It's 2017! Omigosh, when did that happen?

Time ... just flies. Really fast.

Thank God I managed to make time couple nights back for a game with my Thousand Sons. I used a funky experimental list that's quite scary for myself - not so much for my opponents:

Thousand Sons War Cabal
Ahriman
Exalted Sorcerer Sekmet, w ML3 Astral Grimoire and Seer's Bane
Sorcerer Soreth, w ML2 and Mark of Tzeentch
5 Scarab Occult Terminators, w heavy warpflamer
    in a Land Raider dedicated transport
18 Rubric Marines
Heldrake
Predator - tri-las

1850 pts

It's got 12+d6 warp charge dice and is a tiny army at 1850 points. I frankly had no idea how to use this list, but the thought of 18 Rubric Marines plus 3 high powered sorcerers (not including the Aspiring Sorcerer in the squad itself) flying around like jump infantry is really cool.

My opponent fielded a Deathwatch + Ultramarines list. I think he had:

Watchmaster
10 Deathwatch marines
5 Deathwatch bikes
Deathwatch Venerable Dreadnought
3 five-man Tactical squads in 3 drop pods
3 five-man Terminator squads
Land Speeder Typhoon

He was quite shocked to find that he actually outnumbered me - apparently that doesn't happen too often.

Lucky for me, we rolled Purge the Alien, and I had precious few Kill Points to give away.

The game ended in a 9-6 win for the Thousand Sons. Some thoughts and highlights:

• It was quite amusing to bubble-wrap my Predator with a horde of Rubrics, a job normally left to cultists and other such undesirables. In any case, I didn't do a good job with it and the Predator was alpha-striked by drop pod borne marines.
• 18 Rubrics plus 3 independent character sorcerers are deadly! That squad wiped out 2 Tactical squads and 2 Terminator squads in close combat (it helps that the Exalted Sorcerer has Seer's Bane), plus another Tactical squad and Terminator squad with magic and shooting.
• On the other hand, even this big squad is no match in close combat with uber-cc specialists like the Watchmaster.
• My excitement with the heavy warpflamer has waned considerably after my opponent learnt not to close with the Occult Terminators. Time to find the extra points for the soulreaper autocannon.

The game went to maximum turns, which turned out to be a bad thing for Ahriman, who was slain in close combat by the Watchmaster in the very last assault phase. He was very lucky to last that long. Thousand Sons scored Linebreaker, while the loyalist scum scored First Blood and Slay the Warlord.

By the end of the game, the Thousand Sons were left with only 4 Rubrics, 1 Occult Terminator, the Land Raider, and the Heldrake. I lost every single sorcerer.

The loyalist scum only had the Watchmaster and 3 Drop Pods left on the table.

It was bloody game indeed. Khorne is pleased.

While this list was fun to play, I don't think it would have done very well in a Maelstrom or most objective-based mission. There's simply not enough flexibility and not enough units.

But hey, at least Khorne is cool with it.