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So is there a competative T sons list that uses rubrics and or SoT? I would love it if my t sons list was not hot garbage but I don't see any way other then tzengors bomb and crap tons of them.

Competitive? No. Fun? Yes. I'm sure there are a few builds kicking around they most likely include no rubrics or SoTs. Plenty of threads as to why that is. But that is also a wider problem with all elite armies and troops.

Tzangs and more tzaangs with tons of smite and demon princes.

Tzaangor bombs and Tsons psykers are very competitive. Rubrics? Pretty much only as a single tough unit to anchor your board. SOTs not at all so far as I'm concerned.

Define competetive. Do you want to win major tournaments with T Sons? Then the answer is now, they're not top tiers. But in any real meta, even against competitive lists. they can do very well.

They can abuse charictor psykers on disks to spam MW while being untargetable. It certainly a nasty list but your lacking ways to hold objectives outside of cultists.

They can hurt castled armies especially with no/little psykic phase. Eg tau marines, guard can just hoard you away as can orks. Custards still get a save against mortal wounds. Necrons should also be an easier match up ifnyou can wipe units.

Tournament competitive? Doesn't look like it.

Will you hold your own in an average pickup game if you take a fairly optimised list? Probably, depends on your local meta though.

Rubrics and SoT are not competitive at all atm, but that's the case for all MEQ / TEQ in the game (except maybe Blood Angels).

But there are a lot of competitive TS lists, though they mostly include Tzaangors, Enlightened and Ahriman / Daemon prince.

TS are very competitive but none of the marine junk bar Ahriman.

Table wrote:
Competitive? No. Fun? Yes. I'm sure there are a few builds kicking around they most likely include no rubrics or SoTs. Plenty of threads as to why that is. But that is also a wider problem with all elite armies and troops.

I don't mean to be combative, but I do hear that a lot when the issue of Rubrics/Scarabs comes up - 'suck it up tzeentch-boy, it's a game-wide problem', or words to that effect. I guess no-one told Stealth Suits, Bezerkers, Aggressors, Death Company, Ogryns, Reapers, Custodes, Wraithguard, Obliterators, Hive Guard or Shining Spears about that fact. There are plenty of examples of great elite units in 8th. It's just that none of them live in the Thousand Sons Codex.

They can have great lists though, because their hordes and their HQs are both top shelf. New lists will probably focus on even more Tzaangor, to flood the board to make up for the 1st turn beta nerf, and loads of mobile smite spammers behind them, supported by Mutaliths for all the buffs. So yes, if you can resign yourself to buying a Sigmar army, you can be competitive with the Sons. If you want to run Rubrics in a competitive setting, your best bet would be playing Alpha Legion instead, perversely enough.

I believe a mildly competitive one does from what I have seen - no expert mind.

Catch is, it involves Mortarion.

Play their characters. Twice. Like two supreme command detachments. Ahriman on disc, exalted on disc with seer's bane, couple of daemon princes, even the terminator sorcerer with the spell familiar. Fly around smiting everything to death, untouched by the FAQ. Add doombolts, infernal gateways and tzeentch's firestorms to the mix. Dish out 20 mortal wounds per turn, aka 2 big targets of your opponent's.

Leave the rest of the models at home. Or fill the rest of your list with 100+ cultists.

 grouchoben wrote:

Table wrote:
Competitive? No. Fun? Yes. I'm sure there are a few builds kicking around they most likely include no rubrics or SoTs. Plenty of threads as to why that is. But that is also a wider problem with all elite armies and troops.

I don't mean to be combative, but I do hear that a lot when the issue of Rubrics/Scarabs comes up - 'suck it up tzeentch-boy, it's a game-wide problem', or words to that effect. I guess no-one told Stealth Suits, Bezerkers, Aggressors, Death Company, Ogryns, Reapers, Custodes, Wraithguard, Obliterators, Hive Guard or Shining Spears about that fact. There are plenty of examples of great elite units in 8th. It's just that none of them live in the Thousand Sons Codex.

They can have great lists though, because their hordes and their HQs are both top shelf. New lists will probably focus on even more Tzaangor, to flood the board to make up for the 1st turn beta nerf, and loads of mobile smite spammers behind them, supported by Mutaliths for all the buffs. So yes, if you can resign yourself to buying a Sigmar army, you can be competitive with the Sons. If you want to run Rubrics in a competitive setting, your best bet would be playing Alpha Legion instead, perversely enough.

I myself run rubrics. But they are always hard pressed to make their points back. Here is the deal with "elite" infantry. The definition changes from person to person but overall I think others and myself are talking about powered armor marines of all flavors and terminators. Things like Wraithguard and Oblits are generally outside the scope of the statement. Regardless, I wont regurgitate as to why marine infantry and termies are bad this edition because there are hundreds of pages on dakka that explain it better than I can. As to why Rubrics are mediocre at best ill tell you this. If warpflamers were actually priced sanely and not a laughable 15 points then rubrics would be in a far better place than they are now. Also the nerf to AP on the inferno bolters hurt a bit. But the main problem that is native to rubrics is they excel at killing other power armor infantry, which there is very little of these days.

Not gonna tell you to suck it up. But I will suggest reading the many threads on this topic or proxie a 10 man unit in your next game and see for your self.

I will admit, i love my rubrics, but they are so meh, they only time they perform well, is when i drop them way up the board and let them soak up all the small arms fire, and thats about all they are good for. I really wanted to like the T sons codex, but its pretty much just warhammer 40k beast men codex with how much tzangors i have to run.

That said, Tzaangors im kinda in a tough spot with. because either A i take 10 man min squads to minimize their losses, but make them not as potent in melee by bombing them, or take them in 30 and loose half the squad turn one to shooting and moral.

 Backspacehacker wrote:
I will admit, i love my rubrics, but they are so meh, they only time they perform well, is when i drop them way up the board and let them soak up all the small arms fire, and thats about all they are good for. I really wanted to like the T sons codex, but its pretty much just warhammer 40k beast men codex with how much tzangors i have to run.

That said, Tzaangors im kinda in a tough spot with. because either A i take 10 man min squads to minimize their losses, but make them not as potent in melee by bombing them, or take them in 30 and loose half the squad turn one to shooting and moral.

Yes, it was a sad codex in more ways than one, but in heavy irony, it is also a very fun codex. Well, not so fun if you want to play actual 1ksons. I use two 20 man bombs dropped through webway. Seems to work great for me.

My current tourney list is technically based around a Thousand Sons Supreme Command Detachment as my Primary Detachment. But it's pretty much a Soup build for maximizing psychic powers in order to buff Magnus and Mortarion, while having staying value if it takes 2 turns to kill both Primarchs (though if they both die Turn 1, I'm pretty boned).

Since the codex dropped, my list has always featured at least 2 full 10-man rubric squads in rhinos and 5 SOTs, and they have worked out generally alright against competitive lists. The big key to running rubrics is to put down a big distraction unit or two to soak up the fire that the rubrics would usually be tanking, and also to give your rubrics rhinos (you'd be amazed how many people I've seen just running 5-man squads of them on foot and moping about how unviable they are when they suck like that...)

My list usually has a Defiler, which I like because my daemons can buff it 6 ways to sunday, and that tanks the firepower that would otherwise crack the rubrics transports. Add in 30 pink horrors that I usually have running forward that present a big old target, and my opponents typically get fairly distracted by those.

SOT are competitive IMO. Very easy to buff them to deathstar levels and you can deep strike them into your own deployment zone vs armies coming at you. Cast every spell you have on them. +1 to invo, -1 to hit, +1 to wound stratagem. They have decent CC on top of it of all that shooting. Expensive but good.

The question is what else do you include in your army. Daemon princes are pretty nice but are more hit or miss for me. Rubrics really need to be improved. If 5 mans could take soul reaper cannon - that would be great. It would also be great if the sorcerer retained his bolter.

Vortex beast seem awesome (been outta stock since the codex dropped) but 3 of those seem auto include in a competitive list. Ether buffing goat men or pink horors. Ranged anti tank is needed. Probably better to ally in something else...predators suck so bad.

It depends on your opinion on what makes something competitive.

For my money, no Thousand Sons will never compete for top tables at Adepticon or LVO. That to me makes them not competitive.

For casual games where everyone isn't trying to bust the game, yes they can be quite fun and hold their own.

I'd say that Thousand Sons are decently competitive, but will struggle against the absolute top-tier troll builds.

As for rubrics they're are pretty mediocre. But mediocre is still better than many other types of Space Marines. Rubrics can do a lot of damage when buffed by Veterans of The long war, and they can be very hard to kill when in cover. The free psyker is useful if you protect him from peril with the Reroll psychich power, and the beta-smite-nerf exception is a nice touch.

The problem with Rubrics and Scarabs is that they are totally hardcountered by plasma. And plasmaspam is everywhere these days.

 Xenomancers wrote:
SOT are competitive IMO. Very easy to buff them to deathstar levels and you can deep strike them into your own deployment zone vs armies coming at you. Cast every spell you have on them. +1 to invo, -1 to hit, +1 to wound stratagem. They have decent CC on top of it of all that shooting. Expensive but good.

The question is what else do you include in your army. Daemon princes are pretty nice but are more hit or miss for me. Rubrics really need to be improved. If 5 mans could take soul reaper cannon - that would be great. It would also be great if the sorcerer retained his bolter.

Vortex beast seem awesome (been outta stock since the codex dropped) but 3 of those seem auto include in a competitive list. Ether buffing goat men or pink horors. Ranged anti tank is needed. Probably better to ally in something else...predators suck so bad.

I agree, in a sense, but, if you take other large units that might also want those buffs, I feel like the SoT won’t give you much. I’d personally rather buff up Magnus with those powers, and if I do that, then I feel like 10 Rubrics works out better than 5 terminators. All depends on the amount of threats you have though, I guess. If you can deep strike them in turn 2 whilst still having big threats elsewhere then I think you’re in a good position, but if you don’t then they will just melt :(


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 auticus wrote:
It depends on your opinion on what makes something competitive.

For my money, no Thousand Sons will never compete for top tables at Adepticon or LVO. That to me makes them not competitive.

For casual games where everyone isn't trying to bust the game, yes they can be quite fun and hold their own.

I’m curious as to your thoughts on that. Is it simply because they are too elite to work well enough with the primary missions of ITC?

Holding 1 objective, and likely smiting 1-2 units to death a turn is relatively easy to do with 1ksons, but I guess spreading out to hold 3-4 objectives hurts them.

Also, if you’re not running tzanngor spam, then you’re also limiting peoples options on secondary missions. Sure, they can take headhunter and kingslayer (if running Magnus) but then you’re forcing them to go all out on securing those points over several turns. One of the biggest strengths of one of my Eldar lists was their ability to deny, and gain, secondary points. I can see certain 1kson builds being able to do the same.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

pismakron wrote:
I'd say that Thousand Sons are decently competitive, but will struggle against the absolute top-tier troll builds.

As for rubrics they're are pretty mediocre. But mediocre is still better than many other types of Space Marines. Rubrics can do a lot of damage when buffed by Veterans of The long war, and they can be very hard to kill when in cover. The free psyker is useful if you protect him from peril with the Reroll psychich power, and the beta-smite-nerf exception is a nice touch.

The problem with Rubrics and Scarabs is that they are totally hardcountered by plasma. And plasmaspam is everywhere these days.

I’d argue that plasma doesn’t always hard counter rubrics – especially if they aren’t in a position to reliably overcharge.

This is because, if they don’t overcharge Rubrics have a 4++ vs the plasma. If they do overcharge it’s a 5++. A 4 man plasma squad will likely only take 2, maybe 3, rubrics out per shooting phase, so, they have to put in some concentration of fire. This however sucks for SoT cos it is still 2 dead, which hurts so much more.

Hi Table, yeah, i trudged through those fields of salt threads too when the Codex dropped. I know the arguments, and I agree with your analysis. One 10-man in a rhino is my personal fluff-tax when playing a battalion in Sons! The fact remains that if you want to run Rubrics, imo taking 2 AL 5-man squads with src's in a rhino is the best option. 312pts but a very tough cookie to deal with, with lots of ap dakka.

SOT are a solid unit in your average game. Especially with sorc support.

I also like how mellee defilers perform in a tson list cause of all the different buffs like +1 to inv, -1 to hit and d3 wound healing. A defiler healing 1+d3 wounds every turn that's also hard to hit is cool.

Rubrics aren't amazing when it comes to competitive play but a couple min units can be pretty tough point-holders.

Tzaangor bombs with sorc support are very potent.

Is magnus better than 10 SOT? IDK really. He certainly is harder to kill.

I just really like the buffed up SOT unit - combined with death hex...There is nothing they can't remove from the game.

 koooaei wrote:
SOT are a solid unit in your average game. Especially with sorc support.

I also like how mellee defilers perform in a tson list cause of all the different buffs like +1 to inv, -1 to hit and d3 wound healing. A defiler healing 1+d3 wounds every turn that's also hard to hit is cool.

Rubrics aren't amazing when it comes to competitive play but a couple min units can be pretty tough point-holders.

Tzaangor bombs with sorc support are very potent.

Melee defilers are great with diabolical strength, flickering flames and a scourge. You get 8 attacks @ str 14 with +1 to wound. Toss in a daemonforge or a Daemon Prince aura and you have a very beefy and nasty brawler. Alternatively, if you are pressed against something big, you can use your claws for 5 attacks at str 18 (lol) and d6 damage. I mean to say, I love the ugly bastard.

I took a Magnus list to a tournament this past weekend. I got totally caught up in trying to record video that I screwed up in several places. Still, everything performed pretty admirably even if I won't be using the same list next time.

Here's my headless Magnus getting caught up a BL bomb. He failed to stop Death Hex from my opponents Ahriman and I lost his 3++. Ouch. I should have blocked with the vindicator.



This is my revenge the very next round:

topaxygouroun i wrote:
Melee defilers are great with diabolical strength, flickering flames and a scourge. You get 8 attacks @ str 14 with +1 to wound.

Just a quick note : Flickering Flames is shooting only.

See every time I try and use Magnus it's a one trick pony, I kill one thing or two and then he dies. I'm convinced he is the weakest LoW in the game because of how easy he is to counter. Out of my dozens of games with him he has made his points back twice. Once was killing 3 tank commanders to which he got blasted by a baneblade. The other was taking out a GuO and a bunch of little stuff then died. And once he is gone there goes a huge point sink or anti armor

Latly I have been running 3 preds with an exaulted sorcerer to give them rerolls and using killshot and it's been pretty good and actually lasts

 Backspacehacker wrote:
See every time I try and use Magnus it's a one trick pony

He faced down 3 squads of scions, a couple Thunderbolts, and an avenger in my first game and only succumbed to my own stupidity at the end.
Second game he crushed just about everything on the board once I neutralized the big guns.
Third game my psychic phase was totally blown out of the water, which has never happened and he just wasn't able to get into a good spot to do work.

Battle reports will be up some time this week.

Quick "this or that" style vote of opinions if pos!

2 Hellforged Contemptors (1 butcher cannon and c-beam on each) OR 1 double butcher Leviathan?

1 x5 SoT squad with Missles OR 1 x10 Rubric with Soulreaper?

I can't seem to make my mind up between the two sets. All options would have a reasonable spot in the army.

Personally neither of the hellcorged unless it's way the hell outta the way. If they go boom they deal d6 mortal wounds to psyker