10th Edition Competitive Faction Focus: Thousand Sons (Updated February 27, 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): 2024-02-27 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 received some heavy nerfs in the Q3 2023 Dataslate which but a significant damper on the faction – one they’ve struggled to recover from as other factions have gotten buffs. This has gotten worse recently with the Q1 dataslate delivering another set of nerfs to the faction in the form of nerfing allies, increasing the costs of Chaos Knight Brigands and making it so Thousand Sons armies can no longer take the Changeling or The Blue Scribes without first taking a unit of Horrors. The Thousand Sons can still win an event and put up occasional results, but they’re firmly in the bottom half of armies competitively right now. The good news is that it’s a pretty close field.

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.

Q1 2024 Dataslate Changes

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. The more recent Q1 dataslate had a more indirect impact, but still hurt. With the Q1 Dataslate, Daemon allies have been changed – you can no longer take a non-Battleline daemons unit without taking a battleline unit, meaning if you want to include the Blue Scribes or the Changeling as a cheap, protected action-doer unit, you have to pay a tax by taking a unit of horrors. That’s pretty rough for an army where points are very tight and you need all the Cabal units you can get.

To compound issues, Custodes got a buff in the form of a 4+ Feel No Pain against Devastating wounds, and coupled with their point drops, this puts them back near the top of the meta. That’s always bad news for the Thousand Sons, who largely depend on playing against armies who don’t suddenly have 100% more wounds when they fight. The only upside is that they haven’t gone back to units of 10 models.

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.

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, 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 (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. You’ll also want at least one Rhino to cart them around and protect them.

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.

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. 

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.
• 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.
• 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.
• Exalted Sorcerer – These guys are more for boosting the firepower and durability of large Rubric units.

You can also go without these – Thousand Sons are perfectly capable of running a good army just using Magnus and marines. 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 Q4 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.

Even at the higher cost it’s worth considering at least one 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

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.

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 or your solo characters on discs.

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 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 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/devastating 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. 

Anthony Lineberry’s List – 1st Place, Game Knight GT

Anthony took this list to a 5-0 finish and the Thousand Sons’ first post-dataslate GT win. Anthony took down Grey Knights (twice!), T’au, Dark Angels, and Hypercrypt Necrons in the final round to secure the win. Anthony’s List is partciularly notable for how it jettisons the Mutalith and goes all-in on Forgefiends, taking advantage of their relatively low cost and decent damage output.

Anthony's List - Click to expand

The big story here are the triple Forgefiends, outfitted with Ectoplasma Cannons. They pack a powerful punch and help answer the question “how do you deal with bigger targets?” The answer is Twist of Fate and a bunch of 3-damage shooting. What you don’t kill becomes suppressed, taking a -1 penalty to hit. After that the list has a good mix of Rubrics with character support and some solo characters to zip around and cause trouble, along with two units of Tzaangor Enlightened to do actions. The list can optionally attach Ahriman to a Rubrics unit, but as he can’t ride in a Rhino that may not be what the mission calls for.

Alfonso Delgado’s List – 3rd Place, IX GT VALENCIA 40K

Alfonso went 5-0 with this list, finishing third behind another 5-0 Thousand Sons list at an event which definitely needed a sixth round of play. Alfonso beat Necrons, Astra Militarum twice, Death Guard, and Aeldari in round 5 to secure his undefeated finish. His list is included here over the 2nd place list as it includes a unit of Scarabs.

Alfonso’s List - click to expand

Alfonso’s list runs a brick of 10 Scarabs supported by an umbralefic crystal terminator sorcerer and a Daemon Prince to create one of the game’s most durable infantry units. The list also features Ahriman and 10 warpflamer Scarabs, an Infernal Master with Arcane Vortex, and some Chaos Spawn and Cultists to move around the table doing actions and holding backfield objectives. It’s a list with razor-thin margins for error but that scarab brick will some work if it gets the chance. 

Noah Neundorfer’s List – 1st Place, Frontline Gaming Cherokee Open 2024

Last but not least we have Noah’s list, which took first place at Cherokee with an impressive 8-1 finish, losing only to Orks but clocking wins against Necrons x2, Orks, Blod Angels, Custodes, Daemons, T’au, and Astra Militarum.

And yes, it’s hilarious that he did this playing a list with two units of Tzaangors.

Noah’s List - click to expand

Noah’s big trick here is just running three big units of Warpflamer Rubrics, each one supported by a character. The Exalted Sorcerer with Umbralefic Crystal Unit gives the list some much-needed flexibility to reposition, while Ahriman and the Infernal Master provide raw damage output. The goal here is to watch enemy units walk onto objectives and then just burn the shit out of them. The Tzaangors cover the backfield objectives while two disc sorcerers can range around and do actions an the Mutalith helps extend key rituals.

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.