Thoughts after first 8th game with Tzeentch themed CSM

[themortalgod]

So had my first CSM game of 8th (and also my first victory in 8th) and thought I'd share my experiences:

 

- A big unit of Rubrics with warpflamers kills anything. I knew they would deal quite a bit of damage but even tanks and such just evaporated due to weight of fire. I don't think my opponent suspected how much damage they could do, though, as he allocated no fire towards them until it was too late. I suspect as opponents learn warpflamer units will become less deadly simply because they don't survive long. Over the course of the game they roasted: a Land Speeder, Rhino, Tactical Squad, Dev Squad, and Drop Pod. (6 turn game, spent turn 1 in their Rhino)

 

- Rubrics, in general, can shrug off quite a bit of punishment from small arms fire but get blown to pieces by bigger stuff. Still harder to kill than normal marines thanks to the invuln but certainly more vulnerable than last edition

 

- Rubric shooting is quite good. Nothing exemplary but they did reasonable a bit of damage. Not as good at gunning down marines anymore but much more threatening to other things now such as tanks and terminators.

 

- Scarab Terminators felt lackluster for their pts. I had a squad with the missile rack and soulreaper that I managed to Deep strike into the enemy backline to sit in cover shooting. They hardly killed anything. Though, it could be poor rolling on my part. I'm not ready to write them off yet.

 

- Unit champion sorcerers with Smite still feel like a tax for a pretty lacklustre model. Neutered smite that has a 50% chance to cast just doesn't feel worth it. I'd rather just have another marine and not pay the tax but, unfortunately, not on option.

 

- Ahriman feels quite strong. He doesn't really bring a ton of pain, though the +1 to cast helps the odds of a powered up smite. His main usefulness is buffing units with reasonably reliable warptime and prescience. Though, don't be a moron like me and forget warp time only is a 3" range. The thousand sons aura sucks, might save 1 or 2 models all game, and thats if Ahriman is baby sitting your Rubrics. The disc is worth its weight in gold just to get rid of the infantry keyword making Ahriman less vulnerable to vindicares. The mobility is also awesome. 

 

- Lord of Change feels really disappointing. He just feels like a somewhat reliable smite delivery system. The rest of the Daemon tzeentch lore is pretty crappy. 1/3 chance of getting +1T (or useless CC stats) had no impact on the game. Thematically taking control of an enemy hero sounds scary but in practice its rare since most heros have good LD, and even if it happens it doesn't really hurt them much most of the time. A spell that is basically the chance to maybe get the chance to take control of a character to maybe take advantage in a way that might help you is just too random to be useful. Fortunately, LoC has one major benefit. He is a giant model that has 16W, a 4++ and is super intimidating. My opponent invested quite a few resources in shooting him instead of more threatening things.

 

- Brimstone horrors are the bomb! ;) T3 and 4++ with Ld7 means they are wondrous at tying enemy units up. They are also great just to get more bodies on the board so you can deny deep strike zones. My brimstones killed a grand total of 0 enemy models but still felt like all-stars. 

 

- Triple melta raptors with prescience on them hits hard but die very fast. 

 

- A couple squads of las havocs with a chaos lord hanging out nearby can be devastating to enemy mech.

 

Overall, I feel like we are in an ok place. I think the army would suffer more if it was full Thousand Sons themed and I couldn't bring the Havocs, Raptors, and Daemons. I think a chunk of my success, though, came from the opponent not knowing what to expect. As opponents learn to not waste firepower on big bird I think things will get dicier for my Rubrics. 

[Prot]

I would say my experience was similar. The Rubric observation I think is very similar to my own. They are okay against chaff but high powered (non-low level) firepower will mince them up pretty bad... not like last edition at all in survivability scale.

 

I did not care for the Aura either.

 

I do think Raptors/Daemons/Havocs are a good help. Unfortunately I'm trying to avoid those but in truth there's nothing really stopping anyone from saying I'm playing "chaos" and be done with the specialization that just simply doesn't exist right now.

 

My Scarabs apparently do a bit better than yours, but I was watching Rubrics blink out of existence and not really do much back so that might be why.

[themortalgod]

Ya, I suspect as soon as a codex hits it will be back to 7th ed style Thousand Sons where we have access to none of the normal CSM stuff. The models I used were originally intended for a Death Guard army in 7th as at least DG could run havocs and raptors and such then. Now they can't either if you want to be pure "DG", which means I have a crap ton of CSM that are kinda useless unless I decide to play another legion. Until the dex comes out though il run them as Tzeentch and just not paint them for now. ;)

 

I think with Rubrics Rhino is def a necessity, that at least gives them some shelter for a turn. Footslogging just means you will be gunned down by lower pts cost troops.