Tzeentch Psychic Powers

[Lieutenant Steel]

My point was that considering the Thousand Sons psykers are supposed to essentially have 'augmented' psychic powers due to their relationship with Tzeentch they should at least have a built in Spell Familiar, or some other affect to spell casting chances (maybe a re-roll/ ability to ignore Perils of the Warp?). It would mean that Sorceror Champions would at least be slightly more appealing for their cost.

[MarshalHelva]

Both Firestorm and doombolt are decent powers for an Aspiring sorcerer and the only two you should be using. they both enhance the offensive capabilities of the Thousand Sons and both help fill gaps that the unit has trouble with. Firestorm with horde units and Bolt for vehicle/TEQ. Doombolt itself being beam of S8 ap 1 is quite nice and not all that difficult to tag a couple models with it. I really don't understand why people are so disappointed with the tzeentch lore, the only power that is really situational and not useful in most cases is boon but i can see that it could be interesting to cast it on a Tzeentch Lord in Terminator armor. My only disappointment is that the flamer power is lvl 2 as that would have been a pretty scary power disembarking out of a rhino and flaming a squad behind an aegis or cover.

 

Just keep in mind that the "internet" tends to hate on anything that is not seen as top efficient or no brainer choices. it likes units and abilities that are point and click and have a quantifiable return. There are a lot of units in the game that fall into the category of useful, characterful, and fun to use but may not be the most efficient choice. unless you are competing at a grand tournament level game they are completely fine. Thousand Sons are one of these units. I find them a fun and challenging army to play that rely on a bit of luck now and then but then again Tzeentch is a fickle god.

[Excessus]

Sure, both bolt and firestorm are decent powers, but a sergeant with a meltagun or a frag missile shot each turn(with the risk of dying when firing them and even worse survivability than "Gets Hot") is surely a lackluster. Also. there is only a 50% chance of getting bolt, and against TEQ armies(our main nemesis) the firestorm is really sucky!

 

The Aspiring Sorcerers are lacklusters, not really the Tzeentch spells... If they only had two mastery levels and some sort of psychic defense against perils, they would be decent...

[MarshalHelva]

But that's not quite a fair comparison, Doombolt is not anything like a melta gun, for one it has a range of 18" compared to 12" and because its a beam weapon with a little planning ahead you actually stand a chance of killing multiple models in multiple squads in one shot which a meltagun can never do. this is even easier when shooting at say a terminator squad because its much easier to manage hitting two or three models with doombolt with their big bases and is in every way better than a melta gun. I would also argue that firestorm is much better than a frag shot in that it has the potential to do much more damage. See there is a theme here. "greater potential power comes with a greater risk" 

 

Anyways I really don't understand the logic of complaining about Thousand Sons sucking at killing terminators when there are plenty of units at your disposal that are very good at killing terminators. That's like blaming your hammer for failing at drilling holes when it was designed to hammer nails, all the while you have 5 perfectly fine drills in your toolcase.

 

Basically if you are using Thousand Sons to do anything other than supporting weight of fire to kill terminators Then you have already lost. They have a very specific use (killing power armor) with psychic powers that both support that primary use and allow them support other units in tackling units that really are outside their scope.

 

Ive had much more success with my rubric squads when I stopped playing them as if they were tactical marines and more like eldar aspect warriors. 

[Ethrion]

I agree. Thousand Sons to focus on killing power armour / denying areas of the board with the threat of AP3. While you support them with obliterators for AP2 or AP1 weapons. Maybe ally them with some Tzeentchian daemons like screamers and flamers and you're looking at a seriously nasty army.

[*Furyou Miko]

We're bitter because we want to play a Thousand Sons (or in my case "Sorcerers of Tzeentch") army, not a generic warband with some Thousand Sons.

 

You know, like Loyalists get to play White Scars or Black Tempars.

 

Personally I'd be happy with being able to upgrade other squad leaders to be Aspiring Sorcerers. Especially cultists. I'd love to have a ML1 Psyker leading my cultist squads.

[MarshalHelva]

I really do understand that a lot of the frustration of chaos players stems from the fact that you cannot build a mono cult army and have any hope of winning. but that's the whole point. The traitor cult legions no longer exist as a cohesive force they have no hope of fighting and existing without building alliances and warbands from lesser traitor forces. they never have in any iteration of the background material. on the other hand I would say its extremely easy to build a competitive mono-god army with the current codex. We have access to excellent tzeentch obliterators, tzeentch terminators, spawn, cultists, any of the vehicles and daemon engines. Tell me how building and playing a white scars army is any different?

[Excessus]

Our(well, mine at least) frustration is not that we can't build a mono-TS army with nothing but TS in all slots, but the fact that our main troop choice, when compared with most other troop choices, are extremely one-dimensional...

[Brother Ambroz]

I really do understand that a lot of the frustration of chaos players stems from the fact that you cannot build a mono cult army and have any hope of winning. but that's the whole point. The traitor cult legions no longer exist as a cohesive force they have no hope of fighting and existing without building alliances and warbands from lesser traitor forces.

 

How about the Battle of the Fang? There are still warbands led by Tzeentchian sorcerors and all Tzeentchian units. It's annoying because people still have to resort to counts as for some things. For example, Terminator Sorcerors for counts as Oblits.

[MarshalHelva]

The Battle of the Fang was what broke up the thousand sons as a legion force and took place in M32. it is not representative of how Thousand Sons warbands operate in M32-M41:

For the Thousand Sons, it was another matter entirely. Their Legion had thrown almost everything at the battle, and lost almost as much. Apart from their fleet, their remaining non-Astartes Legion resources were used up and cast away. Several of the remaining senior figures in the Legion were lost, encouraging the breaking-down of the command-tree, and their retreat was scattered and piecemeal. As they are not known to have appeared in this strength ever again, it is after the Battle of the Fang that the Thousand Sons are thought to have lost organised coherence and become a group of warbands, predicted by the victorious Space Wolves of the time to be thought of as "...knowledge-thieves roaming the galaxy for hidden trinkets...their shame know[ing] no limit and their poverty...no equal" thats from lexicanum which is quoting directly from Battle of the Fang.

If you're really into playing a battle of the fang army list i would suggest Codex Imperial guard with Thousand Sons allies. or the other way around.

Yes our troops are one dimensional but they do what they do very well, so are Dire Avengers, bloodletters, pink horrors, and many more. its almost like your meant to choose units that compliment each other to create an army that functions as a whole.

we are now way off topic but all I was trying to say is that a Thousand Sons army that is centered around a sorcerer or two and a core of Rubrics but that makes use of raptors, possessed, oblits, daemon engines, heldrakes, terminators and cultists is a fluffy and potentially competitive army. 

So how about that doombolt?

 

edit: huh. i guess editing a post breaks all the formatting?

 

edit edit: had to go in and manually pull out all the tags.

[Brother Ambroz]

Wow that's really hard to read.

 

Anyway the point I was making was that there are still pure TS warbands in the fluff and people want a way to represent that.

 

I think alot of the issues TS have could be solved if they were allowed to pick their powers. That and if they were able to upgrade other squads to ML1 sorcerors.

 

Edit: Yeah things are so whacky it's really frustrating me.

[MarshalHelva]

yeah sorry about that, not sure what happened. It looked fine then I edited the post to correct a misspelling and then it looked like that. 

[Brother Ambroz]

Did ya try editing again? My edit didn't go nuts like that....haha.

[vonny]

What I think would solve a lot of the problems is allowing other weapons than bolters in our units. I know plague marines and noise marines have options, and I'm pretty sure khorne bezerkers could take some options as well (even if it's just plasma pistols and the option to use the wargear list for the aspiring champion).

Having some fancy ensorcelled missile launcher, heavy bolter or even just plasma gun would make Thousand sons a lot more versatile and, when building an army list, predictable. No longer would you need to hope for a roll of 3-4 on the sorcery table for it to have any effect on vehicles if you could, beforehand, make a choice about it.

It would also allow the sorceror to go away from being the 58-point heavy-weapon dude, and get some different spell effects in their list.

 

And you wouldn't even need to make the heavy/special weapons ensorcelled. It would be cool, of course, but just normal specialty weapons would go a long way to solving a lot of the one-dimensionality of the 1k sons.

And I've seen no explanation on why the rubricae would forget how to use other weapons than bolters...

[Lieutenant Steel]

Personally I don't mind that Thousand Sons are one dimensional- with the exception of their sorcerors, they are all automatons after all.

What really chafes is the fact that the spells they generate are random, and only one of them is good at helping tackle vehicles/ terminators: the two units that Thousand Sons units struggle against the most.

The simplest and most expedient way to solve this whole problem, as well as staying within the fluff, is to allow Models/ Units with the Mark of Tzeentch to pick their spells- even if they only get to choose the spells they take from the Tzeentch Lore, and have to roll the others normally. Even if it were only Thousand Sons Aspiring Sorcerors that got to pick their Tzeentch spells it would be a massive improvement as you could take two or three squads of Sons in a themed list, and know you could comfortably deal with vehicles (when you take 3 Doombolts).

[Rune Priest Ridcully]

I think heavy and special weapons would help, as the thousand sons used them before the heresy, and so they rubrica should still use them.

[Excessus]

AP3 heavy bolters and flamers would be cool and fit the theme...

[*Furyou Miko]

:D as long as we also get AP3 Meltaguns, I can't see people complaining. /snark

[Excessus]

Hmm, maybe I should model a TS with a heavy bolter as the icon of flame...too bad I'll then have to spend XX points on that pointless upgrade...

[Rune Priest Ridcully]

^^^^^I have moddelled a thousand son with heavy bolter, just as it looks cool :P

To be honest, if they just changed inferno bolts to be "all weapons of the unit subtract 2 from their AP score, with AP1/2 weapons gaining the soul blaze rule." and gave us access to special and heavy weapons, or if they wanted them to be different from their precious Plague marines, just give them heavy weapons access.

[Shuggnuggath]

Should just errata Doombolt to the primaris power.

 

Also Mark of Tzeentch should allow you to use your invulnerable save vs perils of the warp.

[*Furyou Miko]

It should. also, Doombolt is one of the more powerful powers out there, so no, not a primaris thank you. People would be crying cheese before you could offer wine.

 

On another note: Kill Team game, managed to kill both my characters with Boon of Mutation (one specialist had Psyker, another had Independent Character). >< Not even Spawned, just failed the save against the S4 hit.

[Arcweaver]

slightly of topic but if you want to beaf up you TS squads get them Icon of Flame (all there guns get soul blaze) and in my opinion all BUT the "boon of mutation" (not really a BOON) are GOOD

[*Furyou Miko]

Gift is actually a pretty good bet. Especially in kill team. My first KT game with the Thousand Sons, I rolled Mechanoid. :D Aspiring Sorceress with a 2+ save and Doombolt. Best result ever.

[EricBasser]

I would take Gift of Mutation on Thousand Sons before any other unit I'm running.  If you get the Deny the Witch boon, it just seems fitting on a Aspiring Sorcerer.