Tactics against a sorcerer heavy thousand sons army?

[StankyChicken]

Hello I'm going up against a 2000 point army list of Thousand Sons and obviously they're going to be bringing alot of sorcerers. I'm just wondering what type of tactics and army lists that people have used in the past that have been effective against such opponents. Any suggestions are appreciated, thank you.  

[swordofmandulis]

This isn't helpful, but if he brings Magnus, Ahriman and any kind of optimised list you are likely to be annihilated in short order (just my experiences and opinion)

 

If you want to shut him down I would want a couple of culexus assassins and a space marine librarian terminator with Null Zone. try to get that off in range of magnus to remove invulns and then hit him with everything you have. the culexus assassins will make all of his casting/deny -2 and he wont be able to smite you if the assassins are the nearest models which they should be.

 

Rubrics are nasty, the Terminators are nasty, if he spams horrors that will be nasty, the changeling is really nasty.

 

prepare for a tough battle.

[Dolchiate Remembrancer]

As someome who plays thousand sons: D2+ weapons. You can shoot at everything with them and can kill his army in short order.

[Xenith]

Get in close, engage in combat, transports to protect from inferno bolts.

[9x19 Parabellum]

If he's playing super competitively, I don't think you're going to be able to accomplish much.  Your options are either to focus everything on taking down Magnus, which probably won't happen until turn 3, maybe turn 2, if you're lucky, at which point the rest of his army will have made it across the field and ready to stomp you, all the time getting shred by his smite spam.

Alternatively, you can focus on the rest of his army, in which case Magnus will be annhilating a unit per close combat phase.  Spreading out won't help you, since Magnus can easily cover 32"+charge range per turn thanks to warp time, all it does is put your units outside your captain's buff bubble.

 

I've done some number crunching, and you can't take down Magnus in one turn of shooting with as little as 1700 points of Mortal Wound spam; snipers, hellfire shells and flakk missile...with regular space marines. Blood Angels technically can't use those stratagems, so you'd have to load up on more snipers.  You can also do it with about 1700 points of Hellblasters...assuming you have the models and a force org that supports it :-)  Mixed shooting takes about 2400-2800 points of shooting to bring Magnus down in 1 turn of shooting.  That assumes everyone is in range, double tapping, and in a Captain/Lieutenant bubble.  It also assumes Magnus has his +1 Invulvn saves power up, which he probably will if he goes first.  (And you have to plan for thousand sons to go first, since they are likely to have fewer drops, as everything in their army costs more).  If you can reliably claim the initiative, DO IT! So you can shoot at Magnus before he has the opportunity to put his +1 invulvn power up.

 

Alternatively you could try a couple Librarians and hope to get Null Zone up.  This is tricky, as you have to successfully get the spell off (which is magnus has equa likelihood of dispelling) then you actually have to get within 6" of him.  Whatever shooting you pour in to him had better work and be enough, because you can guarantee that libby is going to get crunched in the next round.  (aka, "we only get 1 shot at this!")

 

I suppose you could try to out deploy them, by taking a couple land raiders and/or stormravens and putting all your stuff in it so you have few infantry drops.  If you do this, just know that Magnus will pop a land raider in 1 round of close combat if you get it too close to him.

[StankyChicken]

Thanks for your suggestions guys and sorry for the late reply, I played the battle and surprisingly I won. Only just but I won the objective, albeit due to extreme luck for myself and poor luck for my opponent. I would have been tabled in another turn if the game didn't end.

 

I'm going to try and remember his army list off the top of my head so excuse me if I get a few things wrong but it was something like

 

Magnus

Ahirman

2 exalted sorc

1 squad of 10 rubric marines (all with warpflamers, they absolutely slaughtered an 8 man squad of Sang Guard who failed a charge on Magnus)

1 squad of 20 Zangors

1 angry bird (Heldrake)

1 squad of 20 pox walkers  ( I know odd choice but he claims it's fine due to the Chaos keyword or something.)

1 Rhino

 

And that's it, good chance I'm forgetting things but I have a terrible memory. If I still have my army list saved I'll post it in either a new post or edit if people are interested. It was a fun game that I quite enjoyed, I'm not new to 40k but I'm by no means a competitive pro I usually just play friendly games as I believe that's where the most fun is to be had. Once again thanks for the people who have suggested tatics, feel free to offer anymore advice if anyone has it as I'll try to use it in future games.

Edited November 8, 2017 by StankyChicken

[Dolchiate Remembrancer]

Yea the pox walkers are just barely legal. ;)

[Panzer]

The Poxwalker are definitely legal, however he can do that only as long as he has no TSons specific relics/traits/stratagems. As soon as he gets his own Codex he would have to put the Poxwalker into a seperate Detachment or else he'd lose all the TSons benefits. ^^