Heresy & Heroes

Well this is a curious one. I’ve played a lot of Chaos armies in my time, but I’ve never looked into Tzeentch and the Rubric Marines of the Thousand Sons. I’ve played against them maybe once or twice, but I really don’t know anything about how they really operate, and especially not in 9th Edition 40k. But, GW sent me the new Thousand Sons codex so I suppose I better have a go at making one of our Lazy Painter’s lists. But I’m giving myself some caveats with this one. First off, I’m not taking Magnus. Yes, he’s a big chunk of points but, I dunno, I don’t like how he pulls the army apart a bit. Does that make sense? Probably not. Either way though – no Magnus.

Also, I actually want to try and do a Battalion for once. I usually go for Vanguard or Spearhead detachment but here, I want to see what I can do to take the full 12 command points into the game. We’ll still try and keep the model count to an absolute minimum, but we want some objective secured troops in here and a good blend of tactical options. Let’s see what we can do.

HQs

First up, we have to take Ahriman on his disc. The disc makes him faster and fightier which is nice and honestly I just love the model. He’s full of character and a natural leader for this army – definitely the warlord here. And those 3 psychic powers he can cast per turn will help a lot as well.

Then we’re taking a pair of daemon princes with wings and swords*. They’re a classic chaos HQ, and two of them are enough to scare anyone. And that sword giving each of them 5 base attacks at S8 is just tasty. Proper tasty. This also starts a theme that runs through this army. Let’s just say I’m thinking of these princes as twins…

Troops

Three squads of five Rubric Marines. They’re all running identical loadouts with each squad taking an Icon of Flame, the Sorcerer is packing a Warpflame Pistol, and one of the marines is toting a Soulreaper Cannon. The Icon will help with the magic stuff (not something I’m up with yet but this appears to be very useful to have three of these in the list), and the Warpflame Pistol and Soulreaper are in there to look cool. I mean, they should kill a lot of things too, but really they’re in there because I like the look of them.

Flyers

Two Heldrakes with each one breathing fire with a baleflamer. No, they’re not as devastating as they used to be, but alongside the daemon princes and Ahriman on his disc, I’ve got five things in this army that can fly fast and rain down a lot of pain on my enemies. And again, I may be biased by my heretical roots, but I just think they’re still the coolest looking flyers in the game.

Heavy Support

Two Maulerfiends with Lasher Tendrils. I’ve played lists with two Maulerfiends before and they always earn their points back and usually do more damage besides. Those fists crack armour like nothing else, and those lasher tendrils are great at preventing them from getting bogged down in tarpits. And with 10″ movement and an ability to ignore charge modifiers, it’s another fast one. Well, another fast two in this instance.

Elites

Two squads of five Scarab Occult terminators each with a Heavy Warpflamer and a Hellfyre Missile Rack. 3 Wound monsters with a lot of firepower and a 2+/5++ and the ability to cast more psychic powers, plus the fact they are awesome looking miniatures, these chaps may be dusty, but I reckon it’s gold dust. Imagine trying to clear that lot out of the centre of the battlefield.

The List:

HQ: Ahriman on his disc

HQ: Daemon Prince with wings and sword

HQ: Daemon Prince with wings and sword

Troops: 5x Rubric Marines with an Icon, a Soulreaper and a fiery pistol

Troops: 5x Rubric Marines with an Icon, a Soulreaper and a fiery pistol

Troops: 5x Rubric Marines with an Icon, a Soulreaper and a fiery pistol

Elites: 5x Scarab Occult Termies with a missile rack and a heavy flamer

Elites: 5x Scarab Occult Termies with a missile rack and a heavy flamer

Heavy Support: Maulerfiend with Lasher Tendrils

Heavy Support: Maulerfiend with Lasher Tendrils

Flyer: Heldrake with Baleflamer

Flyer: Heldrake with Baleflamer

Points: bang on 2000

Model Count: 32 – not too shabby.

Army Name: The Flaming Twins of Tzeentch

Additional stuff: You can pick one of the Cults of the Legion profiles for yourself – I like the Cult of Scheming but there are lots of options. Same goes for relics and Infernal Pacts but with Ahriman as the warlord, he’ll have the Otherworldly Prescience rule which gives him a once per game 3+ invuln save which could certainly be helpful.

How it plays: Well, I can tell you how I’d play it, which may not be the best guide but it should be fun. Everything fast runs up the field beating things up and setting things on fire (I do love the amount of flamers we have in this list) with psychic powers pinging off all over the shop, while the core of Rubrics and Terminators slowly advance and take objectives and offer a solid second wave of attacks.

I know in the past I’ve tried not to do too many duplicates of units, so it was weird copying/pasting all those entries into that list but I reckon you could have a lot of fun painting each pair as the opposite of each other. One heldrake is blue with yellow trim, while the other is yellow with blue trim. Same with the daemon princes, maulerfiends, and scarab occults. Then do a big blue classic blob of rubrics led by Ahriman. I can feel a theme coming through easily there and that always makes an army a treat to paint. I’ll just have to hope it’s a treat to play as well.

Do you think I’d do well with this? How does it stack up against the Grey Knights list from earlier today? Let me know in the comments. Have a great day, and be good to yourself and others. Onwards.

(*) Gah! I did not take into account the Jealous Tyrant rule which someone on twitter pointed out. So I can only take one Daemon Prince in a detachment. I’ve looked, and I like the idea of the army looking like this so much, I’m just going to take him as an auxiliary detachment and take the CP hit. I’m having me two daemon princes, gosh darn it!