7thEd/Malefic/Rubricae/CS/DoT - A list combining everything

[Ethrion]

Ok well now that pretty much everything is out and we have all the facts I've been trying to combine everything that we can take as Thousand Sons and maximize it into the most potent combination for potentially tournament strength competition.

 

As the title suggests we have the core 7th edition rules to work with, then the power of malefic daemonology, the humble rubric marine himself/the base codex, the Crimson Slaughter supplement and daemons of Tzeentch themselves. What I'd like us to do is work out a way to get the best out of it all. I don't want to specifically drop any aspect of it really and go entirely down one route (like pure daemons for example), I'd like to use a bit of everything if possible. Obviously not everything can make the cut but we can try our best and use an average 1750 as a baseline points limit to make a list. Also for the structure I'm going with a simple primary detachment tree and one allied detachment.

 

What might be easiest is if I write out the list I have planned, then try to explain my thinking and we can go from there. So...

 

Primary

 

Belakor

 

CS Sorcerer w/ ML3, prophet of the voices, familiar

 

17 Rubricae

 

10 CS Possessed

 

Secondary

 

Lord of Change

 

Daemon Prince w/ wings, MoT, ML1

 

10 Pink Horrors

 

Ok so on paper it looks might thin on the ground and lacking any form of ranged anti-tank or special weapons and only two troop choices and you'd be right. But what I was thinking was, the sorcerer makes as many free daemons from the malefic discipline as possible - heralds, horrors and screamers. That then instantly gives you more troops, anti-tank and more casting power if you make more heralds. Plus the heralds can come with 30 points worth of stuff so you can give them artifacts like the portal (for more troops) or the grimoire for obvious reasons.

 

The daemon princes fly around shooting the telepathy primaris power or can drop down and start rushing into close combat where they can do damage to armour. Admittedly not as powerful as before with smash getting nerfed but still damn good and Belakor is a beast at killing anything so he can deal with landraiders if necessary. Might be worth putting the primaris malefic on the lord of change so that we have a fall back caster to get more free daemons. Of course when the heralds start coming in they can take over.

 

The possessed are the bunker for the sorcerer as the rules enforce but they are actually a good unit now and with the potential to get buffed more from malefic daemonology they get even better. 

 

The rubricae, well they're rubric marines. They form a massive fearless block of 3+/4++ AP3 bolters that no one is going to want to get near. They will be around long enough for a herald to be summoned who can then start casting divination buffs on them to make them even better.

 

Finally the horrors are there to be the unit that the first summoned herald can run into.

 

Things I've missed out on that might need explaining: obliterators, heldrakes and divination CS sorcerer. Well, the obliterators while awesome just don't put out enough firepower or threaten like 3 daemon princes do. Assuming I'd go heavy with the obliterators and take 6 that's still just not enough. They'd have to be front and centre so that all their weapons could get used, they're slow and still strike at I1.

 

Heldrakes have been nerfed hard this edition and won't have the impact that they did last time. There is a lot more threatening interceptor weapons now and they might not show up until late or get taken out of the sky before they get to fire.

 

The crimson slaughter divination sorcerer while good still doesn't do enough with divination to warrant inclusion. After all, the primaris can be bought cheaper from allied/summoned heralds and then the only other worthwhile power is the 'no cover save' one but that's not a guaranteed roll and again can be bought via better platforms like the Lord of Change or herald.

 

What are everyone's thoughts? What might work better, what have I totally missed and could we build an even more filthy list?

[Teetengee]

Remember that possessed can also be boosted by the Grimoire as they have the daemon rule. (IIRC) But the sorcerer is going to have trouble not exploding due to the malefic daemonology roll as he will perils on any double and will need to be rolling a lot of dice to succeed. (i.e. he will peril more than he succeeds.)

 

Edit: Reread the brb section, sorcerer is fine for this purpose.

[Ethrion]

Remember that possessed can also be boosted by the Grimoire as they have the daemon rule. (IIRC) But the sorcerer is going to have trouble not exploding due to the malefic daemonology roll as he will perils on any double and will need to be rolling a lot of dice to succeed. (i.e. he will peril more than he succeeds.)

 

Edit: Reread the brb section, sorcerer is fine for this purpose.

Yeah I think the process of what to summon first would be very situational and obviously based on what you rolled but if possible the first thing out should be a herald to start the avalanche of further summoning.

[MagnusPihl]

I've been thinking along similar lines, but with a different list approach. Note that I'm not a very competitive player, so I'm probably missing something essential.

 

Combined Detachment 1 (plain CSM or Crimson Slaughter - doesn't matter):

 

HQ

- Ahriman

 

Troops:

- Thousand Sons (1 Sorcerer, 4 Rubricae, 1 Rhino w/ Dozer Blade and Havoc Launcher)

- Thousand Sons (1 Sorcerer, 4 Rubricae, 1 Rhino w/ Dozer Blade and Havoc Launcher)

- Thousand Sons (1 Sorcerer, 4 Rubricae, 1 Rhino w/ Dozer Blade and Havoc Launcher)

- Thousand Sons (1 Sorcerer, 4 Rubricae, 1 Rhino w/ Dozer Blade and Havoc Launcher)

 

Combined Detachment 2 (Crimson Slaughter):

 

HQ

- Sorcerer, ML3, Prophet of the Voices, Terminator Armour, Spell Familiar

- Sorcerer, ML3, The Balestar of Mannon

 

Troops

- Chaos Cultists (1 Champion, 9 Cultists)

- Possessed (1 Champion, 7 Possessed, Mark of Khorne, Icon of Wrath)

 

Heavy Support

- Havocs (1 Champion, 4 Autocannon)

 

-----

Choose whichever you prefer as Primary. Basically comes down to if you want Ahriman's set Warlord Trait, or if you prefer to roll one.

 

 

That should come out to a total of 1736, so there's a bit left over, and plenty of puzzle pieces to move around. Those Havoc Launchers could probably go.

 

Multiple MSU squads of Thousand Sons means that as many points as possible is going into Psychic Dice. The list generates 14+1d6 charges at the outset.

Additionally, there's six units of troops here, plus 4 Rhinos - so that's 10 units with Objective Secured.

 

The Prophet of the Voices Sorcerer should be foot-slogging with the Possessed. He rolls 3 times on Malefic, hoping to get Cursed Earth. Since he and the Possessed are all Daemons, their Invul Save should almost always be either a 4++ or - a third of the time, with the Voices roll - a 2++. Another third of the time they'll all be Beasts, which should let them get somewhere to hide. The final third will hopefully only happen when they're ready to get into close combat. Fingers crossed. Additionally, he'll be summoning daemons as he goes, whenever he can.

If the Sorcerer doesn't get Cursed Earth, but does get Sacrifice, consider placing him somewhere hidden with the 10 Cultists, who will be fodder for Sacrifice. You should reliably produce 1 Herald per turn, in addition to whatever other summoning he puts out.

If you get neither Cursed Earth nor Sacrifice, well... that sucks. Chances are fairly slim. Hopefully you got at least Possession. If you actually manage to roll a 2, 3 & 5, my heart goes out to you.

Between being a Daemon and having access to a Spell Familiar, I imagine this is probably the single best daemon summoner in the game.

 

Ahriman should probably ride in a Rhino with one of the Thousand Sons squads and toss out crazy Witchfire barrages through the fire point. I imagine you'd go for every Discipline with a witchfire for Primaris and hope to get Doombolt on Tzeentch. Lotta dakka. God, I wish he could get a Familiar.

 

The Balestar Sorcerer I intended to babysit the Havocs. If you're feeling adventurous you might want to go for Endurance on Biomancy, but that's a risky bet. Prescience ain't what it used to be, but it's still useful and Perfect Timing is still awesome if you're rolling on Divination anyway. I wish the Sorcerer could get something long-range, though, so he wasn't just sitting there. Note that the Balestar has a built-in Spell Familiar, so it's really only a 10-point investment.

 

Obvious weaknesses are anti-armour and anti-air.

Light to Medium vehicles can probably be glanced down by the Havocs. Other than that, you're basically praying for Doombolt on some of the Aspiring Sorcerers/Ahriman. Options could be to give Aspiring Sorcerers Melta-Bombs, or give the Prophet Sorcerer a Chainfist.

Flyers are going to be a problem. There aren't a lot of them in my local meta so I often forget about them. The Havocs are decent, at least with Prescience, but not awesome. If you can find the points, maybe plop in an Aegis Defence Line with Quad-gun.

[Ethrion]

The problem I see there is that having no heavy anti tank is going to hurt. You need to be able to put pressure on enemy leman russes or predators or land raiders. No air defense isn't really a big deal if you plan on dominating the ground. The way objectives and scoring is now, the more that is up in the air the less dominant you can be on the ground. That was another reason why I did't go for heldrakes.

 

Relying on the aspiring sorcerers to get doombolt and then for them to cast it is all gambling quite a lot. Especially if your priority for using warp charge is to get off malefic powers. Also you don't want to be forced to rely on psychic doombolts for your serious anti-tank. It's a shooting attack that can be denied remember. At least the havocs can't suffer DtW.

 

Also, having so many points sunk into 3 sorcerers is an issue. That's like 500 points there at least. Might work but it's risky. I hate to say it I really do but for the points sink of Ahriman I'd rather now pay another 100 on top of that and take Belakor. He is just ridiculous at what he does. Knows all the psychic powers of telepathy, is a ML3 psyker, has an AP2 I8 S7 armourbane fleshbane mastercrafted weapon. He has a 4++ and if you force enemy units to fail morale he gets D3 more warp charge dice. He has shrouded and doesn't take DT tests and is an eternal warrior.

 

If you plan on summoning daemons I just don't see the point in cultists really. And the prophet can never go in with them btw, only every with possessed. Again, like I said earlier if you're planning on summoning daemon allies in a significant way then you don't need to start with so many troops. Have the elites by all means but chaff like cultists is a waste.

 

The 4 MSU of rubrics is interesting and might work now that their rhinos will have the OS rule and are more durable. But again the problem I have with 4 MSU rubrics is that formation alone comes to around 800 points give or take. That is a massive investment. But it might work I'd have to try it out, I just see points being spent in better places.

[Teetengee]

I agree with most of what Ethrion said, but I just wanted to point out that just because the Sorc cannot join the cultists doesn't mean he cannot sacrifice them for heralds if they are close enough (6"). Although that still means they will do very little to help him in shooting.

[Ethrion]

I agree with most of what Ethrion said, but I just wanted to point out that just because the Sorc cannot join the cultists doesn't mean he cannot sacrifice them for heralds if they are close enough (6"). Although that still means they will do very little to help him in shooting.

Oh awesome I'd totally missed that. So yeah I suppose cultists could be on hand for sacrificial purposes but like you said apart from that they wouldn't be doing much else.

 

Additionally I have been wondering if the 3 dreadnought formation might be a good addition to an overall list as well. I mean I've only used it once for my World Eaters but perhaps it'd have a place in a TS list too?