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Hello everyone! Zak Ludick here from Cape Town, South Africa and this is a Warhammer 40k - The Great Unit Review Wheel! post!

Now known as the Unit Review Library!

What is it all about? It is not there to just give a stat. It is there to give MY review of the unit!

A New Season of Reviews - A Challenge accepted!

The nefarious trio of World Eaters, Death Guard and Thousand Sons are set to get their new Codexes next. Actually, the great FOUR are each getting their favourite Legion's new Codexes but Emperor's Children did not have an actual Index before.

Anyway. I was speaking to my friend @nicolaasmuller about how my Review posts might not make a lot of money for me, but that cumulatively and on average some of them do good and overall there is an average that at least means that there is good movement of income into the Hobby Fund and that it would grow from there.

We were throwing around some numbers and looking at the average of my last 10 Review Posts, 20 Review posts and 30 Review Posts and we could come up with a range of how much I should theoretically be making across a large sample size of completing the remainder of the reviews for the nefarious trio mentioned above.

So Nicolaas says to me something along the lines of: That would be pretty cool if you could do it in like, a month. Maybe do like 2 a day.

So I explained it would be a little bit more than that but sure... it would be cool... is that a challenge? And yeah... here I am... Challenge accepted. 😎

It is now Day 5 of the Challenge. I am a little behind but I needed to prepare. This is the 6th post of that Challenge!

Totals so far: 3/70 Datasheets done, 3/3 Army Rules done, 0/6 Detachment Rules done. Total 6/79.

Time elapsed: 16.66%
Progress completed: 7.59%

Hobby Fund

Due to medical bills and personal commitment of cash to hobby, my hobby fund has to pay me back. I have three lots bought end of last year/start of this year.

This post and its earnings shall assist in paying all that off.

I am collecting funds in the following ways:

Blogging about Warhammer to earn HBD
Accepting donations - Can be sent directly to @zakl.hobbyfund in HBD
Selling some of the collection to friends.

The total remaining is $468!
Every bit counts!

Who are the Thousand Sons?

Yet another Space Marine Legion that fell to the Ruinous Powers. In this case, it was due to a series of unfortunate events... but do not say that Magnus did nothing wrong in my presence then I will strangle you. (kidding)

One way or another, they are the book-worms of the Legions. Magnus the Red was an powerful emerging psyker and he dabbled in things that were arcane and thus touched the warp.

The Emperor is a tragically bad dad. Surely he should have known that one of his Primarchs would develop this trait, a trait he himself had oodles of. But instead of guiding and helping Magnus develop, he forbade Magnus and all the other Legions from using Psykers.

Prohibition did nothing and Magnus and many others subverted this anyway. The theory is that the Emperor only wanted the Space Marines and the Primarchs to start using their psyker gifts when the time was right... but I don't want to spoil all the plot.

Magnus broke the rules and the Space Wolves were sent to bring Magnus to kneel before the Golden Throne. But the traitors changed the message to say that the Space Wolves need to exterminate the Thousand Sons Legion.

The Space Wolves are literally the Executioners of the Emperor. So... it did not seem weird at all when they were told this... so... they went ahead.

The Thousand Sons took terrible losses during the Burning of Prospero and Magnus and the survivors fled into the Warp... and ended up pledging themselves the Tzeetch, the God of Magic and Mutation.

There is a LOT more lore of course, but this but of lore shall make their Army rule make sense!

Army Rule - Cabal of Sorcerers

10th Edition Index

Certain models in this army have the Cabal of Sorcerers rule. Like "Cabal of Sorcerers 2" for example.

At the end of the Command Phase, you combine the number of Cabal of Sorcerers numbers are in your army. This makes up you Cabal of Sorcerers pool for the turn.

You can use these points to do Rituals. Each Ritual can only be used once per PHASE.

At the start of your next Command Phase the Cabal Points reset to zero so you cannot store them up.

To use a Ritual, select one Thousand Sons Psyker model from the army to enact the Ritual and follow the rules of the Ritual

Rituals

Weaver of Fates (Psychic)

2 Cabal Points

This Ritual is used at the start of any phase. Once during this phase, one unit within 18" of this Psyker can re-roll a failed saving throw.

(Comment - Since you do not have to specify the target it means that you have a bubble around this Psyker to use to re-roll a saving throw. Most often used during your opponent's turn near important units. It is also relatively cheap, enabling you to use this ability multiple times, once per phase.)

Temporal Surge (Psychic)

5 Cabal Points

This Ritual is used at the start of your Shooting Phase.
Select one Thousand Sons unit within 18" of the Psyker.
That unit makes a Normal move immediately.
This ability cannot be used on a unit already in Engagement Range of the enemy and this unit cannot declare a Charge move in the same turn as using this Ritual.

(Comment - This is used to make a double move and then shoot. The Movement Phase occurs first, then the Shooting phase so Temporal Surge moves them again. This unit can still shoot but not charge. Great for flamers.)

Echoes of the Warp (Psychic)

6 Cabal Points

Used at the start of any Phase.
Used on the Psyker's own unit.
When using a Stratagem, reduce the cost of the Stratagem by 1CP.

(Comment - unlimited combos. 1CP strats are free, 2CP strats are cheaper. Basically 6 Cabal Points can be exchanged for a CP. If the Detachment has great Stratagems this might be really worth it.)

Doombolt (Psychic)

7 Cabal Points

Used at the start of your Shooting phase.
Select one enemy unit within 18" and visible to the psyker. This cannot target units with Lone Operative unless you are within 12"
Roll a Dice, on a 1 that enemy unit suffers D3 Mortal Wounds.
On a 2-5 that unit suffers D3+3 Mortal Wounds.
On a 6 that unit suffers D3+6 Mortal Wounds.

(Comment - Straight up damage for when something needs to die. Simple)

Twist of Fate (Psychic)

9 Cabal Points

Used at the start of your Shooting Phase.
Target an enemy unit within 18" and visible to the Psyker.
Until the end of the Shooting Phase, every time a Thousand Sons unit targets that enemy unit with a shooting attack, improve the Armor Penetration of those attacks by 2.

(Comment - Great for killing any heavily armoured target)

Thoughts

The power and the weakness in this ability is the same: You are able to choose what Ritual you want to use.

This gives every Thousand Sons player, regardless of the Detachment that they use, the ability to perform these abilities. A good player will spend the Cabal Points at the right time for the greatest effect. Newer players and even the good players may mistime the use of Rituals when they should have used the ability somewhere else or a different ability.

Sometimes the enemy knows your tricks and studies you (👁️🐺) and thus behaves in such a way, using the core rules and their army rules to greatest effect to counter these abilities.

These abilities are a lot more subtle than the Blessings of Khorne abilities which revolve around the entire army getting a damage or movement boost. There is less of a chance of a wrong choice while the Thousand Sons Rituals are more situational.

Example. Twist of Fate costs 9 Cabal Points and the Thousand Sons player moves in to destroy a Space Marine unit with one main unit to inflict the damage. Because of how devastating the +2 AP is on the attack, even an attack that had no AP would take the Space Marines from a 3+ save to a 5+. Should their weapons already have -1AP, they have AP-3 weapons taking the Space Marines down to 6+.

Should the Space Marine be in cover, this would give them Benefit of cover, so unless the weapon is a flamer, they get some AP back. The Space Marine, seeing one unit coming in for this purpose smiles as his automatic response to Twist of Fate is spending a CP for Armor of Contempt, incurring a -1 to the enemy's AP for one attack only. Thus the -3AP is not only -1AP which is much less powerful and the Thousand Sons wasted 9 Cabal Points.

If the Thousand Sons had know, they would have sent in two units to kill the Space Marines since Armor of Contempt can only be used against one attack.

Other Space Marine defenses include Characters that give the unit Feel No Pain, or an Invulnerable save, or -1 to Wound preventing attacks from going to the Save Roll in the first place.

This is one example. There is a plausible counter for most of these Rituals, which is the same for most Army Abilities. Don't get me wrong. Most of the time the Thousand Sons are going to be super powerful with their Rituals.

They can unleash stupendous amounts of damage as well as behave in clever ways with the use of their Rituals. These abilities have defensive abilities, board control abilities as well as combat abilities. This cannot be underestimated.

Thank you for reading!

Warhammer Review Library

You can find all my previous links on this post: Warhammer 40k Links Container Post! 13/02/2025

I shall leave Army and Detachment rules here as well as World Eaters, Death Guard and Thousand Sons!

Army Rule and Detachment Rule Reviews

Faction	Detachment	Review Number
Agents of the Imperium		Army Rule #2
Aeldari		Army Rule #4
Astra Militarum		Army Rule #1
Astra Militarum	Combined Regiment	Detachment Rule #1
Astra Militarum	Bridgehead Strike	Detachment Rule #2
Death Guard		Army Rule Review #6
Space Marines		Army Rule #3
World Eaters		Army Rule #5

Datasheet Review list (Alphabetical)

Faction	Unit	Review Number
Death Guard	Biologus Putrifier	#5
Death Guard	Blightlord Terminators	#10
Death Guard	Chaos Lord	#36
Death Guard	Death Guard Chaos Lord in Terminator Armor	#256
Death Guard	Lord of Contagion	#52
Death Guard	Tallyman	#39
Death Guard	Malignant Plaguecaster	#71
Thousand Sons	Ahriman	#108
Thousand Sons	Ahriman on Disc of Tzeentch	#109
Thousand Sons	Exalted Sorcerer	#59
Thousand Sons	Exalted Sorcerer on Disc of Tzeetch	#257
Thousand Sons	Magnus the Red	#49
World Eaters	Angron	#255
World Eaters	Lord Invocatus	#100
World Eaters	World Eaters Chaos Spawn	#18
World Eaters	World Eaters Daemon Prince	#85