10th Edition Competitive Faction Focus: Thousand Sons (Updated 9/19/2023)

10th Edition is in full swing and with the Q3 2023 Dataslate behind us and some tournaments in the books it’s time to look at the game’s factions and how they shake out following the most recent changes to the game. In this article we’re looking at the Sons of Magnus, the Thousand Sons.

Why Should You Play This Faction?

Since the release of their codex in 9th edition the Thousand Sons have been one of the more competitive factions of the Chaos Space Marine variety and they’ve come out of the gates swinging in 10th, emerging as one of the game’s more powerful armies. As an army the Thousand Sons offer a massive and versatile toolbox of abilities and options and while the number of units you have to choose from is small, almost all of them have value. On top of that, there are a large number of ways to assemble those units into something that is competitively viable on the table.

The most recent dataslate shows that the GW design team seemed to think the faction was a bit too good, and as a result they received some heavy nerfs in the form of point increases and the changes to stratagems. Still; early reports about the faction being competitively dead appear to have been a bit of an exaggeration, and the faction still has some potent strategies to work with in the post-nerf environment, albeit with fewer options to choose from. They can likely still compete, but aren’t the tier 1.5 challenger they were.

Five Things You Need to Know

1. Cabbalistic Rituals are the backbone of your strategy: Cabbalistic Rituals give you four of the most powerful abilities in the game to play with – double moving, free Stratagem use, putting out a buttload of mortal wounds, and turning off enemy saves. These are powerful effects that hand you tools to deal with a variety of targets and you’re going to build and play around their use each turn.
2. Mobility is key: Between the ability to double-move units with Temporal Surge and the Umbralefic Crystal, the Thousand Sons have some powerful movement tech to play with. Whether you’re double-timing a Mutalith across the table to pick up an Ambush Token or dropping an Infernal Master in your opponent’s backfield to do an action and score Behind Enemy lines with the Crystal, there are some real options here that let you adapt to the opponent and play unpredictably. That’s really good to have, because your Rubrics are fairly slow, moving on 5”. That said, you’ve got other options as well – Tzaangor Enlightened and Chaos Spawn both have solid movement.
3. Magnus is Back, Baby: Magnus is one of the single most powerful units in the game and a tremendous asset for Thousand Sons lists as both an option for damage output and as a force multiplier. In addition to the damage, melee threat and movement, Big Red can also boost the movement of nearby units and help some some of your movement challenges.
4. Don’t get stuck in combat: Units like Scarab Occult Terminators aren’t necessarily bad in combat but you generally want to be shooting and in 10th edition it’s even harder to blast your way out of combat with psychic attacks. Your units generally want to avoid being stuck in melee combat, so don’t get tagged unless you have to.
5. Warpflamers are fantastic board control tools: Warpflamers are one of the most potent board control weapons in the game. A unit of 10 models with Warpflamers (well, 9 plus a pistol on the champion) can throw out some incredible hurt. You may not be able to use Overwatch multiple times per turn anymore, but you can still murder things that cross your path pretty reliably.

The 2023 Q3 Dataslate

The first Dataslate update of 10th edition made a number of changes to the game, and several of those hit the Thousand Sons directly – and pretty hard.

• Stratagem Changes. You can no longer use Stratagems multiple times per phase nor modify the cost of Stratagems unless they have the Battle Tactic type. This is a massive blow to the Thousand Sons, particularly when it comes to the Echoes of the Warp Cabbalistic Ritual, as now you can only use it to get a free use out of a very small number of Stratagems. Specifically, Command Re-roll, Devastating Sorcery, and Go to Ground. That’s not the end of the world, as the free Devastating Sorcery was a solid use for the ritual, but this one really hurts, as it means no more double Overwatch or Grenade, nor free use of Warp Sight.
• Devastating Wound Changes. Devastating Wounds no longer cause mortal wounds. This is a mixed bag for Thousand Sons. While it makes some of your multi-damage abilities slightly worse with Devastating Wounds, it doesn’t affect the large number of 1-damage attacks you can create with Ensorcelled Infusion and it significantly reduces the likelihood you’ll lose an entire unit of Rubrics or Scarab Occult Terminators to Wraithknight Overwatch. This one’s a wash.
• Point Hikes. The Thousand Sons suffered some brutal points hikes in the dataslate, and top lists lost around 200 points to work with. That generally means 1-2 fewer units to work with, but as we’ll see it’s not insurmountable as a penalty. It does however mean that Mutalith Vortex Beasts may now be a bit too expensive to play, and it also means you’ll generally be playing with 2-3 fewer Cabal points per game.
• Point Drops. There wasn’t a lot to celebrate, but Daemon Princes without wings dropped 30 points, and as we’ll see, that makes them a much more attractive option. Likewise Cultists dropping helps, but not as much as Desolators being dropped to 5 models per unit max.

On the whole these are rough, negative changes for the faction, though there are a few areas where changes to other factions help the Thousand Sons significantly. For one, the Devastating Wounds change helps quite a bit – while Eldar are still likely the game’s top faction, they no longer have the ability to remove an entire unit of Scarabs from the table with a single turn of shooting. This in turn makes Scarabs a more viable option on the table.

The other big change which benefits Thousand Sons is Custodes being nerfed into the dirt. Custodes were a big problem for Thousand Sons, sitting on a 4+ Feel No Pain against mortal wounds and some nasty melee output which could easily carve up Rubric and Scarab units alike. The lower squad sizes make them much easier to deal with (and shoot to death) while the changes to Devastating wounds make it much easier to clear them off the table with Magnus. Additionally the reduced power of Desolators and indirect shooting options makes Cultists better and makes transports to protect your units turn 1 a bit less required. Add in a favorable matchup against Necrons and you’ve got a faction that can still put up a decent fight despite the nerfs.

What Are the Must-Have Units to Start This Faction?

Ten Warpflamer Rubrics and Magnus the Red. You need Magnus, even at his increased cost. He just brings too much power to the table as a force multiplier and damage dealer. Keep him from getting shot off the board turn 1 and you’ll hve a great time. You also need Rubrics, though you may not be running them as a unit of 10 anymore – thanks to the point hikes, current lists run them more as 5-model units with 3 warpflamers, a warpflame pistol, and a soulreaper cannon. 

Post-points increase Ahriman is a bit less necessary, though he’s still one of the army’s most powerful units and his ability to fire off a ritual for free once per game is incredible for delivering a powerful alpha strike with either Doombolt or Twist of Fate. He’s also a great add to a unit of Warpflamers as he gives them +1 to their wound rolls.

From there you’ll want to figure out whether you want a 10-model unit of Scarab Occult Terminators, how many Rubrics you’re going to want, and what you want your support package to look like in terms of both characters and vehicles/monsters.

Rubrics are one option for the backbone of your army. You’ll want at least 15 of these guys as 3×5 units, and going 4×5 can work well too. Warpflamer Rubrics are great for board control and short-range skirmishing, while bolter Rubrics give you more range and in a pinch can sub in for terminators when you need a target for Ensorcelled Infusion to do its work. Bolter Rubrics also act as a better bodyguard for an Infernal Master, though you can easily get by just not attaching your master(s) to a unit at all. While somewhat durable, Rubrics tend to need a little protection when going up against the likes of Desolators and you’ll typically want at least one rhino to transport them in, if only to protect Ahriman. They’re also just fine with an Exalted Sorcerer to give them a 4+ invulnerable save and bring models back, and taking three units with Exalteds can give you some maddening levels of durability and regeneration-based mobility. Regular Sorcerers are also fine in this regard, trading off the ability to rez models for just being unshootable at 18″ instead.

You probably want 2-4 squads of Rubrics (20-40 models with a mix of warpflamers and icons and soulreaper cannons) on hand for different build options, and I’m going to level with you: That’s a lot of gold trim and it sucks to paint it.

Scarab Occult Terminators are a very tough unit thanks to both their defensive profile and the Implacable Guardians ability, which gives incoming attacks -1 to wound if they have Strength higher than the unit’s Toughness. Their primary value however is in their damage output – their combi-bolters can give them an insane amount of shots, and when you combine that with Ensorcelled Infusion to make them S5 and Psychic, they can suddenly benefit from both Magnus’ aura and the Devastating Sorcery Stratagem. Throwing out 36 S5 Psychic Bolter shots which hit on 2s, re-rolling 1s with SUSTAINED HITS 1 and get +1 to wound, re-rolling everything at a target that has had its save removed with Twist of Fate is a good way to take down almost any target in the game. If you’re taking Scarabs, it’s partly to hold the middle of the table and partly to work in concert with Magnus to tear down bigger targets.

You can potentially run a second set of Scarabs but at that point I think you’re putting too much into one basket, or just shortchanging the rest of your army. You can’t really afford 20 scarabs and Magnus, and a unit of 5 scarabs doesn’t have the punch to be worth it, and you can get more out of your vehicle/monster options instead. That said, 10 Scarabs are pretty nasty, and more durable than they used to be following the changes to Devastating Wounds. 

On the character side you’ve got a lot of options in this new, worse post-dataslate world.

Generally you’ll want at least one Infernal Master – he’s an incredibly useful character and you can run him either bland or in his “powered up” mode with the Arcane Vortex Enhancement. Doing this makes his focused Screamer Invocation S7, AP-2, 2 damage and turns it into a real nightmare weapon when you are running DEVASTATING WOUNDS on your psychic attacks and re-rolling all wound rolls thanks to the attached Rubric Squad’s Bringers of Change ability (don’t forget you can turn one wound result into a 6 result with the Glimpse of Eternity ability). Infernal Masters are also fun solo operatives, able to use Glimpse and Destined by Fate to tank some damage while sitting in your opponent’s backfield doing actions and being annoying. 

You could end the conversation here if you wanted to – Thousand Sons are perfectly capable of running a good army just using Magnus and marines. And there’s room for Tzaangors – the base unit are good for filling out a final slot cheaply, while Enlightened and Chaos Spawn can give you fast moving objective control. But where’s the fun in just taking little guys? The army has a number of large units you can add to your list as well, and most of them are worth consideration.

The big winner for the faction in the most recent dataslate was the Thousand Sons Daemon Prince, who dropped 30 points in the last points update (to 180), to the point where it’s a pretty solid model to consider in a competitive list. There are a few solid reasons to take a Daemon Prince, the first of which is to give friendly models within 6″ the Stealth ability, which is just a solid buff to have on your Scarabs and Magnus, especially if you end up going second. His second big benefit is having the [PSYCHIC] tag on his melee attacks, which means he can gain Sustained Hits or Devastating Wounds on his melee attacks and benefit from Magnus’ ability to re-roll, giving him a very nasty damage output and the ability to occasionally spike for some wounds that can’t be saved. As an added bonus he’s got the ability to once per game give a unit of Rubrics or Scarabs within 6″ [PRECISION] which can make for some nasty character hunting when you drop a unit’s save with Twist of Fate and then proceed to unload on them with a full unit of 10 Scarabs, wiping out the unit’s character first. If you’re taking the Prince, you’re going to want a unit of Scarabs to go with him.

A unit which saw no increases was Tzaangor Enlightened, who have a bit more play now that the points cost on Flamers has gone up. At 45 points for a unit of three these make good, fast, cheap action doers and objective holders and while you could add a Tzaangor Shaman for extra durability and damage output, it’s not really worth it – keep them cheap and make them a pain to waste firepower on.

Even at the higher cost it’s worth considering a single Mutalith Vortex Beast. The Mutalith offers a fairly tough monster profile with T10 and 13 wounds and a 5+ Feel No Pain, but on a fast body – 10” movement and the ability to double move with Temporal Surge from a nearby Psyker. The Mutalith is also decent in melee and great for boosting Rituals – rituals done within 6” of the Mutalith double their range, allowing you to pop off 36” Doombolts and Twists of Fate. The Mutalith is very, very good and while it’s too expensive now to take two, there’s some value in taking a single one, particularly if you’re running a list without Scarabs.

While the Mutalith is the unit you’re most likely to consider, there’s also a place for Helbrutes and Forgefiends. The former can act as a melee counter-threat and win you back Cabal Points, scoring you 1 for each Ritual performed within 9”, while the latter has some decent shot volume and the ability to make your opponent’s elite threats a bit less accurate. Having dodged a points hike, the Thousand Sons Forgefiend in particular merits a second look, though note that it lacks the raw damage output and Devastating Wounds overcharge ability of its Chaos Space Marines cousin. This makes it more of a utility piece, picking targets to drop their WS/BS by 1 – particularly helpful for protecting a unit about to be charged.

Allied Units

Daemons also merit consideration in competitive lists. While Flamers are now a bit too expensive at 80 points for 3 to take them as action goobers, there’s still plenty of reason to consider the Changeling and the Blue Scribes as add-ons. Both offer Lone Operative, while the Blue Scribes also give you a way to get some extra mortal wounds and the Changeling can mess with an enemy’s accuracy and ability to shoot.

How Does This Faction Secure Objectives?

Typically with Rubrics, though if you’re running Tzaangors/Enlightened/Chaos Spawn you’ll use those to move quickly around the sides of the table and capture objectives early. The Scarabs are your “hold the middle” unit and will help deliver alpha strikes with support from Magnus. The Umbralefic Crystal is a big piece of this puzzle, and goes in every Thousand Sons list. Whether you put it on a lone character or embed it in a unit, it allows you to be anywhere you need to be once per game, and that will often either be in place to secure or complete an objective, or to take an enemy off one. 

Your biggest concern when doing this will be staying out of combat, but that’s where Warpflamers come in, punishing your opponent for having the audacity to come within 12” of you. Scarabs are also OK at brawling, and Magnus can handle himself just fine and shoot out as a monster.

For your Action objectives, you’ll generally want to use either Tzaangor Enlightened, the Changeling, Blue Scribes, or all of the above.

How Does This Faction Handle Enemy Hordes?

Hordes are easy to handle when you have warpflamers, and inferno bolters aren’t too shabby for the job, either. You’ve got great volumes of S4 AP-1 shooting to work with before you start adding in buffs on top of it. 

How Does This Faction Handle Enemy Tanks and Monsters?

This is a tougher one – the Thousand Sons have very few anti-tank weapons, only one of which are is their Infantry, and most of their guns and psychic attacks top out at 24” range, meaning that larger targets like Wraithknights can usually sit back in their deployment zone and take shots at you over ruins while you’re unable to respond without walking into a nasty killzone. Mutaliths can help extend the range on your rituals to hit that distance, while the Warp Sight Stratagem can add 9” to your psychic attacks, and combos with Ensorcelled Infusion. 

Often the playbook will be one of two options for taking down big threats:

• Double Doombolt to weaken, finish off with Magnus/Infernal Master+whatever. This is for targets with a great invulnerable save that are very susceptible to mortal wounds. You put your army into DEVASTATING WOUNDS mode, pull a pair of Cabal Psykers within 18” of the target, and fire off two doombolts, one normally and one via the Lord of Forbidden Lore Enhancement. That’ll give you an average of 10 mortal wounds, and you push through the rest either with Magnus or the Infernal Master looking for 6s and whatever other fire support you can get. 

• Twist of Fate to remove the save, massive amounts of firepower to kill. This is for targets which don’t have an invulnerable save or otherwise have a 4+ feel no pain against your mortal wounds. You put your army into SUSTAINED HITS 1 mode for psychic attacks and use Twist of Fate to take away their armour save (against Custodes this puts them on their 4+ invuln, which is as good as you’re going to get). Then you just go to town on the target with high volumes of firepower. If you’ve got Scarabs or bolter Rubrics this is where you use Ensorcelled Infusion and usually Echoes of the Warp to fire off Devastating Sorcery to make their combi-bolters PSYCHIC and Strength 5. If you have Magnus around, this gives you +1 to hit and wound with them, plus full re-rolls on both, and every 6 you roll to hit gives you another hit. Commit enough and there aren’t many targets you can’t take down this way. Your biggest challenge will be getting your targets into 18″ range for your effects.

What Combos Should You Build Around?

There are a few specific things to consider but I’ve already talked about the major tricks.

The Scarab Brick

• 10 Scarab occult Terminators – 8 Inferno Combi-Bolters, 2 Hellfyre Missile Racks, 2 Soulreaper Cannons, Champion with combi-bolter and staff
• Sorcerer in Terminator Armour with combi-bolter and staff

Also straightforward, though not mentioned up there is Magnus to buff the unit when it’s doing Ensorcelled Infusion. The Terminator Sorcerer gives the unit LETHAL HITS and lets you pick a target for the whole army to re-roll 1s to hit against, giving you a rare buff for Magnus. You can go bolter or sword on the champion; his psychic power is [PISTOL] but there will often be times when it’s better to take four bolter shots than use his Warpsmite. I like to give the Terminator Sorcerer the Umbralefic Crystal to give the Terminators late-game mobility and to let them teleport out of combat as well as help mitigate their slow movement, but you’ll want to keep them near Magnus if you can. 

Add a Daemon Prince to this for the added [PRECISION] buff and Stealth to keep them alive longer.

The Infernal Master

• An Infernal Master and Arcane Vortex
• Rubrics with Inferno Bolters

What a great little combo: The Infernal Master gives his unit SUSTAINED HITS 1 and in return they give him the ability to re-roll 1s to wound, or all wounds if he’s shooting an enemy unit on an objective you don’t control. That gives you the great ability to fish for 6s easily on his 2D6 Torrent Psychic attack which hits at S7 AP-2 D2 when upgraded with the Arcane Vortex Enhancement. Throw in Devastating Sorcery and his ability to automatically generate a 6 off one of his results and you have some solid damage output to work with.

Ahriman’s Rubrics

• Ahriman
• Rubrics with Warpflamers

This one’s pretty straightforward – Ahriman gives his unit +1 to wound, making Warpflamers even more deadly and letting them punch up a big against tougher targets. You’ll often want to put this unit in a Rhino to protect them early on. Note: Always take the Warpflame pistol on the Aspiring Sorcerer.

Sorcerer Rubrics

• Thousand Sons Sorcerer
• Rubrics with Warpflamers

Your ideal backfield objective holder unit is a unit of 5 rubrics – either 4 warpflamers or 3 warpflamers + soulreaper cannon and a warpflame pistol on the champion – plus a Thousand Sons Sorcerer with a warpflame pistol. The Sorcerer prevents the unit from being targeted outside of 18″, while the five flamers makes it difficult to drop in and charge them out of deep strike.

Army Lists

Let’s close things out by looking at some recently successful lists for the faction. We have a few solid options to choose from, and with different builds, though ultimately many of the combos/interactions are the same with these. 

Luis German Giles’s List – 1st Place, Torneo Nacional Warhammer 40k Mexico

This 6-0 list shows us that Thousand Sons can in fact still take it to the house in the post-dataslate world. Luis put up wins against CSM, Sisters, Eldar, Custodes, and Dark Angels before beating Astra Militarum in the final round to claim the top spot.

Luis’ List - Click to expand

The big stars here are the Scarab Brick, supported by a Terminator Sorcerer and a Daemon Prince. And though it doesn’t have the same damage output it would have had a month ago (with likely 15 more Rubrics), the list has plenty of ability to spread out and go wide with two units of Tzaangor Enlightened plus the Blue Scribes to do actions and score Engage on All Fronts. The Scarabs can press the center of the table while drowning enemies in high volumes of firepower while the sorcerer rubrics can hold objectives on your side of the table and the unit with the Exalted Sorcerer can press forward.

Christian Pearse’s List – 3rd Place, Ratcon 2023

Christian took this list to a 4-1 finish, starting with a very close loss in round 1 to Genestealer Cults before rebounding with wins against Black Templars, Astra MIlitarum, Necrons, and finishing off with a win against new Tyranids.

Christian’s List - click to expand

This list trades the Scarabs for a Mutalith, another unit of Rubrics, Ahriman on Disc, and a trio of Infernal Masters, playing more of a herohammer role. Here the units are supported by the Blue Scribes and the Changeling, but the Infernal Master with the Umbralefic Crystal can move around by himself just fine in a pinch to do actions and trip up opponents.

Final Thoughts

Thousand Sons are worse after the dataslate but not unplayably so. The army’s basic units are still very strong, and even if you don’t want to paint 30-40 Rubrics you have plenty of alternatives which can still amount to a solid army. The recent changes drop them about a tier, but it’s not as much as some other competitors. Either way, with GSC and Custodes, and possibly Aeldari getting large nerfs, the army has a bit more plan than you’d expect as their natural predators have diminished.

That wraps up our look at Thousand Sons but we’ve got more faction focus articles coming up so stay tuned over the coming weeks. And if you have any questions or feedback, drop us a note in the comments below or email us at contact@goonhammer.com.