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They seem pretty cool. They're kind of expensive but they have AP3 boltguns, 4+ invulnerables and the Aspiring Sorcerer can take Wind of Chaos, which looks devestating, or Doombolt for some extra long-range dakka.

On a scale of 1-10, about a 3. Right up there with vespid spam.

Ap3 bolt guns are no better than regular bolt guns against most enemy armies. They seem better against MEQ, but most MEQ is mechanized or in cover, so the benefit is very small even there.

Having a 4+ invulnerable save on normal troops isn't that big a deal when those troops already have a 3+ armor save and are either in a rhino or in cover.

The aspiring sorcerer is too expensive for basically adding the special weapon to a squad that a normal trooper does for 10 points. The sorcerer can not take a power fist and the squad is limited to his mediocre powers for their anti-tank shooting.

How competitive is the person playing them?

puma713 wrote:How competitive is the person playing them?

Largely irrelevant. Good players can only make up for so much of a poor army's shortcomings, even the best of players can be easily overwhelmed when their army simply withers to nothing because everything they're using is so overcosted that their opponent simply outweighs them with dice and remotely average luck.

So, imagine you were playing a power armored army that was just as durable out of cover as in cover, which meant, in addition to other things, your movement was in no way determined by terrain. Furthermore, the bolters were just as good as regular bolters, but they could ALSO take down monstrous creatures and other marines with shocking ease, while being able to move and still shoot said bolters out to 24". Then imagine that your marines could take a psychic power that was basically a really long range meltagun that was always in melta range, or could instead take the ability to morph any model in the game into a chaos spawn. And imagine that the sarge in this squad caused instant death with their power weapon attacks. And the whole squad treats power attacks in close combat almost the exact same as regular close combat attacks. And they're fearless.

1ksons give you a LOT. You have to pay for it, sure, but you really do get a heckuva lot for the points.

I like 1Ksons. Hideously overpriced, yes, but let's get some things down:

-Inv 4+ means it's equally safe in and out of cover. That gives you a bit of freedom to expose them in order to hit juicy targets.

-Hidden Force weapon: Just might ID a sanguinary Priest or other ID.

- Yes they are slow, but a rhino that takes them to a good position before being cracked is all they need to stay there firing away.

On the other hand....

-They have few armor-cracking options: Bolt of Change on the sorcerer is expensive, can get cancelled and still has to hit, and it's not that great. Very rough in a mech metagame. The Sorceror can also take a meltabomb, but you don't want these guys on CC.

-Cover everywhere. The enemy only has to move half his unit into terrain and he has even odds of ignoring your wounds

They have their uses, the problem is there is tons of cover these days, so you're not always insta-killing things.

Now thousand sons in a dual lash list with 9 obliterators and/or delifers/vindcators and what not does very well. If you can pull things out of cover, you can kill them easier.

Thousand sons are tough, but without feel no pain they are only good at surviving the old plasma/melta/power weapon stuffs

It's kind of funny how big of a deal people are making cover here, as if the only thing 1ksons brings to the table is a better AP on its small arm.

Plus, just because cover exists doesn't mean your opponent is ALWAYS going to have it.

Ailaros wrote:It's kind of funny how big of a deal people are making cover here, as if the only thing 1ksons brings to the table is a better AP on its small arm.

Plus, just because cover exists doesn't mean your opponent is ALWAYS going to have it.

Well the 4+ inv doesn't help them in close combat against very many things. Against a unit of regular CSM the CSM get twice as many attacks and they both get the same 3+ save. So other than the AP3 bolters, which are very situational, they don't bring much. The sorcerer is more expensive and worse than taking a regular champ and some heavy/special weapon troopers.

1k sons actively hurt your army. They bring almost nothing of use to the table but eat up a huge chunk of your points budget.
Being good agaisnt meqs who happen to stand in the open isn't much of an advantage because such situations should be quite rare.
The 4+ invulsave can be easily replicated by cover, which is quite abundant.

Thousand Sons are awesome. They're expensive, but they look cool, can take a punch, and can dish out rather a lot of damage.

Prime uses:

Shock infantry. They may have Slow and Purposeful, but that just means their guns are longer-ranged than normal armies; 4+ Inv helps them hold out while out of cover. Wind of Chaos is a template that wounds on 4+ and ignores armor saves, with that to back them up they can break open even a determined defense with cover.

Elite killing. Gift of Chaos kills any single enemy model a reasonable percentage of the time, which lets you defang enemy units. The much-maligned Inferno Bolters are nightmares against Marine-equivalents, nine Thousand Sons in rapid-fire range are going to kill about six enemy Marines, give them a transport and they can get to rapid-fire range quite easily. And they've got a force weapon on the off chance the enemy gets into combat with them.

Tarpit. Gift of Chaos and the force weapon can handle most enemy characters and squad leaders, leaving your foe to have to try and deal with the Fearless WS4 T4 3+/4++ Thousand Sons using mere grunts. They'll lock any non-elite unit in place pretty much indefinitely.

They're an expensive elite unit, though, I wouldn't recommend taking them to the exclusion of all else. One to one regular Chaos Marines to Thousand Sons seems like a good direction to go; though most people will opt for the broken invincibility of Plague Marines or the hoopy choppiness of Berzerkers over the implacable advance of the Thousand Sons.

AnomanderRake wrote: I wouldn't recommend taking them to the exclusion of all else.

I think this is the real moral of the story, not only for 1ksons, but anyone devoted to a single god. Cult troops are good for what they do in general, but it's probably best not to take more than a 1:1 ratio (or 1:2 ratio) of cult troops to CSM with some sort of icon. I'd say for 1ksons as well as a nurgle or khorne list, a 1500 points army with 1 big squad of cult warriors, 2 big squads of CSM with a mark of that god, and a couple oblits with some points left over for either some good HQ's or other support, and you've got a solid list, 1ksons or otherwise.

most people will opt for the broken invincibility of Plague Marines

Plague Marines are hardly invincible to the point of being broken. Whatever people use to kill regular marines also kills Plague Marines, they're just more resillient against small arms like bolters and lasguns. People tend to use battlecannons, plasma, melta and things like that to kill marines, and all those things ignore Plague Marine FNP and their armour saves.

Avatar 720 wrote:People tend to use battlecannons, plasma, melta and things like that to kill marines, and all those things ignore Plague Marine FNP and their armour saves.

Which, it should be noted, are no sweat for a model with a 4++ save. FNP is better at the small stuff, but 4++ is better at the big stuff.

A unit of THSS termies or a MC plows through a squad of plague marines like it wasn't even there. 1ksons are a different story.

Avatar 720 wrote:

most people will opt for the broken invincibility of Plague Marines

Plague Marines are hardly invincible to the point of being broken. Whatever people use to kill regular marines also kills Plague Marines, they're just more resillient against small arms like bolters and lasguns. People tend to use battlecannons, plasma, melta and things like that to kill marines, and all those things ignore Plague Marine FNP and their armour saves.

Of course. It's all about applying the right type of damage to remove a target.

Plague marines need plasma, missiles and battle cannons. Eg, S8 AP3, or S6 and AP2. These are all typically great anti-tank weapons as well, so dilute anti-tank fire.
Thousand sons are best killed by small arms so their 4+ invul doesn't eat your heavy weapon fire.

On the flip side, I think the double melta + combi-melta, 2 attacks in combat, defensive grenades and extreme resilience to small arms that plague marines bring is significantly better. I fully expect thousand sons to either go back to 2 wounds or drop in price to ~20-21 each in the next chaos book.

AnomanderRake wrote:Thousand Sons are awesome. They're expensive, but they look cool, can take a punch, and can dish out rather a lot of damage.

Prime uses:

Shock infantry. They may have Slow and Purposeful, but that just means their guns are longer-ranged than normal armies; 4+ Inv helps them hold out while out of cover. Wind of Chaos is a template that wounds on 4+ and ignores armor saves, with that to back them up they can break open even a determined defense with cover.

Elite killing. Gift of Chaos kills any single enemy model a reasonable percentage of the time, which lets you defang enemy units. The much-maligned Inferno Bolters are nightmares against Marine-equivalents, nine Thousand Sons in rapid-fire range are going to kill about six enemy Marines, give them a transport and they can get to rapid-fire range quite easily. And they've got a force weapon on the off chance the enemy gets into combat with them.

Tarpit. Gift of Chaos and the force weapon can handle most enemy characters and squad leaders, leaving your foe to have to try and deal with the Fearless WS4 T4 3+/4++ Thousand Sons using mere grunts. They'll lock any non-elite unit in place pretty much indefinitely.

They're an expensive elite unit, though, I wouldn't recommend taking them to the exclusion of all else. One to one regular Chaos Marines to Thousand Sons seems like a good direction to go; though most people will opt for the broken invincibility of Plague Marines or the hoopy choppiness of Berzerkers over the implacable advance of the Thousand Sons.

"Broken invincibility of Plaque Marines" is a severe overstatement. Plaque marines are tough but at the end of the day they die like everything else outside of their Rhino box.

4+ inv helps them not at all when being shot at by most anti infantry weapons or being assaulted by non powerweapon wielding opponents. Most of the time you pay lots of points for an ability that isn't even used/ necessary. Wind of Chaos is short ranged, expensive, requires a psychic test and does very little against infantry within vehicles. Why you expect to shoot at meqs out of cover is beyond me.
After all, cover is quite abundant and easy to get and transports are common.

Gift of Chaos is a sucky psychic power. 6inch range and only roughly a 1/6 chance ( 1/2 to work against psychic defences and 1/3 chance to affect a t4 model ) to work is meh.
A powerfist is both cheaper and has a higher chance to work. Of course, 1k sons cannot take powerfists or special weapons of any kind. The forcesword helps a bit but is still considerably less efficient than a powerfist.
Using an almost 300 points unit as tarpit, one which dies against non "elite" units ( therefore stuff without powerweapons ) just as fast as normal csms, is far from being efficient.

If you like Rubric Marines then take a single unit of them and hope that your opponent has a bad day. Just don't expect them to affect the game in any particularly meaningful way.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Ailaros wrote:

Avatar 720 wrote:People tend to use battlecannons, plasma, melta and things like that to kill marines, and all those things ignore Plague Marine FNP and their armour saves.

Which, it should be noted, are no sweat for a model with a 4++ save. FNP is better at the small stuff, but 4++ is better at the big stuff.

A unit of THSS termies or a MC plows through a squad of plague marines like it wasn't even there. 1ksons are a different story.

I too want to tarpit a 200 points unit of Assault Termies or a 200 points monstrous creature ( possibly even cheaper ) with almost 300 points of rubric marines...

MrDrumMachine wrote:

puma713 wrote:How competitive is the person playing them?

Largely irrelevant.

I vehemently disagree. A good player that knows his army can do much more with it than the internet or even its codex suggests. While a poor player can take a top tier codex and drive it into the ground. Your thinking is backward. Its the codex that can only do so much work, the rest lies on the player.

1k sons = bad

One thing to consider is that in a couple months there is going to be a new codex, and all of this talk will be irrelevant then.

Thousand sons suffer from the same things the other cult troops and much of the rest of the codex does, and that is point cost. Codex creep has made CSMs harder and harder to be competitive with, because the points costs of units in the newer codexes is much lower comparatively than we see in some of the older ones. I imagine that when the new codex comes out, each of the cult troop types will become a little better, from at least a point cost perspective.