Welcome back, Dear Reader, to my ongoing hobby and competitive progress series for 2025. Previously on Road Through 2025, I had started work on my display board for the World Championships. This week I decided to get another game in as I continue to plug along on my Emperor’s Children. It’s a slow time as I gear up for the Challengers Cup Teams event next week and while last time I promised more prep work well, the updated dataslate kind of changed all of that for most of the team.
On that note, the new Q3 Balance Update is out, and it came out a little earlier than expected thanks to an errant app update for the 40k app. The Balance update dropped some major changes for every faction except the one I’m taking to Challengers Cup (Death Guard), so that was at least a relief – I don’t have to change anything in my list, and can continue to just mortar people to death as I please. Good times.
What did change for a faction I play is Thousand Sons – there were some point increases, some decreases, a nerf to Rituals, and a sidegrade/buff to Terminator Sorcerers. It’s a downgrade in the sense that it no longer buffs the whole army, but an upgrade if you’re taking the Sorcerer as part of a big unit of Scarabs. And as someone who has painted 20 Scarabs, that’s right up my alley.
So I sat down and made a list, blissfully unaware that points hadn’t yet updated in my app, having been rolled back and then rolled forward again. This… ended up not being that big a deal, as I ended up only being 5 points over when I updated the app and saw the new points today. That’s easy enough to figure out, and I think I’ll be switching Detachments anyways after this. More on that in a bit.
My List - click to expand Thousand Sons CHARACTERS Ahriman Exalted sorcerer Infernal Master Sorcerer in Terminator Armour Sorcerer in Terminator Armour Tzaangor Shaman BATTLELINE Rubric Marines x5 Rubric Marines x5 Rubric Marines x10 DEDICATED TRANSPORTS Chaos Rhino OTHER DATASHEETS Scarab Occult Terminators x10 Scarab Occult Terminators x10 Mutalith Vortex Beast Tzaangors x10
Rubricae Phalanx
2,005 (!!) Points
– Lord of the Rubricae
– Risen Rubricae
– Warpflamers
– Warpflamers
– Bolters
Scarabs getting cheaper along with the change to Terminator Sorcerers is what I’m here for, and I’m eager to try the list out and see how it does. I really want to make the Rubricae detachment work – that +1 to saves against 1 damage ability seems so cool, and it has some solid Stratagems and Enhancements to work with.
Test Game: vs. Maxi_the_Pigasus’ Tyranids
Max’s list was an Invasion Fleet Tyranids list running a Hive Tyrant, Norn Emissary, Tyrannofex, two Exocrines, a big unit of Zoanthropes with Neurothrope, a Maleceptor, a Screamer Killer, a Biovore, two units of Termagants, a unit of Hormogaunts, and a pair of Lictors. It’s not the kind of list I want to take on with mine, as it’s got a lot of big, beefy units to try and take down and while I have [LETHAL HITS] I’m still wounding these big monsters on 6s, and they also all do 2+ damage, which more or less makes my detachment ability worthless. The Exocrines are particularly nasty.
The Mission: Take and Hold + Tipping Point
We joke a lot about Max being a “punching bag” but his list brought the heat this week. At least, it definitely brought some dice heat, and early on he got some nasty drops on me, killing nine of my Scarabs in one go. That’s partly on me – my plan here was to infiltrate a big brick, then redeploy them with Ahriman for some cheap screening and shenanigans. I didn’t hide the brick well enough after, and getting caught out by an Exocrine isn’t great. What also wasn’t great was failing nine of my eleven 4+ saves against Exocrines to lost most of the squad. I wipe the Hormagaunts before they can get to my lines, but I’m really feeling the lack of Devastating wounds here. I focus down the Norn Emissary on the middle objective but my Mutalith blanks his wound roll into the Tyrannofex.
On Max’s turn he one-shots the MVB with a huge damage roll from the Tyrannofex, and it then explodes and takes out a few more of my models with it. Not great! On my turn he pops Shadow in the Warp and blanks me on the top objective when I fail my Battle-shock test with the big unit of Rubrics, who stay stuck in combat as a result with his Maleceptor – this is a huge development for Max as they can’t use their Stratagem to fall back and shoot and are just kind of hanging there for a turn. They don’t get much done in shooting, either. Again, the lack of dev wounds and extra buffs on psychic attacks feels real tangible here when I need to push damage through with the Infernal Master and can’t (also fun: He failed his first hazardous roll).
I drop the Screamer-Killer and an Exocrine on my turn and bring in the other brick of Scarabs behind the Zoanthropes but don’t do as much damage as I need. We have to call this one early but it’s in a weird spot – I think I have a better board state but Max has a solid lead and has had better secondary objectives. If my Rubrics can weather a turn of shooting from the wounded Exocrine and remaining Zoanthropes I’ll be OK but it’ll depend on dice. The game is far from a foregone conclusion and there’s a good chance Max would have won this one.
As far as the Ritual changes go, well I didn’t even notice. I had OK but not amazing rolls and pushed several times. I did note that I’d need to push to get something through instead of trying again, but that honestly felt fine. Ahriman was a key piece to this with his built-in +1 and I used the +1 on channeling with the MVB before it blew up. And the Terminator Sorcerer here felt better in that he was helping his unit, but also meant that he no longer hand much reason to take the +1 to hit Enhancement, which I put on the Exalted Sorcerer instead.
And a big reason is that I don’t think the Detachment is very good – there’s just too much 2+ damage firepower out there to make the Detachment ability relevant. Infiltrating Terminators is cute, but that could have just been the Umbralefic Crystal and I’d have been fine. The Terminators here are interesting – they really don’t feel near as good without that combo of Ensorcelled Infusion + dev wounds they used to have and that makes for a brutal downgrade. That said, they’ve started to show up in Grand Coven lists competitively and I think it’s worth transplanting over part of the list for that reason. When I run this next I’ll likely look at a 10man unit with the crystal and a terminator sorcerer supported by an MVB and Forgefiend.
My next list attempt will be a Grand Coven list that looks something like this:
CHARACTERS
Magnus
Infernal Master x/Vortex
Sorcerer
Terminator Sorcerer w/Crystal
BATTLELINE
2×5 Rubrics
OTHER DATASHEETS
2x MVB
Forgefiend
10x Scarabs
6x Bow Tzaangor Enlightened
Tzaangors
That clocks in at 1,995 points and while it might be a bit too elite, I think it’s worth trying. 20 terminators feels like too many in the Grand Coven detachment. This has more juice than the Rubricae detachment and I don’t think I got to take advantage of the Detachment’s +1 to saves a single time in my game against Max. So when you see me play Thousand Sons next, it’ll likely be with Grand Coven. I really wanted to run the Rubricae Detachment but it just doesn’t quite have the pieces it needs – not enough synergy.
Hobby Progress
I finished another Noise Marine, and now I’m going back to working on some rank-and-file guys for a bit. I need to get a squad of Infractors done now and replace the shoulder pads on the squad I already painted – the freehand icons there look fine but are out of place compared to the rest of the army. Fortunately I have an extra set of icon shoulder pads in one of my Noise Marine sprues, as one of my four Noise Marine units are going to become Black Legionaries.
These guys are a bit of a slog but I’m making progress here, albeit slowly. The next goal is to finish up my second squad of Tormentors and then from there go back to Infractors and the second Rhino. I may need to look at a Maulerfiend at some point in the next few weeks as well and the change to Flawless Blades put those on my radar – I have three assembled I might paint, but I’m not 100% sure yet on whether I want to run them. They’re still very expensive.
Next Time: Final Prep for Challengers Cup
OK so next will be my actual, final prep for Challengers Cup as we finalize lists and build a matrix. I don’t really have any painting I have to do for the event so I’m in the solid position of just kicking back and getting ready while working on other stuff. As always, there are some embargoed models in there I’m painting but you’ll see those eventually and they won’t take too much out of my Emperor’s Children painting time.
See you next Thursday.
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