Thousand Sons Artillery Options

Think Thousand Sons don’t have any options for bringing artillery to the battlefield? Think again!

What counts as artillery?

The 40K universe has a wide range of options that could be considered “artillery.” For the purposes of this exercise, we’ll be examining options that meet the following criteria:

Must have a minimum range for 48”

Must be able to fire at units it cannot see

Now, even with these guidelines, there’s plenty of variations and roles for the different artillery in the game. To help compare apples to apples, we’ll also be breaking these down by a few different types.

Mortars

Mortars are intended for firing at large groups of infantry with a heavy amount of shots but with low AP. We’ll classify these as follows:

Has an AP of -1 or less

Has a Weapon Strength of 5 or less

Has a Weapon damage of 1

Typically 12 shots or more

Target profile: Cultist

Bunker Busters

Bunker Busters are heavy artillery, typically fired from vehicles, with an intended role of taking out enemy vehicles, fortifications, or heavily armored units such as monsters or beasts. How we classify these:

Has an AP of -3 or more

Has a Weapon Strength of at least 7

Has a Weapon damage of at least 3

Typically 6 shots or less

Target profile: Rhino

Hybrids

Hybrids sit in a gray zone between Mortars and Bunker Busters - designed for units with multi-wound models. They typically have the following profiles:

Has an AP between -1 and -3

Has a weapon strength of at least 6

Typically has a weapon damage of 2-3

Typically 6-12 shots

Target profile: Primaris Space Marine

What artillery options does Thousand Sons have access to?

Unfortunately, there’s no out-of-the-box artillery options for Thousand Sons. To get them, we either need to crack into the Forgeworld rules or bring some Renegades & Heretics as allies.

Here’s how the tree shakes out:

Unit Available by Type Shots Str AP Dmg Points Notes Hellforged Land Raider Achilles Forgeworld Bunker Buster 2D3 - 0 1 453 Mortal Wounds Hellforged Scorpius Forgeworld Hybrid 3D3 6 -2 2 217 Can fire twice Basilisk Renegades Bunker Buster D6 9 -3 D3 108 Colossus Bombard Renegades Hybrid 2D6 6 -2 D3 158 Ignores cover Earthshaker Battery Renegades Bunker Buster D6 9 -3 D3 115 Heavy Mortar Battery Renegades Hybrid D6 6 -1 D3 72 Heavy Quad Launcher Battery Renegades Mortar 4D6 5 0 1 97 Wyvern Renegades Mortar 4D6 4 0 1 103 Re-roll failed wounds Renegade Militia Weapon Team Renegades Mortar 2D6 4 0 1 62 Renegade Militia Heavy Weapon Team Renegades Mortar 6D6 4 0 1 48 Minotaur Artillery Tank Renegades Bunker Buster 2D6 9 -2 D3 280

Mortars

When it comes to getting mortars into a Thousand Sons army, the only way you’re going to do it is with Renegade allies. Thankfully some of these options end up being really cheap and easy to fit into something like a Spearhead.

Target: Cultists

Unit Shots BS Hits Wounds Unsaved Wounds Total Damage Dead Models ROI Renegade Militia Heavy Weapon Team 21 5+ 7 4.6 3.8 3.8 3 25% Wyvern 14 4+ 7 6.2 5.1 5.1 5 19.4% Heavy Quad Launcher Battery 14 4+ 7 4.6 3.8 3.8 3 12.3% Renegade Militia Weapon Team 7 4+ 3.5 2.3 1.9 1.9 1 6.4%

Winner: Renegade Militia Heavy Weapon Team

Hands down the most efficient Mortar option available are the heavy weapon teams. For just 48 points you can put a squad on the table. That means for just 169 points with a Renegade Commander, you can field a spearhead of these guys. That means on average you should be able to take out an entire 10-man Cultist squad. In competition terms, many ITC lists will run 19 Cultists to deny secondary points for Reaper. In those cases you’ve either wiped a small squad or cut into their morale.

Wyverns come in a distant second to the Heavy Weapon Team, where you’re paying extra for the heavy armor to protect your mortar asset. Even though the Wyvern is re-rolling all failed wounds, and indeed is more efficient once it hits, you’re just not getting the value back on the points you invested in it.

Bunker Busters

Bunker Busters are next up and these are not units you’re bringing to kill swaths of cultists with. These units are designed to sit back and break through the enemy fortifications.

Target: Rhino

Unit Shots BS Hits Wounds Unsaved Wounds Total Damage ROI Basilisk 4.4 4+ 2.2 1.4 1.2 2.4 66.6% Earthshaker Battery 4.4 4+ 2.2 1.4 1.2 2.4 62.6% Minotaur Artillery Tank 8.9 4+ 4.4 2.9 1.9 3.9 51.4% Hellforged Land Raider Achilles 4 3+ 2.6 2.6 2.6 2.6 31.7%

For this, we will only be calculating Roi based on the wounds dealt rather than the models killed. Because of this, Roi% will appear artificially higher than compared to how we calculated in Mortars. You should not attempt to compare Roi for these units to the Roi for Mortars or Hybrids

Winner: Basilisk

The Bunker Busters are an odd group. Right now in the meta, they don’t really have a spot where they make sense to take. Consider the winner here, the Basilisk, and that you’re going to just dent a Rhino with a few wounds on average. It’s really tough to justify putting those kind of points into something like this.

The Land Raider Achilles also is a weird unit, meant as a transport but can only fit 6 models The bombard fits our criteria as “artillery” but I think most of us would skip on the 400+ price tag to take one of these guys.

Lastly, you may want to note that the Minotaur is a super-heavy, which makes it even less likely to see the field coupled with it’s relative inefficiency.

Hybrids

Last, but not least, we come to the Hybrids. Not enough shots to really be good for mass infantry removal and not strong enough to be efficient at vehicle destruction. That puts them into a weird zone of taking on tough “elite” units such as Terminators.

Target: Primaris Space Marine

Unit Shots BS Hits Wounds Unsaved Wounds Total Damage Dead Models ROI Hellforged Scorpius 12 3+ 8 5.3 3.5 7.1 3 24.8% Colossus Bombard 7 4+ 3.5 2.3 1.5 3.1 1 11.3% Heavy Mortar Battery 3.5 4+ 3.5 1.75 1.1 0.5 1.1 0%

Winner: Hellforged Scorpius

As expected, being mediocre leaders to mediocre results. The Scorpius is by far, the best option here for a couple reasons.

It can take the Legion trait, which means it can benefit from “re-roll 1s to hit” It can be targeted by psychic powers, since it has the Heretic Astartes keyword It’s the most efficient at getting damage through, as seen in it’s ROI

If we apply the re-roll 1s, the ROI jumps to 33% and get you an additional dead marine. Still, you’re tasked with having to not move in order to get these results and losing just 3 marines in a round of shooting from one of these isn’t enough to really strike fear in the heart of your opponent.

The other options here suffer from a lack of BS, where hitting on 4s with a not-so-great number of shots leaves them in the do not take bucket.

Conclusions

If you’re playing Thousand Sons and you want some indirect fire in your army, you’ve got a couple options depending on what you want to target.

Infantry? Take some Renegade Heavy Weapon Teams MEQs? Take a Hellforged Scorpius or two

Want something to take on vehicles and heavy armor? Well, sadly, the Bunker Busters just aren’t going to solve that problem for you.

When I originally ran this article I incorrectly calculated Renegade mortar teams with a BS of 4+, where they have an actual BS of 5+. This did not have an effect on the overall results but does deflate a bit of their efficiency. The article has been updated with the correct values.

Please enable JavaScript to view the comments