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hi everyone!
listen, i was flicking through my chaos marine codex and wondered if thousand sons could be
compeitive since there too slow and too expensive are they a fesible army in 5th edition
if you know how to make them cometitive please tell me

not really. They fethed by the new cover saves of 5th ed. Their strenghts is AP3 and 4++ but everyone and their mother have a 4+ cover save which negates their inv save and against most opponents their AP3 too

A pure TS army may eventually not be competitive.
But a TS unit can be an important element in a larger CSM army if it faces an MEQ enemy. It adds some flexibility and flavor to the army.

Simple answer is no.

In the 'Ard tournament arena, a pure Thousand Sons army will not be a world shaker as they are not the most powerful build in the codex.

The efficacy of Inferno Bolts is highly situational. If the situation doesn't present itself because of facing the wrong army list, being in the wrong terrain, or other tactical considerations then you have paid a premium of points for units that are not getting their maximum utility.

The short of it is that Thousand Sons excell when firing at MEQ which are inside of 12" and are not in cover. The number of times you can arrange this situation will be directly proportional to their effectiveness.

They are very useful. Don't drink the cool aid. AP3 bolters than can move and shoot at 24" is awesome.

People cite terrain as the reason they are not great, but if you are playing chaos you should be fielding a lash or two.

Lash can pull units out of cover which makes them very susceptible to AP3 fire.

They are also much more resistant in hth and shooting in some scenarios than the much toted plague marine.

I strongly believe top CSM list build could easily include a single unit of K sons in a rhino.

The thing is, if you're playing Lash, you've got Obliterators that will do the exact same thing, only better, and remain viable against a wider range of opponents. This makes 1k Sons redundant, and expensively so. For shooting, Oblits generally do better in almost all situations. For combat, Berzerkers, and for holding/contesting objectives, Plague Marines.

This unit isn't terrible, but you can take other options that do the same thing, only better or more efficiently.

Obliterators have a better weapon, but they are fairly hit or miss when if comes to hitting MEQ squads. 20 ap 3 shots hitting on a 3+ is going to yield more consistent results.

As for more efficient, it depends on how you look at it. One squad of Ksons fills a lot of the roles that it takes a squad of obliteraters and a squad of plague marines to cover.

So for roughly the same points you get a lot more scoring wounds that are uniquely resilient to power weapons and low ap weapons. Plus the psychic powers in the K son squad can be game changeing.

For example wind of chaos or gift of chaos, or the force weapon.

I've moved away from all Plague marines in my chaos list. It makes the army very rock paper scissors. I actually prefer a mix of a k son, plague marines and a berserker squad.

I also use oblits, which are awesome but honestly are very equal to k sons pt for pt, against SMs.

Pete

The problem with Thousand Sons shooting is that it is inferior against even MEQ to Noise Marines with Sonic Blasters in every scenario except the aforementioned 'less than 12" and outside of cover' situation.

At 24" of range the TS will get one shot at AP3 while the Noise Marines will get 3 shots without AP3. Thus they will average the same number of wounds. If the enemy is in cover, the NM get even better as the Inferno Bolters will have to overcome a 4+ cover save. Even within 12" the NM are better if the enemy is in cover.

Thousand Sons can tarpit a dreadnought fairly effectively but will not have much chance of destroying it since they can't have a powerfist.

Plague Marines are unquestinably tougher against most weapons in the game (small arms). Berzerkers are very much superior in close combat. Noise Marines are excellent ranged combatants that even have an extra boost in close combat.

Thousand Sons are also specialized but require much more specialized circumstances to pay off. When facing horde armies (Orks, IG) they are a liability. While the other cults (esp PM and NM) are good Troops in most situations the TS are not. This is why they are not competitive - because they are expensive and are only sometimes worth the points.

I thought we were assuming a Lash prince here.

20 shots from 1k sons on lashed marines = 6-7 wounds within 12"

3 plasma lobs from Oblits = 6-18 wounds within 36", also useful versus horde, vehicles, and MCs

You can run 1k sons, but they're not optimized. Optimization is something that competitive lists demand.

The OP didn't even state that Lash was assumed. In fact, he stated that he wanted to know if a Thousand Sons army was competitive. If the whole army is Thousand Sons then I don't think a DP with Lash is usable.

It's an interesting question, my knee-jerk reaction is that a "thousand sons" army would be weak, (too specialized in anti-MEQ), while having one of your units be Thousand Sons is fine.

The modern competitive CSM army looks something like this:

3 Heavy Support slots, filled with 2-3 oblits or a Defiler.
4 Troop choices in rhinos
2 Lash bearing HQ's, either flying princes or sorcerers who go in the rhinos.

Locally, the thing I've seen in the rhinos most often is Berserkers, with a Plague Squad to park on an objective and shoot plasma rifles out the top hatch. I think a Kson squad w/Warptime sorcerer toting melta bombs would compare favorably with a Berserker squad led by Pfist champ.

Let's do a direct comparison:

Call it 9 Berserkers + Pfist champ (250 points) vs. 9 Ksons + Warptime Sorcerer w/ melta bombs (297 points? Roughly? Not sure precisely)

Attacks Vs. MEQs (presume Berserkers shoot pistols + charge, while Ksons warptime, then rapid fire + charge)

B: Pistols 10 shots, 20/3 hit, 10/3 wound, 20/9 kills. Charge 36 attacks, 24 hit, 16 wound, 16/3 kills. Fist 4 attacks, 8/3 hits, 40/18 kills = 20/9 kills. Total kills 40/9 + 48/9 = 88/9 kills. So, roughly 10 kills?

Ksons: Bolters 18 shots, 12 hit, 6 kills, pistol gives 8/9 * 3/4 = 2/3 of a kill. Charge 18 attacks, 9 hits, 4.5 wounds, 1.5 kills, Sorcerer swings 4 times, hits 3, kills 2.25, overall result is like 10.33 kills?

Seems like we can call this equal, both of them do enough to smother an MEQ unit that they hop out of a rhino and bushwhack.

Continue-ing combat Vs. MEQ's

Each Berserker will swing 3 times, hit 2, wound 1, so every 3 berserkers is one dead marine. By contrast, each Kson will swing once, hit .5, wound .25, so every 12 Ksons is one dead marine. The Berserker sarge will swing 3 times, hit twice, wound 10/6, while the Warptime sorcerer will swing 3 times, hit 9/4, wound 27/16, so they both are likely to kill 2 guys a round, and can dish out instant death to enemy characters.

Thus, unsurprisingly the Berserkers have a clear edge in combats that become protracted.

Resisting overwhelming force:

Sometimes enemies dish out damage in such a way as to deny the Space Marines a chance to fight back, basically with an overwhelming charge at I5 or greater that inflicts power weapon wounds. In such situations the question is the Berserkers I5 vs. the Ksons 4+ invulnerable save. The Berserkers will take only 3/4 as many hits/wounds as the ksons, while the ksons will take only half as many wounds as the Berserkers.

So if the enemy has both power weapons and ws 5, advantage Ksons (Khornate units)
If they have just ws 5, advantage Berserkers (Wulfen)
If they have just power weapons, advantage Ksons (can't think of one, maybe banshees)
If they have ws >5 and power weapons, strong advantage Ksons (special characters, khornate HQs, etc.)

Once again, unsurprisingly, the Ksons are better at taking an enemy charge and holding for a round or so

Fighting Walkers:

Berserkers have an effortless edge if the walk is only AV10, (sentinels, war walkers), while the bigger walkers are more dicy.

Ksons take half the wounds, and have a warptiming meltabomb (so 11/36 hits, mostly pen, 8/9 will pen, so like 1/4 of a pen on a dread) while Berserkers have 3 attacks with a ws 5 pfist, so 2 hits, 2/3 of a pen on a dread? I'd say the Berserkers have the edge on a Dread or Kan, while the ksons have the edge on a Soul Grinder or Ironclad. Death Co Dreads and Defilers are tossups, as the Berserkers really start to feel the lack of invul saves.

Then both sides have certain edges that don't require a comparison:

Berserkers:
Getting to objectives in the last minute scramble (not being S&P can be useful when the Rhino gets blown up)
Rarely route the enemy with shooting and miss their charge (Ksons, often cause a casualty test with their rapid fire)
Ripping apart rhinos and other tanks w/ armor 10 in the rear
Retaining effectiveness if the sarge goes down

Ksons:
Doing anything beyond 12"
Blitzing fragile things that fight hard and fast but are fragile, as moving the balance of the wounds to shooting will cut down on the pre I4/5 attacks (Harlequins, Genesteakers, Daemonettes, Howling banshees, etc.)
Shooting from the Rhino if you are in parking lot formation
Surviving Lash + template weapons, or just template weapons


So that's my analysis. I think it justified the Kson as a peer to the Berserker unit, slightly more effective but also slightly more expensive. As with almost any scenario where you have 2 units that are roughly equivalently effective overall, but have a widely varying set of strengths and weaknesses, I'd say the wisest choice would be to take one (or more) of each, and use deployment to get them where they need to be.

That's 229 points of Berzerkers against 274 points of Thousand Sons. Not exactly an even match (45 point difference)!

I think its sad that the Thousand Suns have been getting the short end of the stick for so long. The gun is nice, but way too situational to ever be really effective.

I just played a Thousand Suns army with my Ork Battlewagon list in a thousand point battle, and I feel almost guilty the the ensuring horror.

I used the rhino payload as the standard unit of CSM troops. Those points (not sure you've got the right # of them, either) could probably let you have one more Oblit somewhere, but I think the other considerations raised are much more important from a list perspective.

The problem with comparing Thousand Suns only to Khorne is that there are two other cult troop choices available. I don't know if you did it on purpose or not but you left out what are widely considered the two best of the four for general utility. I don't see the benefit in figuring out what the third best option is.

You also are only talking about fighting MEqs while simultaneusly arguing for a balanced list. Those numbers would be wildly different against orks or tau, for instance.

Plague Marines with Meltaguns and a powerfist can at least be serviceable against anything in the game while still being rock hard. They seem almost underpriced to me for how much awesome you get out of them.

Something like this is completely competitive:

Chaos Sorceror, MOT, warp time + another power
10 Possessed, Mark of Tzeentch
2 x 9 Thousand Sons, Wind of Chaos, Rhino + Extra Armor
20 Lesser Daemons
Land Raider, Possessed
2 X 2 Obliterators

This is a completely viable list. You can easily win 4 out 5 games in any tourny and would probably be competitive with lash lists simply becasue you would probably get close to perfect comp.

It's obviously a better list with lash, but not a bad list regardless. It's a fricken pain to kill an army like this. Everything has an invulnerable save. It can shoot, it can fight, it's fast, it's resilient...

Pete

Plague don't do as well as either one for assault. I've ceded the defense rhino for them, I'm talking about what fills your offensive rhinos.

Comparing Noise Marines to either one of them, much less both, would need its own thread. My preliminary conclusion is that if equipped with sonic blasters and the Doom Siren they can blitz just about as hard, provided the enemy's clumped enough to allow you to get 5 under it). They are much less hardy, but are good at an area that neither of the other two excell at, anti-horde and 24" firefighting.

In general, I think that Noise Marines are hurt ALOT by the excellent vehicles. In a world of ground rushes I'd be much more positive on them.

What I see around here are 3 rhinos full of Berserkers on offense, one Plague rhino on D. I think that it would work to change out one Berserker Rhino for Thousand Sons. I directed my analysis towards examining that prospect, and satisfied myself. If it isn't compelling to you, that's fine. I'd be interested to read an analysis of the 5th ed metagame explaining why you prefer Noise Marines to Berserkers and/or Ksons in your offensive rhinos.

You never stated explicitly that you were talking about offensive rhinos. That's really all I needed to know.

It depends what you mean "don't do as well".

Hth is not a function of killing and resilience. Plague marines hit as hard as assault marines becasue they have a pistol and ccw, but they basically shrug off all damage that is not powerweapon based. They also take the +1 from charge away from attackers.

Plague Marines will win against berserkers almost everytime. K son's will beat plague marines most of the time if they can stay out of hth. Honestly they are all pretty balanced, but people tend to like plague marines because they are so good against orks and orks are one of the major go to armies at a top touny level at the moment.

Pete

well, for starters i was'nt expecting this much response so thanks everyone
but on topic, i was considering a rhino rushing thousand sons army but felt it would be a little
too expensive soo trashed it. Then i played a undivided (wordbearer) rhino rushing list to a tornament and got
great sports (perfect actually) as well as composition but got hammered every game and so i wondered if
a mono tzeench list would help.
basically i know now that rhino/lash combination is needed to make it effective but it would'nt be as effective as a
slannesh list or my word bearers so i will just have to stick to wordbearers unless anyone has seen an effective thousand
sons list in a tornament in which case please tell me so i can rethink my 40k lists.

Tsons aren't really a viable tournament list. What people here aren't telling you is that even if you lash them into the open, even if they are in 12" they are getting cover. They will go to ground, because if you charge them after they go to ground it's no skin off of their nose because Tsons suck in HTH.

Typeline wrote:Tsons aren't really a viable tournament list. What people here aren't telling you is that even if you lash them into the open, even if they are in 12" they are getting cover. They will go to ground, because if you charge them after they go to ground it's no skin off of their nose because Tsons suck in HTH.

TSons suck in hth. That's quite true. But good analysis of other Cult Troops here in the thread. I prefer NM but that's another story.

True that K sons suck in hth, but it's not like you don;t have good hth options that are tzeentch flavored...

Tzeetnch sorcerers are solid character hunters, the lord with a daemon weapon is a great infantry clearer, tzeentch terminators have a 4+I save which is not joke, tzeentch possessed also have a 4+ save and can be absolute beasts in hth, and lesser daemons are a very much better than they get credit for and would have an obvious home in a K son list.

Pete

Ksons aren't even that bad in H2H combat, unless you are comparing them to berserkers.

They've got one less attack than assault marines, but a Warptime sorcerer puts a fist sarge to shame (one more attack, more likely to hit, only slightly less likely to wound, goes at initiative) and the 4+ save reduces the enemy's fist's effectiveness. The overall slapfight nature of Marine on Marine violence means that tilting the sarge equation the Ksons way goes a long way towards making them decent in H2H.

In a hypothetical fight with an equal # of Noise Marines, with a warptime sorc and a fist champ leading (roughly equal points if the NM have sonic blasters)

Every 6 NM kills one Kson, so they do one casualty, and the champ might do another one, if they are lucky. On the Kson side the Sorcerer pulls kills 2 Noise Marines and the rest might do another if they are lucky. Looks like the Ksons win the grind match if they and the NM somehow find themselves in H2H without either side having the chance to do a decisive charge.

If either side charges they obviously decimate the other side with the pre-charge rapid fire.

40kenthusiast wrote:Ksons aren't even that bad in H2H combat, unless you are comparing them to berserkers.

They've got one less attack than assault marines, but a Warptime sorcerer puts a fist sarge to shame (one more attack, more likely to hit, only slightly less likely to wound, goes at initiative) and the 4+ save reduces the enemy's fist's effectiveness.

Sadly, the Sorcerer will attack at Initiative 1 on the charge because he had to make a Difficult Terrain check. So he will either have one less attack or will be going last.

A buddy of mine has been playing with a 1ksons list. I think it had the following:

1 Sorc Lord man with wings.
1 Greater daemon
2 10-20 lesser daemon squads (dont recall)
1-2 dreads
1 obliterator
3 squads of 7 (sacred number?) sons with sorcs with warptime generally (maybe 1 bolt)

He has a fair amount of trouble with it vs CSM and Sisters, though admitedly a Sister Horde is a really strong match against them. The issue seems to be his thousand sons are so expensive that he can't start much on the board, and it is even possible to nix the sorc's before the daemons hit. With rhino's for the robots it might work better I guess.

In general though, I agree with others who say the 1ksons are strong, but in a very narrow set of circumstances, and their cost makes them vulnerable to volume of fire attrition. They maybe a nice invulnerable save, but against small arms like bolters they are just the same as a regular marine in survivability.

1KSons were good in 4th. Very good. they had a Inv save, a gun that went through 90% of the armour in the game and were fearless.

Now in 5th 1KSons are bad. very bad. Their Inv save is the same as a cover save you get for free, their gun cant go though the 4+ cover save that most people have and their lack of fear will see them dragged down in combat very quickly.

All their abilites have been rendered near useless. They are only slightly better than a marine 80% of the time, except a marine costs 6pts less.

By all means use them in themed armies or casual games, but dont take them to a tournament. They will spend most of their time not going anywhere, not killing anything and taking up points that could be used for something good.

Dont even get me started on how badly they perform againt orks.

Bottom line is GW hate tzneetch (why else do you think FW havent made a Tzneetch greater demon?), so untill the possible legion book at the earliest, they will remain terrible.

Seeing as everyone here are saying they are bad how would you rewrite their rules and stats?

That is a solid list and addresses the original question.

I would make the following changes though:

Tzneetch daemon prince w. wings, warp time & Wind of Chaos

Warp time and Wind of Chaos are an excellent combination. I would also have at least one icon in the army so you can deep strike the daemon prince reliably.

Next one squad of kSons would have Bolt of Change and I would field both units in rhinos.

Finally I would drop one squad of lesser daemons for a greater daemon and include a champion in the squad of possessed Marines to be his vessel.

G

Pdeflorio wrote:Something like this is completely competitive:

Chaos Sorceror, MOT, warp time + another power
10 Possessed, Mark of Tzeentch
2 x 9 Thousand Sons, Wind of Chaos, Rhino + Extra Armor
20 Lesser Daemons
Land Raider, Possessed
2 X 2 Obliterators

This is a completely viable list. You can easily win 4 out 5 games in any tourny and would probably be competitive with lash lists simply becasue you would probably get close to perfect comp.

It's obviously a better list with lash, but not a bad list regardless. It's a fricken pain to kill an army like this. Everything has an invulnerable save. It can shoot, it can fight, it's fast, it's resilient...

Pete