Mega Damage Ogroid and Friends 2.5K List

[themortalgod]

So I am nearing completion on painting my Tzeentch army and have been toying around with weirder builds. This one is designed to be a disruptive mess of annoyance that is plans to absorb being charged by sacrificing chafe which I'm constantly re-summoning and then counter charge with a surprising level of damage. 

Ogroid Thaumaturge - 180pts - General, Ghyrstrike (Hooves), Soul Burn, Infusion Arcanum

Lord of Change - 380pts - Sword, Bolt of Tzeentch

Curseling - 160pts - Arcane Suggestion

Blue Scribes - 140pts - Fold Reality

Magister - 140pts - Glimpse the Future

Daemon Prince - 160pts - Fold Reality, Sword

 

10x Pink Horrors - 200pts - Arcane Transformation

10x Pink Horrors - 200pts - Tzeentch's Firestorm

10x Pink Horrors - 200pts - Unchecked Mutatiom

10x Tzaangor Enlightened - 180pts

 

10x Blue Horrors - 100pts

10x Blue Horrors - 100pts

6x Flamers of Tzeentch - 320pts

 

Total: 2460pts

 

So to start, the general Ogroid expects to be buffed through the roof. With +1 attack on his horns along with +1 to hit and wound for infusion arcanum AND +1 to hit and wound on his hooves not only are his base attacks going to be ridiculously reliable but he is going to be making mortal wounds galore with Soul Burn (4 attacks doing MWs on 5+ (staff and horns) then another 4 attacks doing MWs on 4+ (hooves)). On the charge he will do an average of ~5 MWs in addition to his pretty decent normal damage.

The flamers will fly up the field with the DP to harass a flank, Fold reality should help keep the squishy flamers from dying too quickly and the DP will be positioned to help summon in the backfield. 

The Magister will be mostly focusing on trying to bring up spawns in an annoying position to lock units in combat while the Curseling will be a fate point engine and general annoyance by stealing spells. With any luck, the army will generate MWs galore while being a general nuisance. Thoughts? Opinions? An alternate build I considered is to make the Ogroid invincible instead with all defensives along with Treacherous bond so that I could just stick him out front and watch as he absorbs a ridiculous amount of resources. Might actually be more competitive of an option but less fun.

[mmimzie]

On 11/8/2018 at 8:17 PM, themortalgod said:

So I am nearing completion on painting my Tzeentch army and have been toying around with weirder builds. This one is designed to be a disruptive mess of annoyance that is plans to absorb being charged by sacrificing chafe which I'm constantly re-summoning and then counter charge with a surprising level of damage. 

Ogroid Thaumaturge - 180pts - General, Ghyrstrike (Hooves), Soul Burn, Infusion Arcanum

Lord of Change - 380pts - Sword, Bolt of Tzeentch

Curseling - 160pts - Arcane Suggestion

Blue Scribes - 140pts - Fold Reality

Magister - 140pts - Glimpse the Future

Daemon Prince - 160pts - Fold Reality, Sword

 

10x Pink Horrors - 200pts - Arcane Transformation

10x Pink Horrors - 200pts - Tzeentch's Firestorm

10x Pink Horrors - 200pts - Unchecked Mutatiom

10x Tzaangor Enlightened - 180pts

 

10x Blue Horrors - 100pts

10x Blue Horrors - 100pts

6x Flamers of Tzeentch - 320pts

 

Total: 2460pts

 

So to start, the general Ogroid expects to be buffed through the roof. With +1 attack on his horns along with +1 to hit and wound for infusion arcanum AND +1 to hit and wound on his hooves not only are his base attacks going to be ridiculously reliable but he is going to be making mortal wounds galore with Soul Burn (4 attacks doing MWs on 5+ (staff and horns) then another 4 attacks doing MWs on 4+ (hooves)). On the charge he will do an average of ~5 MWs in addition to his pretty decent normal damage.

The flamers will fly up the field with the DP to harass a flank, Fold reality should help keep the squishy flamers from dying too quickly and the DP will be positioned to help summon in the backfield. 

The Magister will be mostly focusing on trying to bring up spawns in an annoying position to lock units in combat while the Curseling will be a fate point engine and general annoyance by stealing spells. With any luck, the army will generate MWs galore while being a general nuisance. Thoughts? Opinions? An alternate build I considered is to make the Ogroid invincible instead with all defensives along with Treacherous bond so that I could just stick him out front and watch as he absorbs a ridiculous amount of resources. Might actually be more competitive of an option but less fun.

First thanks for post but I recommend sleeping your list into the lets chat tzneetch. There are at least 4 or 5 of us that are actively lurking on that thing. 

 

For starters I would not take pink horrors with out a way for you to kill them yourself. This is because the lose alot of value if they dont start summonings blues quickly, and your opponent can more just contain your pinks rather than kill them quickly. If you look at a pink horror its basicly a kairic acolyte that cost twice as much (and is a wizard). 

 

So in saying that and seeing your high number of individual pink units. I'd recommend grabbing a pendulum. You can cast the pendulum turn one so that it hits all of your pink horror units at once so long as you deploy everything right. This should net you on average 2 full units of blue horror to summon that turn. It will also give you turn 1 targets for fold reality. If you face any good player that know tzneetch they will let you go first, as going first you will be out of range of everything.  But in doing this you not only do you give your wizards something tangible to do turn 1, but you also get to summon alot of blue horrors then 1 and you get to start generating value off your links by taking early battle shock test on your first turn (test you should auto pass because the damage was so low, but that you can still take to fish for 1s.l and thus free pink horrors. 

 

If you go this route I'd even consider turn those 2 blue horror units into another pink horror unit to feed another batch of pink horror to the pendulum. 

 

Anywho good luck and bring change we can believe in ^.^ 

[abdillachris]

Just noticed the tzaangor enlightened cost 100  pts extra from what you posted so you would have to take 1 less blue horror for that 40 pts i suggest you take the pendulum aswell :D

[themortalgod]

4 hours ago, abdillachris said:

Just noticed the tzaangor enlightened cost 100  pts extra from what you posted so you would have to take 1 less blue horror for that 40 pts i suggest you take the pendulum aswell

Ha, its a brain ******, that was meant to be normal tzaangor. (cost is correct, name is wrong) They are needed as battle line.

Personally, I havent found the pendulum very good. It is effectively just a D6 mw spell which tzeentch already has plenty of for free.

edit apparently the word f.a.r.t. is censored?

[Kharneth]

2 hours ago, themortalgod said:

Ha, its a brain ******, that was meant to be normal tzaangor. (cost is correct, name is wrong) They are needed as battle line.

Personally, I havent found the pendulum very good. It is effectively just a D6 mw spell which tzeentch already has plenty of for free.

edit apparently the word f.a.r.t. is censored?

Tzeentch has 0 spells that can target friendly units, therefore that D6 mw from the Pendulum is vital. For 40 points you can kill 3D6 worth of Pinks, or even 4D6 of Pinks if you replace the 20 blues for 10 pinks. This would also fill up your battleline so you can drop the Tzaangors if you'd prefer a non-battleline Tzaangor unit.  In 1,000 points I've been using 2x10 Pinks and the Pendulum and I summon 2x10 Blue horrors nearly every turn. 

Pink Horrors as a 200 point wizard is not worth it, even as battleline wizards. They're too expensive not to kill... somehow only Tzeentch can make this sentence make sense. 

[themortalgod]

4 minutes ago, Kharneth said:

Tzeentch has 0 spells that can target friendly units, therefore that D6 mw from the Pendulum is vital. For 40 points you can kill 3D6 worth of Pinks, or even 4D6 of Pinks if you replace the 20 blues for 10 pinks. This would also fill up your battleline so you can drop the Tzaangors if you'd prefer a non-battleline Tzaangor unit.  In 1,000 points I've been using 2x10 Pinks and the Pendulum and I summon 2x10 Blue horrors nearly every turn. 

Pink Horrors as a 200 point wizard is not worth it, even as battleline wizards. They're too expensive not to kill... somehow only Tzeentch can make this sentence make sense. 

I totally disagree on that about pinks. Everyone seems to think 200pts for a 10 wound wizard with a decent shooting attack that spawns 40 wounds worth of chaff as it dies is overcosted but we are perfectly content paying 140-180pts for 5 wound wizards that do nothing other than cast a single spell? Imo pinks are among the most efficient wizards in the game.  Paying an extra 40pts and at the cost of a cast to slaughter them when my opponent is perfectly happy to do it for me seems wasteful. 

The reason I run units of 10 blues is as speedbumps. It is to give alpha strike armies something to obliterate on their alpha strike that isn't too expensive. It also allows me to start generating brimstone pts right away. If I am feeding units of pinks to an alpha strike too much of my casting power is lost on turn one. I've seen things like BCR erase 1000pts in expensive Tzeentch battleline on turn 1.  A line of blues well placed can completely mitigate this then turn into a line of brims for the next turn. 

[Kharneth]

41 minutes ago, themortalgod said:

I totally disagree on that about pinks. Everyone seems to think 200pts for a 10 wound wizard with a decent shooting attack that spawns 40 wounds worth of chaff as it dies is overcosted but we are perfectly content paying 140-180pts for 5 wound wizards that do nothing other than cast a single spell? Imo pinks are among the most efficient wizards in the game.  Paying an extra 40pts and at the cost of a cast to slaughter them when my opponent is perfectly happy to do it for me seems wasteful. 

The reason I run units of 10 blues is as speedbumps. It is to give alpha strike armies something to obliterate on their alpha strike that isn't too expensive. It also allows me to start generating brimstone pts right away. If I am feeding units of pinks to an alpha strike too much of my casting power is lost on turn one. I've seen things like BCR erase 1000pts in expensive Tzeentch battleline on turn 1.  A line of blues well placed can completely mitigate this then turn into a line of brims for the next turn. 

180 points for Gaunt Summoner with Chaos Familiars: Can cast 2 spells with a +1 to cast and has 9 wounds. Infinitely superior to Pinks. Curseling is 160 points and casts 2 spells. Ogroid is not a great wizard for the price, but does other things. Magister and Blue Scribes only cast 1 spell but are much cheaper than Pinks and come with much more useful spells. Pinks don't come with any spells and having 10 wounds divided between 10 models makes them less defensive than a single model with 10 wounds due to the Bravery function. 10 Bravery is excellent, but they're worse wizards than all the other wizards we have access to with the exception of those half-wizards like Ogroid. 

Pinks are simply too much of an investment to let your enemy completely destroy and are too fragile to be put somewhere where only some of them will be slain. This is why having the endless spells to hurt your pinks is so effective. They're not worth their points unless they're dying and if they all at once it's either too early in the game that losing those spells will hurt a lot or it's so late in the game that summoning those blues/brims is much harder to do effectively.

Also, you have Fold Reality twice but the only useful units to cast it on are the Horrors or Flamers, all of which are very likely to be completely destroyed by a charge. You could turn that Tzaangor unit into 2 units of Acolytes to replace the blues as speed bumps and then replace the blues with Pinks. You wouldn't even need all that battleline and could spend it elsewhere. The point is, Acolytes are cheaper speed bumps that fulfill the battleline tax. They don't turn into brimstones, but if you had a pendulum hitting your pink horrors you'd have speed bumps for days. 

I would never pay 200 points to add Unchecked Mutation or Tzeentch's Inferno to my list. Those spells are simply not worth 200 points. What makes the Pinks valuable is their ability to cast those spells while simultaneously producing speed bumps each turn that can be placed anywhere you need instead of 5+D6" away from where they currently are. 

*Edit*: You probably already know this, but you'd take your Destiny Dice to auto-roll 1s for Bravery and Fold Reality on the Pinks to regenerate them after they die. Of course, this becomes difficult at 2,500 points, but you aren't merely killing your own Pinks, you're recycling them. 

[themortalgod]

43 minutes ago, Kharneth said:

180 points for Gaunt Summoner with Chaos Familiars: Can cast 2 spells with a +1 to cast and has 9 wounds. Infinitely superior to Pinks. Curseling is 160 points and casts 2 spells. Ogroid is not a great wizard for the price, but does other things. Magister and Blue Scribes only cast 1 spell but are much cheaper than Pinks and come with much more useful spells. Pinks don't come with any spells and having 10 wounds divided between 10 models makes them less defensive than a single model with 10 wounds due to the Bravery function. 10 Bravery is excellent, but they're worse wizards than all the other wizards we have access to with the exception of those half-wizards like Ogroid. 

Pinks are simply too much of an investment to let your enemy completely destroy and are too fragile to be put somewhere where only some of them will be slain. This is why having the endless spells to hurt your pinks is so effective. They're not worth their points unless they're dying and if they all at once it's either too early in the game that losing those spells will hurt a lot or it's so late in the game that summoning those blues/brims is much harder to do effectively.

Also, you have Fold Reality twice but the only useful units to cast it on are the Horrors or Flamers, all of which are very likely to be completely destroyed by a charge. You could turn that Tzaangor unit into 2 units of Acolytes to replace the blues as speed bumps and then replace the blues with Pinks. You wouldn't even need all that battleline and could spend it elsewhere. The point is, Acolytes are cheaper speed bumps that fulfill the battleline tax. They don't turn into brimstones, but if you had a pendulum hitting your pink horrors you'd have speed bumps for days. 

I would never pay 200 points to add Unchecked Mutation or Tzeentch's Inferno to my list. Those spells are simply not worth 200 points. What makes the Pinks valuable is their ability to cast those spells while simultaneously producing speed bumps each turn that can be placed anywhere you need instead of 5+D6" away from where they currently are. 

*Edit*: You probably already know this, but you'd take your Destiny Dice to auto-roll 1s for Bravery and Fold Reality on the Pinks to regenerate them after they die. Of course, this becomes difficult at 2,500 points, but you aren't merely killing your own Pinks, you're recycling them. 

It is more a meta thing than anything, but I have completely stopped fielding the gaunt summoner because I never encounter units where his spell is efficient in my local meta. No one plays Death other than me so it is rare that I even see 10 models in a unit. Most of the time it is 5 models so he always just feels like an expensive source of 2.5mw to me. That said, if I started seeing big units of Reapers he would be back in my lists fast.

Fold Reality is taken twice to increase coverage. Blue Scribes almost never cast it but if my DP gets blown of the table turn 1 I still want the option of being able to Fold reality.  99% of the time, Blue Scribes never cast the spell I give them anyway. 

Also, imo, if I am playing well, my Pink Horrors and Flamers will never take a charge that is likely to wipe them out completely in a single round. My flamers usually get chipped down by shooting and spells or blown apart if my opponent focuses them, but they never get charged. They always are screened. 

[Kharneth]

1 hour ago, themortalgod said:

It is more a meta thing than anything, but I have completely stopped fielding the gaunt summoner because I never encounter units where his spell is efficient in my local meta. No one plays Death other than me so it is rare that I even see 10 models in a unit. Most of the time it is 5 models so he always just feels like an expensive source of 2.5mw to me. That said, if I started seeing big units of Reapers he would be back in my lists fast.

Fold Reality is taken twice to increase coverage. Blue Scribes almost never cast it but if my DP gets blown of the table turn 1 I still want the option of being able to Fold reality.  99% of the time, Blue Scribes never cast the spell I give them anyway. 

Also, imo, if I am playing well, my Pink Horrors and Flamers will never take a charge that is likely to wipe them out completely in a single round. My flamers usually get chipped down by shooting and spells or blown apart if my opponent focuses them, but they never get charged. They always are screened. 

The Gaunt Summoner is 20 points cheaper than a unit of Pinks, generates twice as many Fate Points, and deals more mortal wounds. His spell is not great if he's not targeting large units, but he can take any Tzeentch spell and has access to either +1 to cast or +2 to cast, just like Pinks. Whatever spell you give the pinks, the Gaunt Summoner can do. 2.5 mws with Infernal Flames is no worse than Unchecked Mutation or Inferno. The Gaunt Summoner is nothing special, but the Pinks have nothing over him except their splitting. As a wizard, the Pink Horrors are grossly over priced. 

My point isn't that you should replace 10 Pink Horrors with the Gaunt Summoner, it's that they're way more efficient when they're being damaged every turn and particularly the early turns. 

I understand why Fold Reality is taken twice, what I don't understand is how it's so valuable when you're not even killing your own Pink Horrors. If your enemies are attacking your Pink Horrors than lucky you. Sometimes my enemies will kill my Pink Horrors and I appreciate it, but most of the time they'll avoid it. My point about Fold Reality is not that you took it too many times, but that its value is diminished greatly if you're not killing your own horrors and the only other viable unit are Flamers. It's a good spell for Flamers, but it's even better used to recycle your Horrors. 

I have no idea how you avoid having your horrors wiped out in a single turn. The flamers I can understand, but I use 2 units of 10 Pinks in 1,000 points and even then my enemies have no issue taking them out in a single charge. They're very easy to kill.

If you're having no issues than there's nothing you should change. You asked for our thoughts/opinions and mine are simply that a list can be made that does the same thing as the list you posted, but more efficiently. Regardless of how you want to use your pinks, I think you could do a lot better with 180 points than those Tzaangors and the 200 points spent on blue horrors. For 160 points you can fulfill all of those roles (speed bump/4th battleline) with 160 points of Acolytes. Then you'd still have 220 points remaining. Spending 40 of those points on the Pendulum will give you the 2x10 blue horror units you dropped, giving you 180 more points to spend (can you take 7 heroes in 2.5k?). 

[themortalgod]

1 hour ago, Kharneth said:

The Gaunt Summoner is 20 points cheaper than a unit of Pinks, generates twice as many Fate Points, and deals more mortal wounds. His spell is not great if he's not targeting large units, but he can take any Tzeentch spell and has access to either +1 to cast or +2 to cast, just like Pinks. Whatever spell you give the pinks, the Gaunt Summoner can do. 2.5 mws with Infernal Flames is no worse than Unchecked Mutation or Inferno. The Gaunt Summoner is nothing special, but the Pinks have nothing over him except their splitting. As a wizard, the Pink Horrors are grossly over priced. 

My point isn't that you should replace 10 Pink Horrors with the Gaunt Summoner, it's that they're way more efficient when they're being damaged every turn and particularly the early turns. 

I understand why Fold Reality is taken twice, what I don't understand is how it's so valuable when you're not even killing your own Pink Horrors. If your enemies are attacking your Pink Horrors than lucky you. Sometimes my enemies will kill my Pink Horrors and I appreciate it, but most of the time they'll avoid it. My point about Fold Reality is not that you took it too many times, but that its value is diminished greatly if you're not killing your own horrors and the only other viable unit are Flamers. It's a good spell for Flamers, but it's even better used to recycle your Horrors. 

I have no idea how you avoid having your horrors wiped out in a single turn. The flamers I can understand, but I use 2 units of 10 Pinks in 1,000 points and even then my enemies have no issue taking them out in a single charge. They're very easy to kill.

If you're having no issues than there's nothing you should change. You asked for our thoughts/opinions and mine are simply that a list can be made that does the same thing as the list you posted, but more efficiently. Regardless of how you want to use your pinks, I think you could do a lot better with 180 points than those Tzaangors and the 200 points spent on blue horrors. For 160 points you can fulfill all of those roles (speed bump/4th battleline) with 160 points of Acolytes. Then you'd still have 220 points remaining. Spending 40 of those points on the Pendulum will give you the 2x10 blue horror units you dropped, giving you 180 more points to spend (can you take 7 heroes in 2.5k?). 

See the way I see it is. 

While the gaunt summoner generates more fate points, most of the time fate points go into summoning blues anyway so it doesn't even really offset the blue pts a unit of pinks will generate. 

Over the course of a game best case a gaunt summoner will make 10 fate pts. More realistically he is going to make more like 5 or 6 once you factor in failing, unbinding, and situations where nothing is in range.

Meanwhile, pinks are going to make 20 blue pts if they die, and up to 5 fate pts if they don't.

As for the spell. That one is so situational. I'm generally more looking to throw MWs at targets like monsters and heroes rather than random units of 5 liberators or something like that, thus the spell, in reality, is effectively useless. 

Avoiding horrors being wiped out in a single turn all comes down to positioning. Yeah, sometimes it happens, but if you are lining pinks up to be slammed into head to head by a unit of Paladins or a Eels, yeah, they are going to go poof but in my games I rarely run into situations where the whole unit is blown to bits at once if they are full strength when they are hit.  I put blues and the Tzaangor in position to take charges from units capable of easily wiping out a unit of pinks. In most lists I will run Arcane Sacrifice which does sacrifice some pinks for a super powerful benefit but I feel that in many cases my pinks will take a charge, lost 7-8 models then destiny dice up to 5 models or so and promptly flee in my next movement phase while I summon a squad of blues. 

Furthermore, if your opponent isn't killing your pinks, that is another boon. It means you are getting free board control because your opponent is avoiding your pinks. Which is awesome. That is really why I actually like pinks so much. They are one of the only units in the games where if you opponent ignores them you get free board control but if your opponent focuses them they just turn into 200pts worth of chaf, even if they are wiped out. If they aren't wiped out you get even more value. There is no situation where the pinks are completely mitigated.

[Kharneth]

3 minutes ago, themortalgod said:

See the way I see it is. 

While the gaunt summoner generates more fate points, most of the time fate points go into summoning blues anyway so it doesn't even really offset the blue pts a unit of pinks will generate. 

Over the course of a game best case a gaunt summoner will make 10 fate pts. More realistically he is going to make more like 5 or 6 once you factor in failing, unbinding, and situations where nothing is in range.

Meanwhile, pinks are going to make 20 blue pts if they die, and up to 5 fate pts if they don't.

As for the spell. That one is so situational. I'm generally more looking to throw MWs at targets like monsters and heroes rather than random units of 5 liberators or something like that, thus the spell, in reality, is effectively useless. 

Avoiding horrors being wiped out in a single turn all comes down to positioning. Yeah, sometimes it happens, but if you are lining pinks up to be slammed into head to head by a unit of Paladins or a Eels, yeah, they are going to go poof but in my games I rarely run into situations where the whole unit is blown to bits at once if they are full strength when they are hit.  I put blues and the Tzaangor in position to take charges from units capable of easily wiping out a unit of pinks. In most lists I will run Arcane Sacrifice which does sacrifice some pinks for a super powerful benefit but I feel that in many cases my pinks will take a charge, lost 7-8 models then destiny dice up to 5 models or so and promptly flee in my next movement phase while I summon a squad of blues. 

Furthermore, if your opponent isn't killing your pinks, that is another boon. It means you are getting free board control because your opponent is avoiding your pinks. Which is awesome. That is really why I actually like pinks so much. They are one of the only units in the games where if you opponent ignores them you get free board control but if your opponent focuses them they just turn into 200pts worth of chaf, even if they are wiped out. If they aren't wiped out you get even more value. There is no situation where the pinks are completely mitigated.

In every situation I've used the Pink Horrors, if they do not die and become blue horrors than they haven't fulfilled their 200 point value because their spell casting hardly does anything.

I only spend a couple fate points here and there to fill out the necessary blue horror points when summoning blue horrors. I usually instead spend my fate points on flamers or a herald on a disc. On top of this, I'm summoning 20 blue horrors on turn 1 and then 10-20 blues and brims on every subsequent turn until turn 4 or 5 when my Pink Horrors finally die off. 

My Gaunt Summoner uses Arcane Sacrifice and successfully casts all of his spells. If I had the Blue Scribes providing rerolls he'd be just as effective with this. Fate points > blue horror points and you can already generate plenty of blue horror points by harming your pinks. And the pinks you slay don't stay dead. You can even use this strategy to generate more pink horrors than you started with. Take d6 mortal wounds from the pendulum and replace them with the d6 from Fold Reality and then roll bravery or take a 1. If you roll a 1 naturally, you can go above starting, if you don't roll a 1 you can fail bravery to generate more blue horror points or not fail. Doing damage like this to your pinks is a very helpful way to make them more efficient as you don't lose anything when a pink horror is slain and they're incredibly easy to regenerate. 

Avoiding killing the pinks does not help me at all. The enemy can still contest/capture objectives while ignoring my pink horrors. They can stand next to my pink horrors and just attack something else. A lot of this damage comes from range. My enemies will consistently ignore my pinks and focus their damage on my wizards, which is the smart tactic. Just because the Pinks are being ignored does not mean I have board control. They're a very minor threat because they're most threatening aspect is their ability to split when killed.

A unit of Pink Horrors is only as powerful as its spell since the shooting averages 2.5 damage with no rend. With the exception of Bolt of Tzeentch, their magic is not terribly threatening. 

Like I said, do whatever you want. The changes I've suggested will only add to your army without losing anything. 

I've been using 20 Pink Horrors total and I've been running out of Blue Horror models because the 50 I have is not enough, yet 20 Pink Horrors should only become 40 blue horrors. I'm even using the same models as they're slain by the enemy, but I often find that the enemy simply doesn't kill them as quickly as I create them. 

[Kharneth]

Perhaps consider this:

2x10 Acolytes and Aethervoid Pendulum is 200 points, just like 2x10 Blue Horrors. The 20 acolytes can be used to protect your force from Alpha Strikes in the instances where you do not go first. When they die, they will unfortunately not generate Brimstone Horror points, but that's not a huge disadvantage given the advantages you gain from this. 

Instead of those 20 Blue Horrors, you will have access to 20 Blue Horrors every turn and you will have a target for your Fold Reality spell which wouldn't otherwise have a target this early in the game. This would be far more useful than 20 blues and then 20 brims and it doesn't cost anything extra. You're getting more blue horrors for the same thing you've already taken.

Btw I'm not sure what you mean by "lost 7-8 models then destiny dice up to 5 models or so and promptly flee in my next movement phase." You can't use destiny dice to determine how many Pink Horrors you'll regain from rolling a 1 with Bravery. You can guarantee your bravery result, but you can't guarantee how many return when reality blinks as a result from the Icon Bearer, so it's more like 3.5 than 5. 

[mmimzie]

@themortalgod waiting for your oppoent to kill you own pinks is way to slow and not worth it, as those extra blue and brim wont be in nearly as good a position as if you kill your own pinks. So those potential blue and brims exist they also kind of dont matter to your game state so much. 

 

Killing your own pinks allows you to indtead position your blues in agressive positions before you opprnt occupies them and blocks them off from key objectives. 

 

The gaunt summoner as said above is great even in poor match ups. Even against 5 man units his spell still does an average of 2.5 far more than the d3 of some of our other spells, and only alittle less than the 3 of something like firestorm.  This again isnt counting the 2nd spell he as access too and as the best wizard to cast spells from the mortal spell lines. 

 

The pink are quite cost effective as they are battle line and are a 200pt 10 wound wizard, but they also have a bigger foot print than something like an LoC and dont get any special protections from shooting.  So they are also our most vulnerable wizards. 

 

So they lack the punch and synergy power of the LoC, while also lacking the value of having two spells like a gaunt summoner. 

 

Where the pink shine is the splitting power, but if not used aggressively it honestly isn't worth much of anything when compared to what you could have had for bringing anything else. 

 

So TLDR, if you arent gonna split your own pinks, dont bring em. 

[Túrbóbelja]

I would swap the Blue horrors out for 2 units of Screamers. They cost the same and they can accompany the Demon Prince for power and protection, especially since he activates their locus ability and they can help with objective grabbing or "tackling" a unit coming towards your Wizards.