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Crackedgear wrote:
I’ve been playing Thousand Sons for a bit, and the feeling that I should shelve them goes up every time I play. I figured out it’s because it doesn’t matter how awesome my spells are if I can never manage to cast them. It didn’t help that my space marine opponents all seem to have warp charges of 5 and 6 for everything. So I checked, and yes, it’s one more thing space marines are just better at. As opposed you, you know, those guys who are actually made of warp energy.

Anyway, here’s what I did. I went through most of the codexes (don’t have white scars or dark angels) and took note of what warp charge every spell is and how many there are of each charge.

Marines
4-1
5-12
6-34
7-11
8-2
Total-60

Chaos(thousand sons, death guard, chaos marines, chaos daemons)
4-1
5-8
6-15
7-12
8-5
9-1. Stupid doombolt.
Total-42

This of course leaves out how much easier it is for marines to get +1 to psychic stuff as well.

That’s all, just wanted to share.

Edit: adding Eldar

5-3
6-8
7-13
Total-24

The problem as I see it is that Psychic is just not good for anyone. I never see marine Librarians on the table. As a Chaos player (Black Legion) I do run a sorcerer, but I have to screen the ever living crap out of him because for some dumb reason both Chaos and Marine Librarians don't get Invulns. What makes it worse is that there are so many factions that even without a sorcerer, get access to abilities that just straight up cancel a warp power, making you even less effective.

I think Psi needs a complete redesign from the ground up. It should be a risky ability, but devastating and rely on much shorter ranges.

you know, when I bring my sorcerer in games, I only cast the +1 to hit power and the warptime power (usually having the sorcerer babysit my Oblits) it is just bland.

I'm pretty sure doombolt got an errata to make it warp charge 8.

Crackedgear wrote:
I’ve been playing Thousand Sons for a bit, and the feeling that I should shelve them goes up every time I play. I figured out it’s because it doesn’t matter how awesome my spells are if I can never manage to cast them. It didn’t help that my space marine opponents all seem to have warp charges of 5 and 6 for everything. So I checked, and yes, it’s one more thing space marines are just better at. As opposed you, you know, those guys who are actually made of warp energy.

Anyway, here’s what I did. I went through most of the codexes (don’t have white scars or dark angels) and took note of what warp charge every spell is and how many there are of each charge.

Marines
4-1
5-12
6-34
7-11
8-2
Total-60

Chaos(thousand sons, death guard, chaos marines, chaos daemons)
4-1
5-8
6-15
7-12
8-5
9-1. Stupid doombolt.
Total-42

This of course leaves out how much easier it is for marines to get +1 to psychic stuff as well.

That’s all, just wanted to share.

Edit: adding Eldar

5-3
6-8
7-13
Total-24

I don't want to say "you're wrong" but I must say I have a very different experience.
I've been playing since the dawn of 6th edition; to some that will be a long time, to some it will be relatively new. Thousand sons have never been more fun to me. With a tad of FW support (mostly contemptors) they're a decently balanced force and with the addition of PA; we have so much fun stuff to pull out of our hat. It's completely different from 6th and 7th, where taking rubrics was basicallyh shooting yourself in the foot.

I'll admit that when it goes wrong, it usually goes very wrong.

fithos wrote:
I'm pretty sure doombolt got an errata to make it warp charge 8.

It didn't.

Thousand Sons have higher WC and less range than pretty much everyone else because "reasons" (Glamour of Tzeentch vs Miasma of Pestilence / Conceal, Temporal manipulation vs Fleshy Abundance, Doombolt vs Psychic Shackles, etc...), . It's almost as if GW took 6" off all our spells to compensate for our legion trait, and increased all their WC by 1 to compensate for Ahriman.

You gotta learn to live with the fact that someone at GW hates Thousand Sons and just enjoy the cool models.

Marines have far less power psyker options. As it should be. The 1ksons do need a WC decrease on most powers for parity with the rest of the game.

Yeah some of the powers TS have access to are overcosted, but I don't believe that's the main issue the army is seeing.
The main problem for me seems that the legion trait is pretty bad for a mono TS army as only 30% of what you have on the table is benefiting from it, which makes you over reliant on characters (which in 9th seems will be a MAJOR issue as they'll be much easier to shift) and makes all your "CSM" units just plainly worst then if you'd soup them in, this and the very limited of unit choices makes them into a very meeh mono army which can be fun sometimes but just can't perform.
While on the other hand the legion trait is just waaay too good at filling in the psychic void in a chaos soup list, you just take your competitive/good shooty/fighty units and then plop in a supreme command of TS and all your psychic needs are satisfied without wasting the trait on units that don't benefit from it, the army is just seen and judged as a codex Supreme Command Detachment, which is a bit sad and makes them look good from the outside and prevents the army from receiving any love (in fact it only received nerfa) as a whole as that would just reinforces their strength as a soup piece of the puzzle.
Hope someday we'll get a trait that does something for non character units and make mono TS worth taking again

deTox91 wrote:
Yeah some of the powers TS have access to are overcosted, but I don't believe that's the main issue the army is seeing.
The main problem for me seems that the legion trait is pretty bad for a mono TS army as only 30% of what you have on the table is benefiting from it, which makes you over reliant on characters (which in 9th seems will be a MAJOR issue as they'll be much easier to shift) and makes all your "CSM" units just plainly worst then if you'd soup them in, this and the very limited of unit choices makes them into a very meeh mono army which can be fun sometimes but just can't perform.
While on the other hand the legion trait is just waaay too good at filling in the psychic void in a chaos soup list, you just take your competitive/good shooty/fighty units and then plop in a supreme command of TS and all your psychic needs are satisfied without wasting the trait on units that don't benefit from it, the army is just seen and judged as a codex Supreme Command Detachment, which is a bit sad and makes them look good from the outside and prevents the army from receiving any love (in fact it only received nerfa) as a whole as that would just reinforces their strength as a soup piece of the puzzle.
Hope someday we'll get a trait that does something for non character units and make mono TS worth taking again

I agree. Id like to see the legion trait affect the entire army. I also think they need something akin to what marines get. Call them rituals or what not. Maybe a +1 invuln save army wide of turn 1, a +1 AP on turn 2 ect.

Another problem ive had with my sons is that warp bolters (warp weapons in general) got to hard of a nerf. Going from -3 ap in 7th to +2 ap in 8th was a huge hit. Rubrics are supposed to shred MEQ. Currently vanilla marines can get just as much AP on bolt rounds as us. That's a huge problem. Also, I know its a chaos faction and all, but cut back some of the fricking melee. Of all the chaos factions, 1ksons should have the least amount of melee options and the most amount of shooting/psykers. A lot of this was to push Tzaangor AoS kits into 40k but now that they have been in we need to go back to the basics. Which are Rubrics and Psykers. Also, our DP is way over costed. Need to drop it 10 points imho. Also warp flamers are way way to expensive.

DaPino wrote:

fithos wrote:
I'm pretty sure doombolt got an errata to make it warp charge 8.

It didn't.

Ah, I was thinking of bolt of change. Yeah, doombolt sucks. Lol

Don't forget the thousand sons have plenty of ways to get +1 to cast too - there's a relic, a warlord trait and a stratagem, depending on what's best for you - plus easy access to daemon psykers (either allies or summoned).

Plus there's devastating sorcery - the 'if you take any mortal wounds, take an extra one's warlord trait, which makes infernal gateway eye-wateringly painful.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I agree rubrics have an issue. AP-2 looks good until you realise bolt rifles do the same, at longer range, from turn 2 onwards.

locarno24 wrote:
Don't forget the thousand sons have plenty of ways to get +1 to cast too - there's a relic, a warlord trait and a stratagem, depending on what's best for you - plus easy access to daemon psykers (either allies or summoned).

Plus there's devastating sorcery - the 'if you take any mortal wounds, take an extra one's warlord trait, which makes infernal gateway eye-wateringly painful.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I agree rubrics have an issue. AP-2 looks good until you realise bolt rifles do the same, at longer range, from turn 2 onwards.

Yeah I thought my inferno bolters were awesome until I fought my friends iron hands with all their stalker bolt rifles. Super armor piercing you say? And 2 damage so all is dust doesn’t work? Cool.

 BlaxicanX wrote:

 Corrode wrote:
There was me thinking that Thousand Sons psykers were one of the top competitive units in the game right now

And you would be wrong.

Thousand Sons psykers are one of the top competitive units in game right now.

In a soup.

The fact that Thousand Sons psykers make the cut in a list that picks the best units from the second largest faction in the game should tell you how good they are.

Ultimately as much as I love my KSons the swinginess of the psychic phase is why I don't really like bringing them to proper 40k games; I have a lot more fun spamming warpflamers in Kill Team. That's more a matter of personal taste than a statement of their effectiveness though, it's a fact that Thousand Sons have the best psychic powers.