10th Edition Competitive Faction Focus: Thousand Sons (Updated November 8, 2024)

In our Competitive Faction Focus series we look at the factions of Warhammer 40,000 through a competitive lens, talking about who they are and what they can do, and how they play competitively. In this article we’re looking at the Sons of Magnus, the Thousand Sons.

Changelog

• Update (Latest): 2024-11-08 for the October 2024 Balance Updates
• Update: 2024-07-11 for the June 2024 Balance Updates
• Update: 2024-05-31 to add the army rule, updated lists
• Update: 2024-04-30 for the Q2 2024 Points Update
• Update: 2024-02-27 for the Q1 2024 Balance Dataslate
• Update: 2023-09-19 for the Q3 2023 Balance Dataslate
• Published: 2023-08-03

Why Should You Play This Faction?

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. There are things the Thousand Sons can do which no other Chaos army can do, and they can be a challenging (in a good way) and fun army to play.

The Thousand Sons have been up and down over the course of tenth edition, waxing and waning not just with their own nerfs and buffs but also key changes to other factions. After struggling through some nerfs early in 2024 the faction re-emerged as one of the game’s best, in part because indirect fire options continued to become less common. As a result, the faction received some interesting adjustments in the June 2024 Balance update, nerfing some aspects (Cabbalistic Rituals), while buffing some others (point drops, Stratagem changes). They’re still among the games better factions.

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 weakening 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 extra movement from Magnus, the ability to double-move units with Temporal Surge, and teleporting via 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 makes your psychic attacks better and 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. Most Rubric units run in groups of five now with three warpflamers, a warpflame pistol, a soulreaper cannon, and an attached character who can add some nasty fire support.

The October 2024 Update

Turns out dropping Mutalith Vortex Beasts was a huge mistake. The Q4 2024 balance update increase the points cost of almost every unit in the army, save a few like Scarab Occult Terminators and Tzaangors. The army had become the best in the game, and were taken down to the tune of about an entire unit per army.

Older update log notes - click to expand

Army Rule: Cabal of Sorcerers

At the end of your Command phase, each model from your army with this ability that is on the battlefield (excluding Battle-shocked models) generates you a number of Cabal points based on their Cabal of Sorcerers ability. During the battle round, you can spend these points on Rituals from the list below. You can only use each Ritual once per phase. Your unspent points disappear at the start of your next Command phase. Each Ritual must come from one of the PSYKER units in your army. Note: Note that, as of the June 2024 update, each PSYKER in your army can only be selected to perform a ritual once per turn (note that this does not mean they can’t be affected by multiple rituals).

• Weaver of Fates (Psychic, 2 Cabal Points) – Use this at the start of any phase. Once during that phase, when a saving throw is failed for a friendly unit within 18″ of this PSYKER, you can re-roll the save. Note that you have to use this at the start of the phase, so you have to plan ahead for who’s going to get the re-roll, but having an 18″ bubble around one psyker can help mitigate that. Note that you have to fail a save to use this, so it won’t help you avoid Devastating or Mortal Wounds, as those bypass your save.
• Temporal Surge (Psychic, 5 Cabal Points) – Use at the start of your Shooting phase. Pick one friendly unit within 18″ of this PSYKER. Unless they’re within Engagement range of an enemy unit, they can make a Normal move. If they do, they can’t charge this turn. This is huge – it’s one of the most useful abilities in the game, able to help your (otherwise pretty slow) units get to where they need to be. The “can’t charge” rider doesn’t matter all that much here because your units generally don’t want to be in melee – this is much more about getting in position to absolutely roast an enemy unit, to steal an objective, or get in position for an action. Note that while you can use this to move back to safety after tossing out a Doombolt, you can’t do this once you start shooting, so it can’t act as a pseudo-Fire and Fade.
• Echoes from the Warp (Psychic, 6 Cabal Points) – Use this ritual at the start of any phase. Once this phase, you can pick this Psyker’s unit as the target of a Stratagem for -1 CP. Unlike the other rituals, this one became more powerful in the June 2024 update, as it can now affect any Stratagem once again. It can be used to fire off Grenades, Ensorcelled Infusion, or Devastating Sorcery for 0 CP, and can really help in a pinch if you’re running low on CP but need the boost in damage output.
• Doombolt (Psychic, 7 Cabal Points) – Use at the start of your Shooting phase. Pick a visible enemy unit within 18″ and roll a D6; on a 1 they take D3 mortal wounds, on a 2-5 they take D3+3, and on a 6 they take D3+6. This is one of the most devastating effects in the entire game and your offensive gameplan will revolve around not only using it but doubling up on it with Lord of Forbidden Lore. Together they’ll account for 14 Cabal Points per turn, so it’s more an early game tactic for when you’re hitting 21+, though this will often be Ahriman’s free cast as well. Note that this was changed in the June 2024 update to no longer be something you can use to select a Lone Operative from more than 12″ away, meaning you can’t use it to snipe formerly safe targets.
• Twist of Fate (Psychic, 9 Cabal Points) – Use at the start of your Shooting phase. Pick a visible enemy unit within 18″. Until the end of the phase each time a Thousand Sons model from your army makes a ranged attack against that unit, improve the AP of that they can’t make armour saving throws (they still get to make invulnerable saves and feel no pain rolls). This is the biggest hit for the faction in the June 2024 balance update – you can’t use Twist of Fate in the Fight phase any more and you only give your target an extra -2 on your AP rather than just taking away all armour saves. Against most targets, this difference doesn’t matter – most big targets have a invulnerable save. Where you’re really going to feel it is on vehicles, where the likes of Rogal Dorn tanks and Landraiders can now get a 4+ or 5+ against your attacks before you stack additional AP. It’s still very good, but not near the insane unit-deleting powerhouse it was before.

The biggest thing to remember with Rituals is that they’re mostly used at the start of phases – once you start shooting or fighting, it’s too late to fire them off. This means you need to plan carefully for their use and get into the habit of stopping and checking your Rituals at the start of the Shooting phase each turn. Playing Thousand Sons takes careful planning.

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 often run them more as 5-model units with 3 warpflamers, a warpflame pistol, and a soulreaper cannon, though one unit of 10 in an army isn’t rare. Warpflamers are particularly nasty thanks to their ability to re-roll all wound rolls against targets on an objective you don’t control. It pairs well with psychic attacks on their sorcerer and attached characters, particularly when you have Devastating Wounds up for the army.

Ahriman is also a must-have, as 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 while he’s attached.

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). I’ve had him single-handedly kill Abaddon in Overwatch before.

From there you’ll want to figure out just how many Rubrics you want. And you’ve got options. Successful Thousand Sons lists can run anywhere from ten to thirty Rubrics, in big squads of ten or minimum size units, with plenty of variations in between. You can also take a unit or two of Terminators if you like – the latest round of point drops on Scarab Occult Terminators has made them very attractive as a pick, and they pack a great combination of punch and durability.

Rubrics are one option for the backbone of your army. You’ll want at least ten of these guys, and possibly as many as thirty in variou arrangements. Warpflamer Rubrics are great for board control and short-range skirmishing and have very good damage output. Bolter Rubrics by comparison are a lot less popular, but have an edge in terms of range and ability to do more with abilities like Sustained Hits or the Ensorcelled Infusion Stratagem. 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 good indirect shooting isn’t super common, Rubrics are on the whole still pretty fragile when facing Plagueburst Crawlers and Basilisks and slow to boot, so it can be a smart idea to keep a Rhino on hand to protect and transport them. They’re also just fine with an Exalted Sorcerer to give them a 4+ invulnerable save and bring models back, though regular Sorcerers are arguably better in this regard, trading off the ability to rez models for just being unshootable at 18″ instead and reducing your reliance on transports/Strategic Reserves to avoid indirect fire.

You probably want 2-4 squads of Rubrics (10-40 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 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. Scarabs aren’t the preferred way to run Thousand Sons right now – they’re a little slow and you’re already taking a bunch of Rubric infantry – but they are viable.

When it comes to Tzaangors well, the battleline version are just kind of whatever. They are good for filling out your final few points. On the other hand Tzaangor Enlightened have a ton of play as relatively fast, cheap action doers and objection 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.

On the character side you’ve got a lot of options to play with, as pretty much every character option available to the Thousand Sons is worth using.

After that, there are several characters who offer different value. Note that while many of these are leaders, you will often not want them joining units and instead acting as fast, easy-to-hide solo operatives who can do actions and harass enemy units. Note that your Disc characters do not have the GRENADES keyword.

• Exalted Sorcerer on Disc of Tzeentch – These guys give you fast solo operatives who can slow enemy units with their Binding Tendrils Psychic ability. Their Arcane Fire Psychic attack is also a pretty nasty torrent weapon. This no longer happens in your Movement phase, making it impossible to do the trick of flying out, zapping and slowing a unit, and then popping back to safety, but he’s still got a D3 damage TORRENT weapon to pop off and he gives his unit a 4+ invulnerable save.
• Thousand Sons Sorcerer – These guys do want to be added to units, as they protect their unit by making it untargetable by ranged attacks outside of 18″. That allows Thousand Sons to get away with taking fewer Rhinos, as you won’t need to protect a backfield unit from indirect fire if it has a Sorcerer attached to it. They’ve also got a really nasty ranged attack, and that Sustained Hits 3 can be brutal if you roll hot. With the army becoming too expensive for Rhinos and Exorcists on the rise, you want these guys as protection against indirect fire.
• Thousand Sons Sorcerer in Terminator Armour – If you’re taking Scarabs, you need to pair them with one of these guys. He gives the unit a big damage output buff and allows you to pair them with an Umbralefic Crystal. Note that his ability to select a unit to re-roll 1s to hit extends to the rest of the army.
• Exalted Sorcerer – These guys are more for boosting the firepower and durability of large Rubric units, and can bring models back. You really want these with units of ten Rubrics, and there may be room for them given the cost of ten models didn’t change. But most of the time you don’t have the points to dump into full squads of ten rubrics.

Generally you want one character per unit – the output buffs these guys offer are just too good, and you need all the cabal points you can get.. 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 Thousand Sons Daemon Prince isn’t as good as some of your other options, but they are just cheap enough to consider in lists. 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… but that’s a lot of points.

Next up you’re going to want to consider at least one Mutalith Vortex Beast, even after the points hike. 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 it might even be worth taking two. Sometimes these guys just absolutely spike their damage and crush your opponent’s spirit. And as we’ll see, taking three is still an option, even at 160 points per model.

While the Mutalith is the monster/vehicle 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. After their points hike Forgefiends aren’t the cheap threat they used to be, and so we don’t see them show up often.

Allied Units

Following the Q1 dataslate, it’s not really worth taking daemons in competitive lists anymore. Flamers are still too expensive to take as action goobers and you can’t take them or the character options without spending 125 points on a unit of blue horrors. Blue Horrors aren’t terrible, but they don’t give you cabal points and are generally much worse than Tzaangors. Brigands are an option at their new lower price, but losing out on cabal points really hurts the army.

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 (but not great) 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 or your solo characters on discs, but on missions with Stalwarts you’ll be eating good. Action economy is a problem generally for the army as there’s no longer room to fit luxuries like Rhinos in a list to get cheap actions.

How Does This Faction Do Actions?

Actions can be tough for the Thousand Sons, who tend toward being a more elite army – and as such don’t want to waste their Warpflamer Rubrics on actions when they could be shooting and firing off psychic attacks instead. Your best options here are Chaos Cultists, whose pregame Scout move can help them get into position early to hold objectives and do key actions, and Tzaangor Enlightened, who give you fast units with FLY who can take position to do actions when you need them. Just note that Enlightened tend to be really flimsy when they start taking damage.

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, and re-rolling wounds against targets on objectives will let you melt through even big horde units fast.

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 units with heavy weapons can usually sit back in their deployment zone and take shots at you 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/devastating 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 tank saves, 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/devastating wounds. You put your army into SUSTAINED HITS 1 mode (or keep Devastating Wounds) for psychic attacks and use Twist of Fate to improve your AP by 2 against a target (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 12″ range for your effects and to get off Rapid Fire or Warpflamer shooting.

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

What a great little combo: The Infernal Master is a damage cannon and his unit gives 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. He also gives his unit SUSTAINED HITS 1, which is good on the Aspiring Sorcerer and the Soulreaper Cannon.

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. Just be mindful that it’s S3 and not S4 when you’re shooting it.

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

Things have been shifting rapidly in the meta following the Q4 balance update but Thousand Sons can still hang even with their points hikes. Turns out being able to output insane amounts of damage isn’t entirely solved with the loss of 100ish points to the army. It does make the games even more razor-thin, however – make an early mistake or lose too many units and you’ll watch everything go up in flames.

Stu Angels’ List – 2nd Place, Kippers’ Melee 2024

Stu took this list to an impressive 5-0 finish against some very tough competition, showing that Thousand Sons weren’t going anywhere by beating Death Guard, Necrons, Orks, Drukhari, and Astra Militarum before finishing second on points. Stu’s list jettisons Ahriman but keeps the four units of Rubrics and one Mutalith, packing three units of Tzaangor Enlightened and a unit of Cultists to give it some speedy action juice. It’s also just packing two disc Sorcerers as solo units to add some extra pressure and disruption.

Stu's List - Click to expand

Not too dissimilar from older lists, this list leans heavy on characters for Cabal points to power nasty psychic attacks – it’s running an eye-watering three Infernal Masters, plus a standard Sorcerer – and the plan is to use those to dish out damage, with some help from a Mutalith to get extra ranges on Doombolts. The chaff units here give it a ton of speed and the bodies you need to spread out a bit as your Rubrics do the real work. Though with three units of Enlightened you’re also going to occasionally catch the odd player out when you just double up to assassinate some character using their precision attacks.

Malaki Fowler’s List – 6th Place, Gem City GT 2024

Malaki took this list to a 4-1 finish, beating Astra Militarum, World Eaters, Necrons, and Orks before losing in the final round to a Custodes list running three units of Sisters of Silence. It’s real proof triple Mutaliths aren’t dead but it does showcase some of the challenges the list faces.

Martín’s List - click to expand

Triple Mutaliths aren’t dead! You can still run them, just with one or two fewer units overall. Here the cost ends up being “Rubrics,” as this list only runs two units of Rubrics – though note that one is a full unit of ten plus an Exalted Sorcerer – plus some Cultists and Tzaangors. That’s a huge change as it makes the list more of a monster mash and it’s easy to see why it might have struggled against a Custodes list running a pair of Caladius tanks. There’s still plenty of power here, with the big Rubric unit giving you some staying power as a midtable unit with the ability to bring back dead models, and the triple Mutaliths remain a nasty threat. If you’re running this list you need to be very protective of your Cultists and Tzaangors – losing them can end the game real quick for you as you’ll become easily overstretched and unable to do actions.

Final Thoughts

Thousand Sons remain a powerful army, albeit one which can be difficult to play effectively. 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 balance update was a net negative for them, but not so much so that it killed their competitive ability, and they have enough tricks and damage output to tussle with nearly any army in the game.

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