Last fall, I decided to take on a “spooky” challenge for myself. I purchased a small Thousand Sons army, and decided to paint them in a ghostly or spectral theme in honor of Halloween. I had enjoyed the “scary” results on my Scooby Doo Guildball team, and wanted to apply a similar principle to the Thousand Sons. After all, besides the twisted sorcerer leaders, the army is mostly haunted suits of armor, so the theme made sense.

I decided to lean into the theme and use a black and white color scheme, like in old horror movies. But total monochrome would be too plain for the whole army, so I decided to use red to represent “blood magic” effects and as a minor accent color. The scheme was a big hit at the October tournament last year, and over the summer I completed painting the whole army.

Ahriman and Exalted Sorcerer

These two are the primary leaders of the army. Ahriman is an amazing model, and was so much fun to paint. I love the splattery blood on his flying disc and the blood effects on his hand as he casts a horrible spell of some sort. The exalted sorcerer is a dynamic pose, too.

Other HQs and Elites

Not much to say here other than I really love using Blood for the Blood God. The shiny red is quite gory and while it’s best to use just a little on normal minis, I really leaned into it like these guys were in a slasher film.

Zombie Tzaangors

Rather than plain old goatmen, I decided to make these undead to fit in with the rest of the army. Modelling this was a challenge, but a fun one. I cut off limbs, glued them back in twisted ways, and used some old skeleton pieces to replace limbs. One model has its legs removed entirely, and another has a twisted spine, with its top half facing backwards. I added plenty of blood effects too. Really like the way the Zombie Tzaangors turned out!

Aspiring Sorcerers

Since I run several small squads of Rubric Marines, I used the extra bits from an Exalted Sorcerer kit to make several unique Aspiring Marines. Each one leads a team of haunted armors. It was quite enjoyable to combine all the bits in creative ways to make these spooky fellows. The monochrome color scheme made tackling the ornate armor and other details on these much more manageable. Contrast paint over Leadbelcher for the win!

Rubric Marines

To really lean into the haunted armor vibe, I decided to customize these quite a bit. I didn’t make legs at all to make them look like they were floating. The spectral bottom parts are from various D&D minis, including ghosts, spirits, and elementals of various types. To save time I used hot glue to combine the top and bottom, and then used the loincloth pieces on top of that. I like the end result, though I’d like to have a bit more variety in the spectral parts.

Scarab Occult Terminators

And here’s the huge brick of Scarab Occult Terminators! I really like the way these turned out. I used blood on the khopesh weapons to help differentiate them on the table from the smaller Rubric Marines. I think of all the models in the army, these met the spooky theme the best.

Group Shots

Obligatory group shots. This Spectral Thousand Sons force was a fun army to paint, for sure. While I’m happy with the 1000 points our gaming group tends to play at, I definitely have my eye on some more Terminators and some big stompy monsters to zombify and gore up!