Tzeentch win Cancon and the GW GT Heat 1

[whispersofblood]

59 minutes ago, Sedraxis said:

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.

 

I agree with some of what you have said. But S2D Tzeentch has a huge issue as well. I'm on the fence about bringing it to Heat 2, on one hand its incredibly lame, on the other hand dropping it in GW's lap and asking them to fix it is possibly the only way to affect change. I'm definitely conflicted.

[Malakithe]

1 hour ago, Sedraxis said:

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). 

Ehh....Tzaangors, Enlightened, and Skyfire related stuff is not points efficient in the same way that Acolytes now are when it comes to the Mortals side. As far as options go there is Pyrofane + Witchfyre and Guild of Summoners. Thats it.  Every battalion in the book with the exception of Changehost and Witchfyre is bad. Transient Cult is straight useless. All those battalions and the sub-par subfactions is what I was refering too and need to be changed/buffed if the daemon side is going to be squashed back down.

The issues with balancing Tzaangor stuff is it will also directly effect BoC, which presents yet another balancing challenge.

[Sedraxis]

25 minutes ago, whispersofblood said:

I agree with some of what you have said. But S2D Tzeentch has a huge issue as well. I'm on the fence about bringing it to Heat 2, on one hand its incredibly lame, on the other hand dropping it in GW's lap and asking them to fix it is possibly the only way to affect change. I'm definitely conflicted.

Oh I haven't looked into the S2D side of Tzeentch yet, can you give me the basics?

I'm really glad that people took the strongest options they could find. The sooner a problem becomes known the sooner we can accept it and work towards solving it. It does ruin the fun of the event for some, so I hope it won't happen too often.

[Malakithe]

1 hour ago, whispersofblood said:

I agree with some of what you have said. But S2D Tzeentch has a huge issue as well. I'm on the fence about bringing it to Heat 2, on one hand its incredibly lame, on the other hand dropping it in GW's lap and asking them to fix it is possibly the only way to affect change. I'm definitely conflicted.

The SorcLordonMant is a prime buddy to hang out with Kairos so he can cast the SorcLords spell for sure

[AverageBoss]

I still think Flamers and Horrors are mostly fine on their own. Its outside stuff (like free subfaction bonuses, Endless spells, and battalions that bump them way over curve).

Only real changes I would do to them directly would be making the Horror banner heal D3, instead of D6. And a little snippet that Pinks cannot be brought back if no pinks are left in the unit.

[PraetorDragoon]

1 hour ago, Malakithe said:

Every battalion in the book with the exception of Changehost and Witchfyre is bad. 

So regular battletome standards then. 

[Ravinsild]

On 1/27/2020 at 8:57 AM, Clan's Cynic said:

Let's be honest, GW could line the pages of a Battletome with anthrax and some would say it's great.

I'm definitely subscribing to that theory that there's either two people, or two teams, who seem to handle every other Battletome though. One that produces fluffy but pretty 'okayish maybe' ruleswise and another that's extremely powerful with meh internal balance. People will say "well I like the fluffy one!" but sadly AoS doesn't exist in a vacuum where we only play fluffy Battletomes vs other fluffy Battletomes.

Then, SOMETIMES, they manage to get both (Like with the Ironjawz). Although some of the spirit of the Orruks is gone I guess it really do be more crunch than fluff. Used to be funny stuff like the reason Grodrakk's followers wear yellow is because they could never get the Stormcast Eternal armor after beating them because they teleport away, so they painted it bright yellow cuz they wanted the tough ladz shiny armor. Basically as a "We beat you!! Even if we can't prove it by wearing your armor" 

The little things like that are all gone and it's sort of been streamlined, but maybe that's cuz they had to push Bonesplittaz in too, and honestly I didn't read the Bonesplittaz parts of the book just Ironjawz. 

[NJohansson]

1 hour ago, PraetorDragoon said:

So regular battletome standards then. 

Actually no - much better. There are half a dozen other playable ones - it’s just that two of the battalions are really outstanding and on an whole different power level (especially Changehost).

Edited January 30, 2020 by NJohansson

[Sedraxis]

1 minute ago, NJohansson said:

Actually no - much better. There are half a dozen other playable ones - it’s just that two of the battalions are really outstanding and on an whole different power level (especially Changehost).

This, the Tzeentch tome is full of great stuff even if you ignore the broken parts. I think a lot of people have never looked outside their own tomes and just assume everything else is magical christmasland. OBR is once again a good example of that.

[Tittliewinks22]

KO book released same day, only has 3 (4) battalions.  Wish there was as many battalion options as Teezntch

[Gecktron]

11 minutes ago, Tittliewinks22 said:

KO book released same day, only has 3 (4) battalions.  Wish there was as many battalion options as Teezntch

Tzeentch also has a whole lot more units. 

[AverageBoss]

36 minutes ago, Gecktron said:

Tzeentch also has a whole lot more units. 

This.
Tzeentch has close to 40 total model kits to draw on. Not unit choices, model kits.

[Paniere]

my 2c on how balancing things out. 1) rewrite aura of mutability , too strong 2) if you take the changehost batallion, no arcanites allowed ( no fatemaster, no gaunt summoner). 3) modify changehost: either 1 teleport or 2 but within 18/27".  Thoughts?

[NJohansson]

24 minutes ago, Paniere said:

my 2c on how balancing things out. 1) rewrite aura of mutability , too strong 2) if you take the changehost batallion, no arcanites allowed ( no fatemaster, no gaunt summoner). 3) modify changehost: either 1 teleport or 2 but within 18/27".  Thoughts?

Most Changehost (including those at the resent tournaments - not counting the Cancon one) did not include any arcanites. Aura of mutability is strong but for example the host duplicitous does not really care and one teleport will be enough to still stop a lot of things in their tracks. More effective (regarding changehost) would (once again IMHO) be to remove flamers/exalted flamers from it and only allowing min units.

[Dolomyte]

9 hours ago, Gesundheit said:

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!

What do you plan to do against a one drop army that can either shoot your hero’s out or drop a massive brick you can’t get through in your deployment zone with an auto charge turn 1? 
 

beyond just the fact it’s a nightmare to deal with it sucks to play against. I’d rather fight an army of 2 up armor bonereapers all day every day. At least my army gets to move and do stuff. I don’t have every decision taken from me immediately. 

[HarbingerGaming]

The hate for flamers feels so strange. I own 18 and ran them long before they were even considered viable. They are one of my favorite units in the entire game. They've never been considered good compared to other things. Now that the units once standing in the way aren't as overly powerful and they finally have a role to play everyone wants to see them nerfed and no one is taking them en masse. This was one weekend. Horrors seem to be the issue more so than most, especially when combined with Host Duplicitous, which seems to be the most competitive choice. 

[Daramiz]

21 minutes ago, HarbingerGaming said:

The hate for flamers feels so strange. I own 18 and ran them long before they were even considered viable. They are one of my favorite units in the entire game. They've never been considered good compared to other things. Now that the units once standing in the way aren't as overly powerful and they finally have a role to play everyone wants to see them nerfed and no one is taking them en masse. This was one weekend. Horrors seem to be the issue more so than most, especially when combined with Host Duplicitous, which seems to be the most competitive choice. 

Flamers were fine until the new changehost.  They still are fine in a vacuum.

[Forrix]

Flamers are interesting to me. Their damage seems pretty intense, especially in Eternal Conflagration, but they are incredibly fragile. I can see why the Eternal Conflagration/Changehost combo is tilting people but its hard for me to picture flamers getting nerfed much without becoming too much of a liability in a list, especially if the aforementioned combo gets nerfed too. I'm already hesitant to field them outside of that combo due to stuff like OBR catapults and KO shooting. On that subject, anyone complaining about Tzeentch shooting out heroes should get some games in with the new KO.  

[angrycontra]

I think flamers are facing a bit similar issue as old plague monks in that glass cannon units are incredibly hard to balance. You increase their price too much and they're useless, too easy to destroy. You make them too cheap or give some other outside buffs (changehost) or both and you have one broken unit. I mean even now, stormcast and nighthaunt (which are both relatively unpopular among tournament players) could probably build super easy hard counter lists to flamer changehost spam because both of these armies can leave all their more powerful units up in the sky / down underground and destroy all key flamer units in single turn with no fear of retaliation. Could probably work against horror spam too. Problem of course is that these armies are unpopular because their power level is kinda low against other top armies so winning a changehost would not do much good if you lose against most other armies.

Almost easiest way would be to just change flamer warscroll. Make them more durable but less damaging. Like imagine if all flamers got +1 wound and let's say 5+ fnp but only dealt 1 dam attacks (ok they could get +1 attack on their profile so that they wouldn't be completely useless on damage front). This warscroll wouldn't be anywhere near as obnoxious and it would be 100% easier to balance. They could maybe even make flamers a bit cheaper with this scroll.

[Sedraxis]

2 hours ago, angrycontra said:

Almost easiest way would be to just change flamer warscroll. Make them more durable but less damaging. Like imagine if all flamers got +1 wound and let's say 5+ fnp but only dealt 1 dam attacks (ok they could get +1 attack on their profile so that they wouldn't be completely useless on damage front). This warscroll wouldn't be anywhere near as obnoxious and it would be 100% easier to balance. They could maybe even make flamers a bit cheaper with this scroll.

Don't forget to make them a wizard too, and why not make them a unit of 5 for the same points while you are at it?

Why do people have these insane expectations of what a unit should be able to do? Nerfing the damage on flamers will not make them useless instantly, even if they deal half the damage they do now they will still be a very good unit. Buffing their defense will just break them even more . Look at horrors, cheapest wounds in the game but still able to do all sorts of good stuff for some reason.

The problem isn't a single warscroll or battalion, the whole daemon side of Tzeentch allows you to play every strength in 1 army with no drawback. Games end in the first in most cases, it's not a matter of adjusting a single warscroll or battalion to make this okay again.

I once again ask you to look at the mortal side, as the Tzeentch mortals are also really, really strong but yet pale in comparison to the daemons. And if you think Tzeentch mortals are bad... Well, check out some of the other battletomes and units.

[Malakithe]

1 hour ago, Sedraxis said:

Don't forget to make them a wizard too, and why not make them a unit of 5 for the same points while you are at it?

Why do people have these insane expectations of what a unit should be able to do? Nerfing the damage on flamers will not make them useless instantly, even if they deal half the damage they do now they will still be a very good unit. Buffing their defense will just break them even more . Look at horrors, cheapest wounds in the game but still able to do all sorts of good stuff for some reason.

The problem isn't a single warscroll or battalion, the whole daemon side of Tzeentch allows you to play every strength in 1 army with no drawback. Games end in the first in most cases, it's not a matter of adjusting a single warscroll or battalion to make this okay again.

I once again ask you to look at the mortal side, as the Tzeentch mortals are also really, really strong but yet pale in comparison to the daemons. And if you think Tzeentch mortals are bad... Well, check out some of the other battletomes and units.

Most of the other battalions are bad.

Tzaangor Coven: good org, good ability. Problem: 1140pts minimum. To get the most out of it most people will bump up a unit of Tzaangors and one unit of Enlightened and Skyfires. Or you pick which you want to focus on. Due to points its unwieldy.

Alter-kin Coven: lol just no. You have to keep all 3 units together at all times and in combat and if your positioning is even the slightest bit off then it wont even work.

Warpflame Host: terrible org, terrible ability. All the types of Flamers are glass cannons and this requires you to within constant charge range. This isnt 40k where you get overwatch. 

Skyshoal Coven: good org, meh ability. This requires you to fly your units over other units to get the bonus. Wont work on hordes or heroes hiding near hordes and all it takes is clever positioning by your opponent to negate it completely.

Multitudinous Host: bad org, good ability. This one can prove to be good but once you fill out the crazy 8 unit requirement you wont have much room to play with if you go Pink heavy which most would want to do.

Overseer's Fate-twitsters: i actually dont even see the point in this one. Farming DD with a huuuge points investment.

Arcanite Cabal: meh org, meh ability. This is like the B or C team trying to prove they are worth something. The older version was much better. Picking one very squishy hero to be the only benefactor of the ability...terrible design.

Aether-eater Host: ehh...I guess if you wanted a 'cheaper' battalion for the extra cp or something then this could work but otherwise extremely situational and not that good anyway.

Omniscient Oracles: bad org, good ability. The ability is great..but not 1700pts great.

The only issue I have with the Witchfyre Coven is the inclusion of Enlightened. Its a straight up tax.

Changehost is Changehost. With 8 units and a LoC requirement its fairly restrictive on the daemon side but still the absolute best of all the battalions. 

Edited January 31, 2020 by Malakithe

[Sedraxis]

 

10 minutes ago, Malakithe said:

Most of the other battalions are bad.

Tzaangor Coven: good org, good ability. Problem: 1140pts minimum. To get the most out of it most people will bump up a unit of Tzaangors and one unit of Enlightened and Skyfires. Or you pick which you want to focus on. Due to points its unwieldy.

Alter-kin Coven: lol just no. You have to keep all 3 units together at all times and in combat and if your positioning is even the slightest bit off then it wont even work.

Warpflame Host: terrible org, terrible ability. All the types of Flamers are glass cannons and this requires you to within constant charge range. This isnt 40k where you get overwatch. 

Skyshoal Coven: good org, meh ability. This requires you to fly your units over other units to get the bonus. Wont work on hordes or heroes hiding near hordes and all it takes is clever positioning by your opponent to negate it completely.

Multitudinous Host: bad org, good ability. This one can prove to be good but once you fill out the crazy 8 unit requirement you wont have much room to play with if you go Pink heavy which most would want to do.

Overseer's Fate-twitsters: i actually dont even see the point in this one. Farming DD with a huuuge points investment.

Arcanite Cabal: meh org, meh ability. This is like the B or C team trying to prove they are worth something. The older version was much better. Picking one very squishy hero to be the only benefactor of the ability...terrible design.

Aether-eater Host: ehh...I guess if you wanted a 'cheaper' battalion for the extra cp or something then this could work but otherwise extremely situational and not that good anyway.

Omniscient Oracles: bad org, good ability. The ability is great..but not 1700pts great.

The only issue I have with the Witchfyre Coven is the inclusion of Enlightened. Its a straight up tax.

Changehost is Changehost. With 8 units and a LoC requirement its fairly restrictive on the daemon side but still the absolute best of all the battalions. 

This is the whole point. Those battalions aren't bad, they have a drawback. A price you pay for the bonuses. That is what makes them fair.

These battalions are still much better then most battalions from recent books, same for the units. Even without Changehost, Flamers and Horrors Tzeentch will still be able to compete very well.

[Malakithe]

13 minutes ago, Sedraxis said:

 

This is the whole point. Those battalions aren't bad, they have a drawback. A price you pay for the bonuses. That is what makes them fair.

These battalions are still much better then most battalions from recent books, same for the units. Even without Changehost, Flamers and Horrors Tzeentch will still be able to compete very well.

They are bad is the thing. Most people would rather run no battalions at all then have to fill out the crazy requirements for most of them. Battalions arent supposed to be about paying a price for bonuses. The Witchfyre has a straight up price/tax in the form of Enlightened but that one is minor enough. The others not so much. You end up paying too much for the price then you have no room left for an actual good list.

[RuneBrush]

We're in danger of running into the whole battalion discussion here 😉  What I'd perhaps ask is what makes changehost appear vastly more powerful than other battalions.  Is it that you can run a super low-drop army, thus guaranteeing that important first turn decision or is it the battalion benefit that it provides?

19 minutes ago, Malakithe said:

They are bad is the thing

I think it's worth just clarifying "in a competitive list" to this statement.  @Sedraxis you're right in saying that they're comparatively better than some other factions have, but they don't quite cut the mustard when it comes to writing that all important top tier list in comparison to changehost.

[Malakithe]

11 minutes ago, RuneBrush said:

I think it's worth just clarifying "in a competitive list" to this statement.

Yes I should have said that. I figured it was a thread about the competitiveness but ill specify next time.

In that case I still stand by my statements lol