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Most experienced Thousand Sons players have things like chaos spawn, maulerfiends, screamers, and other strong melee units, that are fast, in their list.

Would I be screwing myself to take things like vindicators, predators, and forgefiends? What's the big deal? Is it a precaution to break Thousand Sons out of close combat?

well the biggest problem is no drop pods,if csm marines have drop pod the whole 40k will go insane,but to me mauler fineds and spawn and give them invis,that is just me.or hellfist formation with 5 helbrutes and deepstrike them and give them invis are nice too,

 changerofways wrote:
Most experienced Thousand Sons players have things like chaos spawn, maulerfiends, screamers, and other strong melee units, that are fast, in their list.

Would I be screwing myself to take things like vindicators, predators, and forgefiends? What's the big deal? Is it a precaution to break Thousand Sons out of close combat?

With your unit selection you seem to play more defensive IIRC (just based on units you use). My guess is if 1k Sons wanted to play more aggressively thats where the fast units would come in to tie down units, allowing the squads to move up. Just my guess.

 lucian the dead one wrote:
well the biggest problem is no drop pods,if csm marines have drop pod the whole 40k will go insane,but to me mauler fineds and spawn and give them invis,that is just me.or hellfist formation with 5 helbrutes and deepstrike them and give them invis are nice too,

There's the 3 man helbrute formation that can deep strike but wouldn't be a unit to cast invisibilty on or the 5 man unit that you can cast invisibility on but can't deepstrike.

I've definitely had games where a squad of thousand sons got tied up in a melee that lasted 5 turns and that was sad because it tied up some point intensive casters for the entire game and kept them from doing their witchfire thing. Now I make sure to keep something near them like a helbrute or maybe even just a squad of berserkers to help clear them out of those combats. I freaking love maulerfiends, but I don't think I could make myself keep one from charging out into the enemy to run protection duty.

Edit: Another cheap and easy option to use would be a squad of raptors. They're actually pretty good at helping swing a combat one way or the other and don't cost many points. Their mobility will allow them to stay further away and jump in when you need them to. If you set it up right then you can take advantage of the hammer of wraths too.

If you want a fighty squad that can save your sons from melee but still do useful stuff if facing a gunline, you could use 5 raptors (2 melta guns/flamers and a lightning claw). They are disposable but capable enough at dealing with their intended target that they are worth it. The major down side is loss of a FA slot though.

People use spawn because of their versatility and their ability to make it to the enemy line intact against most armies (weak vs dark eldar). Spawn are also great for biker lords / sorcs to ride with. There are very few games where your opponent doesn't have at least 1 shooty unit that is impervious to kind of dakka that CSM typically put out (buffmander star, wave serpents etc) and the ability to plow 15 wounds of fearless T6 into them turn 2 is great. They won't carry the day alone though, especially if your opponent has good assault units of his own.

If you want to play spawn you could convert up some sentient sphinxes (about biker sized would be appropriate) or giant Scarab Beetles. Spawn counts as are awesome fun to make.

If you actually buy the spawn box you'll definitely have enough bits leftover to make more spawn. It only comes with two bodies, legs, and bases, so you'll have to sculpt or otherwise get creative, but there's hundreds of bits leftover that are just fun for chaos modeling in general. That said, raptors keep it fluffy for the Thousand Sons, and in this new age of needing to be everywhere at once, having a deep striking jump infantry squad is nice.