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So I'm just at a loss of figuring out what this army wants to be or wants to be doing. And I know "wait for the codex" is a thing, since we do just have the index. But all the same, the other Legions make sense to me: world eaters, combat, get in close, fast, and wreak havoc; death guard, super durable, great at attrition, play to there inherent toughness 5+ and 5+ FnP. But with thousand sons I'm like.....shrug. Magnus is great, but the psychic phase is pretty neutered right now as is, he doesn't know different powers than any other psyker, is still held back by the normal psychic restrictions, and costs a ton of points; where he does seem to shine is in combat, but do I want to be rushing him forward into combat? 18 wounds isn't that much against lascannons. And if magnus is the centerpiece, and combat is what you want for him, how do thousand sons support being close quarters oriented, lots of Tzaangors? They're great in combat, but they don't move very fast, certainly couldn't keep up with magnus. The other two unique units seem great on paper. Rubric marines seem great, and have those great flamers for what you would think is close quarters fighting, but again, they are very slow, so they need a rhino? But they're already very expensive, put magnus in your list and try to give your rubric marines rhinos and your list will be very tiny and ineffectual imo. The terminators seem great, but only because you can teleport them in. Are they the natural starting point to the force? Basically is this a cc army? A shooty army? A very mobile army? Or a foot-slogging army? Do you try to avoid having a really low model count? Or just embrace the elite nature of their choices and accept a really small army? I want to dive into thousand sons because I love the lore, the aesthetic, and the mass -2 weaponry, but I can't piece together what feels like a coherent strategy. I would love the community's ideas, thanks.

Have you played any games with them yet?

I think you would be surprised both by how durable rubrics are with a 2+4++ vs most weapons and how good their bolters actually are.

Also smite is deceptively powerful as long as you are able to position well enough to effect the right targets, and having 4+ psykers means a lot of smites.

I think that magnus should soak damage and go after the really scary stuff while the rest of the army moves up in rhinos, then gets out to smite / shoot stuff. They aren't amazing in assault, but they are still very durable in it, and the force weapon on the squad sorc usually does okay.

I would also say that the more multi wound models and rubrics you have the better, since it makes most of the enemy single damage shooting very ineffecient.

Yeah I just don't see the value in basic rubric marines, seems much more like a very raw deal. Now, I'm beginning from a position where a rhino for them is a must, they're abysmally slow, don't teleport, and don't have long range weapons. There special rules and basic guns are great, but you have to get them in range. Looking at a completely bog standard unit of 5 in a rhino, 195 points, that's just crazy in my opinion. For 32 points more you can have a 5 man group of the occult terminators, no mobility problem because they can port in, double the durability, shooting double the number of shots - just seems like a no-brainer to me.

Thousand Sons is a shooting army with strong psychic support. If you want to run Magnus I would recommend a Heldrake to support him, otherwise take Ahriman on a Disk instead and have him run up with the rhinos and such.

Rubrics perform much better on the table than they would seem, largely because they just don't die. Pretty much any type of fire does a poor job of killing them; I'd say they're probably bulkier than the SOT's just because multi-wound fire is more efficient against the latter.

What about Forgefiends? They look they provide some good dakka.

Yeah IDK, 211 points seems like a whole lot for a unit that, if it moves, hit's on 5's.

I think the terminators seem much less appealing than the marines. With the current hype for plasma weaponry I wouldn't be surprised to see most armies fielding more than enough plasmagun equivalents to deal with TS terminators very efficiently. Every overcharged plasma hit has more than a 50% chance of scoring a kill. The marines don't have this weakness - if they draw fire from weapons with damage 2+ then the opponent is essentially wasting efficiency anyway. Most ranged damage 1 weapons have AP0 or AP-1, meaning that cover gives you a 2+ save against such weapons. I think they seem good as footslogging objective campers.

I hear that argument, but I don't see it exactly the same way. If they overcharge their plasma guns they're putting themselves at substantial risk, forget the 2 wounds for a moment, the terminators have double the firepower for almost the same cost. And I also take issue with this imaginary scenario where the opponent chooses to ignore and thus lose to the rubric marines because of the principle of not shooting inefficiently. "What? Those guys get +1 armor save against damage 1 weapons and only have one wound? I better not shoot at them then!" This is a fantasy, if you put a bunch of rubric marines in front of the enemy, they're going to shoot at them whether it's efficient or not. At which point, they have the exact same rules and durability as the terminators, but one less wound. By focusing on marines over terminators you're getting less firepower for the same points and just praying that the opponent is a stickler for mathematical efficiency, and not a normal 40k player who thinks, "kill the threats."