Tzeentch win Cancon and the GW GT Heat 1

[Sinfullyvannila]

24 minutes ago, Frowny said:

I think my bigger frustration with tzeentch is some of the other rules. Acolytes with like 3 weapon profiles that all don't do much damamge, tzaangors with 4 , and then all the fiddly special rules like the scroll and the vulture. It's just kinda annoying for the active player to figure out, a lot of little annoying rules to keep track of but yet overall isn't that impactful. I wish those warscrolls were streamlined a bit more. It didn't really seem that fun for either player.

Horrors for all their strength and annoyingness go play against at least have a very well written warscroll. Whenever I had a question we just looked and there it was.

Scroll and Vulture are just their version of Musician and Banner, so it shouldn’t be any harder for you to remember them than pretty much every other battleline unit. and the Scroll/Vulcharch is actually pretty neat design. The scroll gives them +1 to unbind, which is really nice since that have a massive board unbind footprint compared to the cast majority of casters. The Vulcharc has a chance to deal a mortal wound IF that unbind doesn’t work or if you don’t want to unbind it so you can get the fate point.  So the important thing with them is to remember that a big part of their role is magic denial/punishment.

Also, Tzaangors and Acolytes both got their active profiles cut to 3/2 since now they have to choose between the two standard weapon profiles instead of mixing both.

Edited January 28, 2020 by Sinfullyvannila

[RuneBrush]

1 hour ago, Dead Scribe said:

They are both solid 100% tournament players.  Most of my group is and most of my group regularly sells off their armies to buy whatever is currently mathematically considered superior by the rules (stats, points efficiency etc).

Cheers!  I did wonder 😊  The group I play with have recently been trying to come up with a more competitive army each so that we can play at a few more tournaments without feeling like we're all finding that it requires a different mentality & approach to more casual gaming.  

[Dead Scribe]

I'd say that it is a very different mentality yes.  I know people that do both, but they have to have two different armies basically.  

[JackStreicher]

On 1/27/2020 at 2:02 AM, Austin said:

Between this and the Iron Hands domination the GW playtesters are having a rough go of it lately huh.

-edit

Actually I should say rules folks AND playtesters.

I thought the same thing...

such quality with their products lately...

[AverageBoss]

5 hours ago, Sinfullyvannila said:

Scroll and Vulture are just their version of Musician and Banner, so it shouldn’t be any harder for you to remember them than pretty much every other battleline unit. and the Scroll/Vulcharch is actually pretty neat design. The scroll gives them +1 to unbind, which is really nice since that have a massive board unbind footprint compared to the cast majority of casters. The Vulcharc has a chance to deal a mortal wound IF that unbind doesn’t work or if you don’t want to unbind it so you can get the fate point.  So the important thing with them is to remember that a big part of their role is magic denial/punishment.

Also, Tzaangors and Acolytes both got their active profiles cut to 3/2 since now they have to choose between the two standard weapon profiles instead of mixing both.

Shield Tzaangors still have 4. Sword + shield, 2 weapon mutants (since the dual blades have to be rolled separate from the singles due to different hit values), greatblades, beaks. Deal weapon tzaangors have 3.

Edited January 28, 2020 by AverageBoss

[Dolomyte]

4 hours ago, Dead Scribe said:

I'd say that it is a very different mentality yes.  I know people that do both, but they have to have two different armies basically.  

And then there are those saddest of us who have 8 armies. Ranging from new player Intro to let’s Cut each other’s throats out for fun 

[Inquisitorsz]

Bit more context for cancon Tzeentch lists

The winning list had 6 flamers 10 pinks, 1 gaunt. 
Plenty more pinks and flamers in the bottom half of the field. 
6th had archaon, 5th was mortals 
top 3 were all different sub factions. 
after that you have a 24th and 38th which is a  5-1 and 4-2, Then the rest are probably more like 3-3. 

Skaven did quite poorly at Cancon, only 3 out of 13 lists cracked top 100

Slaanesh still had the most consistent results, having all but 2 of 9 lists in the top 50

OBR were all over the place. There were Nagash + 60 Mortek lists with only 1 win.... and quite a few OBR went 2-4
 

[Death1942]

20 hours ago, RuneBrush said:

OK, controversial suggestion here -

Should TO's consider disallowing Battletomes to be played until they have their associated FAQ document released?

Most events already state that anything released in the last week can be used (new battletomes, FAQs etc), so just extending that to 3 weeks would mean that some of that fine tuning could be undertaken without the new battletome having implications throughout the competitive scene.

Or do we think that allowing this actually helps to highlight when things aren't working?

Didn't it take 7 months for a slaanesh FAQ? 

[zilberfrid]

1 hour ago, Death1942 said:

Didn't it take 7 months for a slaanesh FAQ? 

And it would have been best to ban Slaanesh in the mean timr.

[Kramer]

5 hours ago, Dolomyte said:

And then there are those saddest of us who have 8 armies. Ranging from new player Intro to let’s Cut each other’s throats out for fun 

Sad or happiest..... please say happiest 😂For my sake of course. 

Edited January 29, 2020 by Kramer

[Roark]

11 hours ago, AverageBoss said:

Shield Tzaangors still have 4. Sword + shield, 2 weapon mutants (since the dual blades have to be rolled separate from the singles due to different hit values), greatblades, beaks.

Whoa. Wow. When BoK was released, I thought the extreme simplification that occurred with Skullreapers flagged a new direction in simpler faster play for the game. Haha, nope.

[Dolomyte]

5 hours ago, Kramer said:

Sad or happiest..... please say happiest 😂For my sake of course. 

Heart happy, wallet sad. 

[Gorsameth]

9 hours ago, zilberfrid said:

And it would have been best to ban Slaanesh in the mean timr.

But without tournament data its a lot harder to see where the issues are.

Thats the catch 22, if you ban something because its not tested enough its not going to get tested.

[Kirjava13]

5 minutes ago, Gorsameth said:

But without tournament data its a lot harder to see where the issues are.

Thats the catch 22, if you ban something because its not tested enough its not going to get tested.

At the same time, it seems... deeply questionable to, intentionally or not, use public events people pay for and travel to as effectively beta testing.

[Grimrock]

31 minutes ago, Kirjava13 said:

At the same time, it seems... deeply questionable to, intentionally or not, use public events people pay for and travel to as effectively beta testing.

I don't think they are though. I could be wrong, but I think it's more that they know things are strong and figure if people don't like it then they can tweak it later. As has been said on the forums before, the playtesting gets done but corporate can just ignore it and release however they want. They're not beta testing a release, they're intentionally releasing something that pushes the boundaries and just reacting as people have issues.

Honestly if you think about it it's a huge win for them. They release broken stuff, reap the profits for 6 months, then they get to make it look like a mistake  by providing balance updates that nerf the top dog. That makes the new army coming out look mighty appealing and the cycle starts over again. They're even smart enough to not do it every book so the pattern isn't as obvious and people are willing to tolerate it. People wonder how GW can be so bad at their jobs, but I think they're geniuses.

Edited January 29, 2020 by Grimrock

[Dead Scribe]

I don't think its accidental either.  They know exactly what they are releasing when they release it.

[Bloodmoon]

14 hours ago, Inquisitorsz said:

6th had archaon, 5th was mortals 

Mind posting that Archaon list? 

[Inquisitorsz]

1 hour ago, Bloodmoon said:

Mind posting that Archaon list?

 

All the lists are here 

https://aosshorts.com/cancon-2020-lists/

You can cross reference the results here 

https://downunderpairings.com/Tournament.php?TournamentID=776&Panel1=Leaderboard

[Bloodmoon]

Thanks! Shame people seem to like him better in things other than Host of the Everchosen. 

[Malakithe]

Realistically the 2ish week FAQ after a new book release isnt going to do major overhauls or points changes. GW doesnt have the time nor the people to pick apart new rule sets like the mass player base can. They knew what they were releasing so get ready to wait for months before any kind of real changes take place.

The issue is balancing it out internally without messing up the entire faction. People seem to forget there are other units/battalions in the book other then Changehost, Horrors, Flamers. Messing with the DD ability also could have negative effects for the mortal side. 

The Changehost is a one-trick pony thats made of glass. If GW heavy hands it then like they did the last few versions of it then we might as well tear that page from the book like it never existed. Same with Flamers or Horrors. If Flamers go back to or past their old cost no one will use them. If Horrors go past 220pts no one will use them. The Changehost itself is extremely restrictive with building it but bumping it to 200pts flat might curve it in a bit.

Another issue is the other side of the book. Mortals. Acolytes are fine now finally but...all the Tzaangor related stuff, the units, the battalions, are either straight up garbage or overcosted in points or both. Im a Pyrofane fan myself and am curious how one would have done at any of the events. 

Instead of going ham on nerfing entire sections of the book maybe the other stuff that got no face time needs to be buffed instead. Bump the Changehost points to 200. Bump Horrors to 220. Bump Flamers to 130 or maybe 140 or possibly reduce their attacks by 1. That will make building a Changehost actually meaningful and hard choices will need to be made. These kinds of changes will still keep the book intact while keeping the flavor.

But for the love of Tzeentch people...if you want to come up with a solution it cannot effect the entire faction which almost all of them from this thread is suggesting. If you want to deal with cancer you focus on the cancer and cut it out, not toss a grenade inside the persons body. 

[Gesundheit]

Malakithe you just speak right from my heart! 
But it ist always like this. New stuff wins, everyone screams for a nerf. I think most people did not even know what the new Battletome does before playing against it. 

Thats why most people dont know what to do against it.

ofc it is strong! Ofc they won! But they need a lot of flair to adjust it! Otherwise they kill the hole book!

[Craze]

Malakithe, you nailed it!

100% agreement from my side. The nerf needs to come, but it needs to focus on Changehost and possibly Flamers/Horrors, but central mechanics for Tzeentch as a whole -  like DD -  should stay unchanged! 

[Sedraxis]

1 hour ago, Malakithe said:

Another issue is the other side of the book. Mortals. Acolytes are fine now finally but...all the Tzaangor related stuff, the units, the battalions, are either straight up garbage or overcosted in points or both. Im a Pyrofane fan myself and am curious how one would have done at any of the events. 

This is the stuff that shows how little people actually know about battletomes and rules across the game.

The mortal side of Tzeentch has great design, lots of options and choices. Very on par with pretty much all other good tomes. However when comparing to the daemon side of things it looks bad (as does everything else in the game). 

In fact, the mortal side even did pretty well in the first tournaments (5th I believe?).

This is not a statement aimed at @Malakithe but rather the community as a whole:

If you don't play tournaments, read a lot of battletomes or test/play a lot of armies, why do you still mingle in all these discussions. It is all for a personal agenda?

The same happened with OBR, where people complained about stuff that wasn't even real just because someone on the internet threw some scary numbers around. I get it looks scary, but in practice we can see there are lots of ways to deal with it and play around it.

Slaanesh was a bit of a different story, and now so is Tzeentch. The problem isn't just scary stats, it's the combination of a lot of power and the lack of a clear weakness. In the case of Tzeentch, games are decided in the first turn either by locking down or straight up killing most of an opponents army. Changehost plays a big part in that, but the mere stats on horrors/flamers combined with hosts and allegiance abilities are in another league as well.

Tzeentch will always be a strong army because of their enormous list of options, tools and tricks to pull off game-deciding moves (just the warscrolls + destiny dice give you so much freedom, which is a very cool mechanic). The problem arises when there is no drawback for this and their straight up combat power/costs get to be at the same levels as melee focussed armies with far less tricks. Having bad saves is the attempt at this I guess, but even this gets mitigated with -1 to hit and horrors being the cheapest wounds out there.

Mortal Tzeentch is a great example of what it should be. High damage and movement elites and battlelines supported by utility units/heroes. The drawback of low wounds/saves persists, so if you make a mistake you still lose. Just as OBR loses if their units end up in the wrong place and cannot make the correct engagements.

 

[Gesundheit]

„If you don't play tournaments, read a lot of battletomes or test/play a lot of armies, why do you still mingle in all these discussions. It is all for a personal agenda?“

 

Well i got 4 Armys atm, play a game every week (Only against nearly Max. Lists) and still dont think Tzeentch is totaly over the top.  (I Play FEC Most of the time)

for example FEC where much to strong with the new Codex, but gw just adjustet a few things wich made them less strong, but still solid! 
and that is exactly what they need to now! 
Just a little nerf. Look what happens and go on. 

[Nogginnocker]

At the very least, GW needs to address the question about DD and BS in the two week FAQ regardless of their answer so that it’s beyond questionable and players won’t have that nagging doubt in the back of their heads, “is this really what they intended?” A simple yes or no will suffice.