Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

After a conversation with 40kenthusiast about the best way to build a Tzeentch list, I came up with this build to playtest. A quick foreword about this game: I'm still learning some of the subtleties of this game, and my opponent was a big player back in the last edition of the game, but I'm not positive he'd even played a 7th edition game. It'd certainly been years. He borrowed my rulebook the night before to brush up, but he was a little rusty on his armybook. Specifically, he forgot about some of the rules of the Screaming Bell, namely the magic resistance, the extra two power dice, and the immunity to psychology. Certainly a big deal, although I'm not sure how much difference it would have made in the grand scheme of the game.

Here's the list I took:

Kairos Fateweaver

Herald of Tzeentch, Chariot, BSB, Great Icon of Despair, Power Vortex
This was who I really wanted to try out. A Flying 12" bubble of -2 to leadership, to accompany Kairos around. Not as useful against armies that are Immune to Psychology, but those that have to test should really be hurting.

Herald of Tzeentch, Disc, Power Vortex

Blue Scribes
I really want these guys to be good. I like them a lot, for whatever reason, in FB and 40k. They're certainly worth the whopping 81 points in Fantasy, I'm just not so sure they're worth the Hero slot. I had been going back and forth between them and the Masque in this slot.

10 Pink Horrors
10 Pink Horrors
10 Pink Horrors

3 Screamers
3 Screamers
3 Screamers

6 Flamers, Pyrocaster
4 Fiends of Slaanesh

The core is pretty self-explanatory. The Screamers and Flamers are there to try to force Panic checks in the movement and shooting phases, to maximize the damage of the Banner. The Fiends are to have at least something that can actually fight (in case Kairos needs bailing out, for example). With their ridiculous movement, I pictured perhaps running them up a flank and wheeling, then firing off an Unseen Lurker from Kairos to get them engaged and potentially get off a flank charge, where they'll be brutal.

His list (more or less):

Grey Seer on the Screaming Bell
3 Warlock Engineers with the Warp Lightning setup
3 really really big units of Clanrats (like 30? maybe 35?)
3 units of Slaves
3 Ratling Guns
6 (!!) units of Poison Wind Globadiers... 4 units of 6 and 2 units of 8


The game:
The Grey Seer rolled up Plague, Warp Lightning, something that gives a unit Frenzy, and I forget what else (not Skitterleap).

The Herald on the Chariot got Glean Magic and Gift of Chaos, the one on a Disc got Boon (which I ditched for Flickering Fire, the basic Magic Missile) and Glean. I decided to keep Glean on both, as I recall Skaven magic being pretty good, so I might want to steal some spells. Gift seemed like it would be great on a flying chariot... go drop D6 strength D6 hits all over the army from behind. Kairos took these spells:

Burning Head
Doom and Darkness
(these two seemed to work well with the Ld attack)
Pit of Shades
Unseen Lurker (for the Fiends)

Commandment of Brass (wasn't really sure how much trouble the Bell would be, got this just in case)
Cleansing Flare
Howler Wind
Mistress of the Marsh

He deployed the bell/Seer in a unit of Clanrats in the center, with slaves and clanrats lined up to both sides (with the Ratling Guns, of course), and all the Globadiers behind, ostensibly to chuck globes into combat when the units in front of them engage. Interestingly, he put the 3 Warlocks in slave units instead of Clanrats. I'm not sure whether the primary reason was to give them a bit of extra Ld or because the slaves would be lower priority targets. My deployment saw the Horrors strung out across the middle with the Fiends to the right side of my lines and the Flamers to the left. Kairos was in the middle, and the other fliers were scattered around. He got the first turn.


Turn 1:
Everything moves pretty much straight forward in a line, the Ratling Guns sticking nearby and the Globadiers behind. Thanks to the Horros, I had 9 Dispell Dice for his magic phase. His first magic phase was somewhat uneventful. I blocked Plague and one Warp Lightning, a couple more failed to cast, nothing particularly devastating happened. I lost 2 Screamers in one unit to a Warp Lightning. When he rang the Bell, it got the result that deals wounds to anything T7 or higher (which didn't affect my army) and rolled doubles, so I think he lost some Clanrats or something.

My turn 1: Here's the real test for this army. Everything moved forward 10", so it's all about 14" from my lines. Everything is completely lined up. Thanks to terrain there's no way to get the Fiends up to flank so I just blaze them forward into the nearest unit of Slaves, who decide to hold when he finds out the Fiends charge 20". Kairos and the BSB both fly behind his lines (landing close, but behind everything except the Globadiers. The Screamers do drive-bys of his units on the way to the back, to hit multiple units of globadiers (who are very close behind the blocks). One unit gets reduced to 1 Globadier. The Horrors shuffle around and the Flamers advance on the left flank. The 1 Globadier breaks and runs.

On to the Magic phase. Kairos uses the head with Cleansing Flare. I have a total of 6 dice in the pool thanks to the Scribes and Power Vortex. The scribes fire off a spell from the Lore of Death, get Steal Soul, and it's blocked. The Horrors plink away at a few units. I attempted three times to Glean Magic on the Grey Seer to Plague his army. The first was dispelled, the next two get scrolled. The first attempt at Gift of Chaos gets scrolled, as does the Cleansing Flare. The last one fails to cast. All in all, the magic phase didn't do much, but it did burn up 4 dispel scrolls on the first turn. The Flamers rolled an impressive amount of dice (something like 26 shots), but managed to cause only 1 wound on the Clanrats, which got saved. Less than impressive.

The Fiends, on the other hand, were very impressive. His mage was on the corner of the unit, so one Fiend could only throw on him. He caused one wound, and the rest of the unit killed 4. The mage failed to do anything in return, and the Fiends won combat by 1 (there was no banner in the slave unit). Thanks to the BSB, though, the Break test was at -3 and they failed. This is where I got so impressed with the Fiends. Thanks to Soporific Musk, he had to roll 3D6 and discard the highest on the break test. 1,2,5 meant he was running 4", and the Fiends pursued 12. So there goes a unit of slaves and a Warlock. The Fiends went far enough to reach the Globadiers behind the unit, which fled (not caught).

Turn 2:
Here's where it all goes downhill. A unit of Clanrats, a unit of Slaves, 2 units of Globadiers, and a Ratling Gun are all in Terror range of Kairos, and within 12" of the -2 Ld banner. The Ratling Gun manages to hold, everything else flees and runs. One unit of Globadiers has to run at the Chariot and gets destroyed, another runs through a different unit of Globadiers (also in range of the banner) who also Panic and flee. Half of his army dissolved at the top of turn 2. It was brutal. He managed to rally the Globadiers that fled from the Fiends, the one by himself continues to fall back.

There's not much left for him to do in his movement phase. No one but globadiers has any line of sight to charge. He maneuvers some and we move on to the magic phase. He has an item that makes him lose a power die on a 1 and gain one on a 2-6. Last turn he got an extra die, but this turn he loses one. Between that and the loss of a mage (with another one running in a panicked unit) I manage to pretty much stop his magic phase with the exception of Plague. The Plague hits a unit of Horrors: only 3 fail the T test, and all three make their 5+ ward saves (??). That was unexpected. The plague jumps to the next unit of Horrors, kills 3 (more average) and then fizzles out.

His shooting phase looks like it could be pretty nasty. A Ratling Gun lights into the Blue Scribes, but they make an inordinate number of 5+ ward saves and end up with a wound left. The Globadiers that are in range start chucking things at the BSB, who manages to make enough ward saves to both stay alive and keep his chariot alive (through the only unit of Globadiers and the 2nd Ratling gun). The 3rd Ratling gun tried to finish him off and blew up instead. Some other globadiers exploded the Herald on the Disc. The Bell did something with Panic tests that my army ignored.

My Turn 2, we repositioned. The Fiends charged the unit of Globadiers in front of them, who tried to hold but failed their Fear check, fled, and got run down. The Fiends ran off the board. A unit of Horrors charged something that was already fleeing to make them run into some terrain and get out of the fight for even longer. Kairos and the BSB repositioned to Terror bomb the last few units of his army. The screamers ran the back field, completely destroying a unit of Globadiers (that was already fleeing), 2 Ratling Guns, and put enough casualties on the last unbroken unit of Globadiers to make them take a check (at -2 from the banner) and they broke. At this point there's the general's unit, one unit of slaves, and one unit of Clanrats left on the table that aren't broken. And all three of those units will need a Terror test at -2 at the start of the next turn. This is where it came up that we forgot about the Bell's MR and Immunity to Psychology. The Blue Scribes went for the Lore of Death and hit the general's unit with Doom and Darkness, which he threw 3 dice at to dispell but failed (rolled triple 2's). At this point, their Terror test at -5 would have them running straight into the chariot and be destroyed. He called it at this point. His entire shooting core was gone, he couldn't charge anything thanks to the flying, his magic wasn't getting it done.


All in all, the army was ridiculously brutal. But then, this is really a great match-up for it. The worst would be an Immune to Psychology army with fast assault elements (see: 40kenthusiast's Khorne army). I'll be messing around with it some more and see what turns up.

Since I'm testing this as a joint 40k-Fantasy army, I'll post a batrep soon with some playtest games of essentially the same army on the 40k side of things.

PWG's? No warp lightning cannon? Man, next time he comes down, I'll help him build a real skaven army. :p

Not that I think mine would have won, TBH. But if you want a test game against my skaven or my vamps, let me know.

Do the new demons not suffer the loss of their ward Save Vs magic attacks like the old ones did? I don't have the new books so I am not sure. Though i do know that the Demonic aura was negated in the previous edition of the Demon.

On another note your friends list was a bit unskaveny IMO.

No, they're a regular ward save now.

What would you consider more Skaveny? I don't really know a lot about them. My only other experience with a Skaven army was the exact same Characters and Core (except no Bell), only with Jezzails, a Warp Lightning Cannon, and a Giant. (And a couple tunneling teams of Gutter Runners?)

I run horde skaven and at one point had created a SoC eshin list with over 300 models. To me skaven should be firmly in the 200+ model range. I also don't go nearly as heavy on the magic unless I am running a fluffy 13 PD magic heavy force(also 200+ models)

As I count it up, he had 220 models and 14 PD. Doesn't sound too terribly much different from what you're suggesting (the magic-heavy version anyway).

If Kairos and the BSB chariot are behind his lines, how did they flee into the chariot? You flee away from the source of terror, not the closest board edge.

They were behind the front of the lines, more or less in between some of the units. I meant "behind" in the sense that they weren't in front of and thus couldn't be charged. The BSB and Kairos were on opposite flanks of a unit, so it fled straight away from Kairos into the Chariot on the other side. Sorry about that.

why did'nt he take a warp lightning cannon?! there almost compulsory against block unit demons and there greater demons

He has since been shown the error of his ways. No more leaving home for him without at least one Warp Lightning Cannon, possibly 2.

That would have to be the first time I've ever heard of slaves no fleeing a charge to allow the clanrat units following a flank charge.

Wow.

Also why the huge globadier units.

At tourney here in Oz I usually have to face 10 odd units of 2 or 3. Very frustrating, don't get any real points benefit in killing them and they don't cause panic.

Also slaves are there to redirect charges, not to hide characters in...

Playing dirty and unexpectedly is in character, and I've put an assassin in a slave unit for a laugh before. Never underestimate any sort of Skaven unit. With the Skaven list you have a lot of options, and none of them are 'unskaveny'. Including the ones that don't take Warp-Lightning. I've been staying away from them on purpose lately...

Slaves can easily get +3 rank and outnumbering - that's +4 off the bat. A not-particularly-successful charge from a lower unit strength has a good chance of at least a tie, which is why my two 'key' slave blocks pay the extra four points for a musician more often than not.

Tri-Warplock and Grey Seer is devastating against non Tzeentch/Slann armies, but the Bell is almost always a liability. I pretty much always roll either a double or the 'wound models over T7' result. Makes sense in probability, of course.

Nice to read how you went against an army that's familiar to me though - I've been thinking Tzeentch myself.

Gonads, right on. PWGs should be a small units. Big skirmishing chuds just get in the way.

erm. is this ok that demon list come to 2251pts? Why pyrocaster?

I guess as a freindly game they don't care about a point difference.

oh ok)