Okay, I'll think that I'm digging my own grave here (because I know there's a lot of Tzeench fans out there), but I'd like all of you fellow gamers to share their experiences playing Tzeench. After more than a dozen games so far, I think Khorne has won four or five, Nurgle has ruined his way to VP win three times, and Slaanesh has dominated the rest. Still, Tzeench hasn't won any. I got one click away from victory once, but Nurgle handed the win to Slaanesh in the last round. In every other game, Tzeench has been lurking in the sidelines, forced to turtle away in some distant corner of the Old World with warpstone, and maybe getting a lone click per round, but with no real prospect of winning. Tzeench has become a bit of an outcast in our gaming group, because of this.

Yes, I'm aware that Tzeench gets to draw more cards, but the thing that seems to be repeating itself, is that most of the time these cards seem to be laying about in your hand, and you just have to keep playing these costly 2 point cards (Dazzle, anyone) just to get them off your hands, or to get the magic symbol in place, and hope to draw something useful, but actually contributing nothing. As in many games, you can poke the other players a bit, but that's it. Tzeench lacks the punch to play aggressively, and as I understand the nature of the beast, he is supposed to alter the other gods game with his cards and so, but at the same time he can't protect his own cultists very well (One Warp shield usually doesn't help...and managing to get two of the in the same region is a stretch, even if you get the "invalid parking"-upgrade to your warriors). The right cards at the right time just donät seem to get drawn .Which makes getting clicks very hard, as the number of figures is very somewhat limited also. And no one is taking the "Horrors" seriously. And the Greater Demon is only usable upgraded, if warpstone is hard to come by. And still your two cultists usually get wiped out.

Also, in our sessions, Tzeench hasn't bee too lucky with the distribution of the warpstones in the beginning of the game, as these tend to go to the the regions with all the action, and surviving then is more than difficult.

While you can make some pretty annoying stunts to other players, (f.e. by teleporting somebodys cultist away from region, thus denying that player a dial click) it seems more likely that while Tzeench has the power to influence the outcome of the game, and the winner, it lacks the staying power and methods to actually win himself. And the turtling gets boring after a while.

And after all this whining, I just want to say that I really don't want to thrash Tzeench, I just feel that maybe we haven't had the best come out him yet. I can see the potential, it just hasn't concretized. These are some thoughts that have risen in our gaming group, and I'm interested in how others have managed to win wit Tzeench.

I've won a couple of times as Tzeentch - the key is convincing other players to attack each other enough to stalemate their strategies, delaying acting until as late as possible in the round and then screwing over the leaders at the key moment

But I'd agree that Tzeentch is hard to play and lacks the defensive measures Nurgle and Slaanesh can employ later in the game. (Defense 2 cultists and the Plaguebearer upgrade/Rain of Pus)

Both my wins were by dial advancement - I'm still not convinced Tzeentch can win very easily via victory points. I guess you'd need to use your quantity of cultists advantage to ruin lots of regions quickly.

Tzeentch isn't easy to play. A few thoughts on strategy with Tzeentch:

Re: the 2 pt Dazzle card. Remember you can discard 1 card at the beginning of the draw phase. I almost always discard a Dazzle or Meddling of Skaven.

Possibly your strongest single defense is Temporal Stasis. Play that on a location to keep others out, then load it with your cultists to ruin it. Remember that with the upgrade your cultists can drag warpstones in as well, increasing your odds of ruination.

You can use teleport and Warp Shields to jump to areas about to be ruined to share in the points.

Should you get a good draw one thing you can do is to use 0 pt cards to delay your actions to see what others are planning. You can then react accordingly.

I thought that Slaneesh was a subtle god to learn to play until I started messing around with- and fell in love with- the big T.

I like this thread...

I've been playing more of CitOW recently, and in all the games my group have played; Tzeentch has never won. Khorne wins 60% of the time with DA, Nurgle corrupts his way to victory quite easily and Slaanesh gets those victorys in every now and then one way or another. But Tzeentch always loses.

After about 8 or so games, our resident Just As Planned guy decided to give up on trying to win using Tzeentch and instead became the ultimate distracting force for the other 3 players. Throwing cards down here and there and generally screwing with our tactics and strategies. With Tzeentch in the background, focussing on controlling the board instead of doing nothing by trying to win, it makes our games last longer and makes it a lot more difficult and enjoyable for the rest of the party.

pendrag2k said:

Judging by your text, you seem to go for a VP victory (early ruinign of areas) with Tzeentch. Tzeentch has the second shortest dial.

Can you win with going for VPs? Nurgle is a pretty strong contender for those VPsand I don't easily see anyone going over Nurgle in VPs, unless some Old World cards are heavily against Nurgle.

I think Slaanesh is the second strongest contender for VPs because he's motivated to dominate regions with Nobles anyway, and can force fights to stop

Also, I'd like to second the usefulness of the discard a card at start of turn to remove dazzles and, occasionally, Meddling of the Skaven (it's fun to use on occasion but most of the time it's just not worth it)

pahapasi said:

As someone who has played and watch many games of CitOW (I'm the only one who owns it in my FLGS and gaming group), I think if you got that close than it's a matter of time until you win as Tzeentch. You just need a game where the OW deck is somewhat on your side, or where you are underestimated.

For me, I have yet to see a tried-and-true winning strategy for any god except Nurgle (first get "Provender of Ruin" ASAP, then try to be involved in every ruination). This is because the OW deck, the luck of your draw, and the cooperation of multiple gods will bring down most straightfoward strategies. My group has yet to see Khorne win, but I mainly blame that on new players wanting to be Khorne, or the OW deck being very evil (I've seen a game where "Electors Sue for Peace" lasted the whole game). Similarly, Slaanesh has been on a losing streak because people stop fearing "Field of Ecstacy" as Slaanesh has no way to draw faster and will run out of them eventually.

Here are some ideas for things I do as Tzeentch: teleport bloodletters from my zones to zones with bloodletters (no extra advance tokens), if Khorne is behind I send them to zones with other people so he does not seek revenge, and place more cultists as defense against attackers (you get 8 for a reason).

In our last game, Khorn won by dial advancement. The same round, Khorn managed to TIE Slaneesh for dial tokens, otherwise Slan would have won by dial advancement.

Of the 4 gods, 3 of them (all but Khorn) surpassed the 50 point victory point mark. Tzeentch (me) had the most, due to being the only one on the final ruination location. Nurgle also ruinated a location, but we were out of ruination cards, and his territory was after mine in the phase, so nothing for him.

I'm not certain how Tzeentch can win by dial. My dial advancements were CONSTANTLY thwarted by Khorn (he did have a really good roll with one cultist killing off 3 of my units). My upgrades were poorly played (I got the extra power point, and was NEVER in need of it) and then got the warpstone travel with cultist. Out of all of the gods, Tzeentch is the hardest for me to figure out which upgrades to get. I'm thinking the cultist upgrade and the extra card, after this game.

I also played wrong, where I was discarding as many cards as I wanted at the beginning of a round :S

I think the thing that made the game competitive for me was that the first warp stone showed up in the first territory, so I was able to camp there until I ruinated (yes, not a real word, but I like it) it. No one else was in that little corner for the first little while. Then I slowly worked my way out from there and was lucky enough to ruin a couple more, and prevent Nurgle from activating ruination on his last one.

Dazzle sucks.

How do you guys propose Tzeentch is played other than hoping for a good old world deck? Once Slan gets the 2 defense cultist, I think they have the best chance of winning, as their plans are rarely foiled by Khorn, and Tzeentch becomes the best target after that, since they can't boost their combat as well as Nurgle.

Yesterday, Tzeentch won by dial advancement, but then it was a three-player-game without Khorne.

I'm not certain how Tzeentch can win by dial.

Mainly by manipulating Khorne - teleport his bloodletters into regions where he already has some (preferably regions where an enemy has figures). Thus, you raise the chances that both Khorne won't get as many ticks (only one token per region) and the one into whose territory the warriors got sent won't either (no survivors).

Also don't be afraid to spend a few points pulling out of a region if you've got warpstone carrier cultists.

The best way is to eternally look like you're in second place and argue the other players into attacking the leader... at least when I'm playing in character

Tzeentch and Slaanesh dominated out first few plays. The win ratio has evened out a bit since, but I wouldn't call Tzeentch weak by any stretch of the imagination.

Phew - what a game! Today I got really close at winning with Tzeentch as I managed to pull 58 victory points by the end of the 5th round. Unfortunately that was too little too late as Khorne took his last dial advancement at the same time - after a near perfect game.

I have now seen 7 games (all with 4 players) of CitOW and played in 6 of them. Not once has Tzeentch won. Every other god has won at least once - even myself have managed to win with every other god but Tzeentch. So yes, Tzeentch is definately the most challenging god to play.

This time I tried to go the victory points route, pretty much ignoring the dial after my first upgrade. My self imposed secondary objectives were slowing Nurgle down and running quickly through my chaos card deck. I used stalling and Temporal Stasises to protect my cultist from Khorne and took the Deluge of Magic as my first upgrade in order to get all stasises and other good cards as quickly as possible. I also did some "poach ruining" ie. stalled as long as possible then went all in in a single region that others had started ruining. These strategies worked somewhat well - but obviously not well enough against hot rolling Khorne.

Now I have somewhat mixed feelings about Tzeentch: in a way this game showed, that Tzeentch can be a serious contender but in a way it was yet another Tzeentch disappointment. Still, I think the day is getting closer when Tzeentch finally takes his first victory at my Citow table.

Well, I was playing the dreaded Slaanesh in the same game as aikavaras and I think Tzeentch was a very strong contender. Despite the fact that the Changer of Ways did not win the game, it was such a resounding success story for Tzeentch that I declare that we have reached Phase IV in our game: Tzeentch is now a very good god (I'd say astoundingly good but since the score is still 0 for Tzeentch...) and certainly a contender. The power of the four gods hang in balance, I think.

The key was to start reaching for a VP victory and Tzeentch does this very well with his innumerable cultists. In fact I fail to see why Nurgle is such a terrifying VP god when Tzeentch can do pretty much the same, just better. Sure, Nurgle can get toughness two cultists at times and has two good upgrades (Provender of Ruin and the Lepers) but Tzeentch has better cards, more cultists, can delay the game endlessly and choose which area to ruin. Tzeentch is also better at going for secondary VPs and ruination with his teleports and many cultists.

Despite the fact that Tzeentch has not won any games, he is certainly a god to watch out for. I regard him better than Nurgle at the moment. Nurgle's counter has finally been found and that's Tzeentch playing for VPs.

And Khorne won only thanks to some pretty solid die rolling. One bad turn and Tzeentch would've taken the victory. Perhaps you shouldn't have advocated so much against Slaanesh, aikavaras: had I got one double advancement instead of Khorne, you would've one.

Whitmire said:

Perhaps you shouldn't have advocated so much against Slaanesh, aikavaras: had I got one double advancement instead of Khorne, you would've one.

You're right about that Whitmire. On the other hand I know that had Khorne let you go from his grip during 2nd or 3rd round and you could have easily won. At least once during the game I actually helped Khorne with a Teleport spell which in retrospect I shouldn´t have done either. I guess the beauty of the game is that almost everything you do affects the outcome of the play in many ways. Your every move can help or hinder somebody else.