Warhammer 40,000 - Thousand Sons Index

Alright!  This one will be much more fresh for us, as we didn't get too much in the way of Thousand Sons reveals.  So let's sit back, grab a book, poor some tea, and enjoy some quality time with everyone's favorite Space Nerds.

ARMY RULES

We've already seen both the Army and Faction rules, and they look really good.  One thing we have to keep an eye out for as we look at the Datasheets is how many Cabal points each one gives us.  The more Cabal points we have to spend each round, the better.  We'll also want to keep an eye out for each unit's Psychic weapons and any particular synergy with the three Kindred Sorcery rules.  In particular, we want to see how much synergy we can find for Wrath of the Immaterium, or ways to get DEVASTATING WOUNDS with Pyschic Maelstrom.

STRATAGEMS

Psychic Dominion

I can't remember if we've seen this one or one like it, but this I seem to recall a Stratagem like this.  It establishes KSons as the dominant Psychic force on the battlefield, crushing any Psychic attacks made against them.  This is going to be extremely situational; I'm not predicting a Psyker heavy meta.  But against my Tyranids, Grey Knights, and, of course, other Thousand Sons, this could be useful.

Destined By Fate

Wow!  Just nullify an attack!  You will almost certainly use this, especially if you're fielding Magnus.

Devastating Sorcery

Full re-rolls to Hit and Wound for Psychic Attacks for one unit.  Pretty good, especially with Kindred Sorcery.

Ensorcelled Infusion

Up the power of a units bolters and make them PSYCHIC for Kindred Sorcery.  This could be pretty useful, especially in combination with Devastating Sorcery.

Sorcerous Might

Another stratagem to give another buff to Psychic attacks.  While this doesn't feel impressive, there will be times when you'll find yourself just outside of range.  And 9" is a pretty big increase.

Warp Sight

It's 2CP, but giving a unit INDIRECT FIRE can be really potent.  The fact you get to ignore cover makes this even better.

These are all pretty nice Stratagems.  Two of them are pretty situational, but nice to have in your pocket.  Really the go-to here is the combo of Devastating Sorcery and Ensorcelled Infusion.  Combine that with Wrath of the Immaterium and the Thousand Sons are raining mortals down once again.

ENHANCEMENTS

Lord of Forbidden Lore

If you can make sure you're earning plenty of Cabal points, this is great!  The new rituals are awesome, and being able to use them more will be really good.

Umbralefic Crystal

A once per battle teleport is pretty fun.  I'll be surprised if there isn't at least one unit with an ability like this, too.  But more is definitely better.

Athenaean Scrolls

If you're having trouble generating as many Cabal points as you want, this will get you 1 more.  This probably won't be worth it, but we'll have to see how scarce they are.

Arcane Vortex

Our boring enhancement for KSons, +1 Strength and Damage is still nothing to sneeze at.

This is a pretty mixed bag.  Lord of Forbidden Lore is practically auto-include if it's not too expensive.  Athenaean Scrolls stays home, unless it turns out to be harder to generate Cabal points than you'd expect.

DATASHEETS

Ahriman

We've already seen what he does, as he was one of the two spoilers we've gotten.  He grants us 3 Cabal points, which is probably pretty good.  I'm betting only Magnus will give us more.  His combat stats aren't anything to write home about, but you're bringing him for the free ritual.

Ahriman on Disc of Tzeentch

The only difference here is the movement characteristic.  This probably means you'll be leaving this version of Ahriman home, since you'll want him with some rubrics for protection.  If there's a way to get him Lone Operative, he might be worth taking for the extra movement.  But I'm betting you just take the basic version.

Thousand Sons Land Raider

Well that's a choice for a follow up datasheet.  It's a Land Raider.  There will be times you will want to get a unit into combat, if only just to tie something up, and lascannons are still good shooting.  But this is definitely the army that benefits the least from these.

Thousand Sons Vehicles

I guess we're just doing all of these.  They get the inferno versions of the bolt weapons, which is kinda nice.  Annihilators will be good fire support.  My guess is you'll have better ways to deal with hordes than a Destructor.  Rhinos are probably going to be nice little transports.  Vindicators are another potential way to tie things up.

Thousand Sons Chaos Spawn

From vehicles to Chaos Spawn, I do find it weird we're doing the Thousand Sons versions of things before we get to more unique units.  It's a chaos spawn.  If they're cheap, maybe you'll take them to screen.

Thousand Sons Defiler

If terrain lets you move these around, Defilers might be a really good choice for this army.  You don't have a lot of combat units.  Anything that can force your opponent to deal with charge threats is a good.  It's also nice this gets inferno versions too.

Exalted Sorcerer

The Exalted Sorcerer has a similar profile to Ahriman, except his Psychic attack is more focused around taking out units than characters.  He gets 2 Cabal points, so scaling looks like it will be pretty similar to 9th.  He gets DEVASTATING WOUNDS normally, so if you've got three of these you'll be wanting to use SUSTAINED HITS as often as you can.  He makes your Rubrics extremely tanking with a 4+ Invuln, and he can try to resurrect them in your Command phase.  Unless they're stupid expensive, I can easily see taking three of these.

Exalted Sorcerer on Disc of Tzeentch

In addition to the extra move, which you likely won't use much, he gets a Psychic power that allows him to attempt to halve Movement, Advance, and Charge rolls for an enemy unit.  You're guaranteed to get at least two attempts at this (unless your opponent removes him of course), so this will likely be pretty useful.  He also trades out the Blast weapon for a Torrent weapon, making him a nice Overwatch target.  Pretty good board control here!

Thousand Sons Forgefiend

The Thousand Sons version of this Daemon Engine can "suppress" a unit for -1 to Hit.  It's otherwise identical to the generic Forgefiend.

Thousand Sons Helbrute

Again, we get inferno versions for all our bolt weapons.  But the cool thing here is he helps us recycle our Cabal points, granting an additional Cabal point each time a nearby Psyker uses a ritual.

Thousand Sons Heldrake

Rather than try to be anti-aircraft, this Heldrake marks targets for you and prevents them from gaining cover.  This is honestly pretty good, considering how dependent KSons are on shooting.

Infernal Master

The Infernal Master also gets you 2 Cabal points.  He comes with at Torrent weapon, which is always good.  These torrent powers are a good reason to take DEVASTATING WOUNDS from Kindred Sorcery.  Plus he hands out SUSTAINED HITS 1, which is the other good buff, though this doesn't help him much.  But the kicker is he can just change a dice to a 6, guaranteeing him at least one mortal wound in shooting.

Magnus the Red

Well hello big guy!  I was honestly expecting they'd save you for last.  The order of Datasheets in this Index has been weird.  Just the way Tzeentch likes it!

Magnus gets you 4 Cabal points, already making him a good choice for your army.  His profile is pretty beefy, with T11 and 16 wounds.  He gets both Gaze of Magnus and Tzeentch's Firestorm, raining down shots and potentially mortals.  And he's still a Primarch in combat, with 7 S16, AP-3, D3 attacks with DEVASTATING WOUNDS on the strike.  His Commander ability lets him choose between -1 Damage, forcing a unit to take HAZARDOUS tests in shooting, and granting an Aura of +2" Movement.  That last one in particular is really good!  He also just always grants an Aura of +1 to Hit and Wound to his Sons' Psychic attacks.  Magnus is definitely a great piece to have in your army.

Thousand Sons Maulerfiend

Remember how I said you'd need to get units in combat?  Well this version of the Maulerfiend has free Heroic Intervention.  Strangely he's not a monster, which I didn't notice before, so he's not getting those magma cutters in combat.

Mutalith Vortex Beast

We got to have part of this Datasheet previewed, but now we get the full picture.  While bringing it to improve your rituals is definitely nice, those shooting profiles are also really good.  It's also no slouch in combat, with a decent number of S7 attacks or five S9, AP-2, and 4 damage strikes.  Plus nearby enemies have to deal with mortal wounds raining on them and take Battle-shock tests.

Rubric Marines

We've already seen these previewed, but now we know they'll be the main unit that most of your leaders can join.  So you'll want plenty of these.  Good thing they're Battleline.

Scarab Occult Terminators

There was a period in 9th when these things were nigh unkillable.  They're still tough when they have a Leader, gaining the new version of Transhuman.  And as Terminators, they punch decently hard into other infantry and lighter vehicles and monsters.

Thousand Sons Sorcerer

The generic Sorcerer only gets you 1 Cabal point, but every bit helps.  Fires of the Abyss is short ranged but gets a lot of shots.  And as if you needed a reason to not take LETHAL HITS from Kindred Sorcery, he just hands it out to his unit.  But wow!  He makes it so you can't shoot his unit if he's outside of 18"!  This is amazing protection!

Thousand Sons Sorcerer in Terminator Armour

You're probably going to want at least one unit of Terminators, and they'll want a leader.  Coruscating Flames is an interesting power, doing a spattering of potential mortals to Monsters and Vehicles while still having a decent profile against anything else.  He still grants LETHAL HITS, but now he also grants re-roll 1s against a chosen target.

Thousand Sons Cultists

If you can manage to kill a unit with these guys, you get 1CP.  More likely, you'll get the second half of their ability and get 1CP when they're destroyed.  Spend these poor fools wisely to make sure you're getting CP when you need it.

Thousand Sons Daemon Prince

For some reason this one moves slightly slower than the generic one, making me almost wonder if someone accidentally copied part of the Death Guard sheet and forgot to change it.  He comes with an interesting ability to let a unit of Rubrics or Terminators try and snipe off a character.  As a bonus, he also grants Stealth to nearby units.

Thousand Sons Daemon Prince with Wings

Oh wow!  He appropriately gets to roll 9 dice on his bombing run!  Fluffy and powerful!  And while he doesn't have Deep Strike, he can teleport himself to another part of the Battlefield.

Tzaangor Enlightened

KSons players have never take particularly well to their inheritance from AoS and Fantasy.  Though this has often been because Tzaangors usually didn't have rules to support them.  Here again, they don't have a lot of that synergizes with their Space Marine masters.  But at least they can be a bit evasive as a screen, getting one of those D6" moves when the enemy gets close.

Tzaangor Shaman

Hey!  At least the Shaman gives you a Cabal point!  He also gets the benefit of Kindred Sorcery on his attacks.  Since Tzaangors are usually screening units, the fact he gets them a 5+ FNP is very nice.  And re-roll Hits of 1 should help them be a potential threat too.

Tzaangors

They're honestly not bad in combat, especially if they have a Shaman with them. And with a Brayhorn they should reliably get there.  They can also get you some free Cabal points if you roll well with them.

FINAL THOUGHTS

As expected, the Thousand Sons have a few tricks ups their armoured robes.  But strangely the bulk of them come from their Army Rules and not from the units themselves.  They don't have a lot of re-rolls outside of Stratagems, so they might have a little trouble getting the most out of Kindred Sorcery.  And as I suspected, you basically never want to choose LETHAL HITS.  You can much more easily build into either SUSTAINED HITS or DEVASTATING WOUNDS.  I think I'd probably try for the latter, just to see if I could get that old rain of mortals going again.

Faction Focus: Thousand Sons

When I first started playing, every army was a psychic army that made use of the Psychic phase to try and alter the board state to their advantage.  But as I said in my rules roundup, as the game progressed more and more armies didn't use the psychic phase.  However, there are two armies and one sub-faction that are defined by it.  And now it's time to see how the first of those factions will work now that it's gone.

CABAL OF SORCERERS

Cabal Points are still a thing, and look like they're largely unchanged.  The big difference now is that each unit will now have an ability that tells you how many Cabal Points they give you, rather than looking it up on a chart.  This is a nice quality of life change as you can now easily just look at you Datacards and add them up.  Additionally, it looks like you can use them throughout the battle round, where before you had to spend them during your Psychic phase.  In exchange, though, you lose them at the start of your next Command phase.

We have five abilities to use them on now.  This is down, and less fluffy, from the nine we had before.  It's possible we might get the remaining four when the codex drops.  For that matter, I wonder if any other armies with rules like this might get more options in the codex?  I guess we'll have to see.

Picking these is still going to be a major skill check.  Weaver of Fates lets you potentially protect units around your sorcerers, but you use it at the start of a phase so you'll have to predict where you'll need it most.  Temporal Surge is great, letting you move a unit at the start of the shooting phase for an extra boost of speed.  We've got another "free and duplicate stratagem" rule with Echoes from the Warp.  Doom Bolt is just a nice simple mortal wound bomb, and it always hits to boot.  And wow!  Twist of Fate is potentially huge!  Forget AP, you get to just turn off armour saves for a unit!

PSYCHIC MAELSTROM

It's like my Hyper-Adaptations but you get to pick it every battle round!  Granted this isn't going to affect your entire army, but the Thousand Sons should have plenty of PSYCHIC weapons to use this on.  Unlike Rituals, this will usually be a much easier pick.  You'll simply choose which one will work best against what you're planning to shoot at the time.  But the fact you can change it each battle round is really good!

AZHEK AHRIMAN

Ah, Azhek.  You're legitimately one of my favorite characters in the lore.  Let's see how you'll play on the table now.  

Profile wise he's lost a wound, like many characters in 10th.  Of course two of his weapons are PSYCHIC and will get to use the Detachment rule.  He still grants you 3 Cabal Points.  But what we care about are his powers.  Interestingly his first ability is just a Leader buff, granting +1 to Wound.  That's nice, but I think I would have preferred two powers.

Huh . . .  His Psychic power is just a free Ritual once per Battle.  That's . . .

I'm not gonna lie, that's underwhelming.  I was hoping for two bespoke powers for him.  I mean both of these are useful, they're just lacking in flavor.  At least he gets PRECISION with his PSYCHIC attack.  Oh well, let's see what else we get.

RUBRIC MARINES

Rubrics and the Aspiring Sorcerer are largely unchanged.  The Soulreaper is up an attack but down a second pip of AP and the stave has lost a point Strength and is now a "force weapon."  And your Aspiring Sorcerer is still worth a Cabal Point.

The big change is that All is Dust now appears to be just a 5+ invuln.  This is more simplified, and probably more effective than the previous rule.  But I have a feeling if Plague Marines don't have a similar invuln, the Death Guard players are going to be salty . . .  They've also lost their morale rules like everyone else.  But now they get Veterans, just for shooting instead of melee.  Finally the Icon of Flame can now improve the AP of their weapons.  All this means they're still going to be pretty tough while laying down some potentially brutal fire power.

WARP VORTEX

The Mutalith's Warp Vortex is now greatly simplified, but it looks like it's not limited to one of each effect per turn.  The selection looks pretty flexible, meaning you're always going to be effective no matter what your target is.

We also get a surprise reveal for one of its unit abilities, doubling the range of Rituals for nearby sorcerers.

I wonder why they just didn't give us the third Datasheet?

PSYCHIC DOMINION

AH! HAHAHAH! *cackles madly*

Oh wow!  This is great!  I have no idea how often this is actually going to be worth spending CP on, but this is just such a flavorful stratagem!  You're sitting back blasting your opponent with PSYCHIC attacks.  Then they get the gumption to return the favor.  And you tap an Island and say, "You didn't say please."

I love it!

FINAL THOUGHTS

We get a little tease that Magnus will of course have an Army Commander ability, and it will be a choice of two auras and a focused defense.  Looks like we'll have to wait for the final reveal to start speculating on whether we can put him on the board this edition.

Currently, he and his Thousand Sons are in a tough spot in 9th.  They're a middle of the road army that requires a lot of skill to play.  I think most players, fans of the Thousand Sons or not, want this army to be challenging to play but greatly rewarding to players who can master it.  Rituals definitely look like they'll help with that.

But man, the Ahriman reveal was really underwhelming.  I'm really surprised they decided to just give him an Aura and a free Ritual.  And it's only once per game!