The fourth day of GW’s advent calendar of meta-shifting new Warhammer 40k detachments gives a boost to the Thousand Sons, with the new Hexwarp Thrallband detachment joining the existing Cult of Magic available in the Thousand Sons’ Index. This warp-addled formation seeks to turn the battlefield itself into a morass of corruption, capturing objectives and turbo-charging its psychic attacks.
Revealed via GW’s Warhammer Community site on Wednesday, this new Warhammer 40k detachment is a lot weirder than the three ones that came before it, as befits the chosen legion of Tzeentch. GW is going to release new detachments for all the Warhammer 40k factions before the month ends, and it has stated that it’s the Adeptus Mechanicus’ turn on Thursday, December 5.
While the three previous detachments obviously give infantry and battleline units a big boost, the new Thousand Sons detachment does so indirectly. To unlock is buffs you need to control objective markers. And what better way to do that than by putting more infantry models on the board than your opponent.
As per normal for Warhammer 40k 10th edition, you get one core detachment rule; four Enhancements to buff characters; and six unique Stratagems. We’ll briefly break down the new rules here, and explain how they work in plain terms.
Detachment Rule – Flow of Magic
The Flow of Magic Detachment rule represents your army’s ability to control the weave of reality itself. It spreads over the battlefield, buffing your sorcerers’ Psychic Attacks, and unlocking greater power from your Stratagems and Enhancements.
The Flow of Magic is always active in your Deployment Zone. If, at the start of any phase, you control at least half of the objectives within No Man’s Land, or within your opponent’s deployment zone, the Flow of Magic is active in the respective area.
Whenever a Thousand Sons model in your army makes a psychic attack, you re-roll Wound rolls of one. If it happens to be wholly within your Flow of Magic, you add one to the Wound roll instead.
Enhancements
Arcane Might – 20 points
The models’ Psychic Weapons get +1 Strength, or +2 Strength while within your army’s Flow of Magic.
A simple character buff for both ranged and melee attacks. Pumping Exalted Sorcerers’ ranged attacks up to Strength 8 is pretty compelling, as they’ll be wounding Space Marines (and equivalents) on a 2+.
Empowered Manifestation – 20 points
While the bearer’s unit is wholly within your Flow of Magic, it’s Psychic abilities (including rituals) get +6″ range; and when the bearer takes a Hazardous test for a psychic weapon, you can re-roll the result.
Want to reach out and hurt someone with a 24″ range Dombolt? Apply a Thousand Sons Sorcerer in Terminator Armor’s ‘Marked by Fate’ to an enemy unit two feet away? Grant Stealth to every Thousand Sons unit within 12″ of a Daemon Prince? This is a slam dunk.
Empyric Onslaught – 25 points
As long as the bearer’s unit is wholly within your Flow of Magic, their ranged Psychic weapons get +3 Attacks.
This is just gravy. Attached to a Terminator Sorcerer or an Exalted Sorcerer, it effectively doubles their ranged spells while they’re in your Flow of Magic.
Noctilith Mantle – 15 points
A model with the Noctilith Mantle, and their Bodyguard, are always wholly within your army’s Flow of Magic, but cannot be selected to use Rituals.
Losing access to your Rituals is sad, but this guarantees that the character (and the leader of the unit they’ve joined) always gets +1 to Wound with their psychic attacks, and can always take full advantage of your Stratagems. Give it to a Terminator Sorcerer attached to a big unit of Scarab Occult Terminators for some serious shenanigans, as we’ll discuss below…
Stratagems
Warding Hex – 1 CP
One objective marker that you control, is within your Flow of Magic, and is within range of one of your Thousand Sons Psyker units, will remain under your control until the end of a phase when your opponent’s Level of Control over the objective marker beats yours. This lets your sorcerers call dibs on an objective, then swan off to pursue their schemes elsewhere on the table.
Wrath of the Doomed – 1 CP
After an enemy unit picks its targets in the Fight phase, you select one of your units that was targeted. Until the end of the phase, whenever one of your models from that unit is destroyed, you can roll a D6, adding +1 if your unit is wholly within your Flow of Magic. On a 4+ that model gets to fight after the enemy unit finishes its attacks, before being removed from play.
Since Rubric Marines are such sucky melee combatants, you’re probably using this on Tzaangor or Scarab Occult Terminators.
Strands of Time – 1 CP
After one of your Thousand Sons Psyker units fall back, use this stratagem, and it will be able to shoot or declare a charge despite falling back. If that unit happens to be wholly within your Flow of Magic, it can both shoot and declare a charge.
This is going to give your opponent real problems when it comes to hemming in your movement. The natural target is a unit of Scarab Occult Terminators, as they’re lethal in both the Shooting and Fight phase, and thanks to Deep Strike they’re most likely to be snarled up in your opponents’ lines.
Through the Veil – 1 CP
You can deploy a Rubric Marines unit from Strategic Reserve via Deepstrike. Alternatively, you can deploy a unit of Scarab Occult Terminators from Deep Strike anywhere within your Flow of Magic, with models placed more than 6″ away from enemy units, rather than the normal 9″. If you deploy Terminators this way, they can’t charge in the same turn.
Your opponent needs to be very, very good at screening or you are going to cause absolute torture with this Stratagem. It’s hard to know which is the scarier threat to hold in reserve for your opponent: a unit of Rubrics with Warpflamers that will inflict an average of 35 automatic hits on their target (re-rolling Wounds if the target is on an objective) – or Scarab Occult Terminators (led by a Terminator Sorcerer with the Noctilith Mantle) that can land 6″ away anywhere on the battlefield…
Scouring Warpflame – 1 CP
A Thousand Sons Psyker unit from your army that is wholly within your Flow of Magic gains the Ignores Cover ability on its weapons for the duration of the shooting phase. One enemy unit that it hits cannot gain the Benefit of Cover for the remainder of the phase.
A nice simple shooting buff that might as well be called ‘flare gun’.
Kaleidoscopic Tempest – 1 CP
When a Thousand Sons Psyker unit from your army is targeted by an enemy unit’s ranged attacks during their Shooting phase, you can use this Stratagem to grant it Stealth for the remainder of the turn. If it’s wholly within your Flow of Magic, it gains the Benefit of Cover each time it’s targeted by an enemy attack.
Note that with the wording, you will only gain the Benefit of Cover against subsequent attacks, not the one that allowed you to use this Stratagem. This is a pretty solid double-whammy of anti-shooting buffs – it won’t elevate Scarab Occult Terminators to Custodes Warden levels of durability, but it’s solid.
Summary
This seems like a really strong Detachment if you enjoy the bread and butter of the Thousand Sons army – wizards and space mummies. The strategy is simple: put bodies in zones. Though you have to claim objectives to unlock your best abilities, that’s something you need to do to win the game anyway.
A Thousand Sons list that leans heavily on infantry would ordinarily rely on Devastating Wounds and Doombolts to destroy vehicles and monsters. That’s less of a problem for this detachment: the +1 to Wound you can reliably unlock for your Psychic attacks is going to make your characters and unit leaders a lot more effective against big targets.
The Enhancements don’t really have any bad options, but there are some obvious winners. Empowered Manifestation on a (wingless) Daemon Prince granting a 12″ aura of Stealth is great, and relatively easy to hide behind a building while it protects your forces. A Thousand Sons Sorcerer in Terminator Armor, with the Noctilith Mantle, attached to a mob of Scarab Occult Terminators, can deep strike aggressively while retaining access to all of your Flow of Magic buffs.
If it has an obvious weakness, it’s a lack of innate defensive tech: the Kaleidoscopic Tempest stratagem is very good, but only protects one unit at a time, and you will have other things to spend CP on. The above mentioned Daemon Prince will help, as will killing your opponent dead.
You can download the Hexwarp Thrallband detachment from GW right now, alongside the Tyranids’ Warrior Bioform Onslaught, the Dark Angels’ Lion’s Blade Taskforce, and the Death Guard’s Flyblown Host PDF.
In the meantime, you can check which armies are getting new rules next with our guide to upcoming Warhammer 40k codex release dates – and stay up to date with daily news by following Wargamer on Google News.
Source: Wargamer
