AoS 2 - Disciples of Tzeentch Discussion

[Sinfullyvannila]

I think all that really needs to happen is for them to take Flamers out of the Battalion. Turn the list into a 3 drop.

[Sinfullyvannila]

7 hours ago, Sumanye said:

the point discount on a 30.  

You don’t get the point discount on the 30 anymore. The 30 was a good buy when you could. The extra models in the 20 are to keep the unit up past 9 for probably a couple turns in combat, and to keep your special models around longer.

And yeah, any 180 point battleline unit is going to have to be run as MSU in lower point games.

Edited January 14, 2020 by Sinfullyvannila

[SwashBuccaneer]

Good info so far about Tzaangors. What's the consensus on their weapon loadouts?  I'd built 10 a few months back when I was going to put them in a Thousand Sons list.

They're built with the 2 great weapons, the instrument, the leader has a shield and the others have dual swords so I'm not sure of they're usable in this configuration with building out the other box I have or if I need to just ignore them and make 20 fresh ones.

Edited January 14, 2020 by SwashBuccaneer

[Sumanye]

16 minutes ago, Sinfullyvannila said:

You don’t get the point discount on the 30 anymore. The 30 was a good buy when you could. The extra models in the 20 are to keep the unit up past 9 for probably a couple turns in combat, and to keep your special models around longer.

And yeah, any 180 point battleline unit is going to have to be run as MSU in lower point games.

I specifically said before this battle tome.  I am aware the discount no longer exists and I agree 20 makes sense now, but before it was actually the worst option.

[Sinfullyvannila]

52 minutes ago, SwashBuccaneer said:

Good info so far about Tzaangors. What's the consensus on their weapon loadouts?  I'd built 10 a few months back when I was going to put them in a Thousand Sons list.

They're built with the 2 great weapons, the instrument, the leader has a shield and the others have dual swords so I'm not sure of they're usable in this configuration with building out the other box I have or if I need to just ignore them and make 20 fresh ones.

Max great weapons and max mutants. I like the shields better but I don’t think it’s enough of a difference to toss your old ones. If you really want to change them to shields, get some Kairic Acolyte Shield bits, they should make an easy conversion. 
 

Your Banner Bearer and Musician can count as Great Weapons if you don’t have the weapon pieces from the old kit, and your leader can be one of the models with the Great Weapons.

[Gwendar]

2 hours ago, mmimzie said:

That said I don't quite see flamers as particularly over powered. They have great shooting but they are glass. 30 sisters of the watch with nomad prince buff against any unit of any size can put out the exact damage out as 12 flamers hitting and wounding on 2s for the points.  The sisters of the watch can use the living cities paths to appear from board edges so movement is more restricted, but they don't have to take a battalion and have a few more wounds for the points

That's the thing though.. while they are indeed glass cannons, the ease in which they can be teleported around every turn and in a 1-drop means you are almost always in control and can keep them from getting hit by anything. While that may put them in a situation in which they can't kill anything "important", killing just any unit a turn will still be detrimental.. like if I lost 20-40 Clanrats in T1 it would put me at a big disadvantage when it comes to objectives, especially when you're going to still have 100+ wounds worth of Horrors on the board that you can also teleport anywhere.

Living City is generally quite easy to screen against as it's the board edges.. and while they don't have to take a battalion to do that, I still argue the utility\power that Changehost provides will almost always be worth it, competitively speaking. 

2 hours ago, Sumanye said:

It's very hard to imagine Changehost gets away without a huge nerf.  That ability is so strong it's basically an entire allegiance ability and command trait choice for another army AND it gives your army a 1-drop.  Flamers are good but not broken imo, though I doubt they needed the points reduction in addition to all the nice perks they received.  

I didn't mean to argue Flamers were broken, though I can see how I made it out that way.. they are great for what they do. I'm saying that if you combine them and Horrors together in a Changehost is were things start to get a little nutty as you dictate a lot.

[SwashBuccaneer]

This is a list I've put together so far. No idea how it will play or if it's even remotely good. I want to avoid broken/annoying stuff to play against but not field a bad army either.

Leaders:

Lord of Change

Tzaangor Shaman

Battleline:

10 x Kairic Acolytes 

10 x Kairic Acolytes

20 x Tzaangors

10 x Pink Horrors

Other:

3 x Enlightened on Discs

3 x Skyfires

Exalted Flamer

Exalted Flamer

3 x Flamers

1990/2000

 

[Sinfullyvannila]

3 hours ago, SwashBuccaneer said:

This is a list I've put together so far. No idea how it will play or if it's even remotely good. I want to avoid broken/annoying stuff to play against but not field a bad army either.

Leaders:

Lord of Change

Tzaangor Shaman

Battleline:

10 x Kairic Acolytes 

10 x Kairic Acolytes

20 x Tzaangors

10 x Pink Horrors

Other:

3 x Enlightened on Discs

3 x Skyfires

Exalted Flamer

Exalted Flamer

3 x Flamers

1990/2000

 

Since the Shaman is your only Arcanite leader in there I’d probably drop the Skyfires or Enlightened and an exalted Flamer to pump up your regular flamer numbers. I don’t have my book on me right now. If you do Pyrofane Cult and give the LoC the Artifact; the Skyfires aren’t really bringing anything to the table.

EDIT: I’d say drop the Enlightened and an Exalted Flamer and put in 6 more flamers and buy a Command point.

Edited January 14, 2020 by Sinfullyvannila

[Magnus The Blue]

6 hours ago, Gwendar said:

That's the thing though.. while they are indeed glass cannons, the ease in which they can be teleported around every turn and in a 1-drop means you are almost always in control and can keep them from getting hit by anything. While that may put them in a situation in which they can't kill anything "important", killing just any unit a turn will still be detrimental.. like if I lost 20-40 Clanrats in T1 it would put me at a big disadvantage when it comes to objectives, especially when you're going to still have 100+ wounds worth of Horrors on the board that you can also teleport anywhere.

Living City is generally quite easy to screen against as it's the board edges.. and while they don't have to take a battalion to do that, I still argue the utility\power that Changehost provides will almost always be worth it, competitively speaking. 

I didn't mean to argue Flamers were broken, though I can see how I made it out that way.. they are great for what they do. I'm saying that if you combine them and Horrors together in a Changehost is were things start to get a little nutty as you dictate a lot.

I agree with basically all of this.

Flamers are fine. Good unit but sooo fragile and outside the battalion relatively slow. The play style of massed flamers is a bit dull, but they are far from the only offenders (Rats, Stormcast and Cities all have similar options).

Horrors, are a bit too good. Since they are almost the most points efficient screen in the game and have significant ranged output (not much worse than flamers, if shorter range and they are slower).

The big problem is the changehost battalion, great ability that compensates for the weaknesses of the best units in the tomb, flexibility in what is included and easy to make a one drop list without compromises.  This is doubly true when compared to the other demon battalions which are university indifferent and don't compliment any of the units particularly well. Even at 240point people would take changehost, which suggests its way too good.  

[Gesundheit]

Hey guys, just a quick question.

I bought the aetherwar and want to build the skyfires. But are they worth it?

Cause we start a new ptg campaign soon and i want to try something like this.

LoC

Tzaangor

3 Skyfires

3 Skyfires

 

I think this could work.😊

[CJPT]

I wondering if restoring some kind of range limit to the Changehost would help - e.g, you can only redeploy units that are wholly within 18" of the Lord of Change at the start of the hero phase, something like that. Reducing some of the flexibility or forcing you to move the LoC forward into a potentially vulnerable position would make it more interesting. The other fix would be to simply remove 'Horror Heroes' from the list of valid includes - very few other battalions let you take multiple heroes as it is, and this facet alone elevates the battalion regardless of the actual ability.

Or just make it cost more.

[AverageBoss]

6 hours ago, Magnus The Blue said:

Horrors, are a bit too good. Since they are almost the most points efficient screen in the game and have significant ranged output (not much worse than flamers, if shorter range and they are slower).

I mean, overall Horrors are nerfed over what they were before the new book, AND they went up in points.

Taking the rend cult, plus changehost makes them better than they were before. But you can't nerf the warscroll because those two things exist, since it only really hurts them outside those. So instead you nerf the cult and changehost. That makes much more sense.

[Magnus The Blue]

8 minutes ago, AverageBoss said:

I mean, overall Horrors are nerfed over what they were before the new book, AND they went up in points.

Taking the rend cult, plus changehost makes them better than they were before. But you can't nerf the warscroll because those two things exist, since it only really hurts them outside those. So instead you nerf the cult and changehost. That makes much more sense.

They really aren't nerfed. Before you had to wait until your next movement phase before they even had a board presence. So your expensive screen disappears to a stiff breeze and is of little defence to double turns (one of the biggest issues caster/shooting heavy lists have to deal with). They gained 6++ on the pinks (lost 5+Sv) and 6+ save on Brims. They gained the new locus (very good for screens with lots of wounds) and even kept their old locus.Their damage output is now triple what it was  (if shorter range), this is obviously massive.   I explicitly said the Changehost is a big part of the problem, but the rend Cult is hardly essential for them to be an exceptionally good unit.

The casting got worse and the banner is a bit worse but neither are a big deal when the original 10 pinks were so easily wiped out.

They changed roles completely really from a light screen that keeps coming back to a hard to move horde with impressive short range fire power. 

 

[Asamu]

3 minutes ago, AverageBoss said:

I mean, overall Horrors are nerfed over what they were before the new book, AND they went up in points.

Taking the rend cult, plus changehost makes them better than they were before. But you can't nerf the warscroll because those two things exist, since it only really hurts them outside those. So instead you nerf the cult and changehost. That makes much more sense.

Eh, Blue/Pink horrors  have much higher shooting output than they did before even without bonus rend (2/3 shots on 5+/4+ to up to 3+/4+ vs 1 shot at 4+/4+), and the blue/brimstone horrors are added immediately within melee of the enemy unit upon models being removed, rather than having to be summoned more than 9" away later, which lets them stay on objectives rather than being forced off after losing 10 wounds. And enemies suffer -1 to hit them in melee if they're wholly within 12" of a daemon hero, which makes them a lot harder to get rid of in the first place. Pinks have the highest wound-point ration in the game, at 1 wound per 4 points, which makes it relatively easy to get an absurd number of wounds on the table, and they don't have a massive footprint.

The new spell being easy to cast makes generating summoning points a bit easier (but is less useful than an actual spell), and the loss of being a normal wizard is compensated for with the increased shooting output. Blue/Brimstone Horrors also got significantly better in melee with +1/+2 to wound compared to before (Brimstones at 2 attacks 5+/4+ is pretty good melee stats for such a cheap unit).

It looks like a significant buff overall, IMO. A unit of 10 horrors would need to take ~30 damage in one go to reliably battleshock off, and that's not likely to happen.

[SwashBuccaneer]

11 hours ago, Sinfullyvannila said:

Since the Shaman is your only Arcanite leader in there I’d probably drop the Skyfires or Enlightened and an exalted Flamer to pump up your regular flamer numbers. I don’t have my book on me right now. If you do Pyrofane Cult and give the LoC the Artifact; the Skyfires aren’t really bringing anything to the table.

EDIT: I’d say drop the Enlightened and an Exalted Flamer and put in 6 more flamers and buy a Command point.

Thanks! I'm still trying to figure out list building being new to AoS and trying to build a good core starting list based on the models I do have. I wasn't set on having the Shaman but tossed him in the list since I had a lot of Tzaangors and thought he could buff them.

However, with that list the only models I actually have are the Tzaangors, Kairics, and the Disc Tzaans.

I have: Tzaangors, 20 Acolytes (NIB), The Changling, 10 Pink Horrors (NIB), 10 Blue Horrors (NIB & 10 Brims), Magister on Disc, 3 Enlightened, and 3 Skyfires, and 3 Screamers.

[Gwendar]

11 minutes ago, Asamu said:

A unit of 10 horrors would need to take ~30 damage in one go to reliably battleshock off, and that's not likely to happen.

Well, I agree with everything but this. There are a lot of units out there now that are easily capable of doing that level of damage (20 Irondrakes or Hammerers, 6 Necropolis Stalkers, 2 Ratling Cannons +2 Windlaunchers all fully buffed to name a few) in one turn on average.

Thing is, is that Inspiring Presence is so powerful that if you just keep a CP in your pocket and anticipate one of the above examples to murder your unit, you just pop it on them and they stick around for another turn, getting you more objective scores.

[Grimrock]

Someone mentioned this before, but it bears repeating because people keep missing it. Battleshock tests work by taking your roll and modifying it with the number of casualties. In the new rules when destiny dice are used, the roll can no longer be modified or rerolled. That means any destiny dice, from a 1 to a 6, makes horrors immune because the roll is always less than 10. Doesn't matter if you've lost 40 models in one go, that modifier is ignored once you use a destiny dice. 

I'm curious, has anyone tried using horrors outside of the changehost/conflagration combo? I'm loving them there, but I'm getting the feeling that they're not going to be seen outside of it. Sure they take lots of shots, but their range is so small and speed is so low that I just don't see them working without at least a teleport to guarantee one good round of shooting. I'm also curious to see how splitting works out on the tabletop itself. If you space your pinks out a bit it should be easy enough to fit the blues in, but if you clump up for maximum shots off the teleport you leave yourself vulnerable to getting surrounded on the next turn and having blues wasted because there's no space to put them. Easy to assume they're busted right now but they seem like they'll be tough to use in real life.

[Paniere]

it s virtually impossibile to keep 20 pinks and 9 flamers  in the 9" bubble for +1to wound once they start splitting . 

[hughwyeth]

So I'm hoping to make a mortals/tzaangor list with no daemons, save for a Lord of Change using the Queen of Malifica model - https://creaturecaster.store/eu/product/queen-of-malifica/

There's a few battalions in the books for skyfires/enlightened and mixed arcanites/tzaangors- any of them worth running? I know the daemon lists are great, but I love the mortal/gor models. Currently looking at 6x Skyfires, 6x enlightened, 20 Tzaangors, 10 Arcanites, 10 arcanites, lord of change, magister on  disc, but those are purely the models i like, rather than building for a decent list!

[Qaz]

26 minutes ago, Grimrock said:

I'm curious, has anyone tried using horrors outside of the changehost/conflagration combo? I'm loving them there, but I'm getting the feeling that they're not going to be seen outside of it. Sure they take lots of shots, but their range is so small and speed is so low that I just don't see them working without at least a teleport to guarantee one good round of shooting. I'm also curious to see how splitting works out on the tabletop itself. If you space your pinks out a bit it should be easy enough to fit the blues in, but if you clump up for maximum shots off the teleport you leave yourself vulnerable to getting surrounded on the next turn and having blues wasted because there's no space to put them. Easy to assume they're busted right now but they seem like they'll be tough to use in real life.

Well.. you still have the bridge endless spell (for a movement spell).  The Split happened after you remove the slain model within 1" of the position of slain model had occupied....

Edited January 14, 2020 by Qaz

[RoloMcFury]

17 minutes ago, Paniere said:

it s virtually impossibile to keep 20 pinks and 9 flamers  in the 9" bubble for +1to wound once they start splitting . 

How so? Just put the 2 Blues roughly in the same spot the dead Pink was in (smaller base), leaving a bit of space between each to make sure you have that wiggle room. You remove the slain THEN add the new models, within 1" of where the removed one was (which obviously includes the entire spot the original base was in). It's logistically annoying, but pretty simple in practice.

[LordPrometheus]

32 minutes ago, Grimrock said:

Someone mentioned this before, but it bears repeating because people keep missing it. Battleshock tests work by taking your roll and modifying it with the number of casualties. In the new rules when destiny dice are used, the roll can no longer be modified or rerolled. That means any destiny dice, from a 1 to a 6, makes horrors immune because the roll is always less than 10. Doesn't matter if you've lost 40 models in one go, that modifier is ignored once you use a destiny dice. 

I'm curious, has anyone tried using horrors outside of the changehost/conflagration combo? I'm loving them there, but I'm getting the feeling that they're not going to be seen outside of it. Sure they take lots of shots, but their range is so small and speed is so low that I just don't see them working without at least a teleport to guarantee one good round of shooting. I'm also curious to see how splitting works out on the tabletop itself. If you space your pinks out a bit it should be easy enough to fit the blues in, but if you clump up for maximum shots off the teleport you leave yourself vulnerable to getting surrounded on the next turn and having blues wasted because there's no space to put them. Easy to assume they're busted right now but they seem like they'll be tough to use in real life.

Gaunt Summoners get them for free, so that's a reason to play them right there. I'm sure there's a good list that wants 40-60 of them to just camp objectives. They are a solid tarpit/scoring unit.

I look at their shooting as more of a bonus, personally. I'm not playing them to blast people off the table.

Edited January 14, 2020 by LordPrometheus

[Lou_Cypher]

Do we have any practical results in playtesting and the like before declaring things like Changehost as broken so far?

How do we fare so far against the problem armies like Slaanesh, Petrifex, Skaven, etc?

[MattyP]

What are people's thoughts on the Host Duplicitous Change Coven?   I like the sound of it but wondering on the thoughts of more experienced players

Edited January 14, 2020 by MattyP

[Sedraxis]

Am I missing something or can Changehost lists just lock an entire army into dealing with 150-200 wounds of horrors before they can leave their deployment zone and contest objectives?

Seems bonkers