Games Workshop released two more FAQs this week, this time covering Thousand Sons and Grey Knights in a surprisingly timely fashion. There’s a surprising amount to cover here for such a small codex so let’s dive right in.
Your opponent can’t re-roll Psychic Test results changed by the Capricious Crest
The Capricious Crest lets you force an opponent to change 6s in their Psychic Test to 1s, but some people who thought they were one step ahead of Tzeentch asserted that they would simply choose to re-roll the test after this had been applied. Not any more! This effect now explicitly gets applied after any re-rolls. Your opponent will have to decide they want to try and re-roll that successful test before you change it, giving the Capricious Crest a little bit of extra utility during the times when you don’t even have to use it because a fearful opponent re-rolled a passing test into a failing one. Tzeentch would be pleased.
Arcane Smokescreen can now actually be used by Defilers
The wording has been changed here – The Arcane Smokescreen Stratagem now affects units with the THOUSAND SONS SMOKESCREEN Keywords (instead of ARCANA ASTARTES), so that the poor Defiler can actually use it.
Attackers now Round Up when allocating attacks to a model with the Conniving Plate
Two changes here:
- The wording on the rules for Conniving Plate originally managed to circumvent the normal rules on rounding characteristics. This FAQ has added “rounding up” rider, preventing you from forcing enemies with a single attack to not attack your model at all. This does end up as a moderate nerf overall, as it significantly weakens its impact against dangerous opponents with odd numbers of attacks. One-attack models weren’t really much of a threat against the Daemon Princes you’d put this on to begin with, so
- Clarifications and examples have been added explaining exactly when the limit applies and how it interacts with some classes of effects. None of these represent a functional change, but it’s nice to have some designer thoughts on such an unusual effect. Basically, extra attacks you generate from rules like the Space Wolves’ super doctrine or from weapons giving you multiple attacks per attack like the Death Guard’s Flails of Corruption aren’t affected.
The Prism of Echoes only affects the first range listed in a Blessing Power
They’ve cleaned up the language on Prism of Echoes so that it only affects the first range listed in a Blessing power (i.e. the range you’re applying whatever effect it has at). From a quick look at the Blessings available, this looks to be intended to stop Empyric Guidance from adding 12″ to weapon ranges.
Infernal Masters can only perform one pact per Command phase
A very minor wording tidy up that appears to deal with a fringe reading that could be construed as letting an Infernal Master attempt every pact they knew in your Command phase. They can’t, just the one!
Rubric Marine Aspiring Sorcerers now only get one power in addition to Smite
A bit of a nerf here, making it clear that Rubricae know one power picked from either of their two disciplines, not one from each. This drops their power level a bit, but also significantly reduces the amount of bookkeeping you need to do for the army.
Helbrutes lost Malicious Volleys
They never should have had it to begin with, it didn’t mean much for them, and now they’ve lost it. RIP Helbrutes getting an extra 2 Inferno combi-bolter shots at 24″ while moving, I guess. This was marginally more useful thanks to the inferno rider on the combi-bolter, but not something anyone is going to lose sleep over.
Fatecaster Greatbows also hit on 2+ in Overwatch
A neat buff to Tzaangor Enlightened, a rider was added to Fatecaster Greatbows making them hit on an unmodified 2+ when firing Overwatch as well. They still only get 1 shot each so it’s not like charging them is a death sentence, but it is a nice added bonus.
Clarification: The Dilettante upgrade Relic doesn’t cost extra CP or Relic slots
This is something we already suspected, but now it’s been cleared up completely – if you buy an extra relic with the Dilettante upgrade, the points cost is the only cost you pay.
Clarification: You can use Schemes of Change more than once
You aren’t going to use it either way but sure, now you can spend even more CP to fix the mistakes you made picking objectives 30 seconds prior.
Clarification: Pact From Beyond can get you an auto-super Smite
The FAQ clarifies that if the cost for a psychic power has increased, i.e. because you’ve already attempted to cast Smite 5 times prior during the current psychic phase, then using this ritual to auto-cast “with the minimum required Warp Charge” will count as that higher value, and trigger additional effects. So your Smite that requires an 11 to cast counts as being cast with a roll of 11, giving you D6 mortal wounds instead of D3.
Clarification: You can’t wait until after a Deny attempt is made to adjust the result of a cast attempt with a Cabbalistic Ritual
Abilities like Kindred Sorcerers or Wrath of the Immaterium have to be applied before your opponent attempts to deny – you can’t up the value of your cast after they roll to mess up their deny attempt.
Clarification: You can put a unit into reserves (or wherever else) with its rules and use Stratagems that do so when you select it with the Master Misinformator Warlord Trait
As long as the mission doesn’t specify otherwise, you can do some nasty shenanigans this way, moving your Scarab Occult Terminators off the table and into the Warp or using Webway Infiltration to set up a unit of Rubrics into the warp so they can deep strike later. This is counter to the rulings that several events have already made, and so will change up some things in the coming weeks for events that hadn’t yet hit their cutoff point for list submission and new rules. This makes the Master Misinformator trait significantly more useful, and allows you to play some clever games in deployment, baiting an opponent into deploying out of position, or adjusting your plan on the fly. Tricky to use well, but powerful when you pull it off.
Overall, most of these were expected, but there are a couple of pleasant surprises here and one I’m less a fan of – I could have lived with the Conniving Plate being 0 attacks for 1-attack models, given it’s per model, to be honest. We’re starting to see early competitive play results for Thousand Sons and so far it certainly doesn’t seem like they’re going to need the kind of power level errata we’ve seen for the Drukhari and Adeptus Mechanicus – that’s something we’ll discuss next week, most likely – so for now this looks to be where we’re at for the FAQ.
