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Blue scribes are Meh not good not bad. Changling is GTFO good -1 to hit for everything within 9. Heralds combined with CSM DP will probably make people cry. S8 attacks on a durable frame.

 BoomWolf wrote:
We can also technically pick up zhupor, akros and necrosis if we want for some odd reason, I personally find it amusing.

Not sure what you mean by this? All three belong to specific, non-Tzeentch Legions. Not sure why a Thousand Sons army would want them, there's largely no benefit to it.

I don't know how people are interpreting the rules as saying "if all units in your army are from the Thousand Sons chapter, then the battlefield role of rubric marines is Troops instead of Elites." That just isn't what the rules say.

RAW are perfectly clear: "The Heretic Astartes datasheets listed to the right can be from the Thousand Sons legion", and "The battlefield role of Thousand Sons rubric marines is Troops instead of Elites."

If you want to talk about RAI, there's one explanatory sentence on p10 that says "not all Heretic Astartes units are available to all Chaos Space Marine armies". But this contradicts the actual rules. All units in the Chaos index book have the "Chaos" faction keyword, therefore every unit in the book can be part of any detachment in which all units have the "Chaos" faction keyword.

I can't find a single rule anywhere that says "Thousand Sons Heretic Astartes units can only be included in an army where all Heretic Astartes units are from the Thousand Sons legion" or anything equivalent to that.

Furthermore I can't find a single rule that applies to or deals with "Thousand Sons armies" or armies consisting fully of any specific legion.

8th edition discourages the mixing and matching of legions/chapters/regiments/clans by offering synergy bonuses, not by forbidding mixing outright. So as stupid as it sounds, there's no RAW reason you can't stick Death Guard plague marines and Thousand Sons rubric marines in the same detachment and call them both troops. The army as a whole would neither be Death Guard nor Thousand Sons, but since there are no benefits to having a Thousand Sons or Death Guard army it doesn't matter.

I mean, that's true, and there could be merit to including DG troops in an otherwise TS army, my question was more as to why you would take HQ's who buff the wrong army since the buff is usually the high point of an HQ, and the other parts of a datasheet have to be very potent to justify taking it without receiving any benefit from the buffs (IE Magnus).

Well, exalted sorcerers are outright bonkers compared to regular sorcerers, so that's a reason for people playing non-TS to want them.

And we could use a plaguecaster, as he has a different spell list, just avoid the buff power if you don't have any DG units.

If only we could take a psyker of each legion like SM can, and have a whole range of different spells.
But alas, it was not meant to be. we got underpriced exalted sorcerers to serve as nasty beatsticks, and when our actual caster (ahriman/magnus) bites the dust, they take over casting stuff.

Thanks for pointing that out.. its.. crazy, why are exalted sorcerors cheaper ?

To give you a reason to bother with more than one?
I guess. Sorcerers are pretty horrible with rule of one...

Exalted Sorcerers kinda need to be comparable cost to a regular, less good Sorcerer or else we really get screwed on not getting Chaos Lords/Dark Apostles. I'm jealous of the former in a lot of situations, a daemon prince is a major expense for a back line vehicle buffer.

 BoomWolf wrote:
Well, exalted sorcerers are outright bonkers compared to regular sorcerers, so that's a reason for people playing non-TS to want them.

There really just not. Exalted Sorcerers are terrible they have weapons, they pay extra for 2 denies that they don't need, they kinda have to be put on disks to keep up with the rest of the army. They were pretty good before the swap to 8th, but now there borderline trash pay a bunch of points for crap you don't need, they lack any kind of punch and they lack the ability to buy anything with punch, not to mention the terrible aura you pay for that most of the time will do almost nothing to make your army better.

The Force Staff isn't terrible; wounding T4 on a 3+ and T3 on a 2+ means you can hurt a lot of infantry, and many monstrous creatures are T6. The Exalted isn't going to beat any dedicated melee units but considering that it's cheaper than a Sorcerer with budget weapons I'd say it's pretty good value.

The aura is pretty garbage though, I will agree with that.

Irritating that he doesn't benefit from his own aura when on a disc.
I think the sorcerors pretty decent in combat for its points.

 Thousand-Son-Sorcerer wrote:

 BoomWolf wrote:
Well, exalted sorcerers are outright bonkers compared to regular sorcerers, so that's a reason for people playing non-TS to want them.

There really just not. Exalted Sorcerers are terrible they have weapons, they pay extra for 2 denies that they don't need, they kinda have to be put on disks to keep up with the rest of the army. They were pretty good before the swap to 8th, but now there borderline trash pay a bunch of points for crap you don't need, they lack any kind of punch and they lack the ability to buy anything with punch, not to mention the terrible aura you pay for that most of the time will do almost nothing to make your army better.

How not?
Exalted have better WS, BS, W and A, but cost the same as a regular sorcerer.

Exalted Sorcerers are flat-out better than standard Sorcerers in every way except for two: you want Sorcerers on a Bike (who can't be Thousand Sons, annoyingly) or you REALLY need that jump pack deep strike.

Heck, he's even cheaper with standard weapon loadouts and does everything the Sorcerer does plus has the better stats, invul save, and aura buff for Thousand Sons..

Baseline Exalted: 101 pts
Baseline Sorcerer: 102 pts

They also don't get two denies, are you using the right book?

That said, I still don't think they are worth taking when we have Magnus and Ahriman around and a limited breadth of Hereticus powers we can cast each turn.

Arachnofiend wrote:
The Force Staff isn't terrible; wounding T4 on a 3+ and T3 on a 2+ means you can hurt a lot of infantry, and many monstrous creatures are T6. The Exalted isn't going to beat any dedicated melee units but considering that it's cheaper than a Sorcerer with budget weapons I'd say it's pretty good value.

The aura is pretty garbage though, I will agree with that.

The staff performs worse in most areas over the sword which is cheaper. The Axe is best for killing Charcters and MCs but its also the most expensive.

The Staff out performs the sword in killing Guardsman that's it.


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BoomWolf wrote:How not?
Exalted have better WS, BS, W and A, but cost the same as a regular sorcerer.

Better WS BS and A are only better if you have the equipment that allows you to have an impact. BS 2+ with a bolt pistol isn't good, if you can give that BS 2+ something worth shooting then it becomes good.

1 higher wound means hes around slightly longer to not do damage.

TzeentchNet wrote:Exalted Sorcerers are flat-out better than standard Sorcerers in every way except for two: you want Sorcerers on a Bike (who can't be Thousand Sons, annoyingly) or you REALLY need that jump pack deep strike.

Heck, he's even cheaper with standard weapon loadouts and does everything the Sorcerer does plus has the better stats, invul save, and aura buff for Thousand Sons..

Baseline Exalted: 101 pts
Baseline Sorcerer: 102 pts

They also don't get two denies, are you using the right book?

That said, I still don't think they are worth taking when we have Magnus and Ahriman around and a limited breadth of Hereticus powers we can cast each turn.

Your right he only gets one deny.

Yes hes 1 point cheaper and has much worse weapons and no options to change the weapons. Basically hes a sorcerer that wont be able to do anything but cast spells which are massivly restricted.

Id rather pay 50 more point for a model that can do what he does and do thing in the shooting phase and the fight phase.

I don't believe that a single (expensive) combi weapon option outweighs the Sorcerer's numerous stat deficits and lack of TS synergy. It's not even a fair comparison, really. Moving on...

The verbiage of Forge Worlds response to complaints about the lack of notation regarding DG and TS in the Forces of Chaos book leads me to believe that they'll allow a blanket permission. If so, it was nice knowing you Maulerfiend ... but you're getting swapped for a Hellforged Contemptor day 1. Has anyone else tried running a Thousand Sons daemon machine pack yet? It looks like a lot of fun, if a bit easy to swamp with bodies.

On paper tzeentch decimators with soulburner petards sound amazing.
Mixed in with the changling for durability or even a DP of tzeentch, the damage output is huge.
OFC no-one owns decimators
For pure TS the contemptors sound cool. I have 3 assembled now. Some synergy with the Hellwright, but not sure it's worth it.

The Soulburner Petard makes me paranoid with how you can never avoid the Gets Hot. It can even happen when you're not using the Petard! My current list is using a dakka decimator with two butcher cannons set up next to a tri-gun forgefiend and bolter rapier battery, all backed by a daemon prince. I'll let you know how it goes when I can actually wrangle a game for it.

So you take one wound from gets hot then then one wound it balances out.


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I don't even want to know why you think it could happen when not using the petard.

Butcher cannon seems like a great weapon this edition.

You could synergize with chaos spawn/Raptors to give a unit -3 Ld (+1 if the butcher cannon already killed something). That means that even Ld9 units can lose an extra model over a single lost model. But you're probably going to make sure that it loses more than 1.

Say there's a 10-man tactical squad in cover (Ld 8). You have a Deredeo w/ butcher cannon array, twin heavy bolter and Greater havoc launcher (which is what I'd go for) shoot at it. On average that's going to be 4 dead. Now take a Rubric squad w/ soulreaper and shoot it. Non rapid-fire, they're going to kill another 2 guys. So now we've killed 6 guys and their leadership is reduced to 6. Any number rolled on that dice is going to result in extra casualties so there's a 50% chance the squad is wiped.
Now okay, tactical marines in cover might not be the best of targets but this is really going to work great against any infantry unit w/ 2 or less wounds.

I get that the problem w/ 1K sons generally is anti-armour and not anti-infantry, but it's good to have many options regardless.
On the topic of anti-armour tough. I'm looking at a Hellforged predator w/ C-beam cannon and 2x lascannons. It's a smidge cheaper than a regular predator and while it's actually a bit worse than a laspred against vehicles, it provides more flexibility since the C-beam is not half bad against infantry units.

Does need some careful positioning though because of the containment breach rules.

That's why I prefer petard/claw decimator.
Cheaper, shaves MW off big nasties, moves fast, hits hard and doesn't blow up massivly in out face.

True, and it's not really a tactics concern but I don't think the model particularly fits in the aesthetic of the army.

I'd be tempted to buy one of the osirian contemptors and running it as a decimator.

No, the Orisin is for Contemptors.

Decimators are made with Achea Castellax.

Wait are you telling me that there's a psychic Thousand Sons dreadnought in Horus Heresy and instead of porting that over they gave us a dozen Imperium models that don't even have proper Chaos equivalents

I've already asked them to give the Osrion rules. You should too.
Peer pressurreeeee

Arachnofiend wrote:
Wait are you telling me that there's a psychic Thousand Sons dreadnought in Horus Heresy and instead of porting that over they gave us a dozen Imperium models that don't even have proper Chaos equivalents

The answer to this, sadly, is yes. Thousand sons recently got some amazing HH minis.

TzeentchNet wrote:
I don't believe that a single (expensive) combi weapon option outweighs the Sorcerer's numerous stat deficits and lack of TS synergy.

It's not just a single combi weapon you can give him a melee weapon which is better then the staff as well. Not to mention the upgrades the regular Sorc can take like the Terminator upgrade which allows him to DS and puts him on a much more durable frame and gives him an extra wound. The "synergy" comes only from the aura, which as best I can tell is border line useless with its 6% increase in saves. Look at the numbers I'm not going to go over them again but it's really bad, so unless you're getting that are for free which I doubt it's really not worth it.

There is a reason why Exalted Sorcerers are cheap er then regular Sorcerers, and it's not because GW decided to be super generous to Thousand Sons

The sorcerer "upgrades" cost you, a lot.
As for a better weapon-why? the staff gives you what you need-some S6. you want swords? the scarab brings plenty.

Axes could be desirable, but to take down a T6 thing, you want that S6.

Truth remains that the exalted is cheaper than an identically equipped sorcerer, while FAR better.
If you claim the equipment itself is not good, and GW priced him lower under that assumption-well, you enter the realm of "what if", and asking if GW thought the equipment aint good, why didn't they make the equipment cheaper to begin with.


Yea, I may have opted for an axe if I could, sure.
But I'll never take a sorcerer over an exalted, that's just madness.

 BoomWolf wrote:
The sorcerer "upgrades" cost you, a lot.
As for a better weapon-why? the staff gives you what you need-some S6. you want swords? the scarab brings plenty.

Axes could be desirable, but to take down a T6 thing, you want that S6.

Truth remains that the exalted is cheaper than an identically equipped sorcerer, while FAR better.
If you claim the equipment itself is not good, and GW priced him lower under that assumption-well, you enter the realm of "what if", and asking if GW thought the equipment aint good, why didn't they make the equipment cheaper to begin with.


Yea, I may have opted for an axe if I could, sure.
But I'll never take a sorcerer over an exalted, that's just madness.

So what makes the Str 6 so good? As I have pointed out it does worse vs everything except Guardsman and T8+ models, and thats compared to the CHEAPEST force weapon you can take. The Axe out performs it everywhere, and is 2 points more that is a nothing upgrade.

Before the switch to 8th. Exalted Sorcerers were pretty good. They still had a crap loadout but the spells they casted needed BS to hit so they were worth it not to mention the Silver Tower orbital strike they got. Now, they have none of those benefits, have a better WS and BS more wounds and more Attacks. But are for some reason cheaper then Exalted Sorcerers. According to you either Exalted Sorcerers are under priced, Sorcerers are overpriced.

Some of them do some cost the exact same like disks. So you can put them on disks with combi-meltas thats 20 points more then what a Exalted sorc costs but now hes worth a gak in the shooting phase. In fact 2 of those can do about 10 wounds to a T7 3+ save model in a single turn, with most of that damage coming from things that can't. Wait dont want to kill tanks? Take a combi flamer and a lighting claw, now your clearing out 10 GEQ a turn so you dont get stuck wasting mortal wounds on dirt cheap models.

Agian there is a reason they are cheaper, and it not because GW threw TS a bone. Its because they are worse.

You can't take a lightning claw and combi weapon on a Sorcerer.

As far as the petard, RAW you take a mortal wound in ANY phase for any attack you roll 1 on. Doesn't matter if you use the petard or not. It doesn't state "with this weapon" in that clause. Same reason you don't need to use a chainsword to get the extra chainsword attack. Doubt its intentional, but that's what it says.

If anyone actually ties to claim that, feel free to hit him with an oversized noodle, its the most absurd interpretation ever.

Unless you claim a marine with a plasma gun that punches someone kills himself on a roll of a 1? because it has the same kind of wording.

 Thousand-Son-Sorcerer wrote:

So what makes the Str 6 so good? As I have pointed out it does worse vs everything except Guardsman and T8+ models, and thats compared to the CHEAPEST force weapon you can take. The Axe out performs it everywhere, and is 2 points more that is a nothing upgrade.

Got a mathammer table for this or something?
I find it hard to believe a sword beats a staff against T6