When Wrath of Magnus came out, I was...disappointed to put it lightly. The rules themselves were written in a way that really made Magnus the new hotness, but disincentivized fielding him alongside his Legion. (In fact, it arguably made Rubric Marines worse, as the Aspiring Sorcerer lost the option to choose a Force Weapon, being stuck with a Force Staff because that was what came in the new kit) Tournament lists either ran him in a "vanilla
CAD" (Typhus and Plague Zombies), or a Rehati War Sect/Flying Circus alongside Daemons acting as a Warp Charge battery.
In many ways, Wrath of Magnus was a criminally designed supplement with rules alternating between awful or gamebreakingly good, all while exposing how the 7e Psychic system scaled better for a smaller number of super-casters than a larger number of small casters. That, and many of the formations were just *lazy* in their implementation. Three of the six 1k Sons formations were different shades of "Big Psyker, 3-9 smaller Psykers, Manifest on 3+." Boring.
Although this was more of a "quick fix" to the changes from Wrath of Magnus, hopefully it should give inspiration to anyone working on their own homebrew/working to salvage pre-8th
40k. The intent was to improve the internal balance, add more options (both for list-building and in-game), and just emphasize the **fun** aspect of it all. I also did little things such as allowing Exalted Sorcerers/Scarab Terminators to be swapped into other Formations, similar to how Cataphracti/Tartaros Terminators can be subbed into Loyalist Formations. In all, I wanted the Thousand Sons to be distinct, with significant strengths and weaknesses that reward skillful "technical play". As usual, comments and criticism are appreciated!
PS: I avoided discussing Blue/Brimstone Horrors/splitting. Personally I would be cool with models that were split joining the original unit, but
ymmv.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1zdZZxGYG6DHCbPMJTK7DiMrcM3siKPlHz2i6gWcU2Tg/edit?usp=drivesdk