What Cult is the Best?
This is a question that gets asked a lot in the various Thousand Sons communities. The answer, as it always is with this community, is whichever one you have more fun with! However, this is speaking about competitive 40k. That means that players can, will, and should, min/max their armies and factions to the hilt. To that end, I have compiled a ranking of the various great cults, along with my explanation of why each cult is ranked where it is.
Ranking the Thousand Sons Series
This article is in my series about various aspects of the Thousand Sons. The links are below:
- Cabal Points
- Cults
- Discipline of Change
- Discipline of Vengeance
- Warlord Traits
- Relics
- Stratagems
#9 – Cult of Manipulation
I can’t figure out what we are trying to do here.
Overall, I can’t find anything here I would take. The power is niche, and even when you hit that niche it isn’t that good.
The Warlord Trait prevents rerolls against whoever it is on. Not terrible in its’ own right, but I feel like it is just flat not as good as other Warlord Traits we have available such as Undying Form.
The relic, while fun, requires you to get a character into melee, and then try and pull the trick off to redirect some of their attacks back at them. Its incredibly niche, and incredibly situational. If it works, and when it works, its hilarious though.
#8 – Cult of Change
Not all change is good.
Oof. I struggle to find muchI like about Cult of Change. The power is honestly one I’m not sure I could see myself using against maybe big blobs of Orks. The Warlord Trait lets you reroll charges and shoot and charge after falling back, which would be good on a Daemon Prince if there wasn’t 4 or 5 warlord traits that were strictly better, and in many ways similar (looking at you Aetherstride), without attaching you to a terrible cult.
Even the relic is a big meh. It lets you manipulate psychic tests, but you have plenty of ways to do that already. It is fine in a vacuum, but I feel like there are better options.
Overall, a big miss and I can’t see it getting much play in competitive circles.
#7 – Cult of Knowledge
Knowledge is power, apparently just not a lot of power.
The power could be useful, allowing you to reroll wounds against a specific target. Could be useful if you have a big shooting threat or are about to lay the smackdown with a group of Scarab Occult. It has uses, which is more then then I can say for the first 2 cults on this list.
The Warlord Trait isn’t terrible, greatly smoothing out your psychic tests. Note, you can still perils on a 12, or after you’ve rerolled into double 1s (I know there are some of you out there that this has happened to).
Relic pistol – BOO. At some point maybe GW will learn that noone actually wants a relic pistol.
#6 – Cult of Prophecy
Miracle Dice and the most hilarious Warlord Trait in the Game.
The power is solid. Giving you a floating reroll for a simple warp charge. This is solid, and combined with the Infernal Master ability can give you two floating rerolls. For an army that can struggle with consistency, that can be quite helpful.
The warlord trait is hilarious to me. It allows you to make a character essentially unchargeable. Once the charge is declared, you get to move up to 6″. The idea of a sorcerer skipping just out of reach of a charging enemy never fails to make me laugh.
The relic is solid, giving rerolls to one hit, wound, and damage roll for a core unit within 6″ of the bearer. Again, this can really help smooth out some variance, which is something I always enjoy.
#5 – Cult of Scheming
*Mustache Twirl*
The power allows you to have a unit fall back, shoot and charge. It is decent. Again, you have other ways to do some of this stuff. I wish the warp charge was a 5 or 6 though. I don’t necessarily feel like the effect is strong enough to warrant a WC of 7.
The Warlord Trait is solid. Most of the units you will be taking are already obsec, so this can make that 10-man Scarab Occult Brick count as 20 models. It will also let you use some of those MSU rubric squads to bully your opponent off an objective as well. My gripe with this is that in many ways it could be very “win more.”
The Relic will effectively give you back 1 to 2 CP depending on the stratagem, by changing the cost of a stratagem to 0 once per game. Decent, not overly exciting, and not one of the top options.
#4 – Cult of Magic
How the mighty have fallen.
Once the boogeyman of 8th edition, a buff to some other legions and a nerf to the warlord trait here has knocked this cult down a peg. I think it is still usable, for example, see the list here. However, with the increase in power of some other spells, make sure that you really need Astral Blast before you look at taking this.
The power itself is solid. It allows you to really splash out mortals, and can put out some damage. The problem is the warlord trait is mediocre at best. Only allowing a 1/turn reroll for a witchfire power just doesn’t quite get there.
I’m also not a huge fan of the relic. It allows you to use a cabalistic ritual for 1 less cabal point. If you could double up your caballistic rituals more easily to be able to use 2 or more on one character, this might have more traction. As is, it feels like spending a command point to gain 3 to 5 cabal points over the extent of the game.
#3 – Cult of Mutation
Movement is key.
Competitive 40k is about playing the objective. The armies that play the objective best will usually win the game. One way to really help with this is to be either an army that moves a lot (as we will see later), or an army that stops your opponent from moving. This is where the Cult of Mutation shines. The power is very strong. You can select a piece of terrain, and then cut the movement, advance, and charge of an enemy unit near that terrain. This can be very useful against various types of combat armies. It can also be great for just generally disrupting your opponents gameplan.
The Relic is a slight miss, allowing you to buff the Strength, Toughness, and Attacks of a model by 1, but can only be given to sorcerer units. If you want to make a beatstick sorcerer (which can definitely be done), this will allow you to do it.
I’m not really a fan of the Warlord Trait, there’s better out there.
#2 – Cult of Time
Make your Scarab Occult truly obnoxious.
Time is far and away the second most popular cult at this point, and may even jump to number one. Cult of Time has a good power, warlord trait, and relic, which alone would make it viable compared to some of the other entries on this list. However, the meat of this lies in the Time Flux power. For a 6+ warp charge you can bring back a model at full wounds. This is clearly very good given the power and durability of Scarab Occult. If you have the cabal points, you can even power out an auto-cast 9+ smite, allowing you to use the stratagem to bring back a second model. If you are going to use Cult of Time, you also need to give your Aspiring Sorcerer the Rites of Coalescence, to heal any injured models in the unit prior to casting the power.
The Warlord Trait is good, giving you an undeniable free cast if your character gets a 9+ on a previous cast. Note that the language here is psychic test result, meaning that you only need an 8 on the dice. Combined with the Athenean Scrolls, Warpweave this can actually be way more common then you think.
The Relic is also very good. Allowing a character to get up, at the end of the phase, if it was killed is good. Placing this at the end of the phase makes your opponent have to make some difficult choices, or they may end up wasting attacks or shots.
Why not #1?
This really comes down to personal preference for me. In my experience, any opponent that knows what the cult of time will do will either focus the terminators down, eliminating the ability to bring any back, or they will try to play around them. Clever play by your opponent can negate some of the utility of the power. Overall, I would rather be able to count on my own ability to be clever, which is why we have….
#1 – Cult of Duplicity
The most maneuverable subfaction in the game.
The draw here is the power. An on-demand teleport around the board is phenomenal. An on-demand teleport around the board that, if you choose, can’t be denied, and can auto succeed is even better. The potential uses for this ability are amazing. You can use it turn 1 to put pressure on your opponent. You can use it in the mid game to escape a bad situation or buff a flank. You can use it in the late game to help score primaries or secondaries. Amazing power.
The Warlord Trait giving you a d3 redeploy is cool. With the FAQ you can wait until after you know who is going first to decide whether or not you want to use Risen Rubricae or not. If that isn’t in your gameplan, you can use the trait to shift from an aggressive to defensive deployment or vice versa.
I know that some people like the relic quite a bit but I’m not sold on it. You can only get 1 extra CP per turn, and I’m usually using cabal points to generate that automatically. Better relics out there. However, the rest of this cult is so good it really doesn’t matter.
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