Some units in Warhammer 40k are just designed to jerk you around, and that’s often a good thing. Sometimes an underperforming army – like, say, the Thousand Sons – needs a helping hand, and a shiny new unit that does something really annoying can be just the ticket. Enter the Sekhetar Robots: not just so incredibly good looking I want to start a new army just to own them, but also – after Wednesday’s rules reveal from GW – destined to be the Pharaoh of all pains in the ass.
Since a tortuous set of points increases in late 2024, the sorcerous, Tzeentch-aligned Chaos Space Marines of the Thousand Sons have generally tended to rank among the least competitive Warhammer 40k factions, leaving fans desperately awaiting the dusty boys’ impending codex release date.
On Wednesday, GW’s Warhammer Community site gave us a taste of what’s coming by previewing the rules for the sons of Magnus’ new robotic reinforcements – and these guys are going to be a handful.
At Toughness 6 and 4 Wounds each, with a 3+ save and 5 invulnerable save, they’re rough Terminator equivalents that’ll be tough to shift. They’re getting a pretty flexible set of short range weapon options, able to dual wield chaotic heavy flamer and meltagun equivalents – and they’re packing Hellfyre missile racks borrowed from the Scarab Occult Terminators, able to chuck out S10, AP-2, D3 rockets at 36 inch range. That’s going to make them decent multi-role gunslingers already – but I haven’t got to the good bit yet.
The good bit comes in two parts. As shown off by Warcom, the Sekhetars’ Prophetic Sentinels ability lets them fire overwatch (or heroically intervene) for 0CP once per Battle Round. That’s good, but not great – so here’s part two.
They get the Infiltrators and Stealth 40k abilities built in. As a reminder, that means:
- You can deploy them anywhere on the board that’s more than nine inches from enemy units.
- Any unit trying to shoot them takes a -1 to hit rolls.
So you can start the game with these fairly tough, hard to hit, heavily armed gun platforms already in the mid-board, holding objectives – and the moment your opponent approaches them, let rip with a free round of overwatch shots. If they’re going to come at you fast and get close, even better – load them with the heavy warpflamers and roast ’em up good. Auto-hitting flamer overwatch is best overwatch.
We’ll have to wait for the full T-Sons codex to find out which detachment rules and stratagems can really juice these puppies up, but – since they’re the Big Exciting New Kit for the army, you can bet there’ll be some. The Sekhetar Robots were already awesome looking, walking Anubis statues of doom that had me tempted to start a Thousand Sons warband – now they’ve got me running scared as well.
What do you reckon? Already thought of a hard counter to the dusty dog faced killbots? Come share your theories in the Wargamer Discord community – whatever your feelings on the things Magnus the Red did, or didn’t, do wrong!
Source: Wargamer
