1,000 Sons

What Am I Going To Do With All Of These Sons!?

There are literally 1,000 of them.

I can't decide if I want to paint them like Thousand Sons.  Here's my debacle -- GW has officially pronounced that other chapters have created rubric marines.  I acquired the new Ahriman model for 18 dollars.  But I have red marines.  Ambiguously red kinda/sorta Word Bearers marines.  Therefore, I intend to simply run the Rubrics (with Ahriman occasionally) as a Thousand Sons detachment that is only Thousand Sons in name.  The sticking point is Ahriman, because I feel lame for having my cake and eating it too.  On the other hand, the Thousand Sons did originally wear red...

Not bad for 55% off.

I didn't even intend to acquire a mono-tzeentch army.  It just kind of happened via trades and bargain bin acquisitions.  They're not flashy new plastic rubric marines and whatnot.  They're old mono-posed metal marines combined with some paint-stripped multi-part plastic and metal rubrics of the previous mark.  Several of them required a little TLC to make field-able again.  I'm not sure what paint the previous owner used on one batch of them, because not even denatured alcohol could completely get the paint off.

Serviceable as an Aspiring Sorceror, right?

Here's the real clever bit though.  Everybody loves the new and expanded weapon options for the rubric squads.  In particular, which 40k player do you know that doesn't appreciate a nice mini gun equivalent?  But how does one represent a Soulreaper Cannon without hunting down those overpriced bits that are probably a little too large on my elderly rubric marines?  I think you'll agree that my FW rotor cannons work pretty darn well!  They're just the right size from the looks of it.

"Soulreaper Cannons"

I also ordered a baggy of warpflamers (which are in far greater abundance than the soulreaper cannons out in the wild) for a song.  Once again, David came to the rescue by gifting me some Blood Angels hand flamers to use as a basis for warpflame pistols.

Don't judge my "warpflame pistols".  It's not like Chaos is
in to "standard issue".

...besides, I've got actual warp flamers.
How many are appropriate in a squad do you think?

There, that's all sorted!  Now I've got all of these rubric marines, but who will lead them?  I managed to convert one sorceror using a combination of left over rubric bits, marine with missile launcher arm, tzeentch aspiring champion head and an old chaos marine sword that I think you'll agree is a pretty believable aspiring sorcerer conversion.

Next up, David was generous enough (after buying Burning of Prospero and then suddenly winning a second copy!) to gift me with the 30k version of Ahriman.  There's aspiring sorceror number 3 sorted.

Two Ahrimans in one army.  Even though he's the 30k
version I intend to convert him a bit.

With all of my acquired rubric marines and parts and 3 sorcerers, I magically have 27 models to use as squads of rubric marines.  A multiple of 9, hmm...perhaps this was fated to happen.  After perusing my models that I own, I have the following to make up a Tzeentch themed contingent:

• HQ
• 1 Tzeentchian daemon prince
• 1 "Could be anything" daemon prince
• 1 Chaos Sorceror in Terminator armour
• Ahriman
• 1 Gaunt Summoner
• Who I feel makes an amazing stand-in for The Changeling
• 1 Ogroid Thaumaturge who is a convincing "on foot" Daemon Prince
• Assorted Silver Tower Kairic Acolytes
• Which I feel make pretty cool Heralds of Tzeentch
• Troops
• 27 Rubric Marines (with 3 aspiring sorcerors to go around) with a combination of potential warp flamers and soulreaper cannons
• 10 Pink Horrors of Tzeentch (shout out to Joe for the old daemons battleforce box)
• 2 "pink horrors" serving as Iridescent Horrors (because they're bigger) from the Warhammer Quest: The Silver Tower box, 4 blue horrors and 4 stands of brimstone horrors.
• This gives me enough horrors to split them up in to two squads of 1 Iridescent, 5 pink, 2 blue and 2 brimstones for a total of 10 per unit, or combine them in to one large squad.
• 20 Chaos Cultists with autoguns/heavy stubbers
• 20 Chaos Cultists with autopistols/flamers
• Elites
• 3 Flamers of Tzeentch
• 3 Helbrutes, 2 of which have magnetized arms
• Fast Attack
• 15 Screamers of Tzeentch.
• They don't seem particularly cost efficient in 8th for what they do, but I acquired them in trade for 4 classic eldar warlocks that I picked up as a potential bargaining chip for trades...this is what I got.
• My reasoning was twofold: trade off the warlocks to prevent myself from starting an Eldar army and build out my available daemons, which could see improvements in the forthcoming daemon codex!
• 5 Chaos Spawn
• Heavy Support
• 1 Land Raider
• although it's sporting Word Bearers FW doors ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
• 1 Predator Annihilator
• liquidated from a local guy's Space Wolves army that I need to "chaos-up" a bit
• 1 Defiler
• shout out to Andrew for gifting me this fellow
• 1 Forgefiend
• Flyers
• 1 Heldrake
• Dedicated Transports
• 2 Rhinos

It burnssss ussss!

I might be forgetting a unit or two.  I dont' have any Tzaangors (other than the 6(?) from Silver Tower), which don't feel necessary, but I like them.  Minimum unit size is 10, sadly.

As you can see, this is enough stuff that calling it the "beginnings" of a Tzeentch army seems silly.  I'm well past that point already.  The thing is, I just kind of acquired most of this stuff through trades or on the cheap over time.  I believe it amounts to about 3,000ish points in Matched Play.

What paint did they use one some of these!?
This is AFTER stripping...

It's worth mentioning that some of these models also serve in my non-aligned "main" chaos army as well as components of a similar and unintended Death Guard force.  Hence the painting conundrum.  For example, I don't want to own more than 2ish Chaos Rhinos.  It seems silly.  I intend to find a neutral, ambiguous paint scheme for my rhinos so that I can use them in my mono-Nurgle or mono-Tzeentch armies and still make sense within the paint scheme of my larger Word Bearers army.

Almost all of these models that weren't acquired 2nd hand were either cost-effective as part of a starter box, battleforce, or completely free due to trades or whatever.  The parts I purchased for the rubrics were simply because I realised what else I had!  The only thing that I legitimately paid top dollar for was the Forgefiend.  Even the Heldrake was a sneaky acquisition (although still not assembled) when I realized that there would an influx in them available online due to Stormcloud Attack.

Five bucks and a lot of paint stripping/cleaning later...

Ultimately, this stuff was all still a pretty good chunk of change, but an equivalent force would cost substantially more.  You also have to take in to account all of the time I spent stripping paint, replacing broken parts, sourcing parts, shipping (although there tends to be a decent amount of free shipping on eBay if you're patient to wait for it).  The cost of entry in to 40k can be daunting, but there are ways to soften the blow.

...Now if only had them all built and playable.

Perhaps I should write an article on how I spun some daemons I acquired from a bargain bin in to an entire 3,000+ point Tyranid army.

Let me know what you think!