Editing Warhammer 40,000/9th Edition Tactics/Thousand Sons (section)

====Special Characters====
*'''[[Ahriman]]''' Ahriman is one of the best HQ options that the Chaos faction has to offer, never mind the Thousand Sons. He has three psychic powers known, three manifests, three denials, and re-rolls on all Psychic tests. He also has the '''Lord of the Thousand Sons''' aura, but rather than giving re-rolls to core cult units, he gives re-rolls to all {{W40Kkeyword|Thousand Sons CORE}} units and a D3 force stave. If he is your Warlord he has to take the Otherworldly Prescience Warlord Trait, but this is actually pretty good given it puts him at 3++ for one turn; still, you should ''never'' take him as your Warlord without a very good reason, as he cuts off access to your cult relics. Despite being good in melee, you are best off keeping him back so that he can pull the strings of your Rubrics with his aura, psychic dominance, and ability to reinforce if required. Give him a Disc of Tzeentch, as the mobility is crucial and you'll almost never want him hiding in a transport, plus losing the infantry keyword makes it harder for attacks to specifically hurt him (like how Vindicare attacks wound infantry specifically on a 2+).
** He can also be used like the machine gun he was always meant to be, traveling on a disc with 1-3 hit squads of Tzaangor Enlightened. Give him the sniping Psychic Powers (Gaze of Hate (1.49 mortal wounds base for Ahriman) and Tzeentch's Firestorm (2.04 base for him)) and Twist of Fate, and laugh as enemy characters flee from your ranged assassin. Use 4 Cabal Points on Malevolent Charge to deal an extra D3 MW with one of those powers, just to make sure the enemy character dies.
***Bear in mind both of these mortal wound powers can deal 0 mortals even after a successful cast, and even if you could cast both 100% of the time and re-roll, which is relevant for Firestorm, your average mortal wounds dealt would still only be 1.5 for Gaze of Hate and 2.22 for Firestorm, 3.72 total.  
***Because Ahriman is so good at rolling high thanks to his re-roll (not as good as Magnus, but pretty good), if you want him to be a machine gun, he's a lot better with spells where rolling high is better: Smite and Baleful Devolution are better with a higher modified test and Firestorm relies on unmodified.  If you give him ''those'' three to cast, he takes Smite from 2.08 to 2.32, Firestorm from 1.67 to 2.04, and Devolution from 1.88 to 2.66, which is genuinely credible.  He's also good at Twist of Fate, for denying invulns: he succeeds at it 82.63% of the time, up from 58.33% for a non-re-rolling normie.
**'''Alternative Opinion''': problem with Ahriman being used as a Psychic Machinegun is you always need to get him close and within LOS, and Mortal Wounds don't Mortal Wound like they used to anymore. Presage, Temporal Surge, Twist of Fate, any high-casting spell [[JUST AS PLANNED|that's crucial to your]] [[Tzeentch|plans]] is also a good use for Ahriman, especially since you can only attempt it once. You can still have him use Doombolt by casting it with someone else then using Ritual or by Strat-Switching spells, but letting him hang back for the first few turns and buffing Terminators or Daemon Princes lets him survive longer and thus put him to the most use.
** Unlike Magnus, Ahriman did plenty wrong. He's one of the most evil fuckers in all of 40k/loving leaders who only wants to right his wrongs and his rules really make you feel like a cackling villain/hero - enjoy!
** Great news! Ahriman is now available on the new SC! 1K Sons kit. He comes with 10 Rubrics and 10 Tzaangors!