AoS 2 - Disciples of Tzeentch Discussion

[Xasto]

47 minutes ago, BillyOcean said:

I love that while the rest of the internet complains about Changehost, horrors, flamers, the discussion here is mostly about arcanite builds. I have now racked around 15 games with the new book (its been a busy few weeks), mostly iterations of Witchfyre Coven in the Pyrofane Cult. It has been extremely rewarding - certainly powerful, but with lots of trade-offs and still very much playing the game of Warhammer, unlike Changehost.  After all these games, I have now arrived at a list that I'm ready to take to a tournament at the end of the month. Below I'll give my opinions on some of the discussion points above:

1. Enlightened are not a tax in Witchfyre. Acolytes  need to be complemented with something that can punch hard in combat and, more importantly something that can force the fight into your opponents table half. Otherwise it feels like you are just letting your opponent smash their army into your lines of acolytes and hoping you win the grind. Six Enlightened on Disc provide the fast combat threat you need. I think one of the strongest things about Witchfyre is it combines this key unit in with your full battleline, allowing you to keep drops quite low (5 in my preferred list). 

2. You don't need to bring the Shaman to make Enlightened worthwhile. I've played both with and without him, and settled on a list without. If you manage to set up situations where the Enlightened can go second, six will usually do enough damage with all the rerolls that you didn't need the +1 hit.  If you need them to go first, they will get more out of the Fatemaster than the Shaman anyway, and you are likely bringing a Fatemaster because of how well he works with acolytes. I am usually charging them in turn 2 with the Fatemaster, with the reckless abandon agenda for +1 attack on all profiles, and hitting first. Thats 25 spears, 12 beaks, and 18 discs on average, rerolling to hit, which is usually enough to wipe my opponents biggest threat. Don't get me wrong, Shaman buff is nice too, but he doesn't help the rest of the army the way the Fatemaster does. 

3. Yes  you can easily fit 30 acolytes in the Fatemaster bubble, and other stuff two.  He is on a 60mm base, so we are dealing with a >20" bubble here. I have arrived at 20-20-10 acolytes as my preferred build, and am usually looking to keep at least one of the 20-man units and the LoC (with the Pyrofane artefact) in the bubble for turn 1 shooting, and turn 2 hero phase shooting, before he zooms off somewhere the Enlightened. 

Finally... seeing as everyone is in love with the Fastemaster now, and talking about conversions,  perhaps we should start a little "show us your Fatemaster"... I will go first! I should point out that I was already playing the Fatemaster in the old book, just because I loved the concept of mortal lord on disc, and had made this conversion about a year ago. So I was extra excited when he became good! This was a pretty easy conversion, happy to talk through it if anyone wants to recreate it.

 

Great to hear your thoughts and would love for you to walk us through your list as well as that sweet conversion ^^

[Hebroseph]

I'm surprised you settled on 20-20-10, i figured most pyrofane lists would have a 30 man squad for sure. I would also be interested in hearing your list and thought process into your choices!  I'm a huge fan of pyrofane but have only put it on the table once so far. 

[Will Rogers]

My fate master. Not the best pic but you get the idea. It’s the conversion that got me into tzeentch about 4 years ago 

[GeneralZero]

10 hours ago, BillyOcean said:

 

Where does the spear come from?

Also: Arhiman is the best all around easy fatemaster kitbask. It looks also extremly Tzeentchy and fit well in the tzaangor/acolyte army. And he also look like a boss.

 

[Drib]

19 minutes ago, GeneralZero said:

Where does the spear come from?

Also: Arhiman is the best all around easy fatemaster kitbask. It looks also extremly Tzeentchy and fit well in the tzaangor/acolyte army. And he also look like a boss.

 

The spear should be one of the "old" Chaos Knights set.

[Qaz]

FAQ is out. Lord of Change can't change destiny dice. No Kairos summoning. Changehost teleports 1 unit and destiny dice does not effect save rolls and battleshock rolls. 

 

Edited February 3, 2020 by Qaz
And I can't link it... Maybe later while they do the rolling update.

[Hebroseph]

This is the only part that I found surprising since it goes against the order of operations that the game rules set out. 

Q: If I spend 2 destiny dice to change the casting roll for a Lord of Change, does the ‘Mastery of Magic’ ability change the result of the destiny dice that I used for the casting roll? A: No

 

[Xelotath]

I’m a little bit confused by the FAQ as the designer note seemed to say they had changed the way battleshock worked with destiny dice on Pink Horrors but using Destiny Dice to give the horrors a 1 on battleshock would still generate more Horrors as it uses the Unmodified roll. Or have I missed something?

Edited February 3, 2020 by Xelotath

[Qaz]

4 minutes ago, Xelotath said:

I’m a little bit confused by the FAQ as the designer note seemed to say they had changed the way battleshock worked with destiny dice on Pink Horrors but using Destiny Dice to give the horrors a 1 on battleshock would still generate more Horrors as it counts as Unmodified. Or have I missed something?

Ya, this is still true but not really a big deal since you require a 1 in destiny dice pool. Previously they were passing battleshock on any destiny dice regardless of casualties. 

Edited February 3, 2020 by Qaz

[Xelotath]

Really? Damn that’s busted, glad they changed it 

[Qaz]

Funnily enough, this tells me that OBR battletome is intended or OBR's balancing changes are on hold for corporate marketing/greed reasons. 

All in all, they are good changes. 

[GeneralZero]

Interesting changes tbh: they balance the battletome. But I am a bit disappointed that in a guild of summoners, you can't summon kairos. It wasn't  OP. And kairos being a named character, you weren't able to have more than one on the battlefield anyway.

[CJPT]

Here's my Fatemaster! She's built from bits that would be tricky or expensive to get hold of if I didn't already have the kits for other projects. If anyone has any questions about particular parts I'd be happy to answer them!

I themed her shield around the Paradoxical Shield artifact, which you can see in the second photo.

[MattyP]

1 minute ago, CJPT said:

Here's my Fatemaster! She's built from bits that would be tricky or expensive to get hold of if I didn't already have the kits for other projects. If anyone has any questions about particular parts I'd be happy to answer them!

I themed her shield around the Paradoxical Shield artifact, which you can see in the second photo.

Very cool, Nice paint job! what did you use for the body?

[CJPT]

Just now, MattyP said:

Very cool, Nice paint job! what did you use for the body?

It's a Mirrorblade from the Cypher Lords kit for Warcry!

[Gwendar]

30 minutes ago, Qaz said:

Funnily enough, this tells me that OBR battletome is intended or OBR's balancing changes are on hold for corporate marketing/greed reasons. 

All in all, they are good changes. 

Eh, I don't think OBR really has issues in the grand scheme. They have their good matchups and bad (like, you know, Tzeentch magic\shooting) but yeah, they're best against low rend\CC armies. They tend to lose on objectives which is kind of their detriment in the competitive scene. I won't say they haven't\don't do well... but they aren't as nutty as everyone wanted to make out. I know PE is strong, but it will still melt to massed shooting\rend.

Anyway, I don't see these changes doing anything to Tzeentch. 1 Changehost teleport is still strong and will potentially incentivize bigger Pink\Flamer units and fill the rest out with Brims.

[Forrix]

I'm not a fan of the half-unmodifiable destiny dice mechanic. They felt janky and un-intuitive in their previous state and more so now that they're unmodifiable in some situations but not others. What is the big deal with just making them modifiable? What were these problems they allude to during testing? Its just head-scratching to me.

Also, lol at Gaunt Summoner still summoning 10 pink horrors.

On the Brightside, hopefully this curtails most of the power level complaints for awhile and Tzeentch still looks competitive to me. I was worried they'd go crazy with the nerfs.

[AverageBoss]

I like that Acolytes with glaives keep their shields now.
We are going to be waiting a long time for a streamlined Tzaangor scroll still though it seems. Still 4 different attack sequences for a unit with shields, 3 for a unit with dual blades.

[AverageBoss]

The GS at least has some drawbacks. Not the most stellar spell option anymore (especially given its range). Can't fit in battalions, increasing your drops. The summon is really the only ability he has of note, and wont have much impact beyond that (compare to the abilities of other options we have like the Sorcerer Lord, which are tremendous force multipliers). Extremely fragile and super vulnerable to alpha strikes (not good with the target he paints on himself). If you play him too conservatively to counter a potential alpha, he and his summon wont amount to much during the game. There are certainly arguments to be made of simply taking the unit of Pinks to start with plus an ES, vs the GS. Disk version probably needs a points increase though.

[CJPT]

5 minutes ago, AverageBoss said:

The summon is really the only ability he has of note, and wont have much impact beyond that (compare to the abilities of other options we have like the Sorcerer Lord, which are tremendous force multipliers). 

Broadly agree with this take but wanted to note that post-StD tome, the Sorcerer Lord is a very situational force multiplier for Tzeentch as their buffs now only affect Mortal Slaves to Darkness units - no more supercharging your Tzaangor etc.

[BillyOcean]

1 hour ago, CJPT said:

Here's my Fatemaster!

I absolutely love it.

[BillyOcean]

Well, these are all very positive changes in my opinion. Changehost is certainly knocked down a peg but it will still be very powerful in the hands of a good player. Its just less of a no-downside situation now that you cant teleport 12 flamers along with their horror screen. Destiny dice now  get the worst of both worlds - can't be modified when we want them too, can be modified when we'd rather they weren't. Which I think is fair, as they are an extremely powerful mechanic anyway. I wasn't using the rend and battleshock shenanigans anyway because it didn't seem that was intended, so no change for me. And the small buff to acolytes is welcome, mostly just from a book-keeping perspective because it was annoying having to take the shrugs in a piecemeal way until the shields ran out.

Overall I'm very happy - this makes us less of bogeyman while maintaining a powerful and interesting book.

Edited February 3, 2020 by BillyOcean

[Martijn de Bruin]

2 hours ago, Xelotath said:

I’m a little bit confused by the FAQ as the designer note seemed to say they had changed the way battleshock worked with destiny dice on Pink Horrors but using Destiny Dice to give the horrors a 1 on battleshock would still generate more Horrors as it uses the Unmodified roll. Or have I missed something?

This is correct.

The rule also states that on that unmodified roll of 1 NO models will flee that phase.

Makes those DD1's even more important now.

Edited February 3, 2020 by Martijn de Bruin

[Forrix]

22 minutes ago, BillyOcean said:

Overall I'm very happy - this makes us less of bogeyman while maintaining a powerful and interesting book.

Agreed. I wish DD played smoother but I'm not against the end result power wise.

On the Gaunt Summoner I mostly find it odd that one of his summons is about 2x the value of his other summons. Plaguebearers, Bloodletters, and Daemonettes are all above 100 points but only a bit and generally want to be taken in big units and of course, don't benefit from the GS's locus.

I think Furies would make for an excellent summon except you just get so much raw value from the pinks and the GS has such a big target on his head you pretty much just want to hurry up and summon the 10 pinks. I'd really like that summoning option to be brought in line and a points cut to the GS if necessary. This is more of me commenting on how something plays thought then a major balance complaint. 

I'm also a little sad that I now have no excuse not to run the Blue Scribes and a Fatemaster so I'll be either buying some finecast or converting. I'm liking these fatemaster conversions though. Might do something along the Ahriman lines as I don't have a spare disc on hand and it does look pretty good.

[mmimzie]

1 hour ago, AverageBoss said:

The GS at least has some drawbacks. Not the most stellar spell option anymore (especially given its range). Can't fit in battalions, increasing your drops. The summon is really the only ability he has of note, and wont have much impact beyond that (compare to the abilities of other options we have like the Sorcerer Lord, which are tremendous force multipliers). Extremely fragile and super vulnerable to alpha strikes (not good with the target he paints on himself). If you play him too conservatively to counter a potential alpha, he and his summon wont amount to much during the game. There are certainly arguments to be made of simply taking the unit of Pinks to start with plus an ES, vs the GS. Disk version probably needs a points increase though.

Gaunt summoner is the best faster or one of the best spells in the book. Arcane suggestion. It needs an 8 with a LoC around they can catch the +1 to cast buff. Guild of summoners would let the model pink up a second boost to casting. Making that spell realisticly castable. 

 

-1 to hit and -1 to wound is really strong.