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Finally getting into Thousand Sons this summer after admiring their models for months and lore for years, threw together this list as something to work towards - let me know what you think!

I currently only have Magnus, and I'm definitely running him as I love the model and fluff. Everything else is up for reconsideration.

Patrol Detachment

HQ
Kairos Fateweaver - 20 Power

Troops
10 Rubric Marines - 14 Power
- Icon of Flame, Soulreaper Cannon, Force Stave, Warpflame Pistol

10 Rubric Marines - 14 Power
- Icon of Flame, Soulreaper Cannon, Force Stave, Warpflame Pistol

Elites
Helbrute - 8 Power
- Twin Lascannon, Missile Launcher

5 Scarab Occult Terminators - 13 Power
- Hellfyre Missile Rack, Soulreaper Cannon

Heavy Support
Forgefiend - 10 Power
- 2x Hades Autocannon, Ectoplasma Cannon

Super-Heavy Auxiliary Detachment

Lord of War
Magnus the Red - 21 Power

TOTAL - 100 Power

As you can probably tell, I'm not going for anything super competitive, just fluffy and reasonably effective. Let me know what you think the list may need!

Edit: Corrected Kairos' power cost (20 rather than 21)

Interesting list. I've not tried old eye out yet but can totally understand you wanting to take him for a spin.

I'm not sure about bringing both Magnus and kairos in a 100pl list...many eggs in a couple of baskets.

I've really enjoyed playing my Rubrics. They've done really good in rhinos...they keep your guys safe for the turn or so it takes to get them up close and blasting stuff with inferno flamers.

One nasty combo you might want to think about is getting prescience and warp time on a big squad of scarabs, preferably within range of magnus' aura. Means you can deep strike in and blast away on a 2+ to hit (re-roll 1's) and then have decent offs for getting a charge off and chopping stuff up with power swords (2+ to hit re-roll 1's again).

I think hellbrutes are a good call in the power level format as it will offset the expense of their weaponry.

Ok. Since you have kairos you probably need some horrors as he cannot join a detachment with rubrics as troops. This means you need a sorceror or to entirely drop kairos. I don't see them working side by side in the fluff really.

I recommend: drop kairos and the helbrute:add 1x squad of rubrics, a sorceror and a sorceror in nator armour/exalted to get a battalion detachment.
OR.
Drop kairos, add terminator sorceror and another five SOTs.

I run a list similar to these and they work. Very well.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
*them=Magnus and kairos.

 fwlr wrote:
Since you have kairos you probably need some horrors as he cannot join a detachment with rubrics as troops

Really? They both share Chaos and Tzeentch faction keywords, and there aren't any other Heretic Astartes in the list I'm taking as anything but Thousand Sons.

In the YMDC forum they seemed to agree that you can take one of the aligned legions (DG, TS, EC, WE) with their respective daemons in the same detachment.

If you want to play a thousand sons army and get the benefits of that you can only use certain units that are listed in the rulebook. Kairos is not one of them choices

KhazModan wrote:
If you want to play a thousand sons army and get the benefits of that you can only use certain units that are listed in the rulebook. Kairos is not one of them choices

Pretty sure this isn't true.

The restrictions are just to identify units that can gain the Thousand Sons <legion> keyword.

No where does it imply your whole detachment or army has to be made up of all Thousand Sons in order to gain any benefits (like Rubrics as troops).

There is no reason I can see that would prevent Fateweaver being in this list in it's current configuration.

AnthonyXYZ wrote:

KhazModan wrote:
If you want to play a thousand sons army and get the benefits of that you can only use certain units that are listed in the rulebook. Kairos is not one of them choices

Pretty sure this isn't true.

The restrictions are just to identify units that can gain the Thousand Sons <legion> keyword.

No where does it imply your whole detachment or army has to be made up of all Thousand Sons in order to gain any benefits (like Rubrics as troops).

There is no reason I can see that would prevent Fateweaver being in this list in it's current configuration.

The first sentence of "Forces of the thousand sons" states that "The Heretics Astartes datasheet listed to the right can be from the Thousand sons legion."

So if you want to play a Thousand sons army and get rubric marines as troops you have to play with only the allowed troops.

No, it just means that only those units can replace <legion> with Thousand sons. You can still include non-thousand sons units in the same detachment if they have the Chaos keyword.

There would have to be a specific sentence limiting the entire detachment to a single <legion> keyword, which there is not.

Fwiw I'm in the camp that thinks that it's fine to mix and match so long as everything shares a keyword. Should be able to choose between tzeentch or chaos here.

jcd386 wrote:
No, it just means that only those units can replace <legion> with Thousand sons. You can still include non-thousand sons units in the same detachment if they have the Chaos keyword.

There would have to be a specific sentence limiting the entire detachment to a single <legion> keyword, which there is not.

This is correct. The units in the "Thousand Sons army list" are simply the units that are allowed to have the "Thousand Sons" keyword. They can be included in any detachment where all units have the "Chaos" keyword, regardless of any other keywords.

Technically you can include Thousand Sons rubric marines as troops, and then add a Not Thousand Sons Rubric marine squad as an elite choice. You can even take the silliness a step further and include World Eater berzerkers and Death Guard plague marines as troops in the very same detachment. It's dumb, but we'll have to houserule or wait for a codex before it can be fixed.

For an analogy, let's look at the Imperium army lists. The Adeptus Custodes and Officio Assassinorum army lists have no HQ units, so they can't be used to field detachments on their own. They are allowed and intended only to be used in other Imperial detachments on the basis of the "Imperium" keyword. Saying the Thousand Sons cannot be included in an army containing other "Chaos" units is equivalent to saying assassins and custodes cannot be used at all.

Damn, that just feels so wrong. I know that you could do an army with the keyword CHAOS but then I thought that you would not get the benefits of every freaking CSM chapter.

KhazModan wrote:
Damn, that just feels so wrong. I know that you could do an army with the keyword CHAOS but then I thought that you would not get the benefits of every freaking CSM chapter.

Well, when the actual Codex books come out you are likely to get more benefits for going more narrow with your keywords, as opposed to the flexibility and choice you get without those benefits.

You can take Kairos as your HQ along with thousand sons Marines as long as the chaos faction keyword applies throughout your army. But I don't think you can take the rubric Marines as troops, they'll need to be elites. Page 49 of the chaos index has the title "Thousand Sons ARMY Rules". If the army is thousand sons, which would mean all detachments use the thousand sons faction keyword, then and only then can you take rubric Marines as troops.

That's how I interpret it, anyway.

happynobita wrote:
You can take Kairos as your HQ along with thousand sons Marines as long as the chaos faction keyword applies throughout your army. But I don't think you can take the rubric Marines as troops, they'll need to be elites. Page 49 of the chaos index has the title "Thousand Sons ARMY Rules". If the army is thousand sons, which would mean all detachments use the thousand sons faction keyword, then and only then can you take rubric Marines as troops.

That's how I interpret it, anyway.

Nowhere on the page does it say that. A title is not a rule.

Besides, you could just as easily say your Detachment is a Thousand Sons Army allied with a pack of Tzeentch Daemons.

So far I've only found one rule that deals with the notion of a "<faction> army" at all, and that's the "Brood Brothers" rule in the genestealer cult army list. For this rule the writers actually had to specify that a Genestealer Cult detachment is one where every unit has the Genestealer Cults keyword and so on. And the only benefit of an all-genestealer-cult detachment is that it allows you to include one all-astra-militarum detachment in the same army without sharing a keyword. Outside of this rule there are no rules dealing with any army or detachment being from the same subfaction, only the matched play rule that says every unit in the army has to share at least one faction keyword.

AverageBoss wrote:

Nowhere on the page does it say that. A title is not a rule.

Then why even mention them as elites? What's the point if they're labeled as troops on their datasheet anyway?

AverageBoss wrote:

Besides, you could just as easily say your Detachment is a Thousand Sons Army allied with a pack of Tzeentch Daemons.

Yea, but there are no allies in 8th. Maybe you could have a thousands sons detachment with a tzeentch daemons detachment. In this case your army would have the Tzeentch or Chaos common keywords. I'm not sure if the "rubrics as troops" would apply then, cause as you said, a title is not a rule. I think an argument could be made that it could apply to the thousand sons detachment, but even in this scenario, the OP still would need to change is HQ from Kairos.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Real News wrote:
Outside of this rule there are no rules dealing with any army or detachment being from the same subfaction, only the matched play rule that says every unit in the army has to share at least one faction keyword.

Right, and the matched play rule says one has to pick to which faction a unit belongs. In the rules, the example given is that if a model has the keywords imperium and adeptus astartes, then all other models must have the keywords imperium OR adeptus astartes.

If the OP takes Kairos and rubric Marines, based on the common keywords the faction would be chaos or tzeentch, NOT thousand sons. And that's why I think their rubric Marines should not be taken as troops.

Man, I don't know.

happynobita wrote:

AverageBoss wrote:

Nowhere on the page does it say that. A title is not a rule.

I admit it is unclear, but that's surely how the rules were intended to be read. The rubric Marines have the battlefield role of elites. If people took them in the troop slot on even just the chaos faction keyword, why not just label them as troops in the first place?

AverageBoss wrote:

Besides, you could just as easily say your Detachment is a Thousand Sons Army allied with a pack of Tzeentch Daemons.

Yea, but there are no allies in 8th. Maybe you could have a thousands sons detachment with a tzeentch daemons detachment. In this case your army would have the Tzeentch or Chaos common keywords. I'm not sure if the "rubrics as troops" would apply then, cause as you said, a title is not a rule. I think an argument could be made that it could apply to the thousand sons detachment, but even in this scenario, the OP still would need to change is HQ from Kairos.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Real News wrote:
Outside of this rule there are no rules dealing with any army or detachment being from the same subfaction, only the matched play rule that says every unit in the army has to share at least one faction keyword.

Right, and the matched play rule says one has to pick to which faction a unit belongs. In the rules, the example given is that if a model has the keywords imperium and adeptus astartes, then all other models must have the keywords imperium OR adeptus astartes.

If the OP takes Kairos and rubric Marines, based on the common keywords the faction would be chaos or tzeentch, NOT thousand sons. And that's why I think their rubric Marines should not be taken as troops.

I agree with you. But sadly as the rules are written that is not the case

chosen_of_khaine wrote:

 fwlr wrote:
Since you have kairos you probably need some horrors as he cannot join a detachment with rubrics as troops

Really? They both share Chaos and Tzeentch faction keywords, and there aren't any other Heretic Astartes in the list I'm taking as anything but Thousand Sons.

In the YMDC forum they seemed to agree that you can take one of the aligned legions (DG, TS, EC, WE) with their respective daemons in the same detachment.

Yes but they do not have their own section of the book. Before the rules for TS models are listed, there is a page of fluff for them and some legion-specific rules stating what models they can take. It is the same with the death guard and the WE, but WE detachments just can take everything apart from special characters. This will probably change with the release of codices, but for now don't misquote rules leading to huge arguments.
Also if you are going to object, check the index. It's right there.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
You would need 2 separate detacments. Also for future reference you can ONLY use TS only models in a TS detacment. This does not apply to rubrics

 fwlr wrote:
Yes but they do not have their own section of the book. Before the rules for TS models are listed, there is a page of fluff for them and some legion-specific rules stating what models they can take. It is the same with the death guard and the WE, but WE detachments just can take everything apart from special characters. This will probably change with the release of codices, but for now don't misquote rules leading to huge arguments.
Also if you are going to object, check the index. It's right there.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
You would need 2 separate detacments. Also for future reference you can ONLY use TS only models in a TS detacment. This does not apply to rubrics

Before you accuse me of misquoting rules, why don't you read them again? It specifies that the units in the table are the only ones that can replace <Legion> with Thousand Sons, and that the role of Thousand Sons (i.e., those that replace <Legion> with Thousand Sons) Rubric Marines are troops.

The word "detachment" isn't even used anywhere in the Chaos Index except in the "Battle Forged Armies" section (which also happens to not include any relevant rules about faction keywords before you go run and check).

Also, for the record, there are only two instances of the phrase "faction keyword" in the rulebook - one is in the datasheet explanation, and the other is where it explicitly states that all units in a matched play army must contain at least one Faction keyword in common.

happynobita wrote:
Then why even mention them as elites? What's the point if they're labeled as troops on their datasheet anyway?

Because you can only take them as troops if their <Legion> is Thousand Sons, and would therefore not benefit from Legion-specific aura abilities like Abaddon's "Lord of the Black Legion" re-rolls or Huron's "Lord of the Red Corsairs" morale auto-pass and the like.

I should be clear that I'm not particularly happy about how this is handled, but the Codices will most definitely rectify this with the Legion-specific rules and whatnot.

happynobita wrote:

AverageBoss wrote:

Nowhere on the page does it say that. A title is not a rule.

Then why even mention them as elites? What's the point if they're labeled as troops on their datasheet anyway?

In addition to what Chosen_of_Khaine mentioned,

Having them count as troops simply is not that important anymore due to how detachments work. Sometimes you will want such units to be elites. You might even want to field Troop and Elite Rubrics in the same list.

 fwlr wrote:


Yes but they do not have their own section of the book. Before the rules for TS models are listed, there is a page of fluff for them and some legion-specific rules stating what models they can take. It is the same with the death guard and the WE, but WE detachments just can take everything apart from special characters. This will probably change with the release of codices, but for now don't misquote rules leading to huge arguments.
Also if you are going to object, check the index. It's right there.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
You would need 2 separate detacments. Also for future reference you can ONLY use TS only models in a TS detacment. This does not apply to rubrics

Index: Chaos, p49: "The Heretic Astartes datasheets listed to the right can be from the Thousand Sons Legion."
Warhammer 40,000, p214: "All of the units in a matched play army, with the exception of those that are UNALIGNED, must have at least one Faction keyword in common (e.g. IMPERIUM or CHAOS), even though they may be in different Detachments."
Warhammer 40,000, p243-245, repeated for most types of detachment: "All units must be from the same Faction."
Warhammer 40,000, p240 "All units belong to one or more of the many Factions that fight for dominance across the galaxy." I'm not going to quote this entire section but it's perfectly clear in explaining how factions work within a detachment.

There is no such thing as a "Thousand Sons detachment". Informally, it means a detachment in which all models have the Thousand Sons keyword. But there is no rule stating that. There are only rules defining a "Genestealer cults detachment" and an "Astra Militarum detachment". If we extrapolate this rule (which comes from a single page in a book that most players will never buy) and apply it to the system as a whole, then you have a definition for "Thousand Sons detachment" which otherwise is not a thing in the rules at all. Even if we DO extrapolate, the idea of a "Thousand Sons" detachment is meaningless because there are no benefits, penalties or rules applying to this type of detachment. If you WANT to run an all-Thousand-Sons detachment, then you may only use models from the Thousand Sons list. But that's simply a matter of stylistic preference. Furthermore, there is absolutely NOTHING saying you can't use thousand sons units in a "Chaos" detachment or a "Heretic Astartes" detachment.

As for the suggestion that any unit has to "choose" a faction, that is incorrect. A unit can belong to multiple factions.

Real News wrote:

There is no such thing as a "Thousand Sons detachment". Informally, it means a detachment in which all models have the Thousand Sons keyword. But there is no rule stating that. There are only rules defining a "Genestealer cults detachment" and an "Astra Militarum detachment". If we extrapolate this rule (which comes from a single page in a book that most players will never buy) and apply it to the system as a whole, then you have a definition for "Thousand Sons detachment" which otherwise is not a thing in the rules at all. Even if we DO extrapolate, the idea of a "Thousand Sons" detachment is meaningless because there are no benefits, penalties or rules applying to this type of detachment. If you WANT to run an all-Thousand-Sons detachment, then you may only use models from the Thousand Sons list. But that's simply a matter of stylistic preference. Furthermore, there is absolutely NOTHING saying you can't use thousand sons units in a "Chaos" detachment or a "Heretic Astartes" detachment.

As for the suggestion that any unit has to "choose" a faction, that is incorrect. A unit can belong to multiple factions.

There is no thousand sons detachment, but all currently available detachments require that all units belong to the same faction. So yes, units in a detachment could have several common faction keywords, but on 240 of the main rule book it says, "...all other units in that Detachment must either be from the Imperium Faction, or they must all be from the Adeptus Astartes Faction." It says "or", not "and/or". To me, this implies "pick one". It's vague, but I don't feel like I'm reaching.

happynobita wrote:

Real News wrote:

There is no such thing as a "Thousand Sons detachment". Informally, it means a detachment in which all models have the Thousand Sons keyword. But there is no rule stating that. There are only rules defining a "Genestealer cults detachment" and an "Astra Militarum detachment". If we extrapolate this rule (which comes from a single page in a book that most players will never buy) and apply it to the system as a whole, then you have a definition for "Thousand Sons detachment" which otherwise is not a thing in the rules at all. Even if we DO extrapolate, the idea of a "Thousand Sons" detachment is meaningless because there are no benefits, penalties or rules applying to this type of detachment. If you WANT to run an all-Thousand-Sons detachment, then you may only use models from the Thousand Sons list. But that's simply a matter of stylistic preference. Furthermore, there is absolutely NOTHING saying you can't use thousand sons units in a "Chaos" detachment or a "Heretic Astartes" detachment.

As for the suggestion that any unit has to "choose" a faction, that is incorrect. A unit can belong to multiple factions.

There is no thousand sons detachment, but all currently available detachments require that all units belong to the same faction. So yes, units in a detachment could have several common faction keywords, but on 240 of the main rule book it says, "...all other units in that Detachment must either be from the Imperium Faction, or they must all be from the Adeptus Astartes Faction." It says "or", not "and/or". To me, this implies "pick one". It's vague, but I don't feel like I'm reaching.

Yes you have to pick one, but that can be Imperium, Chaos etc. And nowhere does it say you have to pick Blood Angels to have Blood Angels, or Thousand Sons to have Thousand Sons. There will be benefits to going that narrow when the codexes hit, but currently there are not.

chosen_of_khaine wrote:

 fwlr wrote:
Yes but they do not have their own section of the book. Before the rules for TS models are listed, there is a page of fluff for them and some legion-specific rules stating what models they can take. It is the same with the death guard and the WE, but WE detachments just can take everything apart from special characters. This will probably change with the release of codices, but for now don't misquote rules leading to huge arguments.
Also if you are going to object, check the index. It's right there.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
You would need 2 separate detacments. Also for future reference you can ONLY use TS only models in a TS detacment. This does not apply to rubrics

Before you accuse me of misquoting rules, why don't you read them again? It specifies that the units in the table are the only ones that can replace <Legion> with Thousand Sons, and that the role of Thousand Sons (i.e., those that replace <Legion> with Thousand Sons) Rubric Marines are troops.

The word "detachment" isn't even used anywhere in the Chaos Index except in the "Battle Forged Armies" section (which also happens to not include any relevant rules about faction keywords before you go run and check).

Also, for the record, there are only two instances of the phrase "faction keyword" in the rulebook - one is in the datasheet explanation, and the other is where it explicitly states that all units in a matched play army must contain at least one Faction keyword in common.

happynobita wrote:
Then why even mention them as elites? What's the point if they're labeled as troops on their datasheet anyway?

Because you can only take them as troops if their <Legion> is Thousand Sons, and would therefore not benefit from Legion-specific aura abilities like Abaddon's "Lord of the Black Legion" re-rolls or Huron's "Lord of the Red Corsairs" morale auto-pass and the like.

I should be clear that I'm not particularly happy about how this is handled, but the Codices will most definitely rectify this with the Legion-specific rules and whatnot.

You can certainly have Kairos playing HQ for the TSons, they share at least one common keyword and therefore can be included in the same detachment, simple as that. What might be confusing people here is conflating that rule with the transferal of some subfaction-specific rules - just because Kairos is with the TSons, doesn't mean he gets their benefits. Death Guard don't have marine bikers in their index entry: they can still take a unit of bikers in the same detachment, the difference is that they will lack the Disgustingly Resilient save.

happynobita wrote:

There is no thousand sons detachment, but all currently available detachments require that all units belong to the same faction. So yes, units in a detachment could have several common faction keywords, but on 240 of the main rule book it says, "...all other units in that Detachment must either be from the Imperium Faction, or they must all be from the Adeptus Astartes Faction." It says "or", not "and/or". To me, this implies "pick one".

No it doesn't. There is no possible reading that would suggest "you must choose one faction keyword for this unit and discard the others." You do not "lose" faction keywords unless the rules tell you to. The rule that you quoted means that all units must have one of the aforementioned faction keywords to be included in the detachment (and if there were such a thing as Adeptus Astartes who don't have the Imperium keyword, you couldn't mix them with units that just have Imperium.) Not that any units "lose" faction keywords.

If you were somehow able to discard faction keywords, players would abuse this in order to cheat. You could say that your units are not Chaos because they are Heretic Astartes, and therefore they are immune to rules that give a bonus against Chaos such as the inquisition Quarry rule. Anti-daemon rules would be useless because you could include a single Chaos unit in your detachment and then say that all of your units are not Daemons because they're Chaos.

At any rate, it doesn't matter what the rules "imply". What matters is what is written in the rules, not what is "implied" or "inferred". If the rules don't say it expicitly, then it's not part of the rules unless it's stated in a FAQ or errata. If you think the rules "imply" anything or you "infer" anything from the rules, you are just making rules up. This is called houseruling, and it is perfectly alright and sometimes necessary, but it has nothing to do with what's written in the rules.

I understand what people are hoping for in terms of GW's intent, but they're just projecting their hopes and dreams onto the writers. The rules are exceedingly clear when GW does not want mixed-faction detachments to get faction benefits. Look at Adeptus Mechanicus. The rules explicitly say that nobody gets Canticles unless every single unit has Canticles. Believe me, if GW wants to give you a reason to make sure your entire detachment is all the same subfaction then they will be exceedingly clear about it.

Real News wrote:

I understand what people are hoping for in terms of GW's intent, but they're just projecting their hopes and dreams onto the writers. The rules are exceedingly clear when GW does not want mixed-faction detachments to get faction benefits. Look at Adeptus Mechanicus. The rules explicitly say that nobody gets Canticles unless every single unit has Canticles. Believe me, if GW wants to give you a reason to make sure your entire detachment is all the same subfaction then they will be exceedingly clear about it.

That's true. Well, label me convinced then.

First post on the forum. Two things :
RAW, if you couldn't field <LEGION> with non-<LEGION>, you'd never be able to field Fallen with anything as they don't have a <LEGION> or <MARK OF CHAOS> keyword. Specific example of a Chaos (also Imperium) unit that would be moot in the index.

More importantly on this thread, I feel that fielding Kairos as your HQ is a little thematically inappropriate. It upsets your neat 100pl a little, but why not have an Exalted Sorcerer (or three) there instead?

Or better yet, two Sorcerers and a Tzaangor unit. That puts you at 2hq and 3 troop, meaning you get to field a Battalion and this gain 3CP.