After a short strategic pause to allow the fools of the other Chaos Legions to absorb all the bullets, the Thousand Sons have arrived, unleashing all sorts of terrifying new magick from a new Codex. And it is a good Codex. In terms of power level at launch, this book is landing at one of the highest levels seen all Edition, so if you’re serious about competing on the tournament tables, you’re going to need to know what’s waiting for you the first time you see them across the table.
Luckily, after a few rounds of review where I’ve been too busy at the business factory to contribute much, this time I’ve had a change to fully digest the Thousand Sons codex, throw up in my mouth a little, then start documenting the upcoming horrors. Rob and Norman have already soft-relaunched this series on the podcast looking the World Eaters and Death Guard (which you can listen to here), and today it returns in glorious hypertext markup language – it’s time to Know Thy Foe.
Thanks to Games Workshop for sending us a preview copy of the Thousand Sons Codex. We have also been provided with a MFM points update for the army, which the opinions in this article are based on. These points may be subject to change until they are published on Warhammer Community.
The Basics
Thousand Sons are an elite army focused on doing tremendous damage in the Shooting Phase, and supporting this with some good cheap board control/scoring pieces, and a few units that can hit hard enough in melee to prevent the enemy from rolling them over in the Fight Phase. With the rules in this book, they have an extremely feature complete roster that plays almost all aspects of the game very well; essentially the only thing they’re missing is high-volume melee output, and their anti-horde Shooting is so strong that this doesn’t hold them back.
The Thousand Sons shooting phase is powered by two things – their army rule, which lets them cast Psychic Rituals to concentrate damage on key targets, and the very powerful shooting profiles that most of their units possess, often augmented by Detachment Rules. Obviously there are some good Psychic shooting attacks here, but just the basic Thousand Sons bolter hits at AP-2 (with most “solid shot” weapons getting a similar AP boost over the norm), so every unit in the army can put chip damage into any level of target, especially when helped by the right Leaders. They also have really good versions of the Marine vehicle suite, providing cost-efficient ways to plug any gaps in their damage output.
Up close, the Mutalith Vortex Beast and Scarab Occult Terminators provide very durable units that are at least decently melee capable, able to hold foes in place long enough for the shooting to add up. While that’s happening, Tzaangors and the speedier Enlightened offer strong scoring support (the latter also being surprisingly lethal in their new incarnation), ensuring that they don’t fall behind on points.
To defeat the Thousand Sons, you need to be incredibly judicious about how you use your resources, because essentially anything you expose to them is not long for the world. While they’re hyper lethal, if they can’t see you they can’t kill you, and their regular units are somewhat ponderous. Make sure you’re sending your units out with a plan to sell their lives dearly, and make sure you understand what tricks the Tzeentchian forces are going to use to try and thwart you.
Thanks to Games Workshop for providing a preview copy of the Thousand Sons Codex, which was used to write this article. We were also supplied with a provisional set of points for the new book. These have been used to shape the opinions in this article, but are subject to change up until their official release.
What’s Changed?
Thousand Sons have had a pretty good edition so far, operating as a top three army early on, continuing to thrive after the first few rounds of nerfs, and really only dropping out of top consideration in the last few dataslates. Even then, they’ve still showed up in the 4-1 bracket plenty often, and all this adds up to mean that if you’ve been playing competitive 10th Edition, you probably have some familiarity with Thousand Sons. That begs the question – how much have they changed?
As Tzeentch likes, the answer is a bit of a paradox. There’s a massive amount of change in this book, but the shift in the actual experience of playing against them isn’t as huge as it might suggest. Fundamentally, Thousand Sons could always make anything you expose to them turbo dead, and they still do that. They will be using a substantially broader range of units to do that, but the vibe is still the same, and if anything you’re going to be more dead than before when they pop off. You are also still going to see minimum two Mutalith Vortex beasts in most games, because for some ungodly reason their price has dropped back down again.
The layer beneath that outer shell of ranged violence changes a bit more. Almost all Index Thousand Sons lists used Magnus, and generally once they’d de-fanged the most powerful enemy toys, he would emerge to zip around the battlefield at incredible speeds to murder stuff and lock in victory. He can’t do that in the same way any more, being both a bit weaker and a lot slower, and you won’t see him in every list any more (and they also don’t need his damage output). However, the new version of the Thousand Sons army rule loosens up constraints on their army construction, and they also have a much more efficient roster of supporting units (in the case of Tzaangor Enlightened, probably too efficient) with which to build a balanced army; they now have access to native Scout, Infiltrate and uppy-downy across their units. They’re also no longer punished for using Transports, so Rhinos are in play (and good).
The good news, then, is that you’re not going to have to try and field Magnus moving 32” while you’re already behind. The bad news is that the army against you has a much better set of tools for playing normal 40K backing up their extreme damage output.
Army Rule
One of the biggest changes to the Thousand Sons army is in their Army Rule, Cabal of Sorcerers. This lets them unleash terrible Rituals at the start of their Shooting phase, optimising their ability to annihilate stuff. This was also true in their Index, but the way this works is now massively different, more like a genuine old-school Psychic Phase rather than just being an accumulated pile of mind bullets.
How this works is that the Thousand Sons can perform each of four Rituals once at the start of their Psychic Phase. To perform a Ritual, they pick a PSYKER model, and roll 2d6, aiming to equal or beat a target number for each Ritual to successfully Manifest it, unleashing an effect on a target in range that they can see, and each Ritual also has a higher target number that gives a bonus effect. After rolling their 2d6, if they don’t like the result they can roll a third d6, at a risk of taking Mortals if there are any doubles or triples in the final result. Various effects across the army provide either bonuses or re-rolls to this, the one that’s going to be see the most being a +1 for being near a Mutalith.
Each PSYKER model can only make one attempt to Manifest each phase, and each Ritual can only be successfully Manifested once each phase. If a Ritual is failed it can be attempted again – so as long as there are spare PSYKER models, the Thousand Sons player can keep trying a Ritual till it succeeds. Notably it is done based on PSYKER models rather than units, so if a Rubricae or Scarab Occult unit has a Leader in it, both their Aspiring Sorcerer and the Leader can each attempt one. This change is a big part of what loosens up Thousand Sons army construction; you still want a healthy number of Psykers, but you’re no longer obliged to cram as many Characters and Rubricae in as possible to grant Cabal Points, which is how their rituals worked in the Index.
Now, even with a lower number of Casters you shoul/d assume the Thousand Sons will successfully manifest most of these most of the time, usually but not always with the bonus effect. The Rituals are:
- Destiny’s Ruin: New and terrifying. Grants all Thousand Sons units re-roll hits of 1 against a target for the Shooting phase on a 5, or full hit re-rolls on a 10. If this goes off on full, that target is dead.
- Temporal Surge: A visible friendly target makes a Normal Move of d6” on a 6, or 6” on a 10. This is noticeably toned down from the Index, and they really want to hit the big version. Can be used to help deliver other Rituals – it’s easy for a Rubricae Aspiring Sorcerer and a Leader to poke their heads through a ruin, cast two Rituals, then have someone pull them back with this.
- Doombolt: d3 Mortal Wounds to a target on a 7, d3+3 on an 11. Mortals good, though this again is toned down. Also, there is now only a single way to double cast this once per game, which is a huge relief for anyone who has lost whole tanks to the double tap.
- Twist of Fate: +1AP for Thousand Sons units shooting a target on a 9, +2AP on a 12. Another way to make a target turbo dead.
The funny thing about this is that everything except Destiny’s Ruin is less powerful than in the Index, but Destiny’s Ruin is new and staggeringly strong; on an average 3d6, you just get Oaths of Moment in your Shooting Phase. You also don’t need too many Casters to get most of these out, especially if they’re all on +1 from a Mutalith. Really, the biggest failure case for the Thousand Sons here isn’t going to be not casting these at all, but awkwardly failing to hit the big version of Ruin and Surge when they really want it. Although they get to choose to throw a third d6 into the pool after seeing the first two, they can’t choose not to Manifest if they’ve hit the target number. That can be a bit awkward for them if, for example, the first two dice on Destiny’s are showing a total of 5 – they’d like the big number, but throwing in a third dice only gives them a 1/3rd chance of landing it, at a cost of a 1/3rd chance of taking Mortals. That’s not something you have massive agency over as an opponent, but do be aware that this is now it works.
In terms of what you can do about this, fielding stuff with Invulnerable Saves helps a bit more than it used to, because they’re no longer going to just melt to double Doombolt. In addition, if you have access to an 18” Lone Operative Stratagem, you can use it quite effectively to flummox the Thousand Sons if they try and concentrate fire on you. They also can’t do stuff like rocket across the table and switch on Indirect Fire via Stratagem any longer, so just stay hidden until the time is right. Let them kill your one random throwaway unit harder than anything has ever been killed. Not your problem. All of these also only last for the Phase, not the rest of the turn, so they’re never going to be able to equal their Shooting prowess in the Fight Phase. Use of Blood Surge (or similar) is another way to potentially cause them conniptions. More so than the old version of Rituals, they also have to be more careful about planning around your counterattack, so just holding powerful units back might give them pause. If they can throw 6-7 casters at this they’ll land them all, sure, but if that’s exposing their entire force to kill a few of your chaff units, then it can be an opportunity.
The other big change to watch out for is Transports – now they’re not spending points generated at the start of the turn, there’s simply no penalty for the Thousand Sons for using Transports to deliver their stuff. They can also use them to deliver a few Rituals very safely – Rhino drives up behind ruin, disembarks a Rubricae unit with a Leader, while leaving some of the regulars behind the wall, they cast two rituals, then another unit Temporal Surges them back into the Rhino, and who cares if they roll a 1 on the distance – they still meet the criteria to re-embark. This means that popping Rhinos is especially high priority, even if they’re further away than you might normally consider them to be an imminent threat.
Unit Changes
Okay so there are a massive number of unit changes in the new book, and I’m not going to re-list all of them here; go read the main review. Instead, here are some really key things you need to know about.
Things to Worry About More
Chip Damage
All the basic bolters are AP-2, just all the time, for fun. This means that they can do real chip damage into anything, especially with Destiny’s Ruin and especially with anything that gives Lethal Hits, which is nastiest from Terminator Sorcerers. Heavy bolters and autocannon-like things are also extremely good thanks to this, and while there aren’t too many things that can stack loads of heavy bolters, Predator Destructors are even better here than in most armies, as they can also boost their heavy bolters up to S6
Rubricae
Rubricae were already a top-tier Battleline unit, and on top of adding AP to their bolters, they also get free Ignore Cover from their Icon of Flame (which makes non-flamer units a bit more competitive), and the Aspiring Sorcerer now gets 3W to reflect his elite stature. Bear that in mind if you’re using D2 weapons and relying on wiping the unit.
Scarab Occults
Scarabs are better than ever now; not only do they benefit from additional AP on their guns and an extra wound on their Leader, they now also have effectively always on -1 to Wound against them. Technically there’s a condition that they have to have a PSYKER in the unit, but given the Squad Leader is one and can’t be Precisioned out, that’s entirely up to the Thousand Sons.
Tzaangor Enlightened
These are suddenly absurdly pushed – being real, there is zero chance their price tag survives the first Dataslate. Their bows are two shots each, S5, AP-2, D2, Lethal Hits, Precision, and although they only hit on 4s, you can easily fix that with Destiny’s Ruin. You can also have a unit with flat Lone Operative 18” all the time, because that’s now the Leader ability of Exalted Sorcerers on Disks, and they can lead Enlightened. 50pts for three of these or 80pts for 6 is way too low, and you might just see 3×6 of these in most armies. Characters beware.
Tzaangors
The ultimate utility unit, having Scout 6” and the build-in ability to go back into Strategic Reserves. (At least) one unit is a lock for every list. Worth noting that they can’t pull into Strategic Reserves if there are enemies within 6”, so you can pin them on the table if you push something at them.
Sekhetar Robots
These are kind of weird, but they’re very pushed price-wise, have native Infiltrate, and free Overwatch with a decent number of flamer shots, so one unit will probably sneak into plenty of builds
Predators
These are really, really good in Thousand Sons, and work a bit differently to their other incarnations. Here, if they’re shooting at something of their preferred target type (i.e. Vehicles/Monsters for Annihilators, everything else for Destructors) they get significant boosts to their effectiveness if the target has already been hit by either a Psychic Attack or Doombolt this phase. This can mean you want to keep your shooting platforms a bit further away than normal – while you won’t outrange a Predator, the psychic attacks that tee them up are generally a bit more short-ranged.
Defilers
These are just improbably better here than in all other Chaos armies, and are just a great all-rounder. Watch out for them.
Mutaliths
Same as they ever were, but better at boosting the army rule, and somehow cheaper again, give me strength. Minimum two in every list, let’s go.
Things to Worry About Less
Magnus the Red
Magnus has been a 100% auto-take in every Thousand Sons list up until now, and probably won’t be in the new book. He hasn’t actually changed that much, though has lost his +1 to Hit and Wound aura, so is a less effective force multiplier (gaining some base S on his shooting to partially compensate). The larger issue is how the rules around him have changed, most importantly Temporal Surge being capped at a 6” additional move, which stops him being able to be everywhere all at once, and Devastating Sorcery only being available to one of the Detachments, and more expensive. He’s not bad, and is an extra effective Ritual caster (he can do two at +2), and gets a major boost up close with his sweep moving to D2, so will still probably see a bit of use, but it’s now far more feasible to build great lists without him. In terms of facing him down, re-adjust to his new lower threat range, and remember that you can now meaningfully use -1 to hit effects against him.
Ritual Spammers
The new book is much more cautious about capping the value Rituals can provide – there’s no additional rituals that can burn off Cabal Points in other phases, and importantly only a single, once-per-game source of doubling up on a ritual (Doombolt). That means you don’t need to worry as much about Enhanced Characters and Ahriman teaming up to unleash a devastating go turn, and Ahriman is probably going to see less use in general (though his shooting attack does get considerably better).
Devastating Wounds (a Bit)
This book still has plenty of Devastating Wounds, but nowhere near to the degree the Index did, mostly because Magnus isn’t a lock, and even in the new version of the Index Detachment, army-wide Devastating on Psychic attacks is now a once-per-game treat.
How the Detachments Get You
Grand Coven
Grand Coven is the new version of the Thousand Sons Index Detachment, and it’s really good. The Detachment rule is that it has three army-wide buffs for Psychic Attacks that it can apply each of once per game, providing Devastating Wounds, +1 to Wound, or +6” range. That’s essentially two extra-murderous go turns, and one useful utility trick that can help smooth over some distances either early or late in the game. As you’d expect, they can also activate this for a unit for a turn using a Stratagem, so they can have at least one unit operating on peak power all the time. They can also go even further with the Devastating Sorcery stratagem, which is pricey at 2CP, but provides full hit and wound re-rolls on Psychic shooting and extra range, all in one package. This may not come up that often, as it’s really only Magnus who is all Psychic in his output, but it can also get over the line with some of the available Characters.
Characters are also helped here by some really nasty Enhancements, most notably the Eldritch Vortex of E’taph, which is just a rename of the Arcane Vortex from the Index that boosts the Strength and Damage of all the bearer’s Psychic weapons (ranged and melee). This is especially good on an Infernal Master, and even without it always being Devastating now, you’ll still see that guy a lot. There’s also some consideration for taking it on a regular Sorcerer now, as the combination of some tweaks to their weaponry and abilities and the fact it’s easy to get them re-rolls to hit means you could set up a truly nightmarish once-per-game pop-off with this. They also have the ever reliable Umbralefic Crystal to redeploy a unit once-per-game, and access to once-per-game double Doombolt.
This flashy stuff is rounded out by some great supporting Stratagems – they can re-roll a Ritual as long as they three 3d6 at it, a Psyker can sticky an objective, and they can blank damage on an attack after failing a save.
This comes together as an extremely good all-rounder Detachment that basically does everything the Thousand Sons need to thrive. There are other strong options in this book, but this would be a top-tier codex if literally only this one was printed.
Warpmeld Pact
This is the Detachment for MUTANTS, which are Tzaangors, Spawn and Mutalith Vortex Beasts. Regular Tzaangors get to be Battleline and OC2 here, making them even better utility bird-goats.
In terms of Detachment Rule, all Mutants can boost their durability when attacked, or their offensive power when they swing. In both cases, they can choose to take d3 Mortal Wounds, and then apply -1 to Wound to incoming attacks (for the phase) or +1 to Wound on outgoing attacks. The effectiveness of this obviously varies by unit role, and it’s kind of mediocre on small Tzaangor units and Enlightened, where d3 Wounds is a real impact. It is, conversely, wildly good defensively on Mutaliths, and you should not ever see this Detachment running less than the full three. It’s also pretty nice on Chaos Spawn, as they have a Feel No Pain to help tank the Mortals, and at T5 can make themselves super resilient to small arms with it. Finally, there’s absolutely some buff stacking you can do here to make an incredibly durable big Tzaangor unit, and -1 to Wound is obviously good there too. The +1 to Wound on outgoing is less impactful, but do watch out for it with the Mutalith’s Flamer on Overwatch, and on units of Enlightened that a Disk Character has joined.
Returning to the aforementioned Tzaangor doomstack, the accumulated buffs here can add up to -1 to be Hit and Wounded and a 4+ Invulnerable save, which yeah is a lot on a potential 20-model units that’s OC2 (and can Advance/Charge with another strat to get into the fray). Make sure to run the numbers before you bother trying to clear then, because they can also revive models via another Stratagem (d3+1 in the Command Phase).
That revival can help them sneakily flip objectives, and they have another cute and flavourful way to do this. When one of their Characters dies, they can use Gift of Change, which revives them as a one-model Chaos Spawn unit at the end of the phase. This can be a big problem for one-phase armies, as it means just shooting a Character off an objective isn’t enough to deny it. I think you’ll probably see a solo Tzaangor Shaman in builds of this, and if they appear to be suicidally standing on an objective, you can go ahead and assume this is why!
The last thing to watch out for here is the Twisted Mirage Stratagem, which allows a non-Monster MUTANT unit arriving from Strategic Reserves to arrive anywhere that’s >6” away instead of the normal limitations, at a cost of being able to charge. This is obviously excellent with the built-in uppy-downy that Tzaangors have, and helps lists built with this Detachment score really well. Technically Monsters can also use this to turn Strategic Reserves into a regular Deep Strike with no charge, but no one will ever do this.
Fundamentally, this is a scoring Detachment that’s going to appeal to anyone who wants to use semi-indestructible Mutaliths and those 60 Tzaangors that were hot in 8th. As with many scoring Detachments, the tradeoff is that the lethality is going to be a bit lower than normal (especially if you can shoot off their Enlightened), so you both can and should be a bit more aggressive to try and counter them.
Rubricae Phalanx
This Detachment is centered around the elite Infantry of the Thousand Sons, granting anything with the Rubricae Keyword (which notably extends to Scarab Occults) +1 to their Armour Saves against D1 attacks, with the classic All is Dust rule.
Since Scarabs are also really good now, you’re going to see lots of them here, and likely one unit is going to be a big 10-model one, because there’s an enhancement here to let those bad-boys Infiltrate. Make sure to use your own Infiltrators to zone this risk out if you can, and if not then work out how you’re going to deliver a heroic amount of damage to them. Technically this can also be used on Rubric Marines, and can even be applied to two units, but this won’t come up as much both because it’s not as funny, and because the units are picked before Leaders are attached, and attaching a Leader will stop this working as every model in a unit has to have Infiltrate for it to work.
If you can’t kill that big brick you are going to have some problems, because they’re a pain to shut down – the Detachment has Fall Back/Shoot and Advance/Shoot Stratagems it can throw at them, so you really need to either be sweeping them, or running and hiding. Smaller Terminator units might also include a Terminator Sorcerer with a powerful melee enhancement that gives them Sustained Hits d3 and Devastating Wounds (also nasty on an Infernal Master thanks to six flipping).
Regular Rubric Marines also get some love here, with powerful defensive stratagems that offer -1D against Shooting, and -1 to Wound in melee. The latter one does have unusual timing you should be aware of as an opponent – it’s triggered when you complete a Charge into the squad. This means they can’t use it in their turn, and also that you can potentially play chicken with them if you’re charging lots of things at once – make sure to ask “are you using the -1 to Wound Stratagem” after each Charge, and set up so you have multiple targets you can pick, allowing your units to pivot to another target if they activate this early. On the offence, they can do a fairly nasty combo out of a Rhino; Ensorcelled Ammunition returns as a Stratagem here, upping the strength of their bolters and making them Psychic, and the Thousand Sons Rhino has a special Fire Support-like ability for Psychic Attacks, allowing ten Rubricae with a Leader (perhaps a regular Sorcerer unleashing their once-per-game) to go hog wild.
As a final nasty trick, when you kill a PSYKER model in the Shooting Phase, a nearby Rubricae unit can shoot your unit back after your attacks are completed. Here’s the extremely nasty kicker – let’s imagine you have put one high damage attack into a squad of Rubricae with a nasty Leader. There is nothing stopping the Thousand Sons taking the hit on the Aspiring Sorcerer in the squad, choosing not to use their invulnerable save, and then popping this, because the death of the Aspiring meets the criteria to trigger it. That legitimately makes this significantly more dangerous than a lot of similar effects, so watch out for that possibility. Technically Scarabs can do that too, but it’s harder for them to guarantee the Aspiring dies due to the 2+ base save and 4W and the unit gets way worse if there are no Psykers in there.
This is, ultimately, a Detachment about big power plays, and there are plenty of players who enjoy that sort of thing. Learn what the power plays are (Infiltrating brick, Rhino wombo-combo, shoot back gotcha) and play around them accordingly.
Warpforged Cabal
It’s The Vehicle One! It’s a really good version of The Vehicle One. Vehicles get to re-roll a hit, wound and damage roll each time they Shoot and Fight when a Psyker is nearby, and have further access to +1 to Wound when shooting (which also makes their attacks Psychic, letting Predators tee each other up) and a reasonably good version of ignoring Modifers (covering almost everything except Damage). On the defensive, they also get Armour Of Contempt for Vehicles, which is super nice on Vindicators thanks to their native 2+ save.
There is a somewhat hilarious trade-off for the power, which is that if their Vehicles are near a Psyker, they Deadly Demise on a 5+. This can be an advantage if they’re using a melee vehicle in your face, but it is not optional, so if you can pop a few hulls quickly early on, you might get to do a bit of chain destruction. Savvy opponents may choose to start their Psykers just out of range early on, and move them into range when it’s time to strike.
Rounding out their tricks, the Detachment can sticky an objective via one of their Psykers, adding an extra Mortal Wound sting, and if you charge one of their Vehicles they can blast you with Warpflame Gargoyles for some Mortals and a Battle-shock test.
This is a very uncomplicated Detachment but also very potent, as the Thousand Sons Vehicle datasheets are very powerful, and there’s a great suite of rules for them here. If they’re running heavy on Defilers (and chances are they will be), it also offers them some melee reliability they struggle with elsewhere – most Thousand Sons re-rolls are Shooting only, but not the ones from this Detachment Rule.
Changehost of Deceit
It’s The Daemon One and it’s…kind of whatever. Scintillating Legions Characters can do Rituals if they’re near Thousand Sons, Thousand Sons get a 4+ Invulnerable Save against shooting if they’re near a Scintillating Legions Character. Unfortunately, the roster of Daemons you can actually take is very limited, and the only available Characters are Lords of Change (including Kairos), so you are spending big to turn this on at all, and not getting that much bang for your buck when you do so.
Beyond the Detachment rule there’s all the tricky stuff you’d expect – a reactive move for Scintillating Legions stuff, uppy-downy, Lone Op 18” for small Daemons, classic Tzeentch stuff. None of it is stuff that you can’t just do better by going for a pure Thousand Sons or Tzeentch Daemons army. The extreme utility value of Tzaangors and Enlightened mean that Thousand Sons do not need Daemon imports to close off some gaps in their capabilities as other Legions might. Meanwhile, if you’re going to spend big points on Lords of Change, why not have them no-scoping stuff from behind walls with the Daemon army rules active instead? Why not do that? About the only gotcha you need to worry about here that isn’t something you’d already be planning for against either of these armies is a Stratagem to give -2” to charges against a unit, which can be brutal for thwarting Deep Strikers. Otherwise, if you assume “Tzeentchy stuff” and play sensibly, nothing here is going to surprise you.
Wrap Up
Thousand Sons look set to take the metagame in a sorcerous storm, so we hope this article has helped you prepare to face them down. If you want to know even more about Thousand Sons, make sure to check out the main review.
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