Daemon Engines / Thousand Sons Full Armor

I've been experimenting with my Thousand Sons list and I realize there are a couple of ways to play them. Of course, the focus is always on the sorcery and psychic phase, but other than filling up your HQ slots with Sorcerers and Daemon Princes, I realize there are two options for the support units. I realize that many people go for the horde option, which is the Tzaangors and/or Cultists route. Very few Rubric Marines in these competitive lists, but hordes of Cultists and Tzaangors. The favorite tactic is of course to drop a 30-men (mutant?) Tzaangor bomb on your opponents' frontlines and let rip with Cycle of Slaughter. Now we've to use Dark Matter Crystal for that. I personally don't use Tzaangors - it's not that I hate them. I really like them, but I like my Rubric Marines and Traitor Guardsmen more.

Anyway, as I said, there are a few ways to play Thousand Sons. The elite route or the horde route. Right now my list seems to stand somewhere near the elite option, but I do have 3 squads of Cultists. Then again, I only took the minimal number of Traitor Guardsmen instead of filling up to 40 expendable bodies, so it's not really a horde list. It's a more elite list that relies on durable Rubric Marines, Deep Striking Scarab Occult Terminators and spamming sorcery and psychic powers from my Sorcerers. So it looks like this:

Thousand Sons Battalion

Ahzek Ahriman

Daemon Prince of Tzeeentch

5 Rubric Marines

5 Rubric Marines

10 Rubric Marines with warpflamers

Chaos Rhino with havoc launcher

5 Scarab Occult Terminators

2nd Thousand Sons Battalion (Prosperine Spireguard?)

Exalted Sorcerer on disc with two power swords

Exalted Sorcerer on Foot

10 Cultists (Traitor Guardsmen)

10 Cultists (Traitor Guardsmen) with flamer

10 Cultists (Traitor Guardsmen) with flamer

Hellforged Contemptor Dreadnought with 2 butcher cannons (Hellforged Contemptor battle-automata)

Hellforged Deredeo Dreadnought with butcher array (Hellforged Deredeo siege-automata)

That's my list. Well, I have a lot of Command Points with this list (yay?) and I use tons of Rubric Marines unlike most Thousand Sons list. It's obviously not competitive and I'll get absolutely destroyed in an ITC or tournament. But hey, it's extremely fun to play with. I have at least 4 full psykers and 4 more mini-psykers with baby Smite. I think people will advise me to drop the warpflamer Rubric Marines, but honestly, they are awesome. Did I tell you how they overwatched a Space Marine Chapter Master to death with their warpflamers in my first game? Yeah.

Honestly, the more I think about it, the more I realize that this list is an anti-infantry or anti-horde list. Just look at the amount of shots they can fire. AP -2 for their inferno boltguns or warpflamers, and 8 more shots from the Hellforged Dreadnoughts. That's a pretty scary prospect for any horde or infantry list. On the other hand, I think I'll die to pretty much every Knight list or tanks list. Thankfully Knights aren't in my area's meta and we all play friendly games so I don't have to worry about that. But yeah, the lack of anti-tank is a real problem. It's nothing I can't solve by taking Predators with lascannons or allied Chaos Space Marines with Havocs (like in my previous post).

But that's besides the point. I'm more fun than what's viable or whatever. I'm not going to tournaments. I'm just here to talk about the various options and themes I can explore with my Thousand Sons, especially in casual settings. Right now I have an infantry dominated Thousand Sons list. I'm trying to see what happens if I try to turn it into a more Full Armored list with Daemon Engines, much like how I play my Imperial Guard with lots of Leman Russ tanks. If you remember my Imperial Guard lists, I always take at least 3 Leman Russ tanks - sometimes 4, and that's not even a game where I include my Shadowsword. Sadly enough, since my meta is pretty casual, taking a Shadowsword is overkill, so I'm trying to play more friendly lists, especially since my opponents are mostly kids.

So what's the Daemon Engines route?

Thousand Sons Battalion

Ahzek Ahriman

Daemon Prince of Tzeeentch

5 Rubric Marines with 1 warpflamer

5 Rubric Marines with 2 warpflamers

5 Rubric Marines with 2 warpflamers

Thousand Sons Spearhead

Exalted Sorcerer on disc with two power swords

Exalted Sorcerer on foot

Hellforged Contemptor Dreadnought with 2 butcher cannons (Hellforged Contemptor battle-automata)

Hellforged Deredeo Dreadnought with butcher array (Hellforged Deredeo siege-automata)

Mutalith Vortex Beast

Mutalith Vortex Beast

Maulerfiend with lasher tendrils

Maulerfiend with lasher tendrils

There you go. A Full Armored list of Thousand Sons. The point of this list is to force my opponent to target the big guys. I have a lot of redundancy (I hope), so if you take out my 1st Maulerfiend, I still have a 2nd! Plus the Mutalith Vortex to dish out mortal wounds! Aiming at my Mutalith Vortex Beast instead? Well, if he has half his health left, his Mutalith Vortex power's range doubles! Plus I have 2 of them! And you're leaving my Hellforged Dreadnoughts unmolested. Concentrating all fire on my Deredeo Dreadnought? Great, while everyone's distracted by the Dreadnought, the Maulerfiends and Mutalith Vortext Beasts will charge forward and dish out mortal wounds or crash into your lines. The 2 backfield Dreadnoughts are protected by 3 squads of Rubric Marines, who have warpflamers to help against charges from Deep Striking units via overwatch. Additionally a single Exalted Sorcerer on foot to provide re-rolls of ones for the 2 BS 2+ Hellforged Dreadnoughts. Heh. And I still have 7 psykers in the list, 4 proper ones and 3 mini-psykers who will most likely sit back and cast Temporal Manipulation, Glamor of Tzeentch and Weaver of Fate on my Dreadnoughts or something. 6 big targets for my opponent to shoot at, and I can afford to lose a few of them. I hope.

Well, we'll see. I don't have the money for Maulerfiends and a 2nd Mutalith Vortex Beast now, so this will have to wait until Christmas or so.