Heresy Era Thousand Sons – Out with the old, in with the new!

With all the awesome news and pics of all the Thousand Sons goodness coming out of the Heresy Weekender, it is time to re-evaluate the army. As with most projects there's usually some little thing that's nagged at me about them - In the case of the recent incarnation of the army, it's that the bases don't match up with the ones I've used on the Prospero Spireguard. However, I recently found a caster who does some rather awesome bases that match up nicely with the Spireguard and I picked up a whole mess of 'em. Of course that means the logical thing to do is throw out all the effort on the last take on the Sons and start again, right?


The next incarnation of my Thousand Sons will be a late-heresy force. I'm envisioning an army set post-Prospero but prior to the Rubric of Ahriman, where the legion is beginning to unravel both figuratively and literally - a bit more flamboyance in the bling, a bit more in the way of mutations showing up, and the influences of the Primordial Annihilator beginning to make their mark as they've done with the other three chaos god-aligned legions in the later stages of the heresy. Leading the charge on the new force is the first of two Veteran Squads (as I'm quite liking what I'm hearing on how they'll function in the upcoming book), using a mix of the new plastic Rubric Marines, backpacks from the Betrayal at Calth set, and Achean shoulder pads from FW.


The sorcerers for the force I sort of envisioned in increasing levels of craziness. This mostly-reasonable chap will be the L1 variant. A little blinged out and with some subtle Tzeentchian iconography but otherwise fairly 'normal'.


I quite like the Corvidae/Divination cult, so the second-level sorcerer really pushes the bird theme, as though the cult ethos is starting to make itself apparent on the form of the armour. Both of the cloaked backpacks are just held on with blu-tac and the moment and will be painted separately.


Lastly I wanted an interesting centerpiece Praetor for the force. The as-yet-unnamed leader of the army lost his legs in the Burning of Prospero, but rather than submitting to bionics he uses his considerable telekinetic powers to hold himself aloft. This model was a blast to build, and is based on the lower half of the new Changeling model, I knew as soon as I saw it that I had to build a sorcerer using the bits!

Next up on the building mat are the second squad of Veterans, and then the first of two twenty-man tactical squads. They'll be a bit more reserved overall, using the Mk.IV Calth bodies, and the FW Achean upgrade shoulders and heads, but I'll need to make another FW order to get all the relevant bits for the second twenty dudes. Of course with all the amazing new kits they've shown off over the last couple days at the Weekender I have a feeling I'll be making several orders for new kits over the next few months!