For the Changer of Ways: Thousand Sons LVO 5-1 Tournament Report

Note: Today at Warphammer, we have something special and fun for everyone!

This tournament report is guest written by Nick Hodson. Nick is a Thousand Sons player who just did really well at LVO, and brought both the expert knowledge of his faction and a focus on playing fun games that I love sharing here at Warphammer.

I’ve done some very minor editing to help Nick’s content fit better into the website structure, but this is basically all Nick’s work. Make sure to show him appreciation here in the comments or wherever you find this!

Hello! I’m Nick, a longtime Thousand Sons player and admirer of Mike’s Warphammer site. I recently returned from the Las Vegas Open (LVO), and I thought I’d try my hand at writing up a tournament report for any other aspiring spell slingers or lovers of Chaos out there.

If you don’t know, LVO is one of the biggest (if not THE biggest) 40k tournaments every year. For me, it started out as the pinnacle of competitive events and the “season finale” of the ITC, but it has quickly devolved into an excuse to take a road trip with the boys and throw some dice with 40k players from all over the world. I look forward to it every year, and every year it delivers a banger tournament and a host of new 40k friends. 

My Thousand Sons List

This was my list for LVO:

• Magnus
• Mutalith Vortex Beast (aka the MVB)
• Exalted Sorcerer on Disc
• Tzaangor Shaman on Disc
• 5 Rubrics + Infernal Master w/ Umbralefic Crystal aka The Teleport Squad
• 5 Rubrics + Infernal Master w/ Lord of Forbidden Lore aka The Double Caster
• 5 Rubrics + Infernal Master w/ Arcane Vortex aka The Super Flamer
• 5 Rubrics + Ahriman
• 2 Chaos Spawn
• 10 Cultists
• 10 Cultists
• 3 Tzaangor Enlightened

After the last round of points changes to Thousand Sons, we’ve been cut pretty bare in terms of how much we can bring. It’s a delicate balancing act to bring enough sorcerers so that we can still cast spells (cabalistic rituals), but still have enough units to play the game and score secondaries with. I think four trash units is the fewest that I would consider taking for now until our codex comes out and changes the way that we play.

Side note: OUR CODEX IS COMING SOON AND IT’S PROBABLY GONNA HAVE TZEENTCH DAEMONS IN IT! LETS GOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Now, Thousand Sons is a fairly “solved” faction in terms of list design, but there’s still room for some personal touches here and there. 

• I’ve been playing Thousand Sons with a single MVB for most of 10th, even before our myriad of (deserved) nerfs, so I stuck with that this time around. You certainly can bring two of them, and TJ Lanigan did just that at this very tournament, but that cuts into your wizard points and I’m addicted to my wizard points like you wouldn’t believe. What’s the point of playing Thousand Sons if I can’t sling spells around?
• I really like having four squads of rubrics, and I really like having the LoFL on a unit that’s in a squad. When the second doombolt is coming from the same squad that threw the first doombolt, that opens up the door for a double doombolt plus a double move back behind cover. The threat of doing 10 mortal wounds to anything in the middle with no reprisal is a significant one, and is always something that your opponent is going to have to think about before they come out to hold that middle. I know that a lot of players bring the LoFL on an Exalted Sorcerer on Disc, and that’s perfectly viable too and even a little more flexible. I would probably do that in a list that brought lower cabal points (I had 20)
• All of the rubric weapon loadouts were the same. 3 flamers, 1 soulreaper cannon, and a hand flamer on the leader. Even with sustained hits, bolters are just not as good as flamers. Flamers give you a ton more value where you need it and have incredibly threatening overwatch. Our units are expensive, so getting multiple activations of value out of them (shooting and overwatch) is super important for us. 
• I really like Chaos Spawn. They move fast(ish), they hit hard(ish), and they’re difficult(ish) for the opponent to kill. At 65 points, I really try to fit at least one squad in my Thousand Sons lists. 
• Some lists are cutting the Disc Sorcerers (Exalted on Disc and Tzaangor Shaman for me), and I think that’s a mistake. They’re so good. An Exalted on Disc can double move into your opponent’s DZ, score you behind enemy lines, doombolt one unit, flame another unit, proc Magnus’s indirect fire strat, and overwatch yet another unit. All for 115 points and some cabal resources. That’s insane value for just one guy. I really don’t love the Tzaangor Shaman and would rather have a second Exalted, but points are where they are and I had to make some cuts after this last round of big nerfs.
• While we’re at it, let’s talk about the Tzaangor Shaman. I originally didn’t bring him and had 19 cabal points plus five trash units, but I swapped one of them for the Shaman. Why? 20 Cabal Points is a pretty good breakpoint. That’s 5 for a double move, 6 for Magnus’s free strat, 7 for a doombolt, and 2 left over for a save reroll. Then after you send the Tzaangor Shaman to die for the indirect fire stratagem, you’ll still have 19 left over for the double doombolt and then move play. Without the Shaman, I would’ve had to send the Exalted on Disc for that play, which would leave me with 17 cabal left. 17 cabal is good enough for two double moves and a doombolt, but have I told you about how much I love my wizard points? 

Setting Expectations

For me, the most important part of tournament prep is setting expectations for what I want to get out of the tournament. This is my fifth (or fourth, or sixth, somewhere in there), LVO. I went 4-2 last year and have gone 3-3 each year before that. For this LVO, I decided that I wanted to shoot for a 4-2 record. 

More important than my win-loss record, I wanted to do my best to have great games with great opponents. Being a good sportsman is far more important to me now than winning is, and I wanted to center my mindset around that over getting the W. But it wasn’t always like that! I am a very competitive player by nature. Recognizing that part of myself and decoupling my win loss record from my enjoyment of the event was a huge breakthrough for me and I have had better games and better tournaments ever since. 

Matchup knowledge is also a huge part of tournament prep, and I knew that there were some matchups that are either so bad for me, or that I don’t know enough about, that I accept the risk of pairing into them and just insta-losing. GSC is one of those. Allegedly Thousand Sons is good into GSC, but I don’t know that matchup so I was prepared to lose if I got paired into it. Bridgehead Guard is another of those. I haven’t played against it and don’t think that I could screen it well enough to avoid some unfavorable trades. That’s not to say that matchups like this are unwinnable, just that I’m unlikely to win them without the right preparation. It’s important to accept that you’re going to lose sometimes! 

A Word on Deployment

I think deployment is a crucial part of 40k that most players don’t think enough about. Tons of games are won and lost at deployment. At most modern 40k tournaments, you’ll know the terrain layouts ahead of time and I highly recommend that you have a plan for how to deploy on them. When I deploy, I think about:

• Where do units want to be two turns from now?
• Who needs to be in an aura to be effective?
• Can I get shot on turn 1 if I go second? If so, am I ok losing those units “for free”?
• Which units are going to secure my natural expansion and which are going to deny my opponent’s?

With my list specifically, deployment was pretty consistent. Ahriman’s rubrics cover a flank with cultists, usually near my natural expansion. Another unit of cultists sits right on the line in the center, ready to run up if I pull area denial, secure no man’s land, or cleanse as secondaries, with a spot behind a wall that they can retreat to if I go second. The super flamer rubric squad deploys in the most forward protected position to threaten as much of the board as possible. The double casting rubric squad hangs back in a central spot because I don’t use the MVB aggressively so they’re going to get a 36” casting range. Magnus deploys wherever is safe and in space that won’t be used by other squads. The Umbralefic Crystal rubric squad can flex deploy based on how threatened they’re going to be. 

Alright, alright, enough preamble. Let’s get into the games!

Round 1: Jonathan Bubley’s World Eaters (Win, 100-21)

Jonathan’s List (Vessels of Wrath): Angron, a Defiler, a Helbrute, 10 Berzerkers w/Kharn, 10 Berzerkers w/MOE, Invocatus (Avocado) w/3 Eightbound, 2×3 Exalted Eightbound, some Jakhals

Jonathan and I had an incredibly easygoing and fun game together. I could immediately tell when I met him that he was just there to roll dice and have fun, which is awesome. 

Looking at his list, I was fairly sure going into it that I could just prioritize damage and win the game by tabling him and scoring later. Without Rhinos to protect the Berzerkers, they’re fairly vulnerable to getting indirected off the table by Magnus. Doombolts can handle Angron and the Defiler in a pinch and regular rubric shooting will take down the eightbound. I needed to be careful about positioning and screens, but felt that I was firmly in the driver’s seat if I could pull that off. We played Mission A, which is a standard take and hold mission without any frills. 

Going into deployment, he deep struck the two Exalted Eightbound which left him with a bit less pressure on the table. I did my standard deployment, but strung the cultists out a little more than usual to cover some ground for screening in case he went first. He deployed in his deployment zone but fairly aggressively, likely hoping for a first turn scout into advance and charge.

I ended up winning the roll-off to go first. His army was fairly out in the open so I full sent everything that I could to strike a crippling blow. The LoFL squad double doombolted Angron and the super flamer finished him off. Magnus moved up to slide a wingtip around a ruin, which wiped one of the Berzerker squads with Kharn. The rest of my army moved up to capitalize if he sent it into me on his T1. He did send Avocado and the boys up into a rubric squad, but I heroically intervened the MVB into them for the flat 4 damage attacks, which meant that he couldn’t activate the full squad into the rubrics and had to hit the MVB with two of them instead. In return, the MVB fully wiped the Eightbound. That combat shouldn’t always go that well but hey, sometimes it does.

The rest of the game was essentially locked up after that, and I moved up with all the damage that Tzeentch could muster to knock him off the table. A highlight was Angron coming back on T3, which he could only rapid ingress within sight of both the LoFL squad and the super flamer. So it was written, so it shall be. Time is a flat circle. The squads did their thing and we shook hands after that. Huge props to my opponent for staying positive and fun through what was essentially getting brutally tabled throughout the game. 

Round 2: Tim Ho’s Chaos Knights (W, 92-42)

TIm’s List (Traitoris Lance): 12 War Dogs and some nurgle. 1 Stalker, 1 Executioner, 5 Brigands, 5 Karnivores, 3×3 Nurglings, Poxbringer

Tim was a great guy to play against. He flew all the way to Vegas from New Zealand for LVO, with a short pit stop in Hawaii for a GT there! He was also a fairly experienced player and had played against TSons multiple times, which is always a benefit for both players given how many tricks we have. 

I’m fairly confident going into War Dog spam with TSons. We can clear a huge amount of his army with our tools. Double doombolt kills one per turn (ish), the super flamer kills one per turn (ish), Magnus kills two per turn if he charges, and the crystal squad + Ahriman’s squad can kill at least half a knight per turn each, more if the knight is on an objective. My game plan was to table him and score what I could while doing it (there’s a recurring theme here). We played mission C, which is also fairly no frills hold and score mission. 

After a standard deployment, I went first. I played my usual game of “kill what I can see without reprisal”. This put pressure on him to come to me for fear of getting slowly tabled and losing on turn 4 or 5. The GW “can’t fight through walls” ruling did a lot of heavy lifting here, as I could position Rubrics moderately aggressively in the central ruins without worrying about them being charged unless he came all the way around to my side first. 

We mostly jockeyed for position on turns 1 and 2. A little doombolt and double move here, a little indirect there. Turn 3 was the major eventful turn of this game. He was feeling the pressure of losing a knight or two while only killing my cultists (through indirect fire) in return, so he tried to come out and make something happen. Unfortunately I was pretty well hidden so he could only really find one-ish Rubric squad to kill. 

On my next turn, I lined up my army for a go-turn, expecting to kill ~4 knights. I lined up backups for each squad in case I spiked down and didn’t finish any knights where I expected to. Sometimes the dice go your way though, and each unit that I lined up into a knight got the kill exactly, down to the wound. I ended up killing 5 of his 9 or 10 remaining knights. There was really no recovering after losing half his army, and I mopped up the remaining knights for the rest of the game. The highlight was a regular Rubric squad (ie not the super flamer and not Ahriman’s +1 to wound squad) doing 8 wounds to a knight in overwatch. Flamers, man. They’re a hell of a drug. 

Round 3: Robin Roberts’s Genestealer Cults (Loss, 50-96)

Robin’s list (Host of Ascension): Honestly, I still don’t really know. A bunch of 20-man squads with attached characters, a few units of bikes, a few units of trash, and a mortar that stayed in the backfield and handed out bonus AP to his army.

Remember when I said that I would just lose if I ended up playing Bridgehead or GSC? Yeah, me too. Sometimes you accept a certain risk when you go into a tournament unprepared for a specific matchup, and sometimes that risk doesn’t go your way. 

Robin was a gracious, albeit merciless, opponent. He thoroughly beat my ass while happily helping me improve in the matchup after the round. Just for clarity, I specifically asked him to help me improve my game into GSC, it’s not like he just ripped a “here’s what you can do better” after beating me.

Going into the matchup, I didn’t (and to some extent still don’t) understand what GSC does. I know that they’re T3 and very squishy and I have flamers though, so surely it isn’t all bad? I know the general idea of wait out their drops and then play the game, but man I misplayed this one in quite a few different ways. I let him cut really hard angles with his 20-man squads to where he could only see one of my flamer rubrics, which gave up my best advantage (overwatch) in this matchup. I also forgot that he can jump back into reserves for a CP after he gets shot, so I lined up Magnus plus a rubric squad to kill a big squad but I activated Magnus first, giddily thinking “hell yeah quad blast”. He lost a few dudes, popped back into deep strike, and I was a very sad pile of dust. 

Looking back, there was definitely a path to winning this game, but I couldn’t see it at the time. I’m very inexperienced against GSC and my opponent knew his army inside and out. It turns out, he has actually been the number one GSC player in the world for the last three years, which did make me feel better about the loss! After the game, he told me that TSons hard counters GSC. Well guess what friend, not when I’m at the wheel.

Thus ends day 1 of LVO! I was 2-1, most of my teammates were 2-1, everybody’s happy to be in Vegas, and times are good. They also posted pairings in the evening, so I knew that I would play Necrons in the first game the next day. 

Round 4: Joshua Suarez’s Necrons (W, 96-54)

Joshua’s list (Canoptek Court): Blast from the past! 2 wraith bricks w/technomancers, two units of immortals (10 and 5) w/Plasmamancers, Illuminor Szeras, a C’tan, two Doomstalkers, and various chaff.

Day 2 begins! Josh was a really fun and cool opponent. He’s only been playing the game for just over six months, but he has the right ideas about tournament play and I’m confident that he’ll do well in future tourneys. He has the skill and the right mindset. He was consistently stating his intent, measuring his angles and checking with me to make sure that we agree, and generally doing all the collaborative things that you want in a competitive game. 

That said, when he rocked up to the table and opened with “I have never played against Thousand Sons in my life”, I knew it would be a tough game for him. There’s just too much that TSons can do to absorb all in one game and play around for the first time. I did my best to summarize the key tricks and most powerful combos, but I’m sure it’s like drinking from a firehose to understand the staggering combination of options available. I told him just before the game started, “This is the most important thing to remember. I know that your list is a very tanky, defensive style of list. You’re probably used to stat checking people. If you stat check me, I WILL pass. I have the damage to kill you more than most other lists out there. If you try to just sit in the middle of the table, you will die.”

So anyway, the Necrons stat checked me in the middle of the table and died. Seriously, that’s most of the summary of the game. We were playing Purge the Foe (ugh) and I went first (ugh), so I thought right away it was going to be an uphill battle. Nothing of note really happened on turn 1. Turn 2, I failed to kill a unit of his because I was too scared of the doomstalkers so I went for a double doombolt and move behind cover play that didn’t work out. On his turn 2, he said “I need to make something happen here” and moved his army into the middle of the table. He did get kill/kill more that turn, but I don’t think that it was worth it there. 

On my turn 3, I turned on Magnus’s -1 damage buff and sent the army at him as he was now sitting out in the open. I killed a good chunk of his army but avoided putting damage into the wraiths since I wasn’t going to get through them all. Magnus shot and charged Szeras and then piled into one of the Wraith squads so that it couldn’t effectively engage anything else. He spent most of his remaining assets killing Magnus and a rubric squad or two, but the rest of the dusty boys were able to clean up after that. After the game he asked me about strategy, and we had a great talk about how good going second on Purge the Foe is. You can just do nothing and win by reacting to exactly what your opponent does. 

Round 5: Thomas Moore’s Ultramarines (W, 83-77)

Thomas’s List (Gladius Task Force): Bobby G, Calgar + Company Heroes, 2 Repulsor Executioners, 2 Vindicators, various Space Marine units (Reivers, Infiltrators, Sternguard, Scouts, Intercessors), and a Lone Op Lt.

Man, these last two rounds were some of the most enjoyable 40k games that I’ve ever played. I love it when you get that positive read on your opponent and you know that you’re in for a hard fought but very fair and collaborative game. Thomas was a killer opponent and I would play him again any day of the week. He was an absolute gentleman in every sense of the word. By the end of the game, we weren’t even really crossing over to each other’s side of the table. We would just ask each other for the measurements and movement of each other’s units and we would collaborate on what was possible and what wasn’t. I love it. 

Matchup wise, I think TSons are pretty good into marines, so I felt confident going in. Not overwhelmingly so, but that I definitely had the edge. We played mission N (The Ritual) and I was going second, which helped my confidence quite a bit. I could just deploy behind walls and do nothing and win the game by a few points at the end, which is pretty much how this game went. I think 40% of my army ended the game in the same spot that it deployed in. 

Turns 1 and 2, not much happened. I killed some of his little units that he had sent out to score points while losing nothing in return and still scoring primary from behind walls near my deployment zone thanks to how fun and interactive The Ritual is. Around turn 3, he read the writing on the wall and knew that he had to start taking some risks in order to not just lose by a few points at the end. He sent out Calgar’s unit to try to bang a long charge, which they did not make. That left them wide out in the open to get killed “for free” in my turn. I think that trying the charge was definitely the right play for the situation, sometimes you just have to play to your outs and take the risk. When you have a 30% chance to win if you make the risky play, but a 100% chance to lose if you don’t do it, which of those two options is really riskier? 

The highlight of the game, from my perspective at least, was when he drew and didn’t discard Recover Assets on turn 4. Man, I hate that secondary. He tried to accomplish it with his Lone Op Lt that was surrounded by a unit of infiltrators. This was the Lt that also has a reactive move if I came within 9”. I picked up my teleporting Rubric squad, deep struck them 12” away from the infiltrators, then double moved them up through cabal while staying outside of his 9” reactive move. A doombolt and a hail of fire later, and he got stuck with the unscored secondary going into turn 5. That meant he could only draw two more new secondaries instead of three (through the discarding secondaries stratagem), which was the final nail in the coffin, and I won a close game by sitting in my deployment and doing nothing while going second. Isn’t The Ritual a great mission? 

Round 6: Tice Damigo’s T’au (Win, 80-75)

Tice’s list (Mont’ka): 3 crisis suits w/commanders (one was Farsight), 2×2 broadsides, 3 units of stealth battlesuits, 2×10 breachers in Devilfish transports, and various trash units (kroot, fireblades, pathfinders)

This was a real nail biter against a stellar opponent. All of the ways that I described my round 5 opponent (Thomas) apply here to Tice equally. This was such a fun game with intentions clearly communicated and measurements all agreed on in advance. Much like round 5, we eventually stopped physically walking around the table for a lot of incidental moves. Once you build the trust, 40k really can be an incredibly collaborative game. This game description will be just a little more detailed than the others because this was such a close one.

I felt very 50/50 about my chances going into the game. I needed a lot of hand holding about what his army does, since I haven’t played against Tau since somewhere deep in the depths of the beginning of 9th edition. Tice was super helpful about helping me do threat assessment of his army, which really helped us both understand the game dynamic better. I knew that Mont’Ka does incredible damage in the first 3 turns of the game and falls off later, so my general game plan was to wait him out and fight him later while taking whatever he gave me through angles and doombolt+moving.

Well, that plan flew completely out the window when he rapid ingressed a crisis suit and leader unit onto the middle objective on turn 2 since I didn’t screen it and was just sitting behind walls doing nothing. Shit. Plan change. Honestly after five and a half rounds, I just plain didn’t see the play coming and didn’t set up to defend against it. Luckily I’m still Thousand Sons so I double moved the super flamer out of cover and into the middle to handle the crisis suits with some doombolt assistance, but I wasn’t set up to kill them so I could only get the bodyguards, leaving the Commander alive. This meant that Tice was up on primary, had bottom of turn, and had a commander sitting in the middle of the board ready to mess me up going into his turn. On his turn 2, he easily killed my super flamer squad and some of my other trash that I had used to deny his primary. I was firmly on the back foot and ready to lose that game off the back of that mistake. 

On my turn 3, I knew that I was down and had to change the gamestate in order to not lose. I drew behind enemy lines and assassinate. I contemplated both standard ways to get BEL (send a disc sorcerer or send the teleporting rubrics), but that would just preserve my assets while I slowly lose the game. I needed to send my army, otherwise I’ll just lose a close game. So I sent it. I double moved Magnus into his deployment zone to score BEL, doombolt a Kroot character, and kill a squad of crisis suits. This would also put Magnus squarely in his deployment zone to pull his army back on turn 3, his final turn of operating at Mont’Ka level efficiency. I moved the MVB onto the center objective, hoping that he wouldn’t have enough to kill them both (he didn’t). I sent the teleporting rubric squad to also double move (thank you LoFL) onto his natural expansion and sit behind the wall, denying his primary. Ahriman and friends held my own natural expansion, letting me sit on all mid-board objectives if my plan works. It’s a risk but it had to be done after how I played my turn 2.

His turn 3, he killed Magnus but didn’t have much firepower leftover to kill more of my army. It worked! I was still down on assets, but up on board position. I traded Magnus’s life for one turn of primary and board position, and that turned out to be enough to keep me just ahead. I held on for dear life for the rest of the game and scored every point possible while getting killed left and right. 

In the end, the game came down to the very final play at the end of turn 5 (his turn). After calculating the primary that he was about to score at the end of the game, I was up by 5 but he had Assassinate and No Prisoners. He was out of CP. He managed to charge a lone Farsight into my Tzaangor Shaman, which would give him seven points (five for Assassinate and two for No Prisoners) if the Shaman dies and won him the game. I had 3 CP left, which gave me a save reroll and the blank a damage stratagem as outs. With four attacks hitting on 2’s, wounding on 2’s, and getting through a 6++ invul and the “blank a damage” strat, it’s pretty close on whether or not the Shaman dies to that combat. We were hyped that this was it, the last clutch play of a very tight game. He gripped his dice, threw them into the tray…….and rolled four 1’s to hit. Sometimes, Tzeentch smiles upon us. 

We hugged it out after that, both really happy to have such a fun and close final game of the tournament. He took it all in stride, talking about some plays and positioning mistakes earlier in the game that let me score extra points throughout, so he didn’t blame the final roll for the end result. Like I said, truly an amazing competitor. 

Final Thoughts

And that’s the tournament! I ended up going 5-1 and in 58th place, my best LVO performance ever. More importantly, I had six amazing and fun games against great opponents. 

If any of you reading this are considering going to a tournament for the first time, I highly recommend it. The game is in a really good spot right now competitively where tons of different armies and playstyles are all viable. And there are some really cool players out there to throw dice with. A local RTT is a great place to start if you want to dip a toe in. 

May the Changer of Ways bless your rolls! 

Mike Note

This got me hyped to get back to playing Thousand Sons! What a cool army, and Nick showed that despite its reputation as a draining army to play with or against, you can have consistently great games if you approach your games the right way.

I’ve been very hesitant to allow guest posts because I wanted to maintain a very consistent level of quality here at Warphammer. I don’t put out content very often, but the tradeoff is that whenever someone sees something from Warphammer, they know it will be really well done and fun. Seeing Nick put together one of the best tourney reports I’ve seen in a while was really encouraging, and I’ll be more willing to trust other people to put together high quality content too. Guest reports won’t replace or delay any content I’m personally working on, but they’ll be a fun addition, especially to cover armies that I’m personally not playing recently.

A BIG thank you to Nick for joining us today, and hope it gets you more excited to play your own Thousand Sons and go have fun at tournaments!