Heresy of the highest degree...

[mountaincycle661]

Ok, taking into account the "outwardly offense-based" powers, i still give it up to the wolves over the sons.

Warptime and wind of chaos combined can be pretty heinous, ill give you that. But thats ALL we thousand sons take. Gift of chaos SUCKS because you have to use it at the beginning of your turn (NOT in the shooting phase like the demons counterpart, boon of mutation). Nurgles rot is a joke, lash of submission is a thing everyone prepares for now....and DOOMBOLT?! please! Your talking to a guy who has an ARMY of S4 AP3 bolters!!! why the HELL would i need doombolt?! (same goes for the tzeentch demon weapon...hey look! its MORE S4 AP3!!)

Lame.

Now, The Jaws power, as mentioned before spells death for a lot of things. But there are whole threads dedicated to its ridiculous power, so i wont get into it there. Suffice it to say, that for comparison reasons, the Jaws and Warptime/Wind of Chaos cancel each other out.

The wolves have a 3d6 shot, unlimited range, St7 weapon. Awesome for killing rhinos, chimeras, trucks, sentinals, rear armor on just about anything, shaking and stunning armor 12 (eldar, im looking at you)....The sons? we have a one shot wonder! The bolt of change. We have to pass our psychic checks (because we have to do that now, unlike before when we could just auto-pass), then we get ONE shot at BS4. You know the frustration and angst of having a lascannon miss? You know, because they ALWAYS miss? its like that...only once you miss, the thousand sons have very little else to pick up the slack. We dont have meltaguns, or plasma, or flamers. We're so expensive, theres little room for oblits, and chosen, etc.

The wolves have a character that causes a STORM (literally) of negative effects on the enemy that actually....*GASP!* ...has a noticable outcome on the game! The first teir in this storm is dropping your enemies Ballistic Skill by 1. That right there would spell doom for a thousand sons army. or any other shooty army for that matter (other marines, chaos marines, IG, eldar...). It causes break checks on unengaged units, it makes a huge area of effect difficult terrain, it starts sending down bolts of lightning to hit vehicles on side armor...It just seems like the author of this book has his head up his *** and just wanted to make an awesome good guy psyker, "cuz i luvs my space marines, cuz they're just so cool and awesome...and cool!".

Meanwhile, ahriman is +5 points than the Storm Caller and about as useful as a paper plate in a hurricane.

Lame

[King Wibble]

But paper plates in hurricanes look purdy, especially the shiny ones :P
You're right though, for a guy who has studied and worshipped the warp for over ten millenia you would have thought he could do more than shoot a static charge from his finger, and at least be able to pass a pyschic test automatically because he has been a psycher before most rune priests started forgetting to shave.

[Fowlplaychiken]

1 month.





Thats how long it will take for people to go through the endless cycle


codex release
rabble rabble rabble, overpowered, unbeatable, game breaking
counter discovered
silence
codex release
rinse, repeat

mark my words, one month after codex launch and the cries will be silenced.

I will beat the piss and vinegar out of space wolves with any army in the game. Just requires a rethinking of tactics. Can we all use the same old list and tactics after the codex launch? No. could we ever, after a new codex came out? No. New codex means new units and rules, which means rethinking tactics and rebalancing lists to address potential tournament matchups. Remember when IG came out? remember when there were cries of "zomg OP, zomg game broken, death to 5th ed" etc? yea. Everyone was scared to death until the 'acceptable" ratio of anti infantry/anti horde/anti tank was redressed to account for mechanized IG armies. Now you dont hear cries of complaint anymore. We just take more Anti Tank and move on.

[King Wibble]

Well, I wasn't making any reference to the gameplay of the codex because tbh I haven't seen it and so I have no reason to form any opinion. However it does interest me how the stats and powers in a codex release compare with the fluff.

Obviously a space marine army couldn't get the story book stats because every IG player would cry as one squad kills a whole battalion, that said, an IG army would take up the table by itself, and Orks quite simply would take up the room you wanted to play in.

What I look for is how well the stats reflect the armies that we have come to love and adore in the fluff we read. I loved the way that IG got mech that represented how everyone envisages IG, armour all over the place and plenty of numbers and commanders screaming orders. Orks got a facelift that turned them into what they truely are, p**s poor mechanics, but what they build and how they use it is absolutely terrifying. Space Marines got vets and drop pods which is what they have in my opinion missed in years.

Yes, a codex will be 'over-powered' when it's first released and that's because GW are trying to write codex to make the armies play as well as they do in the fluff. However, eventually it will lose that shine reason being if ENTER ARMY NAME HERE was that over powered, there would be no 40k because that army would have conquered the galaxy already.

What annoys me is when GW makes a little inconsistency, perhaps it will be ammended and they have already been aware of this, such as making an army able to compete the way it does in the fluff but in doing so it loses a bit of its character. After all SW were mortal enemies with TS and they went to war over it, so to represent that surely the SW codex shouldn't have psychic powers?

Just my opinion, but what do you think?

[mountaincycle661]

Exactly. Inconsistancy is the key term here.

They shouldnt have ANY psychic powers. Maybe some anti psychic wargear, like a psychic hood or something. But cancelling ANY power on the roll of a +3? Thats better than any hood ive ever seen. Hell, thats better than what ELDRAD brings to the table!!!

what the HELL, GW? Marines who hate psykers have the most powerful psykers? The supposed dominant psyker forces (thousand sons and eldar) get stuck with pitiful little tiddly-winks?

Ahriman should be able to kick the psychic CRAP out of anyone except eldrad...even then, it'd be a duel for the ages. So some dumb bastid space wolf comes along and shows everyone else up?

[Schnitzel]

1 month.





Thats how long it will take for people to go through the endless cycle


codex release
rabble rabble rabble, overpowered, unbeatable, game breaking
counter discovered
silence
codex release
rinse, repeat

mark my words, one month after codex launch and the cries will be silenced.

I will beat the piss and vinegar out of space wolves with any army in the game. Just requires a rethinking of tactics. Can we all use the same old list and tactics after the codex launch? No. could we ever, after a new codex came out? No. New codex means new units and rules, which means rethinking tactics and rebalancing lists to address potential tournament matchups. Remember when IG came out? remember when there were cries of "zomg OP, zomg game broken, death to 5th ed" etc? yea. Everyone was scared to death until the 'acceptable" ratio of anti infantry/anti horde/anti tank was redressed to account for mechanized IG armies. Now you dont hear cries of complaint anymore. We just take more Anti Tank and move on.

You do realize this isn't one of those threads right? That this thread is more about SW's getting abilities that are lame fluff-wise, now SW's getting game breaking abilities. Whats being said here is it sucks that SW's have awesome psyker stuff and Thousand Sons don't, not ZOMG teh wolves are so uber unbeatable!!!1!1.
Sheesh.
Yeah, there's a lot of anti wolve sentiment being thrown around.... but there are a lot of arrogant jerks flaming any one and every one that sounds the least bit condescending. Give it a rest, its a tiring argument thats part of a tiring cycle.

[King Wibble]

Just out of curiousity, how would you write the TS codex, bearing in mind that it has to be balanced in comparison to their bretheren. Obviously they are going to have some uber unit, spawn, and something mid-range, but what would you like to see in it?

I personally am a loyalist, play my own chapter, so this isn't really for gaming, just fluff. But would you see something like Librarians going round as 2 hq and the option if you take Ahriman then you can take coven squads (librarian with 10 man squad) with somekind of incentive, such as the men acting like familiars, enhancing dice roll etc? How would you balance that out with the rest of the army? Would they have powers like JotWW, or would you go Tomb Kings from WFB (who I love to play with) and use their powers to support and make your army more effective in dice rolling, i.e. powers to allow re-rolls, extra attacks, etc.

[mountaincycle661]

Writing a codex for the thousan sons would be fast, simple and effective. And im glad you asked, because ive been meaning to get this off my chest for a while!!

First of all, I would go back and edit a couple things that were put into the chaos codex as it exists now. Your core unit of troops, the thousand sons, would behave exactly as they are now with a few exceptions:

1) The sorceror commands - if the sorceror leading the unit gets killed, the unit only moves 1d6 for Slow and Purposeful?! BULLCRAP. Get that stupid rule outta there.
2) Thousand sons are the ONLY INFANTRY UNIT IN THE CODEX right now that DONT have bolter, BP and CCW (barring terminators) Change that. Bring them in line with all the other cult troops.
3) bring back the ol' two wounds a piece. All thousand sons should have two wounds.

Other than that, everything is good. Keep the same points costs. The +4 invo, the slow and purposeful...Its fine. Just those three changes would make an enormous impact on their playability and make a dedicated army of them actually plausible.

Possessed are fine the way they are, but it would be cool to have an aspiring sorceror in there too. Maybe instead of the usual demonic table they roll on you could alter it to be more tzeentchian. Like, the possessed get the horror's warp-fire shooting ability instead of rending and/or power weapons. Make them a cross between a unit of horrors and possessed.

Spawn would be the tarpit unit, and i wouldnt change a thing about them. They're fun just the way the are. Except, i think they should alter their profile to allow them to NOT charge something they cannot kill (ie - land raider, monolith, bastion, etc)

As for other units, thats really about it. I think you should still be allowed to take bikes, raptors, oblits, defilers, etc. But where possible they would HAVE to take the mark of tzeentch. This way, you could fill the gaps in the thousand sons army to make a well rounded list. Meaning, you could use oblits for anti tank, raptors for charging, bikes for fast response units, etc....but it would still be fluffy all around.

Ahriman should cost just as much as any other super-psyker out there (ahem, Njal, ahem), and be just as deadly. He needs access to all sorts of powers...and by "all sorts" what i really mean is "useful and not phucking redundant". He should have area of effect spells, spells that are totally unique to a legion like the thousand sons. Spells like they used to have in the older codexes. Spells that fight or target other psykers, spells that affect the movement phase, spells like the changeling's ability. Just generally wierd, unusual stuff. Not necessarily offensive-attack-oriented spells, but things that alter the flow of play and mess with your opponent.

I want spells that make your enemy turn on themselves in confusion, spells that warp the guns of the enemy causing them to lose 1 AP value, spells that warp the ground and make the enemy slower or my own units faster....oh and something similar to "guide" would be nice, since most tzeentchian sorcerors are all about "farseeing". How about a spell that warps a piece of area terrain and makes tentacles grow up out of the ground and cause damage to those inside? or pins them?

Does anyone remember "twisting path"? Enemy takes a pinning check, if they fail they are pinned and the sorceror gleams some peice of info from the enemy and gains 50 victory points. Awesome! not useful anymore, but could be updated to grant you some sort of kill point advantage or something. Or what about the talisman of tzeentch? All enemy psykers are at -2 Ld when making psychic checks. Awesome, balanced and not god damn retarded like a "+3-you-dont-get-your-power-off roll".

Its unfortunate that other races have uncerimoniously snatched the title of most bad *** psyker, because surely that spot belongs to eldrad and ahriman. So, ahriman will have to compete the these said units, instead of exceeding them in power....unless you plan on making him more expensive than he already is, or turning him into an apocalypse datasheet!

Sorcerors everywhere. A sorceror leads the bikers, the raptors, the thousand sons units (duh), the possessed, the chosen, the terminators. Dont change anything about his profile or anything, or the points costs. Just copy paste his options and stats into the other units in place of (or next to) thier champions.

Lastly, the thousand sons are all about thier psykers. As an army of space marines, raised on a PLANET of psykers, spending thousands of years in the warp perfecting thier art and making dark pacts with the gods, THEY SHOULD AUTOMATICALLY PASS ALL PSYCHIC POWER CHECKS. They used to, they still should. They should have at LEAST 2-4 pages of psychic powers to choose from. Too much you say? take a look at the fantasy rule book. The lore of this, the lore of that, the other lore....The demons book for WFB has pages of psyhic powers and wargear. Besides, if GW wrote 8 pages of powers to choose from for a thousand sons codex, you just KNOW that 6 of those pages will be useless point sink bull$hit.

Its not really a hard thing to imagine, changing this codex. Couple rules dropped off the cult legion thousand sons troops, add sorcerors instead of champs to other squads, make ahriman what he SHOULD be, add a couple pages of awesome powers and you're done!

What do you think? not so bad, right?

(jesus, maybe i should apply for a job at GW. I think i could write codexes for them....idiots)

[Lord Anubis]

I'm not sure the Thousand Sons need an entire codex of their own. Honestly, I've always found single chapter/ legion books to be stretched a bit thin.

A few rules I would drop down, though...

Ahriman, first off, would need tweaks. The first would be his need for a psychic test-- gone. As has been pointed out, he's a 10,000 year old sorcerer. He knows what he's doing. I'd probably even make this an expansive rule and say that if Ahriman leads your army, all Tzeench sorcerers automatically pass their psychic tests. Ahriman doesn't waste time with rookies.

It was very upsetting to see they'd gotten rid of the fluffy bit about Ahriman stealing the spells of all other sorcerers. Ahriman should be able to use every psychic power in the Chaos Codex. Period.

The Black Staff is fine. He can use three psychic powers per turn, even multiple shooting powers. I'd probably even push it and say he can use the same power more than once, if he so chooses. Three BS 5 bolts of Tzeench at that Leman Russ? The Lash with a double Doom Bolt? Warptime, Lash, and a force weapon? It's all good.

**Actually, one other thought in the complete cheese category... It could be an Ahriman rule or a Black Staff bonus or what have you... Anyone trying to nullify Ahriman's powers with a psychic hood must roll 2d6 and add the lowest result to their leadership.

Army-wide, I honestly don't think they need much else. The only two biggies I'd make would be Legion Terminators (S+P, no options, 4+ invulnerable) and that every vehicle in the army must be possessed (yes, even dreadnaughts), to represent their drivers/ pilots/ etc turning to dust and inhabiting the vehicle.

That would make me happy.

[CrusherJoe]

1 month.

Thats how long it will take for people to go through the endless cycle

codex release
rabble rabble rabble, overpowered, unbeatable, game breaking
counter discovered
silence
codex release
rinse, repeat

I call this cycle the "New Codex WTF Tango".

I've danced it myself. I try not to, but sometimes it's fun to tango.

Besides, I love a good rant, and there's precious little powerful rant-fuel like a new codex with all sorts of shiny new toys that some jackholes (your opponents that have been waiting patiently for a new 'dex for 20+ years or some such ridiculous time period) get....and you DON'T.

Now...somewhat on-topic: the majority of the TS aren't psychics, they're soul-scraps trapped in power armor bottles. They're a lot like...well, robots, really -- if you could make a fully-functional AI and then take the soldering iron to 3/4 of it's CPU and give it an electronic lobotomy. This is why every unit of CS cult troops -requires- a sorcerer, to keep the dumb, slow, but oh-so-deadly dumbots in line. Just because you're A psyker doesn't mean you're THE pyker -- in other words, pretty much any numbnuts with a warp connection can (and is, I suppose) a "sorcerer". Putting on the deep blue armor and strapping on the PHaux-Egyptian PHenis PHaroah (silent P)Hat does NOT, in fact, make you The Most Baddest-A$$ed Psyker in the Universe.

Tzeench is the changer of ways. He likes to screw with people. Sometimes -- hell, OFTENtimes -- he likes to REALLY screw with his devoted, chicken-foot licking, power-whoring fans:

TZEENCH: [Trying REALLY hard not to look terminally bored.] Oh yeah sure, sign up for the Thousand Sons army, strap on this funny-looking hat and I'll make you the psyker equivalent of Samuel L. Jackson.

A$$-piring Chumpion: Woohoo! That'll kick so much a$$! I'll FINALLY GET LAID! YES! THANK YOU MIGHTY TEE-ZEE!

TZEENCH: [muttering under his breath in a most malevolent manner] Too easy, like taking candy from a baby. [TZEENCH reaches out with his power and simultaneously takes candy from the mouths of 1 million babies across the galaxy, replaces all the candy with an equivalent mass of weasel poop and enjoys the simultaneous screams of disgusted horror from all those kiddos...and then implants 1 million pieces of candy in the A$$-piring Chumpion's bum and then watches in delight as the candy reaches critical mass and collapses under it's own weight, creating a rectal singularity that devours A$$-piring Chumpion's body as though it were being shoved into his own bunghole. Awesome! Tzeench FTW!!]

...you get the idea.

So while I can see the validity of your arguments...well, sorry, but I'm just not very sympathetic to CSM players that seem to like nothing more than complaining about the current C:CSM and how they really suXXX0rz compared to the previous (pornographically broken, BTW) version of C:CSM. You got to rape the game for a good long while there -- you had a good run, you really did.

But as any REAL follower of Tzeench would say (with joy and adoration plainly evident on his face), "Things CHANGE!"

That very same argument also explains the proliferation of psykers in the new Codex: WEREWOLVES in SPAAAAAACE. After say, oh, TEN MILLENIA (that's over 10,000 -- here, let me spell that out for ya: TEN THOUSAND) years of ardent, sociopathic hatred for any person that could maybe turn on a light with their BRAIN instead of their hand and then subsequently getting their shaggy, mangy a$$es handed to them on any battlefield where one of these "aberrations" happened to show up...well, even a fuggin' stupid dog learns to move out of the way of the boot that kicks it over and over...or, in the case of the SPAAAAACE WEREWOLF WANNA-BEES...they re-think that whole "WE DON'T NEED NO STEENKIN' PSYKERS" strategy/creedo/inbred impulse.

[OK...if you're a TS or SW player, you're probably thinking I'm pretty much an a$$hat right now. Let me let you in on a secret: I play current-codex CSMs and find the book extremely flexible and powerful without having to board the Rape Train every time I play with it, and I find the concept of Space Wolves to be...well, a little silly but I go with it. The thing is, I had to be an equal-opportunity offender and that meant...well, probably sounding like an a$$hat to TS and SW players, and for that, I do apologize.]

Do I think ol' Stormcaller is WAY OTT?

Yes.

But that would be true no matter what's Tzeench's Bzeetches showed up to the table with.