1000-1500 Tzeench Demon army advice

[Damian]

Thinking of buying the 'Daemons of Tzeench' box set and starting a demons army but looking for a little advice...

I was thinking of 2 battle lines of pink horrors, supported by a flamer chariot and maybe a few more flamers? (I guess i'll have to stay at range)

A Curselling (as leader) and a Gaunt Summoner (for dealing with horde armies), maybe a Thurmage for some melee? 

 

Question is... does this look ok from a game perspective or would I get steamrolled by other players? and where would I go from here if I wanted to expand?

 

Or maybe choose a different army? Seems Tzeench has had a lot of nerfs recently 😞

[Kharneth]

I started with the Daemons of Tzeentch box, but I really only use the Pink Horrors. The exalted flamer and 3 flamers sit on standby for summoning, but I didn't actually build the chariot. I got a Herald on Disc out of it instead, which I've summoned once when I had a lot of summoning points so I can extend my summoning reach (by summoning a cheap character). I haven't built the screamers. 

I've heard that the demons (screamers, flamers, etc) aren't very good, but I'm not sure if they're bad. I crunched the average damage output for the flamers, exalted flamer, and blue horrors to compare and I got 6 wounds for the 3 flamers, 4 for the exalted flamer, and 2.5 for the blue horrors who also shoot 4" shorter. Flamers cost 160 points or 18 fate points and Blue Horrors cost 100 points or 10 fate points. Since I use them as summons I mostly compare their fate point cost, but the flamers are actually more affordable if taken for 160 points. 18 fate points worth of blue horrors would deal 4.5 wounds compared to the flamers' 6 wounds, but they'd have 18 wounds (6+) compared to the flamers' 6 wounds (5+). What this tells me is that the flamers are only going to be better in situations where firepower greatly outweighs survivability. 

The Exalted Flamer is 12 fate points and I've found that I tend to summon this instead of flamers more often. The exalted flamer is almost the same as 2 flamers in all regards. It only deals 4 wounds, compared to 12 blue horrors dealing 3 wounds, and has only 4 wounds on it compared to the 12 from the horrors, but it's just easier to summon. So, instead of building the Chariot, I took the Exalted Flamer model and made it by itself and I took the Herald on a Disc and made it by itself and I use them as alternative summonable units when I'm not summoning blue horrors. I've never used the chariot, but I'm happy with my use of the Daemons of Tzeentch box. 

Since you have the flamers you might as well use them, but as you expand your army don't be shy about putting them on the bench. In 1,000 points I've been using 10 Pink Horrors and 2x10 Kairic Acolytes because I cannot squeeze 2 pink horror units in. I've found the acolytes very useful, though your choice of the Curseling leaves a lot of points open. In 1,000 points I can usually summon 20 blue horrors on my first turn and I am usually using all 20 and both of my acolyte units for something, so if you're going to take 20 pink horrors and no chaff than you should be sure you can kill plenty of them and summon something early. 

Gaunt Summoner is amazing. 10/10, would recommend to a friend. Get his familiars, too. I actually use him as my general with the Arcane Sacrifice command trait for d3 mortal wounds on Pink Horrors, +9" to Infernal Flames, and rerolling both of his casts. Ogroid Thaumaturge is on my wish list; I've heard good things but have no experience. Keep in mind he is not a daemon and cannot buff your Pink Horrors with the +1 to cast special rule that they have, nor can he select spells from the demon lore.

The Curseling didn't attract me mostly because it relies on enemy wizards. Though most armies take wizards, I find that my friends usually take wizards as magical protection and therefore stealing their spells isn't a very reliable trick for me. The model and lore is cool, though.

1 hour ago, Damian said:

Question is... does this look ok from a game perspective or would I get steamrolled by other players? and where would I go from here if I wanted to expand?

I've been using Lord of Change, Gaunt Summoner, 10 Pink Horrors, and 2x10 Kairic Acolytes. I've found that in my games I usually only have the LoC and Summoner left. Everything else dies and is recycled (except for the acolytes who merely die). So, like, every turn I'm summoning blue horrors and they're dying and slowly they're replaced by brimstone horrors and by turn 5, when I'm successful, my wizards have been wounded but not slain and my horrors have devolved to mostly brimstones. The thing that prevents me from being steamrolled is my ability to consistently summon 10-20 blue horrors every turn to prolong the steamroll by 1 more turn. 

My Lord of Change does work. His Infernal Gateway spell does an average of 6 mortal wounds within 18"! The Gaunt Summoner protects/saves my forces from any large unit(s). They compliment each other very well. I'd probably choose the Thaumaturge over the Curseling because he comes with a d6 mortal wound spell, then give him or the summoner bolt of tzeentch and you'll have 2 d6 mortal wound spells. 

The thing about the Gaunt Summoner (and also the Curseling and Thaumaturge) is that he's very slow. Move 5 might be average, but it's pretty restrictive when your damage is done prior to movement. This might be a good justification for having a Herald on Disc in your pocket to summon whenever you need a mobile character to put in positions for summoning. 

One unit that you have not mentioned that receives a lot of praise are the Tzaangor Enlightened. I've heard the Skyfires are good, too, but after having been nerfed I think the Enlightened are looking even better. When taken in a unit of 6-9 they can deal some pretty nasty damage and become a valuable target for the Fold Reality spell. 

[themortalgod]

Changeling is overpriced and too expensive in smaller games. You are basically paying 13% of your pts to slow an enemy unit down OR have an overpriced caster in a compromising position.

Gaunt summoner I find is also hit or miss. He pays a lot of tax for his spell which is only good against hordes and has less use in smaller battles where units will be smaller.

In comparison I would recommend looking into the Curseling and/or Magister. 

The Curseling can double cast AND can cast stuff he unbinds. This creates a situation where for 160 pts you have a model that is not horrible in combat who can potentially generate 4 fate points per turn. Consider making him your general with Arcane sacrifice to start building horror pts early and to make his casting super long range and reliable.

Meanwhile, I would put the magister’s spell as one of the most useful in the game. If you place that spawn well it can completely disrupt a battle line. Remember, you just have to place the spawn within 3", so I try to plop the thing down 2.9" away from a couple of units. This means in the subsequent combat phase it is unlikely they will be able to pile in enough and kill it which means the damn thing ties up the unit for a whole turn. I have had magister spawns completely ruin a battle plan before. 

Flamers arent top tier competitive but they are ok-ish now. I run them with a daemon prince who has Aura of Mutability. As a unit, they scoot up a flank and pour death onto the enemy. if the enemy diverts resources to them great, if not even better as I use the DP as a summon base and create a second army in the backfield. Fold reality on the DP can help keep the flamers alive for quite a while. The same thing can be done with a herald on disc instead of the DP.

One big mistake most people make with flamers is that they treat them like a normal shooting unit and focus fire. Flamers are not that. While sometimes you just need to focus down a target, you can bring a lot more flamer output by pointing each flamer at a different target and trying to get as many things burning as you can. 

 

[Myzyrael]

1 hour ago, themortalgod said:

 

Gaunt summoner I find is also hit or miss. He pays a lot of tax for his spell which is only good against hordes and has less use in smaller battles where units will be smaller. 

 

You have some very good points. One thing I’d like to add is that the gaunt is a beast. With familiars he has 9 wounds, +1 to cast inbuilt and his warscroll spell is so good it should be banned. Even on a small unit of 10 he does an average of 5 mortals which is way more than the 3.5 of any D6 spell out there. Sure, not against single targets. But for that you can give him the bolt anyways. As a daemon he also benefits from the wellspring letting him reroll those 1s on casting rolls. 

[themortalgod]

28 minutes ago, Myzyrael said:

You have some very good points. One thing I’d like to add is that the gaunt is a beast. With familiars he has 9 wounds, +1 to cast inbuilt and his warscroll spell is so good it should be banned. Even on a small unit of 10 he does an average of 5 mortals which is way more than the 3.5 of any D6 spell out there. Sure, not against single targets. But for that you can give him the bolt anyways. As a daemon he also benefits from the wellspring letting him reroll those 1s on casting rolls. 

It really depends on meta. Personally like 80% of my games are up against SCE that never bring more than 5 models per unit so he brings ~2.5 wounds with his spell. Still not horrible, but expensive. I find I get way more value out of Magisters and Curselings.  Against legions of Nagash, though, he is a monster.

[Kharneth]

44 minutes ago, themortalgod said:

It really depends on meta. Personally like 80% of my games are up against SCE that never bring more than 5 models per unit so he brings ~2.5 wounds with his spell. Still not horrible, but expensive. I find I get way more value out of Magisters and Curselings.  Against legions of Nagash, though, he is a monster.

You make some good points, but the OP actually already plans to take the Curseling. He did not mention the Changeling at all. 

The Gaunt Summoner is almost always useful because even when he's not using Infernal Flames, he's a +1 to cast spell platform with access to both spell lores. Comparing him to the Curseling, he's getting +1 to cast and access to twice as many spells for 20 extra points. If you wanted Fate spells its a moot point, but the only things his spells are weak against are multi-wound models. 

It's definitely a choice that relies almost completely on your meta, because the Curseling needs enemy wizards with useful spells in order to make use of his abilities and the Gaunt Summoner quickly becomes overpriced if your enemy has multiwound battleline units. 

I really want to try out some of these other wizards. They're all good, they just seem to need to be used in particular ways to be effective. I love the mention of aiming flamers at multiple units and using Fold Reality on them. I might put 6 in a game and try it out. 

[themortalgod]

14 minutes ago, Kharneth said:

You make some good points, but the OP actually already plans to take the Curseling. He did not mention the Changeling at all. 

The Gaunt Summoner is almost always useful because even when he's not using Infernal Flames, he's a +1 to cast spell platform with access to both spell lores. Comparing him to the Curseling, he's getting +1 to cast and access to twice as many spells for 20 extra points. If you wanted Fate spells its a moot point, but the only things his spells are weak against are multi-wound models. 

It's definitely a choice that relies almost completely on your meta, because the Curseling needs enemy wizards with useful spells in order to make use of his abilities and the Gaunt Summoner quickly becomes overpriced if your enemy has multiwound battleline units. 

I really want to try out some of these other wizards. They're all good, they just seem to need to be used in particular ways to be effective. I love the mention of aiming flamers at multiple units and using Fold Reality on them. I might put 6 in a game and try it out. 

Personally, I don't weight access to both lores for much as I often find I have more spell slots than there are useful spells anyway.  My 2¢ is that if you are facing hordes Gaunt is a clear winner. Against anything else, Curseling wins. Being able to potentially pump out 4 fate points per turn is just so good.  That said, if we consider that the Ogroid was mentioned I'd say he is the clear loser of the bunch and that Curseling + Gaunt is better than any combo that involves the Ogroid. 

You are right though, Curseling depends on facing wizards. (I'd say pretty common unless Khorne is featured heavy in the meta)

Though, against anything other than say BCR, I think the Magister is going to bring a ton of value, which is why I bring him up as well. He is the true sleeper OP that often gets overlooked. 

[Kharneth]

1 hour ago, themortalgod said:

Personally, I don't weight access to both lores for much as I often find I have more spell slots than there are useful spells anyway.  My 2¢ is that if you are facing hordes Gaunt is a clear winner. Against anything else, Curseling wins. Being able to potentially pump out 4 fate points per turn is just so good.  That said, if we consider that the Ogroid was mentioned I'd say he is the clear loser of the bunch and that Curseling + Gaunt is better than any combo that involves the Ogroid. 

You are right though, Curseling depends on facing wizards. (I'd say pretty common unless Khorne is featured heavy in the meta)

Though, against anything other than say BCR, I think the Magister is going to bring a ton of value, which is why I bring him up as well. He is the true sleeper OP that often gets overlooked. 

Well I don't know, because I see value in many of the spells. I never get all the ones I'd like. I tend to prefer the Lore of Change, which might be why I'm not as inclined to take the Curseling or Magister. I also play against Skaven, Maggotkin, and Fyreslayers the most and have no useful spells to get from them. My Lord of Change can already steal spells when unbinding. The Curseling's ability to automatically cast them on the enemy's turn is a nice way to collect extra Fate Points, but you'd have to consider the people you play against. Also, keep in mind that the Curseling doesn't actually produce more Fate Points than any other character, he's just allowing you to gain the Fate Points while also not having the spell go off due to unbinding it. In any case where the Curseling successfully unbinds and casts a spell during the enemy hero phase, you would've gained those 2 Fate Points from not having unbound the spell to begin with. His potency is highly dependent on the enemy's magic. 

To me, the Magister seems like an effective way to turn Destiny Dice into Fate Points, but I can see the utility in summoning a Chaos Spawn. He's a much cheaper alternative to Kairos, though he might be not as reliable. I'm surprised to hear that you've been able to survive your combat phase and disrupt the enemy's battle line with this spell. I've heard that the chaos spawns seldom survive that combat phase. I suppose being almost 3" away from an enemy unit helps a lot, but I'm skeptical about how many units you could do this to with a single Chaos Spawn before its 5 5+ wounds are gone. 

Also, if he's going to be taking Pink Horrors and Flamers he'll want as many Daemon Wizards as he can get. Gaunt Summoner is the only daemon wizard that has been mentioned and without one the Pink Horrors will lose their +1 to cast buff and the Flamers will lose their ability to regrow. These are minor considerations, but the OP said that he wants a Tzeentch Daemons force. It's important for there to be Daemon Wizards if there are Daemons or Arcanite Wizards if there are Arcanites because of the buffs and auras. 

There are very few "clear winners and losers" in my opinion because there are a lot of little parts that need to align. With 2 units of Pink Horrors and at least a Flamer unit, it might be worth finding at least one daemon wizard to take, if not more. And, if you plan to take more than 1 wizard with those 2 units of Pink Horrors, I think it's a very worthy consideration to think about taking the Lord of Change and its +1 to cast within 18" for all Daemon Wizards buff. 

[themortalgod]

The odds of a single unit or two units being able to pill in far enough and still do enough damage to kill the spawn is pretty low unless your opponent invests resources in killing it during the hero phase before movement. (which is, again, a win)

Sure if you stick is 3" away from a big hero, the spawn is dead, but it is all about placement. Plus, worst case scenario you draw the unit 3" away from where it wants to be so even if the spawn dies, all of a sudden next turn''s charge is 3" harder for that unit or they are more spread out and fewer models can get into combat.

Another great use of the Magister is to use it to suck shooting units into combat. A shooting unit is almost certainly not going to kill the spawn easily until they blow it apart in the next shooting phase. Very much worth to completely neuter a unit's shooting for a turn. 

Also it isn't that I don't value the Daemon lore spells, its just that I almost always have more slots than I need for them, personally,  In a smaller force though, I can see that being less of an issue though. 

[Myzyrael]

True the magister has a really nice spell and the spawn can prove useful very often when used tactically.

So sad he doesn‘t benefit from most of our to-cast buffs.  Getting the 7+ (without our beloved dice) is hard sometimes. The same goes for the Curseling unfortunately. 

 

Is anyone using the Herold on foot? In aos 1 i was using him quite often, summoning him to increase the range of his spell but now he’s sitting on the shelf most of the time.

[themortalgod]

6 hours ago, Myzyrael said:

True the magister has a really nice spell and the spawn can prove useful very often when used tactically.

So sad he doesn‘t benefit from most of our to-cast buffs.  Getting the 7+ (without our beloved dice) is hard sometimes. The same goes for the Curseling unfortunately. 

 

Is anyone using the Herold on foot? In aos 1 i was using him quite often, summoning him to increase the range of his spell but now he’s sitting on the shelf most of the time.

Blue Scribes or Arcane Sacrifice really help with the reliability. Though 58% to start with isn't horrible odds. Personally I really like sacrifice as it lets me build blue pts early and that extra 9" means the spawn is showing up in great locations.

I have found the same with the Herald, he doesn't bring much. Difficulty of 9 is just too high of a cost for his spell and for 60pts more you could just take 10 horrors which are just as good at casting and bring along 50 wounds. (10 pink wounds, 20 blue wounds, 20 brim wounds) as well as decent shooting. 

[Kharneth]

Like I said, I can see the value in the Magister, but pink horrors are expensive to take without a daemon wizard nearby. Not that +1 to cast makes them worth their 200 points, it just helps. I use mine with the LoC for +2 to cast and even still I failed Fold Reality 3 turns in a row with them last night 😓

The Magister's Bolt of Change seems both situational and unreliable to me, but I've never actually used him. With the same range as our other spells, he'll likely be out of range on the first turn, then by turns 4 and 5 the Chaos Spawn's ability to disrupt a battle line is quickly diminished. So you're looking to get that Chaos Spawn down at the end of turn 1 or during turn 2 or 3. I could see getting one towards the end of the game potentially useful for assisting an objective. But you cast this spell on turn 2 and 3 and I'd guess it's important enough to get off when you want it that you would use Destiny Dice, perhaps double 4s or 5s. You cast the spell and it does D3 mortal wounds, then you only get to roll a 4+ for each slain model in order to summon the chaos spawn. If the unit has multiple wounds, this becomes drastically harder. If they have 1 wound and you get the average of 2 on the D3, a 75% chance to get a single 4+ is good, but no guarantee. And then some enemies can negate mortal wounds. It just doesn't seem like a strategy that could be relied on.

I really like Arcane Sacrifice as well. With Pink Horrors it really becomes a win-win trait if there isn't something else that you need. I don't have a Herald on Foot and if I did I wouldn't use him because the Herald on Disc costs the same amount of Fate points and when/if it survives it can move much further to provide another summoning zone. The Herald on foot has a better spell, so you could take him as a cheap hero and with arcane sacrifice he can sit with pink horrors and semi-reliably get his spell off.

[themortalgod]

5 minutes ago, Kharneth said:

I really like Arcane Sacrifice as well. With Pink Horrors it really becomes a win-win trait if there isn't something else that you need. I don't have a Herald on Foot and if I did I wouldn't use him because the Herald on Disc costs the same amount of Fate points and when/if it survives it can move much further to provide another summoning zone. The Herald on foot has a better spell, so you could take him as a cheap hero and with arcane sacrifice he can sit with pink horrors and semi-reliably get his spell off.

 

Herald can't have arcane sacrifice. 

[Kharneth]

4 minutes ago, themortalgod said:

Herald can't have arcane sacrifice. 

Damn you right. I appreciate the Gaunt Summoner a little more each day haha. Idk, maybe Nexus of Fate for the Herald? 

[themortalgod]

2 minutes ago, Kharneth said:

Damn you right. I appreciate the Gaunt Summoner a little more each day haha. Idk, maybe Nexus of Fate for the Herald? 

I probably wouldn't make the herald my general. Nexus is probably the best choice though if you do.

[Kharneth]

I don't know why you'd take him if you had another hero already, I guess unless that hero isn't a wizard. If you're not going to use the Herald's spell you might as well put him on a Disc imo.