sweeping Advances, would it be better if, instead of wiping out a unit completely, they did a number of unavoidable wounds equal to the difference in your Initiative roll-off?

It would certainly stop the "5 Marines who got lucky kill 20 Orks who got unlucky" crap. And yes, this has happened to me and i thought it was dumb.

JNAProductions

2016-12-25, 04:20 PM

It would certainly stop the "5 Marines who got lucky kill 20 Orks who got unlucky" crap. And yes, this has happened to me and i thought it was dumb.

Or a 50 man blob of Guardsmen being wiped out by one lucky Marine.

So positive change, overall?

LeSwordfish

2016-12-25, 04:33 PM

Personally I suspect that even without ATSKNF, marines would fall into the meta that just about every other army is in: anything worth killing/defuffing is Fearless. That, for me, is every bit as significant as a bunch of armies wholescale ignoring it: I don't really care about applying Fear to, say, Devastator squads, since just about anything Fear-causing should beat them anyway.

Fear would actually be fairly rubbish even if everybody was vulnerable to it: in the very best case you go from 3+ to 5+ to be hit and vice versa. I would really rather see Fear be more effective on those things it does hurt: perhaps a unit that fails a Fear test, immediately falls back as if it failed a morale check. The unit that causes fear can't sweeping advance, but they can opt to automatically follow the fleeing unit and remain in combat with them.

Lord Of The Rings used to have a similar Terror rule: if you want to charge a unit that causes Terror, pass a leadership Courage test: fail, and you can't. However, there was no effect from being charged by a terrifying unit. In War Of The Ring, whenever you enter combat with a Terrifying unit (charging or charged) make a test: fail, and your Fight value is reduced, thus significantly increasing the number of attacks your opponent may make against you. Perhaps something similar could work for 40k: fail a Fear test, and your opponent doubles their Attacks characteristic, or perhaps you may only make one attack per model.

JNAProductions

2016-12-25, 04:45 PM

Forum Explorer

2016-12-25, 04:45 PM

JNAProductions

2016-12-25, 04:47 PM

I kinda think they should just get rid of Fear altogether. It's a clunky rule at the best of times with far too many ways to ignore it or protect against it.

I'd like to see Fear re-worked to do something useful. As it is, it's not terribly useful, but it's a fluffy rule for some things, so should have an impact.

LeSwordfish

2016-12-25, 04:51 PM

That Devastator squad you just talked bout? Only has 1 attack base. Not saying it's a bad idea-just saying it needs work.

I figure someone walloping a guy with the blunt end of a multi-melta should be about as effective as a Howling Banshee having a breakdown. This interpretation would make it dramatically more effective against better melee units anyway, which is kind of how it works anyway, both currently and in War Of The Rings. It also prevents bonus attacks like charging and double weapons.

JNAProductions

2016-12-25, 04:53 PM

I figure someone walloping a guy with the blunt end of a multi-melta should be about as effective as a Howling Banshee having a breakdown. This interpretation would make it dramatically more effective against better melee units anyway, which is kind of how it works anyway, both currently and in War Of The Rings. It also prevents bonus attacks like charging and double weapons.

Ah, okay. That's actually pretty good, then!

Perhaps, if you only have 1 attack, then you cannot attack at all? And if you have more than 1 (whether from charging, two weapons, or high base attacks) you are reduced to 1? Because a Devastator having a breakdown should be worse than a Howling Banshee breaking down.

Forum Explorer

2016-12-25, 05:36 PM

I'd like to see Fear re-worked to do something useful. As it is, it's not terribly useful, but it's a fluffy rule for some things, so should have an impact.

Is it though? I mean so many armies should basically be immune to fear. Dark Eldar , CSM, Orks, Necrons, Tyranids, and yes, Space Marines.

Renegade Paladin

2016-12-25, 06:39 PM

Requizen

2016-12-25, 09:56 PM

So what do Necrons do for anti-air?

Ignore it with durability or take Scythes. Unless you play with Death from the Skies, in which case you lose Skyfire. FW Pylons are not good for AA. You can Ally in if you want, I guess.

peacenlove

2016-12-26, 01:47 AM

LordDavenport

2016-12-26, 02:19 AM

Ignore it with durability or take Scythes. Unless you play with Death from the Skies, in which case you lose Skyfire. FW Pylons are not good for AA. You can Ally in if you want, I guess.

So tau? Unless I am missing something, CSM only offer missile launchers with AA missiles(Hilariously expensive), or Auto cannon Drakes(Also expensive). Tau do have some of the best AA options in the game, even if you are avoiding the cheese of riptide wings.

Speaking of, what is the best way to ally in tau AA?

Cheesegear

2016-12-26, 02:27 AM

Speaking of, what is the best way to ally in tau AA?

Tau, Riptide Wing
Riptide; Ion Accelerator, Velocity Tracker - 205 Points
Riptide; Ion Accelerator, Velocity Tracker - 205 Points
Riptide; Early Warning Override, Velocity Tracker - 205 Points

Tome

2016-12-26, 04:33 AM

If you want something a little less cheesy, a Firebase Support Cadre (1 Riptide, 2+ Broadsides, 500+ points) or Ranged Support Cadre (3 Pathfinder units, 3+ Broadsides, 400+ points) are also viable options if kitted appropriately.

A Skysweep Missile Defence formation (1 Devilfish, 3 Skyrays, 450-500 points) may also work out okay if you want minimum cheese but maximum anti-air.

Cheesegear

2016-12-26, 08:04 AM

Imperial Fists, Battle Demi-Company
(W) Terminator Captain; Cataphractii, Chainfist, Auspex, The Shield Eternal - 190 Points

Tactical Squad (x5); Grav-Gun, Combi-Grav + Drop Pod - 130 Points
Tactical Squad (x5); Grav-Gun, Combi-Grav + Drop Pod - 130 Points
Tactical Squad (x5); Meltagun, Combi-Melta + Drop Pod - 125 Points

Command Squad; Apothecary, x4 Grav-Guns + Drop Pod - 200 Points
Ironclad Dreadnought; Heavy Flamer, [Meltagun] + Drop Pod - 180 Points

Land Speeder; [Heavy Bolter], Heavy Flamer - 50 Points

Devastators (x5); x4 Lascannons - 150 Points

Raptor Wing
Land Speeder; x2 Heavy Bolters - 50 Points
Stormtalon Gunship; Skyhammer Missile Launcher - 115 Points
Stormtalon Gunship; Skyhammer Missile Launcher - 115 Points

Imperial Fists, CAD
Librarian; [Stave], ML2, Auspex, Melta Bombs, The Bones of Osrak - 125 Points

Scouts (x5); Combi-Grav - 65 Points
Scouts (x5); Combi-Grav - 65 Points
Scouts (x5); Sniper Rifles - 60 Points

Inquisitorial Representative
Inquisitor Coteaz - 100 Points

Total: 1850 Points

Thousand Sons, Grand Coven
- War Cabal
Exalted Sorcerer; Stave, Terminator Armour, Jump Relic
Sorcerer; Stave, Disc
Rubric Marines (x10); The AP4 Flamer
Scarab Terminators (x5); The good Flamer

- Lord of the Legion
(W) Magnus the Red

- Daemon Engine
Heldrake; Baleflamer

We rolled Contact Lost. My opponent immediately was sad face, because he already knows that his army is terrible at it, and basically auto-loses to Drop Pods.
My Librarian rolled 4++, and Coteaz rolled Ignores Cover. Both of them rolled Overwatch at full BS, which I never used once.
He rolled a bunch of Powers, except I didn't really care and stopped paying attention.

Except then it was my turn to deploy, and I rolled Strategic. The roll was +1 to Seize and re-rolls to Reserves because Strategic is basically the best unless you roll #6. So, because of Coteaz, I was now rolling 2D6 to Seize and needed a 5+. Radical. Predictably, I Seize - on a '6', if that matters. It is Night Fighting, except I don't seem to care. Coteaz tells the Lascannons to 'just be cool', and I take out his Sorcerer-on-Disc on Turn 1. Getting First Blood and taking x3 of his Warp Dice away. My Command Squad comes down and my Captain shoots his Auspex removing Night Fight, and then Grav annihilates his Terminators; In an amazing show of bad luck, he fails 7 out of 8 Invulnerables and I remove his Terminators, too, and bring his Exalted down to one Wound. Brutalitops.

When I asked "Where's your army?" after my opponent deployed, and when he shrugged his shoulders in response and simply pointed to Magnus, I knew the way to beat Magnus and his 650 Point price tag, was simply to ignore him and just annihilate the rest of his army. I brought Coteaz for his Preferred Enemy (Daemons), but it didn't seem to matter, since I figured I wouldn't shoot Magnus anyway.

He got his Objective on Turn 1, and got to kill some Tactical Marines with his AP3 ammo. Magnus tried to AP4 Nova all my Scouts, but I put 11 dice into stopping that noise. Nothing really happened in his Turn 1, since I took like 5 of his dice away immediately. But, what I didn't expect, was that Magnus would Summon a Chariot and then shoot stuff with Lascannons and Template weapons.

My Turn 2, and my other stuff came down. My Meltaguns killed his Terminator Sorcerer, and my Ironclad Dreadnought came down and sat in front of his Rubricae. The fact that there were Chariots on the board now, only reinforced my plan; Ignore Magnus. Kill his Chariots. Kill everything except Magnus. In a stunning show of weirdness that seemed to confuse everyone, my Shred target for my Stormtalons was not Magnus, but the Chariot. So I killed that.

Magnus turned my Scouts into Spawn, which was really annoying. But, my opponent has no ObSec, and I have Drop Pods everywhere. And, since it's Contact Lost, my opponent gets to draw no Objectives because we're playing the Maelstrom-iest Maelstrom Mission there is. Magnus Summons another Chariot to make my Devastators sad. Got to get those Lascannons off the board, right?
(inb4; I forgot that Coteaz gives free Interceptor).

My Turn 3, I draw Domination. My opponent has no ObSec, I have all of it. I kill a Spawn, Shred down another Chariot, my Ironclad ruins the Rubricae, and with Domination in the bank, and my opponent unable to draw Objectives, that's game.

His Turn 3, Magnus gets into combat with Scouts, and makes more Spawn. Summons another Chariot, and tries real hard not to die.

My Turn 4, I don't really have anything to do. Again, I'm still ignoring Magnus, focusing on killing Chariots and Spawn. I feed Magnus a squad of Tactical Marines, just so I can get the 'Issue a Challenge' point. Magnus dominates my face, getting a Spawn. But I got a VP. So I came off the winner of that combat.

His Turn 4, Magnus is the only thing he has on the board. FLY AWAY. He chucks a D-Beam at my Warlord. Except I have a Psyker in my unit, and Shield Eternal gives Adamantium Will. I Deny on 4s. A Chariot Lascannons Coteaz in the face, but, I think the damage is already done. I've had +5 Deny Dice in each of my phases until now, which has been plenty. Especially since at this point, my opponent 'only' has +5 Dice all coming from Magnus.

My Turn 5. I almost feel bad at this point. I didn't know Thousand Sons were this bad. Or maybe I expected Magnus to be better? Maybe I expected something. I brought Coteaz for his Preferred Enemy, except I only shot at Chariots and Spawn with my Devastators. I never used Coteaz's Interceptor. My Raptor Wing went around killing everything except Magnus, and my Ironclad was untouchable...

His Turn 5, Magnus D-Beams my Drop Pod and an Ironclad off an Objective, which prevents me from always drawing cards. Turns out D-Beaming my Psyker with AdWill didn't work so well. He does a Treason to try and kill my Stormtalon.

Game goes to Turn 6, and, this turn, I 'only' get to draw 3 Objectives (even after I've already Scored Ascendency and Domination). My opponent has Magnus and a Chariot on the board. I kill the Chariot.

Magnus does a Treason and shoots my stuff. Magnus tries to Summon a Chariot to grab an Objective. Whatever.

Game ends at Turn 6.

Magnus ends the game with 4 Wounds left.

I end the game 20-4.
I'm really not sure that not killing Magnus impacted my ability to win the game.

Once again, I was brought back to what everyone has been saying the entire time;
Magnus is great (Summoning Chariots really seemed to work, since they bring Lascannons or Ignores Cover to the table, depending on the turn), it's just that the rest of the Thousand Sons basically suck. Magnus is 650 Points. That's...A lot. Now, when you're spamming 4 Point Cultists and ~30 Point Spawn, expensive Chaos Marine stuff never seems like an issue. But when Thousand Sons are 150 Points for five, Scarab Terminators are worse per point, it's just..."Where's your army, bro?"

I think my opponent said the core of his next list would be;
(Ex.?) Sorcerer
Tzaangors
Tzaangors
Tzaangors
Magnus the Red

Fateweaver
Pink Horrors

...and his Rubricae/Scarabs would unfortunately go to live on his shelf. CADs/ADs are simply too valuable in Maelstrom (especially against Space Marines). Thousand Sons don't really benefit from the Warband, so there's no point in that.

Drasius

2016-12-26, 08:08 AM

...a Firebase Support Cadre (1 Riptide, 2+ Broadsides, 500+ points) ...

Firebase Support Cadre
205 - Riptide, SMS, EWO, VT
70 - Broadside, HYMP, SMS, EWO
70 - Broadside, HYMP, SMS, EWO

345

Drasius

2016-12-26, 08:30 AM

Thousand Sons, Grand Coven
- War Cabal
Exalted Sorcerer; Stave, Terminator Armour, Jump Relic
Sorcerer; Stave, Disc
Rubric Marines (x10); The AP4 Flamer
Scarab Terminators (x5); The good Flamer

- Lord of the Legion
(W) Magnus the Red

- Daemon Engine
Heldrake; Baleflamer
...

I think my opponent said the core of his next list would be;
(Ex.?) Sorcerer
Tzaangors
Tzaangors
Tzaangors
Magnus the Red

Fateweaver
Pink Horrors

You should tell him to stop being a horrible player and put magnus on the shelf. Magnus isn't worth 650 points, hell, he's probably not even worth 500 unless you can realistically power him and you're not doing that with anything but a gimmick list. While you're at it, tell him to stop cheating, since Exalted's can't take terminator armour., then tell him to stop being a newb for putting his disc sorc out on his own instead of at the back of some rubricae, slap him for taking the warpflamers and then slap him again for taking 1x10 instead of 2x5 rubrics.

As for his next list, even if he draws a bunch of objectives, he's still relying on cultists to take them since ~1000 points is stuck in 2 FMC's who should be swooping and therefore can't take objectives. Fateweaver is a terrible choice to pair with Magnus since fatey struggles to get his powers off on a good day and is a bad choice for dice generation per point. An ML3 herald, a unit of horrors to bunker everyone and the Heralds Anarchic would be of infinately more use and noticably less points while generating more WC. Unless you've got ~15 dice available, don't even bother putting magnus on the field.

Also note that you took a sledgehammer against a porcelain vase in terms of list difference, to the point where I'm not sure why you ever bothered playing. That game was over the instant he wrote his list.

Wraith

2016-12-26, 08:47 AM

Also note that you took a sledgehammer against a porcelain vase in terms of list difference, to the point where I'm not sure why you ever bothered playing. That game was over the instant he wrote his list.

Yeah, I kinda feel the same way here. I know you're all about the competitive tournament scene, Cheesegear, and that at your store your opponents are probably savvy enough to understand what they're getting into so it's not like you just punked some newb in a soul-crushing pick-up-game from Hell, but you tailored your list specifically to kick your opponent in the nuts (if the Ironclad Dreadnought isn't proof enough, taking Coteaz in a 'friendly' game? Merry Christmas indeed....) while he was trying out something new and fluffy to see how it works.

The "I wasn't expecting Thousand Sons to be this bad" comment is especially cruel given how much effort you went to in order to Paper-hammer the crap out of them. NO ONE would have had an easy time against Double-Fists-CAD, let alone an army that we already know kinda sucks AND in a scenario which is especially bad for them. I mean, congratulations on the win and having a good time and all that, but I don't think I want to congratulate you on going out of your way to make someone shelve 1000pts of their Christmas presents forever, too. :smallconfused:

Cheesegear

2016-12-26, 08:58 AM

Magnus isn't worth 650 points, hell, he's probably not even worth 500 unless you can realistically power him

I priced him at 450, if not less, based on other FMCs. If we consider Wraithknights, he shouldn't be more than 350.

While you're at it, tell him to stop cheating, since Exalted's can't take terminator armour.

Then it was around the wrong way. The Exalted on the Disc and the Sorcerer in Terminator Armour.
Unfortunately (for me), Wrath of Magnus and Traitor Legions are the only books I haven't bought since...Well, I don't even remember the last Codex/Supplement I didn't buy - probably because I didn't buy it. So, yeah. Unlike nearly every other game I've ever played, I couldn't go back to my books when I got home.

then tell him to stop being a newb for putting his disc sorc out on his own instead of at the back of some rubricae

He put him in the front of the Rubricae. Triple 1s on the Look Out! and then three failed saves later...Yeah. Wait. That makes more sense. If I needed three Lascannons to kill him, it means that the Sorc had 3 Wounds, which means the one on the Disc had to be Exalted... Maybe they were both Exalted? ...Yeah. They probably were.

An ML3 herald, a unit of horrors to bunker everyone and the Heralds Anarchic would be of infinately more use

That's what I said.

Also note that you took a sledgehammer against a porcelain vase in terms of list difference

As I said; I was expecting something...That wasn't what I played against. My meta is pretty good, and this guy is pretty good at the game (he has beaten me several times). No, wait. You guys actually know him. He was my partner in the last doubles tournament. But, this list? I don't know. It was just...Bad. Once I rolled my Warlord Trait, paired it with Coteaz's natural ability to re-roll Seize, and then I did Seize, the game was already over. Maybe if my opponent actually had a Turn 1, instead of 5 of his Warp Dice missing right off the bat, it could've been different. There were also a couple of times where my opponent was incredibly unlucky, with triple failed Look Outs, and then failing 7 out 8 Invulnerables on his Terminators is pretty bad - both of those things happened on Turn 1, too. I said that there was probably grounds for a rematch in the near future. One of the biggest problems that was basically insurmountable, was Contact Lost, which my opponent already knew his list was bad at. If you don't control any Objectives on the board, you don't get to draw new cards - not even the Kill Point ones! I offered to re-roll (I really did!), but he didn't take it.

Except maybe it'll be worse next time, because I wont forget that Coteaz has !Interceptor, and those Chariots will be dead-by-Lascannons before they hit the ground. That said, Coteaz is Objective Secured, so I'd like him to run around with a unit that doesn't like going in a Transport, that also isn't naturally Objective Secured. Except the only units that I could think of in that vein were Paladins and Deathwing Knights, and I don't know how I would fit those into my list.

Hell, but you tailored your list specifically to kick your opponent in the nuts (if the Ironclad Dreadnought isn't proof enough, taking Coteaz in a 'friendly' game? Merry Christmas indeed....) while he was trying out something new and fluffy to see how it works.

I have to point out that every unit and Formation in my list, I have used at least once in the last month. It's not so much that I tailored my list specifically (since I actually tried to avoid doing that), but that every unit in my list works exactly how I want it to - except the Land Speeders, but that's how min/maxing works.

Drasius

2016-12-26, 10:30 AM

Except maybe it'll be worse next time, because I wont forget that Coteaz has !Interceptor, and those Chariots will be dead-by-Lascannons before they hit the ground. That said, Coteaz is Objective Secured, so I'd like him to run around with a unit that doesn't like going in a Transport, that also isn't naturally Objective Secured. Except the only units that I could think of in that vein were Paladins and Deathwing Knights, and I don't know how I would fit those into my list.

I have to point out that every unit and Formation in my list, I have used at least once in the last month. It's not so much that I tailored my list specifically (since I actually tried to avoid doing that), but that every unit in my list works exactly how I want it to - except the Land Speeders, but that's how min/maxing works.

If your opponent is worth playing, he'll summon the chariots more than 12" away from coteaz. The lascannons have 18" range and the flamer is torrent, so can reach up to 20".

As for avoiding tailoring, then you wouldn't have taken the Ironclad since it's such a hardcounter agains a Sons army that it's not funny. I'm really nor sure what you were expecting to face that required a cata captain with a command squad full of grav or lascannons against an army that relies heavily on multiwound T4 characters. You knew he was taking Magnus (who we already know is overcosted by hundreds of points) and a Thousand Sons army, which again, we've already established is terrible (with a few disbelievers) and yet you still took a tough as nails list. Or maybe that was the point? To crush him and make him stop wasting his money the only way you can when someone is already deep in the hole?

It's much like the death guard vs alpha legion comment you made a while back. You're taking a maelstrom army against an army that's going to be at it's least worst in eternal war mission and never has a chance in any maelstrom missions because of a very low model count on top of very slow units. You could roll any maelstrom mission in the book and it's never going to matter if you're taking drop pod marines against a Sons army. Want to know why? Think about how much effort it takes to destroy a single drop pod when virtually nothing in your army can touch AV12.

Don't get me wrong, his list was utter trash and he deserved to be crushed, but if you had to swap lists with him, can you honestly see any way that you'd be able to win a maelstrom mission against your army played competantly? If not, then why bother playing at all?

Wraith

2016-12-26, 12:44 PM

I have to point out that every unit and Formation in my list, I have used at least once in the last month. It's not so much that I tailored my list specifically (since I actually tried to avoid doing that), but that every unit in my list works exactly how I want it to - except the Land Speeders, but that's how min/maxing works.

I know what you're saying, and we've all been through the same conversation a bunch of times on this forum alone, let alone in other web-places and in real life; the fine line between min/max and tailoring. Not that my opinion counts for much to you, of course, but it's pretty clear that you crossed the line even if you didn't realise it, and telling me "well, here's this one unit that could maybe be better if I felt like it" is pretty indicative of that.

My collection of "stuff that I've used before" consists of 2 Ironclads, a Venerable Dreadnought and 3 Land Raiders, because I play Black Templars and Iron Hands. All of my regular opponents know that I have them, and play them in various combinations at various points..... but it'd be a **** move for me to take all 6 of them against Thousand Sons (it'd be tricky in 1850pts, but absolutely not impossible) and them tell my opponent "well, you know I have them, you'll just have to deal with it". Which is pretty much what it looks like you did.

Basically, you suck at failing. :smalltongue:

Forum Explorer

2016-12-26, 01:38 PM

I guess the problem is, that you took your 'standard' list in for a friendly game, and forgot that you needed to take in a list that is actively bad in order to have a competitive game against Magnus and the Thousand Sons.

Next time try running a single CAD, no allies, no formations, and every unit has to be unique. And no special characters either. And nothing with an AV higher then 12. And play Eternal War. That might give you an interesting game.

bluntpencil

2016-12-26, 01:48 PM

Renegade Paladin

2016-12-26, 03:05 PM

So far as I'm aware that's how Colour Sergeant Kell works, with his power sword and power fist; he chooses which he fights with. Same for techpriests and their power axe, laspistol, servo arm combo.

Caxton

2016-12-26, 03:45 PM

I disagree with telling others how to have fun. Cheesegear's friend was very familiar with him and what he brings. If he wanted Cheese to pull his punches I'm sure he would have asked.

Kris Strife

2016-12-26, 04:55 PM

As someone new to the hobby side, I can kinda see both points. I mean, it'd be kind of a jerk move to bring a tourney tier team for someone's intro game, or a player starting a new casual level army. But if I was a competitive player, and I was wanting to try out something new, I'd want my opponent to bring a strong list so I could see how good it actually is.

Though a lot of this just sounds like really bad luck, as much as anything else.

Caxton

2016-12-26, 05:38 PM

Is there a guide to Genestealer Cults or is anyone working on one?

Drasius

2016-12-26, 06:24 PM

A question on Specialist Weapons:

I understand that you don't get +1 Attack when attacking with a Specialist Weapon, such as a Power Fist, unless your second weapon is also a Specialist Weapon, such as a Lightning Claw, or another Power Fist, making, for example, Power Fist + Power Sword a crappy combo.

However, let's say you have a model with such a crappy setup (or, you know, a Librarian Dreadnought...?). Does it get the +1A if attacking with the non-Specialist Weapon? If I have a Power Fist + Power Sword, do I get +1A when using the sword (fighting with this weapon, as opposed to the specialist one), but not the fist?

My inclination is to go with 'no', but it seems that there's a slim possibility for +1A for two weapons for Blood Angel Librarian Dreadnoughts.

Generally the consensus is no, but I have heard of people who play it as yes. Check with your local meta how they play it.

I disagree with telling others how to have fun. Cheesegear's friend was very familiar with him and what he brings. If he wanted Cheese to pull his punches I'm sure he would have asked.

It's not so much telling people how to have fun, it's more that there was never any doubt about the outcome of that game and Cheese, being the long time player and of competative mindset, would have known that before he even put rolled to sieze.If the game is effectively already decided and one guy is just going to get pounded into the dirt with no chance of winning, the next ~2 hours aren't really going to be much fun for either side, so what's the point in playing? It's basically the same as the GW game with SW vs Sons. The Sons player had basically lost before he put his models on the table and the only real chance he ever had was getting Magnus into the air and staying there since starting in the middle of the board with sub-par units that can't hurt vehicles surrounded by meched up long fangs and podded dreadnaughts is never going to end well. At that point, how much fun is it going to be for the Sons player to get all his stuff wiped out in 2-3 turns and then just keep Magnus flying around trying not to get shot down or gibbbed by helfrost weapons? If the game is going to be fun, why bother playing? It's the same reason many people decline matches against eldar - the outcome is predetermined and if I wanted to play set-my-army-up-and-then-pack-them-away-again, I'd play Apoc instead.

Cheesegear

2016-12-26, 07:06 PM

As for avoiding tailoring, then you wouldn't have taken the Ironclad since it's such a hardcounter agains a Sons army that it's not funny.

I'm not going to, next time.

I'm really nor sure what you were expecting to face that required a cata captain with a command squad full of grav

I heard that Terminators would be re-rolling their Saves or something.

or lascannons against an army that relies heavily on multiwound T4 characters.

I intended for them to shoot down Magnus with Preferred Enemy (Daemons) (Coteaz always gets his Warlord Trait). Right up until Deployment when I realised that shooting Magnus would not be how to win.

You knew he was taking Magnus (who we already know is overcosted by hundreds of points) and a Thousand Sons army, which again, we've already established is terrible

I knew Thousand Sons were bad. What I didn't know was how bad. Now I know.

Don't get me wrong, his list was utter trash and he deserved to be crushed, but if you had to swap lists with him, can you honestly see any way that you'd be able to win a maelstrom mission against your army played competantly? If not, then why bother playing at all?

No. I do see that. That's why it wasn't a good game and there needs to be a rematch. Preferably with me having a different list.

Not that my opinion counts for much to you, of course, but it's pretty clear that you crossed the line even if you didn't realise it, and telling me "well, here's this one unit that could maybe be better if I felt like it" is pretty indicative of that.

In retrospect, it seems obvious. Well, it is obvious. But, again, what I expected to happen, and what did happen, didn't exactly line up.

and forgot that you needed to take in a list that is actively bad

I lol'd.

Next time try running a single CAD, no allies, no formations, and every unit has to be unique.

I can play a Highlander List. I think I've got one lying around.

Is there a guide to Genestealer Cults or is anyone working on one?

It's not a real Guide (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=21262152&postcount=1336). But it'll do. The reason it's not in the OP is because I've always meant to go back and edit it into the normal format that I use for my Guides, but, I just never have.

LordDavenport

2016-12-26, 07:25 PM

@Bluntpencil: So the Specialist weapon special rule seems to support your interpretation.

"A model fighting with this weapon does not receive +1 Attack for fighting with two
weapons unless it is armed with two or more Melee weapons with the Specialist Weapon
rule."

The important words here are fighting with. It would be nice if in the assault phase section it said something like "when a model with more then one weapon attacks, choose which weapon it is fighting with and then resolve its attacks using that weapons profile" Saddly, that is not the world we live in. We have this questionable passage:

"If a model has more than one Melee weapon, he must choose which one to attack with when he comes to strike blows – he cannot mix and match the abilities of several different Melee weapons."
So, here is the semantic question. Would you say that the librarian dreadnaught is fighting with both weapons while specifically attacking with one weapon? I can easily see arguing both sides. Definitely have the argument with the people you are playing with before you try playing this. Show them the quotes, and possibly ask GW for a ruling.

Caxton

2016-12-26, 10:02 PM

It's not a real Guide (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=21262152&postcount=1336). But it'll do. The reason it's not in the OP is because I've always meant to go back and edit it into the normal format that I use for my Guides, but, I just never have.

Ok, great. I was going to do it if there wasn't any groundwork yet, but it looks like you have most of it down already.

Grim Portent

2016-12-26, 11:40 PM

Renegade Paladin

2016-12-27, 12:17 AM

It's almost like they're having the fluff writers do the formations while not having a clue how the rules guys are points-costing the units.

Blackhawk748

2016-12-27, 12:35 AM

It's almost like they're having the fluff writers do the formations while not having a clue how the rules guys are points-costing the units.

The 1k Sons rules dont even make sense from a fluff perspective. If anything they should get the Eldar Farseer ability to reroll dice during Psychic tests. Actually that would have been an amazing buff.

Their "Legion Tactics" Should just be a +1 Invuln. Boom done. Rubrics have a 3++ all the time, whoop dee do, its not gonna break anything.

Hell heres a Formation bonus "All hits caused by Soul Blaze have Shred." Now Soul Blaze is useful against non GEQs.

Seriously, needing to max out your Formation to get the bonus is stupid. Especially when its that many units. If it was 3 units of Rubrics, thats different, but its like what, 7? Beyond unreasonable. It just shows what happens when you have someone who doesnt care about the army write the rules. If you need more proof look at the Sisters Detachment.

Forum Explorer

2016-12-27, 12:41 AM

The 1k Sons rules dont even make sense from a fluff perspective. If anything they should get the Eldar Farseer ability to reroll dice during Psychic tests. Actually that would have been an amazing buff.

Their "Legion Tactics" Should just be a +1 Invuln. Boom done. Rubrics have a 3++ all the time, whoop dee do, its not gonna break anything.

Hell heres a Formation bonus "All hits caused by Soul Blaze have Shred." Now Soul Blaze is useful against non GEQs.

Seriously, needing to max out your Formation to get the bonus is stupid. Especially when its that many units. If it was 3 units of Rubrics, thats different, but its like what, 7? Beyond unreasonable. It just shows what happens when you have someone who doesnt care about the army write the rules. If you need more proof look at the Sisters Detachment.

True that. The quality and strength between a codex the person wanted to make, and a codex the person was obligated to make is absurd.

And yeah, there are so many different things they could've done that was better. Instead we got one of the worst possible combinations, because maxing out a formation in order to get a bonus is always going to bad. The bonus needs to be incredible in order to justify something like that. Like getting free rerolls to save.

Saambell

2016-12-27, 02:34 AM

To be paranoid and crazy, its almost like they have in their heads that no one plays with points and they only write them out of tradition. Its almost like they never even thought about how the points SHOULD be cause they never thought they would be used. If there's no points and just Formations/CAD slots, then they don't have to worry if things are over costed or under costed. "Take all the things" sounds like they planned or plan to not actually use the point costs.

They also seem to place a bit too much faith on Social Contracts for balancing when the Rules Writers seem to make the rules. They seem to be heavily leaning on "just talk it out with your opponent" as an answer to rules issues. They seem to think that they can skip balancing as "Play with your friends and agree not to pull any nasty moves on them" is the idea they have for the way people play. Its likely the way they play in the office given how the game ends up being released like. They likely skip points and just toss a bunch of models on the table and just ask each other to grab some other model if they don't think they can win. Its a Social game, and the makers seem to place a lot of faith on that.

boomwolf

2016-12-27, 04:09 AM

Cheesegear

2016-12-27, 04:19 AM

Magnus will be amazing around 4k points.

Can't tell if serious or trolling.

boomwolf

2016-12-27, 04:23 AM

Why not both?

LeSwordfish

2016-12-27, 04:40 AM

Because those are diametrically opposed positions? And because it being "both" would just be a way out of justifying your statement?

boomwolf

2016-12-27, 05:15 AM

They are actually not opposite statements.

In bigger games Magnus WILL be great, as you can properly wield him.
At huge games you can have Magnus, tons of horrors and a full coven to make a real army with proper fuel, bodycount, and magic aplenty.

That said, fielding him is pure trolling as while good, he's still silly. The mere concept of "magic missile all the things" is silly.
Also, he's very vulnerable to some gimmicks, making it swing or miss, depending if you run into said gimmick.

Drasius

2016-12-27, 05:18 AM

I got bored and decided to check out how much a full 1k Sons War Coven formation is in points.

With just a spell familiar and ML3 a maxed out 10 Exalted Sorcerers are 2k points. No relics, no discs, just the basics needed to be a decent sorcerer puts them at 200 points each.

Normal Sorcerers are more affordable, actually being able to fit all the 1k Sons relics that you have even half a use for (Helm of the Third Eye and Coruscator are not on this list), ML3 on everyone, Spell Familiars, Sigils of Corruption and Terminator Armour on everyone in 2k points. They at least get a rerollable 2+ save (2++ with buffs) and are able to be Jump Infantry when they want, but it's 10 2 wound models in 2000 points. It's such a stupid thing overall and a sign of horrific imbalance in what should be one of the most common 1k Sons formations.

I am genuinely flabbergasted that GW thought that it was fair to have them not get half the formation benefit unless you spend a minimum of 600 points (10 bare bones Sorcerers) on the formation. It's as if they wanted all the 1k Sons formations to be Apocalypse only in price while being meh in rules.

*Points at thread title*

Min cost is actually 750 since mark of Tzeentch is mandatory, and that's for 10 sorcs in power armour who all have to roll on Tzeentch for their 1 spell. Not to mention that most people play it that if you need to use the MoT to get to a 2++ (eg. Sigil, MoT, Blessing), you can't and it stays at a 3++ due to the wording on MoT, though if you go by the strictest interpretation (multiply, modifiers, set values), a sigil or AoDG over-rides everything and gives you a set value, but nobody plays that way.

It's almost like they're having the fluff writers do the formations while not having a clue how the rules guys are points-costing the units.

The same guy that wrote the rules for the Wulfen wrote the Wrath of Magnus rules. Why yes, he is the self confessed spess woof's biggest fanboy, why do you ask?

The 1k Sons rules dont even make sense from a fluff perspective. If anything they should get the Eldar Farseer ability to reroll dice during Psychic tests. Actually that would have been an amazing buff.

Their "Legion Tactics" Should just be a +1 Invuln. Boom done. Rubrics have a 3++ all the time, whoop dee do, its not gonna break anything.

Hell heres a Formation bonus "All hits caused by Soul Blaze have Shred." Now Soul Blaze is useful against non GEQs.

Seriously, needing to max out your Formation to get the bonus is stupid. Especially when its that many units. If it was 3 units of Rubrics, thats different, but its like what, 7? Beyond unreasonable. It just shows what happens when you have someone who doesnt care about the army write the rules. If you need more proof look at the Sisters Detachment.

The last thing we need is bonuses to useless crap like soul blaze. If they had've made the Icon of flame hand out ignores cover, then we'd be talking. Also, technically it IS 3 units of rubrics, but it's also 3 units of Scarab Occult Terminators, 3 of any flavour of sorceror and then 1 more of any flavour of sorceror or Ahriman. Min buy in for the War Cabal is dead on 1500 points for the rerolls, and that's before you get them some sort of auxilary choice to get the other half of your formation bonus. The sad thing is, not only is that the only way to get rubricae into your list, but such an outrageous formation is also, IMHO, the only real option the Sons have to try and be competative.

True that. The quality and strength between a codex the person wanted to make, and a codex the person was obligated to make is absurd.

Again, the guy who wrote the rules was interviewed during the farce of a game they televised/streamed and he said he was quite happy with how the WoM rules were and worried that he'd made them too strong. He made exactly the 'Dex he wanted to make.

As for Magnus.
I say you underestimate him. He is worth every single point of his 650.
He's just not fitting on the "classic" point range.
Just like stealth suits rock killteam and combat patrol but fail in over 1000,Magnus will be amazing around 4k points. Where your army can freaking sustain him, while still doing thier own things.

No, because at 4k, T7 stops meaning anything and multiple armies will have 10 different ways of shredding him in a single turn, even if he's in the air. Compare the damage Magnus can do to a Warhound with dual turbolasers and I'm fairly sure that not only does Magnus come up sort in the reliability stakes against the warhound because turbolaser fire can't be denied, but the Warhound is probably harder to kill for many armies as well as outdamaging Magnus too.

Cheesegear

2016-12-27, 05:31 AM

In bigger games Magnus WILL be great, as you can properly wield him.

I'm going to strongly disagree.
If you've got 4K points to spend, so does your opponent. The only way Magnus survives in 4K (EVERYTHING is going to shoot him immediately), is if you have something else for your opponent to shoot at. For something to take the heat off Magnus, it's going to have to be really, really impressive; I'd like to know just what exactly you think is more threatening than Magnus. Because that's the only reason that I'm not going to shoot him to death immediately. Especially if he's Warlord (which he almost always is).

The other option, is that 4K is 4K. The problems seen in every Codex, is merely magnified. Not fixed. Yes. Great. You can take the more expensive things. But, again, you come to the problem of backing them up. If I'm playing 4K, and I bring a Thunderhawk, that's ~800 Points gone. For a model that's not even that good (Yes, Magnus, I can see you). But, you know what's so great about Space Marines? Almost Everything It's that I can back up that Thunderhawk, with a Gladius. I can have my cake and eat it, too. If I think my Thunderhawk can be at all threatened by anything, I can Ally in a Crimson Death Formation from Eldar; They're Allies of Convenience and it's 4K Points and I have no reason not to. Maybe in my 4K, my opponents will let me bring a Riptide Wing...And a Thunderhawk...And a Gladius. If I shave, I can probably get a Crimson Death in there as well. Maybe a Culexus, too. Just for shots and goggles.

At huge games you can have Magnus, tons of horrors and a full coven to make a real army with proper fuel, bodycount, and magic aplenty.

And everyone else gets to do that too. Putting you in the same position as you were before, but now with more points money sunk into your army.

That said, fielding him is pure trolling as while good, he's still silly. The mere concept of "magic missile all the things" is silly.

No it's not. Magnus is a Blaster Wizard. They've existed since day dot.
The only thing silly about Magic Missiles is when you cast them at the Darkness.

Also, he's very vulnerable to some gimmicks, making it swing or miss, depending if you run into said gimmick.

If you're using him in 4K, you're almost guaranteed to run into every gimmick in the book - in the same army.

What you've fundamentally failed to grasp, is that in larger games, single models (e.g; MCs) get worse, while huge, **** off units and Vehicle Squadrons actually get better.
Swarmlord is unplayable in 1850. But he's literally the best in 500. Because single, scary models get worse the more things/options your opponent has available to shoot at you.

EDIT:
Now that you've actually dug yourself that hole, though. You have to write the 4K list.
HINT: Try and have at least 9 Objective Secured units.

Forum Explorer

2016-12-27, 05:52 AM

Again, the guy who wrote the rules was interviewed during the farce of a game they televised/streamed and he said he was quite happy with how the WoM rules were and worried that he'd made them too strong. He made exactly the 'Dex he wanted to make.

And he is a space wolf fan who decided that the degenerate rejects of the Space Wolves (Wulfen) should be more capable in close combat then a Blood Claw.

Regardless of his satisfaction on how things turned out, his bias is really bloody obvious. After all, what does he care if an army he wants to lose against his Space Wolves ends up being weak? That way he can play his Space Wolves against them and win, every time. :smallyuk: (No, I don't have any respect for their professional integrity). I mean just look at the Wulfen codex, Space Wolves get a bunch of toys that make them more powerful. Thousand Sons? End up worse then literally every other Chaos Space Marine legion.

It's like Boomwolf said, I could make a codex better then that. I almost feel like the fans should hope for 8th edition to go horribly wrong like Age of Sigmar did, so that the fans will make an actually balanced version like 9th Age is for Fantasy (From what I hear, anyways)

Cheesegear

2016-12-27, 05:54 AM

Thousand Sons? End up worse then literally every other Chaos Space Marine legion.

Nope. They're better than Emperor's Children and Word Bearers. Thousand Sons are bottom tier, certainly. But they aren't the worst.

Forum Explorer

2016-12-27, 06:03 AM

Nope. They're better than Emperor's Children and Word Bearers. Thousand Sons are bottom tier, certainly. But they aren't the worst.

Really? :smallconfused:

I'd like to put that to the test, but I don't actually have the rules for any of the CSM armies.

Though, I do think you are underestimating Emperor's Children. Perhaps I should go looking for a codex so I can write up a theoretical list.

Grim Portent

2016-12-27, 06:31 AM

Really? :smallconfused:

I'd like to put that to the test, but I don't actually have the rules for any of the CSM armies.

Though, I do think you are underestimating Emperor's Children. Perhaps I should go looking for a codex so I can write up a theoretical list.

They get Fearless and FnP 6+ on all marines, can upgrade that to 4+ with their icon and if they die in combat before their turn comes up they can make one attack before they die.

They get combat drugs as their detachment benefit and have just 2 decent relics, one gives it's carrier d3 bonus cumulative drug rolls, the other is a melee weapon with super rending (ID and AP2 on 6s to wound) and a 6" ranged profile as a bonus.

Combat drugs are a d6 table of +1 to WS/BS/I/S/T/A. Special detachment gives them to everyone.

Like the other cult legions they make their own cult unit inferior to their normal marines. Why take Noise Marines when sonic weapons are meh and normal marines are their equal in combat?

EC want to be in assault like the World Eaters, it's a good place to be with T4 FnP 4+ and I5, but unlike WE they have no ways to get up the field quickly, they can't rely on their drugs to be helpful since it's random and they don't have good enough relics to make a Deathstar or play Herohammer, unless maybe if you roll +1T four times on a Daemon Prince with the drug relic and the detachment bonus.

hamishspence

2016-12-27, 06:32 AM

And he is a space wolf fan who decided that the degenerate rejects of the Space Wolves (Wulfen) should be more capable in close combat then a Blood Claw.

Wulfen are the 13th Company who went into the Eye of Terror during the Horus Heresy, and have recently been rediscovered.

Forum Explorer

2016-12-27, 06:43 AM

Wulfen are the 13th Company who went into the Eye of Terror during the Horus Heresy, and have recently been rediscovered.

Interesting. So what are those rejects who go full werewolf called now?

Cheesegear

2016-12-27, 06:45 AM

Interesting. So what are those rejects who go full werewolf called now?

Thunderwolves.

Cheesegear

2016-12-27, 06:56 AM

They get Fearless and FnP 6+ on all marines, can upgrade that to 4+ with their icon

See, most Legions get their benefit from Veterans of the Long War, for free. Emperor's Children have to pay points for their FNP to be any good. As FNP 6+ is basically nothing, and FNP (6+) on T4 models is also nothing. Unlike Iron Hands, Emperor's Children also get no benefit from Endurance, and they have no natural sources of FNP anyway.

In short; Emperor's Children have to pay for their Icon, every unit, to be worth a damn. Paying points is bottom tier, when you consider that Traitor Legions is handing out free rules to everyone else (except Word Bearers, and that's why they suck the hardest).

and if they die in combat before their turn comes up they can make one attack before they die.

And if they die to Shooting, they get nothing. Since Melee isn't a thing for most armies, you're dying to shooting. The other problem is that they're I5, so they'll nearly always get their attacks in Melee anyway, which means this rule barely comes up.

Combat drugs are a d6 table of +1 to WS/BS/I/S/T/A. Special detachment gives them to everyone.

The only useful one is +1T, and then you get to be T5, FNP (4+) [Paying points for the Icon]. Which almost makes you better than Death Guard. Your other five games you play, your Combat Drugs may as well do nothing. Relying on random rolls, isn't actually how you win the game. That's why as broken as #6 on the Genestealer Cult Ambush is, Genestealer Cults don't actually win most games. Except that the games they do win, they win by a lot.

The only thing that makes Emperor's Children even remotely get a look in, is that they have the best Relics in the book. Unfortunately, they don't really have anything good to put them on.

Drasius

2016-12-27, 07:29 AM

They get Fearless and FnP 6+ on all marines, can upgrade that to 4+ with their icon and if they die in combat before their turn comes up they can make one attack before they die.

They get combat drugs as their detachment benefit and have just 2 decent relics, one gives it's carrier d3 bonus cumulative drug rolls, the other is a melee weapon with super rending (ID and AP2 on 6s to wound) and a 6" ranged profile as a bonus.

Combat drugs are a d6 table of +1 to WS/BS/I/S/T/A. Special detachment gives them to everyone.

Like the other cult legions they make their own cult unit inferior to their normal marines. Why take Noise Marines when sonic weapons are meh and normal marines are their equal in combat?

EC want to be in assault like the World Eaters, it's a good place to be with T4 FnP 4+ and I5, but unlike WE they have no ways to get up the field quickly, they can't rely on their drugs to be helpful since it's random and they don't have good enough relics to make a Deathstar or play Herohammer, unless maybe if you roll +1T four times on a Daemon Prince with the drug relic and the detachment bonus.

This. MoS CSM are 15ppm (plus 10 points on the champ tax) and Noise marines are 17ppm (plus 10 points on the champ tax). What does that extra 2ppm model buy you? The ability to pay 3ppm for a salvo 2/3 bolter with ignores cover, 30 points for a a small blast ignores cover krak missile or 15 points for a str5 ap3 flamer on the sarge. That's it. No extra attacks, no other options, no statline changes, nothing. You just pay extra points because reasons. It's not quite as outrageous as it is when comparing MoK marines to bersekers, but at least they get something [WS5] for their extra 4ppm, much as Plague marines get their poisoned knives, grenades and a second special at 5 men for their 8ppm premium. Thousand Sons Rubricae get a 4++ over a 6++, fearless, natural Ld10, inferno bolts while their sarge gets a force weapon staff and becomes a ML1 psycher they all gain SnP while losing their bolt pistols, grenades and any weapon or sarge upgrades beyond melta bombs and a Gift of mutation for their princely 8ppm premium (and a 33! point premium for the sargent).

The issue is that while MoK marines aren't even terrible in CC for their points (on the charge anyway) and have IC's like Kharn and a juggerlord to back them up, MoS marines really aren't that great because nobody cares about a handful of Str4 attacks, even if they are I5, when there's things like wulfen/thundercav/wraiths/WK's/etc out there and they don't have a combat lord to back them up, instead, they get Lucious. That's ... not a good trade. Yes, they can get a 4+++, but at 30 points per squad when MSU is king, on top of the useless MoS that you paid for? Hmmm... I think I'd rather be death guard and be T5 with a 5+++ and relentless to boot thanks.

Word bearers on the other hand have possessed as their selling feature and that goes about as well as you'd expect. Plus they can cast maelific on 3's, but since their sorcs only have 2 wounds and incursion and summoning are both WC3, they're still going to kill themselves inside 3 rounds on average. Good for a daemon prince though I hear you say. Yeah, well, shame that DP's suck because T5 with no EW is for chumps when you cost 300+ points. At least some of the other legions have 2+ armour so their Tz princes can be immune to small arms fire. Word bearers got their book ages ago in Crimson Slaughter, but unfotunately for them, it's incompatible with the traitor legions since one says you can't take vets, the other says you must.

Fighting over which one is the worse by 5 points compared to another when they're all hundreds of points behind even the mid tier codecies is pretty pointless. None of them will ever be able to have a reliastic chance at beating a competently built and played eldar or marine armies. Probably not a tau, necron or daemon army either without exceptional luck.

Drasius

2016-12-27, 07:38 AM

Interesting. So what are those rejects who go full werewolf called now?

Thunderwolves.

Or coats. Remember all the pelts you see every spess woof wearing? Remember that "there are no wolves on Fenris"? They slaughter, skin and wear their brothers and ride some of the others into battle and hand out relics from the great crusade to yet other, different mutants. Yet one more reason to abhor their hypocracy and hidden foulness.

Brookshw

2016-12-27, 07:46 AM

So I'm magnatizing a mawlock but am hitting some arm drooping unfortunately. Anyone ever used 3mm magnets and if so were they strong enough to avoid drooping? If so did you do magnet to magnet, or magnet to metal?

Cheesegear

2016-12-27, 07:48 AM

In My Grandiose and Infallible Opinion, in order, from worst to best...

Bottom Tier
Word Bearers
Emperor's Children
Thousand Sons

Middle Tier
Iron Warriors
Black Legion
Night Lords
*

Top Tier
World Eaters (Meta-Buster)
Alpha Legion (*In Eternal War, move to Middle Tier)
Death Guard (*In Maelstrom, move to Middle Tier)

Anyone ever used 3mm magnets and if so were they strong enough to avoid drooping? If so did you do magnet to magnet, or magnet to metal?

No drooping on my magnets. Magnet to magnet.
I think an issue is that Mawloc arms might be too heavy for 3mm.

LeSwordfish

2016-12-27, 07:51 AM

Alpha Legion (In Eternal War, swap places with Night Lords)
Death Guard (In Maelstrom, swap places with Night Lords)

I'm not sure you mean "swap" there - Night Lords don't become top-tier in either, right?

Cheesegear

2016-12-27, 07:54 AM

I'm not sure you mean "swap" there - Night Lords don't become top-tier in either, right?

I edited it to make it less confusing.
Night Lords are quite good...I actually might put them top tier, in Maelstrom.

hamishspence

2016-12-27, 08:00 AM

Or coats. Remember all the pelts you see every spess woof wearing? Remember that "there are no wolves on Fenris"?

I figured that the wolfiest "wolves" were the colonists who first settled Fenris millennia before the Great Crusade, with something having gone badly wrong with them back then (maybe they engineered themselves to resist the climate, but the superwolf genes "took over").

Them being fully wolf-shaped, and larger (for Thunderwolves) even then the biggest failed aspirants, or Bran Redmaw in werewolf form.

Whereas "werewolf" failed aspirants (and Bran Redmaw) are still humanoid - just hairy and muzzled.

Blackhawk748

2016-12-27, 10:06 AM

GW rules team being godly incompetent is known for a long while. It has reached the "ain't even mad, that's amazing" level if how bad they are.
I seriusly made better codcies out of sheer boredom at times. Had I been paid to do so, I could make better and faster rules releases than thier entire team combined, and I'm just an amateur. (pretty good amateur if I may say, but never made any "real" release)

When they dropped the Ork MFD, i was so disappointed i went and made my own version of it on Dakka in about 45 minutes. It was widely agreed to be superior, without being crazy. It took me 45 minutes to make one that facilitated more than one play style. 45 minutes

The last thing we need is bonuses to useless crap like soul blaze. If they had've made the Icon of flame hand out ignores cover, then we'd be talking. Also, technically it IS 3 units of rubrics, but it's also 3 units of Scarab Occult Terminators, 3 of any flavour of sorceror and then 1 more of any flavour of sorceror or Ahriman. Min buy in for the War Cabal is dead on 1500 points for the rerolls, and that's before you get them some sort of auxilary choice to get the other half of your formation bonus. The sad thing is, not only is that the only way to get rubricae into your list, but such an outrageous formation is also, IMHO, the only real option the Sons have to try and be competative.

Hey getting that instead of having to max out your formation to get the re-rolls is better than nothing. Also, what is the bonus to their formations if you dont max it out? I dont even know

They get combat drugs as their detachment benefit and have just 2 decent relics, one gives it's carrier d3 bonus cumulative drug rolls, the other is a melee weapon with super rending (ID and AP2 on 6s to wound) and a 6" ranged profile as a bonus.

Hey, thats Headwoppas Killchoppa, except for the range. That thing is great if you can get enough attacks.

LansXero

2016-12-27, 10:11 AM

Tvtyrant

2016-12-27, 10:16 AM

This probably belongs on the fluff thread, but it just jumped at me:

If SW geneseed only takes on humans with the helix canis, where did all the Terran SW came from before they found Fenris / Russ? Why was Russ dropped into the only planet with people who could endure his mutated geneseed? :s

My pwraonal theory is that Fenrisians are actually genestealer descended. They have the krakens, their transformation is biological instead of warp caused, and their genes can adapt to Russ' strange genetics. The chaos gods chose where to send each prinarch, and probably sent Russ to Fenris in the hopes that he would turn into a heretic.

There are several primarchs that are suggested by the fluff to have xeno DNA, Fulgrim with Eldar, Coraz woth hrud, etc.

Wraith

2016-12-27, 10:48 AM

It's probably due to mutation over time. Initially all Astartes were Terran and implanted with a Primarch's DNA in the form of a gene seed - so far so good, no particular deviation and similar results due to everyone having a similar starting point (discounting the Thousand Sons, whose problem was due to psykery/the warp rather than genetics).

After Russ was discovered on Fenris, however, the Legion that would become the Wolves started recruiting exclusively from Fenrisian stock, who were the descendants of gene-altered Colonists from pre-Dark Age. Russ' gene seed - which worked fine in Terrans because they were not the result of mass-gene therapy and 8,000 years of non-standard deviation due to the collapse of the Colonist's society and technology - reacted badly to the altered Fenrisian DNA and began to mutate. Every new generation of Space Wolf changed it just a little bit more until a) it was compatible only with Fenrisian DNA and b) began producing Wulfen. It didn't even take all that long - the Crusade only lasted about 200 years and there's evidence of mutation way, way before the Heresy - but soon all of the original Terrans had died off and there were no stabilising "control group" keeping it together, only altered Fenrisians and from there only more mutations.

I might be wrong, of course, and it could be something else entirely - maybe Khorne having a hand in their evolution, in the same way that Tzeentch took an interest in the 'Sons, or Nurgle in the Death Guard. There is, however, other precedent in the 40k lore that suggests that the degradation and subsequent mixing of different technologies causes adverse effects and something as simple as gene-seed changing to work only with one particular host would be comparably unremarkable.

Caxton

2016-12-27, 11:14 AM

I edited it to make it less confusing.
Night Lords are quite good...I actually might put them top tier, in Maelstrom.

Night Lords? Why? I'm not 100% familar with them, but isn't their legion bonus FEAR?

LeSwordfish

2016-12-27, 11:30 AM

They get Stealth, which makes several of the best things in the book (Bikes, princes, heldrakes) better, and Night Vision, and they can have fast-moving Objective Secured in the form of Raptors. They have multiple good relics, good warlord traits, and their MFD allows them to autochoose Night Fighting and stack it with Stealth. I'm not sure that I'd agree with Cheese that they're "top tier" for CSM, but they definitely hold their own - i'd have pegged them at the top of Mid Tier.

Blackhawk748

2016-12-27, 11:34 AM

I can see them in the Top Tier of Maelstrom. They move fast and Night Fighting is helpful.

Voidhawk

2016-12-27, 12:11 PM

I edited it to make it less confusing.
Night Lords are quite good...I actually might put them top tier, in Maelstrom.

With all the moving around, perhaps it would be better to just have separate Maelstrom and Eternal War lists?

Grim Portent

2016-12-27, 02:15 PM

I got a box of Exalted Sorcerers and a box of Rubric Marines on Christmas and I've decided to build a full War Coven with them, mostly because 'why not?' rather than any good reason, so I'm going to see how far I can stretch the parts from the Exalted Sorcerers across the Rubrics to make them into more Sorcerers.

Got a casual agreement from my brother to play a silly game of 2000-2250 points against his Tyranids when I'm done painting the 1K Sons. 10 Exalted Sorcerers in a War Coven, all rolling different disciplines, against an actual, if suboptimal, Tyranid army in a bid to see how many bugs the Sorcerers can kill before dying. I anticipate a stomp, but it may be amusing to see what kinds of psychic shenanigans get pulled off before I wipe.

Blackhawk748

2016-12-27, 02:35 PM

Grim Portent

2016-12-27, 02:37 PM

That may not be as one sided as you think. IIRC They can get Termi Armor and its not like Nids have much AP 2, so rerolling those saves will make them pretty hard to kill for your average Nid. Granted they will eventually just bury you in corpses, but you might do more damage than you think. Unless he spams Fexes, then you gonna die.

Exalteds are stuck with normal power armour, no 2+ saves unless you manage to combine buffs to hit a 2++.

I'd use Terminator Sorcerers but they have access to fewer disciplines than Exalteds, so they don't really fit the gimmick.

Drasius

2016-12-27, 03:37 PM

I figured that the wolfiest "wolves" were the colonists who first settled Fenris millennia before the Great Crusade, with something having gone badly wrong with them back then (maybe they engineered themselves to resist the climate, but the superwolf genes "took over").

Them being fully wolf-shaped, and larger (for Thunderwolves) even then the biggest failed aspirants, or Bran Redmaw in werewolf form.

Whereas "werewolf" failed aspirants (and Bran Redmaw) are still humanoid - just hairy and muzzled.

See, I figured the failed aspirants were the fenrisian wolves.

Hey getting that instead of having to max out your formation to get the re-rolls is better than nothing. Also, what is the bonus to their formations if you dont max it out? I dont even know

Core Choice
War Cabal is rr1's to hit if a psycher from the unit cast a power. Min cost = 550 points
Sekmet conclave gets Fear and +1T when within 6" of 2 other units from the conclave. Min cost = 825 points

Command Choice
War Coven is select a discipline from the main 5 BRB schools (Bio, Pyro, Div, Telekinesis, Telepathy) to cast on 3's from (all sorcs cast on 3's from that discipline only). Min cost = 300 points
Ahrimans Exiles cast on 3's when within 18 of Ahriman. Min cost = 710 points
Rehati War Sect cast on 3's when within 18" of Magnus and they have LoS to everyone on the field when casting powers only. Min cost = 1205 points

Auxilary Choice
Warherd gets fleet and Tzaangors only can run & charge. If they charge 9 or more, +1str & I. Min cost = 285 points

Unfortunately, the min costs listed here are decieving as that's just for ML1 MoT sorcs with no spell familiar, each of them needs about another 100 points of gear to be moderately useful. Since they're all Sons detatchments, they all (except the Tzaangors) get +1 invo if the unit is affected by a blessing as well as hand out hatred to any spess woofs. One of the biggest issues, IMHO, is that you really want a command choice, but you really don't need 4 more sorcerors on top of the 1-2 you have to take in the core choice and then another if you want the warherd to get more warm bodies. If Ahriman's or the War Coven had've been 3 sorcs, you could have made it work with the Sekmet Conclave I think. That and the fact that the Lords of the Legion only allows you to take Exalted sorcs instead of normal ones means that the price goes up way too fast. Thousand Sons have lots of issues unfortunately, which anyone who'se ever played a game with them should be able to recognise almost instantly, once again making their lack of decent rules or points as much of a tragedy as their background.

Hey, thats Headwoppas Killchoppa, except for the range. That thing is great if you can get enough attacks.

No, 'Eadwoppa's is also +2 str whereas this thing is Str: User AP5 in CC and comes on Str4 models. 'Eadwoppa is str8 on the charge via a warboss, which is pretty good, even if a powerclaw is ap2 instant death all the time against most non MC's.

I got a box of Exalted Sorcerers and a box of Rubric Marines on Christmas and I've decided to build a full War Coven with them, mostly because 'why not?' rather than any good reason, so I'm going to see how far I can stretch the parts from the Exalted Sorcerers across the Rubrics to make them into more Sorcerers.

Got a casual agreement from my brother to play a silly game of 2000-2250 points against his Tyranids when I'm done painting the 1K Sons. 10 Exalted Sorcerers in a War Coven, all rolling different disciplines, against an actual, if suboptimal, Tyranid army in a bid to see how many bugs the Sorcerers can kill before dying. I anticipate a stomp, but it may be amusing to see what kinds of psychic shenanigans get pulled off before I wipe.

Good luck with your game, should be an interesting one since nids don't have a huge amount of shooting that'll knock you out before you get close enough to do some damage. I must say that I'd be going for Ahriman's Exiles instead of the war cove if you want to roll 10 different dicilplines, but that does limit you to exalteds only, but it also gives you 10 lance strikes to use and 50% more wounds per sorc. Your choice obviously, but it does seem like a waste to only have 1 guy casting on 3's though.

Edit:

I'd use Terminator Sorcerers but they have access to fewer disciplines than Exalteds, so they don't really fit the gimmick.

Exalteds gained Div and Telekinesis but lost Sanctic. The loss of hammerhand and cleansing flame is rough, as is the option to have a cheap and nasty primaris against daemons, but Div is pretty good and telekinesis has a couple of decent powers in there too (mainly Levitate and Maelstrom). The reason that I'd be using terminator sorc's is that if you're taking 10, you're re-rolling 1's for your saves. 3 wounds for the exalted, but fail ~8% of their saves against 2 wounds for the termie sorcs but only fail ~3% of their saves. Termies come out a bit better off, but Perils does't care about armour and neither does sweeping advance, so the fearless from the Exalted is a nice bonus there too.

Cheesegear

2016-12-27, 04:07 PM

Night Lords? Why? I'm not 100% familar with them, but isn't their legion bonus FEAR?

No. It's Fear at -2, which means it doesn't suck, because now most things are testing below Leadership 7 which means that it isn't totally useless. If you can make things test at Ld6 or worse - if you make them test at all, that is - then Fear actually works more than never.

With all the moving around, perhaps it would be better to just have separate Maelstrom and Eternal War lists?

No, because it only matters for Alpha Legion and Death Guard.

Blackhawk748

2016-12-27, 04:33 PM

Core Choice
War Cabal is rr1's to hit if a psycher from the unit cast a power. Min cost = 550 points
Sekmet conclave gets Fear and +1T when within 6" of 2 other units from the conclave. Min cost = 825 points

War Cabals bonus would be fine....if it was just on instead of needing to be active. Eldar get +1 BS, Tsons get half of Preferred Enemy.

So worse Death Guard Terminators then?

Command Choice
War Coven is select a discipline from the main 5 BRB schools (Bio, Pyro, Div, Telekinesis, Telepathy) to cast on 3's from (all sorcs cast on 3's from that discipline only). Min cost = 300 points
Ahrimans Exiles cast on 3's when within 18 of Ahriman. Min cost = 710 points
Rehati War Sect cast on 3's when within 18" of Magnus and they have LoS to everyone on the field when casting powers only. Min cost = 1205 points

Wow, why are these so limited? Librarium conclave is just cast on 3s and the Psykana division is stupid cheap in comparison.

Auxilary Choice
Warherd gets fleet and Tzaangors only can run & charge. If they charge 9 or more, +1str & I. Min cost = 285 points

So they're Orks, got it.

No, 'Eadwoppa's is also +2 str whereas this thing is Str: User AP5 in CC and comes on Str4 models. 'Eadwoppa is str8 on the charge via a warboss, which is pretty good, even if a powerclaw is ap2 instant death all the time against most non MC's.

Ah, true, but your faster and i assume its one handed?

Drasius

2016-12-27, 05:27 PM

War Cabals bonus would be fine....if it was just on instead of needing to be active. Eldar get +1 BS, Tsons get half of Preferred Enemy.

Can't compare things to Eldar, we all know that they're broken. Comparing to something like Ultras/Gladius doctrines and the fact that you should be activating this often and easily, it's not terrible. Unfortunately, it's a little wasted since Scarabs have twin linked bolters, as do sorcs in termie armour, but then, it also works in CC, so it's not all bad.

So worse Death Guard Terminators then?

Yep, but then, death guard have, IMHO, the best rules in the book and always will because GW constantly undervalues increased toughness and they had a better base to start with.

Wow, why are these so limited? Librarium conclave is just cast on 3s and the Psykana division is stupid cheap in comparison.

Because Chaos can't have nice things? But yes, why the strongest psychers in the galaxy get crap all for casting formations and have the worst psychic table remains a mystery.

So they're Orks, got it.

Worse. They're 8ppm for pistol/ccw and their sarge just gets +1 A and +1 Ld for 10 points instead of being a unholy force of destruction like a nob w/ klaw is.

Ah, true, but your faster and i assume its one handed?

Yep. Also has an assault 2 6" shooting profile. Still sucks balls though because unless you're rolling ork like numbers of attacks, str4 ap- is irrelevant most of the time in combat.

ION: My local GW is having their post Xmas thing today and is auctioning off a bunch of stuff for tickets that we've been getting over the last month based on our purchases. Every $10 gets you a ticket, and bonus tickets for buying certain things like starter boxes, start collectings, battleforces that sort of thing so newbies get more of a chance to get stuff. Turn up on the day and bid against anyone else in the store with however many tickets you want and hand in the number of tickets bid to recieve your prize. Should be an interesting day. I suspect that there's going to be quite the bidding war for the giant Ultramarine that was for the 30th anniversary. I'm dead keen on getting some books and bitz however.

Cheesegear

2016-12-27, 05:28 PM

Wow, why are these so limited? Librarium conclave is just cast on 3s

No it isn't. It's +1 to cast for each other Librarian in the Formation within the aura. A Librarius Conclave is nearly always casting on 2s with 3 Librarians. The only drawback is that the Psykers who put in their Powers and the +1, can't cast. But, at ML2, there are really only two Powers you want to cast with +6 dice anyway; Invisibility and/or Endurance.

A 5-man Conclave usually does the following;
3 guys in one unit, casting on 2s.
2 guys in another unit, casting on 3s.

When Librarians start dropping like flies (either from Perils or your opponent being smart), the Librarians just Voltron up again until one 'set' of the Librarians is casting their Powers on 2s. The most important facet of the Conclave, is that every Librarian may know all the Powers of the Librarians in the aura, which means that unlike Eldar, Space Marines aren't hamstrung when the wrong Psyker rolls the wrong Power.

TL;DR
A Conclave is better than you think it is. But still not as good as a Seer Council. Go figure.

Every $10 gets you a ticket

Gross. :smallyuk:
My store was 1 ticket for $55, and another ticket for every $30 after. A White Dwarf is an additional +2, any boxed game is +5.

...Whatever. I got my Valkia the Bloody framed art for being a cool guy for the year.

Blackhawk748

2016-12-27, 05:50 PM

Because Chaos can't have nice things? But yes, why the strongest psychers in the galaxy get crap all for casting formations and have the worst psychic table remains a mystery.

Its not like it'd be hard

Primaris: Tzeentch's Firestorm(WC 1): Range Torrent S D3+2 AP -, Assault 1, Inferno
1 Doombolt (as is)
2 Tzeentch's Blessing(WC 1): Is a Blessing with range 24". The target unit's Invunerable save increases by +1.
3 Tzeentchs Guidance (WC2): Its Prescience
4 Foresight of the Damned (WC 1): Its Perfect Timing
5 Tzeentch's Inferno (WC 2): Nova Power with the following profile: Range 9" S5 AP4 Assault 2d6, Ignores Cover, Soul Blaze
6 Tzeentch's Wrath (WC 3): Its Psychic Maelstrom

Look at that, that took me 10 minutes and its lazy, but its better than what they did and it even follows Tzeentch's strange obsession with Laser Spam.

Worse. They're 8ppm for pistol/ccw and their sarge just gets +1 A and +1 Ld for 10 points instead of being a unholy force of destruction like a nob w/ klaw is.

Wooow. Thaats bad. Though do remember that the Nob winds up costing you 31 points total to just have the klaw.

boomwolf

2016-12-28, 04:05 AM

Actually it's not better.
Too random so you can't rely on it for anything, and several powers just doesn't really benefit 1ksons.

If you want better tzeentch table, all you need to do is make firestorm stronger, remove the risk factor off boon, and switch places between siphon and firestorm (because with primaris siphon, you can actually plan for warp factories.)

In fact, here's boomwolf's quick-and-dirty fix to 1ksons. this is 5 minutes of thinking worth of edits, and turns them from bottom tier to high mid, possibly top.

Tzeentch powers:
P-Siphon Magic (as is)
1-Boon of Mutation (increase range to 12", no hit, just roll a boon)
2-Doombolt (as is)
3-Tzeentch firestorm (large blast, barrage)
4-Breath of Chaos (WC1)
5-Baleful Devolution (as is)
6-Treason of Tzeentch (as is)
Here. powers are now, with just minor edits, far FAR more reliable, useful and generally effective.

On to units:
Rubrics-base cost decrease 20 points, point per model decrease by 2 points, flamers are free (including pistol), cannon is 15 points. (more affordable, weapon choices are now actually worth considering)
Scarabs-Reduce warpflamer to 10 points, cannon to 15 points, missiles to 15 points. (weapon choices more worth considering.)
Tzaangors-Fear and Rage (just little somethings to make them more interesting.)
Exalted-They are fine.
Ahriman-The changes to the powers and formtaions effect him GREATLY. he needs nothing more.
Magnus-won't touch him as I didn't do anything remotly like testing him out, and as such touching him would be irresponsible.

Formations:
Grand Coven-add harnessing warp dice on 3+ when casting tzeentch powers. (just think of the interactions between this, MoAK and the fact siphon is now a primaris. this is in fact rather huge.)
Everything else can seriously remain the same. the mere interaction with grand coven and power changes would be enough. each individual formation might do very little when not maxed out, but the little it does when interacting with the improved table and grand coven is enough.

That's it. that's all you had to do to make 1ksons be seriously good, rather than a niche picks for us fans.

Forum Explorer

2016-12-28, 05:33 AM

The Patterner

2016-12-28, 06:05 AM

Brookshw

2016-12-28, 06:26 AM

No drooping on my magnets. Magnet to magnet.
I think an issue is that Mawloc arms might be too heavy for 3mm.

As a follow up, 3mm magnet to magnet turned out to be strong enough so yay!

Lord Torath

2016-12-28, 08:20 AM

I'd give Scarabs Power Fists base. Or at least give the option to give them Power Fists. Power weapons are useless on them.Do power fists still strike last?

LeSwordfish

2016-12-28, 09:47 AM

Kill (Team), Maim Burn! Kill (Team), Maim, Burn!
Chaos Space Marines in Kill Team.

First things first, Chaos don’t benefit from Champion Of Chaos. This massively massively sucks, since now you’re paying a tax on every character you own for no reason. Good start!

Legions
You can totally make your whole kill team a Legion force, there’s nothing stopping you.

Black Legion only gives you Hatred. Note that with Black Legion, you can take Marks, so if you have some clever plan that requires Marked units then go nuts I guess.
Alpha Legion gives most of what you could be taking Infiltrate. Nice! You can Infiltrate vehicles full of dudes too, but there’s only so much you can do, shooting out of a Rhino. Unfortunately, you probably can’t persuade your meta that “warlord” is synonymous with “leader” and get a whole bunch of leaders.
All you get from Iron Warriors is a 6+ FnP, which is not nothing but not as good as most things.
Night Lords hand out Stealth, and let you take double raptor squads. Fear is a little better in Kill Team, where you don’t get “Sargeant” leadership bonuses or squad-wide fearless, but it’s still not good.
Word Bearers gives you nothing whatsoever.
World Eaters get Fearless! Furious Charge isn’t great, though, since you’re no harder to kill.
Thousand Sons Sorcerers can get +1 invuln, if they bless themselves. Rubricae aren’t too bad in Kill Team, but you could take them as Black Legion Rubricae and get Hatred (Everything) instead of a small conditional buff for one guy.
Death Guard are fantastic. Feel No Pain, Fearless, and Relentless are three of the best specialist rules and everyone gets them for cheap.
Emperor’s Children aren’t very good, though they do bring along a decent amount of Ignores Cover.

Troops:
Cultists: At fifty points for ten, these can get pretty trolltastic. Take forty with double-flamers and bet your opponent they can’t kill all of them. Alternatively, find space for ten in any other list and use them as meatshields.

Chaos Space Marines: You can get a full squad of ten for 135 points, then throw on wargear and special weapons to pop tanks. Death Guard and Mark Of Nurgle makes them Fearless, Relentless, 3+, FnP, T5, which is as tough, numerous, and flexible as you’ll find in the entire book.

Tzaangors: They’re more expensive than Cultists, and aren’t going to do much more in Kill Team, except be a touch more survivable with T4 and a 6++. Is that worth twenty points to you? I’m not sure it is to me.

Elites:
Chosen: If you want to spam special weapons you can, but you’re paying a lot of points just for the ability to do so, for no actual increase in survivability. Alpha Legion can place them close to the enemy team first turn - nuke the four scariest things turn one with infiltrating combi-plasma? And then hope your opponent was relying on those four things to kill marines, because you’ll have only a couple of t4 3+ chumps in your whole list.

Posessed: Still suck. Fearless and a 5++ aren’t worth what you pay for them.

Beserkers: Take World Eaters marines instead, for cheaper and can take special weapons.

Rubric Marines: Ap3 on everything and a 4++ aren’t actually bad in Kill Team, and you get one of the few psykers in the entire format. You’ve got no ability to hurt tanks at all, though, and Slow And Purposeful is crippling.

Plague Marines: Unless you really want blight grenades on everything or Poison (and while neither is great, neither is bad per se), take Death Guard marines instead - you can get ten for the cost of seven.

Noise Marines: You do have access to lots of Ignores Cover, which is nice, but you’re paying through the nose for it. Unless you want to troll a Shrouded-heavy list, you won’t get much out of this.

Dedicated Transports
Rhino: It’s a rhino. Remember that chaos rhinos can take both Havok Launchers and combi-weapons, both of which add an unexpected extra kick of firepower.

Fast Attack
Bikers: Bikes in everything else are good, and chaos bikers aren’t an exception. You can have T6 FnP Fearless bikes, or Stealthy bikes, and they’re fast enough to deliver meltaguns reliably. You’re stuck with a small model count, though - cultists, maybe?

Chaos Spawn: You can troll a bit with them, but they cost an awful lot and have no save whatsoever. They make decent Distraction Carnifexes in the format, though.

Raptors: Jump Infantry that can take melta and plasma. That’s fun: ten raptors with two meltaguns can work as a list I expect.

Warp Talons: Sorry, but these aren’t good. Five with the Mark Of Tzeentch can pretend to be fast, close-combat rubricae, but that’s not great at all.

---

Overall, Chaos can spam units like nobody else, or take decent infantry with special weapons, or kind of do both, and can’t do much else. If you want to play CSM in Kill Team in any kind of competitive context, you can’t do better than Death Guard.

Requizen

2016-12-28, 10:15 AM

How about this for a simple Alpha Legion Kill Team:

CSM x5 - Plasma/Combi-Plasma
Cultists x16 - all Autoguns + 1 Heavy Stubber.

21 bodies (a lot for Kill Team), all Infiltrating/Outflanking, with Plasma. DG might be slightly better with the survivability, but I already have Necrons for that.

Alternatively:

Chosen x5 - Plasma x4
Cultists x10

Less bodies, more Plasma, better MEQs. I think more bodies is better though.

Drasius

2016-12-28, 12:26 PM

Do power fists still strike last?

Yes, since they're unwieldy and you're not a MC or Walker.

As for CSM Kill team, I see very little reason to not run Death Guard now that you can get Plague Marines-lite that are just as good in 99% of cases for so much cheaper. The only downside is no rhino if you want 2 special weapons (or 1 special 1 heavy). 10x T5 FNP fearless, relentless marines probably don't need a rhino anyway. Infiltrate is nice and all, but the increased resilience from DG is just too good to pass up, especially in a game where every casualty matters so much, the ability to not-die is pretty damn useful.

Nice mini guide though LeSwordfish. Technically though, Iron Warriors hand out a 6+++. It's not much, but if for some reason your cunning plan works but only if you don't take marks, then it's probably a better bet than Black Legion, though I'd argue that the Night Lords Stealth and Auto Night fighting and Night Vision mean that you're still not picking IW.

LeSwordfish

2016-12-28, 01:04 PM

I mean, since stealth works in the open, Stealth is like a 6++ but better. But yes, thank you, i missed that.

Grim Portent

2016-12-28, 04:14 PM

I've been thinking a bit about the 1K Sons War Coven and I think I have a rough idea for what I really would have wanted to see out of a 1k Sons formation.

War Coven

Same unit options as the real one, so 1-9 Sorcerers/Exalted Sorcerers and 1 Sorcerer/Exalted/Prince.

Master of the Arcane: The Coven Leader (the model from the Prince/Sorcerer/Exalted option) harnesses warp charges on 3+.

Psychic Communion: When a unit from this formation manifests a psychic power other units from the formation can choose to contribute one or more of their manifesting attempts for the phase to increase the numerical values of the power.

A Witchfire so empowered increases it's Strength characteristic, if it has one, by 1 for every mastery level contributed and fires an additional shot for every 2 mastery levels contributed.

Blessings increase any characteristic bonuses they bestow by +1 for every two mastery levels contributed and improve any saves or Feel no Pain rolls they grant by +1 for every three mastery levels contributed. Such Blessings cannot increase a characteristic above 10 or a save (including Feel no Pain) beyond 2+.

Maledictions increase any characteristic penalties they apply by 1 for every two masterly levels contributed and reduce any saves for Feel no Pain rolls they reduce by 1 for every three mastery levels contributed. Such Maledictions cannot reduce a characteristic to 0. If they would reduce a save to worse than 6+ it is automatically failed for the duration of the Malediction.

In addition to the above all powers cast in this manner increase their range by 6" for every mastery level contributed to their casting.

I really wish the 1k Sons had actually gotten a formation that allowed them to pool their resources to unleash truly devastating barrages of psychic might, and what I've knocked up in about a minute above would almost make it possible for the Sons to actually do some of the things they're meant to do in the fluff, like vaporise small armies with sorcerous lightning or make weapons and armour transform into molten slag. With this the Smite power for example could be pushed to S10 AP2 Assault 17 range 180", which for a minimum of 1350 points (10 sorcerers of Tzeentch with Mastery 3) is still very bad, but at least it would be awesome to be able to kill a yak from a hundred yards away with mind bullets crush a Land Raider with a psychic barrage or melt a guard platoon into a puddle with psychic flames.

Stuff like Psychic Shriek or Beams would be really strong, but then they'd be competing with a Warhound Titan in points cost, which I can't see even 16 Doombolts that all have to target the same unit managing to compete with in most games.

LordDavenport

2016-12-28, 04:26 PM

Yep, but then, death guard have, IMHO, the best rules in the book and always will because GW constantly undervalues increased toughness and they had a better base to start with.

This seems to be the crux of the issue. There are 4 marks, and the designers wanted them all to improve relevant things, thus differentiating the CSM of the 4 gods. Except 1 of the stats didn't matter for reasons(EC and I), one only mattered to expensive things and was limited even there(TZ and ++), one provided 2 special rules that are pretty great and would be nice if close combat was a thing, while the last one boosted a stat that always matters and tied it to feel no pain.

Really wish the mark of slenesh just gave out battle focus, possibly along with plus initiative. Then make sonic weapons assault, and give noise marines access to rending. Bam, now emperors children are notably more mobile, and it is fluffy that slanesh is stealing eldar's shtick.

Blackhawk748

2016-12-28, 06:49 PM

This seems to be the crux of the issue. There are 4 marks, and the designers wanted them all to improve relevant things, thus differentiating the CSM of the 4 gods. Except 1 of the stats didn't matter for reasons(EC and I), one only mattered to expensive things and was limited even there(TZ and ++), one provided 2 special rules that are pretty great and would be nice if close combat was a thing, while the last one boosted a stat that always matters and tied it to feel no pain.

Really wish the mark of slenesh just gave out battle focus, possibly along with plus initiative. Then make sonic weapons assault, and give noise marines access to rending. Bam, now emperors children are notably more mobile, and it is fluffy that slanesh is stealing eldar's shtick.

Hell, dont even need to make them Assault, just give them Relentless.

LeSwordfish

2016-12-28, 07:00 PM

Relentless doesn't seem very Slaaneshi - but Battle Focus does, and gives slaaneshi units a chance to run rings around their opponents.

Cheesegear

2016-12-28, 07:46 PM

Night Lords hand out Stealth

Stealth is a near-useless Specialist. But, give it to your entire Team and your opponent wont know where to shoot his Ignores Cover. Of course, if all your dudes look the same, then your opponent has no reason to not shoot your Leader or Specialists over anything else. Point is, Stealth is good on your entire Team.

World Eaters get Fearless! Furious Charge isn’t great, though, since you’re no harder to kill.

Fearless is extremely useful in Kill Team because it means no Break Tests. That alone puts World Eaters above most other Legions. Even if you give them Bolters and Meltaguns, they're still better than nearly everything else.

Rubricae aren’t too bad in Kill Team

Yes they are.

Emperor’s Children aren’t very good, though they do bring along a decent amount of Ignores Cover.

Only thing you need is that AP3, Ignores Cover. It will kill everything in the format. Of course, you'll only get one, which means being targeted immediately.

Alternatively, find space for ten [Cultists] in any other list and use them as meatshields.

Only if the rest of your Team is Fearless. Cultists drop like flies, which means half your Kill Team is going to die in the first two turns; Causing Break Tests.

Chaos Space Marines

Now that Legion rules give them a bunch of rules for free, they're the best unit in the book.

Chosen:

Only if Alpha Legion, and probably not even then, since two units of Chaos Marines can do the same thing, and put more bodies on the board doing it.

Rubric Marines: Ap3 on everything and a 4++ aren’t actually bad in Kill Team

5/150 is bad. Put a squad of Cultists on the board to make up numbers, I guess.
OH NOES YOUR OPPONENT BROUGHT AV12 YOU LOSE IMMEDIATELY.

Bikers: You’re stuck with a small model count, though - cultists, maybe?

Only if you're Fearless.

Raptors: Jump Infantry that can take melta and plasma. That’s fun: ten raptors with two meltaguns can work as a list I expect.

Not as good as Death Company. Not as good as Necron Praetorians.

Overall, Chaos can spam units like nobody else

I have no idea what Codex you just read. Do you mean Cultist spam?

How about this for a simple Alpha Legion Kill Team:

Cultists should not be included in any competitive Kill Team - unless the not-Cultists are also Fearless.

You know why points-filling with Space Marine Scouts is a thing? Because Scouts are T4, 4+. With real options for weapons. In addition, everything else in a Marine Team - in case the Scouts die - has ATSKNF, which means that Break Tests don't matter as much.

Cultists make your Team worse, not better.

Except 1 of the stats didn't matter for reasons (EC and I)

Initiative does matter. Just not on a unit that looks like it doesn't want to be in Melee (i.e; Noise Marines).

Chaos Marines with the Mark of Slaanesh and Icon and pretty good. Because they'll be I5 in Melee and wreck face before other things get to strike. Unfortunately, there's no reliable way of getting into Melee, and no matter what Melee Emperor's Children list you build, World Eaters are doing it better and breaking the game while doing it.

EDIT:
On that note, I'll actually almost rate Emperor's Children in Kill Team;
Fearless. Check.
FNP (6+). Granted, it's nothing on Death Guard, but it's something. Especially since in Kill Team you're unlikely to meet weapons over S7. Plasma Guns are almost the standard in KT, and they ain't S8. Anything that is S8, needs to be targeted immediately. But you know that, because you have a brain.
Initiative 5 with Grenades is actually good. The only issue you have to deal with is Overwatch; FNP (6+) is almost helpful...Almost... Dirge Casters. Chaos Marines have access to Dirge Casters. I forgot.

The biggest thing in Kill Team, is that there wont be no Butcherhorde movement for World Eaters, and there certainly wont be any Talismans of Burning Blood in the format. So World Eaters actually can't make a better KT than Emperor's Children. So, rather than being 'bad World Eaters' in Kill Team, Emperor's Children get to upgrade to 'bad Death Guard'. You have the option of F5+/I3, or F6+/I5. Both are Fearless. When looking through this lens, well, Initiative only matters in Melee (and, in Kill Team, vs. Cerberus Launchers which makes most things under I4 sad), and Shooting is just better than Melee.
However, Mark of Nurgle on Chaos Marines is 3 Points, while Slaanesh is 2. Ultimately it just looks like this;

Emperor's Children
Chaos Space Marines (x7); [Close Combat Weapons], Meltagun, Power Sword, Gift, Slaanesh, [Veterans] - 150 Points
+ Chaos Rhino; Dirge Caster - 40 Points

Total: 190 Points

Make one of your Specialists, Scout, jump in the Rhino, and Disembark as part of your Scout move. Turn the Rhino to its side, the Meltaguns jump out the front, while the other four jump out the other side with the Rhino blocking LoS. Your Bolt Pistols are irrelevant because your Krak Grenades are in range on Turn 1. If someone does spam AV (usually AV10), throw Krak Grenades at the problem until it goes away.

Death Guard
Chaos Space Marines (x10); x2 Meltaguns, Gift, Nurgle, [Veterans] - 200 Points

More dudes, with an extra Special weapon. Without the Rhino, you don't get to Scout into the middle of the board, and you're generally slower. But, it's essentially Eternal War, and since you're Fearless, you wont be taking Break Tests, so that's fine. You've got ~5 Turns to be where you need to be. Unless you're playing Assassinate, where the goal is to win the game by removing Leaders/Specialists. And, in that case, you're getting into Rapid Fire range on your Boltguns fast enough.

EDIT II: Grenade Boogaloo.
Remember to include in your Chaos Guide, that as Marines, you have Krak Grenades as standard. Use them instead of Bolt Pistols. As a Space Marine with a Pistol, you have a S6, AP4 ranged attack, and +1 Attack in Melee.

EDIT III:
Also remember that Scout is conferred to a Dedicated Transport, making Rhinos better than they seem. Unfortunately, everyone knows this rule, and will likely end up in 'Scout Wars' as each player wants to win the roll to Scout first to take the center of the board.

Saambell

2016-12-29, 03:11 AM

Taking people's advice into consideration, here's round two:

Death Guard Vectorium
Core Warband
Lord: VotLW, MoN,Bike, Claw, Fist, Sigil 165 Points
Terminators: VotLW, MoN, Combi Melta, Claw, Axes 125 Points
Bikers: VotLW, MoN, Melta x2 108 Points
Havocs: VotLW, MoN, 4x Autocannon 130 Points
CSM: VotLW, MoN, 10 Man Squad, Autocannon, Melta, Rhino 225 Points
CSM: VotLW, MoN, 10 Man Squad, Autocannon, Plasma, Rhino 230 Points
Auxiliary Spawn
Spawn: MoN 36 Points

CAD Alpha Legion
Sorc: ML3, Bike, Sigil, Familiar, VotLW 170 Points
Chosen: VotLW, 4x Melta, Rhino 165 Points
Chosen: VotLW, 4x Flamer, Rhino 145 Points

TOTAL 1499

A lot more anti tank, a lot more mobility. If I had 35 Points to spare, a Rhino for the Havocs would be on the list, even if just for one more bit of ObSec armour. Might think about dropping the Sigils for a 5th Rhino, and swapping the Melta CSM for a Plasma. That would leave me with 10 Points, which I could use to give the other 2 Terminators Combi Meltas, but that would mean some arm ripping...not sure I want to do that.

LordDavenport

2016-12-29, 04:44 AM

@Sambell:OOOOHHH... I just had another great idea*. This is mainly that wasting the chance to use the mindvale as often as possible is a crime. Also T5 terminators with a FnP should do things.

A max squad of terminators with MoN and combi whatever is 422 points
Take the AL Sorcs bike away, give him the mindveil, stick him in the blob.
You don't even have to stick a lord in the blob. He can be doing his own thing with some bikes.
T5, FnP terminators rolling up the board at around 10" a turn. They aren't thundercav... but they might be even more durable then bikes. Well... bikes can't be vindicatored off the board. So slight loss there?

Eddums

2016-12-29, 07:55 AM

Hi all! I'm a long time reader of this thread, first time (I think) poster. I'm just getting back into 40k after about a 7 year break - last time I played was 3rd ed. I'm an Eldar player, which apparently makes me cheesy by default with the current 'dex :smalltongue:, but I'll be doing my best to avoid undue beardyness.

With that in mind, I was hoping to get a bit of feedback on my current plan for a 1500 list. My current meta is not competitive, it tends towards the fluffy and the fun. No wraithknight or jetseer shenanigans here. As a result, I'm not looking for an uber-powerful list, just to avoid making any utterly ridiculous choices (I'm aware that most Eldar choices are decent at the moment, but there we go).

Without further ado:

Primary Detachment - Codex Craftworlds (Combined Arms)

HQ

1 Farseer, Singing Spear, Spirit Stones of Anath'Lan (120)
1 Farseer, Singing Spear (105)

Troops

10 Guardian Defenders, Scatter Laser, Warlock Leader (140)
10 Dire Avengers, Exarch with Power Weapon and Shimmershield (160)

Elites

6 Striking Scorpions, Exarch with Scorpion's Claw (142)
5 Wraithblades with Ghost Axes and Forceshields (150)

Fast Attack

1 Vyper, Shuriken Cannon and Brightlance (60)
1 Vyper, Shuriken Cannon and Eldar Missile Launcher (65)

Heavy Support

5 Dark Reapers, Exarch (140)
3 War Walker's, 3 Scatter Lasers, Brightlance, Starcannon, Eldar Missile Launcher (235)

Allied Harlequin Detachment - Unbound

1 Troupe (7x Players, 1x Troupe Master), 3x Harlequin's Caress, 2x Harlequin's Embrace, Haywire Grenades (179)

1 Death Jester, Haywire Grenades (65)

1 Shadowseer, Mastery Level 2, Mask of Secrets (100)

The general plan is for the craftworlders to form a decent bulwork of firepower, with the Wraithblades working as a tarpit/tanking unit, and the Scorpions disrupting the enemy's firebase and assault. The Harlequins provide the main aggressive assault element, using H&R to stay mobile, and using assault and the Shadowseer to stay safe from shooting. The Death Jester joins either the Guardians or the Reapers to boost their firepower, and try to draw enemy squads into assault range for the quins or the Scorpions. The Avengers, Scorpions and Reapers use the Aspect Host formation for +1 BS and re-rolling moral and pinning tests.

Just to note, I know that footdar is not an optimal build, but I personally find it more fun, especially for casual games, and it fits my fluff. What I guess I'm asking is not 'is this a competitive Eldar list' but more 'are there any obviously silly things I've done, or practically mandatory picks I've missed out on'?

Also, just to clarify, my allied detachment is unbound, but my primary detachment still gets ObSec for being battleforged, right? The whole new detachments/ method for picking an army confuses my poor 3rd ed brain.

Thanks in advance for any feedback, and I'm really glad to be back into the hobby! :smallsmile:

Blackhawk748

2016-12-29, 08:29 AM

*Eldar List*

Ok Lets see:

3+ Farseers: No
Warp Spiders: No
Scat Bikes: No
Wraithknights: No
Wave Serpent Spam: No

Congratulations, you've made an Eldar list that won't get you punched in the head. Being slightly more serious, your list looks fine, then again as we've said, you can make a list of random stuff from that book and be fine.

You cant stick the Avengers, Dark Reapers and Scorpions in the Formation, cuz then your CAD would be illegal. However, if you can split the Guardians into 2 squads of 5 (i cant remember if thats their minimum) then you can.

Closet_Skeleton

2016-12-29, 08:54 AM

There's no such thing as an unbound detachment, only an unbound army or a battleforged army. A Battleforged army is made up of detachments and formations while a unbound army cannot contain them as it is made up purely of units.

So to be legal you'd have to take a Harlequin troop formation which forces you to throw your Death Jester and Shadow Seer into the Harlequin squad and takes away their independent character rule or just play an unbound army and loose Obsec.

Forum Explorer

2016-12-29, 10:59 AM

Cheesegear

2016-12-29, 11:05 AM

Twhile a unbound army cannot contain them as it is made up purely of units.

An Unbound army may include Formations. It's just Apocalypse-style. Take whatever you want - if it fits into a Formation, even better.

Renegade Paladin

2016-12-29, 11:54 AM

An Unbound army may include Formations. It's just Apocalypse-style. Take whatever you want - if it fits into a Formation, even better.
But it can't include a CAD or Allied Detachment.

Drasius

2016-12-29, 11:54 AM

As the others have said, yeah, unbound is an army wide thing, but you could still put the Avengers, Scorpions and Reapers into an Aspect Host and get their boost for free since if you're already unbound due to the Harlequins, it doesn't matter if you have a CAD or not, but this way, you'll still get your Aspect Host bonus. Probably best to be aware that you will undoubtedly get a few raised eyebrows at minimum if you turn up and tell people that you've got an unbound Eldar list, but if you show them your army list, I'd wager that you'll still get a game.

As for the list composition, the one thing I'd probably change a bit is the weapons loadout on the vypers and war walkers so it's not so ... eclectic. Have them concentrate on doing one thing and do that thing well. The targets for scatterlasers, brightlances, starcannons and missile launchers aren't really the same, though being eldar, it's not like it really makes or breaks anything.

On a brighter note, welcome back to 40k, please don't be shy to post up here if you need any help with lists or counters to things, suggestions for your next purchase or just to tell us all how your battles went.

Blackhawk748

2016-12-29, 01:24 PM

Guardian minimum is 10 man.

Thank you, wasn't sure.

Drasius

2016-12-29, 06:10 PM

Not sure how/why this hasn't been posted here yet:

https://scontent-mxp1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/15698216_846395962169450_5003037649406456083_n.jpg ?oh=448972a9e1f1e3d8280b7aeca5901856&oe=58DAC795

I really, really, really want that inquisitor, but I'm not paying $140 AUD for her.

Cheesegear

2016-12-29, 06:17 PM

I really, really, really want that inquisitor, but I'm not paying $140 AUD for her.

I'm sure somebody will buy the box and not want the Inquisitor.

Grim Portent

2016-12-29, 06:22 PM

I really want that Magos, but I'm also in the boat of being iffy on the price.

In other news I finished my first 1k Sons Sorcerer, just four days after I started.

https://scontent-lhr3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/15726957_1306253586114900_7142772615660001748_n.jp g?oh=7f28b8347c8f4d6103bdc6e9e8e90235&oe=58EF0215

Just another 8 to go now and they can team up with my old metal Ahriman.

Ricky S

2016-12-29, 06:31 PM

So what exactly is included in the box? The celestine, her bodyguards and the inquisitor?

Cheesegear

2016-12-29, 06:39 PM

So what exactly is included in the box? The celestine, her bodyguards and the inquisitor?

And the Techpriest. Triumverate. Means 3.

Grim Portent

2016-12-29, 06:39 PM

So what exactly is included in the box? The celestine, her bodyguards and the inquisitor?

I think it's Celestine, her bodyguards, the Inquisitor and the Magos all in the one box.

EDIT: Ninja'd by Cheese by a few seconds. :smalltongue:

LeSwordfish

2016-12-29, 06:43 PM

So more of a quintumvirate, really.

Drasius

2016-12-29, 07:03 PM

Nice looking wizard you've got there Grim, they're certainly a nice kit.

Ricky S

2016-12-29, 07:18 PM

And the Techpriest. Triumverate. Means 3.

Ah cool, I wasnt sure if the bodyguards were counted with celestine. $140 including the tech priest is a better deal, now to find someone to sell the tech priest too.

I think it's Celestine, her bodyguards, the Inquisitor and the Magos all in the one box.

EDIT: Ninja'd by Cheese by a few seconds. :smalltongue:

Haha Cheese will do that.

So more of a quintumvirate, really.

I counted five models too. Gw needs to learn to count :P

Blackhawk748

2016-12-29, 07:46 PM

The tech priest is also apparently the size of a Carnifex, so theres that. I really want to know what his stats are.

Caxton

2016-12-29, 09:21 PM

Renegade Paladin

2016-12-29, 09:53 PM

So more of a quintumvirate, really.
Bodyguards don't count as part of the ruling trio. :P

DaedalusMkV

2016-12-29, 11:21 PM

Been playing around with the World Eaters Butcherhorde. Can't quite figure out how it should be done. What does the playground think?

Right now I'm thinking that the Rhinos may get left at home due to them not having the bonus move. But I could also just use them for cheap obsec. For auxiliaries, I'm considering spamming Spawns to have cheap units to crawl up and eat up overwatches and tie up annoying units.

Max bikes, 2+ Chaos Lords and a whole bunch of generic CSM with pistols and Meltas. World Eaters aren't exactly subtle in their preferred approach. Basically, your bikes are trying for turn-1 charges (whatever unit has the +3 movement Artefact isn't so much trying as 'succeeding'), while the generic CSM Run forwards to set up turn 2 Charges. Numbers are your friend in World Eaters, and I'd say you want at least three units of Bikers and three or four full Chaos Space Marine squads. Overwhelm them with targets, then charge them and destroy them. World Eaters are all about pure, unchecked aggression. Rhinos don't help with that.

Auxiliaries should be either a Spawn squad or Raptor Talon. But Spawn so you can have more Bikes and Marines is probably best.

Renegade Paladin

2016-12-30, 12:52 AM

Man. When trying to build a Cadian Battle Group MFD, 1500 points suddenly starts to feel really restrictive.

1500 points

Combined Arms Detachment (685)

Company Command Squad - 130
-Vox-caster, camo gear
-Two grenade launchers, heavy flamer
-Commander; krak grenades, camo gear (Warlord)
-Astropath
--Laspistol

Primaris Psyker - 75
-Mastery Level 2

Ministorum Priest - 25

Infantry Platoon - 200
-Platoon Command Squad
--Vox-caster
--Three flamers
-Infantry Squad
--Vox-caster
--Lascannon
-Infantry Squad
--Lascannon, flamer

Veterans - 155
-Two meltaguns, heavy flamer
-Chimera
--Heavy flamer

Aegis Defense Line - 100
-Quad-gun

Emperor's Blade Assault Company (815)

Company Command Squad - 220
-Medi-pack, carapace armor
-Two plasma guns, heavy Flamer
-Astropath
--Laspistol
-Company Commander; krak grenades, carapace armor
-Chimera

Veterans - 155
-Two meltaguns, heavy flamer
-Chimera
--Heavy flamer

Veterans - 155
-Two meltaguns, heavy flamer
-Chimera
--Heavy flamer

Veterans - 155
-Two meltaguns, heavy flamer
-Chimera
--Heavy flamer

Hellhound - 130
I'd wanted that CAD to be an Armored Fist Company, but I couldn't very easily get that under 800 points and then I had to pay for the command squad for the Command choice. The only way to do it would have been to run the Assault Company without any special weapons at all, and... no. And there's no way to get fortifications into the MFD, so the only anti-air is Hydras through the Emperor's Wrath artillery formation, and... also no. And whichever designer thought I (or ANYONE) was going to take a full infantry company that doesn't even get Objective Secured as a core choice (for the curious, minimum cost with no upgrades or special weapons is 2295 points) can go soak his head. :smallsigh:

On the upside, that's five Chimeras and a Hellhound to run around and wreak havoc and a fairly strong infantry firebase. As an alternative, the Emperor's Fist company I designed at first was coincidentally also 815 points, so I could take out the Emperor's Blade and slot it into this CAD without adjusting anything, but I feel like that leaves me dangerously short on ObSec.

Cheesegear

2016-12-30, 02:00 AM

Right now I'm thinking that the Rhinos may get left at home due to them not having the bonus move.

You take the Rhinos because they have Dirge Casters. You never, ever get in (unless your opponent deploys first, sees your Butcherhorde, and then Deploys 6" back). Turn 1, Move 12", Flat-Out another 6". Once you're in that sweet 6" Dirge range, (if your opponent has pushed their DZ), your World Eaters Charge in the Turn 1 Charge Phase, while still being next to their Dirge Rhino.

Or, while your World Eaters are Turn 1 Charging, what's in your backline holding Objectives? One unit of Havocs isn't going to be enough. Of course, if you're playing Eternal War, that's not relevant.

For auxiliaries, I'm considering spamming Spawns

Raptor Talon. There are no other Aux. choices for the Butcherhorde.