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 ulgurstasta wrote:
Last time Thousand Sons had their own list Tzaangors, cultists/mutants, Chaos hounds, Thrall Wizards and Chaos beasts from the planet of sorcerers were a part of it.

If we're playing that game, the army list in Realm of Chaos: The Lost and the Damned wasn't a Thousand Sons army list; it was a Renegades of Tzeentch army list, of which Thousand Sons Chaos Space Marines were only a single unit type (same goes for the Nurgle list). This is in contrast to the army lists for Black Legion, Emperor's Children and World Eaters in Slaves To Darkness.

 AndrewGPaul wrote:

 ulgurstasta wrote:
Last time Thousand Sons had their own list Tzaangors, cultists/mutants, Chaos hounds, Thrall Wizards and Chaos beasts from the planet of sorcerers were a part of it.

If we're playing that game, the army list in Realm of Chaos: The Lost and the Damned wasn't a Thousand Sons army list; it was a Renegades of Tzeentch army list, of which Thousand Sons Chaos Space Marines were only a single unit type (same goes for the Nurgle list). This is in contrast to the army lists for Black Legion, Emperor's Children and World Eaters in Slaves To Darkness.

Well if we are going down that route the fluff text specifically says that these units existed on the planet of sorcerers and that the TS made use of them, so the name of the actual list isn't that important in of itself.

I agree with the OP.

The book is less Thousand Sons and more Warriors of Tzeentch now with the codex no doubt being split evenly between Gors, Sons, and Marines.

I think the reason the original unit was so well received and there's so much pushback with this news is because before the Tzaangors represented a small meatshield unit specifically introduced to solve the problem of numbers in a Thousand Sons list. Now it's looking like it will have the same problem we saw before where there are no Thousand Sons in a Thousand Sons army (ie. Magnus and 4 demon princes or Magnus + Demons).

There clearly wasn't enough to warrant a stand alone codex without the addition of the Tzaangors AoS units, but it was the lazy approach and leaves the codex feeling more like a money grab than an honest attempt to make a stylized Thousand Sons codex. A Thousand Sons army will likely have more models and points dedicated to Tzeentch than Thousand Sons moving forward.

This probably will attract a lot of angry answers, but what can FW do about that?

The book is less Thousand Sons and more Warriors of Tzeentch now with the codex no doubt being split evenly between Gors, Sons, and Marines.

Out of curiosity do people just believe the Planet of Sorcerers to be compromised of just rubrics, sorcerers, Daemon Princes and Magnus? Thousand Sons lore tends to state pretty much that they have entire armies of slaves to deal with things as well and Tzaangors have been part of that for a long time.



If us Slaanesh ever get an EC book I definitely don't expect our gibbering warbands to just be compromised of Noise marines and Noise X.

Granted I do think there's something to this. After all, we didn't get Plague variants for Chaos Lords or Sorcerers. You only get DR under certain conditions. Their Helbrutes don't have it for whatever reason. Then we don't get Plague versions of Bikers or Raptors (that's less fluffy so it could be understood), Havocs (which are most definitely a Death Guard thing), Veterans/Chosen, etc. There's inconsistency. Why are only certain Death Guard units DR and plaguey?

However, Chaos in general has always made use of slaves and daemons and machines. It makes sense to have things like Pox Walkers and Tzaangors. I don't know how many variants are needed, but they do make sense for fluff.

Oddly it's better to run alpha legion t sons then regular T sons. Scarab occult are pure trash, currently there is no reason to take them. It's best to use alpha legion, take 2 squads of rubric and either make them a 20 man squad, or give a 10 man all flamers, and go for the alpha strike with alpha legion strat to deep strike them 9 inches away, move up 5, then flame on with 10 flamers turn one.

There really is no point to running T sons, and if the need to smite goes through, the only thing that would make them useful is if they got full blown smite, and scarrub occult got access to other powers, else they are just crap.

Oh did someone leak the codex already? Or is this wildly speculative knee-jerking that attempts to make a definitive statement based on limited information?

OH WAIT I'M ON DAKKA DAKKA OF COURSE IT'S THE SECOND ONE!

The Death Guard Codex is the way to expand an army like this. Proper Death Guard units? They are only 3. Plague Marines, Terminators and Deathsrouds. You have then a bunch of elite-characters, you can do that with TS.
But the rest? Zombies, Daemon Engines, etc...

Chaos Marines, by their own nature, haven't never been a pure Space Marine army like Loyalist are. Heck, normally Chaos Space Marines where always a small part of the army! (We can say here that it was because of rules, but even in the fluff, Chaos Space Marines are normally a small number, and they rely on cultists, daemon engines, daemons, etc... to support them)

The problem here is not that they are adding more Tzaangors units. Is just that theres not many Space Marine units of the TS. That can be easely fixed, and probably it will be in the future. But I don't understand all of this.

Death Guard vs Thousand Sons
Poxwalkers - Tzaangors
Bligthdrone - Skyfires
Myphitic Blightauler - Tzaangor Shaman
The plague mortar - Vortex Beast.

They have the same number of "Non marine" Units in their army, if you don't count the generic CSM units that are port over.

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:

The book is less Thousand Sons and more Warriors of Tzeentch now with the codex no doubt being split evenly between Gors, Sons, and Marines.

Out of curiosity do people just believe the Planet of Sorcerers to be compromised of just rubrics, sorcerers, Daemon Princes and Magnus? Thousand Sons lore tends to state pretty much that they have entire armies of slaves to deal with things as well and Tzaangors have been part of that for a long time.

Spoiler:

If us Slaanesh ever get an EC book I definitely don't expect our gibbering warbands to just be compromised of Noise marines and Noise X.

But that's kind of the point... it's a Thousand Sons codex, not a Planet of Sorcerers or Warriors of Tzeentch book.

The addition of Cultists and Zombies for Deathguard makes sense as they are nothing but fodder. That's why Tzaangors were warmly received. They were a close correlation to Tzeentch's version of zombies. But is the Deathguard codex made up of 1/3 zombie units?

Ultimately it's going to come down to what they do with the book. If they could find a way to reduce the cost of Rubrics and Scarabs so they would form the backbone of the army and find a way to make Exalted Sorcerers fill a non-HQ role, then that would at least fill more of the org chart out with Thousand Sons units.

For example...

Rubrics and Scarabs are pretty overpriced when you consider their limited flexibility. Really what pushes their price up is they're being lead by sorcerers. If they removed the sorcerer leaders from both units and perhaps gave them a -1 to hit penalty if not within 12" of a sorcerer would that justify their price point to be closely priced to stock marines and terminators? If not maybe even a point cheaper?

They could then make sorcerer covens with the Exalted Sorcerer kit. We could make an exalted sorcerer coven that are just like elder warlocks and could be broken out to lead the rubric and scarab units and in doing so would remove the -1 to hit penalty.

They could make Cult Coven units also using the exalted sorcerer kit. These would be small 'brotherhood of psyker' units of 3 to 5 sorcerers that would get a unique spell they could use depending on the cult they belonged to. Could be 1 such unit in Elite, FA, and HQ.

So there are tons of ways they could make Thousand Sons unique with the stuff they have without just loading the book with goats which would be quite lazy on their part. We'll see what they do though.

I wouldn't mind for a Rubric Styled Dreadnought type, and a Sorcerer Equivalent as well.

Knowing Thousand Sons the Sorcerer Dreadnoughts would be using some strange magicks to empower the Sorcerer within or some sort of oddball crystalline sort of golem to empower themselves.

Essentially, the Death Guard level of kits was surprisingly huge especially compared to the previous Tsons level. I just hope for more.. As I always do.

it's a Thousand Sons codex, not a Planet of Sorcerers or Warriors of Tzeentch book.

If the Thousand Sons use a ton of auxiliaries, then it's still a Thousand Sons codex.

 Galas wrote:


Chaos Marines, by their own nature, haven't never been a pure Space Marine army like Loyalist are. Heck, normally Chaos Space Marines where always a small part of the army! (We can say here that it was because of rules, but even in the fluff, Chaos Space Marines are normally a small number, and they rely on cultists, daemon engines, daemons, etc... to support them)

Albeit is tempting for CSM to desire all the tools loyalist have, this would end in armies playing the same , just one has spikes.
I disagree with the fact that CSM must be a minority.
I think the new Death Guard is in a decent spot, compared to the 3.5 codex there is most of the stuff, just the havocs are missing (I would have loved a 4 specials unit), and there are more engines and cultists. Daemons are with only a foot in, that is annoying.

Arguably, even if Plague Marines are just 1 unit, their sheer customizability make them count for 5. A unit with a different combination or mix of specials and melee weapons will play in a dramatically different way.

Yeah, Plague Marines count as Tacticals marines, Assault Marines and Devastator marines. And even as Sternguard and Vanguard Veterans if you go small numbers with a ton of special weapons They are probably the most customizable unit in the game.
And I wasn't saying that CSM should be a minority in their own army. I was saying that they need to have a different feel than loyalist. And part of that feel is using cultists, chaff, mutated units, and weird daemonic-machine monsters.

For "un-chaosy" chaos, one can play HH. Or a loyalist army with a heretic paintjob.

Everyone seems to be glossing over the fact that there will also likely be daemons in the book as well. I for one am stoaked to see daemon and t sons synergy. I mean if you read the 30k books they pretty much all had daemon families called tootlaries(spelling?) So it would be nice to see rubric and horrors synergize

BrianDavion wrote:

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:

Thousand Sons has always been an army that avoided mutations at all costs. Ahrimans Rubric was to prevent the mutations from occurring on the surviving thousand Sons members. Ahriman even kills one Marine when he mutates a bit and seems to enjoy it.

Given this is early into the days, and that legions tend to both vary and change over several millenia.. I mean after-all, old Morty hated psykers and in the end he's both one and has one's under him.

This. a lotta people think the traitor legions haven't changed at all since the Heresy. they VERY MUCH HAVE.

The death guard we can see has changed considerably. and they're noted to be one of the legions that has changed the LEAST

Just wanted to echo this point, Recruiting marines is hard for the traitor legions, the warp contaminates the geneseed as often as not, and it takes expertise like that of Fabius Bile to successfully make batches of marines. There are some exceptions of course, nurgle blesses his champions with abundance, so deathguard recruit fairly well, which is probably why they are the least changed legion. Supplementing the traitor legions forces with demons and cultist is one of the things that have kept the long war going, that and a trickle of defections from loyalist marines (which are probably a legion or twos worth of marines after 10,000 years). Abaddon's open door policy for recruitment is probably a nod to this reality, which is why the black legion is arguably the strongest of the traitor legions.

I play 1ksons myself, and kind of went off them in favour of my Imperials. That was nothing to do with Tzaangors, however. I love those little suckers, and I'm really excited to see them get some supprt/elit/hq options. Hopefully the buffs they give will be significant, so that a herd of 20 Tzaangor blades will pose a serious threat.

Really, it was because Thousand Sons, as they stand, are really really two-dimensional - that's their problem. Fingers crossed that the Codex fixes this a little bit. So I guess I'm on the other side of the fence - I'm very excited to see what GW cook up.

Nvs wrote:
The addition of Cultists and Zombies for Deathguard makes sense as they are nothing but fodder. That's why Tzaangors were warmly received. They were a close correlation to Tzeentch's version of zombies. But is the Deathguard codex made up of 1/3 zombie units?

If we ignore the independent characters, most of our army is daemon engines. More daemon engines than we have marine variants.

DG set a precedent for actual marines being a relatively small portion of the army. Which annoyed me initially as a DG player, but it honestly works. Give it a chance.

As I said in the other thread there is no real reason thousand sons could not have a lot ore units of rubrics, they could even expand the psychic powers to 18, one tzeench, one biomancy, one divination.

Why are there not rubric praetors, or any of the command units, the armour with all the kit would still be there, why no ancient equivalent etc.

Where are the rubric havocs and special weapon squads ?

Gw lacks imagination and the "no model, no rules" crap for the last few years is really killing the kitbash ability to make these extra units.

If you don't like Tzaangors don't use them. It's as easy as that. My DG force is comprised of Marines mostly with poxwalkers numbering not more than one unit that I haven't used yet.

I'm playing Nurgle-Daemons, so I have to buy a codex of which I don't want to use 75%.

 Galas wrote:
Yeah, Plague Marines count as Tacticals marines, Assault Marines and Devastator marines. And even as Sternguard and Vanguard Veterans if you go small numbers with a ton of special weapons They are probably the most customizable unit in the game.
And I wasn't saying that CSM should be a minority in their own army. I was saying that they need to have a different feel than loyalist. And part of that feel is using cultists, chaff, mutated units, and weird daemonic-machine monsters.

For "un-chaosy" chaos, one can play HH. Or a loyalist army with a heretic paintjob.

They have mobility issues compared to some of the loyalists, but that was a thing for chaos since 3rd in the very least.
In 3rd I loved how the assault marines of chaos were the bikes and raptors had a different role. The game was built in a way that you could feel the difference with few rules added.
Same with range but DG in 3.5 was a close range engagement army. They had true grit like the Wolves, before the wolves themselves became a full furry parody.

I ask again, if one does not want mutants and tzaangors, can have TS dreads like deredeo and leviathan? Or hellforged preds?

 Kaiyanwang wrote:
I ask again, if one does not want mutants and tzaangors, can have TS dreads like deredeo and leviathan? Or hellforged preds?

I'm reasonable certain those are all in the tson list. Unless you mean you want special tson versions in which case no, they get the unique global tson rules but otherwise act as normal due to the model = rules thing, and giving tson unique dreadnought models is very different than just letting them have some lore friendly units that are already in AoS.

SilverAlien wrote:

 Kaiyanwang wrote:
I ask again, if one does not want mutants and tzaangors, can have TS dreads like deredeo and leviathan? Or hellforged preds?

I'm reasonable certain those are all in the tson list. Unless you mean you want special tson versions in which case no, they get the unique global tson rules but otherwise act as normal due to the model = rules thing, and giving tson unique dreadnought models is very different than just letting them have some lore friendly units that are already in AoS.

I meant general rules. Not necessarily synergizing 100% but maybe they are good enough to support the army.

Aren't you the same guy that railed for weeks about 'GW's loyalist marine favoritism' by comparing rubrics against Inceptors; only for us to learn that inceptors were something like double the points we thought they were and actually one of the worst units in the game?

It's pretty impossible to take anything you say seriously tbh.

Me or him? Because I was part of that as well. It is because the starter box was really out of whack and stuff changed, but mainly because the relationship between point value and power level was really unclear, and at times we were literally being lied to about how upgrades factored into power level.

ERJAK wrote:
Aren't you the same guy that railed for weeks about 'GW's loyalist marine favoritism' by comparing rubrics against Inceptors; only for us to learn that inceptors were something like double the points we thought they were and actually one of the worst units in the game?

It's pretty impossible to take anything you say seriously tbh.

1) I don't think is me
2) Link post(s) when you make these statements.

 Backspacehacker wrote:
Oddly it's better to run alpha legion t sons then regular T sons. Scarab occult are pure trash, currently there is no reason to take them. It's best to use alpha legion, take 2 squads of rubric and either make them a 20 man squad, or give a 10 man all flamers, and go for the alpha strike with alpha legion strat to deep strike them 9 inches away, move up 5, then flame on with 10 flamers turn one.

There really is no point to running T sons, and if the need to smite goes through, the only thing that would make them useful is if they got full blown smite, and scarrub occult got access to other powers, else they are just crap.

If you say so. I think you might be confusing armies with no stratagems with those with tons of them. Maybe just maybe the new book will have new stratagems and spells.

For now mine Rubrics do just fine with rerolls from Abby and +1 to wound.

OP doesn't seem to get TS lore by assuming nothing changed between 30k and 40k.

Also feel free to you know... not buy the models you don't like? You say the army should be just sorcs and rubrics but decry the lack of unit choices. Sounds like a whinge for the sake of whinging.

Personally I think there should be more than the simple choice of Scarab Occult Terminators and Rubric Marines Rubric Marines or marines in general for the Thousand Sons. I mean did the Thousands sons just drop all of their weapons for bolters, soul reaper cannons, and warp flamers after the Rubric of Ahriman was cast?. I know that Magnus was no strategic genius, but he's still smart supposedly. It just seems silly to give all that up. At the very least give us some Khentai variant and possibly a untit bearing some heavy weapons. Who knows maybe they will, but I doubt it.

 andrewm9 wrote:
Personally I think there should be more than the simple choice of Scarab Occult Terminators and Rubric Marines Rubric Marines or marines in general for the Thousand Sons. I mean did the Thousands sons just drop all of their weapons for bolters, soul reaper cannons, and warp flamers after the Rubric of Ahriman was cast?. I know that Magnus was no strategic genius, but he's still smart supposedly. It just seems silly to give all that up. At the very least give us some Khentai variant and possibly a untit bearing some heavy weapons. Who knows maybe they will, but I doubt it.

They were already using those weapons when they got changed.

Soul reaper already existed, it was the name the time sons gave to the assult Cannon because they did not like the original name of the weapon , assault Cannon. This is explained in the book "thousand some"

Warp bolters are explained because they started ensceibing their rounds with runes to make them more deadly, and the warflamers are just warp juiced up flamers. The t sons where never known for using heavy weapons, even in the books, they always used their psyker powers to sub In for the lack of heavy weapons. I mean they still have vehicles yeah, but most of their ground forces utilized the warp.

 Backspacehacker wrote:

 andrewm9 wrote:
Personally I think there should be more than the simple choice of Scarab Occult Terminators and Rubric Marines Rubric Marines or marines in general for the Thousand Sons. I mean did the Thousands sons just drop all of their weapons for bolters, soul reaper cannons, and warp flamers after the Rubric of Ahriman was cast?. I know that Magnus was no strategic genius, but he's still smart supposedly. It just seems silly to give all that up. At the very least give us some Khentai variant and possibly a untit bearing some heavy weapons. Who knows maybe they will, but I doubt it.

They were already using those weapons when they got changed.

Soul reaper already existed, it was the name the time sons gave to the assult Cannon because they did not like the original name of the weapon , assault Cannon. This is explained in the book "thousand some"

Warp bolters are explained because they started ensceibing their rounds with runes to make them more deadly, and the warflamers are just warp juiced up flamers. The t sons where never known for using heavy weapons, even in the books, they always used their psyker powers to sub In for the lack of heavy weapons. I mean they still have vehicles yeah, but most of their ground forces utilized the warp.

They may have preferred psychic attack, but even for the thousand sons there probably were not enough psychics for all things. Beside only Magnus was really capable of taking things like Titans with his psychic might. Its kind of like saying the Raven Guard never used heavy weapons or vehicles because they preferred stealth warfare and guerilla tactics. They did just not to the exclusion of all else. That is all I am saying.