Editing Tactics - Thousand Sons (section)

==Unit Analysis==
===HQ===
*'''Sorcerer''' - Your bread and butter standard sorc. Not much better than aspiring one you get as a part of any squad with only one extra wound and better WS (which mostly wouldn't come into play), but he can and probably should take additional mastery levels up to level 3, and have access relics and special issue wargear. They are the cheapest of your spellslinging HQs and much more cost-effective than the others in terms of getting Warp Charges, AND you can take up to three of them in one slot. If you're planning to specialize in maledictions, blessings and summonings this is the best choice.

*'''Sorcerer Lord''' - Bigger and scarier sorc, he comes with ML2 and a statline of Chaos Lord (-1 WS). Can be upgraded to a whooping ML4, and have a unique upgrade "Magister Templi" which grants him all the powers from his own discipline and re-rolls for psy tests for that discipline spells. Being BS5 he's better at trowing out witchfires, especially those single-shot ones, and with a higher Initiative he wouldn't die in a challenge against enemy combat HQs before his own initiative step.

*'''Daemon Prince''' - Monstrous sorc that runs (or more often flies) solo. Much like Sorc Lord it can go up to ML4 and excels at throwing out psychic dakka with his BS5. <s>If</s> When you give him wings he would be the only model in your army that can mindbullet enemy flyers and FMCs. As he comes with a Soul Hunter standard and is quite good at killing stuff, giving him robes of Ritualist for reliable Sacrifice casting is almost a must. This is the most expensive of your sorcerers, and not much better at casting most spells, so if you don't plan to use him as close combat rape machine, complete with Daemon Maul and Battle Form and probably Iron Arm too, or as a psychic interceptor, take normal sorc or lord instead.
**''Kai Gun'' - Another comeback from the glory days of old, its a decent gun against infantry, light vehicles and monsters, and it can help you generating extra sacrifice tokens.
**''Screamer Cloud''' - Grants you three T5 W1 invisible bodies to Look Out Seer for against enemy shooting. As DP is not an ''independent'' character he only LoS on 4+ - it's basically an additional 4++ save rolled before your regular one. One thing to note, is if you're planning to secure Battle Form and/or Iron Arm, those invisible models would bring down your majority toughness back to 5 until only one of them is left - thankfully you can choose to not regenerate them after losing.

*'''Tecnomancer''' - Specialized mech-supporting sorc. First off, it provides an awesome 24" bubble of no stupor for your vehicles, so you don't have to keep close to your other sorcs or spend extra points on possession or crystals. Secondly, his special psy powers are great for supporting mech, repairing them, increasing their firepower and granting anti-assault protection/deadly tank shock. The icing on the top is his Possess Vehicle that allow you to ''ressurrect'' vehicles from their wrecks (and wrecks only, so no possessed Knights or Titans, as they always explode), applying both Korona and Burning Wrath to them and increasing their BS to Tecnomancers 5. This includes enemy vehicle wrecks as well. Even with a ton of drawbacks it comes with possession is incredibly powerful, especially when resurrecting something with a lot of dakka, like Land Raiders, Mortis Dreads or even Battlewagons full of rokkits (because they're S9 BS5 now). Being Pyrae, Tecnomancer can also throw out fireballs, just in case you need some extra anti-infantry. And finally, it allows you to take one Infernus Relic vehicle from Chaos IA. Which means Fire Raptor or Sicarian in case you don't have Raptor. Overall, a great HQ if you go heavy mech and OK even if you only have a few highly shooty vehicles.

*'''Insorcist''' - Infantry support to Tecnomancer's vehicle support. Same 24" bubble of no stupor, but for non-vehicles, and a set of supporting psy powers, that focus on keeping your golems <s>alive</s> undead and bringing back those who died. His iconic shooting power Vengeful Spirits becomes more and more powerful as your casualties grow, although your opponent would try to focus him down before you start throwing out double-digit numbers of poisoned cover-ignoring AP2 shots. Additionally, being Corvidae he can boost his troops damage output with Giudance or even roll a Flickering for making his golems nigh-unkillable with three successive 4+ saves.

*'''Rubric Swordmaster''' - Your only non-psyker HQ, it focuses on one thing and one thing only: killing things in close combat. Swordmaster cannot reach the heights of melee rape Sorc Lord or DP could with a Battle Form, but it's much cheaper and very killy for it's cost, and for just one Warp Charge he becomes AP2 3++ (in addition to being able to Sweep). Unfortunately, you cannot mount him on a disk, so to get the most out of him he needs a transport.

====Special Characters====
*'''Ahzek Ahriman''' - Your shooty super-sorcerer, Ahriman is a maxed-out sorcerer-lord, geared towards dishing out insane amounts of witchfires (as long as you have enough warp charges) - his staff allows him to triple-tap one witchfire, and he can pre-pick the ones he generate normally AND pick one from each discipline during deployment, so you're guaranteed to have exactly the powers you need against your opponent's army. Being Corvidae he's forced to pick at least 3 of his powers from it, although it's not much of a drawback, as Corvidae powers are quite useful for boosting his and his units firepower and survivability. His WoPs also allow him to pierce powerful denies and ignore Shadow in the Warp. If you choose a Dark Blade and/or Battle Form he also could be a close combat monster, but since he cannot shoot while locked in combat it's not recommended to actively try and search close combat.
**'''Alter Fate''' - Global power that can force re-rolls on any one die once per each PHASE. Including enemy rolls as well. Well worth its warp charge cost. Do note that you can re-roll reserve rolls (well, one reserve roll), with this as well, since they happen during movement phase and it stacks well with Ahzek's warlord Trait that allows you to outflank few units. And as your opponent tries to bring his reserves you may try to delay one particularly nasty unit for a turn or two, which may win you a game.
**'''The Rubric''' - Plain and simple spell for killing psykers - almost guaranteed to kill the likes of Librarian, and deal a lot of damage to tougher models like Greater Daemons or Tyrants. It may however backfire horribly with a warp surge granting 3++ to the surviving target.

*'''Hathor Maat''' - Your choppy super-sorcerer, Maat is much like a TS version of Mephiston, except with better psy powers and worse armour. As a Magister Templi he knows all Pavoni powers and re-roll psy-tests to manifest them, and if you make him your warlord he would re-roll all other powers too, which may come in handy since he can use his wounds (which he have FOUR of) to fuel Sarifice spells and then regenerate them with his staff and/or Leech. Ability to cast TWO Battle Forms on his already impressive stat line, combined with 3++ and +2S staff means he can become WS10 S10 T9 I10 A8 titan-wrestling monster wherever he needs. With the ability to double-tap any of his powers he's fairly shooty too, especially against vehicles, as Lightning and his own unique spell "Thunderstorm" chew through hull points in no time, and double Agony can stunlock two vehicles outside his "no mech allowed" radius of 24". The problem is he's slow, and while in a Land Raider he cannot cast his powers unless you link him to a crystal. Ideal solution would be to secure a Wormhole for one of your other sorcerers so Maat could jump into the middle of the field and start wrecking havoc - you may even run him solo if you're OK with spending 2-4 warp charges on defensive Battle Forms, just make sure he stars the game in a unit in case of across-the-board sniping or loyalist marines drop-poding in front of him and gunning him down before he can buff himself.

*'''Magnus The Red''' - He's Daemon Primarch, so obviously he's a rape machine, and he costs almost as much as a Titan. Magnus is a Mastery Level Five psyker who knows all TS powers save Tecnomancer/Insorcist specific ones, and he passes all psy tests automatically, including sacrifice ones and he can use warp charges as Sacrifice tokens, and denies against him are made with -1 penalty without that "minimum of 6+" of the Sword WoP, so most regular units cannot deny against him at all. His Metamorph special rule basically makes him a Gargantuan Creature for the purpose of survivability. His armour save is 2+, although he loses it after dropping to three or less wounds, his eye have a statline of Helldrake's baleflamer with an extra rape against psykers, and his close combat weapon is a simple force ax with which he can strike on initiative because he's a Monstrous Creature. He can even fly, temporarily sacrificing two mastery levels for it. And on top of that he provides a 24" bubble of no stupor for EVERYTHING. The only thing that stops me from calling him uber-daemon prince is his special rule that increase the cost of all blessings he uses on himself, so he's not quite as good at buffing himself to a stratosphere and wiping entire units in glorious close combat - he's more of a guy to witchfire/maledict enemies to death, especially if he can draw some extra warp charges from other sorcerers.
** Much like Warhound titan, unbuffed Magnus is a glass cannon with insane firepower on a relatively squishy (for his point cost) body. You may alleviate this problem by buffing his survivability with blessings and/or wings, but at the expense of his firepower, to the pont that you can turn him unto invulnerable brick with no firepower aside his eye.

===Troops===
*'''Rubric Marines''' - Your basic bread and butter scoring units. Slightly cheaper than ones in CSM codex, and with much better aspiring sorc, but with all the downsides of stupor. You must take at least one if you want to remain battleforged, but you'd  probably take them anyway, just for securing objectives. They are great at fighting Sv 4+/3+ enemies, especially if they are armed with some powerful guns, but suck socks against cheap mooks, be it hordes of MSUs. Never ever take them without a trusty Rhino, unless you want to spend your precious warp charges to just run them where they need to be.

*'''Young Sons''' - Your not-scouts, who cannot infiltrate or hide in cover with cloaks, but have AP3 bolters and are psykers. You take them to hold back-line objectives and generate warp charges for your actually good psykers. They are very cost-effective for the second purpose (not to the point of Warlocks and Pink Horrors, though), but casting powers from them should be avoided if possible, since they have none of the sexy psychic rules other sorcerers get. For the same points cost they deliver twice as many bolter shots as Rubric Marines, but they are much frailer and are NOT fearless, while still being relatively expensive.

===Dedicated Transport===
*'''Rhino''' - Your good old Metal Box, now with an awesome 5++ and meh AP3 bolters for a minor points bump. Everything that can buy it should. Period. Even backline point-holding squads. Havoc launcher is all but auto-include too, even if you don't use it for a first two turns, pressing forward at flat-out speed. Due to Stupor it cannot be used for tank shocking distant enemy squads and contesting objectives once it delivers it's the passengers, unless you took a Technomancer. In which case set it on fire with Corona and run it through as many light infantry squads as you can - it's about your only way of effectively dealing with MSU Guad.

===Elites===
*'''Rubric Terminators''' - Like the regular Chaos Termies, but with more (and better) guns, no fists, sorcerer characters (yes, in plural), and Drop Pod-grade safe Deep Strikes. So yeah, definitely a termicide, rather than melee beatstick - drop those guys loaded with combi-weapon and heavy guns on priority target and watch it going boom, and now there's giant distraction in the middle of your opponent's forces, that would eat entire phase worth of firepower and maybe a charge to let the rest of your army move into position.

*'''Sorcerer Squad''' - The glassiest of glass cannons, these guys are your death-star. Entire unit of aspiring sorcerers on discount, that could take extra golems for ablative wounds. Entire squad '''should''' be mounted on disks for the JSJ potential that would put Tau to shame - as your primary "shooting" happens during psy phase the squad is free to flat out (up to 24"!) after unloading their mind bullets to hide behind some solid BLoS - just hope your opponent wouldn't catch them with deep strikers, flyers and jump packs. While T5 and 3+/4++ may seem tanky, stupidly high points cost for a 1-wound models means they're actually extremely fragile. As mentioned above, equipping the entire squad with Mirror WoPs is very good on spamming multiple same powers. Make sure to model each sorcerer in a squad distinct from the others or at least mark their bases, as because each one of them have his own set of powers.

*'''Terrorfiend''' - 4 flashbane AP2 shots are kinda OK at hunting MCs and even GCs (now then they're only resistant to poison and sniper, not the fleshbane), but with 1.66 wounds per turn before cover, invuln and FNP, Terrorfiend is not going to make actual kills against multi-wound models. And you want it to kill things, because it powers up a nearby sorc with a free '''safe''' and '''reliable''' sacrifice token.

*'''Rubric Dreadnought''' - More like a loyalist dread, it's a reliable fire support platform, a source of occasional vehicle/building bashing and counter-charges to save your shooty squads. Not as good at dropping at the enemy in a pod, since your pod is more expensive than the one loyalists have, the dread itself is more expensive, and you'd gonna need to pump more points into it to prevent Stupor, so it kinda defeats the point of ''cheap'' surgical drop. It works best with your home objective holders, as it won't keep up with Rhinos.

*'''Sorcerer Dreadnought''' - Psychic dread. Like the one BAs get, but better, because 4++, all the TS psi-rules, better powers, WoPs (which it can get up to three of) and potential for ML2. If you thought flying dread that shoots mind-bullets in addition to regular ones was bad watch out for ''wormholing'' dread that brings squads of infantry with him.

===Fast Attack===
*'''Discriders''' - Your ''actual'' melee beatstick - fast, tough, with pistols they deliver 3 attacks  (4 on the charge), and with crystal weapons thay can deal with a wide variey of targets. It's highly advisable to secure Dtrowse for their aspiring sorc, or the HQ you attach to them, so you can assault without Initiative penaly and attack first against most targets. Speaking of which, they desperately need a backup sorc to be attached to them, because once they enter Stupor they ''lose their discs'' '''permanently''', essentially becoming overpriced regular golems.

*'''Sky Rubricators''' - Rubric marines with jump packs. Unlike Raptors and Assault marines they DO have bolters, and does not come stocks with pistols, so they're more of a mobile shooty squad. One unique trick their aspiring sorc have is the ability to turn the unit into jet pack infantry for a turn with a minor psy power. Note that as it happens during the psychic phase you get the benefits of both 12" move and JSJ in the turn you activate it, but get none of it on the next turn. Stupor hit them hard, ''turning their jump packs off'' but at least it does not destroy them, so attaching another sorc or casting Obey would fix that.

*'''Hidden Ones''' - Your actual scouts. They come with a ton of tricks, starting with stealth and infiltrate, and going all the way to outflanking from the enemy rear, being near-unshootable until they open fire themselves, escaping to reserves whenever they feel like it and finally coming stock with Invisibility. They even go without all the bad rules rubric marines get, while keeping almost all the good stuff of the rubric sorcs, and even if you snipe their caharacter it would not stop them from casting powers. So what's the catch, you ask? Well, they cost as much as discriders while being as tough and killy as regular rubric marines, and cannot take Rhinos.
**Note that Hidden Ones come stock with pistols rather than swords, so no crystal weapons for them, although you can give them double-pistols. Being made out of meat, bones and blood rather than dust, they could be frenzied if you manage to sneak Pavony sorcerer near them.

*'''Storm Eagle''' - Like the one other marines get, but with 5++ and Sorcerer Command for extra points. The later means it's almost unusable without the possession or crystal, as even flying DPs would have a hard time keeping up with it. Can take PoTMS to split it's anti-infantry and anri-tank fire for a marginal point cost, by sacrificing model capacity, which you'd probably don't need anyway, as it performs better as a gunship that runs empty rather than dropship - just remember that it still cannot fire blasts on infanty while firing lasers on other flyers.

===Heavy Support===