So I play with a bunch of friends, here's what I would like to use :

1 Lord of Change
General; Magic Level 3
Twin Heads
Master of Sorcery - Life

1 Herald of Khorne
Battle Standard
Great Standard of Sundering
Obsidian Armour

1 Herald of Khorne
Armour of Khorne
Firestorm Blade

39 Bloodletters of Khorne
Standard; Musician
1 Bloodreaper

39 Bloodletters of Khorne
Standard; Musician
1 Bloodreaper

6 Chaos Furies
6 Chaos Furies

1 Fiends of Slaanesh
1 Fiends of Slaanesh

6 Flamers of Tzeench


I have about 10 spare points and I would like to insert a dispel scroll herald for those unlucky magic phase.

The switch would probably to drop the letters to 34.

I'd like to know your opinions on that matter if you're interested.

Lore : life to cope with the T3 letters, and to restore Health if he ever gets hit by shooting. Rest of the army is pretty standard !

Any other suggestions is appreciated !

CHEERS !

It's a nice list.
Got some nastyness (Twin Bloodletter Hordes) and some weaknesses (single caster with lots of Points plowed into him).

Your idea of getting a second caster in the shape of a Tzeentch Herald with Dispel scroll is actually exactly what I'd do.

I would also give that Herald Master of Sorcery instead of giving that Gift to the LoC - because the way Life works is that you're basically signing up to using a 600+pts model to baby-sit the rest of your army which just isn't particularly cost efficient most of the time.

Interwebz wisdoms raise Life to the skies but I Think you win games by staying on the offense (rather than defense) so even though Life is a good Lore it's not the 'best' one out there.

Bloodletters are great with Light but then you have to ditch the Sundering flag of course.

Regarding the LoC he's got an innate Loremaster for the Lore of Tzeentch - and this is actually when this Lore still retains some quality in 8th. Bolt of Change is nice, Glean Magic is a nice way of sticking it to whatever nasty wizardry your opponant is bringing.

And there's nothing stopping you from having Master of Sorcery on both casters of course. :)

Dreign stop lying Lore of Tzeentch does not retain quality, its never had quality :P

everything bar boon and glean isnt worth the dice, and theres no buffing spells, its all random damage spells bar those 2

you could get very lucky and cast max str and max hits, but it never works out that way lol

If it was me, i would pop kairos in, as he will do everything your lord of change can do and more, the only reason i wouldn't take kairos is because your entering a tournament that doesn't allow special characters

The thing is I always use the LoC offensively too, choosing the right fights. Usually keep him in combat and in range of one of the hordes to buff them.

I'd rather have flesh to stone up than being able to glean magic every turn. Lore of tzeentch keeps you out of fighting which is an even worst babysitting in my opinion.

As to answer to Zhambah, we don't use special characters cause we feel they are not balanced with the rest of the game. But yeah Kairos is better.

2 choices come to my mind now :
Herald, MoS, SB, Beasts (maybe on a disc)
Herald, SB, Wings (bonus if he gets Glean out of the lore)

I'd take the first option, disc is very optional, no look out sir but more maneuverability... depends on if you think you can do a good enough job keeping him out of combat with the flamers

I've already made my opinion abundantly clear on the Lore of Tzeentch so I personally wouldnt take that

the only thing extra I would want to add is another level on LoC, a lot of people don't like wasting the points due to him being a lore master, but i value the extra dispel/power casting value, especially as no other army can get a lore master for as cheap as us so you will normally be facing a lvl 4 wizard...

well, that's my opinion, hope it helps

i totally disagree about the lore of tzeentch. after being forced to play it a lot recently (due to various tournament comps etc.) i think its an extremely powerful lore. its not as easy to use as the other lores (or "moron-proof," as i consider the lores of life, light, and death to be ;)), i've had great success with it.

all of the spells have their uses and glean and bolt are insanely broken.

i don't think beast magic adds anything to your list either, it only makes a strong combat army a bit stronger (bloodletters don't need wildform to win big). since you are playing with friends, i'd actually suggest taking the herald with SB and wings in order to get a bit of experience with a new lore and to challenge yourself a bit. no sense in taking a brainless blitzkrieg army that requires no skill to use, but thats just my opinion.

Damn it Maynard you beat me to my own response pretty much.

The Lore of Tzeentch is not as good or easy to use as some of the BRB Lores, but seeing as the LoC gets Loremaster Tzeentch 'for free' I really Think it's an option. Together with for example Tzeentch Will you can tamper with the randomness of Bolt of Change (for example) and Glean Magic basically gives you every spell present on the table (on both sides) at a fixed casting value.

Naturally, if you want the less subtle approach just take Dark Magister and Master of Sorcery (Death) and 6-dice the boosted Purple Sun every turn (or whatever) - but yeah, Brother Maynard gave the nuances that I was meaning to mention really.

If you like Life pedneault then by all means use it! :) Flesh to Stone is definately an excellent augment - on both Bloodletters and Daemonettes.. Where-as I'd maintain that Birona's is better (still) on Bloodletters while Occam's is better specifically on Daemonettes.
But for both: Yeah sure, Life ain't a poor choice at all.

No, Maynard... I respect you as a tactician and a player, but on this... in my opinion the lore sucks, for starters you get one less spell... and you only get 2 spells if your going with the herald like you suggest.

Ok so Maynard has had some success with it, but given the randomness of the spells, someone has to.

Flickering Fire of Tzeentch - cheap but oh so random, D6+1 str D6+1 hits, so you could range from str 7 hits 7 times, to str 2 hits 2 times, if you have a dice left over with nothing else, then go for it, but theres normally better spells out there (well in other lores)

Boon of Tzeentch - this one is excellent, no one can deny that, its probably the best spell in our book

Glean Magic - This one is also brilliant, no complaints, pure excellence

Gift of Chaos - you typically don't want your herald anywhere near where they can get caught in combat. even if you do get it where it is within 12" of an enemy unit, they need to be within 2 units within 12" to make this even worth while, even then it remains complete random, do the unit/s take 1 or 6 hits? at str 1 or at str 6... theres no consistancy

Bolt of Change - Now this is more like it, using 2 dice to draw the str, so you can get an average, pretty high, str 7, with the minimum of 5 hits, not bad for a magic missile, but at 12+ to cast?! thats the same cost as bironas, sure you're going to take a few models, but, your throwing atleast 3 dice to see this go through

Tzeentch's Firestorm - Worst. Spell. Ever. A magic misile spell, so you need line of sight and out of combat, averaging 7 hits, say your opponent saves 2 out of those 7 hits, through Armour, or ward, you can now put 1 single horror within 3 inchs of the target... basically you just gave your opponent 50 victory points

The only thing Tzeentch has got going for it, their spells are excellent against regen

In today's meta, the best magic spells are the ones that buff your units or nerf theirs. Tzeentch doesn't have any of these.

You could take a really pathetic list, all the sub-par units from our book if you was trying to friendly it up, i've been toying with the idea of power vortex caddies, but in my area, me and my friends still play competitively... you learn to become a better player if you play competitively rather than rolling up to a 2k tourny with little experience. But that's me, it might not be you, and by the sounds of it, its not maynard either... different areas and all.

well thank you, and i would prefer to see it on the LoC (as the lore only really comes into its own when you have all of the spells) but i think SB and wings is a great setup for a herald.

i actually love this spell because of the randomness. if i'm shooting at a white lion block (thats going to run right through my bloodletter horde), you can zap them with this on 2 dice. usually, the HE player thinks the same way you do and lets it through, if you only kill 2, no biggie, if you kill 5, more's the better! one turn of this isn't much but then again its only 4+ to cast. after 2 turns of being redirected and eating flickering and flamer shots, that white lion horde is going to be in a losing position when it closes with the bloodletters. and while we're talking redirectors, FF is definitely one of the best spells in the game for handling eagles and their ilk. and the randomness is exactly why people can't just let it through. the last time i used this spell, the DoC player wasn't thrilled when it put 5 wounds on his great unclean one. the randomness makes it a must-stop spell, especially if you're targetting things like aboms, hydras, mortis engines, and other high T things with regen.

only if its on a LoC, its garbage for obvious reasons on a herald (unless you're running 2, then its awesome again!)

i'm sure you've played some really intense games where all of the units on the table have been taken down to fractions of their former strength. your opponent will sometimes bail his characters out of the units in order to "hide the pts" and pt them in places where you can't get them all with a single charge. this spell is excellent for that late-game scenario, because if mr. skaven player is about to get his clanrat bunker charged by the bloodletters, he can't bail his seer and bsb out of the unit. if he does, he runs the risk of the gift spell costing him 600 pts in one go.

also, you say you don't want your herald within 12" of an enemy unit. i do this quite commonly, he's usually in a unit of 6 flamers and i love to march them outside of an enemy's charge arc and fry at close range. and if your opponent has 3 sabretusks/units of shades/chameleons/gutter runners hunting for your mage (they like to shoot at close range too!), this spell turns into a must-stop and will likely eat a scroll. if you're rocking the wings combo on the little guy, you can drop him right in the middle of the enemy's formation (out of charge arcs of course!) and cast the spell. will it do 6 S6 hits on the enemy's knight bus? maybe not, but it may turn out that this spell cripples some units that are more important to the battleplan (believe me, if you cast this within 12" of 2 harpy units, the DE player HAS to stop it).

personally i'd compare this spell to a DD spell instead of birona's, as they fulfil completely different functions. 12+ to cast is nothing compared to the damage this spell can do. think about it, how many power dice is it worth to have that level 4 3+ ward disc sorceror off the table? or the only ironblaster that's got a shot on your greater daemon? or that spirit swallower keeper? or that doomwheel that's going to be zapping your GD in its next shooting phase? or the kdai that is keeping your BL horde from getting into his IG block with 2 characters?

birona's timewarp isn't worth anything in any of the above situations, and in my experience, thats what wins the tough games. don't get me wrong, i love birona's bloodletter blitzkrieg special, i championed almost as quickly as kitsune did. but at the end of the day, it just makes a unit thats amazing in combat even better. bolt brings the damage dealing capabilities of the army into a new dimension.

the horror thing is easily mitigated by... not bringing any horror models <_< otherwise its a 2d6 S5 flaming MM which i think is a pretty good deal for 13+. especially if you face a lot of mortis engines or other regenerating gribblies. and as far as the 50pts go, i have on occasion brought horror models with me to tournaments in which i used the tzeentch lore. if i blasted a hydra or a unit of mournfangs with the spell and did 3 wounds, i just put the horror in front of the unit so that it blocked any 90 degree wheel that they could make while charging. so what if they charged and i lost 50 pts? whats the going rate for a redirector in our army? 55-60 pts right? and a single horror is going to do just as much damage to a hydra or unit of mournfangs as a fiend/furies anyway, plus it meant that i didn't have to expend a unit of furies just yet.

i disagree, i don't think hexes/buffs are necessarily the "best" category of magic. i mean, look at the skaven lores, there's next to zero augmentative magic and they have some of the most fearsome magic phases in the game. augments are great and they can be game-winning but to assume that any other type of magic is irrelevent is a grave mistake in my opinion. timewarped bloodletters or mindrazored daemonettes aren't worth anything if they're being redirected. tzeentch magic has some great tools to deal with those situations. from my own experience, the games against the toughest ogre armies (just an example, any tough army really) aren't won with double sixing birona's, they're won when all 3 sabretusks are dead by the bottom of the second turn.

yeah i agree with you, in fact, all of my experience with the lore of tzeentch was acquired because tournaments around here beat daemons with the nerf bat and take all of our usual toys away (0-1 gifts, no siren song, no master of sorcery etc.). i think the lore of tzeentch is usually just swept aside because it doesn't have a game winning augment or nuke spell, but a lot of testing shows that its actually a good lore. in fact, i think the ETC was smart to change master of sorcery back from loremaster tzeentch, i think they inadvertently broke the gift beyond belief when they did that.

but like you said, different locations and play styles invariably account for our major differences of opinions. lore of tzeentch is better in some contexts than others but i don't think its quite the dud you're making it out to be. its not the lore of the wild for heaven's sake lol. however, i think we can both agree that it does not fit your playstyle!

Nothing beats the Lore of the Wild for suckiness! :lol:

I have to say I quite like the Tzeentch Lore myself, but I mainly just use it on Horrors and always give my HoT something else, usually Beasts, Metal or Heavens. I think it has value on an LoC, I just haven't used an LoC for ages. I don't rate Life that highly myself - a lore that needs one particular spell to go off (which does NOTHING on its own) to make most of the other spells worth their casting cost doesn't really appeal to me, and there are only 2 spells in the lore really worth casting most of the time (Flesh to Stone and Regrowth). If your going to take Life, I'd probably put it on a HoT rather than waste it on my main caster.

As much as I like Beasts I don't think it really benefits your list unless you are planning to cast the character buffs on the LoC (which would be a good reason to put the HoT on a Disc so he can follow him around). The only other reason I can think of for taking it is if you are expecting to play against WoC, Dwarfs and maybe Ogres, where it would help the Bloodletters maintain their combat superiority.

I have to say that by my standards I wouldn't really call your list "friendly", but that really depends on who you play against regularly and what types of armies they field. If everyone in your gaming group is regularly fielding Chosenstars, Gutstars and any other army builds with 'star' in their name then I guess its fair enough. :P

The first time I ever used a LoC was with Tzeentch's lore. I found it surprisingly quite effective. With how devastating it can be vs how easy it is for it's spells to cast, it's really quite special. Note, this first game I had with that aforementioned LoC was vs. Dwarfs and while yes I had Twin heads, I was getting a lot of my spells through and they were quite punishing.

i think

is what it comes down too.

I love the other lore's in our book, but they aren't much better in terms of buffs, nurgle only has 2 hex's, but i favour his lore out of the three. like wise, slaanesh has a hex and a buff spell, and phantasmagoria, but even with that buff, (people seem to let through succor of chaos on bloodlettters for some strange reason) it still doesn't do enough for me.

I guess it comes down to when i played lore of tzeentch, i didn't have as much luck with it as you have so... it's pretty much been relegated to the do not touch pile of things in our army book, I may pick it out now that you've talked such a good argument and have a play. But I still have my reservations about the lore

well to be fair, i'd say that about 15% of my success with it comes from luck, the rest comes from the low casting values and threat of how random the lore is. people simply can't take the risk that the dice will just freak out and cost them big. and in the case of bolt, it really isn't random at all lol. it's going to bring the pain regardless of what you blast with it.

it is more difficult to use than the rulebook lores, because a lot of the success comes from picking good targets and creating a lot of "sophie's choices" with what you use the magic to threaten. when people have to choose between saving their ironblaster or their mournfangs, you can see the value. hexes and augments don't do this, its very easy for the other player to know what to stop if they just got charged by a bloodletter horde with a light caster, or siren songed into a daemonette unit with shadow.

another thing that makes it really hard to use well is that you have to pay much more attention to what combats you get your blocks into. timewarped bloodletters will win against anything, so you know that no matter what sticky situation you get them into, 6 dice and birona will get them out. tzeentch magic is much different. if you get caught in a losing combat, the only thing that will save you is a counter charge from your own units, there is no buffing them to victory (barring glean and presuming your opponent rolled a spell that fits your needs). this was the hardest part of learning to use the lore, because a lot of combats that wouldn't phase me with light magic turned into real risks without it.

i also think there is a fair bit to say about the LoC and the lore. my preferred setup is a level 3 with tz's will and a power vortex, which combines with boon and the low casting values very well. the extra power dice, casting values, and the re-roll all combine to create an unbelievably destructive magic phase. the spells are relatively short ranged but because the big chicken can fly and doesn't mind being close to the enemy, no single model is safe. one little tip is to make sure to roll the S and # hits from the spells simultaneously so that you can see both before deciding to use the tz's will re-roll to manipulate the effects. after you do this for the first time, the opponent has to be even more careful about what he lets through. you can also leave one dice til the end of the phase and tzeentch it to get a boon to bring some more pain or squeak a last devastating glean through.

one last thing to say about the lore is that it grabs pts. i once played against a chaos dwarf player in a tournament, a very good player who ended up beating me. i had him dead to rights from turn 4 onwards and my light herald was punishing him in the magic phases. he refused to burn his scroll though. every time he was out of dice and i got a buff through that would swing a combat my way, i'd ask if he'd scroll it. and every time he said," well thats going to hurt, but its not going to get you points," and he'd refuse to use his scroll. i don't remember what he ended up burning it on, but when the dust cleared at the end of the game, he had like 6 models left but he was up about 400 pts, winning the game. he still had his level 4/general, bsb, a lone survivor of a huge bull centaur unit, a hellcannon, and maybe some infernal guard. this got me to look at direct damage magic in a different way, and it also got me to re-examine how i use my scroll (especially since daemons are a great pts denial army). this was one of the games that definitely caused me to see the merit in direct damag magic in the day of super augments and apocalypse nuke spells, and further moved in th direction of the lore of tzeentch as an option. it doesn't hex or augment, but it does one thing very well, and that's grab pts.

there's just an insane amount of options, i know your mind is pretty much made up zhambah, but i am happy to see that you and hopefully anyone else reading this at least has their mind opened to the possiblities of the lore of tzeentch. :P

What I find myself amazed about really was the first time I used LoT was mainly be accident, I planned that LoC to use Death as I was playing against Dwarf's, yet at the end of it (I really wanted Twin Heads) and through army list fixing I just decided to wing it with a loremaster LoC.

It was really quite impressive. Even the LoC in melee becomes quite formidable when he can get Gift off at the same time. WS6 isn't going to make a Dwarf Lord sweat of course, but sometimes you don't need to fight the general.

you've definitively opened up my eyes. I've considered using a LoC for a while simply to get gift of chaos so i can destroy his herdstone caddy wizards (this is against my most common opponent) but apart from that, it would be hard for the lore to "grab points"

in your other thread you talk at how your opponent would let spells through and not waste his scroll... simply because the spell is going to hurt, but not kill the unit. that's what it's like in my area against most armies, sure, i could perhaps find a sabre tusk, or a unit of ungor raiders, or whatever kind of chaff, that hasn't been destroyed yet, but then... you've just turned a near 600 point beast into a chaff hunter... I don't know, it seems a waste, there doesn't seem to be enough mass destruction.

With today's meta, I'm not talking etc here, it's very much horde dominated, and theres nothing in the lore that allow. most lores we have access too have some kind of mass destruction or something that allow's us to deal with hordes

Nurgle
- Plaguewind
- Rancid Visitation

Slaanesh
- Slicing Shards of Slaanesh (combined with other things... that would obviously be in your list if your using Lore of Slaanesh)

Fire
-Flame Storm
-Fulminating Flame Cage (combined with siren song, or windblast)

Beasts
-High Powered Transformation of Kadon

Metal
- Final Transmutation

Light
- Birona's Timewarp

Life
- The Dwellers Below

Heavens
- Harmonic Convergence

Shadow
- Melkoth's Mystifying Miasma (lower WS, making your units survive more and opponents die more)
- The Withering (Combined with miasma, this is a combat phase they will not forget
-Pit of Shades (Granted only really works on low initiative units)
-Okkam's Mindrazor

Death
- The Purple Sun of Xereus

yes some of them are augments rather than straight up bye bye unit, but you case bironas on a bloodletter horde and its plowing through most units likewise with the other buff spells.

I think that's my main issue with Tzeentch, If I was facing High Elf MSU army, i'd be far more tempted to take tzeentch... but I never get to face an MSU army :(

As far as casting values, I find the casting values aren't that low, infact if you add them all up it comes to 48, light (our favourite lore) comes in at 51... with an extra spell and you was saying in your thread that light eats dice... perhaps boon is the reason that Tzeentch don't eat dice, but i still feel the spells are over costed

as a beastmen player myself, i'd be most upset to see a LoT LoC in the other army. we beastmen absolutely rely on our chaff to control what the gors and bestigors get hit by and when. when someone shows up with a bunch of direct damage magic to blow away our razorgors and harpies (i use 3 of one and 2 of the other), things go south in a hurry. beastmen also struggle against monsters in general, especially flying ones. don't put the LoC into the bestis, put him into the flank of the beast banner gors and let him Tstomp all day, there's nothing they can do about it, especially if he's charging the flank when the letters go in the front. and yeah, tzeentch magic is perfect for making life around the herdstone very difficult.

"chaff hunter" might be a bit misleading, but i'd definitely go with the term "support unit hunter." he's great at killing things that give us problems that are not necessarily chaff, like ironblasters and mournfangs. or terrorgheists, those things are horrific against all of our stuff, but interestingly enough, lore of tzeentch handles them quite nicely. or another one of my favorites Mr. Lordpedo. all of the bloodletters with all the buffs in the world can't kill this guy, but bolt changes the whole equation dramatically. a 3+ ward disc lord is another good one. i don't think of it as being a "600 pt chaff hunter," i think of it being a GD playing the role that i like my GDs to play, that of "600 pt Everything-the-Bloodletters-and-Flamers-Can't-Kill hunter." :P

i disagree, although this is likely a regional difference. only about a quarter of the tournaments i play in are ETC, but even the ones that aren't are not dominated by hordes. you see them a lot in certain armies (dwarfs, beastmen, O&G, daemons, VC), but they rarely use more than 2 and sure aren't the main threats. 30 bloodletters deal with nearly any horde in existence with a bit of help. the only difference is that with the lore of tzeentch, the help comes from your own troops, not from augmentative magic. the damage spells allow you to blow away those critical support units and allow your support to tip combats in the bloodletters' favor. if nuke spells are the only tools in your toolbox for dealing with hordes, than i can definitely see why LoT would appear to be a luckluster lore. but the simple fact of the matter is, there is more than one way to skin a horde, and we DoC have plenty of tools outside of nuke spells.

lol, ironically enough, i've never taken tzeentch to a heavily comped tournament (nurgle magic rules in heavy comp :rock: ). all of my experience with it comes from tournaments with no limitation on unit size (or where only certain troops are limited). and my opinion stays the same. whether i'm using tzeentch magic or not, i almost never look to my magic to solve the horde problem. bloodletters do that just fine on their own. i use the magic to gain an edge on the periphery, in the skirmishes between my fiends and crushers and their harpies/eagles/chameleons/doomwheels/manglers/ironblasters/whatever. its those support units that add real dangerous capability to an enemy army and they are the targets that the lore of tzeetnch excels against. the most dangerous deathstar in the game is worth about 120 points if there are 2 units of furies on the table. i don't have to confront it if i have those units and the opposite is true. the opponent doesn't have to face my bloodletters if he has the units to block them, and he doesn't have to face my greater daemon if he's got the ironblaster to blow it away. if you take those away through direct damage magic, he's got no choice than to face the bloodletters, and let the chips fall where they may (and thats usually in our favor :D . you're very concerned in how much damage magic does to the enemy's main combat units. while this is an important capacity of magic, it is by no means the only one or most important one, thats all i'm saying. i don't think that a lore's merit is based solely on any one criteria, but in how it affects the capabilities of the army. lore of tzeentch does so in a way that no other lore does, but it requires that it be used in a different way. you can't use it like another lore and expect the same results, its too different.

i think you misunderstood me a little bit, when i said that a light caster "eats dice," i didn't mean that the casting values were high (as we all know, they are very level-2 friendly!). what i meant was that the lore has a spell for nearly every situation; a light caster nearly ALWAYS has something to cast or contribute to the game. i meant it as a testament to the lore's power and versatility, not as a criticism in any sense. as a matter of fact, we have an extremely talented player in one of the local clubs, and the running joke is that light magic is the "<player's name> of magic lores."

OK ok... I give in... I'll have a shot at playing LoT again... against some opponents that aren't as competitive at first... if that goes well... well, who knows