Tzeentch Psychic Powers

[Noctus Cornix]

Ok so in all honesty, I have never been a fan of Thousand Sons. They have always seemed like a really boring and bland Legion that just goes 'pew pew' with their fingers. Now it's been a while but I decided to read over their fluff and I really am starting to warm up to them as time goes. Finally sitting around with the codex in my hand, I flipped through the codex to take a look at the Tzeentch Psychic Powers because I always hear so much hate about it. Now I know I am not one who really only knows the basics of Psychic Powers (I play Black Templars, Dark Eldar, and Marines Malevolent so Psychic powers have always been unavailable to me) but upon reading it, these things seem extremely powerful. Powers like Doombolt, Breath of Chos, and Firestorm all seem to be exceptionally devastating mid to close range abilities, and couple that with inferno bolts from a Thousand Sons squad and you have one hell of a monster for a mid to close unit.

 

So here's my question, because no doubt I am seriously missing something... What's wrong with them? :)

[Lieutenant Steel]

The ,main problem as far as I've seen in the Tzeentch spell list is that Boon of Chaos is just plain bad, the Primaris Power doesn't have an AP value, which means it won't cause many wounds on average. One thing which bugs me is that when you buy a Thousand Sons unit you pay a premium for a Lvl 1 Sorceror who has a 33% chance of rolling a terrible, terrible spell (the one which lets you roll on the Boon table if you don't die first).

 

Doom Bolt and Breath of Chaos seem fine to me, but I haven't actually played with them.

[Brother Ambroz]

Noctus I agree with you. I have played against Thousand Sons this edition and they are pretty devastating against everything except TEQ. Especially if they infiltrate. All of his spells were great, except for Firestorm which didn't really do anything to my marines or terminators but would be pretty good against Guard or Eldar.

[Noctus Cornix]

I think Firestorm can be a rather devastating power against all things TEQ because it just does a whole -_-: ton of wounds they have to roll for. It can potentially do alot of damage to MEQ units aswell but only with good rolls. I think its meant to balance out the sheer fact that Thousand Sons units, which are great against MEQ units, it has issues against TEQ so this balances it out.

 

Boon of Mutation, I honestly don't think is super bad, if I'm totally honest. While I can't say its the best, it does allow you to simply buff up your characters basically for free as the turns go by.

[Brother Ambroz]

It can be if you're rolling well but it didn't do anything to the 6 termies I brought. In large clustered units it'll do really well.

 

Boon was good when I've played with it but there's always a chance you'll get spawned. In one game I got horrible boon rolls all game but some you'll roll well some you won't.

[Lieutenant Steel]

Boon of Mutation, I honestly don't think is super bad, if I'm totally honest. While I can't say its the best, it does allow you to simply buff up your characters basically for free as the turns go by.

But it's not free because you have to pay the price of not being able to use a better, more versatile spell. Breath of Chaos is great because it gives you an option to deal with enemy TEq. Doom Bolt is also great because it gives Thousand Sons Sorcerers the chance of having AP1 weapons in the squad. The real cost of Boon of Chaos is that you don't have either of those other, much more useful/ effective spells- as well as the fact that to reliably use it (i.e. without killing your character) you have to use it on ICs rather than champions, but the last thing you want to do is turn your IC into a Spawn or naked Daemon Prince...

[Noctus Cornix]

Boon of Mutation, I honestly don't think is super bad, if I'm totally honest. While I can't say its the best, it does allow you to simply buff up your characters basically for free as the turns go by.

But it's not free because you have to pay the price of not being able to use a better, more versatile spell. Breath of Chaos is great because it gives you an option to deal with enemy TEq. Doom Bolt is also great because it gives Thousand Sons Sorcerers the chance of having AP1 weapons in the squad. The real cost of Boon of Chaos is that you don't have either of those other, much more useful/ effective spells- as well as the fact that to reliably use it (i.e. without killing your character) you have to use it on ICs rather than champions, but the last thing you want to do is turn your IC into a Spawn or naked Daemon Prince...

 

You have to re-roll if you land Dark Apotheosis actually but ya I see what you mean.

[Kol Saresk]

Stupid question, why can't you just take more than one power from the Tzeentch table? If I have read the rules right, you can take at least one and up to half of your total amount of powers from the alignment tables. So that's what, at two powers at most right?

[Noctus Cornix]

Stupid question, why can't you just take more than one power from the Tzeentch table? If I have read the rules right, you can take at least one and up to half of your total amount of powers from the alignment tables. So that's what, at two powers at most right?

 

You can only generate a maximum of two powers from the Tzeentch Table, period. (Its the last paragraph just above the Disciplines of Tzeentch) which is fine but the problem is that, if I remember correctly, you have a limited amount of psychic powers you can take as a level one sorcerer (such as aspiring sorcerers) so you'll be rather boned if basically all of your aspiring sorcerers land boon of mutation. :/

[Kol Saresk]

I thought I said that. :rolleyes:

 

So, if you are level one or two, the answer is no but if you are level three then you can take two powers because that is not more than half of your total number of available powers but not suggested? And if you are a KSons Squad AS, then no you want either doombolt or breath of Chaos, with Doombolt being the preferred I imagine. Is that right?

[Zeratil]

Aspiring Sorcs can't get breath, it requires mastery level 2 iirc.

 

The main problem with Tzeentch is boon and the rubbish primaris (so half the spells), combined with the fact that models with the MoT HAVE to take at least one power from it, so 50% of your ASs will end up with a sub-par power - and you've just spent 68 points on him. If the AS could pick his discipline from Tzeentch, Bio, Pyro and Telepathy they'd be much closer to being worth their points.

[*Furyou Miko]

You have to re-roll if you land Dark Apotheosis actually but ya I see what you mean.

 

No, you don't. You're thinking of Gift of Mutation, the 10-point upgrade. We're talking about Boon of Mutation, the Tz psychic power. There are no rerolls for Boon.

 

Also, yeah, Aspiring Sorcerers can't get Breath. Their only worthwhile power is Doombolt, which, sods law states, you'll never actually get on enough Aspies to make buying more than one to work the gambler's fallacy worth it.

[Noctus Cornix]

You have to re-roll if you land Dark Apotheosis actually but ya I see what you mean.

 

No, you don't. You're thinking of Gift of Mutation, the 10-point upgrade. We're talking about Boon of Mutation, the Tz psychic power. There are no rerolls for Boon.

 

 

Incorrect. Page 70 of the Codex.

 

Boon of Mutation:

 

Boon of Mutation is a blessing that targets a single, friendly character within 2". That character must immediately make a roll on the Chaos Boon table (re-rolling the Dark Apotheosis result) as described under the Champion of Chaos rule on page 28.

[Kol Saresk]

Aspiring Sorcs can't get breath, it requires mastery level 2 iirc.

 

The main problem with Tzeentch is boon and the rubbish primaris (so half the spells), combined with the fact that models with the MoT HAVE to take at least one power from it,

That's the same with any Marked Sorcerer.

 

"If a Sorcerer has a Mark of Chaos or is a Daemon of a particular Chaos God, they must roll at least one, and may roll up to half, of their powers on the table that corresponds to their patron deity."

 

In the case of Breath of Chaos, you have to roll a 5 or 6 and need two warp charges to use. So unless there's a limit on how many warp charges an AS can have, they should be able to get it.

[Zeratil]

Aspiring Sorcs can't get breath, it requires mastery level 2 iirc.

 

The main problem with Tzeentch is boon and the rubbish primaris (so half the spells), combined with the fact that models with the MoT HAVE to take at least one power from it,

That's the same with any Marked Sorcerer.

 

"If a Sorcerer has a Mark of Chaos or is a Daemon of a particular Chaos God, they must roll at least one, and may roll up to half, of their powers on the table that corresponds to their patron deity."

 

In the case of Breath of Chaos, you have to roll a 5 or 6 and need two warp charges to use. So unless there's a limit on how many warp charges an AS can have, they should be able to get it.

 

 

You have as many warp charges as you have mastery levels, so 1 for AS. They therefore re-roll breath results when determining psychic powers. As for the mark issue, I never said other marked sorcerers had it any better, I was referring back to the OP bringing up Tzeentch, not the other chaos disciplines (they're not much better, Slaanesh is okay I guess.) I actually like the idea of boon, I'm a big fan of powers that allow you to do things not avaliable through other means (such as wargear or guns), honestly I don't think boon would be OP if you took away the hit against the affected model. You can only cast it a few times a game and every time you do your psyker is not doing something else and you always risk perils and dying as usual. At least we get cheap mastery level 3 psykers - who become worse when the serve the God of Sorcery. One step forward...

[Kol Saresk]

Okay gotcha. Sorry for the misunderstanding.

[Excessus]

I have a question...

 

...you have to use Boon on a character within 2", yes? The Aspiring Sorcerer is a character and definitely within 2" of himself, can he boost himself?

[*Furyou Miko]

I believe so.

[Zeratil]

Yes he can he just has a 1/6 chance of killing himself.

[Kol Saresk]

That's only 0.16 repeating, not exactly bad odds.

[Ardune]

That's only 0.16 repeating, not exactly bad odds.

Unless you cast it more than once in a game... If you cast it every turn, odds are you're sorc will kill himself. (30% by turn 2 , 42% by turn 3, 52% by turn 4, 60% by turn 5...)

 

The real problem with the Tzeentch spells is that they are essentially wargear equivalents, meaning they have a similar effect to a special/heavy weapon.

Firestorm = weird frag missile launcher

Doombolt = weird meltagun

In the case of Firestorm, I'd rather have the missile launcher. Admittedly, Doombolt is good when compared to a meltagun (18" range, beam) but does not have the melta rule and gives everyone a free 6+ save against it (4+ if a ML2 hood is nearby, 5+ for a ML1 hood) on top of cover saves.

 

By making this the only choice for the asp sorc's rather than allowing them to pick disciplines with non-wargear equivalents, they are essentially making him the special/heavy weapon guy of the squad. This really just takes the squad that's supposed to have this unpredicatable and different psyker thing happening and turns them into mundane, gun-toting marine equivalents.

[Kol Saresk]

Not entirely true. Every roll is a brand new roll. You can't "count the deck" so to speak. Every roll is a "new deck." Even if you do it like 1 die, 2 dice, 3 dice, it will always still be 1/6 as it goes from 1/6 to 2/12 to 3/18. Every time you roll the die, you will always have the same chance of rolling a 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 or 6 as you did the last time you rolled the die. You could end up rolling 4's every turn for the S4 AP- hit and then roll 25 every time he rolls on the Boon table.

 

Hmm, I do see two pluses of Doombolt over Firestorm, but I also see two pluses of Firestorm. Doombolt is S8 AP1 and when it destroys a vehicle and causes an Explodes! result, you get to roll how big the explosion is with 2D6. It could hurt you but it could also hurt nearby enemy models. Meanwhile Firestorm gets one shot at S D6+1 and AP- with Blast giving it a lovely 3" template as well as the potential to cause D3 S3 AP hits for every model removed as a casualty to the remainder of the unit. Potentiality, if half of a unit is wiped out by the attack, the other half could be wiped out by Inferno. The downside to both abilities is that they rely on specific scenarios in order to be fully used. But the AP1 on Doombolt definitely gives it an edge over Firestorm's AP- in my book, but to each his own.

[Ardune]

Not entirely true. Every roll is a brand new roll. You can't "count the deck" so to speak. Every roll is a "new deck." Even if you do it like 1 die, 2 dice, 3 dice, it will always still be 1/6 as it goes from 1/6 to 2/12 to 3/18. Every time you roll the die, you will always have the same chance of rolling a 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 or 6 as you did the last time you rolled the die.

Admittedly, once a roll is made then future rolls are independent events. But what I laid out was simple statistics, those are the probabilities that he will be dead by those turns from the boon itself.

 

Dead by Turn 1 = (1-(5/6)) * 100% = 17%

Dead by Turn 2 = (1-(5/6)^2) * 100% = 30%

Dead by Turn 3 = (1-(5/6)^3) * 100% = 42%

...

Also, that does not count in the probabilities that he increases his armor save or toughness per boon roll but also ignores a death to perils of the warp.

 

Due to the minimal gains, Boon is a terribly bad gamble and a poor spell because of it. Considering you are forgoing destructive shooting power for small stat increases that generally benefit melee combined with the fact that the rest of the squad wants to shoot things and avoid melee, this is a poor choice for any aspiring sorcerer.

 

Unless you plan on using him as a buff monkey for an IC, I'd recommend to take the Firestorm primaris every time.

 

Also, I'd never take Firestorm over Doombolt unless the opposing army made it an enticing switch (which is really only against vehicle-less horde armies).

[Kol Saresk]

Okay, I think I see how it goes. Although result 32 might be worth it in the right situation, although the risk of never getting it is something that must be considered.

[*Furyou Miko]

It's a small thing, but because you can't reroll a reroll, you can get Apotheosis from the spell. It's just infinitesimally unlikely.