Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

I've recently asked opinions on a new army to play with 9th coming up and I've chosen the thousand sons, although they were not recomemded much. Now I was jist wondering if anyone plays them, if you could give me some advice on the thousand sons and what I should look into buying for them. I will be purchasing the start collecting box and codex bundle but I've heard I will need a pyschic awakening book, ritual of the dammed I believe? I may be wrong. Anyways, im not too sure as to what that is and if its necessary.

Any thousand sons players willing to give advice on how to play the army and what to do is much appreciated!

Thank you!

Units are up in the air until we have points. We won't know precisely how good things are for a little while. Don't be scared to play some smaller games with proxies to get a feel for what you like to use.

The PA book is important to us, because it does offer a ton of utility.

Units are up in the air, but keep in mind it's going to be pretty rough to play pure Thousand Sons right now.


That being said, here is how I would rank things, as they stand, but I don't have the new points:

1) Ahriman. While he is likely to get a points increase, he is likely going to still be the best unit in our codex. You can't go wrong with him.
2) Rubric Marines- Our bread and butter troop. PA added a lot of very good Stratagems for them, and being able to hold objectives in 9th is very important.
3) Daemon Prince- Still one of the best units.
4) Scarab Occult. These I think are going to be incredible in this edition, and I am looking forward to fielding more of them.

After that, it's a bit up in the air. I'd avoid Magnus for now, he's pretty bad unless we get a revamped statline for him.

Thank you guys for the input!

Definitely focus on Sorcerors and Rubricae (potentially including Scarab Occult Terminators) for the moment,

We don't know what point changes the new edition will bring, so it's hard to guess. Ritual of the Damned is the book you're after.

Thousand Sons should be pretty good. With HQ slots seemingly being hard to come by and Command Points (fairly) plentiful, then the Thousand Sons having lots of Squad-leader PSYKER units and lots of good cheap stratagems (risen rubricae for 'infiltrate', infernal fusilade for massive firepower, etc) puts them in a good place.

I'm less convinced by Tzangors - massed close-quarters light infantry is going to get screwed over something rotten if people embrace the Blast rule, because small units aren't great.

One side-note:
If you focus on non-named sorcerors and basic rubricae , culists and 'normal' chaos tanks, you do have the secondary advantage that you can - if you want - play a bunch of tzeenchian sell-swords and swap to represent a force attached to a different non-cult legion. It's hard to imagine a force of rubricae playing as well as THOUSAND SONS with any other <LEGION> keyword, but the option is there.

 Sasori wrote:

After that, it's a bit up in the air. I'd avoid Magnus for now, he's pretty bad unless we get a revamped statline for him.

I'm up in the air about this. If multi-smite stays then Magnus could wind up being a beast along with a way to guard him from alphas.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 Sasori wrote:

After that, it's a bit up in the air. I'd avoid Magnus for now, he's pretty bad unless we get a revamped statline for him.

I'm up in the air about this. If multi-smite stays then Magnus could wind up being a beast along with a way to guard him from alphas.

My main issue is he gets locked into the Warlord if you take him, and that's a pretty major downside right now. If the multiple-smite stays around, which I think may get corrected in the GT pack, I still not know if I would take him because of that.