AoS 2 - Disciples of Tzeentch Discussion

[Freejack02]

1 hour ago, The_Dudemeister said:

I find it incredible at what length some people go to bend the rules in their favor.

No one in this thread is doing that, as far as I can see.

[Gwendar]

2 hours ago, RoloMcFury said:

Is anyone else a little concerned about the power level of the Changehost, combined with how much more effective the shooting is? It makes for a really dirty 1 drop/alpha strike list that just takes all the control of the game away from your opponent. 

So at the end of turn 1, your opponent will have lost about a quarter of their army, have 100 wounds in front of them to be dealt with, with their most dangerous threats at -2 to hit them. Seems reallllly nasty. They could try to deploy to out-range you, but the range is pretty drastic (13" inch move from the LoC, + 9" for +1 wound relic + 18" shooting = 40" from your LoC. Can even use Fate dice/CP to make the LoC move even further guaranteed. )

Does any of that sound like an issue for game balance to anyone else?

Not particularly.. every book has at least 1 setup that is overtly stronger than others but I almost feel it's too early to tell with Tzeentch. People will find a way to deal with it and I don't see it being much stronger than some of the CoS\Skaven shooting (with or without Bridge) or T1 charging Slaanesh\IJ\FeC etc. 

Board control is obviously huge here and there is definitely some power presence in Conflagration lists with Horrors.. but I feel experienced players are still going to find ways to outpace it. Who knows... my mind will likely change once I've played with a similar list in the next few weeks.

[Sinfullyvannila]

Ok; So I made my list I’m going to try tomorrow. It will be a friendly game so my goal will not necessarily be to win but to try some of the less popular endless spells.

The Hosts Arcanum

Arcanite Cabal 140

Fatemaster 120 points. General; Trait: Changecoven Trait Artifact: Secret Eater

Magister(Foot) 100 Shield of Fate

Tzaangor Shaman 150; Arcane Suggestion 

2x10 Kairic Acolytes with Shields 200

20 Tzaangor with Shields 360

9 Tzaangor Enlightened 540

Gaunt Summoner on Foot 240 Artifact: Changecoven Artifact Spell: Glimpse the Future

Doomblast Dirghorn 50 

Buning Sigil of Tzeentch 40

Daemonic Simulacrum 50

Points: 1990

So the strategy here is to use the Trait to attempt to move the Shaman and Enlightened up, so that the Shaman can lay down the Horn as deep as possible. Tzaangors deploy as close to a Hero Monster as possible. Acolytes screen the Gaunt Summoner.

Shaman deploys the Dirghorn. Gaunt Summoner then puts down the Icon as close to the Dirgehorn as possible to set up an overlapping debuff field turning a large area of the battlefield into a miserable hellscape. Then hit the enlightened with Shield of Fate and use their destiny dice to make a 9” charge if possible, the added survivability from the Shield and Dirgehorn should let them get their Visions of the Past with minimal risk.

After the first turn, the Shield of Fate goes on the the infantry blobs who try to hold objectives while the Enlightened go around deleting what they can with their shiny new attacks. Tzaangors will try to get into a fight with a Hero Monster if they can to get the +1 save agenda.

Simulacrum is just there for another Horde Clearer. There’s pretty few wizards in this list after the Acolytes and Pinks get breathed on so it shouldn’t backfire too much. Geminids or an extra CP is probably a better buy, but this is experimental.

Edited January 11, 2020 by Sinfullyvannila

[Malakithe]

App just updated

[Elephant_fresh]

Hey guys,

is there a way to make a competitive disciples army that doesn't use horrors? I'd like to start a more shooting focused army but would hate to paint 100+ pink/blue/brimstones

Something like eternal conflagration with flamer spam and lots of skyfires?

[Gwendar]

57 minutes ago, Malakithe said:

App just updated

But of course Azyr's a bit broken and while Horrors shows 200 points, adding them just adds Brims at 60 points.. and they aren't showing as battleline either. But hey, standard practice 😉

[Hannibal]

30 minutes ago, Elephant_fresh said:

Hey guys,

is there a way to make a competitive disciples army that doesn't use horrors? I'd like to start a more shooting focused army but would hate to paint 100+ pink/blue/brimstones

Something like eternal conflagration with flamer spam and lots of skyfires?

That or Kairic Acolytes as Battleline. These would give you higher numbers. Flamers seem to be the definition of a glas cannon with their 20 pts per wound on a 5+ save.

[RoloMcFury]

32 minutes ago, Elephant_fresh said:

Hey guys,

is there a way to make a competitive disciples army that doesn't use horrors? I'd like to start a more shooting focused army but would hate to paint 100+ pink/blue/brimstones

Something like eternal conflagration with flamer spam and lots of skyfires?

I'd make sure you have something to screen for the Flamers. Although they're finally deadly, they're the glass-iest cannon around, with durability-per-point one of the lowest I've seen. Chaos Warriors, Chaos Marauders, Screamers, or Tzaangors all seem like reasonable options outside Horrors.

[Elephant_fresh]

7 minutes ago, Hannibal said:

That or Kairic Acolytes as Battleline. These would give you higher numbers. Flamers seem to be the definition of a glas cannon with their 20 pts per wound on a 5+ save.

I was thinking of greenstuffing flames onto the acolytes to use as flamers since I really like the models aha

maybe if I used Tzaangor instead then 

 

[The_Dudemeister]

19 minutes ago, Gwendar said:

But of course Azyr's a bit broken and while Horrors shows 200 points, adding them just adds Brims at 60 points.. and they aren't showing as battleline either. But hey, standard practice 😉

You have to add the unit and then check the box for Pink Horrors. That automatically puts them to battleline.

Flamers and Screamers likewise only show up as battleline if you chose the appropriate coven.

[GeneralZero]

Question: lets do an example : pink horror unit of 10. Fight . It takes 11 wounds. So, the 10 pinks are dead, make them 20 blues, then the last wound is taken and make a bimstone.

Ok. Now we have a battlechok do on this newly blue horrors unit of 19blue+1brims. What is the battleshock modifier? how is the rest of the phase?

[Hannibal]

4 minutes ago, GeneralZero said:

Question: lets do an example : pink horror unit of 10. Fight . It takes 11 wounds. So, the 10 pinks are dead, make them 20 blues, then the last wound is taken and make a bimstone.

Ok. Now we have a battlechok do on this newly blue horrors unit of 19blue+1brims. What is the battleshock modifier? how is the rest of the phase?

I don´t see a problem here. It´s a unit that took 11 wounds, therefore the modifier is 11. Why do you ask that question?

[Gwendar]

13 minutes ago, The_Dudemeister said:

You have to add the unit and then check the box for Pink Horrors. That automatically puts them to battleline.

Flamers and Screamers likewise only show up as battleline if you chose the appropriate coven.

Huh... that's an interesting way to do things. I didn't bother looking and preferred to jump to conclusions so early in the morning 😅

10 minutes ago, GeneralZero said:

Question: lets do an example : pink horror unit of 10. Fight . It takes 11 wounds. So, the 10 pinks are dead, make them 20 blues, then the last wound is taken and make a bimstone.

Ok. Now we have a battlechok do on this newly blue horrors unit of 19blue+1brims. What is the battleshock modifier? how is the rest of the phase?

It's all the same unit of Horrors.. so the modifier is going to be 11.

[Raz0Cyph]

Mistake

Edited January 11, 2020 by Raz0Cyph

[Jaskier]

As someone who played with Acolytes back when they first came out, it's great to see they're finally at a point where they're not only decent screening units but also can perform a useful role in the army (such as being a cheap wizard). Very efficient defensively too! It almost makes me laugh just thinking about how their old mediocre warscroll used to be priced at 140 points per 10 😂 Though I think Changehost/Horrors are probably the way to go competitively, I'm definitely going to try my Acolytes in a few different builds and see how they fare.

[Malakithe]

1 hour ago, Gwendar said:

But of course Azyr's a bit broken and while Horrors shows 200 points, adding them just adds Brims at 60 points.. and they aren't showing as battleline either. But hey, standard practice 😉

Figures...if anything was to be broken it would be the Horror warscroll due to smashing them all together

[Gwendar]

26 minutes ago, Malakithe said:

Figures...if anything was to be broken it would be the Horror warscroll due to smashing them all together

True, and I expected something to be wrong.. Hell, Skaven were busted for a good while when that tome released. But as @The_Dudemeister pointed out, you just have to go in and checkmark the Pink Horror box so it's actually fine from what I can tell.

I suppose it makes sense but seemed an odd way of doing it at first.. though the only other thing they could do would be to make Pinks the default and you uncheck the boxes but.. that's bad.

Anyway, here's to a day of list-building and theory-crafting 😉

Edited January 11, 2020 by Gwendar

[AverageBoss]

1 hour ago, Gwendar said:

Huh... that's an interesting way to do things. I didn't bother looking and preferred to jump to conclusions so early in the morning 😅

It's all the same unit of Horrors.. so the modifier is going to be 11.

Actually the modifier would be 9. Being a 20 model unit at that point, it would get a +2 bonus.

1 hour ago, Raz0Cyph said:

Nerf on enlightened on disk is rough.. not a part of wytchfire Coven and tzaangor coven in addition..

Disk riders can be taken in both. Per page 240 of the brb, subtext on a units name is ignored in battalions unless specified.

[Gwendar]

12 minutes ago, AverageBoss said:

Actually the modifier would be 9. Being a 20 model unit at that point, it would get a +2 bonus.

Well, yeah.. I was just mentioning the.. "unmodified" modifier as I assume most knew about the unit size bonus. 😉

[Raz0Cyph]

23 minutes ago, AverageBoss said:

Actually the modifier would be 9. Being a 20 model unit at that point, it would get a +2 bonus.

Disk riders can be taken in both. Per page 240 of the brb, subtext on a units name is ignored in battalions unless specified.

Yes someone told me that in the fb page! Nice to read!

[LordPrometheus]

The app also incorrectly says that Tzeentch marked Chaos "allies" don't count as Tzeentch, and applies them to your ally points... ugh.

[Acid_Nine]

20 hours ago, RoloMcFury said:

Is anyone else a little concerned about the power level of the Changehost, combined with how much more effective the shooting is? It makes for a really dirty 1 drop/alpha strike list that just takes all the control of the game away from your opponent. Here's a sample list (probably not optimized):

Infernal Conflagration

LoC 3- -1 to be hit wholly within 12 at range, +1 to wound wholly within 9
Changeling 
Herald of Tzeentch - required crappy artifact 
x20 Pink Horrors 
x9 Flamers of Tzeentch 
x3 Flamers of Tzeentch 
Exalted Flamer 
x10 Brimstone Horrors
x10 Brimstone Horrors 
Geminids
Balewind

Changehost

So, on turn 1 (if the alpha strike is worth it), you're looking at:

x60 Horror shots- 3+/3+/-1/1 dmg (17.77 wounds against 4+ save). Additionally, you can probably complete the Overthrow Leaders agenda to make them permanently 5+ save for the rest of the game. 100 wounds at 5+ with -1 to hit in melee and shooting... ugh.

x28 Flamer shots- 3+/2+/-1/d3 dmg (20.73 wounds against 4+ save) (even more against 10+ size squads)

If map allows it, Changeling within range to unleash Geminids + a lore spell (lot of wounds here, along with -1 to hits, which will stack with the Locus

If your opponent deployed to allow it, the Herald of Tzeentch can Balewind up and fire off Pink Fire + Bolt of Tzeentch. 

If your opponent deployed to allow it, the other Flamers + Exalted may also be in range.

 

So at the end of turn 1, your opponent will have lost about a quarter of their army, have 100 wounds in front of them to be dealt with, with their most dangerous threats at -2 to hit them. Seems reallllly nasty. They could try to deploy to out-range you, but the range is pretty drastic (13" inch move from the LoC, + 9" for +1 wound relic + 18" shooting = 40" from your LoC. Can even use Fate dice/CP to make the LoC move even further guaranteed. )

Does any of that sound like an issue for game balance to anyone else?

Yea this was the list I was concerned about, and yes this is a major issue of balance from what myself and at least two other people in my game store has thought about.  This is the kind of list that could just kill the game from what I have seen, and kinda makes me pessimistic for AoS. But, the sky hasn't fallen yet, and I didn't build / paint 2,500 points of idoneth just to give up now.  At least this could deal with the Petrifax elite problem people have been having, but from what I see I don't know if there is a counter to this.

Kinda makes me wonder how this made it past the play testers. Everything in the book seems at least passable, but this seems like the sky is actually falling.

[Murder Pancake]

I would really like to know why the Tzaangor Shaman isn't part of the Tzaangor Coven. I imagine it's because I'm not allowed to have nice things.  But at least I have battleline Screamers. 

[Cambot1231]

All this talk of flamers being  glass cannon ... I think we are forgetting the -1 to hit locus buff from your horror hero nearby.

[The_Dudemeister]

42 minutes ago, Cambot1231 said:

All this talk of flamers being  glass cannon ... I think we are forgetting the -1 to hit locus buff from your horror hero nearby.

They are still incredibly fragile for their points cost. The trick is to not let them get hit in the first place and there are ways for that.

Personally I don't mind at all because they're exceptionally killy for a ranged unit. They compare quite well to many melee units when mathhammering. Except that for a fast ranged unit, every model is basically always dealing damage. All those 20/30-man melee blobs where a huge chunk isn't in range and to mitigate that, taking weaker 2" weapons just to squeeze in more attacks... Flamers don't have that problem at all.

And 18" range is also far enough to stay beyond the threat range for many melee units even when they roll really well for charges. So even without a screen their sheer range is their main advantage for survival.

Have a hero with the additional -1 to hit for ranged weapons artefact babysit them and you outshoot most other good shooty units. Send a Chaos Spawn from spells like Bolt of Change into close combat that they have to shoot and I'm really not sure anymore how to defend against Flamers. With careful positioning and these tricks, melee and shooting won't get to Flamers easily. So only magic is left... against your Tzeentch army 😂👌