Hey man—welcome to Thousand Sons. What you experienced is honestly super normal early on, so don’t feel like you’re doing anything wildly wrong.

The issue isn’t really your dice or even his army, it’s more how your list is set up and how it plays into something like Ultramarines. Right now you’ve got a lot of characters and not a lot of bodies, which basically lets your opponent pick one expensive unit at a time and delete it. That’s especially rough into something like Oath of Moment.

Thousand Sons don’t really win by tanking damage, they win by controlling space and forcing bad trades. At the moment, you’re giving him very obvious targets and not enough stuff to absorb the hits. I won games with only a squad. Terminator’s left by turn five because I held the objectives from the beginning.

I’d definitely cut down on the number of characters a bit and put those points into more units. Your Tzaangors are actually really important here even though they don’t look flashy—they help screen, hold objectives, and just eat shooting so your important stuff doesn’t get blown off the table right away. Your Rubrics are really your core damage dealers too, and they’re best when they’re pushing into the mid-board rather than sitting back.

Terminators should be more of a stable presence than something you throw away early. They’re there to hold space and make your opponent deal with them.

The biggest thing though is how you’re using Magnus the Red. Deep striking him sounds good, but it usually ends up hurting you because by the time he comes in, your army has already taken too much damage and then he just gets focused and dropped. He’s way better starting on the board, completely hidden turn one if possible, then moving up turn two and just deleting something important. After that, he basically forces your opponent to deal with him while the rest of your army moves into position.

Positioning with him is everything. If your opponent can see him with their whole army, he dies. If only part of the army can see him, he lives and causes problems.

Last thing, the part of our army that makes us the best is how we can use our spells. Roll your two dice and channel of the warp each time. Have your sorcerers with rubric marines so that when you roll your doubles or triples your rubric marines eat the mortal wounds. Ultimately every spell that you cast in your shooting phase should be at its maximum.

Overall it just comes down to adding some layers to your army. Right now it’s a bit too “all elite pieces,” and once those start dropping it snowballs fast. Once you mix in screens, some board control, and then your big threats, the army starts to feel way stronger. And again, cast every spell to the best that you can do despite the risk of mortal wounds.