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From what I've heard, the Thousand Sons are quite difficult to use, and you have to use certain methods to make the effective on the tabletop. I'd like to use a decent bit of TS models, but I'm also curious if summoning daemons and such may help the TS fare better in games. So, basically, I'm asking if someone could assist me by explaining which models/units I should get to build a decent Thousand Sons army (1850 points or so). I don't need anyone to design a list by any means, but just some starting pointers on what I should be looking to get for the army overall.

(Note: I'm not too knowledgeable when it comes to the Thousand Sons, so if something doesn't sound right, that's why.)

The Thousand Sons aren't all that good at summoning (they Perils too easily, being non-Daemons, and you're burning pretty expensive models when sacrifice effects come into play). A Thousand Sons Summoning army is going to be two armies, a Thousand Sons army stapled to a Daemons army that does the actual summoning.

Thousand Sons armies should be focusing on maxxing out their detachments for extra benefits and trying to make their units function with a minimum of random excess upgrades, Summoning isn't really much of a help.

Somewhere it shows the math on survivability of a Rubric vs. Scarab. It ends up being a difference of under 10%.

I'd recommend. At least one of each Rubric, Scarab, and Exalted boxes. I'd pick-up one more of eother Rubric or Sekhmet based on preference. Ahriman is totally up to you.

Once you've got that base for your summoning army you could get the Start Collecting Tzeentch set.

And yes TS isn't the usual summoning army, but they're a great utility knife and summoning may be a counter somewhere along the line for their match-ups.

Rule of cool: Play what you want because it looks cool. Strategy is for after.

So, a couple sorcerers, around two 5-man Scarab Terminator squads, and three 10-man Rubric Marine squads with transports would do the trick?

depending on how you field your thousand sons army, will determine how well it can or cannot summon. If your running a War Cabal, you have the option to take a daemon prince as part of that formation, at LvL 3 Psyker you can roll twice on the malificant table for summoning.and not worry about perils and a spell familure to help. If you're running the Thousand Sons Grand Coven Decturian, you will get a special rule that helps mitigate any perils issues. If you have the Wrath of Magnus book, there's a formation of 3-9 Heralds (they generate D3 extra charges per herald), which would also help with summoning.

 TapedTempest wrote:
From what I've heard, the Thousand Sons are quite difficult to use, and you have to use certain methods to make the effective on the tabletop. I'd like to use a decent bit of TS models, but I'm also curious if summoning daemons and such may help the TS fare better in games. So, basically, I'm asking if someone could assist me by explaining which models/units I should get to build a decent Thousand Sons army (1850 points or so). I don't need anyone to design a list by any means, but just some starting pointers on what I should be looking to get for the army overall.

(Note: I'm not too knowledgeable when it comes to the Thousand Sons, so if something doesn't sound right, that's why.)

Difficult to use is putting it lightly. I would argue that Thousand Sons are firmly at the very bottom of the pile when it comes to Chaos forces, and arguably the whole of 40k right now. There are many problems with the list, but if that is not a deterrent, I will give my thoughts.

The Good
The War Cabal is likely the best way to run the army. Rerolling 1's on Armour and Hits is a decent improvement for not a lot of effort. It makes your units about 16% shootier, and makes Terminators obnoxious to fight against.
Scarab Occult are a decent investment within the Cabal. A rerollable 2+ save is as good as it sounds, and the Sorcerer has a range of spell lores to roll against.
Magnus and the Rehaati are amazing. Tournament-winners. It depends on what you are looking for in a Thousand Sons list, but they can make a decent push at the top tables.
Exalted Sorcerers and Scarab Occult have a massive range of spells available to them. If you base your plans on delivering the right spells, you can fling more spells from more disciplines than any other force in the game,

The Bad
Rubricae are *awful*. There is a reason that they are consistently held as one of the worst units in the CSM book; spinning them into a full book has not changed that.
Read through the book and write a list that can fight 3 Imperial Knights in one game, and GSC Hybrid-spam in the next. You won't, because you can't. You simply lack the tools to fight outside your comfort zones*.
You don't even make particularly good psykers. Your options are to spam out Witchfires from Tzeentch, pay 160pts for an Exalted, 250 for a Scarab Occult, or fry your brains trying to cast Malefic. You can throw dice, but lack the spells or Familiars to make them useful.
Compare your psychic output to a Tzeentch Daemon army, for example, and the difference should become quite stark.

The Ugly
For all the perks War Cabal offers, all it really does is spam out AP3. Inferno Bolts are great if all you ever fight are Marines out of cover. It is woefully bad at anything else.
War Cabal costs 1440pts at bare minimum, excluding transports or upgrades of any kind. You'll also need a tank on top of that, so realistically it will take up all of your points in an 1850 game and leave nothing for Allies or versatility.
Your psykers are not Daemons and so will Perils if they try to run Malefic. A lack of Spell Familiars means that only half of your Sorcerers will actually be casting anything and you'll end up using them as batteries for the HQ lifters.
Soulreaper Cannons, Warp Flamers and Hellfyre Racks are not worth the paper they were printed on.


If you are still set on your ways, I would say:
- If you want to win hard every time, take Magnus and his Rehaati mates, and then an allied Daemon force.
- If you want to actually use Thousand Sons, take the bare minimum to play a War Cabal and then scrape the points for transports and character upgrades to make it 'work'.
- Accept that your army is for fluffiness and take whatever you want, effectiveness be damned. Exalted Sorcerers are pretty neat and give you a huge toolbox to play with.


*This includes niche builds such as: Hordes, TEqs, fast melee threats, massed vehicles, heavy vehicles, fliers, Knight Titans, long-ranged firepower, JSJ firepower, FMCs, deathstars, tarpits, Gladius, ObSec spam, anything with a cover save, or indeed anything that is not a MEq within rapid fire range.