Advice vs thousand sons

[bawnslippy]

Hey hive mind, I have a game coming up vs thousand sons 1k pts. Not played against them before but expecting lots of smite attacks. My army is a little balanced in options (can choose from 2 tyrants, warriors, broodlord, gants, mawloc, provores, tyrant guard or hive guard) but wondering if I should:

1. Bring a big pod of gants to absorb smites
2. Bring all my psykers to try and counter psyker - or will I be outgunned here?
3. Focus on long ranged attacks, which I don't have tonnes of outside of the tyrants

Appreciate the thoughts and opinions

[dkng]

If you want to commit to anti-psyker go for Kronos with Synaptic Ganglia morph. Get the Neurothrope as it can deny twice.
As for more conventional ways of dealing with the enemy prioritise AP as their saves can be ridiculous. Kraken can be your best bet here.
Shame you dont sport any Acid-Tyrranofex. Ga(u)nts will be horrible against them as they all have -1ap weapons (I wont even mention the devourers) which suck hard against the AoC Rubricae. Mawloc is pretty much the same story although its' staying power can be better. Pyros can get something done if you get them within 12 (16 for Kronos). If you know he'll bring many squads of Rubrics the Stranglethorn can be decent... ish... Venom Cannons on Warriors are going to be your best shooting.
Best of luck as this is not an easy matchup.

[bawnslippy]

Kinda what I thought, I don't see a lot of ways to win here. I have 2 unbuilt carnifex and an unbuilt zoey that I can proxy as a neurothrope. They seem well designed to sit on objectives and torch me if I get close

[bawnslippy]

Should I bring the gants as a meat shield? Or better spent elsewhere?

[dkng]

Jun 9, 2022 8:00:15 GMT bawnslippy said:

Should I bring the gants as a meat shield? Or better spent elsewhere?

I think in this matchup gants will die in droves while doing close to nothing in return. Better go psyker heavy or monster heavy.

Do you have the Flyrant? He'll cut them like hay with the Reaper

[bawnslippy]

I do have flyrant. Wasn't sure whether to give him ranged or melee weapons.

Also have a walking tyrant so also considering tyrant guard and just trundling up with my bodyguards and going double melee tyrants

[kazetanade]

Bring 1 Neurothrope

Bring 2x3 Zoanthropes

Bring tendrils WLT


PROFIT

[bawnslippy]

Jun 10, 2022 7:06:03 GMT kazetanade said:

Bring 1 Neurothrope

Bring 2x3 Zoanthropes

Bring tendrils WLT


PROFIT

I literally don't own any of those models!

What does WLT mean?

[hivefleetkerrigan]

WLT = warlord trait

[dkng]

To elaborate a bit - Neurothrope is one of the best psykers in the game. Period. It sports a natural +1 to cast and like 99% of the time you give it the Resonance Barb relic to give it another +1 (and an extra power to have as a backup). It can deny twice but you'll rarely do that as it is wise to keep it in the back - you will be out of enemies deny range while still being able to cast whatever wherever thanks to the Synaptic Link rule. Of course if the situation demands you can move it forward to deny.
So you have a 6W, 3++ caster with +2 to cast. But there is more. It has the Warp Siphon command skill - point a friendly Psyker unit and it rolls 3d6 picking two of the dice for psychic tests. Add Synaptic Tendrils warlord trait and it can do it twice. Take a close look on the rules and it can even cast it on itself. You will fail the cast or suffer perils very, very rarely.
Moving on to Zoanthropes - those little buggers get +1 to cast Witchfire powers for each guy in the unit - so 3 of them get +3 to cast. They also get the same bonus for mortal wounds when casting Smite (capped at 3 MWs). So if you use the Siphon on Zoans and then cast Smite with them you roll 3 dice, pick two best with +3 to cast and you do D3+3 MWs. If two of those dice will get you 8 or better you deal D6+3 MWs. Sounds good?
So... if there is a single best way to upgrade your army is to go for those floating brains - it adds a brand new layer of stinking creamy cheese to your games and a whole lot of opportunities. Good luck!

[Jbizzy]

Fighting T-sons you want High AP weapons with D2 or more and lots of mortal wounds (Zoan thropes and Neurothropes).

Can you have one of the walkrants be a Swarmlord?

[bawnslippy]

So, silly me got confused about who I'm against and turns out my opponent brought a Ravenwing bike squadron! No matter, I was relatively well balanced.

Trygon got wiped turn one seeing no action, as did a warrior squad. Pretty demoralising and was tempted to concede and suggest a reset for a new game, but went ahead anyway.

Winged tyrant and walking tyrant got into shooting and melee pretty quick and took out bike squads quite quickly.

Trades blows but ultimately won by about 15 VPs as was quite consistently on 3 of 4 of the objectives and winning my secondaries (playing tempest of war). Got myself a box of zoeys as a treat!

Learning points: switch away from kraken on a smaller board and try leviathan. Also, keep everything well hidden on deployment!

[Master Chief]

Jun 9, 2022 14:47:36 GMT dkng said:

Jun 9, 2022 8:00:15 GMT bawnslippy said:

Should I bring the gants as a meat shield? Or better spent elsewhere?

I think in this matchup gants will die in droves while doing close to nothing in return. Better go psyker heavy or monster heavy.

Do you have the Flyrant? He'll cut them like hay with the Reaper

Well I think a few hormagaunts are always good to protect yourself against their deep strike and against the mortal wound shower they can unleash on you.

Hormagaunts or gargoyles are quite fast and you'll find a way to do something good with them.

Is always better if those mortal wounds go on that cheap unit, than if they hit or bracket something important.

And in the end before killing even 10 hormagaunts or 10 gargoyles with a 5+++ vs mortals, is going to take a lot of smites.

You don't have to spam them, but I think you should always have a unit of 10 gargoyles or 10 hormagaunts in your list.

Plus like you said, I think that there's no other army in the game that suffers the reaper flyrants and the damage 3 weapons like the thousand sons.

One reaper flyrant spending 3 CPs should be able to delete almost 10 rubric terminators on his own and go back to safety ready for the next round.

[piersonsmuppet]

Jun 12, 2022 15:27:26 GMT Master Chief said:

One reaper flyrant spending 3 CPs should be able to delete almost 10 rubric terminators on his own and go back to safety ready for the next round.

Did you mean Rubric Marines or Occult Terminators? Reaper will only avg 6 Terms with +d3A and rr wounds, 4-5 if they have glamour or 4+ power up, and 3-4 if both are up. So I wouldn’t send it into the Terminators except for clean-up duty.

[Master Chief]

Jun 12, 2022 17:23:27 GMT piersonsmuppet said:

Jun 12, 2022 15:27:26 GMT Master Chief said:

One reaper flyrant spending 3 CPs should be able to delete almost 10 rubric terminators on his own and go back to safety ready for the next round.

Did you mean Rubric Marines or Occult Terminators? Reaper will only avg 6 Terms with +d3A and rr wounds, 4-5 if they have glamour or 4+ power up, and 3-4 if both are up. So I wouldn’t send it into the Terminators except for clean-up duty.

Sorry I meant terminators.

You can still cast smite and scream, plus another couple of hits might be in because of the warriors imperative, plus the 2 extra feet str8 attacks.

But if you kill 6,7 or 8, you don't really need to worry about that sqaud anymore.