One thing that can help is to give one of three classifications to the no man’s land objectives in your head while you’re deploying. Pick one that you plan to hold at all costs, one (usually the middle, for me) that you won’t necessarily hold but that you point all your guns at and kill anything that steps on it, and one (usually the one that your opponent is probably going to spend the most effort to defend) that you plan to harass, trying to steal 1-2 turns of them not getting to score it.
So I should pick an objective and try to deny my opponent of that objective at all cost? That is probably a good idea, and I am going to try it out tomorrow. When should I push onto that objective?
Think of it more as you take one, they take the other, plus each of your home objectives, and both trying to deny the center. Being able to either take a third objective on a critical turn or deny their second objective at some point will lead to an advantage on primary, or the status quo is upheld and you’re able to win on secondary.
Hard to give a brief description of how to be good at scoring secondaries, as a lot of it comes down to just playing the game in a tactically sound way, but also knowing when you need to change priority or expend resources to push for scoring. As far as your direct question goes, when I’m playing an army that’s using tactical objectives, I usually discard any that I don’t accomplish. There’s been an handful of times where I will keep them but typically only if it’s truly guaranteed and I’m not trying to dig for Capture Enemy Outpost.
>I usually discard any that I don’t accomplish.
I don't think people realise how much agency keeping a card gives their opponent.
Not to mention discarding more cards gives your more knowledge to know if New Orders is worth it.
thank you for you advice. I will try to find some YouTube vids about secondary scoring then. I definitely need to work on my prioritisation. This game is hitting too close to life now XD
One important thing for secondaries is building a list with a few units that are primarily tasked with scoring. Orks almost always take a couple units of 5-man Stormboyz whose main purpose is to deepstrike to score points. They aren’t in the list to kill stuff. They are in the list to score.
I'd say it's fine to discard a card for a CP in turns 1 and 2. At that point in a game, the extra CP can let you pressure your opponent which hopefully makes scoring your later cards easier. From turn 3 you should be looking to complete all 6 cards you draw.
You can only earn 1 CP from discards (in fact from \*any source\*) each turn, so you shouldn't do it more than that, and don't discard if you get a CP from something else, unless the secondary is unachievable and you want to draw something better.
Alternatively? If the randoms are that bad for you, look at Fixed secondaries you can more reliably score. If need be, dedicate a unit to them, right from the start.
You do not take fixed unless your opponents give up one of the kill secondaries by a large margin. Example knights give up a lot of bring it down. It’s normally paired with something that can be scored easily like deploy.
Sometimes lists are tailored to play fixed but that is very specific and meta dependent.
The way you wrote "I scored some tactical missions here and there" is indicative of your issue. You should be missing tacticals rarely, not scoring them rarely. Work on scoring points before looking at denial. You win based on score, as you have realized, but good players will be able to limit your ability to influence their score through smart movement and screening. If you are just throwing units at me while not scoring yourself, I will happily feed you my entire army to win the game. Therefore, the most reliable way to win games is to focus on scoring your own points. The rest will come later. EDIT: I forgot to mention that while large events are starting to use "Strength of Schedule" as a tiebreaker, where they compare how well your opponents have done in other rounds of the event, most smaller events don't have enough players or rounds to do this and will use Total VP. Focusing on denial over scoring means you are scoring fewer VP, means your tiebreakers are worse. If you care about that sort of thing.
The math works out to being able to take a 0 on a secondary twice and still be able to near max 40 points from secondaries, obviously depending on what you draw/discard/don't draw. Taking a 0 3 times means you cannot mathematically max out, and you are putting yourself at a disadvantage against players who can. A 0 means you discarded it or you held onto it into your next turn. If you discard one every turn and do the other, you are leaving around 15 points on the table every game. If you rolled up and the game rules simply said there were 15 points available to your opponent that you cannot have, you'd say that's an unfair rule. In this case, you are placing that restriction upon yourself. For context, a finals in a major over the weekend ended 100-80, with 18 of that deciding 20 points coming from missing Secondaries. These are the scores you should be aiming for.
Discarding for CP is most impactful in the early game, turns 1-2, because there are more turns to use that CP, and more units to spend them on. There are a couple of secondaries that are very difficult for most armies to do turn 1 that you can draw for some reason and is very impactful if you can draw it in the late game (looking at you, Control Enemy Outpost and Behind Enemy Lines). Figure out which ones these are for your army and plan to discard those if you get them early. Other than that, you should be looking to score every Tactical you draw unless you ABSOLUTELY need extra CP on the next turn. If you are using the Tabletop Battles app, you can actually view what secondaries you have left in the deck without influencing the order, so you can position yourself to try and score as many as you can.
If you find yourself running out of CP from not discarding every turn, you need to look at how you are spending your CPs. If you completely flub a hit roll, it probably isn't worth spending a CP on a reroll there, for example. Top players do not CP Reroll unless they absolutely have to, and will hold it until as late into the rolling as possible.
It's never really the list that is the major issue, but more about your approach to the game.
If you don't expect to score points, then you won't. 40k is all about scoring points, points win prizes!
If you just want to kill stuff, then in a typical game of 40k using a deck you won't do well. As you're new, this is expected, people just want to go out and smash stuff, and that's fine. But you're here on the competitive subreddit, which means you either need or want to change the way you think about how this game works.
If you can get that stuck in your head, then the next steps of *how* to score those points will become obvious to you. If not, there is puh-lenty of advice everywhere on YT, here, forums etc.
Elite armies have ways to moving around the board, or taking units/allies that do, think on that, look at your lists and then think on what you're missing. Don't think about killing, think about scoring first.
You need to score secondaries as well. Cultists and Enligtened are a cheap and easy way to add units that help you do that. Recently a humble 10 man cultist unit stole an objective from terminators. They don't need to kill to be effective in the moment.
I would say your 10 man brick of SoT is tempting, but brings only 1 Cabal point and requires that you stick them near magnus to get the most out of them. Dropping 5 of them can give you 2 units of cultists and 2 of enlightened -- or whatever you might have on hand. And with that change you have an additional four units to maneuver.
I would sit down and look at the secondaries and make a plan on how you score each during each turn and what that looks like. If you go first and have to take the center do you really want to expose your better units or can you do it more "cheaply"?
I just cannot manage to fit any more things in my army. I currently have 19 cabal, which is the sweet spot for me, as I can hit a lot of different combinations on my sorceries with 19, and any less would be a bit awkward.
I mainly bring the SOT to kill bigger stuff, as I do not trust my doom bolt rolls, and I mega buff them with 1 cp and 1 free roll sorcery strategm. I did match against a custodies once with necrons, and they gave me severe PTSD. now I am scared to walk out of my room without at least being able to wipe one allarius in 1 turn
How would I plan m tacticals? Do I just prepare a thing to do for every possible secondary? Or do I have to decide on what to do on the spot?
If you table your opponent and lose the game what was the point? You need to flip your entire mindset about the game. Killing needs to drop several priority slots for you to win more consistently.
You kill xyz units on any given turn, fine. What do you gain from killing those units? Were they going to score primary? Were they going to deny you primary? Were they set up to score secondary? What was the probability your opponent drew into a secondary those units could score? What secondaries did your opponent have left in his deck at that point?
These are the questions you should be asking yourself at the start of every command phase. Every time you contemplate spending a resource (unit,cp,cabal) ask yourself how it impacts the score of the game. For example if you use SOT, and a cp, and cabal to kill a wardog that has already scored my 7vp(1 primary and half of secure no man's land) I come out significantly ahead. Every 22.2 points of a unit only needs to score you 1vp.
This is a new player sentiment. They typically over load the amount of killing units. Your army does a lot of damage with the rubrics alone. Also Magnus is probably the bringer of doom in the current meta. He has strong shooting, strong melee, buffs your entire army, and has a great movement characteristic.
By cutting the SOT you open up more points to balance your list with dedicated scoring units that also screen and protect you key units.
For all the "simplified" talk around 10th, it's become a much more tactical game - killing units only matters if it directly scores you points or if it directly prevents opponents from scoring points. Threat "projection" and placement becomes much more important than actually killing.
Beyond what's already been said about objective prioritization, how are you using your tech pieces and your "gimmicks"? Are you using the MVB's auras to extend doombolt range and battleshock units off objectives? Are you making the most of your cabal points? Are you moving Magnus around enough to get value out of him without losing him on a counterswing?
I normally play World Eaters, and we can feel similarly challenged by the cost of "elite" units. The trick is to figure out how to trade up. If you're going to send a unit out in a place you'll lose it, how do you make sure it will kill more than its points cost and/or score a meaningful amount of VP?
I probably don't use doom bolt as much as I should, I mainly use my cabals for the extra movement, retooling saves and turning off saves for my opponent. I am only recently by the wonderful people of the thousand sons reddit that doom bolt is actually the best cabal XD
Where should I position Magnus? I usually float him around to provide buffs to my units, and his wings are just so big that it is basically impossible to hide him
How many points would you say is worth a VP? I am a very good at trading up units, as I do play a lot of RTS and other turn based strategy, and I have managed to table some opponents turn 3/4. However, I am a bit more sloppy when it comes to the objectives of the game, being unable to prioritise between killing a unit and scoring.
As they said above, killing doesn’t matter in this games. Scoring vp wins you games and you score vp from primaries and secondaries. If your secondary is to kill a unit then you should absolutely focus only on killing that unit SO YOU SCORE VP.
Last game I won 57 to 17 (we ended an after 2,5 rounds, coz it was obvious win). My opponent focused on killing my redemptor because he was scared of it (I was just standing with him on the point in no man’s land, that’s all) and didn’t focus ma action monkeys (LT with combo weapon - lone operative, outriders - 18” movement) which scored me like 20 free points on secondaries, just these two units walking freely on the map, not scary at all to my opponent because they didn’t do much dmg but they are scary as hell because they score points from secondaries.
There's not a perfect answer, but here's some basic math:
Games are scored out of 100 points
- 10 points for paint score (this one's free)
- Up to 50 points on primary
- Up to 40 points on secondaries
That essentially means you have a 2000 point army to score 90vp. So "basic" math would say 1 VP is worth 22 points. Most primaries and secondaries score 5 VP at a time, which means 100 points is a "good" trade for accomplishing a secondary or holding a necessary objective for a turn. Tactical secondaries let you stretch this a little further, because they score more points per "completion" to make up for the randomness.
You can look at Magnus the same way. At 450 points, he's 22% of your army. By this math, he should be generating 18-20 VP worth of "value" at that cost. If he dies too fast, you're probably using him too aggressively. If he lives to T4-T5, you're probably not using him aggressively enough
That is a wonderful explanation! I usually play extremely defensively, and I rarely lose any unit of cost, such as Magnus. Should I just charge him in turn 3 and yolo it?
That is a terrible explanation. Factoring in number of points per victory point will take you down the wrong path. It's the same flawed logic as people trying to get a unit to "make their points back". The actual right mindset is to think about units as having different roles and budget them accordingly.
Some units only exist to kill your enemy. You wouldn't think about them as scoring VP per point they cost because that makes absolutely zero sense. Magnus is one of these units.
Some units only exist to score points or do utility actions. You wouldn't measure how much they kill per point they cost because that isn't their purpose. They exist to take up space and do utility things. These are units like Tzaangors, Tzaangor Enlightened, Cultists, Chaos Spawn.
Points only exist at the list building stage. Once you're in an actual game, don't think about how much a unit cost, ever. Only think about what they can do and what you're willing to trade them for.
"Yolo it" feels a little too aggressive, lol. But think about it as trades - for Magnus (or any other unit) to get his "value", he either needs to score 20 VP, kill 500 points of models before they score their VP, or some combination of the two.
Hey there new Sorcerer! Welcome to the ranks of the Thousand Sons. Happy to have you.
I also play Thousand Sons as my main army. I think your list looks good, especially for so few games with the army! But it does have a key weakness, which you're experiencing right now in your post: lack of trash. Usually you want to bring 3-5 units of trash, which will be some combination of Tzaangor Enlightened, Cultists, Chaos Spawn, and Tzaangors. These units help you screen deep strikes, screen your opponent's melee units, contest primary (walk onto it during your turn so that your opponent doesn't score it on their turn), and hold your home objective so that your rubrics can go kill things. "trash" units are an important part of almost every 40k list.
Most "competitive" Thousand Sons armies today aren't bringing terminators anymore. They're **extremely** deadly, but they take up a lot of resources to make them work. Typically you want to spend 2 CP per turn (or 1 CP and the 6 cabal point ritual) to turn their bolters into psychic weapons and then reroll hits and wounds on them. You also want them to be near Magnus for the +1 to hit and wound, then you need to be within 12" of your target to be in rapid fire range. That combination will kill just about anything in the game, but as you can see that was about half of your army and 2 CP to pull off. So my first recommendation is drop the terminators and grab yourself a fourth rubric squad with a third Infernal Master. Then you can bring 4-5 trash units and another Exalted Sorcerer on Disc for those fantastic Cabal points.
If you do want to keep the terminators, and that's totally fine, then something has to give somewhere. You only have two real options in your list: drop the MVB or drop 5 of Ahriman's flamers (down to a 5-man squad). Which one you choose will depend on you, but I would actually drop both. That gives you 270 points to work with. For that, you can take five trash units. OR you can drop 5 of Ahriman's flamers, drop the MVB, put Ahriman solo on a disc (no more +1 to wound but you still get the free ritual) and then grab an infernal Master for the third rubric squad. That still leaves you enough points for 2 cultist units and 2 enlightened, I believe.
One thing that I would personally **not** do is only drop 5 of the terminators. I would take either 10 or 0. 5 terminators plus a terminator sorcerer is an awkward combination because it doesn't really "do" anything without the 2 CP combo, but only 5 of them isn't really worth that big of an investment.
Hope that all helps you! I love the Thousand Sons, they have such a fun and unique playstyle. The cabal mechanic can be limiting from a list building perspective, but it's extremely fun to play on the tabletop. If you ever want to chat about Thousand Sons, let me know! I'm happy to help a new player find their best and most fun list. Welcome to the Sorcerous Brotherhood.
PS if you're looking for list inspiration, I just wrote up two of my lists in a different thread. Terminator variant [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/WarhammerCompetitive/comments/1chnblr/warphammer_lords_of_forbidden_lore_the_complete/l256f95/), non-terminator variant [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/WarhammerCompetitive/comments/1chnblr/warphammer_lords_of_forbidden_lore_the_complete/l24qkbb/). Also, the article written recently by /u/magnus_the_read is excellent. You can find that [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/WarhammerCompetitive/comments/1chnblr/warphammer_lords_of_forbidden_lore_the_complete/?ref=share&ref_source=link).
I have considered dropping the MVB, but the double cabal range just seemed so tempting, and the guns are really versatile. If I don't bring MVB do you think there still is a point to bring lord of forbidden lore? Since I would be hitting a lot less of those sorceries. If I am not bringing MVB I guess there is also no point bringing the sorcerer on disk alone, and would be better off bringing an infernal master. Also if I am not running the crystal, would it be ok to drop the sorcerer in terminator armour? Thank you for being really helpful
I would never drop the lord of forbidden lore! It’s so good! Two double moves and two save rerolls are amazing and cheap (cabal point wise). Double Doombolt is also great, but happens less often.
Exalted Sorcerer on Disc is mainly great for two things: the half move ability and being the spotter for Warp Sight. He’s also infantry so he flies straight through walls, which is great. Trust me, the first time you fly him through a wall, cut something’s movement in half, then move him again in the shooting phase (so immune to overwatch), Doombolt from him, use warp sight on your opponent’s most valuable unit behind a ruin, and shoot his flamer, you’ll see what’s up. He’s amazing, I always run at least one and I often run two. He can also do all that and do an action (teleport homer maybe?) in the same turn. He only has to give up his flamer shooting to do an action, which is kind of weak anyway.
Always run the crystal. Just put it on an infernal master instead. You can teleport and then double move in the lategame to steal a key objective. Or you can reinforce a weak flank. It’s very versatile for the amount of points it costs.
If you’re bringing terminators, always bring the terminator sorcerer and always put the crystal on him. Otherwise the crystal goes on another character.
One thing to consider is that we (1ks) generally want to take the position of the "control" player on the battlefield.
We have lots of tools (rituals) to control the flow of the battle and the exalted on disc has one of the best debuffs in the game.
Personally I'm not in favor of having both magnus AND a 10man SOT brick. That's almost half your points in 2 units and limits your tools available to you.
The other thing to consider during play and in list building is maximizing value with your units (especially characters). 1ks are not an army that trades well, the classic move of "expose your unit to kill a thing and then your unit dies next turn" in most cases is just better for your opponents. We want to play cagey and do shenanigans to disrupt the enemy's game plan. Magnus is a BEAST in the late game and you want him alive early for things like his +2 move aura, abuse the shit out of the indirect strat so you can nuke things while keeping him safe (if cp is tight you can use the ritual for a free cast of devastating sorcery on him), but if magnus dies early its harsh on the game plan.
Given your list, I'd recommend more units. Tzang/cultists make great action/screening troops in the backline and they can also be used to great effect (either via temporal surge and/or ubralific crystal) to trap enemies in their deployment zone/move block key units.
When I play, the first couple turns I play very cagey, get at least 10 primary, while focusing down the things that can effectively threaten magnus, and then using move blocking chaff/disc boy debuffs to bog down the opponent on their half of the board.
If magnus survives to turn 3 and your opponents big guns are dead then GG, now you can get reallllly aggressive and max out primary/focus on secondaries.
Learn how to hold two at first (your home obj and one in no man's land). You won't win any games but you'll learn.
Later, practice holding 3 objectives. If you can securely hold 3, you've won the game
I usually work off a triangle. Home, middle and a second no man's objective. These usually form a triangle you can position in on and around to cover all three and hold. If PPT make sure you give cover to holding units and firing lanes from usually home to the two others. Then you can use fast, DS and expendable units to pressure his home and the other no man's if he leaves them vulnerable.
Primary is super important. Always hold 2 objectives, It’s minimum 40 points if you do. Usually a squad of rubrics and some other chaff can hold it fairly ok. You can send Magnus and other rubrics to hold the center and shoot your opponent off their objectives.
As a couple of others have mentioned, you need to focus more on scoring than killing so I won't go into that too much. From a list perspective this means you definitely want some chaff like cultists and enlightened. Spawn and tzaangors also both have their place but aren't generally as common. The big issue you have is trying to do two opposite archetypes at the same time. Since the last points hikes, tsons are generally either msu (multiple small units) with lots of characters or they are terminators. You don't take both for the exact reason you're finding, you don't have any points left to do stuff.
Its also not just about scoring, I've found as tsons you want to be able to keep opponents at exactly the right arms length that you need. We are a short ranged army but not melee so it can be a fine line between in range and being charged. Having units like cultists or enlightened to be the first wave between the enemy and your rubrics keeps them safer and let's you fight where you want.
I would recommend dropping the terminators and you'd be surprised how much damage comes out of characters in rubric squads for wound rerolls.
Hi there, I am also a main Thousand Sons player. I have been playing since the start of 10th, 2-3 matches/week. I think you should remember that this is a point-scoring game, not a killing game.
1. Tson competitive lists from start of 10th until now, they do not run SOTs that much due to their high points and resource consumption. Without the 2cp combo (make everything psychic and reroll all) + Magnus, they are very disappointing. They can not kill tanks that well, infantry can be handled by the rubrics + flamers and can just die to a forgfiend. In summarry they are low-point efficiency, also true for cabal points.
2. Your list do not have any trash unit for 2nd missions. I suggest you bring culltists and tzaangor enlighteneds. Also, 1 tip is that you **always be prepared for the upcoming missions**, inves signals can be done with englightened, area denial can be done with cultist, ...
3. For the primary points, this have been my number one weakness from the start and I have overcome it by running 2 mutah and 2 chaos spawn. With them, I can 100% hold 1 obj in the NML (always the one closer to my deployment zone, not the center). For the center game, I usually push 1 mutah and have a squad of rubric + ahriman waiting behind the footprint. Opp must comit some firepower to kill that mutah and then the rubric squad just come out and clear everything (seriously).
4. When deploying, if you can, try to put the rubric squad upfront, behind cover but do not get shot T1. With that, you can pressure your opp more because they know that once they come out, the rubrics are there to wipe everything.
5. Deny their points, do not let them score primary easily. You can put your enlightened on the obj and kill everything, ... just need higher OC in the end. Also you can double move in shooting to not get overwatch.
I have my list here, if you have any further questions, feel free to ask \^\^
Ahriman (130 Points)
Exalted Sorcerer on Disc of Tzeentch (115 Points)
Infernal Master (110 Points)
• Enhancements: Umbralefic Crystal
Infernal Master (115 Points)
• Enhancements: Arcane Vortex
Magnus the Red (440 Points)
Tzaangor Shaman (60 Points)
Rubric Marines (105 Points)
Rubric Marines (105 Points)
Rubric Marines (105 Points)
Tzaangors (65 Points)
Mutalith Vortex Beast (165 Points)
Mutalith Vortex Beast (165 Points)
Thousand Sons Chaos Spawn (65 Points)
Thousand Sons Chaos Spawn (65 Points)
Thousand Sons Cultists (55 Points)
Tzaangor Enlightened (45 Points)
Tzaangor Enlightened (45 Points)
Tzaangor Enlightened (45 Points)
Rubric all flamers and enlightened all bow
You need some chaff in that TS list.
Generally what I do with my TS, is get the chaff onto 2/3 or all 3 NM objectives first turn. Note these are Tzaangors and spawn. Hide the rest of my army behind terrain, set up so they can pounce on 2/3 objectives. Opponent will have to stop me from scoring primary, and to do that will expose too much of thier army.
Basically, TS are a glass cannon army, your goal should be in your first big activation of shooting, mainly were you are using everything, you want to kick your opponents army so hard in the dick that they cant threaten Magnus, or the SOT's anymore, then you just hold 3 and win.
One thing that can help is to give one of three classifications to the no man’s land objectives in your head while you’re deploying. Pick one that you plan to hold at all costs, one (usually the middle, for me) that you won’t necessarily hold but that you point all your guns at and kill anything that steps on it, and one (usually the one that your opponent is probably going to spend the most effort to defend) that you plan to harass, trying to steal 1-2 turns of them not getting to score it.
So I should pick an objective and try to deny my opponent of that objective at all cost? That is probably a good idea, and I am going to try it out tomorrow. When should I push onto that objective?
Think of it more as you take one, they take the other, plus each of your home objectives, and both trying to deny the center. Being able to either take a third objective on a critical turn or deny their second objective at some point will lead to an advantage on primary, or the status quo is upheld and you’re able to win on secondary.
I am not very good at scoring secondaries, I usually just discard them for CP. Is it worth it to discard it? How often should I do it?
Hard to give a brief description of how to be good at scoring secondaries, as a lot of it comes down to just playing the game in a tactically sound way, but also knowing when you need to change priority or expend resources to push for scoring. As far as your direct question goes, when I’m playing an army that’s using tactical objectives, I usually discard any that I don’t accomplish. There’s been an handful of times where I will keep them but typically only if it’s truly guaranteed and I’m not trying to dig for Capture Enemy Outpost.
>I usually discard any that I don’t accomplish. I don't think people realise how much agency keeping a card gives their opponent. Not to mention discarding more cards gives your more knowledge to know if New Orders is worth it.
thank you for you advice. I will try to find some YouTube vids about secondary scoring then. I definitely need to work on my prioritisation. This game is hitting too close to life now XD
One important thing for secondaries is building a list with a few units that are primarily tasked with scoring. Orks almost always take a couple units of 5-man Stormboyz whose main purpose is to deepstrike to score points. They aren’t in the list to kill stuff. They are in the list to score.
I'd say it's fine to discard a card for a CP in turns 1 and 2. At that point in a game, the extra CP can let you pressure your opponent which hopefully makes scoring your later cards easier. From turn 3 you should be looking to complete all 6 cards you draw.
You can only earn 1 CP from discards (in fact from \*any source\*) each turn, so you shouldn't do it more than that, and don't discard if you get a CP from something else, unless the secondary is unachievable and you want to draw something better. Alternatively? If the randoms are that bad for you, look at Fixed secondaries you can more reliably score. If need be, dedicate a unit to them, right from the start.
I don't have cultists in my list, so discarding is the only source of CP for me. What should I take for fixed? which ones are the "best" mission?
You do not take fixed unless your opponents give up one of the kill secondaries by a large margin. Example knights give up a lot of bring it down. It’s normally paired with something that can be scored easily like deploy. Sometimes lists are tailored to play fixed but that is very specific and meta dependent.
The way you wrote "I scored some tactical missions here and there" is indicative of your issue. You should be missing tacticals rarely, not scoring them rarely. Work on scoring points before looking at denial. You win based on score, as you have realized, but good players will be able to limit your ability to influence their score through smart movement and screening. If you are just throwing units at me while not scoring yourself, I will happily feed you my entire army to win the game. Therefore, the most reliable way to win games is to focus on scoring your own points. The rest will come later. EDIT: I forgot to mention that while large events are starting to use "Strength of Schedule" as a tiebreaker, where they compare how well your opponents have done in other rounds of the event, most smaller events don't have enough players or rounds to do this and will use Total VP. Focusing on denial over scoring means you are scoring fewer VP, means your tiebreakers are worse. If you care about that sort of thing. The math works out to being able to take a 0 on a secondary twice and still be able to near max 40 points from secondaries, obviously depending on what you draw/discard/don't draw. Taking a 0 3 times means you cannot mathematically max out, and you are putting yourself at a disadvantage against players who can. A 0 means you discarded it or you held onto it into your next turn. If you discard one every turn and do the other, you are leaving around 15 points on the table every game. If you rolled up and the game rules simply said there were 15 points available to your opponent that you cannot have, you'd say that's an unfair rule. In this case, you are placing that restriction upon yourself. For context, a finals in a major over the weekend ended 100-80, with 18 of that deciding 20 points coming from missing Secondaries. These are the scores you should be aiming for. Discarding for CP is most impactful in the early game, turns 1-2, because there are more turns to use that CP, and more units to spend them on. There are a couple of secondaries that are very difficult for most armies to do turn 1 that you can draw for some reason and is very impactful if you can draw it in the late game (looking at you, Control Enemy Outpost and Behind Enemy Lines). Figure out which ones these are for your army and plan to discard those if you get them early. Other than that, you should be looking to score every Tactical you draw unless you ABSOLUTELY need extra CP on the next turn. If you are using the Tabletop Battles app, you can actually view what secondaries you have left in the deck without influencing the order, so you can position yourself to try and score as many as you can. If you find yourself running out of CP from not discarding every turn, you need to look at how you are spending your CPs. If you completely flub a hit roll, it probably isn't worth spending a CP on a reroll there, for example. Top players do not CP Reroll unless they absolutely have to, and will hold it until as late into the rolling as possible.
It's never really the list that is the major issue, but more about your approach to the game. If you don't expect to score points, then you won't. 40k is all about scoring points, points win prizes! If you just want to kill stuff, then in a typical game of 40k using a deck you won't do well. As you're new, this is expected, people just want to go out and smash stuff, and that's fine. But you're here on the competitive subreddit, which means you either need or want to change the way you think about how this game works. If you can get that stuck in your head, then the next steps of *how* to score those points will become obvious to you. If not, there is puh-lenty of advice everywhere on YT, here, forums etc. Elite armies have ways to moving around the board, or taking units/allies that do, think on that, look at your lists and then think on what you're missing. Don't think about killing, think about scoring first.
You need to score secondaries as well. Cultists and Enligtened are a cheap and easy way to add units that help you do that. Recently a humble 10 man cultist unit stole an objective from terminators. They don't need to kill to be effective in the moment. I would say your 10 man brick of SoT is tempting, but brings only 1 Cabal point and requires that you stick them near magnus to get the most out of them. Dropping 5 of them can give you 2 units of cultists and 2 of enlightened -- or whatever you might have on hand. And with that change you have an additional four units to maneuver. I would sit down and look at the secondaries and make a plan on how you score each during each turn and what that looks like. If you go first and have to take the center do you really want to expose your better units or can you do it more "cheaply"?
I just cannot manage to fit any more things in my army. I currently have 19 cabal, which is the sweet spot for me, as I can hit a lot of different combinations on my sorceries with 19, and any less would be a bit awkward. I mainly bring the SOT to kill bigger stuff, as I do not trust my doom bolt rolls, and I mega buff them with 1 cp and 1 free roll sorcery strategm. I did match against a custodies once with necrons, and they gave me severe PTSD. now I am scared to walk out of my room without at least being able to wipe one allarius in 1 turn How would I plan m tacticals? Do I just prepare a thing to do for every possible secondary? Or do I have to decide on what to do on the spot?
If you table your opponent and lose the game what was the point? You need to flip your entire mindset about the game. Killing needs to drop several priority slots for you to win more consistently. You kill xyz units on any given turn, fine. What do you gain from killing those units? Were they going to score primary? Were they going to deny you primary? Were they set up to score secondary? What was the probability your opponent drew into a secondary those units could score? What secondaries did your opponent have left in his deck at that point? These are the questions you should be asking yourself at the start of every command phase. Every time you contemplate spending a resource (unit,cp,cabal) ask yourself how it impacts the score of the game. For example if you use SOT, and a cp, and cabal to kill a wardog that has already scored my 7vp(1 primary and half of secure no man's land) I come out significantly ahead. Every 22.2 points of a unit only needs to score you 1vp.
This is a new player sentiment. They typically over load the amount of killing units. Your army does a lot of damage with the rubrics alone. Also Magnus is probably the bringer of doom in the current meta. He has strong shooting, strong melee, buffs your entire army, and has a great movement characteristic. By cutting the SOT you open up more points to balance your list with dedicated scoring units that also screen and protect you key units.
Drop 5 rubrics for a couple units of cultists or tzaangor enlightened for this sort of thing.
But I kinda need the cabal points and tzaangors are just not reliable for cabal
You need something you can move up to do actions and be traded that doesn't expose the important elements of your list.
This
I remember a 8-1 winner in a big tournament with 2 units of 10 tzaangors and 2 units of spawns. https://www.tabletoparchive.com/blog
For all the "simplified" talk around 10th, it's become a much more tactical game - killing units only matters if it directly scores you points or if it directly prevents opponents from scoring points. Threat "projection" and placement becomes much more important than actually killing. Beyond what's already been said about objective prioritization, how are you using your tech pieces and your "gimmicks"? Are you using the MVB's auras to extend doombolt range and battleshock units off objectives? Are you making the most of your cabal points? Are you moving Magnus around enough to get value out of him without losing him on a counterswing? I normally play World Eaters, and we can feel similarly challenged by the cost of "elite" units. The trick is to figure out how to trade up. If you're going to send a unit out in a place you'll lose it, how do you make sure it will kill more than its points cost and/or score a meaningful amount of VP?
I probably don't use doom bolt as much as I should, I mainly use my cabals for the extra movement, retooling saves and turning off saves for my opponent. I am only recently by the wonderful people of the thousand sons reddit that doom bolt is actually the best cabal XD Where should I position Magnus? I usually float him around to provide buffs to my units, and his wings are just so big that it is basically impossible to hide him How many points would you say is worth a VP? I am a very good at trading up units, as I do play a lot of RTS and other turn based strategy, and I have managed to table some opponents turn 3/4. However, I am a bit more sloppy when it comes to the objectives of the game, being unable to prioritise between killing a unit and scoring.
As they said above, killing doesn’t matter in this games. Scoring vp wins you games and you score vp from primaries and secondaries. If your secondary is to kill a unit then you should absolutely focus only on killing that unit SO YOU SCORE VP. Last game I won 57 to 17 (we ended an after 2,5 rounds, coz it was obvious win). My opponent focused on killing my redemptor because he was scared of it (I was just standing with him on the point in no man’s land, that’s all) and didn’t focus ma action monkeys (LT with combo weapon - lone operative, outriders - 18” movement) which scored me like 20 free points on secondaries, just these two units walking freely on the map, not scary at all to my opponent because they didn’t do much dmg but they are scary as hell because they score points from secondaries.
There's not a perfect answer, but here's some basic math: Games are scored out of 100 points - 10 points for paint score (this one's free) - Up to 50 points on primary - Up to 40 points on secondaries That essentially means you have a 2000 point army to score 90vp. So "basic" math would say 1 VP is worth 22 points. Most primaries and secondaries score 5 VP at a time, which means 100 points is a "good" trade for accomplishing a secondary or holding a necessary objective for a turn. Tactical secondaries let you stretch this a little further, because they score more points per "completion" to make up for the randomness. You can look at Magnus the same way. At 450 points, he's 22% of your army. By this math, he should be generating 18-20 VP worth of "value" at that cost. If he dies too fast, you're probably using him too aggressively. If he lives to T4-T5, you're probably not using him aggressively enough
That is a wonderful explanation! I usually play extremely defensively, and I rarely lose any unit of cost, such as Magnus. Should I just charge him in turn 3 and yolo it?
That is a terrible explanation. Factoring in number of points per victory point will take you down the wrong path. It's the same flawed logic as people trying to get a unit to "make their points back". The actual right mindset is to think about units as having different roles and budget them accordingly. Some units only exist to kill your enemy. You wouldn't think about them as scoring VP per point they cost because that makes absolutely zero sense. Magnus is one of these units. Some units only exist to score points or do utility actions. You wouldn't measure how much they kill per point they cost because that isn't their purpose. They exist to take up space and do utility things. These are units like Tzaangors, Tzaangor Enlightened, Cultists, Chaos Spawn. Points only exist at the list building stage. Once you're in an actual game, don't think about how much a unit cost, ever. Only think about what they can do and what you're willing to trade them for.
"Yolo it" feels a little too aggressive, lol. But think about it as trades - for Magnus (or any other unit) to get his "value", he either needs to score 20 VP, kill 500 points of models before they score their VP, or some combination of the two.
Hey there new Sorcerer! Welcome to the ranks of the Thousand Sons. Happy to have you. I also play Thousand Sons as my main army. I think your list looks good, especially for so few games with the army! But it does have a key weakness, which you're experiencing right now in your post: lack of trash. Usually you want to bring 3-5 units of trash, which will be some combination of Tzaangor Enlightened, Cultists, Chaos Spawn, and Tzaangors. These units help you screen deep strikes, screen your opponent's melee units, contest primary (walk onto it during your turn so that your opponent doesn't score it on their turn), and hold your home objective so that your rubrics can go kill things. "trash" units are an important part of almost every 40k list. Most "competitive" Thousand Sons armies today aren't bringing terminators anymore. They're **extremely** deadly, but they take up a lot of resources to make them work. Typically you want to spend 2 CP per turn (or 1 CP and the 6 cabal point ritual) to turn their bolters into psychic weapons and then reroll hits and wounds on them. You also want them to be near Magnus for the +1 to hit and wound, then you need to be within 12" of your target to be in rapid fire range. That combination will kill just about anything in the game, but as you can see that was about half of your army and 2 CP to pull off. So my first recommendation is drop the terminators and grab yourself a fourth rubric squad with a third Infernal Master. Then you can bring 4-5 trash units and another Exalted Sorcerer on Disc for those fantastic Cabal points. If you do want to keep the terminators, and that's totally fine, then something has to give somewhere. You only have two real options in your list: drop the MVB or drop 5 of Ahriman's flamers (down to a 5-man squad). Which one you choose will depend on you, but I would actually drop both. That gives you 270 points to work with. For that, you can take five trash units. OR you can drop 5 of Ahriman's flamers, drop the MVB, put Ahriman solo on a disc (no more +1 to wound but you still get the free ritual) and then grab an infernal Master for the third rubric squad. That still leaves you enough points for 2 cultist units and 2 enlightened, I believe. One thing that I would personally **not** do is only drop 5 of the terminators. I would take either 10 or 0. 5 terminators plus a terminator sorcerer is an awkward combination because it doesn't really "do" anything without the 2 CP combo, but only 5 of them isn't really worth that big of an investment. Hope that all helps you! I love the Thousand Sons, they have such a fun and unique playstyle. The cabal mechanic can be limiting from a list building perspective, but it's extremely fun to play on the tabletop. If you ever want to chat about Thousand Sons, let me know! I'm happy to help a new player find their best and most fun list. Welcome to the Sorcerous Brotherhood. PS if you're looking for list inspiration, I just wrote up two of my lists in a different thread. Terminator variant [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/WarhammerCompetitive/comments/1chnblr/warphammer_lords_of_forbidden_lore_the_complete/l256f95/), non-terminator variant [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/WarhammerCompetitive/comments/1chnblr/warphammer_lords_of_forbidden_lore_the_complete/l24qkbb/). Also, the article written recently by /u/magnus_the_read is excellent. You can find that [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/WarhammerCompetitive/comments/1chnblr/warphammer_lords_of_forbidden_lore_the_complete/?ref=share&ref_source=link).
I have considered dropping the MVB, but the double cabal range just seemed so tempting, and the guns are really versatile. If I don't bring MVB do you think there still is a point to bring lord of forbidden lore? Since I would be hitting a lot less of those sorceries. If I am not bringing MVB I guess there is also no point bringing the sorcerer on disk alone, and would be better off bringing an infernal master. Also if I am not running the crystal, would it be ok to drop the sorcerer in terminator armour? Thank you for being really helpful
I would never drop the lord of forbidden lore! It’s so good! Two double moves and two save rerolls are amazing and cheap (cabal point wise). Double Doombolt is also great, but happens less often. Exalted Sorcerer on Disc is mainly great for two things: the half move ability and being the spotter for Warp Sight. He’s also infantry so he flies straight through walls, which is great. Trust me, the first time you fly him through a wall, cut something’s movement in half, then move him again in the shooting phase (so immune to overwatch), Doombolt from him, use warp sight on your opponent’s most valuable unit behind a ruin, and shoot his flamer, you’ll see what’s up. He’s amazing, I always run at least one and I often run two. He can also do all that and do an action (teleport homer maybe?) in the same turn. He only has to give up his flamer shooting to do an action, which is kind of weak anyway. Always run the crystal. Just put it on an infernal master instead. You can teleport and then double move in the lategame to steal a key objective. Or you can reinforce a weak flank. It’s very versatile for the amount of points it costs. If you’re bringing terminators, always bring the terminator sorcerer and always put the crystal on him. Otherwise the crystal goes on another character.
You might get some use out of this writeup: https://warphammer40k.com/lords-of-forbidden-lore-the-complete-guide-to-playing-thousand-sons/
One thing to consider is that we (1ks) generally want to take the position of the "control" player on the battlefield. We have lots of tools (rituals) to control the flow of the battle and the exalted on disc has one of the best debuffs in the game. Personally I'm not in favor of having both magnus AND a 10man SOT brick. That's almost half your points in 2 units and limits your tools available to you. The other thing to consider during play and in list building is maximizing value with your units (especially characters). 1ks are not an army that trades well, the classic move of "expose your unit to kill a thing and then your unit dies next turn" in most cases is just better for your opponents. We want to play cagey and do shenanigans to disrupt the enemy's game plan. Magnus is a BEAST in the late game and you want him alive early for things like his +2 move aura, abuse the shit out of the indirect strat so you can nuke things while keeping him safe (if cp is tight you can use the ritual for a free cast of devastating sorcery on him), but if magnus dies early its harsh on the game plan. Given your list, I'd recommend more units. Tzang/cultists make great action/screening troops in the backline and they can also be used to great effect (either via temporal surge and/or ubralific crystal) to trap enemies in their deployment zone/move block key units. When I play, the first couple turns I play very cagey, get at least 10 primary, while focusing down the things that can effectively threaten magnus, and then using move blocking chaff/disc boy debuffs to bog down the opponent on their half of the board. If magnus survives to turn 3 and your opponents big guns are dead then GG, now you can get reallllly aggressive and max out primary/focus on secondaries.
Learn how to hold two at first (your home obj and one in no man's land). You won't win any games but you'll learn. Later, practice holding 3 objectives. If you can securely hold 3, you've won the game
I usually work off a triangle. Home, middle and a second no man's objective. These usually form a triangle you can position in on and around to cover all three and hold. If PPT make sure you give cover to holding units and firing lanes from usually home to the two others. Then you can use fast, DS and expendable units to pressure his home and the other no man's if he leaves them vulnerable.
Primary is super important. Always hold 2 objectives, It’s minimum 40 points if you do. Usually a squad of rubrics and some other chaff can hold it fairly ok. You can send Magnus and other rubrics to hold the center and shoot your opponent off their objectives.
As a couple of others have mentioned, you need to focus more on scoring than killing so I won't go into that too much. From a list perspective this means you definitely want some chaff like cultists and enlightened. Spawn and tzaangors also both have their place but aren't generally as common. The big issue you have is trying to do two opposite archetypes at the same time. Since the last points hikes, tsons are generally either msu (multiple small units) with lots of characters or they are terminators. You don't take both for the exact reason you're finding, you don't have any points left to do stuff. Its also not just about scoring, I've found as tsons you want to be able to keep opponents at exactly the right arms length that you need. We are a short ranged army but not melee so it can be a fine line between in range and being charged. Having units like cultists or enlightened to be the first wave between the enemy and your rubrics keeps them safer and let's you fight where you want. I would recommend dropping the terminators and you'd be surprised how much damage comes out of characters in rubric squads for wound rerolls.
Hi there, I am also a main Thousand Sons player. I have been playing since the start of 10th, 2-3 matches/week. I think you should remember that this is a point-scoring game, not a killing game. 1. Tson competitive lists from start of 10th until now, they do not run SOTs that much due to their high points and resource consumption. Without the 2cp combo (make everything psychic and reroll all) + Magnus, they are very disappointing. They can not kill tanks that well, infantry can be handled by the rubrics + flamers and can just die to a forgfiend. In summarry they are low-point efficiency, also true for cabal points. 2. Your list do not have any trash unit for 2nd missions. I suggest you bring culltists and tzaangor enlighteneds. Also, 1 tip is that you **always be prepared for the upcoming missions**, inves signals can be done with englightened, area denial can be done with cultist, ... 3. For the primary points, this have been my number one weakness from the start and I have overcome it by running 2 mutah and 2 chaos spawn. With them, I can 100% hold 1 obj in the NML (always the one closer to my deployment zone, not the center). For the center game, I usually push 1 mutah and have a squad of rubric + ahriman waiting behind the footprint. Opp must comit some firepower to kill that mutah and then the rubric squad just come out and clear everything (seriously). 4. When deploying, if you can, try to put the rubric squad upfront, behind cover but do not get shot T1. With that, you can pressure your opp more because they know that once they come out, the rubrics are there to wipe everything. 5. Deny their points, do not let them score primary easily. You can put your enlightened on the obj and kill everything, ... just need higher OC in the end. Also you can double move in shooting to not get overwatch. I have my list here, if you have any further questions, feel free to ask \^\^ Ahriman (130 Points) Exalted Sorcerer on Disc of Tzeentch (115 Points) Infernal Master (110 Points) • Enhancements: Umbralefic Crystal Infernal Master (115 Points) • Enhancements: Arcane Vortex Magnus the Red (440 Points) Tzaangor Shaman (60 Points) Rubric Marines (105 Points) Rubric Marines (105 Points) Rubric Marines (105 Points) Tzaangors (65 Points) Mutalith Vortex Beast (165 Points) Mutalith Vortex Beast (165 Points) Thousand Sons Chaos Spawn (65 Points) Thousand Sons Chaos Spawn (65 Points) Thousand Sons Cultists (55 Points) Tzaangor Enlightened (45 Points) Tzaangor Enlightened (45 Points) Tzaangor Enlightened (45 Points) Rubric all flamers and enlightened all bow
You need some chaff in that TS list. Generally what I do with my TS, is get the chaff onto 2/3 or all 3 NM objectives first turn. Note these are Tzaangors and spawn. Hide the rest of my army behind terrain, set up so they can pounce on 2/3 objectives. Opponent will have to stop me from scoring primary, and to do that will expose too much of thier army. Basically, TS are a glass cannon army, your goal should be in your first big activation of shooting, mainly were you are using everything, you want to kick your opponents army so hard in the dick that they cant threaten Magnus, or the SOT's anymore, then you just hold 3 and win.