Heresy Era Thousand Sons - The March To Godhammer

The fine folks over at the Tempus Fugitives have released the initial mission pack for the campaign weekend in March - "Hammer of the Gods". Set on the recently-rediscovered Machine World of Godhammer, several factions will battle for supremacy over the planet. The weekend will consist of a number of battles both on the surface, and on/around the series of space elevators known as Skyhooks, with the results of the battles affecting the outcome of subsequent battles (and as I understand it, subsequent campaign weekends set on the same planet).

That said, I pulled all the Thousand Sons out to see exactly where things stand, and decide what I wanted to take for the campaign weekend. I was pleased to note that I'm well past the half-way point on getting the army painted!

 

The first mission outlined in the campaign pack is the "Skyhook" mission, in which small forces (1000pts) vie for control of the space elevators, which will allow for easier deployment of the ground assault force missions subsequently. There are some restrictions to the army choices however:

• Only units entering play via Deep Strike may be held in reserve. 
• The following units may be used in a Skyhook battle without any additional rules – Jetbikes; Jump Infantry; Jet Infantry; Beasts; Skimmers 
• The following units may be used in a Skyhook battle but suffer from the ‘unstable footing’ special rule – Infantry; Heavy Infantry; Bike Infantry; Cavalry; Monstrous Creatures; Walkers.
• Your Skyhook army may NOT include flyers, units with Structure points, Gargantuan Creatures or any Apocalypse Formations. Vehicles detailed only in Forge World's Imperial Armour publications may be used. If a vehicle is described in more than one publication the most recent version must be used.
• UNSTABLE FOOTING: Models affected by this rule must take a Dangerous Terrain test at the start of each turn. Wounds suffered cause Instant Death. This represents the rapidly moving and unstable platform on which they are fighting slipping from beneath them and pitching them headlong over the edge.

Unfortunately, my Thousand Sons are more of a heavy assault force, with most units either not allowed for use in the Skyhook game (Tanks primarily), or subject to the Unstable Footing rule. That said, my initial run at a thousand point list that was as little affected by Unstable Footing ended up pretty thin:

I'm not 100% sold on this list - while it utilized the Assault Vets and Jetbikes, it does feel a bit too "all the eggs in one basket" for my tastes, so I may cut down on the Vets a bit and add in some regular Tactical marines to give the list some flexibility (at the risk of more models plummeting to their doom each round).

The second mission type is "Invasion Team Battles" wherein two players join forces, each bringing 2000 points following the standard FOC, though one player on the team may include a single Superheavy. As I have a Falchion (legion Shadowsword) in the works, I'm hoping I can find a suitable partner for this portion of the event, though I'll be making a second list sans Superheavy. In the meantime, the list looks like this:

Alternately, instead of playing a doubles game, one of the options is to take a single 4000 point army including a single superheavy, so I took a pencil to it and came up with a first cut at the Big List:

Pretty much uses up every model that I've build for the Thousand Sons so far, with the exception of Magnus the Red, and a pair of Contemptor Dreadnoughts. I'm waiting to find out what the FOC restrictions are for the 4000 point option however. If it's designed such that I need to essentially build two separate 2000 point armies I won't be able to do it as I don't have the mandatory 4 Troops choices. I could get around it by building another ten Tactical marines and running them as four separate ten man squads, but I'm hoping to avoid buying and building any more models for the army. On the other hand, it may behoove me to just focus on doing the 2000 point game - that way there's less that I need to finish painting, as well as fewer models to have to package and send across the ocean risking damage or loss...

Given the above 4000 point list as the options from which I may pick and choose for the Skyhook or Invasion Team missions, I'd be happy to receive any suggestions about alternate army selections for those missions!