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Starting to slowly, slowly building up my Heresy Thousand Sons.

Our group plans to do escalation games. 500 pts, 1000 pts, 1500 and so on.

Im pretty hesitant on building the two full boxes of Calth marines up, on the chance TS will be very different in how they are organized/options. I would like to start on getting some games in.

What is a pretty solid core of choices that you will most likely have almost all games? Preatorian with 2 tac squads? Is it worth making 40 bolter marines? And are there any staple vehicles? Predators? Or just take dreadnoughts?

It generally depends on the legion you are using. Different legions will normally have different cores, based on their fluff. For example a death guard core often consists of two to three footslogging twenty man tactical squads with attached apothecaries because that's fluffy for them. However an Iron Hands core would (I think but I don't really know their fluff) have smaller ten man squads in rhinos because (again, I think but I don't know) it's more fluffy for them to have a more mechanised army. Most 30k players are more interested in fluffy armies than strong ones. I don't really know the Thousand Sons fluff so I can't really tell you what you should use as your core, but if you know then use that. If not, maybe do some research or maybe someone here can give you some suggestions.

I'd be inclined to wait for them to produce 1K Sons rules before building an army. Like snykyninja said, the rules for a particular legion can pretty drastically change how you'd approach your idea of a core army. For example, some army lists even have Elites or FAs that can be used as mandatory Troops choices in to the right circumstance (ex with Word Bearers, a particular HQ let's you unlock Ashen Circle as compulsory Troop choice, and these are normally Fast Attack units).

Thousand Sons are bound to be very special snowflake army, I'd think, so my advice is to wait.

If you've got those 60 bodies you will be set whatever comes out. Like the two previously said, if you have a specific legion you want, I'd wait for the rules so you can tailor exactly to what you need.

NOW, with those bodies all you need to do is order weapons packs from FW or another source to get all manner of support squads, heavy support squads, seekers, vets and command squads. I have ordered plasma supports off ebay from guys who cut up and bit out the BaC box and it's great! I plan on getting another set of BaC and getting some other weapons packs to make some lascannon heavy support marines, a CC vet squad and command squad and then use the terminators and contemptor like normal.

It really is a MASSIVE savings from buying straight from FW. Good luck with your 1k sons!