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.
UPDATE 5/14
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.