Chaos Marine Analysis - Sorcerer

I promised a smaller post today, and hopefully that's going to be the case. I'm probably going to be talking about the psychic powers more though, so let's delve right into it.

The Sorcerer is the single cheapest HQ that Chaos Space Marines have access to, so if you're just wanting to take the minimum, he's your man. He can then take Terminator armour at 15pts less than how much a Chaos Lord has to pay for it, probably because you don't have to include the Power Weapon, as he just keeps his Force Weapon. He can also take all of the wargear that a Lord can take as well, but I probably wouldn't equip him with any of this as it's generally not going to be used with a Sorcerer, for example, why would I pay 15pts for a Power Weapon when I already have a Force Weapon? Or any of the other close combat weapons aren't that much of an improvement for a Sorcerer considering that you might not be able to get maximum use out of them with him and you're already replacing a Force Weapon.

So, psychic powers. You can only take Marks of Nurgle, Tzeentch and Slaanesh on Sorcerers, because Khorne hates psykers, and that's why he doesn't have a psychic discipline.

Tzeentchs powers aren't bad. The Primaris Power is quite nice, it has got a medium range and is a strength of D6 +1, so quite random, and for every model removed due to this you inflict you get more hits, it's also a blast weapon. So a strong power, you can then get Boon of Mutation which is very different to its previous incarnation, instead of turning one of your opponents models into a Spawn, you give one of your Characters a free roll on the Boons table. Quite nice.

Doombolt is in there too, effectively Bolt of Tzeentch, except vehicles that you blow up do so twice as far. And then there's the infamous Breath of Chaos. I don't really think that I need to explain what that does. Essentially, Tzeentch seems to specialise in psychic shooting attacks with a buff power thrown in.

With Nurgle, you get another D6 +1 psychic power, but this time it is for the nummber of shots, being an AP5 poisened weapon. However, I'm not really a fan of it due to its pistol range. Nurgle does seem to specialise in Maledictions, the first power making an opposing units weapons get hot, and with a 24” range that's quite nice. Not game changing but nice.

The second psychic power is a Malediction with a random effect. It comes with an excellent range and could have some excellent effects. The first effect isn't great, reducing enemy attacks but giving them shrouding. The second one is much better, reducing strength and stopping units from running, the third one is essentially enfeeble, which is really nice.

The final power isn't great again, it's a psychic shooting attack with a 12” range, except instead of the random number of shots you get a large blast, but the real kicker is that it's AP2, which is really useful.

The Primaris power for Slaanesh is pretty good. 4 shots, 4 strength and AP4, it has got a range 4x as long as the Nurgle power as well. It also comes with a lot of special effects such as pinning, concussive and more.

The first power is then a buff, which will randomly give a unit a +1 buff to one of their stats, all of which are useful in combat, essentially making a single unit more effective in close combat, although it only has a 12” range meaning that you'll have to get your Sorcerer close to the action.

Symphony of pain is the second power, this time a malediction, it has a medium range and reduces the ability of an opposing unit to hit, in combat or at range, it also makes them more succeptible to sonic weaponary. The final power is quite simple, 24” range, each model hits itself in the face in that unit, with no AP.

You can then upgrade your psychic mastery level up to 3, 25pts per mastery level which is nice. But which psychic discipline is the best? Assuming psychic mastery level 1, I'd probably say Slaanesh, but once you start upgrading your mastery level I'd move to Tzeentch, as all of the powers perform a simple task whilst the Slaanesh ones are all completely different in application.

So there we go, a quicker breakdown this time. I'm not really going to comment on how good this unit actually is specifically as I don't have enough information to look at units in the context of the rest of the army and see how it works synergistically. However, I do have plans to come back to each Force Org slot in turn and look at the whole thing rather than unit-by-unit breakdowns once I have some more information and can look at units as part of the whole Codex. Ah, much better this time, just over 850 words.