Dealing with a Bloodsecrator as Disciples of Tzeentch

[themortalgod]

So I had a game tonight and lost by a super narrow margin which was fun, but the bloodsecrator gave me huge troubles. My opponent basically deployed it right behind LoS blocking cover so that it was out of LoS of everything, then packed the entire board with loosely spread blood reavers. Because of the 3" rule I couldn't get any shooting or magic both within LoS of him and also in range until late in the game but his huge range on his aura (thanks to many slaughter priests) meant his whole army was immune to battleshock and the re-roll successful casting neutered my magic effectiveness. I feel like I would have certainly "had" the game if I had an answer to the bloodsecrator that was holding his entire battleline together.

Was wondering if anyone had any thoughts on how I may counter this as DoT as they are pretty dependant on drawing line of sight to threaten anything. Thanks for any help!

[ssharkus]

I think Changeling with Bolt of Tzeench dropping right next to him.

[Arkiham]

2 minutes ago, ssharkus said:

I think Changeling with Bolt of Tzeench dropping right next to him.

This would work well.

If it goes off..

 

Tbh it sounds like he played a really strong game, as a khorne player well done to that guy.

But to help, well you'll need to get behind the los,  so probably flying units, maybe summon something, it's going to be very hard which is his intention 

[someone2040]

Preface: don't play Disciples at all, and it's tough without actually understanding stuff like points being played, the rest of the armies, etc, but...

I would say, either pick off the things you can, or try and go around the flanks to gain access to the Bloodsecrator.

For picking off the stuff you can. Bloodsecrators only have 18" range tops, which means, if he's sitting in his deployment zone, he can only at best reach the half way point on the board if he's planted his banner. You can sit back on your side of the board, and wait for the enemy to come to you while you shoot them from afar, or engage outside the 18" range.

At some point, he's going to have to pick up his banner and move forwards.

Otherwise, there should surely be some avenue of attack. The left side or the right side. You can always zip down one flank with Skyfires, deleting some units in your way and hope for the double turn to zip into range and shoot the Bloodsecrator.

 

[Vaux]

8 minutes ago, someone2040 said:

For picking off the stuff you can. Bloodsecrators only have 18" range tops, which means, if he's sitting in his deployment zone, he can only at best reach the half way point on the board if he's planted his banner. You can sit back on your side of the board, and wait for the enemy to come to you while you shoot them from afar, or engage outside the 18" range.

Well 18" without the 3 Slaughterpriests his opponent most likely had. So now we arent talking about an 18" but a 36" bubble for the Bloodsecrator... that's a hell lot more.

[Salyx]

You should try to Play defensively, trying to keep Out of His banner's Ränge as good as possible with your casters. This way He has to move Up towards you, which opens space for flying Units to land. Either get him with your LoC, Screamers or Skyfires/ Enlightened. The latter choice seems the best. So Not depend on magic to kill him, because you have to reroll Casting attempts and He can have an Item giving him a 2+ save against magic. So the best way is to get flying Tzaangors next to him or perhaps use the changehost and Changeling to Teleport some Screamers next to him. 

[Wraith01]

Skyfires flying to the back and snipping him. 

[TheOtherJosh]

...." Bloodsecrators only have 18" range tops..."

 

The _base_ range of the ability is 18".

 

But, if your opponent is using the Gore Pilgrims warscroll that can increase to a 30" radius bubble. (Each slaughter priest within 8" when the portal ability is used increases the range by 6" and here are two of them in the warscroll)

 

So... midpoint in their deployment zone (6") they have a bubble that is covering 60" in diameter centered on the bloodsecrator. And 36" from their board edge.... so basically ... up to the edge of your deployment zone assuming a 4' board edge and a short size deployment.

 

[Terry Pike]

Herald of Tzeentch. Summon a bailwind, use multiple mortal wound spells, dead secrator.

Summon a herald in range of the banner before he gets to plant it, use the d6 bolt on 3 dice, followed by arcane bolt.

Skyfires.

Changehost to get the lord of change up the table, gateway.

summon a lord of change, gateway, bolt.

[themortalgod]

Wow so many replies so fast, thanks for all the thoughts. 

I considered the changeling in future matchups but the odds of changeling revealing itself and 1 shotting the guy is so low. Especially if the banner is planted on turn 1.  And changeling is unlikely to get a second shot before he is torn to pieces. 

As for flying units and summoning, the problem is he had so much chaffe that the "must finish movement 3" away rule prevented me from getting past his line. Until I thinned out the chaffe I didn't really have way to get any ranged anywhere near his bloodsecrator.

 I quickly mocked up his deployment just to give an idea (See attachment)

Basically the red dots are his units, boxes are scenery, and the big red circle is the aura from the bloodsecrator.  As you can see his deployment is completely full of models. So there is no spot to land, or summon a model that can actually "see" his bloodsecrator. Then he just moved the whole horde up being careful that it was "thick" enough that nothing with 16" movement could fly over it while still being 3" past it on the other side. 

I eventually cut his army down but not before he had too many objective points to be caught since I couldn't really stand up to him in close combat (naturally), By the end of the game he had 1 model with 1 wound left and I had 1/3 of my army but I was down by so many objective points there was nothing I could do. The bloodsecrator's +1 attack and immune to battleshock just make his models so hearty and Tzeentch MW style play isn't very good at thinning hordes especially when it is vastly deminished due to the aura. (also note: all his units were in units of 10 to maximize his bloodtithe and minimize my gaunt summoner)

 

 

 

[someone2040]

Apologies fellas, didn't remember about the extended range. 

 

@themortalgod what scenario was being played? Border War sounds like it would be the case based on the fact you mentioned he was getting objectives while you weren't (as you probably were avoiding getting up close and personal with the Khorne army surging forwards).

If I had to say, I would say that this is actually one of the weaknesses of the Tzeentch lists, especially stuff like Skyfires. Awesome and wonderful when there are key things that you want to take out, but not so great against horde armies that have plenty of models to flood the board and you can't get to the enemies key pieces. 

It's also quite unlucky that your opponent got a piece of LOS blocking terrain in the middle of his territory. Many armies will likely not have a good answer for this, regardless of whether your army is Disciples of Tzeentch or not.

 

That being said. It's important to note that the Bloodreavers ability for being near a totem is only 12" regardless. So if you can choose to fight Bloodreavers slightly further away from the Bloodsecrator, this can reduce some of their damage output.

Assuming it is Border War, personally, I think I would've (and that's not to say I have a ton of experience or am the world's next top playa) chosen one of the side objectives to contest to stay even in the objective points throughout the game, and then tried to play for the minor victory if I didn't think an opportunity for the major presented itself.

 

Either way, sounds tough! And yet, in the next game it might be over before it starts if he can't protect his Bloodsecrator (Amazing that those things are only 120 points :S)

[Killax]

21 hours ago, Terry Pike said:

Herald of Tzeentch. Summon a bailwind, use multiple mortal wound spells, dead secrator.

Summon a herald in range of the banner before he gets to plant it, use the d6 bolt on 3 dice, followed by arcane bolt.

Skyfires.

Changehost to get the lord of change up the table, gateway.

summon a lord of change, gateway, bolt.

This.

I think it's important to keep in mind that in any game a Khorne army or Chaos army is seen is that the Bloodsecrator is one of the top priorities. Especially if you play at the higher levels the Khorne player will play him like that and try to protect him at all costs. Certain boards will allow for this better as others so all the Tzeentch player in most scenario's can do is out-threat him and start "a hunt".

As Terry also desribed, in many cases a single or smaller number of models to hunt each other will work out in your favour. In some cases I see players play with 6 Skyfires without a massive reason, I understand that versus ranged armies the more the merrier applies, however if you expect a lot of Khorne players you do not need to go this route. Instead you even give yourself a slight advantage if you don't because the tons of Khorne attacks only do something if there are wounds enough left to apply  

So as above, Skyfire/HoT/LoC 'flying hunters' would be my choice of weapon here.

[Carnelian]

Don't forget that he must keep the slaughterpriests within range of the bloodsecrator when he plants his banner i.e. at the beginning of every turn

[themortalgod]

6 hours ago, Killax said:

This.

I think it's important to keep in mind that in any game a Khorne army or Chaos army is seen is that the Bloodsecrator is one of the top priorities. Especially if you play at the higher levels the Khorne player will play him like that and try to protect him at all costs. Certain boards will allow for this better as others so all the Tzeentch player in most scenario's can do is out-threat him and start "a hunt".

As Terry also desribed, in many cases a single or smaller number of models to hunt each other will work out in your favour. In some cases I see players play with 6 Skyfires without a massive reason, I understand that versus ranged armies the more the merrier applies, however if you expect a lot of Khorne players you do not need to go this route. Instead you even give yourself a slight advantage if you don't because the tons of Khorne attacks only do something if there are wounds enough left to apply  

So as above, Skyfire/HoT/LoC 'flying hunters' would be my choice of weapon here.

Great suggestions, unfortunately, they all depend on being able to get a unit up the field in a position that it can draw line of sight. Which was impossible given his deployment. The only way to make a gap big enough to summon a herald in LOS would be to kill a big chunk of his army first. 

[Black_Fortress_Immortal]

If the priests are increasing the range of his aura, then nuke the priests, and watch the rest of his army miss out on the Rage of Khorne, while he has to move the Bloodsecrator in range again.  That window is your opportunity to strike his melee to trigger possible battleshock.  Without priests, the units aren't as buffed/good, also.  I've played games where I nuke the priests first, but have tried to go for bloodsecrator first (ignoring the priests), failed, and paid the price.

[Tzaangor Management]

If you need to thin the horde, depending on the size of each unit of course, then consider the Gaunt Summoner. He's cheap at 100 points, has a spell specifically designed for destroying hordes, the ability to cast a second spell and his low armour save shouldn't be too much of a problem if your opponent is keeping the majority of his units that deal damage at range in his own deployment zone.

[themortalgod]

28 minutes ago, Tzaangor Management said:

If you need to thin the horde, depending on the size of each unit of course, then consider the Gaunt Summoner. He's cheap at 100 points, has a spell specifically designed for destroying hordes, the ability to cast a second spell and his low armour save shouldn't be too much of a problem if your opponent is keeping the majority of his units that deal damage at range in his own deployment zone.

2

Definitely using one (on a vortex, with familiars ;)), his spell, though, is designed to kill hordes with massive units sizes. It doesn't do a ton of damage to a large number of small units. Does about ~5 wounds per turn to squads of 10.

15 hours ago, Black_Fortress_Immortal said:

If the priests are increasing the range of his aura, then nuke the priests, and watch the rest of his army miss out on the Rage of Khorne, while he has to move the Bloodsecrator in range again.  That window is your opportunity to strike his melee to trigger possible battleshock.  Without priests, the units aren't as buffed/good, also.  I've played games where I nuke the priests first, but have tried to go for bloodsecrator first (ignoring the priests), failed, and paid the price.

His strategy was to keep all of them hidden and out of LOS, the priests don't need LOS to cast their abilities so he really has no reason to bring them out from cover. They pretty much just huddle in their terrain spamming MW on anything that comes close.

 

I played another game against the army recently and tried the changeling method to try to hit him with Bolt of Tzeentch on turn 1. Unfortunately, he also ran the item that allowed him to auto dispel once per game so the bolt of change was stopped, the changeling then got torn to pieces in the following turn. I managed to win the game though as it was gift from the heavens mission so I just sat on my objective all game gunning down his chafe so I won on kill points. His little bunker of priests remained untouched at the end of the game though, I really had no way to threaten it.  Still have no idea how to really kill it, but in missions where I can just use overwhelming firepower to rack up kill points without losing on the objective score, I feel I can do ok by ignoring them. 

 

[TheOtherJosh]

Mutalith Vortex Beast of Tzeentch doesn't require LoS for the Aura of Mutation? (15" range) On a 4+ they're suffering at least d3 mortal wounds.

[Arkiham]

1 hour ago, TheOtherJosh said:

Mutalith Vortex Beast of Tzeentch doesn't require LoS for the Aura of Mutation? (15" range) On a 4+ they're suffering at least d3 mortal wounds.

Correct.

 

It's surprisingly strong tbh 1/3 of the time it's d6 mortal wounds and 1/2 the time mortal wounds.

[TheOtherJosh]

Correct.
 
It's surprisingly strong tbh 1/3 of the time it's d6 mortal wounds and 1/2 the time mortal wounds.

It wasn't exactly a question, more of a "how about using a ..."

So, perhaps a Mutalith ... "escorted" up field with Pink/Blue/brimstone Horrors (and enough reinforcement points to split) to keep a screening wall between the attackers and the mutalith. (No real ranged attacks with Khorne.)

[Black_Fortress_Immortal]

6 hours ago, themortalgod said:

Definitely using one (on a vortex, with familiars ;)), his spell, though, is designed to kill hordes with massive units sizes. It doesn't do a ton of damage to a large number of small units. Does about ~5 wounds per turn to squads of 10.

His strategy was to keep all of them hidden and out of LOS, the priests don't need LOS to cast their abilities so he really has no reason to bring them out from cover. They pretty much just huddle in their terrain spamming MW on anything that comes close.

 

I played another game against the army recently and tried the changeling method to try to hit him with Bolt of Tzeentch on turn 1. Unfortunately, he also ran the item that allowed him to auto dispel once per game so the bolt of change was stopped, the changeling then got torn to pieces in the following turn. I managed to win the game though as it was gift from the heavens mission so I just sat on my objective all game gunning down his chafe so I won on kill points. His little bunker of priests remained untouched at the end of the game though, I really had no way to threaten it.  Still have no idea how to really kill it, but in missions where I can just use overwhelming firepower to rack up kill points without losing on the objective score, I feel I can do ok by ignoring them. 

 

Well in that case, he was on top of his A game.