The good, the bad and the just plain lame.
This is a breakdown of thousand sons rubric marines by a veteran chaos player.
*List price, 150 for 5 models. Now to put this in perspective as a chaos player I now have access to some very cheep minions. These new minions are Chaos Cultists and cost 50 for 10 models. I can get 30 models for the price of five rubrics. If I want to hold an objective I will use the 30 cultists, not 5 marines.
If I’m not planning on using rubrics to hold objectives then I am using them to kill things. So for 150 what do we have? Well I can get 5 Chosen and 4 plasma guns for 150. So that’s 5 rubrics vs. 5 chosen with 4 plasmas. Personally I would just pay 20 more points and get a Heldrake.
Well that’s not an impressive start; for their points, they can’t hold objectives as well as 30 cultists and they can’t kill things as well as 5 chosen with 4 plasma guns (or a Heldrake). So lets up point cost, perhaps we need to spend big to get big.
10 rubrics with a banner and a rhino with a havoc launcher and soul blaze comes to 337. Let’s be honest, that’s a lot of points. Can the unit live up to its cost? 10 Chaos Space Marines fully kitted out with
ccw, bolters, vets, plasma gun, Lascannon, power weapon, and rhino with dozer, havoc, blaze comes to 275. That is a difference of 62 points. Both units are semi mobile, both are effective against infantry, both are relatively survivable and both will last a while in assault. Rubrics have no heavy weapon, the
csm do. Outside of their respective transports the rubrics will be moving 6” at most, the
csm will be able to move a maximum of 6” plus run. In a game that is won or lost in the movement phase, mobility is the key to victory. Even a couple of extra inches can make a big difference when you are making a last dash for the relic. When your unit is 7” away from claiming or contesting an objective on the bottom of turn 5 it is very important that your unit can run that extra inch.
My point being that a kitted out
csm squad will perform very similarly to the rubric squad, so why not use those beautiful models as baseline
csm?
Maybe you are addicted to their invulnerable save. After all, Heldrakes are running rampant everywhere and getting a save against them makes them a lot less scary. And lets not forget all of those new elder “rending” small arms. It’s a nice feeling to have that invulnerable save no matter what is thrown your way. But then again, why would the Heldrake be going for your rubrics? I cant see using a 337 point unit to cower on an objective and rubrics are getting saves against the bale flamer so overall I would think they would be low on the hit list.
Rubrics should be killing things when they have a point cost this heavy so they should be going after contemporary targets of opportunity. Units that are going for the kill should, in general be expendable. They should also be capable of putting pressure on your opponent. 337 points is not very expendable, but the rubrics should always be able to find a reasonable target to at least put pressure on. That being said there are far better choices for much cheaper than the rubrics. They are too expensive and slow to be troops, and they are too expensive and slow to be a reliable killing unit.
*That is enough about points, lets move on two equipment and special rules.
1. no grenades: while not that bad because they are not an assault unit, you will need to assault on occasion and not having basic grenades hurts more often than not. And you will never get to experience the thrill of throwing a frag or krack grenade.
2. bolter with ap3: This is always good as long as you are shooting at anything with at least a 4+ save. But I cant help noticing that this isn’t as cool as it was last edition (we will come to the reason for that very soon). I think this should have been a storm bolter with ap3. And there should have been some form of heavy weapon to complement the lack of anti tank (A random roll on a power chart doesn’t count as far as I am concerned).
3. Slow and purposeful: This I just don’t get at all. Why didn’t they just give them relentless, Or storm bolters with ap3? Last edition this was cool because you could move and shoot at full range. Well that is old news, everyone does that now and they don’t need relentless or slow and purposeful to do it. The only benefit it grants is the ability to charge after shooting with rapid fire and heavy weapons (that they don’t have). And in a unit that isn’t designed for assault that just doesn’t make any logical sense.
*Left behind…That is how I feel. My beautiful, hardworking, game winning rubrics have been left behind by the author of this new book. I have taken this personally. I find it difficult to play an army that has been so blatantly over looked and forgotten. I put it to you that The thousand sons were the only cult troops in the book to be down graded while retaining their cost. At least the berserkers (who also did not fair to well with the update) are still usable and have fancy new ap4 weapons along with a point decrease.
I was so upset about what they did (or rather didn’t do) to my army that I quit chaos all together and reorganized my marines as vanilla space marines. With combat tactics I have turned 30 very stupid rubrics in to killing machines capable of taking on any form of adversary and coming out on top. My Thousand Sons have been reborn! We will never forgive and never forget how the gods of chaos have abandoned us! Death to the changer of the ways! First we were betrayed by the emperor, then we were betrayed by the warmaster Horus, Now the final betrayal has come and it is at the hands of Tzeentch himself. NONE SHALL STAY MY WRATH! My marines are out for blood.
1850 12W-2L
1750 ?W-?L (about 50-50)