Maximizing the potential of rubric marines, some thoughts...

[Ethrion]

Ok, so I've spent ages wrestling with the eternal problem: how to build the most cost effective Thousand Sons army and how to get the most out of them.

 

First up is MSU or 1GU (1 giant unit)? For me, because of the insanely high "champion tax" Thousand Sons have to pay, its best to go with 1GU. It'll mean we are not spending 58 points all over the place on aspiring sorcerers who 1) have a rubbish psychic power in the first place and 2) are too afraid to use it because they'll kill themselves.
 

Admittedly it looks maddening expensive to take a 20 man rubric squad but if you take two 10 man squads you end up paying more so why bother... that's the first issue dealt with.

 

Next up is what is their role in the army? Sounds simple but it's important to know what they are meant to do: "an automaton's gotta know his limitations"! They have bolters which means they want to be in and around the mid-table area to maximise their usefulness. No point in having them milling around at the back of the map, get them in the face of the enemy and get them being a threat.

 

A block of 20 guys with AP3 relentless bolters advanced in a central area is going to be a problem for anyone. Their 4+ invulnerable will allow them to take on all the weapons that normally marines are scared of and anyone getting close to deal with them is going to have to seriously think about not stepping out in the open - which in itself means they are going to be slowed going through terrain.

 

So we've determined that you want a massive block of them in the middle of the board causing a headache for your opponent, but how can we now improve upon their weaknesses? I see the weaknesses being speed and ultimately having a marine/bolter stat line. Lets deal with speed first.

 

A rhino is out because the squads too big, so the only other way to move them up fast is to run them...or is it? Enter Ahriman stage right: with his warlord trait of infiltrating D3 units you can get that 1GU right up into position before the game even starts. In one fell swoop you have a block of death in range of anyone foolish enough to deploy too close. If you roll more than 1 for the infiltrate you can bring up more support units that you have in the army but the primary job is to get the 1GU up front fast.

 

Ahriman is costly yes but he isn't all bad with ML4 and some of the powers he has access to are pretty nice (telepathy especially). But I digress...

 

Now to the improving of the bolter stat line. Only Abaddon could give preferred enemy (SM) to them and even then he's too costly and besides he HAS to be the warlord so you'd lose the infiltrate skill of Ahriman, so Horus' prodigy is out. Nothing else in the chaos book will help so we look to the daemons of chaos codex and specifically a herald of Tzeentch. This guy gets to take divination, tool him up to ML3 and suddenly you have the ability to cast re-roll hits on the rubrics and potentially get "enemy has to re-roll successful saves" and "ignores cover". All of this instantly makes those AP3 bolters a shed load more deadly.

 

Imagine a perfect storm of: midfield control, invisibility on rubrics, prescience on rubrics, misfortune and/or perfect timing on the enemy plus other handy little things like hallucination "errm" going off. That's some serious power for the 1GU of Thousand Sons.

 

Now I've left out all the other peripheral units in the army because this is just concerned with getting the best out of the rubrics, nothing else. It's entirely up to personal choice what else you surround them with but the butchers bill for just this section of the formation is 820, a lot yes, but damn good at what it's doing. What I would say though is once this has been put in the list as much as other things are nice they just end up making everything too expensive. For example you just cant have a 500pt rubric squad, Ahriman at 230 and then tooled up daemon princes at another 300 or so...

 

Anyway those are my thoughts on maximizing the rubric marine troop choice.

 

edit: as has been pointed out the Herald has to sit nearby the rubrics in his unit of pink horrors. But that's not too much of a downside as he can still cast the primaris power onto the rubric marines.

[Narse]

You can't put anything with daemonic instability (independent or character) in something without daemonic instability.  So, you can have the Herald but he will either be walking, or hiding inside a Daemon squad.

 

I would suggest considering Lord of Change, as well...  Having Heavy support Daemon princes are a rather high priority target that you don't really mind losing.

[Excessus]

I second the Lord of Change. A maxed out LoC, although expensive at 305p, is nigh indestructible and will give out some serious butt-hurt to enemy forces.

 

One thing I have to say is the vulneability towards hordes. Last tournament I went to I brought my Thousand Sons along, and the only real problem I had was with horde armies. I lost my game against a fellow TS player due to a tactical mistake on my part, and all other marine or elite armies I faced I won over. Now, how to deal with this efficiently? Flamers/Screamers of Tzeentch! Both are fast units that can dish out plenty of hurting to a lot of models in various ways. The flamer templates will of course be able to catch a lot of models, as will the 'fly-by' hits from the screamers. Together with the elite-killing Thousand Sons and daemon MCs, I think they will do nicely...

 

I felt comfortable with my two squads of nine TS. Sure, the sorcerer tax is a bit too high, but so is the Thousand Sons tax from the start anyway and I like to have the option of shooting at two targets with a decent amount of shots. Ahriman is awesome, and I will always bring him if I can. Not only does he infiltrate(and outflank!) infantry, but he will also bring three biomancy powers to the field, something a Thousand Sons force are in dire need of. Endurance is important against small-arms fire, which is the TS weakness.

[Ethrion]

Yeah the horde issue is a problem that should be dealt with by another aspect of the army and like I said what goes around the core thousand sons is up to personal preference. 

 

With 2 units of 10 rubrics or 1 unit of 20, the cost difference is marginal so I suppose that's okay to take but certainly no more than 2 units.

 

I agree with biomancy as an option on Ahriman to buff the rubrics.

[Excessus]

Yeah, no more than 2 squads for sure. A squad of nine TS is 242, which only is 29 points above my tooled up CSM squads with psword champ dual plasma, votlw and extra ccw:s so it's not that much more but it gives you a more limited squad. It's definitely annoying that they can't overwatch, but they are pretty sturdy in melee so it's nice to have a counter-charging unit closeby to get them out as soon as possible.

 

Some statistics from the tournament and three training games where they had Gift of Mutation also:

 

Game #1

Sorcerer 1: Doombolt, Shrouded

Sorcerer 2: Firestorm, Feel no Pain

 

Game #2

Sorcerer 1: Doombolt, +1W

Sorcerer 2: Firestorm, Eternal Warrior

 

Game #3

Sorcerer 1: Doombolt, -

Sorcerer 2: Firestorm, Hammer of Wrath

 

Game #4

Sorcerer 1: Firestorm, +1S

Sorcerer 2: Doombolt, +1T

 

Game #5

Sorcerer 1: Doombolt, +1T

Sorcerer 2: Firestorm, -

 

Game #6

Sorcerer 1: Firestorm, +1Bs

Sorcerer 2: Doombolt, Instant Death

 

Game #7

Sorcerer 1: Doombolt, Stubborn

Sorcerer 2: Firestorm, -

 

Game #8

Sorcerer 1: Doombolt, -

Sorcerer 2: Doombolt, Instant Death

 

Game #9

Sorcerer 1: Doombolt, Feel no Pain

Sorcerer 2: Firestorm, Stubborn

 

So my gut feeling tells me that GoM isn't worth it to put on sorcerers, it almost never does anything useful(I bolded the times they got something useful) and the only time I got to use the benefit in a game was when he got shrouded. He got IDed when he got +1W, and I don't think he got a single shot off when he had +1Bs...

 

 

It's fun to see how they almost always followed the statistical probability of what psychic powers they get. Luckily I got dual doombolt on them(and another one on ahriman!) when I faced Belial and his DA! :D

[*Furyou Miko]

What, Feel No Pain isn't useful?

[Excessus]

Well, if he has to take a FnP save he is most likely the last one left. And frankly, an aspiring sorcerer by himself is not that useful. Better than not having him though, but it's of marginal use. Ofc, it would be good to have in a challenge, but I rarely ended up in challenges with my sorcerers. Either their sergeant was already dead or they didn't have one from the start, or he died to a power fist(they had force axes). I don't remember getting to save anything with the FnP at all in those games, besides, I tended to get endurance a lot, and FnP doesn't stack...

 

[Edit]: lol, made it sound that I didn't save anything with endurance either, but I did. It was just the GoM FnP that I never got to use... :)

[*Furyou Miko]

Fair enough.

[zyl-]

I think using the fact that the sorcerors are actually able to take a challenge decently could play out well for us. Just a main problem there being that you can't always choose who you face.. especially true for a slower squad.

[Excessus]

Aspiring sorcerers actively discourage HQ characters from accepting those challenges due to their force weapons, and with an 4++ they have decent chances of surviving a challenge as well.

[Narse]

I have always found 15-17 as the sweet spot for Thousand Son Squads.  At that size they never seem to get eliminated during the course of a game unless they face something that should of been taken care of early.  (such as 3 Warwalkers with guided scatter lasers)

[Souba]

any thoughts about using the spartan assault tank? it may be worthwhile with its 25 man capacity and given that AV 14 is harder to crack in this edition due to the change from melta to plasma.  i think he is a nice transport if you dont want to invest into ahriman to get a 100% infiltrate

[Ethrion]

I was really just focusing on what we had access to in the standard codices but yes, that would solve transport issues to use the spartan assault tank.

[Excessus]

Problem is that it doesn't have fire points, and why would you need an assault vehicle for your Thousand Sons? You are almost never assaulting with them anyway. Just getting it for the 25 man transport is a bit...meh. Ahriman fills one other spot than just infiltrating, he is the compulsory HQ and a lvl4 sorcerer with MoT, meaning he's making Thousand Sons troops and can take 3 biomancy powers, something regular sorcerers only can take two of(because nobody should take more than one tzeentch spell anyway). He's expensive, yes, but not too expensive for the gear he has...

 

Thousand Sons on foot can still participate in the battle, the 24" range of their AP3 bolters can start sniping things already first turn. You deploy 24" apart and with 6" movement from both sides there will be plenty of range for your bolters to take their toll. Bikers and such are faster and can more easily get within their 12" rapid fire range...so many will think twice before going too close to your army...which is a tactical advantage...

 

If you give them rhinos, they will be faster delivered to a spot where they need to be unloaded and pour their AP3 death into an enemy, but while they are travelling there they will only be able to fire two shots per turn.

 

Ahriman's infiltrate makes sure you can place them optimally in your deployment. You don't even have to place them further ahead, but just opposite the Power Armoured target they are going for.

[Ethrion]

Yeah, Ahriman is by far and away the best option to get the rubric marines into threat range fast. Also, if you take 3 powers from biomancy you are very likely rolling up the eternal warrior ability for him in which case that 230pts doesn't seem half bad.

[Excessus]

And he smashes walkers and other vehicles with iron arm as well since he has a staff. S7-9 at I5 is very nice! Along with the opportunity of giving rubrics FnP or their opposing marines -1T to make those rubric bolters even more deadly... Biomancy is a must for Ahriman...

[Ethrion]

And he smashes walkers and other vehicles with iron arm as well since he has a staff. S7-9 at I5 is very nice! Along with the opportunity of giving rubrics FnP or their opposing marines -1T to make those rubric bolters even more deadly... Biomancy is a must for Ahriman...

Yeah, very very much a must :) We can catagorically say that Ahriman really does help maximize the potential of rubric marines in a 'well worth 230pts' way.

[zyl-]

So the second HQ is a disc sorc or a winged prince?

[Sepsis the Unclean]

For the 2nd HQ I'd run either a Lord of Change or a Tzeentch Herald from the daemon codex. Purely for divination 'buffs'.

[*Furyou Miko]

My second HQ is a Warpsmith with the Murder Sword, the Scrolls of Magnus and a Sigil of Corruption. >> rather nasty at close-to-combat range, especially if she rolls a decent spell with the Scrolls.

[Ethrion]

Ok, just had a couple of games using Ahriman as my warlord and boy does the infiltrate warlord trait work a treat! The ability to either infiltrate or outflank depending on the situation and the enemy is huge.

 

I was playing a length way deployment, kill points against gun line IG armour and I outflanked with my two obliterator squads who single-handedly wrecked the IGs plans by instantly being in amongst it. Without it I would have been footslogging into a serious amount of firepower.

[Teetengee]

My second HQ is a Warpsmith with the Murder Sword, the Scrolls of Magnus and a Sigil of Corruption. >> rather nasty at close-to-combat range, especially if she rolls a decent spell with the Scrolls.

But, you can only exchange one weapon for an artifact (no Sword and Scrolls on the same model). I really hate to be that guy but it seems important.

[Godhead]

Scrolls don't replace a weapon.

[Teetengee]

Scrolls don't replace a weapon.

That doesn't mean they don't take up your one selection from the chaos artefacts table. "A model can replace one weapon with one of the following."This is further modified in the case of scrolls and of the d-key that you get to keep your weapon "Does not replace one of the character's weapons." It doesn't however eliminate the "one of the following" statement. This seems to be both RAW and RAI as far as I can tell.

[*Furyou Miko]

Well, when I play against you, I won't field my Warpsmith, Teeten.

 

I take the sword and the scrolls together because Rule of Cool, so if my opponent refuses to accept that it's fine by raw (it doesn't actually say you can only make that replacement once) then it's not worth fighting with them over.