Playing against Thousand Sons for the first time. What to expect?

Hey guys,

I stopped playing 40k during 7th edition since I did not like the rules at all and subsequently took a 4 year break from the game. Now with 8th edition released and a shiny new codex in my hands, I decided to once again lead my Dark eLdar army into battle. My first game of 8th edition will take place on saturday and it's going to be 1500 pts against Thousand Sons. I have zero knowledge about the army asides from having a bunch of Psykers in Power Armor. What can I expect? Which units are high priority targets? What should my general strategy be when facing them? Any help is welcomed!

I played against them for the first time at the London GT last weekend and got my arse kicked. I was utterly overwhelmed in the psychic phase due to having no psychic defence whatsoever. He also did pretty well in the shooting phase (one unit of Horrors putting out 90 shots with +1 to wound) and in hand to hand (Magnus). I'd even taken the Helm of Spite but they get various bonuses to their psychic tests which makes it really difficult to deny.

Hopefully someone with more experience against that army will be able to offer some good tactics for you.

Count Adhemar wrote:

I played against them for the first time at the London GT last weekend and got my arse kicked. I was utterly overwhelmed in the psychic phase due to having no psychic defence whatsoever. He also did pretty well in the shooting phase (one unit of Horrors putting out 90 shots with +1 to wound) and in hand to hand (Magnus). I'd even taken the Helm of Spite but they get various bonuses to their psychic tests which makes it really difficult to deny.

Hopefully someone with more experience against that army will be able to offer some good tactics for you.

Well, that doesn't sound good. Although my opponent is probably not going to field a GT level army against me. We specifically organized the game as an introduction to 8th edition and he has no experience against Dark Eldar. I was also thinking about taking Helm of Spite but my reasoning was, that a single deny roll against a whole army of Psykers is probably wasted anyways, so I decided on skipping it.

I played against them last night, and utterly decimated them.

It really depends on his psychic dice, and how well they utlize the overly long Psychic phase they will have.
But you will have a strength because Thousand Sons tend to be reasonably low model count, unless they take Tzaangor hordes, in which case they lack in ranged weapons.
The Helm is by no means a waste because of how it also causes Perils if you successfully deny. Its not much, but its enough for your opponent to be wary and try to avoid it.

My suggestion is to just focus fire. Take Raiders loaded with Kabalites with guns, add Splinter Racks, and just focus fire on specific units until they're gone. If they take Magnus, take that sucker down with sustained fire, because thats going to be a MASSIVE chunk of their army points.

I think the key might be to use the rules of things like smite against them. They can only attack the closest enemy. Good positioning and screening of your big guns like ravagers combined with aggressively engaging them with things like reavers and grotesques is probably the way to go.

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