Considering Dual Bat w/Daemons and Magnus

[Prot]

I have no idea if this will work, or if it's worth it so I want to bounce it off you guys.

 

This is a bit late because the game is tonight, but as I struggled making it, I realized I should have asked for a 'framework' to consider for the list a while ago.

 

So the concept is simple:

 

Magnus,

Thousand Sons Battalion (some Rubrics for sure, and 10 SOT for sure)

 

Daemon Battalion.

 

This is where I'm totally stuck. I thought of just 

 

10 Pinks

10 Pinks

10 Brimstones

 

HQ: Tzeentch DP with wings (?... or should I wedge him into the Thousand Sons Detachment?)

HQ: Changeling

 

Save some points for splitting and/or summoning Flamers???

 

I really have no clue on this. 

 

Ideally I typically back fill my Thousand Sons bat with shooty stuff... even my good ol' buddy Daryl the Decimator:

 

 

He's good for the mortal wounds, but extremely expensive and heavily targeted. 

 

What do you guys think? Go with the Daemon Battalion for more CP? Chuck it and go with Tzaangors and heavy hitters?

[Zodd1888]

For what you'd be using the daemons for in this list I'd probably drop the Pink's to Blues and go for the split.

 

Roll a Changeling and Herald on Disc to roll with the 1kS DP and Ahriman on Disc. Changeling chills or summons with Blues after first turn, Tzeentch Herald on Disc rolls with DP/Magnus.

 

You'll be immovable, pressuring with Magnus and Rubrics, and can spread through the board depending how you split.

Edited October 10, 2019 by Zodd1888

[BoomWolf]

Never, ever, EVER take blues

They are, per point, less endurable than either pinks or brine-and unlike pinks they cannot smite without committing suicide, nor have "guns"

 

Use pinks if you want dudes that's worth a damn, use brimes when you want cheap slot filling. never blues.

[Furnace Lord]

I thought Blues could smite without killing themselves? But other than that, I'm pretty sure they're still terrible :p

[BoomWolf]

Yes, I got confused for a moment.

The reason pinks smite better is that they do proper d3 MW when you got a pack of them, rather than mere 1 MW

 

Still the least durable of the three.

[Prot]

Ugh. I got hammered. This was a bad idea for me, but it saved me a lot of money on replacing daemons.

 

I played Astra. The guy even turned it down... didn't double fire his Artillery... didn't play Cadia Stands (that is nearly an auto win strat vs Chaos. I got hit twice with it last tournament.)

 

I did get first turn. I did slingshot Magnus across the board. I didn't have any means to truly clear the screens. At best I could have used fly on Magnus to tie up a flame tank, a RUss, and a Manticore, but failed getting 8" even with a reroll.

 

Even though I had Magnus buffed (-1 to hit, +1 to invuln), he was easily taken down T1 after the living Guardsmen retreated from CC.

 

Of course this left my list without the biggest threat. If there is an upside (this was no surprise) it would be that he soaked up about 60% of the tank shooting.

 

The rest unleashed (like I said, imposing self nerfs on the Astra player) but that killed my Brimstones, half my pinks.

 

So T2, I bring in 10 SOT.... these guys... I have no idea how people are winning anything other than super narrative games with them. I had 2 units of Rubrics come in.

 

The Rubrics killed a good deal of intantry, but that was not my issue. With very little else to do, I buffed the SoT's as much as I could and the 10 man squad with all psychic buffs and VotLW took down a Manticore. But that was it.

 

I conceded since I had no way to deal with his 8-10 tanks. And he still had a pile of reserves he hadn't brought in. 

 

In truth it felt like I was playing against an Apocalypse army with 1000 points of Chaos. 

 

I know this was one of the worst matchups I could face, but it was good to get this idea out of my head before investing any effort/money into the new daemon units.

[WarriorFish]

Indeed, Guard definitely aren't the opponent you'd want here. They can muster plenty of fire power such that they can handle most things, and a close range army like Sons is going to have a tough time getting in to do the damage. More so as a shooting army you have a bit of a hindrance in that few can outshoot the Guard as that's their thing. With a decent mechanised element the lack of strong AT options for Sons would have been one of the final nails in the coffin

 

From the sounds of it I don't think I'd call this a tuned down list just because he didn't use a couple of Stratagems. Guard are about the bread and butter, that's how they win any Stratagems are the icing on top so not using a couple isn't going to make what sounds like a strong list much different. Plus Guard do love to see a deathstar these days, lets them focus fire effectively and they can muster enough dice to blast through most saves.

 

The trouble with that is Magnus is a lynchpin of your strategy, and a crutch for some of the Son's deficiencies so easier said than done. Maybe with some tweaks and a different opponent you can glean a bit more on the list? I feel that Daemons have something to offer Sons, even if it's flooding with cheaper bodies so it's worth experimenting a little more?

[Prot]

WF. I play against this guard player quite a bit.  Compared to his ITC list... It was turned down. Normally he takes 2-3 of those Command Tanks for example. He only had a plasma-cutioner variant. 

 

I would say it's as much my fault in him taking these units. I did not want a 'weak' test because my meta is... probably a 7-9 out of 10 on the competitive scale (depends on who you're playing).

 

I'm okay with such a hard loss. Truly. It got me to stop painting Rubrics which as you know are immensely time consuming. I stopped the SoT project as well. And I won't paint Magnus.

 

One side note... I came to realize Magnus isn't as flexible as Mort. Yes, his smite alone is tremendous, but army wise, I don't think he's as good. In part I realized this because I played Mort through last year's competitive season playing pure Death Guard. I was used to the multi choice in how Mort uses his blade. And his aura of mortals... his -1 toughness.... FnP. I instantly felt  Magnus was not as potent, and Mort's not relying that much on Psychics so -if- they get shut down, he still has a lot more tricks up his sleeve.

 

That said, I do agree there's not a lot of room for your 400+ point super-death unit anymore. I just had to try it. I did not expect it to be honest, but will all buffs and first turn... I was surprised at the result.

 

After this match up though, and I had been playing my Thousand Sons with Chaos Knights for the last... half dozen or so games (?)... I think it would take a lot of convincing for me to play these guys without some rules adjustments.

[WarriorFish]

Times are a bit tough I'd not say there's a great difference between a 9 and 11 list but it's a moot point. Sons definitely need a boost but I feel it's optimistic to expect anything significant when CA2019 hits, probably need a new codex? Would be nice if that got new unit entries too but we'll see I suppose. The ideal situation is you don't "need" to consider allies to feel your Sons are in with a chance after all

[BolterZorro]

Too bad TS don't have acces to the new chaos units  as a pure TS and/or with synergies. I mean: discordant, obliterators (expecting points decrease here), venom, new chars, etc...

BTW, Magnus is honestly a bit expensive: reading all the battlereps, I feel that he's glasscanon contrary to morty which is more relient (in addition to bodygards!!). I'm expecting also a point drop for magnus.

[Prot]

I agree about Magnus. I just really wanted to pull him out. I sold my first one, and wanted a reason to paint a second one.... this isn't giving me motivation. lol

 

But as far as the Chaos stuff... honestly a lot of it is 'okay' but more in tune with what we've seen in the past. I play a lot of Black Legion competitively and the problem with a lot of  the new stuff is GW is doing this thing where they try to make a lot of money on a single sculpt by having it 'fix' broken units.

 

So the Disco Lord is good. Probably the best of all the new models, but really it's there to help all your BS4 Daemon Engines perform, and/or move faster.

The Dark Apostle (probably never to be seen by TS) is just an undeniable psychic power that is slowly dropping from play.

Master's of Possession. Great powers, but exclusive to that restrictive model (no fly, no deep strike, narrow power scope). He's there to make Possessed functional, help Oblits, and potentially heal Daemonic Engines. 

 

The problem with -all- of this as far as I'm concerned is we (Thousand Sons) need a new character like we need another visit from Space Wolves. 

 

I do not want holes plugged anymore. I want unit fixes. GW is seemingly opposed to re-writing any unit dataslates. They'd rather I pay 50 CAD for a single model that improves dysfunctional units. 

 

I don't want characters personally.. anymore. I want unit fixes. Adding in more content is  always welcome... just don't make what we own fall further down the hole. 

 

Case and point: Although GW technically did not rewrite the Drop Pod Dataslate (again they refuse to fix anything at the source) they came up with a change to drop pod reserve rules. It could be argued they rewrote the dataslate kind of, but the point is... THIS is what I want to see. Take a staple unit. Make it really desirable. I don't want an aura that does it, not a psychic power, not a detachment. Fix the units.

[WarriorFish]

The problem with -all- of this as far as I'm concerned is we (Thousand Sons) need a new character like we need another visit from Space Wolves.

Don't give them ideas Though as mentioned elsewhere I'd take another repetitive story if it got some things sorted.

 

At the moment Chaos is not in a good place due to the new round, that only leaves "sub" factions like the Sons further back in the inevitable line. It's possible that GW may shake it up, but hard to imagine.

 

Unfortunately it's models that dictate what happens, so as much as Sons may want new units and need more AT if GW has a new model to sell then that's what you get. As much as I like some of the new models I agree that they shouldn't be patches, Chaos feels a bit top heavy currently.

 

I'm a little worn out from the box set releases, I'd like a return to the codex mill and get some updates out for armies that need them (i.e. not just Sons). It's not so bad for me, I can pootle along painting my Sons up for larger games without significant impact yet. I think that Magnus as the centrepiece model being a bit meh probably sums it up Maybe when I get round to getting mine he might be good again