what happen to the rest of the kids?

[Lord_Khepri]

so being interested in all the fluff behind my beloved sons, the rubric leaves me puzzled. i understand the flesh change and why and how the rubric came to be. But my bewilderment comes from the change effecting the whole legion, which would include tank crews and assault squads. now i could go along with once the rubric was instilled they all picked up bolters, that just means i "cant" use tanks, raptors bikes in my list, only daemons ie forgefeind and "mutated" ie obliz. how do you guys feel about this? 

[Redtoof]

I don't think just because they are dust they can only use bolters. In 2nd edition they could be equipped in the same way as any other chaos marine squad (including power swords and the like), so there's no fluff reason why you can't use more advanced stuff, or at least if there is, you can ignore it and use the old fluff (everything is canon). In the game it's easy enough to claim your vehicle crew are thousand sons, but a bit harder to represent thousand son raptors or heavy weapon squads. One way I've seen is to model your special and heavy weapons as sorcerers. One of my regular opponents has some nice sorcerer-terminators that he uses as oblitorators, or terminators with combi-plasmas.

[Lord_Khepri]

in second edition weren't we considered a mutated army not ash trays, thus explaining the Armoury options, the way i understood it is that after the rubric they are under direct commands and cant really function by them selves. more like puppets of the sorcerer. 

[Cap'm Heckus]

I don't see why you couldnt use tanks?  There's nothing saying the crew inside aren't Rubrics.  Just add a 1kson head to the guy poking out of the top.  Tanks are fearless, so are 1ksons.  Most CSm tanks are BS 4, so are 1ksons.  Their special save is ignored anyway as vehicles use AV.  No other stat comes into play.  Whats the difference?

 

Bikes and raptors? they can't be as easily ignored.  The 6++ from the mark just doesn't make a rubric.  At best they are tzeentch-marked late comers who want to join a thousand sons warband.

 

Spawn and possessed can be used as "flesh-changed" (possessed with mark at least get the 4++).  Tzeentch Warp Talons could be something akin to rubric raptors.  Not a stellar unit but with the 1kson heads and 4++ save they might be fun.

[Lord_Khepri]

you know what buddy of mine brought up a better point, also i think im having a hard time getting my point across. he said prior to the rubric the flesh change warped and twisted the tank crews fusing them to their war-machines. which to me makes alot more sense then driving ash trays.

 

i actually just got some warp talons, hoping to support my infiltrating termies.

[Rune Priest Ridcully]

I personally think fluffwise that the thousand sons would field the full range of marine types and equipment, one that fluff has stated is that with sorcerers present their martial abilities were just as great as any other marine, so I hate GW's "duur" approach to them when the zombie marines who are stated to be brain dead get access to wargear.

[Hellios]

Rubrics can do pretty much do what any normal marine can do. Although they can often lose focus. They don't seem to have a huge drive to do anything if a sorcerer isn't telling them what to do. The reason they lack decent special weapons and such is that the 1ksons have a limited number of people who are able to maintain their technology, and they tend to rely on sorcery rather than tech to get things done.

[Rune Priest Ridcully]

That argument could apply to pretty much all of the other chaos factions, the reason we don't have any wargear is because GW half baked the chaos codex again.

[Excessus]

The rubric is said to have turned all TS with little or no psychic power into rubricae, and that includes all sorts of marines such as tank crews, dreadnought pilots, techmarines, apothecaries...and so on. Only around 600 rubrics exists at the same time, since those are the original legionnaires that got "rubric:ed". A thousand Sons sorcerer would not waste these few but powerful automata on something as trivial as driving a tank. In 30k, there would be all sorts of auxiliaries and machinations to lend from the dark mechanicus for operating machines, and most vehicles already had a support crew of servitors installed from the start anyway. More than that though, Thousand Sons sorcerers have the power to control and pilot machines and robots (as seen in A Thousand Sons), a few rhinos at the same time wouldn't be too difficult for them I'm guessing, if the need arises. Another option would simply be to make a daemon possess the machine itself. In 40k, since the Rubricae are so limited, a commanding Sorcerer would rather leave the driving and shooting with vehicles to 'new' renegades, which a decently sized Thousand Sons warband would have plenty of (Ahriman: Exile).

[Lord_Khepri]

thanks Excessus, that's basically the answer i was looking for.