Warhammer 40,000: Kill Team (HoR)/Tactics/Thousand Sons(8E)

The difference between the Thousand Sons and their fellow traitors, aside from all the psyker stuff, is their reliance on shooting. Since their base models are pretty much marines with fancier guns, they rely a lot on their guns to make a difference while melee is handled by your cultists and Tzaangors.

Your common keywords are Chaos, Heretic Astartes, Thousand Sons and Tzaangor.

Rules

• Experienced Leader: Similar to the loyalists, you can make models that share all of the leader's keywords into Core models or double the number you can take of certain Core models.
• Arcane Host: Only your psykers possess the Brotherhood of Psykers rule.
• Daemonic Ritual: Your leader can summon any daemon of Tzeentch for free once per movement phase. Unlike your generic legions, you can pretty much shit out Horrors even on turn 1 and then ease your way into the bigger guys. Fortunately, these daemons don't count towards the rout check.
  • Horrors summoned this way won't split into smaller horrors unless you pay for it.

Armoury

• Pinion of the Primarch: Leader only. Remember that feather Magnus gave Kitten as a bit of protection/a proxy? Well, it's more useful here. It not only adds +1 to all casting checks, but it also grants your boss flight...though they're just as slow as they were before.
• Icon of the Inferno: Leader only. Gives you a one-turn aura of 3" that doubles the firing rate of all your rubric weapons. You'll want to keep this until you have a priority target to remove.
• Dagger of Reflections: Leader only. Lets any leader Deny the Witch and get a bonus while they're at it. It gets better when you notice that if your leader's within 3" of the caster when they deny, you not only get a big boost to the deny roll, but you also forbid them from casting that power ever again.
• The Dustbound Helm: Aspiring/Scarab Sorcerer only. This pretty much turns you into a rubricae, losing 1" of movement and restricting all advances to a maximum of 3" but you get to ignore wounds on a 6+. If you intend to only sling spells around and little else, you'll find the protection tempting.
• Flux-Cairn: Tzaangor leader only. This lets you summon a setpiece once a game. It gives everyone within 6" re-roll 1s to hit and on saves, but your team re-roll to wound and on casting. Unlike other setpieces, this demands your Tzaangors to stay around it or else it collapses.

• Ectoplasmic Armour: Tzeentch model without Terminator armor only. This is evil, so EVIL. You know all those re-rolls those bosses give to their lackeys? Gone. All gone. And you just flipped them off. Just hope that the weapons aren't already enough to do you in.
• SPIKEY BITZ: By the dark gods, they return. Every fight phase gives you a chance to deal a mortal wound to one random schmuck within 1" of the model.
• Occuli Maledictum: Hidden models within 12" of the bearer are immediately exposed, making you a good foil for scouts and stealth suits.
• Haunted Adamantium: Good for more morale-busting, but not for sneaky. It bans hiding, but it makes anyone within 6" (or IP if the model has it) take -1 to Leadership.
• Teleporter: Terminator only. This is your one means of compensating for the crappy movements of these models, though it's just as random as advancing without any of the fallbacks.
• Ouroboros: Lets you re-roll a random setpiece/objective your model encounters.
• Futuresight: Gives your model a means to foil any reserves-trickery, as they let anyone within range open fire on any such model that poofs in, though it's at a penalty.
• Covenant of Change: Leader only. You can cause perils if your deny test rolls a double 1 or double 6. In truth, it's a nice trick, but it's less vital than the others.
• Targeter: Lets your model re-roll 1s to hit if they stand still. It's cheaper and easier to grab than a familiar.
• Augurscope: The heretical auspex. Lets one friendly model re-roll 1s to hit with their guns.
• Ensorcelled Weapon: Leader only. Lets you add +1D on a single generic weapon, but nothing else.
• Armourium Scarab: Gives a gun an extra attack when rolling a 6+ to hit, which is kinda redundant with Death to the False Emperor. Might be worth it to a Farcaster Tzaangor though.
• Predestination: Terrain no longer blocks your charges. All well and dandy for your marines. If they ever wanted to charge. Which they shouldn't.
• Hypercharger: Like the other heretics, you can get +1 S for -1BS.
• Censer Grenade: Otherwise known as a smoke grenade, same as any Imperial army.
• The Awakening: Not allowed on Scarab Occult Terminators. This makes your model a psyker, but only lets them deny with a single die.

Shamanic Gifts

These are special powers available only to your Tzaangor leaders.

• Fate Rider: Only 12 points, but this lets you roll for two powers below. What's not so clear is whether this counts as one power (thereby allowing you to potentially get a lot of powers or risk redundancy on an aspiring shaman) or three (thereby being useless on aspirants). Either way, this is more for your other leaders, who are otherwise trapped on one.

1. Savage Prophet: Gives an aura of +1 to hit in melee. Obviously useful for the other leaders.
2. Preternatural Prophet: Gives an aura of +1 to hit while shooting. Stick to a Fatecaster mob for this.
3. Alchemist: Allows a shaman aspirant to re-roll either one or all die when using the Shaman's sorcerous elixir.
4. Mutating Strike: Deals a mortal wound on a 6+ to hit. Since it's not melee exclusive and doesn't affect Discs, the field's pretty even for whichever boss you pick.
5. Silent Skyhunter: Gives a Farcaster, which is okay. However, it only lets IP take effect if your models see the leader, which might be inconvenient based on circumstances.

Familiars

You have a rather decent list of familiars available to more than just psykers. Leaders can pick two different ones while anyone else just gets one.

• Reloader Familiar: The EVIL armourium cherub. This only re-rolls 1s to wound, but it won't go away after one use.
• Linkdevil Familiar: This might make retreating a bad idea for the enemy, as it lets you shoot once with a pistol or make one whack if they fall back.
• Combat Familiar: This one's a bit of a mixed sell, since it costs more if your model's stronger, but weaker guys shouldn't be fighting anyways. In any case, it's two free attacks at the user's strength AP0 D1.
• Spell Familiar: Psyker only. This allows you to re-roll a warp die, but you perils if the re-roll matches the original roll.
• Regeneration Familiar: Leader only. Normally the most expensive familiar, but this gives the power of regaining lost wounds...until you roll a 1 and get another mortal wound instead.

Philosophies

• Just as Planned: +1 TP for never using Tactical Re-roll.
• For the Crimson King!: +2 TP for never using a core Tactical Action. With how many of your tactics involve pre-game shenanigans or single-use tricks, you'd be less likely to side with this.
• All is Dust: +1 TP for a marine-only force. Be wary about melee because you've got a majority of shooting-only hordes.
• The Changer's Hordes: +1 TP for a team with a save no better than 4+, meaning no marines. Well, there goes most of your firepower.

Tactical Actions

• Timeslip (2 TP): Lets you force a re-roll of a re-roll for either side. Nice.
• The Galaxy Burns (2 TP): Your <Legion> models all get one extra attack for the fight phase. Especially useful for melee-focused forces.
• Beseech the Dark Gods (2 TP): Your daemonic ritual now has a chance to summon multiple daemons. Quite nice if you plan on spamming them.
• The Architect's favour (1 TP): The Eye of the Gods returns. On any turn were your leader slays another leader or 3+ lesser models, you can roll for a Boon, though you must re-roll being a prince or gribbly.
• Translocate (2 TP): Lets you teleport an objective that you have uncontested control over by 2d6". Perfect for ruining strategies!
• Suggestion (1 TP): Sacrifices the ability to overwatch when a model is charged, but it gives a chance to stop the enemy from charging in the first place.

Unit Analysis

Your FOC is as follows

• 1 Leader
• 1-20 Core
• 0-3 Special

Leaders

• Aspiring Sorcerer: A hybrid between the main sorcerer and rubricae leader, he pretty much possesses the statline of the latter while being able to pick out Dark Hereticus powers like the former (with some exceptions for cake of not trying to balance) and only able to cast once.
  • Scarab Occult Sorcerer: For 19 points, you can shove your sorcerer into a suit of termie armor. Curiously, you can kit him up to dual wield in the strange event that you think that smiting will be enough.
• Tzaangor Shaman Aspirant: The psyker boss of the Tzaangors. He's pretty much a shaman but he exchanges the boss' aura and instead gives special powers that you pick from the armoury.
• Aviarch: Flying Tzaangors! His spear's pretty choice for wiping off GEQ on the charge, but if you dislike tempting Tzeentch, you could take the Fartecaster and plink away from relative safety.
  • Twistbray: The cheaper Tzaangor boss. He loses out on magic, but he has a hate for characters. He can take one shaman power, but it's tied to your item allowance.
• Cultist Champion: Seriously, why are you doing this? You're going to be forking over free VPs like this.

Core

• Chaos Cultist: A pathetic distraction. Their only options are for one out of ten of these fuckers. Otherwise, figure out what you want them to die doing and keep them staying there while your real soldiers do business.
• Tzaangor: Your slightly stronger cultist. They're more likely to hold a bit, but they're still GEQ. If you have plenty of them, consider buying a Brayhorn for an aura of mobility to gift to leaders and others around them.
• Rubric Marine: The basic dustbin with quite a deadly gun. As their melee is laughable, you'll be relying on the Tzaangors and cultists to be your walls.

Special

• Scarab Occult Terminator: Big guys with mere power weapons, but otherwise similar to a Rubric. They can be seriously threatening when tooled up, but it will run up your costs, especially for a Termie-heavy force.
• Tzaangor Enlightened: Your flying birdmen are here for one of two reasons: Erasing crap on the charge or shooting farcasters. Pick one and stay there.
• 0-1 Mutalith Vortex Whelp: It's...a babby mutalith. It's considerably weaker than the base, but it still is your massive thing of chaos and mayhem.
• Those Thingies: Expensive units, but using even one gives you a unit easily capable of tying up whatever comes across it. Throwing one at an enemy while escorting a Leader or other key unit can force the enemy to prioritize between firing at the thing as it charges them and use up their Overwatch or ignore it to fire the other guy and get charged anyways.