Eyes of the nine

[mmimzie]

First dodge isn't bad infact <.< it's kind of tougher than shield if you think about it. I come from playing mostly skritch, and anyone who knows how that deck plays knows its basicly skritch against the world with lackies that can and do go die on occasion. I don't love last chance as i don't like holding the ploy in my hand for maybe 3 turns as that's 1 less power card you can refill with.  I prefer the upgrades because you can drop them.

 As for damage upgrades i really don't like great strength and it's ilk and it's almost primarily only for the tzangor, and buffs on the leader your throwing out 2 dice hammers with no cleave <.< that's less than 50% chance of success against 1 shield die not to mention possibly needing to charge to get into range. 

I like the tznagors kill power though he's super strong just he's only got 3 wounds meaning lots of warbands with no upgrades can take him out in a turn.  So i dont really want to throw him a lot  buffs. 

Cards i love after reading what you two have to say:

that said i do love glory seekers.  It gives you +1 damage where you need it. Obviously abit dead it some situations, but when you need it, it's amazing and works on any one. 

Trap and pitfall trap perfect cards here anyone can score it, easy enough 1 damage to add to any model, and you don't need glory to use them. 

I still really like piercing bolt it's 1 less damge than inspired, but it has cleave and works on channel which is basicly like getting a support. very high success chance, and it with any good spell makes one start to consider getting an innate channel upgrade, but you really need 1 more good spell to come out that has a channel. 

abasoth's withering, shield of fate, sphere of azyr those are my go to spells. 

Deathly fortitude, acroback, sudden growth, soul traps, tethered spirit are go to defensive  cards i think. 

Glory seeker, empowered sorcery, piercing bolt are good upgrades for the big guy, who i feel is the most reliable thing in the force thanks to his range allowing you to spam the attack action. 

[Red Drake]

Would ethereal shield or acrobatic give you a better chance of defending on your leader? 

+1 on the roll vs +1 dice

Edited October 19, 2018 by Red Drake

[mmimzie]

3 hours ago, Red Drake said:

Would ethereal shield or acrobatic give you a better chance of defending on your leader? 

+1 on the roll vs +1 dice

Acrobatics is about 1million% better than ethereal shield.  Mainly because crits are so important and more dice means more crits. However you also have have cleave that ignores shields and the option of getting +2 to 3 dice via going on guard. 

[Skellisquad]

Playing around with deck ideas based around turning the Blue Horror into the primary weapon

First cut, untested. Feedback invited.

Objectives (12)
243 - Change of Tactics
252 - Defensive Strike
257 - Escalation
284 - Precise Use of Force
291 - Superior Tactician
N62 - Eyes of the Master
N64 - Master of Magic
N317 - Extreme Flank
N318 - Finish Them
N319 - Fired Up
N340 - Keep Them Guessing
N357 - Opening Gambit

Gambits (10)
331 - Hidden Paths
332 - Illusory Fighter
347 - Quick Thinker
354 - Second Wind
368 - Time Trap
N69 - Bound by Fate
N70 - Deceitful Step
N73 - Malicious Flames
N391 - Aggressive Defence
N400 - Centre of Attention

Upgrades (10)
376 - Awakened Weapon
384 - Deathly Fortitude
393 - Helpful Whispers
424 - Tethered Spirit
N79 - Bizarre Capering
N499 - Faneway Crystal
N503 - Gloryseeker
N513 - Mirror of Spite
N543 - Sudden Growth
N546 - Tome of Glories

[mmimzie]

21 hours ago, Skellisquad said:

Playing around with deck ideas based around turning the Blue Horror into the primary weapon

First cut, untested. Feedback invited.

Objectives (12)
243 - Change of Tactics
252 - Defensive Strike
257 - Escalation
284 - Precise Use of Force
291 - Superior Tactician
N62 - Eyes of the Master
N64 - Master of Magic
N317 - Extreme Flank
N318 - Finish Them
N319 - Fired Up
N340 - Keep Them Guessing
N357 - Opening Gambit

Gambits (10)
331 - Hidden Paths
332 - Illusory Fighter
347 - Quick Thinker
354 - Second Wind
368 - Time Trap
N69 - Bound by Fate
N70 - Deceitful Step
N73 - Malicious Flames
N391 - Aggressive Defence
N400 - Centre of Attention

Upgrades (10)
376 - Awakened Weapon
384 - Deathly Fortitude
393 - Helpful Whispers
424 - Tethered Spirit
N79 - Bizarre Capering
N499 - Faneway Crystal
N503 - Gloryseeker
N513 - Mirror of Spite
N543 - Sudden Growth
N546 - Tome of Glories

i think with mirror of spite they might see what you have coming for them and ops not to kill the brimstone. Infact they might just kill the blue to nerf his attacks and then ignore the brimstone entirely. 

As the blue horror only does a damage with his attacks so pumping that up at all won't really get you too far. What if instead you focused on making him the barer of the tomes. with tome of disease you don't even have to roll dice to get his free damage in, and with all fo those movement jiggerdy pokedy you could easilty get him in range, and with the acolyte objective care you can score 4 glory off al lthe tomes on top of the glory you net from tome of glory. Lastly slumbering key and destiny to meat also seem like decent options 

[Skellisquad]

3 hours ago, mmimzie said:

i think with mirror of spite they might see what you have coming for them and ops not to kill the brimstone. Infact they might just kill the blue to nerf his attacks and then ignore the brimstone entirely. 

As the blue horror only does a damage with his attacks so pumping that up at all won't really get you too far. What if instead you focused on making him the barer of the tomes. with tome of disease you don't even have to roll dice to get his free damage in, and with all fo those movement jiggerdy pokedy you could easilty get him in range, and with the acolyte objective care you can score 4 glory off al lthe tomes on top of the glory you net from tome of glory. Lastly slumbering key and destiny to meat also seem like decent options 

I like Tome of Disease but I'm not convinced of the Acolyte when there are only three Tomes that can be played on the horror at the moment.

[mmimzie]

4 hours ago, Skellisquad said:

I like Tome of Disease but I'm not convinced of the Acolyte when there are only three Tomes that can be played on the horror at the moment.

That's pretty fair. I just think when I look at eyes of nine they seem like alittle bit of a worse shaven. So I think alternative win conditions might be the best angle to take?? Have you tried your deck??

[Bandit-94]

16 hours ago, mmimzie said:

That's pretty fair. I just think when I look at eyes of nine they seem like a little bit of a worse skaven. So I think alternative win conditions might be the best angle to take?? Have you tried your deck??

Yes and no.

yes: narvia and turosh are really weak even if they become inspired, and you can not bring them back to life.
they are fast, but as resilient as a piece of paper

no: with Vortemis we have access to spells. thanks to the last two warband packs and echoes of glory there are some interesting ones like Abasoth's Unmaking, Abasoth's Withering, Infinite Riches (forFaneway Crystal) and, only for us, Wracking Change (combo with Power Surge for 3 direct damage).

turning blue horror into our primary weapon is certainly interesting, but in my mind this model is more useful as a disturbing element and / or objective grabber. the most interesting thing about blue horror, in my opinion, is that when it changes into the brimstone due to an attack it can not be driven back. this makes him a perfect candidate to conquer objectives in the opponent's field (I have always evoked him in the opponent's field as he forces the opponent to divide the warband = easy Divide and Conquer) and allow easy access to score Supremacy and / or Making a Statement (with Abasoth's Unmaking).
making it even a weapon is easy with cards like Gloryseeker, but I prefer to use it as a key model for objectives like Supremacy, Bind the City / our only way out, Eyes Of The Master, Divide and Conquer, Extreme Flank, Keep Them Guessing, Alone in the dark, Skirting Danger, Loner..).

my deck is not an objective deck, it's a "Board Control Deck).

[zombiepiratexxx]

This lends itself to how I've seen things when looking through the cards. EotN to me seem to be like the "Chess" warband. I know that Underworlds is about positioning and precise use of your moving parts but the Tzeentchians seem to take this to the next level. I might be way off, but from the quick theory-crafting I did when looking over their unique objectives and Gambits that's what stood out to me. 

[Bandit-94]

2 minutes ago, zombiepiratexxx said:

This lends itself to how I've seen things when looking through the cards. EotN to me seem to be like the "Chess" warband. I know that Underworlds is about positioning and precise use of your moving parts but the Tzeentchians seem to take this to the next level. I might be way off, but from the quick theory-crafting I did when looking over their unique objectives and Gambits that's what stood out to me. 

that's exactly what I think

[mmimzie]

There are certain alont of chess analogies that can me made for this warband for sure, you got you king/queen/pawn/rooks.  and movement i think is definitly the name of the game for this warband. 

that said i think cards involving hold objectives are not worth it at all no matter the warband. as it is very easy to get you off. They dont even need to swing at you just throw a ploy and you lost a glory or more.

I also don't love making a statment, while it's true that unmaking makes it easier to score, it doesn't by much. for one you only have 1 guy who can reasonable hold and objective in that he doesn't get puched back if he dies once. While the other 4 warband members want to be as far away from the enemy models as they can be at all times, they won't dane to go into opponents territory. This means you can only realisticly score making a statement on game where you ahve both making a statement and withering before hand, and where in you ahve 3 objectives on your side and 2 on the opponents. While you opponent doesn't also have "confuse, distraction, great concussion,  & earth quake" Or purhaps they are palying goblins and have withering and a making a statement of thier own and they don't jsut destroy the last objective in there own territory to stop you. 

The problem with the deck that works this way is it only works one time if it does at all. As if your opponent knows the stuff you are going for and they can stop it, they just will. 

where as with a kill focused deck your opponent can't stop you from scoring 80% of your objective cards. 

now we do have alot of great ways we can get glory outside of objectives. "eyes of the master, master of magic, chosen my destiny, martyed, shining example, fired up"  Are all really great cards for us. On top of this unverisally good cards like "escalation and ploymaster"  can help fill out our objective roster.  I think you just need a few more like concerted attack to round out the deck, and you have a really good passive objective deck.

Upgrades like slumbering key, destiny to meet, and tome of glories are also important tool for utilizing the blue horrors unique longevity. Even if you have an opponent trying to kill your blue horror so it can't get these upgrades, you not gain and advantage that he wasting alot of attack actions for 1 measly glory. 

which i do agree you want a more passive deck, i just think anything that involves holding objectives is so easy to mess up that it's not entirely worth going for any such game plan. 

[Skellisquad]

All good feedback which matches with my observations from the few games I'd played with the  EotN. I thought it might be worth trying something different with the Horror as I didn't feel like I was making the most of it with Destiny to meet and the Tome. I'll certainly trying throwing Divide and Conquer into the mix. I'd forgotten Concentrated Attack which I always used to run with my Farstriders.  Not so sure about Fired up/Shining Example as a run of poor rolls and nothing inspires. 

I've toyed with Making a Statement and its a great trick when you pull it off, but it isn't easy and as @mmimzie says, it's only a good trick the first time. 

Spells are certainly tempting but with only one wizard putting too many eggs in that basket seems highly risky. 

[Desidus]

So after retiring my Stormsire deck (Because it was way too low risk High Reward, and consistently providing me wins left right and centre) I am now mucking around with Eyes of the nine. Here is what I have been playing around with of late that has consistently scoring me wins.

Pro tip - Potion of Rage on Inspired K'charik is ridiculous. You could double this up with Total Offence if you wanted it to be consistent phase after phase (For the first attack action not as a charge - where as PoR works on a charge as well). Combine this with Concealed weapon and you can consistently take out any high wound Enemy fighter. Combine with Gloryseeker / strength of Arrogance if needed. I prefer throwing Glory seeker onto Vortemis or the Horror (Because when your opponent kills the Blue you have the brim doing potentially 4 damage with its reaction to 4 wound heroes.

Power Surge with Wracking Change is too good, I played around with Damning Pact as well to consistently make this deal 2-4 Damage (depending on crits). It's consistent damage output that has done some solid work for me. If you take Power Surge you drop Eidetic Memory (This is purely here for Round 1 damage on K'charik if I don't manage to get him inspired early).

 

https://www.underworldsdb.com/shared.php?deck=0,234,284,291,329,348,384,273,N436,N527,N546,N389,N61,N64,N69,N70,N72,N77,N80,N83,N86,N87,L25,N371,N373,N503,252,257,N319,N68,378,N529,N437

 

@riddlesworth For you to take a gander at

Edited October 30, 2018 by Desidus

[Tiger]

So I've picked up the game. Bought Echoes of Glory and obviously The Eyes of the Nine box set. Would anyone be willing to give me some tips on what type of objective cards I should focus on getting? 

Help...

[Red Drake]

I have a very instant objective heavy deck and it’s been doing very well for me. 

 

Sorcerous scouring, master of magic, a strong start, precise use of force, victorious duel, what armor? 

Then extreme flank, alone in the darkness, escalation and supremacy for relatively easy multi point objectives 

then cards for scoring other cards like superior tactician and combination strike. 

 

I win win most of my games like this. 

 

The ploys are all movement and extra action   cards and some spells

the upgrades are all defensive upgrades and casting buffs for my leader

[Bandit-94]

I was thinking these days that vortemis, once inspired, has nothing to envy to Stormsire in what concerns ranged attacks. also K'charik, despite having only 3 wounds, has an F3 attack just like Ammis dawnguard. could be interesting a deck that balances control and aggro by exploiting the ranged attacks of vortemis and melee attacks by K'chariK'charik.

 

I will share with you guys a test-decklist about this strategy. 

[Bandit-94]

https://www.underworldsdb.com/shared.php?deck=0,N61,N64,N66,N303,N342,243,255,235,257,N340,N317,N374,N539,N499,N546,N543,N548,N503,N83,N527,N80,N85,347,N424,332,N426,N70,N69,329,331,348,320

 

actually this is my decklist. 

[D20 goblin]

Played in a quarterly tournament yesterday and decided to take eyes of the nine as my previous bands decks got invalidated 

After 4 games it became pretty clear that eyes are a tough warband to master, I had deck issues for sure but I found that trying to inspire vortamis and score glory for spells was really hard, master of magic seems easy to do but its too random and agents of change is impossible,

my successful games were were when the blue horror was buffed and I stayed back with the rest only killing whoever came in range, movement ploys were essential for this and positional scoring like eyes of the master and extreme flank came off really easily, I really struggled to score supremacy and only got it in 2 of the many games, 

I’d say going forward with them, they need more spells and pretty much all the extra movement cards in the game, they are super tricky but when they work they are great, I think they’ll struggle with objective play as they simply don’t have the numbers to score cards like supremacy easily and their inspire conditions and faction specific objectives are much harder to pull off than some other bands, 

 

all in in all I liked them but I’d say they’re tough to play right now, 

 

 

[Bandit-94]

TZEENTCH - 1° esperimento (1).pdf

 

this is my test-decklist. 

any suggestions? 

[Biboune]

May be make a room for Potion of Rage; K'charik once exalted and equip with it is one of the most reliable fighters.

 

For the moment, I can't figure out how to play this band.

Some of their specific objective cards are focus around objectives (another Our Only Way Out and Determined Defender) but the band has vey few arguments to play this style of game (both the Thorns and the Goblins can get on objectives with less actions and still have enought figthers to keep their opponents busy).

There is not enought spells yet to build a deck around and most of them are not so great: ploys that can fail... ploys are precious... Moreover most of the eyes of the nines' objective cards focusing on spells are bad: Agents of Change? very hard. Rising Inferno? May be if it were an immediate objective it would be ok, still quite hard, but it is end phase... Master of Magic? Cursebreakers need only to cast one spells, they all have spells as fighter actions and they need it to get inspired...

Narvia and Turosh are too dicey to inspired, they are fragile...

K'charik is fragile great once inspired but he needs Vortemis for been so.  

The blue horror is nice. it takes 2 action to get killed but it is 1 action to get it on the battlefield, attacking it is not such a bad deal for you opponent. It can be summon back with it's geatr but Vortemis needs to be still alive so let's speak about him.

Votremis is your only wizard and can summon the blue horror. If your deck is about spells, as it should be for a tzeench band, he is your opponent main and may be only target. If he dies, you won't be able to play most of your cards, the game is over. Like the Warden but worst, you don't need the warden to play your ploys and your have more models to protect him.  One more issue, Vortemis needs to make a succesfull attack action with a range of 3 to get inspired. If his attack fails, you are at charge range of almost every kind of ennemy models (expect the chosen axes and the S guard), if it is succesfull you are at charge range of 4 movement models (hi Saek). You dealt an amazing amount of damages (=1) and the the core of your band can be one shot in response...

There is cards like Side Step, Illusory Fighter etc; that can get him out of range but let's just put Inspiration Strickes in our deck. Let's put Spoils of Battle, may be Goulish Pact, because you need Sorcerous Adept, Impowered Sorcery to make something out of spells, Sudden Growth to stay alive  etc.

The deck may look like that: https://www.underworldsdb.com/shared.php?deck=0,348,343,334,320,N70,N417,362,N389,374,403,N503,N546,N543,N80,N85,N86,N83,N77,376,336,257,N385,N386,272,N64,N63,254,250,282,N340,N317,L24

 

PS: Tutenkharnage is correct...  Poor Vortemis

 

Edited November 20, 2018 by Biboune

[Tutenkharnage]

It’s even worse than you think: even if Vortemis drives back anopponent three hexes away, he’s still in charge range unless that model has only 2 Move. 

[Desidus]

7 hours ago, Tutenkharnage said:

It’s even worse than you think: even if Vortemis drives back anopponent three hexes away, he’s still in charge range unless that model has only 2 Move. 

I played around with a High Risk High Reward deck where Vortemis would commit only If I had Wracking Change in hand with some other ploys. However if you didn't get the Draw you didn't win.

I fooled around with an Idea about loading up the Horror with A destiny to Meet, Slumbering Key, Formless Key, and Tome of Glories, however dropping 4 upgrades down just for the third end phase, with no guarantee that Vortemis wouldnt die early and leave you with the horror dying mid game, wasn't exactly planning for success.

[mmimzie]

On 11/20/2018 at 2:31 PM, Desidus said:

I played around with a High Risk High Reward deck where Vortemis would commit only If I had Wracking Change in hand with some other ploys. However if you didn't get the Draw you didn't win.

I fooled around with an Idea about loading up the Horror with A destiny to Meet, Slumbering Key, Formless Key, and Tome of Glories, however dropping 4 upgrades down just for the third end phase, with no guarantee that Vortemis wouldnt die early and leave you with the horror dying mid game, wasn't exactly planning for success.

I've actualy been playing this and it's gone well thus far. I have spoils of war for the extra upstage, and I'm considering adding the ploy that cost a wound to put on an upgrade. 

 

It's got both deathly fortitudes in it slumbering, blahs blahs blahs glories. 

 

I think the free upgrade ploys are important, as deathly fortitude is pretty worth throwing on when you can. 

[Bandit-94]

tested this morning against the cursebreakers, won 2-1.

the deck works very well, it is very agile but it can either hold the field or attack strongly thanks to Vortemis and k'charik, while the blue horror annoys the opposing models by pushing them instead of doing damage.

the decklist is good, but it suffers a lot from model losses as it greatly restricts the possibilities of positioning for vital objects such as extreme flank and of actions to score keep them guessing.

[Biboune]

On 11/20/2018 at 11:31 PM, Desidus said:

I fooled around with an Idea about loading up the Horror with A destiny to Meet, Slumbering Key, Formless Key, and Tome of Glories, however dropping 4 upgrades down just for the third end phase, with no guarantee that Vortemis wouldnt die early and leave you with the horror dying mid game, wasn't exactly planning for success.

I think this kind of plan would work better for SG or Skavens: they both have a ploy to ressurect their minions, so loosing the Warden or Skritch is not preventing you to earn glory with key like upgrades. Skaven also have Expendable; very good upgrade combine with keys.