Armies of the Thousand Sons

As usual, while just rummaging around my usual social media hangouts, I saw this post from the Warhammer Community website. It's a post featuring the armies of the Thousand Sons and introducing a few of the new detachments and formations.

First up, the post begins with the usua Combined Arms Detachment, which you can tailor accordingly to create a Thousand Sons flavored Combined Arms Detachment. As you probably know by now (if you're familiar with Chaos Space Marines armies), in the vanila Chaos Space Marines codex you can take Thousand Sons (or Rubric Marines) as your Elites choice, but that's about it. So you can still take the new Thousand Sons units as featured in the Traitor Legions codex supplement or use the new datasheets for your new Thousand Sons models in your current Chaos Space Marines army if you sod desire.

However, why would you want to do that?

Raiders of Lost Knowledge

Rubric Marines

The whole point of receiving all these new Traitor Legions codex supplements and Wrath of Magnus rules is to field your own Thousand Sons army! Otherwise we wouldn't be bothered updating these models. And there's a huge advantage in doing so - by creating a purely Thousand Sons force, your sorcerer-Marines get a load of enviable bonuses, and this applies to any formation AND Combined Arms Detachment. So long as you meet the requirements of a Thousand Sons Detachment, you can still field nothing but Thousand Sons and get their bonuses. For example, you can take Rubric Marines as Elites and field Tzaangors as your Troops choice because they get Objective Secured. This means your Thousand Sons detachment still get the Blessing of Tzeentch, Blood Feud and Legacy of the Rubricae rules. Hooray. Don't ask me what those are, though. I have no idea myself, and I'll find out for you guys when I receive my Wrath of Magnus books.

Oh, by the way, you can take Rubric Marines as your Troops choice, so if you're not fond of Tzaangors, you can just take Rubric Marines as Troops to fulfill your normal Combined Arms Detachment requirements. Hip hip hooray. Speaking of which, if Ahriman is your Warlord, he seems to grant your army Infiltrate, or at least infantry units anyway. The Warhammer Community post jokes about Infiltrating 20 Rubric Marines into your opponent's Deployment Zone on turn 1, but I'm pretty sure there's the 12" out of sight rule and 18" within sight rule that you've to take into account, so no abuse of Infiltration there.

Lords of the Silver Towers

Tzaangor Warherd

The next section the Warhammer Community post features the Lords of the Silver Towers because apparently each Exalted Sorcerer is the Lord of a Silver Tower. What does that mean? Apparently once per game each Exalted Sorcerer has the ability to lay down a S9 AP2, lance, heavy 1 blast template with unlimited range and I think target doesn't need to be in line of sight. Something like the Orbital Bombardment from your Master of Ordnance in the Imperial Guard Company Command Squad. I'll let you guys know the full, precise rules when I get Wrath of Magnus. Anyway, this is neither here nor there, the focus is the Tzaangor Warherd featured above.

Apparently, if you want to play horde style with your Thousand Sons because you kind of hate how elite and how few in numbers they are, and like me you're used to fielding hordes of cheap bodies (Imperial Guard, baby!)...well, actually I'm different because I field armor companies filled with tanks, so never mind. In any case, you do have the option to field masses of Tzaangors because each of these guys are only 7 points each - 8 if you give them an autopistol. Why would you want to do that? Because Rubric Marines are extremely expensive at 23 points per model - more than 3 times the cost of a Tzaangor.

So if you prefer to build a small elite force of nothing but psykers and screw the Rubric Marines, you can actually just build an army with a lot of Sorcerers/Exalted Sorcerers and a lot more Tzaangors. Yay. The Warhammer Community recommends that you make use of the smaller formations in the book, such as the War Coven and Tzaangor Warherd, because Exalted Sorcerers and Tzaangors are at their best at this. This allows you to spam ridiculous psychic powers and still have the numbers of bodies to capture objectives. Hoo-rah!

Legion at War

Sekhmet Conclave

Next up is the Legion at War section, which is the one I am (and probably everyone else) very interested in. This features the Sons of Magnus Detachment, which is the way you want to play Thousand Sons in larger games (and I only play large games, so yay for me). Like any other themed detachment like my Cadian Battle Group, the Sons of Magnus Detachment is composed of many smaller formations (all useful) that grants overall command benefits such as bolstering your psychic powers of all your warriors within these formations.

Warhammer Community, as usual, recommends that you bring along Magnus in these really big games because he's a beast, quite frankly. I think you remember my post on his stats and stuff the other day, just look to that to have an idea how broken he is (he still gets squashed by a Strength D weapon though, if you roll a 6). The Warhammer Community likes the Sekhmet Conclave the most because you get to field Magnus in it PLUS a horde of Scarab Occult Terminators, and potentially boost Magnus's toughness to 8. Or you can replace Magnus with any of his chief Lieutenants such as Ahriman or an Exalted Sorcerer, up to you. In any case, this formation makes him a beast, and you can tailor your Sons of Magnus Detachment accordingly.

That's all the post had, and don't worry. Once I get my hands on the actual book next week (I think), I'll cover all the formations and do an in-depth analysis. I think I'll also cover the Tzeentch Daemons formations as well to complete the thing, I always had a soft spot for Tzeentch after all.

Emperor willing, the book should arrive sometime next week (it's officially released on 3rd December, this Saturday), so look forward for more updates then! FOR THE EMPEROR! Don't worry, the Thousand Sons are still loyal to the Emperor...who am I kidding...