Mutalith Vortex Beast Converted from a Ghorgon/ Cygor Kit

When I was building my Tzaangor, the Mutalith kit was out of stock at GW, so I made my own out of an old Ghorgon kit from AOS that I had laying in the bits box. Basically, I wanted him to be a big Tzaangor! Let's take a look at him!

Magnus the Red: Converted and Painted!

I have Magnus here painted and converted. Yes, the background is a little busy, but I am happy with the model overall.

Simple Tzaangor Conversions from Acolytes of Tzeentch

One of the best bangs for your buck when getting into either Thousand Sons or Disciples of Tzeentch is to pick up the Changecult box. In either game, Acolytes are pretty worthless, so let's make them into Tzaangor with a super easy conversion.

It Came from the Forums: Vonkessler and his mind blowing conversions, Titans and Much More!

TJ here with another edition of It Came from the Forums and this one is for the hobbyists that love HUGE, intense conversions and sick paint jobs. This is Vonkessler's expertise and I am about to make your dork endorphins go into overdrive with his incredible work. Let's take a look!

It Came from the GT!? Incredible Thousand Sons Cavalry!

One of the things I wanted to do when I went to the GT at Dropzone Games (and well any event I go to), was to cover some of the great, painted armies that people brought to the event. There were several great armies on hand (and the Best Painted will get a post of its own soon), but Dameon Green's army from Khepri's Eternal Legion really blew me away. First off, the display was really nice, but once you look at the army, you start to see some really exciting stuff. Let's take a closer look:

It Came From the Forums Update: Kolonel Grotsnik's Pre-Heresy Thousand Sons!

Old School Terminator here, checking in on the subject of a previous It Came From the Forums, Kolonel Grotsnik, previously featured for his Cybernetica and Grot Rebellion armies, the artist hinted at the potential for a Thousand Son army with a single model. Since then, the Forces of Prospero have come together in a VERY big way!

New Tomb Kings = Happy Thousand Sons/ Tzeentch Converters!!

 Old School here to talk about the "accidental" conversion opportunities that are now available due to the cross release of the Grey Knight and Tomb Kings books as well as just some general fun conversion opportunities for more traditional players who prefer their Thousand Sons as traitors!

This post will include some photos of the new Tomb King advance orders as well as some ideas I hope somebody will run with!

Chaos Space Marine Units and Tactics 2.4

Old School once again with another peice of the CSM army units and tactics: Troops article here. This post will focus on the Thousand Sons' rubrics and their aspiring sorcerors! As always, feel free to comment!
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"The Soulless" Thousand Sons My first true Chaos love were the Rubrics and truthfully, I still have a softspot for the 1K Sons! The sons excel at killing everyone's favorite armour, power armour.
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Simple Construction Building a Thousand son squad is fairly straight forward because all rubrics are the same. The question then becomes "How many". I prefer to take them in squads of 9 (including the sorc) mostly due to fluff, but also for the number of dead Marines I can create.

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The Sorceror Commands Every TSons squad is led by an aspiring sorceror who costs a whopping 60 points before giving him a power. What powers do I recommend? There are three that really stand out to me: Doombolt, Wind of Chaos and Bolt of Change.
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Bolt of change will give your squad the only means of anti-tank you can take in the squad, but for 25 points, a responsible commander should have another means of anti-tank tucked into the army somewhere, making this the least attractive option.
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Next is Wind of Chaos, which is very expensive, but can also do very well against elite armoured troops AND answers the horde dilema pretty well in close quarters. The only down side is the cost for me.
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I usually run with Doombolt because it gets me a couple more shots at 24" and compliments the Sons at Rapid Fire range as well. The low cast of DB also makes it attractive so you can add those points back into the army elsewhere.
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Other powers like Warptime and Gift of Chaos have their uses, but really aren't in my recommendations. A really dicey and fun (AND expensive) thing to do would be to use gift of Chaos with your sorcs and when you are out troop hunting, attempt to turn the enemy's powerfist/claw guy into a spawn, instantly locking his squad in assault with it (you better be lucky, but it could be funny and can save you from getting assaulted.) Warptime is a choice if you think (or for some reason) want your Sorc in CC. Remember that while he is hitting more, he also will not use his force weapon power due to him already taking his test for WT!
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Rolling Deep! Another important thing to remember is that if you are hunting Marines, then you will need to run 2 squads side by side. This is because a full squad in rapid fire range will hit an average of 12 times, causing about 6 wounds, killing six marines in the open. If they are cover, which they usually are these days, you will want that extra squads present to help keep the number of dead high and the assault potential low.
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What about rhinos? Rhinos add so much to the ability of TSons that they are mandatory! This also will allow slow and purposeful to be used to your advantage, allowing them to take troops in the open at 24 inches after disembarking. The first time this happens to an enemy, he will restrict his movements a little more and alter his plan (a chance for him to make mistakes and for you to implement your plan to the fullest). I recommend Extra armour or even Daenomic Possession for the Sons' rhinos as it is very important that they get to shoot the enemy.
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Lastly, I would like to add that Thousand Sons will always struggle against the A5 and A6 hordes (lots of bodies and they care not for AP3, they die to bolters too) because those armies tend to have a high volume of damage output either in the form of shooting or assault, while you will have a much lower volume of shooting and assault (no cc weapons) to deal with their numbers. This leads to a higher chance of failed saves and also to allocating wounds on sorcs. On the other side, you have a good chance (50/50) of surviving deadlier ordnance. Overall, the rest of your army will have to be very good at providing the mutual support needed to keep the Sons effective, I recommend other dedicated assault units nearby in case they get bogged down in CC and to help them push from target to target OR, revolving all your firing ability around the direction of where you rubrics are heading, though your enemy will most times make that very difficult.

Speed Painting with Quality 101 Pt. 1 (Thousand Sons example)

Alright, we all have those models in our army (or for some of us armies) that we have and barely use and we like to pretend we will take the time to paint some day. Well, I got sick of seeing my old Thousand Sons sitting around and I decided I would paint them, but that I wouldn't take a ton of time doing so (after all, I have a greater Plague Daemon and a Nurgle Prince to paint this weekend). Just because I am using Thousand Sons in my example, doesn't mean it couldn't be done with Ultrasmurfs or any number of armies out there, so maybe this could help you. Hopefully the hobby purists won't hang me for this!

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So I decided to try my hand at speed painting and in the process put a little tutorial together for those of you who don't have the time to sit and painstakingly paint every last model in your army but you want the to look good.

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The models were already primed black, but I of course don't want to sit around painting them blue so I found a color that was just a shade lighter than I wanted them to be when they were finished. In this case it was KRYLON PERIWINKLE BLUE SATIN FINISH (Ultramarine Blue is a decent equivilent.)

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Spay the models from about a foot and a half away as this stuff can be a little thick and pick a day where it is not too humid or rainy as it will cause the finish to look like a dried Mud flat. Don't freak out about the flash, it will be corrected before completion.

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With your Thousand Sons decked out in Periwinkle, now it is time to give them a very generous wash of Asurman Blue wash from GW. Use a good sized brush to slop it on and then brush the liquid wash downward across the model, forcing the dark blue to pool in creases and in areas where natural shadow should fall. Then let it dry (I did the spray and wash one night and then painted the next day).

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Next, I wanted to paint the trim its metallic gold color the 1k Sons are famous for. Now I could have easily done this with a brush, but with speed being the theme, I decided to use a metallic gold marker I found at Wal-Mart (they come in a pack with silver, blue, green, and magenta). I did all the trim, but the stripes in the head dress were done using paint, but that is in the next step. I was suprised by how well the gold looked coming from the marker and it is really the point where I figured that these models could look really good even for a very quick job.

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My next step was to bust out the Folk Art paints available in the entire color wheel and found at Wal-Marts and Hobby Lobby stores across America for pennies! I used Kings Gold and a very pointy brush to do the stripes on the Egyptian Headdress (took only two coats). The tabards were brushed over with Titanium White (very good at covering). I could have gotten away with one coat, but the second didn't cost me much time and it really pops.

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The last step of this tutorial is to wash the tabards with Gryphonne Sepia, once again brushing it to get into the folds and creases. At this stage, I have put a total of 2 hours and 40 minutes of actual labor time into this 9 man squad (which includes the aspiring sorceror) and I am actually impressed with the quality at this point. I am going to take an hour and twenty minutes Friday to paint the details (bolters, powerswords ect.) and then base the models. At this point, I will have completed a 9 man squad in 4 hours of actual painting. We will leave the final judgements to the second half of this tutorial, but I must stress that this could be done with almost any army, but especially ones that have colors in the same wheel as the GW washes ... So Ultra Marines could literally be done with these same colors, Salamander and orks could be done with greens, Blood angels with reds ect, ect.. While this may not be for everyone, I hope it proves useful to those hobbyists who have units they do not have the time or interest to perform epic level paint jobs on. As always, comments are more than welcome.