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they wont disown me...they probally just wont play this particular list. hense the orginal reason for the topic. im not upset about it... just trying to find a way to use said list, while still being friendly and slightly competetive...and making bad puns is just something i do.

I'd love to face it in a friendly game/s to try and beat it.

But after half a dozen tries, unless I can it would become not welcome.

Friendly games amongst regular opponents become slug fests as each change their armies to beat their opponents.

I however wouldn't like to see it in a tourney.


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As a tourney should be a take on all comers approach, and that list requires a very specific army build to beat it.

I have no problem playing against hard lists even for fun. I generally subscribe to the idea of if you aren't trying your hardest to win, you are dishonoring your opponent. Taking a fun or fluff list against people is like saying you suck so bad I can bring this crap list and have a chance of winning.

As for roleplaying out a scenario or all the other fluffy activities some enjoy, its not for me. Most of the time it like writing bad fan fiction. I just want to play a competitive game where both players are trying hard to win.

About only time I bring easy or soft lists is when I'm teaching new players how to play. I still try really hard to win, I just don't take the most optimal lists or the hardest units.

I also have played a few games with bad lists because of exploring what the army can do. Taking units that are not used as often, or using common units in new ways. Sometimes I get good results, sometimes bad. For instance I found executioners suck pretty much any way you can take them, witches can be really powerful, and that DE warriors with a certain banner is one heck of an anvil.

As for how I like games to end up: I hate close indecisive battles. I like to massacre, or be massacred. You learn more from games where one player crushes the opponent utterly than you get from a game where you slug it out and let the dice decide. Massacres are usually causes by superior tactics/deployment of one player. Draws and minor victories are when neither player really finds an advantage, and IMHO there really isn't as much to be learned from it other than you didn't try hard enough.

But yet, if its a draw, most likely its because your opponent is similar to you in skill level.

Yeah, my beasts have no chance against this tizz list(shoud I say ANY tzeentch list?)

And all because of Horrors generating PD & DD.

Actually draws don't mean that your opponent is similar in skill level at all. Just about any WE player can play for the draw if he really wanted to, his army is meant to be points denial after all. Same thing with some VC lists, who bring unbeatable death stars and bring back their loses every turn.

In many games even against similarly skilled players there is a tipping point where a close game suddenly becomes decisive. A lucky roll, a slight misalignment, a missed charged... There is usually a chance for stalemate to become a crushing victory, if the players see it and go for it.

The types of games I hate are when two players run their 3 or so blocks, maybe some unimportant support, and they let their armies grind at each other. No attempts to make mismatches, no attempts to out finesse or deploy the opponent. Just mindless block hammer. Same thing goes for two shooting armies standing just inside range and shooting each other to death.

I'm always suprised when the Kairos list gets posted and folks ask if it's overpowered.

1. Yes. It dominates the magic phase in ways unimaginable.
2. Multiple special characters, including the best magic user in the game, augmented by the Blue Scribes which just feed him more power dice.
3. Flamers - arguably the most overpowered, undercosted unit in the daemon list. Incredible number of shots, great BS, ward save, 2 wounds - you've maxed those out.
4. Horror blocks - okay you need them as core and for the theme. But min sized and min choice = your running the minimum amount of core to max out your characters and rare.
5. Screamers is a little different, as they aren't that great, but at least fit the theme.

I guess it met the tournament rules, but if you look at the 'Ard Boyz list, your just points short of what people take to that one. If your playing simply to massacre or be massacred - probably wouldn't want to be someone I'd want to play against.

notabot187 wrote:

As for how I like games to end up: I hate close indecisive battles. I like to massacre, or be massacred. You learn more from games where one player crushes the opponent utterly than you get from a game where you slug it out and let the dice decide. Massacres are usually causes by superior tactics/deployment of one player. Draws and minor victories are when neither player really finds an advantage, and IMHO there really isn't as much to be learned from it other than you didn't try hard enough.

See i disagree here, The most fun for me are minor victories. My game last night at the end of the battle we only had a few hundred points each left on the board. It was probably the most fun game i have played. Each turn it looked like someone else was going to win. Truly an epic battle.

As far as massacring, i think deployment and the tactics have a decent amount to do with it, however the list has a bigger impact imo. The games where you know you have lost on turn 3, and it wasnt dice or poor playing, it was their list you could do nothing against.

This is compounded by the fact that you will normally concede and more then half the time are met with a "Come on man just play it out", so the player can rub your face in the dirt even more.

Also learning more from a massacre? I dont learn as much then a close game. With close games you can say ok, i should have done this here instead, and right there that was a bad move. Against a massacre it is normally like wow, I dont even know what to do against that. I guess i could try doing this but that probably wouldnt work. Unless your very new and making horrible moves.

Currently the WHFB metagame is broken imo. You have to either build an all around army that does well against most armies, and pray you dont go against the sick lists. OR build an army that counters the sick lists at the cost of doing worse against other lists. Unfortunately neither scenario is healthy for the metagame, hopefully 8th edition will change that.

i enjoy a close game. or rather one thats not decided untill the last turn. weather that means masacare or not... i like a tight competetive game. but having people take 1 look at my list and go "yea im not beating that, no thanks" or "that list is too scary, i aint playing it" kinda defeats the purpose of playing. i want a challenging list, and a competetive one, but not one so ultimitly scary no one will play it. so, heres a retouch at my orginial to try and keep the models and theme, but be less scary.

lord of change lvl 4, with twin heads and flames of tzeentch = 635
blue scribes - 81
TZ herald with flames of tzeentch and winged horror -160
TZ herlad with flames of tzeentch and winged horror - 160

15 horrors w/standard - 192
15 horrors w/ standard - 192
17 horrors with changling, standard - 276

5 screamers - 150

5 flamers - 210
5 flamers - 210

totasl 2196

kept almost the same models... just beefed the horros numbers and added standards, i also dropped 3 screamers and made a single unit, and trimmed the flamers to 5 strong each. the list should still do the same thing... but less crazy. one thing....my lord of change is 10 points more then kairos, and way less versatile in my books, but i think hes the deal breaker in a friendly game. in any case thoughts?

High elves. I don't have my dex handy, but here's my counter.

Lord on a dragon with the insta-end one magic phase item and MR3.

Minimum possible core. (will die quickly).

4 RBTs (or 2 and an eagle if you think it will help).

And lastly, as many dragon princes as you can afford, mounted BSB with the banner that makes them immune to spell effects and the unit banner (lion standard?) that makes them immune to fear/terror. put all your non-lord characters here (a scroll caddy to snuff things directed at your lord/dragon, and a combat hero tooled for challenges so he can't snipe your BSB that way).

So you've got this epic deathstar that's immune to anythying flaming, fear, terror, and ignores the effects of all magic. At worst, it's something the list you described has absolutely zero chance of killing outright. At best, if you maneuver your dragon lord and the deathstar carefully, you might be able to pin down a few members of his flying circus. you'll certainly wreck at least one unit of horrors.

Either way, this should hold the dice-spamming list to a draw at worst. Against anything else, it's terrible. If you want to play even more defensively, put your lord (or in this case it can be an archmage if preferred) in the deathstar as well. However, you then stand no chance of catching the flying circus.

Sorry it's not a detailed list, but I don't have the book handy.

Any thoughts?

Malleus pointed out one of the more popular anti-Tz lists. He also pointed out (correctly) that it gets whooped by anything not Tz. I recall a tournament where someone was expecting Mono-Tz spam and took such a list. Nobody in the tourney brought that particular daemons list and the guy got rolled.

The list is much more likeable from an arbitrary internet standpoint, meaning your "composition" is in the green all over the place. However i dont think you really weakened the army in any fashion and i still stand by this statement:

Kiwidru wrote: Basically if you put down XXXX points of any combination of tz demons it will take extreme effort to lose the game...

You have a worse flying mage, but you are still packing 12pd into a list that size (for reference that is a lvl 4, three lvl 2's, and two level 1's), and honestly that is only because you inefficiently put a banner in your small horror squads rather than another dude which would bump them both up to lvl 2. This is *way* past the upper limit of 90% of the armies (looking at you DE, VC, Lizards). And more importantly all other armies have their magic from a few individual soft squishy non-spectacular mages, where as your dice come from many many Itp, fear causing, ward saving, flyers/blocks...which is much harder to mitigate.
So basically (and this is all tourney metahammer):
1. Unless someone is completely hero'ed out for magic: you are just going to completely dominate your phase and also nullify his magic phase.
2. If they are completely maged out, but they arnt one of those three armies: they are still going to get dominated in your phase and also have no magic phase
3. if they are completely maged out, and they are one of those three armies: they will get dominated in your phase but have a minor magic phase, however probably dont have the numbers or the combat prowess to take advantages of your weaknesses, nor will they me able to inflict nearly enough damage to justify all the points invested in mages.
4. if they have made an army that will beat yours: you lose 1 game, they likely lose the rest.
5. they have an even more broken list (looking at you dark elf shade deathstar with ring of hotek): take full advantage of one of the few times you can join the mob and harass the guy with the uberbroken list

i admire your effort and resolve, but i think you will eventually have to compromise: just be friendly and shrug innocently as you steamroll your way through most armies

I'd agree with a lot of this stuff. Special characters are generally unbalanced, and three is pretty crazy.

The main problem with the Tzeentch theme is all the Flickering Fires and the Flamers. The Screamers are generally considered non-competitive.

If you want to tone it down a little, I'd drop some of the special characters (but in most friendly games, my friends and I generally don't play with them. So if you and your friends do, then go for it), and drop the units of Flamers down in size; everyone complains about them (the guy who took last at a local tourney got a box of them, to "help him start a good army" as a joke), and go with bigger blocks of Horrors, with the heralds in them. I say bigger blocks, because it would be less about tossing around bolts of fire, and I say put the Heralds in them, so the units don't get shot/magicked/charged and killed so easily.

And while I've heard a lot of complaining about this list (this is, essentially, why people complain about Daemons, with a little of Nurgle stuff on the side), it seems like more and more people are putting the DE stuff above the Daemons now.

As for stuff that could beat this army...high elves. Star Dragon. Dragon Armour. He's immune to all of your shooting, close-combat, and Tzeentch magic. He should be able to tear anything you've got to pieces.

Personally I don't see what the fuss is about on your first list. It's fine. It's easy to beat if you know what your doing. It's not a list to field against a bunch of new players, but in a tournament, it's fair game. You don't even have the top Daemonic gifts like Master of Sorcery and the best banner, Great Standard of Sundering. The banner will destroy any VC you come up against.

You also have to remember, there are a lot of armies out there that can hurt you. For examply, Dragon Princes from High Elves. The only person who can potentially hurt them in that army is Kairos. All the rest will do nothing. There is also a lot of magic items out there that make models immune to flamming attacks. It's almost a must to take them now as there is so much with flaming.

Personally, I say field your list as you were before. It's is a beatable list, people need to adapt to the game. It's not that hard to beat it and almost every army out there can do it. I fielded a very similar list in a tournament in Welland and got massacered twice, very comically. One by VC and another time from Skaven (Old Codex). Dice rolls weren't on my side much, but my opponents knew what they were doing.

Fighting Gopher wrote:Personally I don't see what the fuss is about on your first list. It's fine. It's easy to beat if you know what your doing. It's not a list to field against a bunch of new players, but in a tournament, it's fair game. You don't even have the top Daemonic gifts like Master of Sorcery and the best banner, Great Standard of Sundering. The banner will destroy any VC you come up against.

You also have to remember, there are a lot of armies out there that can hurt you. For examply, Dragon Princes from High Elves. The only person who can potentially hurt them in that army is Kairos. All the rest will do nothing. There is also a lot of magic items out there that make models immune to flamming attacks. It's almost a must to take them now as there is so much with flaming.

Personally, I say field your list as you were before. It's is a beatable list, people need to adapt to the game. It's not that hard to beat it and almost every army out there can do it. I fielded a very similar list in a tournament in Welland and got massacered twice, very comically. One by VC and another time from Skaven (Old Codex). Dice rolls weren't on my side much, but my opponents knew what they were doing.

We mostly agreed in a tourny it was fair game. But bringing a list like that to a FLGS you might have trouble finding someone to play with you.

Fair Enough, but even in a friendly game, I would play against it with any of my armies. I would just take it as a hurtle to overcome. It might not be the friendliest list, but all of Daemons could be ranked as such really.

The best tournaments judge presentation and comp each with equal weight to wins. Sure take "best general" but know that when you win with lists like that one you should feel shame. I beg demon players stop trying to ruin our game.

How did Daemon players ruin the game? Seriously. They're a tough army to beat. Yes, they are over-powered at the moment. They didn't ruin the game though. They can be beat, it's just pretty hard to do it at the moment unfortunately. I just don't understand the arguement in saying that the players ruined the game. If your upset about it, it's the game creators of it not the players.

However, I believe in July with the rule changes to Fantasy, you will see daemons are not so powerful anymore.

Fighting Gopher wrote:How did Daemon players ruin the game? Seriously. They're a tough army to beat. Yes, they are over-powered at the moment. They didn't ruin the game though. They can be beat, it's just pretty hard to do it at the moment unfortunately. I just don't understand the arguement in saying that the players ruined the game. If your upset about it, it's the game creators of it not the players.

However, I believe in July with the rule changes to Fantasy, you will see daemons are not so powerful anymore.

I dont like the comp system in general but i can see why it was put in. Due to shifting metagames, and the fact that the books cant be "patched" like online games means you will run into imbalances that cant be easily fixed. so TO's try to put in their own rules to make a fair tournament.

For tournies with the comp system i think it is a little interesting that you get points based on your build, when i would play say magic tournaments you compete with what you think is best, if someone thought it was cheesy to bad for them. Its a tournament, your supposed to go to win. Hindering players because they are playing a strong list (sometimes to the point where its impossible to win, even with perfect games) is dumb imo.

I really like the look and feel of the demon army, as well as the overall theme. However i dont think i will ever play it in its current implementation unless it somehow comes back in line with other armies in terms of power.

I think for tournies anything should go, every army has its cheesy super-build, some more-so then others. The Big deal with deamons atm, is that equal skill, equal dicerolling, the demon player has an edge. Sure the other player can win, but some dice rolls would need to go in his favor, and he would probably have to be a superior general.

William Matthews wrote:The best tournaments judge presentation and comp each with equal weight to wins. Sure take "best general" but know that when you win with lists like that one you should feel shame. I beg demon players stop trying to ruin our game.

The best tournaments? Comp? In the same event? Kinda subjective isn't it? Maybe some of the biggest events do this, but big does not equal best. Personally any comp or list building restrictions in a tourney is an event I refuse to go to, and discourage people from attending. I can understand some people wanting hobby events and story telling events, but in a tourney you are trying to win. If it is legal in the rules, then its all good as far as I'm concerned. Personally I feel any actual list building restrictions are not playing the actual game. Since even soft comp (where you just get dinged for bringing things that aren't terrible, instead of banned lists) essentially exclude entire army types from competition, I am against them.

Does daemons, dark elves, and VC need nerfing? Maybe, but until WHFB official does it, I say play it like it is. Anything else is a lame home-brew at best, and actively stacking events in your friends favor (like making restrictions that favor your friends carefully tweaked list that sneaks by highly subjective comp)

I look forward to playing you all.

A lot of the commentary thus far seems to be missing the point of the complaints about Tzeentch daemons. It isn't the power dice, in all seriousness no one would complain about all those power dice if that was the main gimmick.

The complaint is that the other player doesn't get to play, regardless of any dice rolls. A list set up to play WHFB will never do anything against that list aside from roll armor saves and try and dispel a bit of the incoming horror.

The reason is simple. Everything important in the list is a flyer which does not engage in combat.

Let's say I've got a basic army. I have 3 blocks of infantry, one of elite infantry, one knight unit, 2 war machines, a BSB, my Lord (who is a fighting cav guy), and 2 scroll caddies.

Let's say your luck is rubbish, and all your magic does is miniscule damage for the entire game, you just absolutely flub your rolls like nobody's business.

At game's end I've killed the pink horrors, by marching across the board (really walking because I'm march blocked by flyers) and charging them. I can't charge the screamers, because they are flyers. I can't charge Kairos or the characters, and as soon as I get close the flamers just walk back into the woods.

You are playing on auto-pilot. Move flyers out of charge arcs and war machine LOS into positions where they can flare (good case) or magic missile (better case) or use a specific spell (best case). Move screamers over things into march blocking position and hit as many units as possible, priority target is anything that can hurt the flyers. Pink Horrors move up, redirect/flickering fire, then move back, continueing the same).

I am playing on auto-pilot. Stand back as far as possible, use shooters until they are dead, then stand still and wait for bottom 6. Shake hands, fill out score sheet.

This wasn't a game. I could run both sides, and what comes up on the dice barely matters.

The lists that give you trouble are those which are entirely shooting, because fighting models never get to fight against Tzeentch Daemons. Even those have only gotten back to an even game, and they'll get obliterated by any blitz list they happen across.

If you actually want to play WHFB, play an army that doesn't have > 50% of it's points in flying magic users.

"If you actually want to play WHFB, play an army that doesn't have > 50% of it's points in flying magic users."

Truth well spoken.