Welcome back, Dear Reader! Two weeks ago I had a double-post week detailing my exploits at the March Asgard RTT, followed by a Crusade weekend with a bunch of the Goonhammer crew. The reason I powered out both of those before the weekend was because I was simultaneously preparing for another RTT, this time at Ettin Games.

Prepping a List

One of the things I swore I’d do after my last RTT was drop Magnus from my list. Despite being surprisingly useful in my games, his value was almost entirely tied to going up against less experienced players with armies that were unprepared for his nonsense, and a little bit of luck with his saves on top of that. While the Thousand Sons haven’t been winning any events in this new, completely fucked meta, they have been getting some X-1 results, and the lists I’m seeing do that run a lot of Terminators.

So I knew the first thing I wanted to do was trade out Magnus for more Terminators, adding a second unit of five. The other thing I needed was more Cabal points. I’ve settled on 13-14 as the number I need most games, as that lets me lose 1-2 but still power out a couple of effects, and most of the time I’ll want to do either “can’t be denied” or “+2 to cast” and the +1 CP actions with my units. This meant the Tzaangors had to go. They’re cheap but they aren’t doing enough and don’t even get me Cabal Points.

I also wanted to add a Daemon Prince. The DP is easier to protect than Magnus while still offering re-rolls and a decent (if unspectacular) melee combatant. He gives me a solid counterpunch when I need it against bigger targets.

Finally there’s the cult. I know I said I was going back to Duplicity, but I decided to give Time a second chance. I’ll come back to whether this was a mistake later, but ultimately I liked the Cult of Time synergy with the Terminators and the ability to bring back up to two models per turn and heal another with Rites of Coalescence.

OK all that said, I still didn’t have everything I needed painted and I knew I’d once again be bringing a subpar list thanks to my need to fill gaps. The good news is that a Defiler is an adequate substitute for a second Forgefiend – which I still hadn’t finished painting, so I’d only have to speed paint a few models to fill out a list that, in my estimation, is a marked improvement over the last one:

My List

++ Battalion Detachment 0CP (Chaos – Thousand Sons) [101 PL, 12CP, 13 Cabal Points, 1,999pts] ++

Cults of the Legion: Cult of Time

• HQ [23 PL, 8 Cabal Points, 435pts] +

Ahriman [8 PL, 3 Cabal Points, 160pts]: 11. Tzeentch’s Firestorm, 12. Twist of Fate, 21. Presage

Infernal Master [5 PL, 2 Cabal Points, 90pts]: 12. Glamour of Tzeentch, 5. Glimpse of Eternity, 6. Malefic Maelstrom

Thousand Sons Daemon Prince [10 PL, 3 Cabal Points, 185pts]: 13. Doombolt, 22. Swelled by the Warp, 3. Undying Form, Hellforged sword [10pts], Warlord, Wings [2 PL, 35pts]

• Troops [18 PL, 3 Cabal Points, 320pts] +

Rubric Marines [6 PL, 1 Cabal Points, 105pts]
. Aspiring Sorcerer [1 Cabal Points, 21pts]: 31. Empyric Guidance, Inferno Bolt Pistol
. 4x Rubric Marine w/ inferno boltgun [84pts]: 4x Inferno boltgun

Rubric Marines [6 PL, 1 Cabal Points, 110pts]
. Aspiring Sorcerer [1 Cabal Points, 26pts]: 12. Glamour of Tzeentch, Warpflame pistol [5pts]
. 4x Rubric Marine w/ inferno boltgun [84pts]: 4x Inferno boltgun

Rubric Marines [6 PL, 1 Cabal Points, 105pts]
. Aspiring Sorcerer [1 Cabal Points, 21pts]: 22. Weaver of Fates, Inferno Bolt Pistol
. 4x Rubric Marine w/ inferno boltgun [84pts]: 4x Inferno boltgun

• Elites [32 PL, 2 Cabal Points, 680pts] +

Scarab Occult Terminators [21 PL, 1 Cabal Points, 445pts]: 2x Hellfyre missile rack [20pts]
. Scarab Occult Sorcerer [1 PL, 1 Cabal Points, 55pts]: 23. Temporal Surge, Inferno combi-bolter, Rites of Coalescence [1 PL, 15pts]
. 7x Terminator [280pts]: 7x Inferno combi-bolter, 7x Prosperine khopesh
. Terminator w/ Heavy Weapon [45pts]: Soulreaper cannon [5pts]
. Terminator w/ Heavy Weapon [45pts]: Soulreaper cannon [5pts]

Scarab Occult Terminators [11 PL, 1 Cabal Points, 235pts]: Hellfyre missile rack [10pts]
. Scarab Occult Sorcerer [1 PL, 1 Cabal Points, 60pts]: 23. Temporal Surge, Ardent Automata [1 PL, 20pts], Inferno combi-bolter
. 3x Terminator [120pts]: 3x Inferno combi-bolter, 3x Prosperine khopesh
. Terminator w/ Heavy Weapon [45pts]: Soulreaper cannon [5pts]

• Fast Attack [3 PL, 69pts] +

Chaos Spawn [3 PL, 69pts]
. 3x Chaos Spawn [3 PL, 69pts]: 3x Hideous mutations

• Heavy Support [25 PL, 495pts] +

Defiler [10 PL, 175pts]: Defiler scourge [10pts], Reaper autocannon

Forgefiend [8 PL, 175pts]: 2x Heavy Hades autocannons [50pts], Ectoplasma cannon [15pts]

Mutalith Vortex Beast [7 PL, 145pts]

++++

The second unit of Terminators is only five models but they give me some additional versatility, and it’s not impossible to think I might teleport them in. At the very least I can move a unit around with the Umbralefic Crystal. This list is pretty flush with CP – that’s because I don’t love the Thousand Sons relics or Warlord Traits (particularly in Cult of Time) and so there’s no reason to spend a ton of them if I don’t have to. That’ll make it easier to spend the CP reducing the damage on incoming shooting later.

The downside to this list is that there was still a lot I had to paint. Ideally I’d have run a second unit of 10 Scarabs, but unfortunately I only had one box sitting around and nowhere near enough time to paint an entire squad of 10 in a week.

Hobby

Let’s talk about that painting project. Based on this army plan, I had two weeks to paint:

• A Daemon Prince
• An Infernal Master
• One Rubric Aspiring Sorcerer
• Five Scarab Occult Terminators
• One Chaos Spawn

That’s… a lot, but it’s doable. I can cut a a few corners here – I had already done some basecoats on an Infernal Master and the Aspiring Sorcerer, and if I didn’t take a Terminator Sorcerer I could use the model I converted up as the champion of the squad.

The Infernal Master

I decided to keep up the green OSL theme for the daemonic energy from my Forgefiend here, using it for the eldritch energy being conjured to summon some baby Screamers. Plus I did blue for the backpack flames. I’m happy with the effect overall.

The Rank-and-File Yabbos

These guys went pretty fast, with the Terminators finishing up the night before the event. Thousand Sons are not an army meant for a lot of speed painting, what with all the gold trim and the details on them, but I’m able to get them pretty close to the rest of the army.

The Daemon Prince

Now for the major project of the bunch. I actually put this guy together right before Crusade weekend and got him assembled with a little paint beforehand. The Daemon Prince plastic model is not particularly good – the details on it kind of stink – but the base of it is solid enough that it’s easy to convert and build around. For my conversion I want a Daemon Prince that’s much more avian, which means feathered wings and a beak. Finding big feathered wings that aren’t too big is a bit of a chore but in this case I find an extra Yndrasta on ebay – her wings are a great fit and she’s relatively cheap thanks to being in the Dominion boxed set.

The head is just an extra Lord of Change head – the plastic LOC comes with several so I pick one of the more regular options.

The Daemon Prince model doesn’t really have a neck so I sculpt one out of greenstuff. I’m not particularly great at sculpting but the neck just needs to be a bunch of tube-like shapes going back to the body. Muscle is kind of easy in that regard.

Next up is the tabard, which I augment with the belt buckle from Kairos Fateweaver. I’m planning to build a regular LoC with my kit so I can use the Kairos bits.

 

Once the tabard is done I do the wings; this is just a matter of putting greenstuff in place and then pushing the wings on; I’ll glue them into place with superglue later.

Now it’s on to the sword. For my money there are basically 3 things you can easily do to customize a Daemon Prince: Swap out the wings, swap out the head, and swap out the sword. So with two out of three down it’s time to finish the set.

I wanted the sword to be a Khopesh visually, to match the rest of the army. The easiest way to achieve this is to just cut my own sword, and I can do that with plasticard. I start by cutting the shape out of thick plasticard, then shaving down the front part to an edged blade and add some details.

That gives me a model I’m pretty happy with, especially when the wings are added. They’re big but not oversized, and the whole effect is pretty great. He’s big and obviously doing what he needs to be doing without being a chore to transport. Let’s paint this badboy.

I start with the Fang and work my way up to Reaper Snow Shadow and Ghost White. The Wings are blended from blue to Screamer Pink, then some edge highlighting on the wings really makes them pop. For the Khopesh I follow the scheme I’ve been doing on my Scarabs, doing a black-to-gray fade and washing it with Guilliman Blue. I add some runes along the blade for extra details.

I’m very happy with the results – he looks great and he passes in my opinion the key test of conversions: He looks like something you could plausibly expect GW to sell. With all of my last-minute painting done, it’s time to go to the RTT.

The RTT

Ettin had moved to a new, larger space, giving them the room to have up to 8 tables. The new space is well lit, open, and clean. Some of the tables are a little low, but I’ve been told they’re getting risers for them, and most of the terrain needs to be completely overhauled (I’ve partially been spoiled by Asgard using the GW layouts) – most of the terrain is too short and the first floors only measure 3″, while the side ruins are boxes that have to be traversed. But overall the venue is nice.

Game 1: vs. Dan’s Drukhari

Well if it isn’t Dan “Swiftblade” Richardson, my old arch-nemesis. We’re paired up in round 1 and I get to take on the latest iteration of his Drukhari. And as it turns out, I was in for a lot more than I bargained for this time around.

Dan's List - click to expand

Dan finished putting his new list together late the night before and it’s a nasty iteration of the lists I’ve already faced. It now sports a pair of Ravagers to pick off enemy targets at a distance, and a lot of fights last effects – so many, in fact, that I’ll walk right into a very bad situation midgame. Of course Dan tells me all this during the pregame but I, like an idiot, don’t pay any attention to that and almost lose the game as a result.

For the record, I love playing my friends at tournaments. It reduces all the pressure, and they’re always people I’m happy to play and be comfortable with in a much more loose fashion. And as always, Dan was awesome to play against.

The Mission: Tide of Conviction

Tide of Conviction has some weird objective placement and I’m still not 100% clear on how to deploy for it. The big thing here is to protect your center objective, but the terrain makes that relatively trivial for the most part, since the ruins are close enough that we can both put units out of line of sight to babysit our precious home marker.

My Secondaries

• Mutate Landscape
• To the Last – Both units of Scarab Occult Terminators and the Daemon Prince
• Bring it Down

Dan’s Secondaries

• Abhor the Witch
• Herd the Prey
• Raise the Banners

Theoretically Cult of Time should make TTL a better pick for me, but as will be the case, I play too aggressively with my scarabs to get away with it. Dan’s army really resists kill secondaries, but the best I can do here is Bring it Down, which can max at 12 and that’s probably my best bet. Mutate Landscape can also be a relatively easy 12 points here on a 6-objective map.

I’m Going Second.

 

I actually don’t hate it this time. Yeah, it means some free ravager shots on my stuff potentially, but I’m able to deploy really aggressively . Fortunately the terrain gives me enough hiding room that I can avoid that and don’t catch any turn 1 charges.

This game ends up being a tale of two fronts: On the right side, my five Scarabs pair with the Forgefiend, Spawn, and a unit of five Rubrics to take out a raider and its Incubi contents, eventually sweeping up the board and scoring me some much-needed points.

On the other side, I press forward with my Mutalith and Scarabs – in part to avoid giving up a ton of Herd points – but end up walking right into a facefull of Fights Last effects from the Incubi and the Haemonculus, which means my Scarabs get cut down much faster than I expected. It’s not great, and I really need to learn to play more conservatively with Scarabs – I’m too used to blightlords. This costs me 5 points on To the Last, but it does save me 4 on Herd and prevents Dan from scoring another 4 so on the balance it actually works out for me points-wise.

If I get a break, it’s that the Mutalith exploded when it was killed (though remember that’s a 4+), taking out a good chunk of models with him and whittling the Haemonculus down to the point where he could be killed. Dan’s vehicles did the rest – while Dan rolls more 6s on FNPs than anyone I know, he also rolls more 6s to explode, and so did some of the work for me there.

In the end, Dan’s able to pick up the Mutalith, the Defiler, the big unit of Scarabs, one unit of Rubrics, and the Daemon Prince. The problem is that’s only 7 points for Abhor. On the last turn I’m able to power forward and take the objective in his deployment zone to score 14 for primary on the turn (12 + 2 bonus), and that puts me just over with a 71-70 win.

Result: 71-70, Win

That was close! Dan has gotten way better and we’ve come a long way from the days when beating him was a foregone conclusion. There are definitely some things I could have done better during the game, and I’m looking forward to playing Dan again in practice.

 

Game 2: vs. Joseph’s Crusher Stampede

Crusher Stampede is rough, but I learned a shitload playing against them in my last event. First, I learned that Psychic Interrogation was a mistake, and so is Wrath of Magnus. I need to focus my efforts elsewhere. Second, I need to be careful about screening, but the shooting isn’t so big a deal I can’t afford to be in the open.

This particular table has some of the roughest terrain at the event in my estimation, with large structures that block movement on every single ruin. Only the ruin in the lower left (above) has a real carve-out, so when I win the roll-off I choose that table corner to give myself some hiding room. That’s probably the most important decision I made all game.

Joseph's List - Click to Expand

Good lord, that’s a lot of beef. Joseph has two Dimachaerons and three Scythed Heirodules in the list, and plans to make regular work of the breakthrough stratagem to drop 6 mortal wounds on everything he charges. It’s a rough challenge to get through all of it, and turn 1 is going to be critical.

The Mission: Death & Zeal

This puts the least distance between us of any deployment map – not great! The big upside I have is that the Crusher Stampede units can’t advance and charge without help from a psychic power and I’m hoping to deny the shit out of that. I end up deploying two units of Rubrics with Risen Rubricae near the no man’s land objectives – the plan is to capture those early for extra points and then force Joseph to split his army a bit so all the meat isn’t bearing down on my home objective.

My Secondaries: 

• Bring it Down
• Stranglehold
• Mutate Landscape

Joseph’s Secondaries:

• Grind Them Down
• Stranglehold
• Psychic Interrogation

Bring it down is a no brainer for me and while I probably should have taken Engage on All Fronts, I go with Stranglehold instead. yes we both have it, but it’s weird in that we can both just keep scoring it. Mutate Landscape is my consolation here. I think I can pull 9 points on it easy and just hope that’s enough. Meanwhile Joseph opts for Psychic Interrogation as his third secondary, which is a big mistake – I can keep my characters close and use the Psychic Dominion Stratagem to continually deny interrogation using 3D6, and trading 1 CP for 3 VP is a trade I’ll make all day.

I’m Going Second.

Again, I don’t mind this so much, as I haven’t left Joseph with any turn 1 charges. Unlike my Death Guard, who really want the extra turn of movement, the Thousand Sons play much more reactively, and so aren’t desperate to have the first move. That said, they do really want first turn to throw up defensive buffs, but those aren’t as necessary against Crusher Stampede.

Joseph opens by moving his Stampede across the table and picking up Stranglehold, and he charges forward to kill my Mutalith, which I deployed too aggressively (damn). Fortunately it doesn’t explode. Then it’s my turn and my dice get hot at the right time, making it a little easier for me to pick up both Dimachaerons on turn 1. I still had a bit of shooting left when the second one dropped, but it was good to take them both out, and frees me way up to think about other targets.

On Turns 2 and 3 my attention turns to the Heirodules and the dice even out. I’m able to kill two of them using mortal wounds and shooting, but not until they wipe out my Defiler and Forgefiend, plus a unit of Chaos Spawn. I end up using the Umbralefic Crystal to teleport a unit of 5 scarabs to Joseph’s home objective, where they harass the tyranid warriors off the objective and force him to turn around with his last Heirodule, opening up the center objective. On the last turn things get a bit puzzle-oriented but I’m able to advance Ahriman to the center objective to hold it (needed a 3+ advance, which I got on the re-roll), and kill the Swarmlord on the topleft objective to max Primary on turn 5 and get over the hump on Bring it Down. I max Bring it Down, pull 9 on Mutate Landscape, and 12 on Stranglehold, while Joseph pulls 6 on Grind, 15 on Stranglehold, and only 3 on Psychic Interrogation.

Result: 86-75, Win

Alright, I’m starting 2-0 for the first time this year. Feels good, but now comes the real heat: My options in round 3 are either Custodes or Harlequins, and neither is a good matchup for me. I’d rather play Colin McDade’s Harlequins, all things considered – the ability to toss out mortal wounds to bypass their 4+ invulnerable saves is much more sure than trying to do the same thing through Custodes, and they’re easier to wound.

 

Game 3: vs. Connor’s Custodes

This is not a good matchup for me. In fact, it’s downright miserable – the entirety of the game essentially comes down to whether the Custodes player can tank 4+ saves against mortal wounds.

Connor's list - click to expand

The big thing here is that Connor is running Inquisitor Draxos, which seems like a mistake. It opens me up to take Wrath of Magnus, and if I can just get 1 model per turn with my Thousand Sons, I should be able to score that. Still, that’s a big ask.

The Mission: Secure the Relics

AKA new priority targets. This one benefits Custodes – and Connor gets the best of me on this one – by creating a situation where it’s possible to just move three objectives close to each other and create a nice little murder triangle for Custodes to operate in. It sucks, and there isn’t a ton I can do to prevent at least two objectives from being close to each other.

My Secondaries:

• Wrath of Magnus
• Psychic Interrogation
• Assassination

Connor’s Secondaries: 

• Grind them Down
• Stranglehold
• Auric Mortalis

The Auric target here is my 10-model unit of Scarabs. Hopefully I can kill 2-3 units with them before they go down, but we’ll see. I’m hoping to score Wrath at least three times, but I think 4 could be doable. Assassination is a long shot but I don’t have many good options otherwise.

I’m going first.

That’s not bad – it means I can get up some of my psychic defenses early and try and whittle down a few models.

I open up by using Umbralefic Crystal to teleport a unit of scarabs to the bottom right objective where they can hopefully draw some of the heat from the rest of the army. They go aggressive against the Custodians and, after some re-rolls and CP, manage to kill a single Custodian in the unit with psychic powers. They’d manage to survive the Vertus Praetors coming in and would then follow up by failing to take those down, leaving one on a single wound the following turn as well.

The whole game would be like this, with Connor making 2/3 of his 4+ feel no pain saves, keeping models around on 1 wound and essentially blanking me on Wrath of Magnus most turns. As a result, the game was a miserable slog as I watched units cling to the board and systematically wipe mine off it. The same would happen with the Emperor’s Champion and the Allarus, and the bikes’ salvo launchers would make quick work of all of my bigger models. This time the Mutalith did explode, and took out a terminator with it.

Otherwise, with lots of mobility and the ability to just pick up any of my units at any time, there wasn’t much I could do here. I was tabled on turn 4, and we talked it out from there.

Result: 47-95, Loss

 

A tough loss but it is what it is – I knew going in that if I won my first two games I’d almost certainly lose my third. There’s something particularly joyless about going up against Emperor’s Chosen with Thousand Sons where you know your army’s primary method of doing damage will be shrugged off half the time, but I’m pretty sure Harlequins would have tabled me as well, and potentially done so a turn or two earlier. Despite being on one of the top two tables, I end up placing 8th, because the event was using Wins > battle points for the final standings and scoring 47 points in round 3 means I place below everyone else with 2 wins. Cool.

 

What’s Next

More practice games. Like everyone, I’m eagerly awaiting the balance dataslate, and I’ll be testing out new armies for Dallas at the end of the month. Lists aren’t due until April 27th, so I have time to figure some things out there. I’ll probably have one more quick update next week and then one right before Dallas. After that, we’ll see. I still have a ton of work to do on my Thousand Sons and at this point I think the next step is to get five more Scarabs painted. Still not sold on Cult of Time, either – may go back to Duplicity for the redeploy. I also need to do some test games on player-placed terrain again, so that’s next on my list.

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