Tzaangor Enlightened and Guided By the Past

[swarmofseals]

Tzaangor Skyfires have gotten most of the attention for competitive play since the Disciples of Tzeentch book  came out, but Enlightened have always piqued my interest. 

For those of you that have used them: how easy do you find it to use the Guided by the Past ability? Just based on efficiency Enlightened without Guided are only a bit more efficient in melee offense than Skyfires with Guided (of which their version is very easy to activate). With Guided by the Past active, however, their offensive efficiency basically doubles and they become a very legitimate melee threat. It seems though like it would be very easy for opponents to basically never allow the buff to be activated by refusing to activate whatever unit the Enlightened are engaged with until after you activate the Enlightened -- unless of course the unit that the Enlightened are engaged by is strong enough to cripple the Enlightened in one go. 

[Arkiham]

36 minutes ago, swarmofseals said:

Tzaangor Skyfires have gotten most of the attention for competitive play since the Disciples of Tzeentch book  came out, but Enlightened have always piqued my interest. 

For those of you that have used them: how easy do you find it to use the Guided by the Past ability? Just based on efficiency Enlightened without Guided are only a bit more efficient in melee offense than Skyfires with Guided (of which their version is very easy to activate). With Guided by the Past active, however, their offensive efficiency basically doubles and they become a very legitimate melee threat. It seems though like it would be very easy for opponents to basically never allow the buff to be activated by refusing to activate whatever unit the Enlightened are engaged with until after you activate the Enlightened -- unless of course the unit that the Enlightened are engaged by is strong enough to cripple the Enlightened in one go. 

run them behind a screen unit, then youll always be able to trigger it when you want

[Choombatta]

It is most helpful, I have found in my games, when it forces your opponent to make decisions in the combat phase they normally would not have to.

 

[swarmofseals]

1 hour ago, Choombatta said:

It is most helpful, I have found in my games, when it forces your opponent to make decisions in the combat phase they normally would not have to.

 

Yeah, I thought there might be some solid utility here in that it gives your opponent a choice between not attacking with the target unit and giving your Enlightened a huge buff. That said, in order to actually shut down the target unit you also have to decline to attack with your Enlightened. So I can see this being particularly valuable when attacking a target that is more expensive than the Enlightened. This requires a bit of a specific scenario though as offensive units that are more expensive than Enlightened will probably be fine with striking first. So the ideal target is an expensive, defensively efficient unit that you can pin down and force to retreat or take a lot of damage.

All that said, I'm a little bit wary of this because of my competitive Magic background. There is a notorious mechanic in Magic called the "punisher"  mechanic that is one of the most commonly mis-evaluated mechanics by, uhh, less skilled players. Basically all of the cards with this mechanic feature two undercosted effects, of which your opponent chooses one. The classic example is the card Browbeat, which either deals 5 damage to your opponent or you draw three cards. Both effects would typically cost more than the card costs, but the card sees little play even in decks that are specifically designed to make both effects desirable for you. This is because giving your opponent the choice really reduces the effectiveness of the card. 

1 hour ago, Arkiham said:

run them behind a screen unit, then youll always be able to trigger it when you want

I'm not sure I follow your logic. What happens if your opponent just chooses to not activate the unit the Enlightened are fighting until after you activate the Enlightened? Basically one player and then the other choose to activate units until only the Enlightened and the unit it is fighting are left. At this point (depending on whose turn it is to activate) either you get to choose to activate your Enlightened without the benefit of Guided by the Past or choose to not activate it at all, which punts to your opponent who then gets to choose to either also skip their unit entirely or attack first and allow your Enlightened to hit back with the benefit of the ability. Alternately your opponent chooses first which ends up with a very similar set of possibilities.

[Arkiham]

Ah sorry, miss remembered.

If you run them behind or in a unit which the opponent doesn't really want to take a ful attack from, such as tzaangor you can try an force your opponents hand. 

Don't attack and potentially loose the entire unit without reprisal or do and die anyway. 

[Bethorina]

On 02/01/2018 at 11:52 PM, swarmofseals said:

Tzaangor Skyfires have gotten most of the attention for competitive play since the Disciples of Tzeentch book  came out, but Enlightened have always piqued my interest. 

For those of you that have used them: how easy do you find it to use the Guided by the Past ability? Just based on efficiency Enlightened without Guided are only a bit more efficient in melee offense than Skyfires with Guided (of which their version is very easy to activate). With Guided by the Past active, however, their offensive efficiency basically doubles and they become a very legitimate melee threat. It seems though like it would be very easy for opponents to basically never allow the buff to be activated by refusing to activate whatever unit the Enlightened are engaged with until after you activate the Enlightened -- unless of course the unit that the Enlightened are engaged by is strong enough to cripple the Enlightened in one go. 

What you should do is run a max squad of enlightened and then pile your enlightened on another unit Judy in the corner this stops them getting max attacks and also if the sky fires do their job they have no choice but to trigger the other unit the enlightened require manipulation if you can pull that off then your fine very easy with lots of small units on enlightened too cause you can force your opponent to have to activate them this has been my experience with them