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NOTE
I decided to update the first post as the army has changed greatly since I first started and it's always a good idea to have some models shown in the first post for the new viewers who don't want to search throught the first pages of concepts and ideas.

INTRO
Last year I read ‘A Thousand Sons’ and they’re by far the most interesting Space Marine legion ever. Of course I was already interested in them thanks to the Horus Heresy Artbooks so when I brought it I already knew a bit about the Thousands Son interesting background and suspected that I would want to build an army of them after reading it. As expected I started work on a Scarab Occult army sortly after finishing the book.

WHO ARE THE SCARAB OCCULT
For those of you who haven’t read the book the Scarab Occult were the Thousand Sons veteran psykers and I believe made up the entire first company. It consisted of several cults, each specialising in a unique use of psychic sorcerery…

The Corvidae - Able to see the future and warn the brothers of threats in the middle of a fight.
The Pyrae - Skilled Pyrokinetics able to generate and control fire. Shields projectiles you name it and control robots.
The Pavoni - Able to manipulate body chemisty; boil blood, evaporate oxygen in the lungs. Disturbing stuff.
The Athanaeans - Powerful telepaths used for reading enemy squad leaders minds and communicate to their brothers.
The Raptora - Telekines that can offensively hurl things at enemies or attack them directly or defensibly generate ’kine shields’ powerful invisible barriers.

Luckily at the time the two best releases required for such a project came out Codex: Grey Knights an army of psychic Astartes and Tomb Kings with some nice bitz to use. I’m also keen to build an army with a small amount of models after completing 64 infantry and 19 tanks for my last project. Lugging that stuff up a hill to my gaming club ain't fun lol.

UNIT CONCEPTS SO FAR!
Magnus The Red
I considered including the Primarch at first using Lord Draigo but then thought how unpractical it was as Magnus destroyed 3 xenos titans in the book by himself, so unless I was going to use count as stats from a titan he wasn’t going to be in the army.




Little Magnus
So I decided to create a captain nicknamed 'little Magnus' due to his resemblance to the Primarch similar to little Horus of the Luna Wolves/Sons Of Horus. I then found the prefect model…




True I won’t be able to use it in GW stores but I think he’d make a great Draigo counts as with storm shield in one hand. I’m also debating if I should attempt to green stuff some more hair on him?

One Of The Captains
I plan to convert one of the Thousand Sons captains from the book, not Ahriman thou as everyone does him and I think there are much better ones to choose from.

Interceptors
I been considering the idea of using artificer armoured marine as ‘counts as’ terminators for a while as marines are always spoken of in the 40k fiction of being able to take down hold squads of infantry and having an small army of elite dramatically posed marines was tempting.




Of course as you can see from these three I plan to model every warrior to look like a hardened veteran, attached wargear and robes, the iron armour should represent artificer armour very well and I've also modelled a personal teleporter on the backpack. Thou storm bolters would be represented by magical bolts with the heavier weapons being modelled as powerful spells being cast.

However after asking around on forums about it was decided that they looked too much like interceptors and would be confusing. So these guys will be used as my interceptors.

Terminators
So given on how my artificer armour idea wasn’t going to work I decided to focus on converting terminator armour, I had already come up with some ideas on how I could do it with the legs being the only problem then I saw the micro art studio legs and everything fitted into place.

I also used a pair of chapterhouse shoulder pads I had ordered during a previous project out of curiosity and the Scibor Scarab Shield to replace the storm bolter plus a few other bits. I went with the power armoured helm because I prefer it to the angular terminator version.





I've also decided to scrap the invisible magic bolts for actual weapons so I’ve brought several of the SM commander’s storm bolter which was the easiest to convert. However rather than trying to remove the awkward mould line on the top detail I got rid of it and was going to replace it with a bolter sight from the tactical box set, but instead I made my own sights using the parts of the interceptor teleporter packs instead.
My favourite squad member is the hammer user, I love seeing thunder hammers in Dawn Of War and Space Marine as you really feel the impacts. So I decided to copy the animation when the force commander raises it in the air then brings it down on an enemy from DOW.
Finally there’s the reaper Autocannon which will represent my Psycannons, I got rid of the skull and added a eagles wing to the side to make it less chaos themed, I also swapped a halberd to the left hand.

I’m looking forward to seeing one of my squads charge for the first time as they completely dwarf standard models, just look at their size compared to the black reach marine. The dreadnoughts will be quite big as well so this will be an army of giants!

Dreadnoughts
It took a while but I final got a hold of a pair of relic contemptors and after a bit of work the first one was completed.




Aside the basic bits such as putting a scarab over the Aquila and a nice head crest on the helmet I converted the heavy bolters to Autocannons. I shorted down the IG Heavy weapon team Autocannons because I felt they would have looked odd if I had kept them at their original length.
Another edition was 2 strong magnets to make the arms exchangeable, now they weren’t wide enough so I brought some plastic tubing the same width as the arms to put them in and thanks to the Dread‘s size this hasn‘t effected the model too much.

I'll talk about the specialised boltgun that the interceptor has in my next post.

& MUCH MORE
Now I know that people using the Grey Knight codex for Pre-Heresy Thousand Sons is common. But I feel one of the biggest benefits to the codex is it’s ability to allow me to field the other forces of Prospero alongside the thousand sons. Will get to each of them later in the log but for now here’s a quick recap.

Warrior henchmen allow me to field an attachment of Prospero Spire Guard with a general representing Coteaz.

The Legio Cybernetica robotic units can be represented by basic dreadnought and paladins.

& the Thousand Sons Hidden One Operatives can be represented by assassins and inquisitors.

LAST BUT NOT LEAST
Due to GW’s attitude towards the hobby side of their business, and continuing price rise I’ve decided to make this army my last, but with so much potential I feel it will be my best project ever.

Anyway I look forward to hearing your feedback on the current and future conversions for this project.

Horus Heresy collected visions Black Libby @£30. ish


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Flying brick as well?

Looks like this one's gonna be awesome. Can't wait to see it come together!

Also, if you want a quick and easy Magnus, a company did him a while back. They pop up on eBay semi-frequently:

Sounds like a great (and ambitious) project. Be interesting to see how you carry it out.

Nice…. I just finished the audio book…. I listen while working on my army. It beats 40K radio lately.
Was thinking the same thing, it sounds like a great army to build….

wow, this looks interesting. definitely subbed

Glad to see someone is doing this! I'd heard the idea booted around in a couple local gaming groups, but no one has done it yet.

As far as modelling, the more GS you use to make cool fire/warp/energy effects, the better. This army should wear it's sorcerous power proudly!

Do you own the Collected Visions of Heresy book? There's so much good TSons material in there...

Darth Bob wrote:Looks like this one's gonna be awesome. Can't wait to see it come together!

Also, if you want a quick and easy Magnus, a company did him a while back. They pop up on eBay semi-frequently:

That's actually my photo of my copy of the model, which is for sale (link in my sig)--no clue what that website that copy of the image is hosted on is, though. For some reason my photo keeps being used by people on ebay.

I like your idea for the army. My own was formulated from Codex: Space Marines and if I started it again now, I would probably end up with something similar. I like using the curved blades, if you're lucky you can sometimes get large-ish lots of them for cheap on ebay. I agree that the power armour Grey Knight heads will work well on Terminators; MaxMini do good pre-Heresy shoulder pads for Terminators or you can use Dreadnought shins or plasticard.

Omg awesome!!!

1k Sons are my prefered pre-heresy-army.

And GK codex fits pretty well... fire discipline for bolters (= storm bolter) is okay..

I thought Space Wolves codex would be okay for pre-heresy... 4 hq slots for librarians...

motorhead1945 wrote:I thought Space Wolves codex would be okay for pre-heresy... 4 hq slots for librarians...

That's wrong on so many levels thou.

One thing I discovered today is that the heavy support grey knights don't require LOS which made me immediately think of the tutelaries; warp entities that the thousand sons use, often used for locating enemies and sniping. Maybe model them like this miniature; http://www.lounge.belloflostsouls.net/photopost/data/575/ksonp2.jpg

Protieus what happened? The string has unravelled leaving only the loose threads (Metaphor-puntastic if i may say so).. So is this thousand sons Defo defo defo x1000 your chosen army?

Perkustin wrote:Protieus what happened? The string has unravelled leaving only the loose threads (Metaphor-puntastic if i may say so).. So is this thousand sons Defo defo defo x1000 your chosen army?

Tau & Night Lords; I know, trust me I know.

It just so hard finding a project that can be as interesting and match my previous projects. The Thousand Sons & Post-Apocalyptic Kroggs! are my next two projects; FACT!
I aim to enter the Kroggs into the 'Armies On Parade' and with the Thousand Sons army being so small it I can work on that on the side. I may come back to do the Night Lords in the near future thou.

Maybe for the teleporting guys they could jump the warp using physic powers?

Indeed, and to represent the teleporting guys, you could have them modeled mid-blink. (There were some great Warp Spiders posted a while ago where they were modeled with warp portals behind them.)

DREADNOUGHTS CONCEPT
I’ve been looking at the Grey Knight codex and I’m thinking about a purifer based list as the 1k sons of the Pyrae cult were skilled pyrokinetics and it seems appropriate. However pre-heresy dreads are a pain to convert and those sgt 8 auto cannon dreads are too good not to take. But rather than stuggle to convert a pre-heresy dread I thought of a concept that could work instead.

I will use a conversion I used in my machine cult project and mount the body of a venerable dread on it, add a few details to the legs and with the added auto cannon arms I’ll hopefully have something similar to a Protoss Immortal from Starcraft 2.





Also I'm thinking about using the FW Iron Armour kits with thousand son torsos for the gold trim and heads, but I'll have to see if I can learn how to paint the 1k son symbols on by hand since I won't be using the Chapterhouse studio pads with them.

What will you use for helmets?
I would like to find out how to make the helmets.

Do the Immortals.

A Venerable is basically a Pre Heresy dread. Adding more legs to it imho would make it look quite odd.

Arken Vul'tan01 wrote:A Venerable is basically a Pre Heresy dread. Adding more legs to it imho would make it look quite odd.

Not by the standards of the RT era dreads, nor the art from the Visions of Heresy series it's not!

dont paint the scarabs use GS there realy easy to do .

Thought of using any of the new TK stuff? Not sure if it fits your theme or not.

Vitruvian XVII wrote:Thought of using any of the new TK stuff? Not sure if it fits your theme or not.

Of course, I plan to use their blades for the weapons. Also instead of the dreadnought maybe I could use the old space crusade dreadnoughts as robots as the Pyrae cult also specialised in controlling machines and used robots for frontline and support.

Could always use the Necrosphynx with the Drednaught. Those arms would look great on it!

Looking awesome, good idea for the codex btw

ARTIFICER ARMOUR?
I’ve come up with an much better concept for the Thousand Sons model, basically the FW Iron Armour model with Thousand Son torso and grey knight arms with tomb king blades. Now even with bits websites these will work out to be very expensive, so I’m a bit reluctant to take 30-40 of them especially since the 30 FW iron armour marines would cost £120!

So I’m debating mounting them on 40mm bases and saying they have artificer armour and use just Grey Knight Terminators and Paladins, this means…

It will be a lot cheaper as I will only need 15-20 models. This also means I can focus more on them and add more detail.

I can feature the warrior’s tutelary on the base (the most powerful Thousand Sons have a warp entity that help them channel their power)

Converting tutelary warriors as ghost knights could be an interesting concept?

For the Psycannon I’m going to model the warriors casting a magical projectiles, now terminators get to keep their CCW while the power armoured GK can’t, so I won’t have an unarmed thousand sons fighting in close combat with just their fists, if you get what I mean.

I can use the Ahriman model as my librarian with a few tweaks to the model.

However the huge downside is that this could easily cause confusion for my opponent and other people as GK terminators and their power armoured counter parts have identical wargear. So I’m reluctant to take this option.

Anyway I’m going to ask for player’s opinions at Throne Of Skulls this weekend and I’m eager to hear what you guys think on the matter as well?

You can get a terminator kit and a Space marine Tactical squad and combine bits and such.

hey proiteus,
im thinking about doing something similiar and i was wondering if/how you were planning on making the scarab emblems?

Well it seems like you're in for a long modelling ride no matter what you do.

I would suggest that you use Terminators for the Terminators. It's just going to cause confusion otherwise. The big difference between GK and SM Terminators is that GK's are more embellished and look older and more regal. But they also have all that embossed Roman all over them. What you could do, if you were game, would be to dremel out all that Roman and replace it with Hieroglyphics.

With the standard GKs, you could probably use Dark Angel or Black Templar bodies (for the plastic robes) and raid Bitz services for the GK arms. For the heads, similarly convert GKs or use the FW heads and either cast them or contact FW and ask if they could just cast the heads for you for a discounted price.

The Thousand Sons torsos are covered in Tzeentch iconography, not Egyptian scarabs.

I like the magic concept. A friend of mine used magic as a replacement for obliterator weapons. You could say that the "Storm Bolter" is just them casting fireballs, and that they are so good at using fireballs that they no longer need to take a psychic test to do so.

CONCEPTS & IDEAS
The Grey Knight codex is fantastic problem is coming up with an effective list that suits this theme and has some variety. Here are some ideas for units I’ve had…

Justicar Thawn
To sum him up he’s a grey knight terminator justicar with a ‘will be back’ regardless of what puts him down he’s up the next turn on a 4+. I like the idea of modelling his fallen body with his tutelary hovering over him healing it, have his arm growing back bone first, skin 2nd and have the armour regenerate behind it with some glowing effects it could look fantastic.

Mordrak & Ghost Knights
Coming up with ghost knight representatives for this theme had been hard so far I have 3 ideas…
1. Powerful Tutelaries; perhaps using the new tomb kings stalkers, however tutelaries enhance the powers of the psykers and never actually fight the enemy directly.
2. Ghost Thousand Sons; calling his fallen brother backs from the warp to aid him.
3. Necromancy; thou a bit dark for the pre-heresy a skilled member of the Pavoni cult could use his powers to manipulate the body chemistry of a fallen enemy like a puppet. Problem is describing why the enemy has force weapons and GKT stats.

Thrall Sorcerer Squad
Inquisitor henchmen squad with 6 psykers in a rhino can create a sgt 8 AP 2 large blast template for 100pts. So I thought it would be a nice idea to create a unit of human psykers and convert them to look like a squad of small sorcerers who combine their powers to aid the thousand sons.

OOOO SHINY BITZ
Still debating the idea of saying all of the warriors in the army have artificer armour and mounting them on 40mm bases and counting them as terminators. Saw these bits online and fell in love with them, might use them for squad leaders and characters or perhaps use them as artifcer armour for the terminator squads?

As always I'm grateful for any feedback on the ideas?

Like the idea of the Thrall Sorcerers very much!

I personally wouldnt have a problem with you putting artificer armoured marines on 40mm bases and using them as Terms, provided they were modelled dynamically () and that there were no PA marines on 25mm bases.
Holy hell those bitz is sweet! get 'em...!

First off let me ask where did you find those marine bodies!

I am also thinking of using the Grey Knights codex for the Pre-heresy thousand sons. Here is what I have gotten so far.

I bought the shoulder pads from Chapter House. Even though they are going to be sued they still delivered quickly.

http://chapterhousestudios.com/webshop/component/virtuemart/?page=shop.browse&category_id=44

I ordered these from Scibor for Halberds:

http://sciborminiatures.com/en_,shop.php?art=1076

Head dresses:

http://sciborminiatures.com/en_,shop.php?art=910

Lastly from kromlech.eu i added some Khopesh Vibro Swords for variation.

http://cgi.ebay.com/Kromlech-Khopesh-Vibro-Swords-/160569161533?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item2562aaf73d

My plan is to combine all these bits into a Grey Knight Terminator Squad.

Hope this helps you on your quest.