Hey everyone, Chandler here. As everyone knows by now, Chaos Space Marines players the world over got a huge gift in the form of Wrath of Magnus (and the upcoming Traitor Legions supplement). This is the first time we’ve ever seen a Primarch hit the table tops in games of Warhammer 40k and Magnus is an absolute beast! In this article I’m going to review one of his new Formations from Wrath of Magnus; the Rehati War Sect. For more reviews, analysis and battle reports, check out the Tactics Corner.
Overview: The Rehati War Sect Formation consists of Magnus and 3-9 either Daemon Princes or Exalted Sorcerers. They get the lackluster Favoured of Tzeentch special rule, giving them the ability to re-roll failed saves when taken with the maximum units, as well as the Court of the Crimson King special rule which lets all the units manifest warp charge on a 3+ when within 18″ of Magnus and all units have line of sight to every unit on the table. That’s a huge boost!
At first glance this Formation doesn’t pass the eye test because of it’s point investment, and certainly that is a matter of concern, but what if this formation made up most of your army? That sounds crazy I know, but let’s take a look at it:
Rehati War Sect and Tzeentch CAD – 1843
Rehati War Sect – 1540
- Magnus the Red
- Daemon Prince – Wings, Mastery Level 3, VotLW, Daemon of Tzeentch, Spell Familiar, Athenaean Scrolls
- Daemon Prince – Wings, Mastery Level 3, VotLW, Daemon of Tzeentch, Spell Familiar, Staff of Arcane Compulsion
- Daemon Prince – Wings, Mastery Level 3, VotLW, Daemon of Tzeentch, Spell Familiar
Chaos Daemons CAD – 293
- Herald of Tzeentch – Mastery Level 3
- 11 Pink Horrors
- 11 Pink Horrors
Tactics: So, how does this list work? By dominating the psychic phase with witchfires, summons, and buffs. You’re getting a massive 21 psychic dice before rolling in the psychic phase! One Daemon Prince will be used as mainly a buffer and summoner in this list. It’s not a guarantee that you will roll the powers you need, but at the very least you’ll be able to get Summoning as it is the Primaris. You’re rolling on Malefic here primarily looking for Cursed Earth. It is a Blessing with a range of 12″ and serves two purposes: First, to improve the Daemon Princes invulnerables by 2 because of the Blessing of Tzeentch special rule giving them all a 3++ re-rolling 1s and Magnus a 2++. Second, so that your summoned units won’t scatter and mishap. Harnessing warp charge on a 3+ with a re-roll because of the Spell Familiar means you’re very likely to pass your summons most of the time without having to throw a massive amount of dice at them.
The Chaos Daemons CAD here also gives you an even greater chance of getting Cursed Earth and various other Malefic conjuration powers. Keeping the Pink Horrors at 11 man units means they will generate 2 warp charge per unit. In addition, you’ll be summoning more Pink Horrors with this list, obviously to improve your warp charge pool as the game goes on, but also because of the powerful Split rule. As your Horrors run around the table and take enemy fire, they will further split off into blue and brimstone horrors giving you even more dice in the pool. And if your opponent wants to prevent this, he’ll either have to ignore them or dedicate resources to assaulting them. That’s where the other Daemon Princes come in.
At least two of the Princes will be dedicated to Biomancy, Tzeentch, and Telepathy. Throwing around powers such as Treason of Tzeentch, allowing you to take over enemy units and shoot with them which is incredibly powerful. The Athenaean Scrolls are important because as long as you roll doubles on your psychic tests when targeting an enemy unit with a Witchfire or Malediction your opponent won’t be able to deny you, which is nice when you are facing off against another heavy psyker based army. Tossing Invisibility on summoned horrors, or the daemon princes themselves making them that much more difficult to deal with. Buffing up with powers like Warp Speed, Iron Arm, and Endurance on the prince with the Staff of Arcane Compulsion equipped makes him a brutal unit. +2 Strength swinging at AP2 with Force makes him a very scary opponent to deal with. The Repelling Sweep special rule will also provide him with some control against enemy units attempting to charge him. For 10 points this seems like an auto-take for a Demon Prince! Add the benefit of the Blessing of Tzeentch and these guys become even more difficult to kill. These two princes stay on the ground and counter-charge units threatening horrors, or go on the offensive themselves blasting the enemy with witchfires or charging up the field.
Magnus acts as more of a flying gunship in this list. You will primarily keep him in the air making use of his massive volume of Witchfires from the Change discipline as well as the two D shots he can shoot per psychic phase at different targets! You can even use him to summon in Flamers of Tzeentch to harass and distract the enemy. Flamers can still be pretty good, especially when you summon them across the table after flying 24″ so they can toast those pesky cheap troop units lurking in ruins. He does not have many blessings to buff himself and obviously Siphon Magic is a good choice, but if you get Cursed Earth off you can instead spend your efforts focusing on what he does best, which is blasting the enemy with strong psychic shooting attacks.
There are, or course, a few drawbacks to running this list. Alpha strikes will hit this army hard, but some of it can be mitigated. For example, in this list you don’t put power armor on the Princes. They don’t need it as they’ll be rocking 3++ invulnerable saves for most of the game. This means that Graviton weapons will be needing 6s to wound them, which is pretty important as grav is so instrumental in the meta. Bubble wrapping the Princes and Magnus with the Horrors is a good way to avoid the alpha strike as they’ll have to chew through lots of Pinks, followed by Blue and Brimstone Horrors after. Horrors and their Split rule are vulnerable to assaults. Because of the new FAQ you need to be able to place an entire unit of Blue/Brim Horrors within 6″ of the last model before it is removed from the table.
Obviously, this list needs to go first to really get the most out of it, but 3 Daemon Princes and a Lord of War aren’t exactly easy to kill on turn 1. You’ll mainly want to protect your summoning prince as he is the one that will really make the difference as far as being able to score objectives, etc. Reserving him on turn 1 and flying him on later might not be a bad idea. Destroyer weapons, primarily of the ranged variety, are also a big issue. A lucky hit with a D weapon can smoke these guys, as well as Strength 10 hits, so keep that in mind when playing the army.
Having to roll at least one power on the Tzeentch table because of the Daemon of Tzeentch rule will limit the army’s effectiveness a little, but with the new powers in Wrath of Magnus suddenly what used to be the worst of the psychic trees is arguably quite good.
This Formation probably isn’t ready to dethrone the Infernal Tetrad in power, but it can still be quite good. Magnus is a massive point investment, but his ability to effect multiple targets with witchfires and D shots makes him almost like a GMC in power. He’s well worth every point and can put up some massive damage especially once he gets in the air. And if forced to fight in combat, he’s not too shabby either rocking Strength 8 AP 2 on initiative with an Instant Death weapon that can spawn an enemy. You’ll want to avoid getting him into combat with things like Imperial Knights or other AV 13 walkers as he will struggle to kill them and while he’s in combat he can’t make the most of his shooting abilities.
The Rehati War Sect isn’t going to win the LVO anytime soon, but it can be a very strong and fun Formation to play and quite difficult for a lot of opponents to deal with. Magnus is capable of wiping out half of an army on his own, and with the summoning power of the Princes you’re looking at getting a lot of extra points on the table. Horrors will be a nightmare to deal with even with the sudden nerf to the Split rule and you can summon them en masse with a Rehati War Sect.
Personally, I’m quite happy with Wrath of Magnus and the upcoming Traitor Legions supplement. Chaos Space Marines have been in desperate need of a bump up on the power scale, and these new Formations, along with Magnus really help provide the army with the boost it needs to keep up with today’s meta.
And as always, Frontline Gaming sells Games Workshop product at up to 25% off of retail, every day!
Frontline Gaming will buy your used models for cash or store credit!
Great read, but I wish you’d have gone more into using it with some Exalted Sorcerers… It kind of comes off more as a Tactica article on your specific list and not about the formation in general. Totally worthy of a read if you want to run that exact list though!
Yeah I just don’t see the formation as being very viable beyond the daemon princes really. Mainly because the other Thousand Sons formations require so many sorcs and they are just sooo expensive. I mean by the time you kit them with a disc and bump their Mastery Level and give them a familiar they are like 230 points. And a lot of the other formations make better use of them at a cheaper cost (like the War Coven). Still, it’s fun dropping several Str 9 blasts a few times on the battle field! I’m glad you enjoyed it though. I’m actually really anxious to give the list a try. So many goodies in Wrath of Magnus it’s hard to choose!
I see it written everywhere (including in this article and the initial Wrath of Magnus review on FLG) that the Scrolls prevent an opponent from denying any spell cast where two or more dice have the same number. However, from a screen cap of the actual rules, it states that a target of such a spell cannot deny the witch. Recall that the BRB states that a player chooses one of the targets of a spell to make a deny the witch roll (with any applicable benefits). If a spell has no target, the player may make a DtW roll with no bonuses. By RAW, the Scrolls only help when casting a witchfire or malediction. RAI is not clear at all – for only 20 points, GW could have very well intended for the artefact to only work when casting against a specific enemy target.
Your thoughts?
Good catch and something easy to overlook. I think the intent and of course RAW is for witchfires and maledictions effecting enemy units. Can be a big deal when targeting a psychic death star for example, that would normally be able to deny it easily. I edited the article to reflect it and also added some more including the Staff of Arcane Compulsion which,for 10 points, seems like it should be an auto-take for a Tzeentch demon prince.
It does bump you to S8, which is nice, but how often are your Princes actually going to be on the ground and able to take advantage of Repelling Sweep? I feel like it’s better-suited to a character that will be joining units.
I also envision a situation where you have the Staff on a character sitting in difficult terrain while controlling a Grav-Wave Generator objective.
If you read the article it’s pretty clear that he means to keep two of them on the ground buffed up with Telepathy and Biomancy so.. 🙂
Yeah, I just don’t think that’s a very safe plan. Way too easy to just not roll Invisibility + Iron Arm.
“I also envision a situation where you have the Staff on a character sitting in difficult terrain while controlling a Grav-Wave Generator objective.”
And also with a Word Bearers character in the Unit who has their Relic that forces Units to re-roll successful Charges against them 😀
Add in a Word Bearers IC with the Relic they have that forces successful Charges against their Unit to be re-rolled for even more trolltastic fun 😀
Hmmm. I suppose since Word Bearers don’t have a Mark, it would be possible to do so. THE UNCHARGABLE MONSTER.
Then you get, like, shot with a Scatter Laser and realize the flaw in your plan.
I guess if the Daemon Prince is using a beam or nova power, since those don’t target anyone, those could be denied normally?
Beams and Novas target all units in their “area,” actually.
One thing I haven’t seen mentioned pretty much anywhere is that Horrors lost their ability to summon in the Wrath of Magnus book. They do NOT have access to the Daemonology discipline. GW confirmed this in the FAQ they put out almost immediately after Magnus dropped.
So no more OP summoning batteries that can split themselves.
For reference: https://www.games-workshop.com/resources/PDF/Errata/Warhammer_40000/Wrath_of_Magnus_EN.pdf
Horrors don’t have access to Malefic anymore. The Herald in the CAD summons more Horrors not the Horrors themselves.
IMO it’s a great change. I’ve seen some belly-aching that this means “daemons can’t summon more daemons but Space Marines can” but really, it makes a lot of sense.
It was way too easy to use Horrors to multiply your forces. They faced little downside for perils (since they just lost a single 9 pt horror) whereas taking a wound on a normal psyker is a huge deal.
Summoning should be accessible only to important units like Heralds/Greater Daemons/DPs that actually run the risk of significant hurt for summoning in free units.
I agree completely. I think the loss of summoning is offset some by the Split rule and I agree with you that the only beings that should be able to summon are the greater psykers.
Eh. Considering they can not summon two squads (or more) for free, without spending warp charge, I don’t think it really can be counted as much of a loss. People were usually using a Herald (with Paradox) or FMC to summon anyways.
I would have to agree with this. Split is actually a more reliable way to get new units and thus more warp charge on the table.
Ive seen multiple posts about the new formations. This formation only gains re-rolls of 1’s to saves if you take a total of 9 demon princes & exalted sorcerers. This formation as written above would not gain the benefit of reroll since the maximum number of units is not taken.
Yes it does with the Daemon Princes. Daemon of Tzeentch allows you to re-roll 1s on your saves.