vs Thousand Sons

This week I played against my brother's Thousand Sons using the new rules from Ritual of the Damned! Spoiler: I am loving them.

We thought about playing the new Disrupt the Ritual mission from RotD, but I wanted to try out my new stuff in a more controlled environment. So we just did an Eternal War mission from CA2019.

I ran six characters because I really wanted to try out each and every new spell. I admittedly spread myself a little thin with relics and psychic powers, which ended up to my detriment. But I still got to use a lot of new things! Brought my Chaplain for the first time, as well!

My brother recently bought Magnus and so brought him to our game. He also brought three fucking Daemon Princes, and Ahriman. And a Noctilith Crown so that he could reroll psychic checks. He said that, unopposed, this list could dish out 30-40 mortal wounds. He had a bunch of Sorcerers in different detachments so that he could run the new Cults and use all his fun toys as well. It looked like we in for a very psychic-focused battle.

The battlefield.

The game started off pretty tame. Neither of us had guns beyond 24" so we both spent the first turn kind of moving into the battle itself. He got off a few psychic powers and I got a few storm bolter shots, but nothing dramatic. I started out in the Tide of Shadows, and it really mitigated the damage that his Inferno Bolters could inflict on my Terminators.

I also defied my typical habit and brought some PAGK! I set up these Purgators with Psycannons deep in some ruins. On my turn I teleported them forward, failed to kill some Rubric Marines, and then they all got smote to death. Fragile little boys. Putting them back on the shelf again.

Edict Imperator to try and contest an objective!

The new powers are very cool. My Brotherhood Champion used Edict Imperator to run my Dreadknight up into his troops. I obviously couldn't take the objective from them because I couldn't charge and the Rubrics had ObSec, but I gave him a problem that he had to deal with. That extra mobility is going to be very helpful.

My Chaplain got me an extra Command Point with Empyrean Domination, which felt very good. My plan in my first psychic phase was to switch over to Tide of Escalation, but my BroCap failed to get off Warp Shaping, even with a reroll. So I was stuck in Tide of Shadows. Which isn't a terrible place to be, but I was really hoping to smite away some Rubrics on my turn.

All of his psykers staying within the reroll bubble of the Noctilith Crown.

Moving forward. Magnus having 16" fly is really good.

My brother was really worried about how much damage I was going to do to Magnus because of my daemon bonuses. He hid his Primarch away early on to try and keep him safe, and then rushed him out. Math-wise, all of my Grey Knights in my backline could have taken him out in one psychic phase. The problem was that my brother had so many competent psykers who were denying most of my casts. It is no exaggeration to say that at least 50% of this game was spent in psychic phases. I always enjoy playing against my brother's warcoven. It always leads to incredibly intense and kind of hard to follow psychic phases where we are baiting out each other's denials and using stratagems that augment our abilities and hinder each other. It's a unique kind of 40k that only happens between us.

This moment right here was my best chance to kill the Crimson King. He charged one of my Terminator squads and we made a miraculous number of 5++ Crux Terminatus saves. Then all my characters and the Paladin Squad moved in, but they failed to even drop Magnus to his second bracket. When he fought back, Magnus slew my BroCap and the Paladin Squad accompanying him. This was a problem -- with my BroCap dead, I was stuck in Tide of Shadows. Again, not a bad place to be, but I could have really used the enhanced smites.

Hello there, heretics.

He pulled Magnus back and smote away another character. I moved in to surround his Noctilith Crown and his mass of characters, and then I deep striked.

I used the new stratagem Dynamic Insertion to drop my Apothecary on an objective and used Powerful Adept to extend the range of Inner Fire. My Apothecary wiped out a full squad of Rubric Marines and took two wounds himself. This was a CP intensive but very cool little move. Now my Apothecary was in his back line and ready to start slaying.

My Paladins and Grand Master Simandus came in outside of the range of his Noctilith Crown's perils bubble so that they could all safely smite. I'd gotten around 1000 points of my forces into a relatively safe position squeezed between a few buildings. We were ready to go.

With psychic and shooting we slew two of his Daemon Princes.

At this point, most of his Rubrics were dead and his characters were exposed. We started moving in.

My Apothecary went on a Sorcerer killing spree after he'd razed the objective he landed on.

Grey Knights are so cool.

At this point the game was mine. Magnus was back up to full health and one of his Daemon Princes was running wild around the battlefield, but I'd created such a presence in his deployment zone that he couldn't hold back the Sons of Titan. He could either stay here and try to fight me off his objectives or flee into my deployment zone and hope to start gaining points of his own. His options weren't great.

The inexorable onslaught.

I didn't get to use as much new stuff as I wanted in this game, but what I did use was fantastic. The flexibility and options that these new rules provide is going to be invaluable. Particularly Empyrean Domination, as it provided me +5 CP over the coarse of the whole game. I also really like the new Chaplain litanies. My Chaplain knew Litany of Faith which let him deliver a 5+++ against mortal wounds to anyone I needed, and Refrain of Convergence which allowed him to Deny the Witch at +4. He ended up being an incredibly useful piece of anti-Tzeentch tech.

Useful notes.

I'm excited to keep using these rules, and really experience the power that the Tides will give me.