Battle Report: New Thousand Sons and Magnus vs Blood Angels

A lot of people are interested to see how the new Thousand Sons army can perform on the table, especially with Magnus included. I decided to open up Vassal and give the army a test run. I have a pretty good Blood Angels list which I've been having a lot of success with lately so I decided to pit Magnus and his rubric buddies up in an ITC scenario. First let's take a look at the setup:

Thousand Sons - Grand Coven Detachment 1850 Points

Core- War Cabal

Sorcerer on disc, ML 3, VotLW, Spell Familiar, Mark of Tzeentch

2x Rubrics with a Rhino

1x Scarab Occult Terminators

Command- Lord of the Legion

Magnus

Auxiliary- Daemon Engines

Heldrake w Baleflamer

Not a lot of models in the list here. At 1850 this army doesn't stack like Battle Company with tons of units, but what it lacks in bodies it more than makes up for in power and durability.

Blood Angels - Combined Arms Detachment 1850 Points

HQ:

Librarian Dread ML2, Drop Pod

Elite:

Contemptor Dread w Kheres

Troops:

2x Tac Squads w/ meltagun drop pods

1x Tac Squad w/ grav drop pod

Cassor the Damned

Fast Attack:

Drop Pod

The Golden Host Formation

Dante

2x Sanguinary Guard w/ Chapter Banner, 3 swords, 1 axe, 1 Power Fist

The mission was ITC scenario 3 which is Purge the Alien primary and modified maelstrom secondary. Tertiaries were First Strike, King of the Hill, Slay the Warlord with a Vanguard Strike Deployment.

Blood Angels won the roll to pick sides and to go first.

Deployment: Blood Angels null deployed of course and gave turn 1 to Thousand Sons who set up everything but the Drake in their corner. The Rhinos with the rubrics embarked on either side of the Terminators who had the two disc Sorcs attached. Magnus standing behind them.

Turn 1 - Thousand Sons: As there were no targets to effect on Turn 1, Magnus simply moved up a bit along with the Rhinos and Terminators to position themselves to score objectives and control the center for the end game. Magnus attempted Siphon Magic but it was denied (surprisingly enough) and then proceeded to throw a single dice at Boon of Mutation only to roll a 1. No 3++ on the first turn. This was already looking rough and I had chosen to keep Magnus on the ground to assault on turn 2 if need be. Magnus did manage to summon a squad of 3 Flamers of Tzeentch however. Otherwise Turn 1 was pretty uneventful for the Thousand Sons.

Turn 1 - Blood Angels: The Blood Angels decided to drop Cassor and the Contemptor out of the pods surrounding Magnus while a Tac Squad with melta dropped in the center near objective 1 and another tac squad with grav dropped down on objective 2. Nothing really eventful happened on their turn 1. The Contemptor shot into Magnus with the Kheres but he managed to make the saves. The melta gun from the tac squad near objective 1 fired into the Rhino immobilizing it. Neither army gets First Strike!

Turn 2 - Thousand Sons: The Heldrake fails to come on and Magnus positions himself to D beam Cassor and the drop pod he came from. The other Rhino begins moving down the side of the flank. The Rubrics get out of the Immobilized tank to help deal with the tac squad while the disc sorcs and the Termies move around to shoot into them as well. The Flamers get on the rear of the Contemptor to provide some support on rear armor. Psychic Phase, Magnus D beams both Cassor and the Pod killing both! He then uses the D witchfire from Change to shoot into the Contemptor blowing him up. The terminators shoot their AP3 combi-bolters into the tac squad and simply obliterate them. Things are looking good so far for the Thousand Sons.

Turn 2 - Blood Angels: The Golden Host choose not to come in this turn while the rest of the pods all come in. The final Tac squad positions near objective 1 but scatters way back. The two librarian dreads both come in threatening Magnus and objective 3 trying to box him in to keep him away from the tacticals. The librarians both manage to get Quickening off and a 5++ save power. They move up and shoot a few of the Rubrics down near objective 1.

Turn 3 - Thousand Sons: The Heldrake still refuses to come in. The terminators swing over to deal with the fresh Tac Squad. The rhino on the flank continues moving towards the middle area. Magnus lines up between both the librarian dreads. The Flamers move about near the center of the board. The rubrics near the center move down to try and shoot at the Tac Squad on objective 2. In the psychic phase, Magnus gets off Siphon Magic and uses the D beam to destroy one of the Librarian Dreads. In the assault phase he charges the other librarian dread who is now down to 2 hull points after shaking off a D hit. This would end up being bad for me as I struggled to take down this thing the rest of the game and Magnus was locked in combat unable to use his massive amount of witchfires.

Turn 3 - Blood Angels: Seeing the prefect opportunity to strike, Dante and the Golden Host come in. Dante's squad sticks a landing adjacent to Magnus while the other Sanguinary Guard land near the center close to objective 1. The tac squads shoot up the Rubrics and leave only the sorcerer who dies during the charge from the Sanguinary Guard. Dante and his group charge into Magnus doing a couple of wounds but Magnus saves all but of them. The Dread also puts a wound on him. Magnus despite strength 8 and 6 attacks cannot crack the librarian dread's AV 13.

Turn 4 - Thousand Sons: The Drake finally comes in to blast the marines on objective 2, vector striking one of the Sanguinary Guard and killing him on the way in. The Terminators move around the flank and use Baleful Devolution to blast most of the squad away and even create a Spawn from one of them! In the shooting phase the terminators blast the remaining 3 tac marines away with their ap3 combi-bolters. Magnus gets off Force and summons 3 more Flamers to grab objective 3. The heldrake pops his daemonforge re-rolls hitting all the marines on objective 2 and killing them but failing to hurt the pod. The Spawn that was created from the Sanguinary Guard charges the remaining Sanguinary Guard to keep him tied up for a turn. In combat Magnus knocks a hull point off the dread, who is now in a challenge with Magnus, while Dante and the Sanguinary Guard keep trying to pound him. Magnus takes another wound here.

Turn 4 - Blood Angels: Nothing really changes here. The Librarian dread and Dante and company continue to pound on Magnus and the Sanguinary Guard and the Spawn slap fight.

Turn 5 - Thousand Sons: The drake goes into hover. One Rhino dumps out Rubrics to move to the center and the Rhino moves into the enemy deployment zone to pick up a maelstrom point. The disc sorcs break off to go destroy a pod. Most of the forces move into the center to claim the King of the Hill tertiary. Magnus finally manages to kill the Librarian

Dread.

At this point, we called the game as Thousand Sons were well ahead on Purge the Alien and had managed to claim King of the Hill. Blood Angels took the maelstrom in a close one, but the final score:

5-4 Thousand Sons victory

Thoughts on the Game: I made the mistake of getting too cocky with Magnus and charging him in leaving him tied up for 3 turns which could have been spent wiping out the rest of the army with the ranged D and other witchfires. Magnus is a beast in combat, but you need to pick and choose his targets. He is durable enough against tough walkers, but Knights will certainly give him trouble in combat. He would have been better served in the air as a flying gunboat. Even so, he was responsible for killing all 4 dreads, and a couple of drop pods. A pretty amazing performance. Believe the hype. With just a 3++ rerolling 1s from Blessing of Tzeentch special rule, he is an absolute beast. He only has a couple of blessings to choose from so you have to be careful. You want Boon of Mutation as a last resort as you don't want to risk spawning him. Summoning Flamers of Tzeentch is another go-to spell and way to increase your board presence. If you're going to run Magnus you'll want to invest in a few squads of Flamers of Tzeentch for summoning purposes as he can easily create them since he doesn't perils and can harness on a 2+.

The Scarab Occult Terminators did surprisingly well for me in this game. Between the psychic witchfires and their ap3 twin linked combi-bolters they were laying waste to marines. And the disc sorcs casting Force every turn helped me keep a 3++ on the unit! These guys are lots of points but man can they lay down a hurting to light infantry. The rubrics did ok, but mainly served as objective grabbers here.

Overall I like what I am seeing so far. As a long time Thousand Sons player I'm anxious to get my Magnus and get this army rocking and rolling on the table.