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Hey all! I need some advice about how to beat my buddy's thousand sons army. My group of 4 friends started warhammer a few months ago and and nobody can beat his damn army. and just to ensure his unbeatable streak, he just got new units that kills any tactics I had in store for him. I play a black templar army (army list can be found in this forum post http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/609413.page )

the only thing not listed is two 5 man legion of the damned squads with plasma/mm

my buddies army list (I don't know what upgrades he has, But I know what he can do) is as follows

HQ: sorcerer with psy mastery 3, familiar, jet bike and an invul save of some sort...he loves screech...

Troops: 2 squads of 5 thousand sons. I think these guys are pretty standard except for the champion usually has a power weapon of sorts and he just keeps them back and spams warp fire.

Fast attack: a biker squad fully decked out in plasma stuff

Elite: possessed squad....don't know what they have but I know they have a 5++ save

That is the units he kept beating everybody with before....I almost beat him because I got him into melee, but it came down to a single dice roll to run into difficult terrain to cap a vp that I fell just short of doing and cost me the game...now the problem is, he just got a hellbrute, termies and daemon prince (that flies) to take care of that pesky melee problem he was having, oh, and 2 more 5 man squads of thousand sons....he comes out to around 1900 points he says with all the upgrades and such. Obviously my points only come out to 1300, so he cant field his whole army, but still.....is there any good way to beat whatever lower point combination he decides to use (which is almost assured he is going to use that prince)?

If you have any questions I'll try to clarify for you, I know my explanation might be a bit confusing. It's just frustrating when all I read is thousand sons aren't good enough for the point cost, but he cleans up on the table

I am confused.
Unbeatable with an army revovling around 1ksons and possessed. dude must be a damn good player.

Looking at your list, the glaring errors are:
1-you are fielding assault marines as anything that is not RG, BA or a forgeworld chapter with actual benefit to them.
2-mixed devs. never do that.
3-never give them heavy bolters either. or missiles for that purpose.


Honestly, just run him over with masses of shots, and don't stand out in the open, because marines in the open are 1ksons favorite targets, in fact that's the ONLY target they are good against.

I mean, when it comes to ap-less, the 1ksons die just as fast as your average marine.

Anything with serious range will give you an easier time, as you just need to guard it from the bikers, then play on your own terms while you outrange his slow dudes. same applies to the possessed.

Any form of AV will also give him nightmares, given he has no answer to it. bring a tank or something.

Honeslty, the problem seems to be that you are trying to get close to him, and his army is dedicated to the sole purpose of killing marines up close, yet got little way to get close.

Land Raider full of LC Termies and a Chaplain.

Perhaps some clarification about my army is in order then? I picked up those devs for 15 bucks on a good deal. I mainly just got them for the lascannons. trust me, if I even need to lose some points somewhere, that dev squad is the first to go. But i figure, while I need some more points, why not put some extra shots downrange?

As for the assault marine.....yeah, I have no excuse for that other than I needed melee?

the main problem with his old army list was that he would do warpfire on me, and then mop me up (in cover) with that ap3 fire, so he would constantly outgun my crusader squads. mean while his sorcerer would take pot shots with shriek and then jet away to always break los or stay out of range. I honestly wasn't worried about his bikes because of my las cannons and his possessed squad just requires focus fire which I fail to do because his 1ksons are picking me appart.

But yeah, I do agree with armor. he only has doom bolt (I believe is the power? s8 ap1 and hits everything between sorc and the target?) to do anything.

what unit should I be using in melee besides assault termies?

Are the bikers nurgle? (T6?)

besides the nurgle biker it sounds very mediocre.

Bikes still will be a pain forever and it will be a tough nut to crack.

at best you will need to send a similiar hard nut or road bump them while you kill his scoring units.

Thats about all i can think of.

You could always try vindicators + enfeeble on the bike squad (though that Sorcer is gona make that tough.)

those bikers are indeed nurgle.....as is his possessed squad I think?

I guess it just sounds like I dont know how to deal with those 1ksons with ap3. He already proved in a past game with me that he is going to win every time if my crusader squad tries to out range his 1ksons. All the while his sorc just bounces around and uses shriek, killing whole squads. In his defence, he did roll his warlord trait to have preferred enemy vs me, which really sucks...

but even aside from my army, we have a tau and gk player, both of which he still wins.

 Grimaldus3320 wrote:
Hey all! I need some advice about how to beat my buddy's thousand sons army. My group of 4 friends started warhammer a few months ago and and nobody can beat his damn army. and just to ensure his unbeatable streak, he just got new units that kills any tactics I had in store for him. I play a black templar army (army list can be found in this forum post http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/609413.page )

the only thing not listed is two 5 man legion of the damned squads with plasma/mm

my buddies army list (I don't know what upgrades he has, But I know what he can do) is as follows

HQ: sorcerer with psy mastery 3, familiar, jet bike and an invul save of some sort...he loves screech...

Troops: 2 squads of 5 thousand sons. I think these guys are pretty standard except for the champion usually has a power weapon of sorts and he just keeps them back and spams warp fire.

Fast attack: a biker squad fully decked out in plasma stuff

Elite: possessed squad....don't know what they have but I know they have a 5++ save

That is the units he kept beating everybody with before....I almost beat him because I got him into melee, but it came down to a single dice roll to run into difficult terrain to cap a vp that I fell just short of doing and cost me the game...now the problem is, he just got a hellbrute, termies and daemon prince (that flies) to take care of that pesky melee problem he was having, oh, and 2 more 5 man squads of thousand sons....he comes out to around 1900 points he says with all the upgrades and such. Obviously my points only come out to 1300, so he cant field his whole army, but still.....is there any good way to beat whatever lower point combination he decides to use (which is almost assured he is going to use that prince)?

If you have any questions I'll try to clarify for you, I know my explanation might be a bit confusing. It's just frustrating when all I read is thousand sons aren't good enough for the point cost, but he cleans up on the table

Range is the big thing. Deploy second, pre-measure and make sure you're at your own weapons maximum ranges and then fire, fall back and fire. a list like that just has nothing for range Even if you do less damage initially, Thousand Sons cant TAKE very many casualties before they start suffering.

As I try to tell people all the time: just because you can assault doesn't mean you should. Just because you CAN shoot dopesnt mean you should. think in terms of his range and how close he can get to you next turn. Plan accordingly and stay away from it until you're ready for the final blow.

7E changed a few things around but check this out as well.

Well you have some options though it doesn't revolve around using crusaders in land raiders

At best you could return the favor with some Bike marines with grav weapons with divination librarian on a bike to fish out perfect timing.

OR a more Black Templar style would be to use Close combat terminators and go in and punch face to get around jinking cover.

But if GK and Tau are having issues then perhaps you need to pull out his dex and double check everything he is doing. or the other players might not be playing right.

Droppodding in would get you close quickly, and 5 man squads should lose two from the bolter fire from one 10 man squad.

If you are going to go the close combat route you need to have larger squads to absorb the casualties. You also need a better means of getting into combat then a Rhino.

For example I'm planning on using 15 man blood claw squads in a storm wolf in my SW army. Only the Deamon prince could contest such a squad, and they will wipe any enemy unit off the map in one phase while the storm wolf shoots at the DP.

Your Assault squads should focus on the melee and drop the plasma. Get full squads. A ten man squad will get 2-3 kills in assault, stay stuck in so they can't be shot, and clean up next turn.

Yeah...I don't have drop pods or termies or land raider yet haha. BuyBest a land raider and assault termies will probably be my next purchase since he is bringing out a prince and my taught friend is talking Riptide...

So what I'm hearing here is that I should make a squad of 10 assault marines instead of 2 of 5 and have them go after... possessed squad? Meanwhile have my lascannons try to snipe those bikers as early as possible?

As for his sorc, I was thinking dropping my legion of the damned on him and giving him a taste of some plas/mm, and then going on to other targets as need be from there.

And I guess for the 1ksons, I'll just stick to cover and try to pick him off the Best I can?

 Grimaldus3320 wrote:
Yeah...I don't have drop pods or termies or land raider yet haha. BuyBest a land raider and assault termies will probably be my next purchase since he is bringing out a prince and my taught friend is talking Riptide...

So what I'm hearing here is that I should make a squad of 10 assault marines instead of 2 of 5 and have them go after... possessed squad? Meanwhile have my lascannons try to snipe those bikers as early as possible?

As for his sorc, I was thinking dropping my legion of the damned on him and giving him a taste of some plas/mm, and then going on to other targets as need be from there.

And I guess for the 1ksons, I'll just stick to cover and try to pick him off the Best I can?

Make sure his sorcer is alone when you drop the legion on him. If hes in a bike or possesed squad I woudnt go for it. But if hes all alone, he'll be easy pickings.

Like said above, 1ksons are expensive and the only thing going for them is that they have ap3 guns. Stick to cover and trade fire and youll do fine.

If your friend will let you ask if you can proxy all the heavy weapons on the devastator squads. A 4 plasma cannon devastator squad will rape, destroy, and burn his list to the ground.

 BoomWolf wrote:
I am confused.
Unbeatable with an army revovling around 1ksons and possessed. dude must be a damn good player.

Looking at your list, the glaring errors are:
1-you are fielding assault marines as anything that is not RG, BA or a forgeworld chapter with actual benefit to them.
2-mixed devs. never do that.
3-never give them heavy bolters either. or missiles for that purpose.


Honestly, just run him over with masses of shots, and don't stand out in the open, because marines in the open are 1ksons favorite targets, in fact that's the ONLY target they are good against.

I mean, when it comes to ap-less, the 1ksons die just as fast as your average marine.

Anything with serious range will give you an easier time, as you just need to guard it from the bikers, then play on your own terms while you outrange his slow dudes. same applies to the possessed.

Any form of AV will also give him nightmares, given he has no answer to it. bring a tank or something.

Honeslty, the problem seems to be that you are trying to get close to him, and his army is dedicated to the sole purpose of killing marines up close, yet got little way to get close.

seriously? puts me to damn shame. He dont even have a drake!
Just pile in more shots at him. Use more of your rifle dreads, land speeders have av? Thunder Fire cannons? Land Raider Crusaders with hurricane bolters. Hell razor back with assault cannons or heavy bolters. Hell just use rhino wall and have your black templars run behind the rhinos.

Multiple Landraiders full of CC attackers will be trouble for him...watch out for Obliterators or other units with meltaguns, however.

Like everyone says: Beat'em in CC with lots of attacks!

Don't change anything. The thing is that you have a weak list but have numerous possibilities to make it decent with the units that you allready own. While the 1k player has a weak list but that's the best he can pull off with this models. And the games allready sound to be equal.

Sounds like he's got tons of lower strength AP2-3 fire and you've got space marines.

Time to break out the COWARDLY METAL BAWKSES.

Seriously dude. Rhinos for days will solve all your problems.

I agree that rhinos would do a lot for you until ready to charge. I think they are slow and purposeful so they dont get overwatch? Can someone fact check that for me since Im at work and with no codex in front of me?

By Odins beard, unstoppable and Thousand Sons in the same sentence. Well, what about alley with Red Scorpions. Get Tigrius and Loth. Buy 4/5 Devestator Centurions and grab invisibility + Gate of Infinity and try to get 4 inv save. Commence to have your friend never play with you again.

 knightofkob wrote:
By Odins beard, unstoppable and Thousand Sons in the same sentence. Well, what about alley with Red Scorpions. Get Tigrius and Loth. Buy 4/5 Devestator Centurions and grab invisibility + Gate of Infinity and try to get 4 inv save. Commence to have your friend never play with you again.

were they really friends then? Getting beat is not UNfriend worthy. ah well.

MY THOUSAND SONS ARMY IS UNSTOPPABLE AS WELL!

COWER MORTALS IN THE PRESENCE OF MY 300 POINT SQUADS OF 10 SPACE MARINES!

But seriously, just bring more guns. Thousand Sons will die to bolter shots just as fast as their 13 point also power armored brothers

Yeah, just hang back and shoot them all to hell. Thousand sons are really the weakest cult troop in the CSM dex. And if possessed are giving you trouble, you are doing something really wrong. I love possessed, but they have NO weapons outside of close combat weapon and whatever their wonderful boon table gives them. You should be able to hide behind cover and blow him to hell. The only reason his list should be beating anything is if he's got a LOT of cover to hide behind, or you guys are just outright playing terribly. He has most of his points in his single HQ choice. This is a total newbie list. Hell, you could field a dreadnought and give him all kinds of hell with just that one model. Are you guys all new and maybe are using the rules completely wrong?

 Jancoran wrote:

 knightofkob wrote:
By Odins beard, unstoppable and Thousand Sons in the same sentence. Well, what about alley with Red Scorpions. Get Tigrius and Loth. Buy 4/5 Devestator Centurions and grab invisibility + Gate of Infinity and try to get 4 inv save. Commence to have your friend never play with you again.

were they really friends then? Getting beat is not UNfriend worthy. ah well.

Well proly not. But its a really broken unit. It fire 20 reroll to hit and wound shots that ignores cover and armor saves. And can show up any where on the field during his round. And they have a 2+and 4++ save tanked by 2++.

The weakest sub faction of a bottom tier dex is unbeatable? There's about 100 ways to beat his army with the Space marine codex. He doesn't have any flyers or anti air, you could beat him easily with air superiority. A unit of grav cents would tear up 90% of his army. Massed bikes would hurt him with their mobility. A land raider full of SS/TH termies would be tough to deal with. Your codex is literally packed full of ways to absolutely demolish his list. That 1k sons army is about the polar opposite of unbeatable where I play.

 knightofkob wrote:

 Jancoran wrote:

 knightofkob wrote:
By Odins beard, unstoppable and Thousand Sons in the same sentence. Well, what about alley with Red Scorpions. Get Tigrius and Loth. Buy 4/5 Devestator Centurions and grab invisibility + Gate of Infinity and try to get 4 inv save. Commence to have your friend never play with you again.

were they really friends then? Getting beat is not UNfriend worthy. ah well.

Well proly not. But its a really broken unit. It fire 20 reroll to hit and wound shots that ignores cover and armor saves. And can show up any where on the field during his round. And they have a 2+and 4++ save tanked by 2++.

So...a unit that has one round of glory and then gets bounced? meh. Lots of units like that in the game. in one assault, 4 miniatures can monkey stomp 10... we dont call it broken. We call it points spent wisely. Terminators can win combats against units three times their size. So is it broken or just a really expensive and good unit?

I think the use of "broken" is so overused it makes me wanna gag. There probably are units like it (most place Revenant Titans in that category because of how hugely unfun they are to play against most of the time) but not even a tenth of the units people use that word for really are. and look at the points these super units consume? anything thats costign you 500 points better damn well perform like a champ.

 Jancoran wrote:

 knightofkob wrote:

 Jancoran wrote:

 knightofkob wrote:
By Odins beard, unstoppable and Thousand Sons in the same sentence. Well, what about alley with Red Scorpions. Get Tigrius and Loth. Buy 4/5 Devestator Centurions and grab invisibility + Gate of Infinity and try to get 4 inv save. Commence to have your friend never play with you again.

were they really friends then? Getting beat is not UNfriend worthy. ah well.

Well proly not. But its a really broken unit. It fire 20 reroll to hit and wound shots that ignores cover and armor saves. And can show up any where on the field during his round. And they have a 2+and 4++ save tanked by 2++.

So...a unit that has one round of glory and then gets bounced? meh. Lots of units like that in the game. in one assault, 4 miniatures can monkey stomp 10... we dont call it broken. We call it points spent wisely. Terminators can win combats against units three times their size. So is it broken or just a really expensive and good unit?

I think the use of "broken" is so overused it makes me wanna gag. There probably are units like it (most place Revenant Titans in that category because of how hugely unfun they are to play against most of the time) but not even a tenth of the units people use that word for really are. and look at the points these super units consume? anything thats costign you 500 points better damn well perform like a champ.

You do realize cent star is one of the top builds right now. Literally being able to demolish a unit every turn you shoot, then tank nearly everything thrown at it, to do it again next turn is realllyyyy good.

FWIW, TS are Slow & Purposeful. Putting that out there in case that's one of the reasons your marines are dying so much.

So 9/10 of the advice here is spending $100s on new models, the other 1/10 is probably your best advice, learn to adapt to his playing and make counter moves according so then you save yourself money and become a better player, plus the games are more fun when its not one deathstar vs another deathstar.

 changerofways wrote:
MY THOUSAND SONS ARMY IS UNSTOPPABLE AS WELL!

COWER MORTALS IN THE PRESENCE OF MY 300 POINT SQUADS OF 10 SPACE MARINES!

But seriously, just bring more guns. Thousand Sons will die to bolter shots just as fast as their 13 point also power armored brothers

Exalted, I seriously couldn't stop laughing.

 ninjafiredragon wrote:

 Jancoran wrote:

 knightofkob wrote:

 Jancoran wrote:

 knightofkob wrote:
By Odins beard, unstoppable and Thousand Sons in the same sentence. Well, what about alley with Red Scorpions. Get Tigrius and Loth. Buy 4/5 Devestator Centurions and grab invisibility + Gate of Infinity and try to get 4 inv save. Commence to have your friend never play with you again.

were they really friends then? Getting beat is not UNfriend worthy. ah well.

Well proly not. But its a really broken unit. It fire 20 reroll to hit and wound shots that ignores cover and armor saves. And can show up any where on the field during his round. And they have a 2+and 4++ save tanked by 2++.

So...a unit that has one round of glory and then gets bounced? meh. Lots of units like that in the game. in one assault, 4 miniatures can monkey stomp 10... we dont call it broken. We call it points spent wisely. Terminators can win combats against units three times their size. So is it broken or just a really expensive and good unit?

I think the use of "broken" is so overused it makes me wanna gag. There probably are units like it (most place Revenant Titans in that category because of how hugely unfun they are to play against most of the time) but not even a tenth of the units people use that word for really are. and look at the points these super units consume? anything thats costign you 500 points better damn well perform like a champ.

You do realize cent star is one of the top builds right now. Literally being able to demolish a unit every turn you shoot, then tank nearly everything thrown at it, to do it again next turn is realllyyyy good.

Yes...I REALIZE... that Centurion Stars do well. Any Paladin given that many guns is going to do well. It's not cheap. It can die, and if you're going to pay that much for a unit, it better perform.

This thread has the best title ever

Sounds like a tough situation for the OP. I've never played vs Thousand sons but it all sounds horrendous. Had another game yet?

ADL may help.

Extra cover is no bad thing. It pretty much invalidates the AP of the bolters. You'd also get cover against any witchfires unless I'm mistaken?

You can always GTG for 2+ cover if things get really desperate. For a minor investment in $/£, you can negate 1k sons biggest (and overcosted in 7th) advantage. Hell, you could always proxy in a few bits of cardboard in the sort term.