First off, some quick questions that came up during play.

1. Do peasent kills advance Khorne's track? At first we said yes but the wording says "enemy figures" while peasants seem to be referred to as "tokens" rather than "figures".

2. When Slaneesh is controlling a unit can he spend points to resummon it to another region?

3. How are the discards chosen from the "Meddling of Skaven" card? Random? The owning player chooses (kind of useless then)?

So, after a marathon session, our group doesn't see how Tzeentch can realistically hope to win (barring getting very lucky with the old world cards). Khorne has his dial advancement, Nurgle his victory points, Slaneesh gets dial advancement AND points from nobles, Tzeentch gets...warpstone which does nothing except ruin your "stronghold" regions faster. I read the older Tzeentch thread and even people who have played over 20 games have never had a Tzeentch victory, so it can't just be a simple case of "he's the toughest god to master, people just don't know how to play him yet".

The main problem is Tzeentch has one of the most difficult dial advancement conditions (based entirely on luck, warpstone hurts your efforts, the requirement of 2 means you'll always have the least number of viable dial advancement regions out of anyone) and he's the worst for scoring victory points (worst unit stats in the game, least number of warrior figures, cards don't really balance it out, Khorne has better stats, Nurgle better numbers, Slaneesh better defense).

"But what about magic symbols!" you say. "Tzeentch can put them anywhere!" The problem with that is his cards that provide magic symbols are more the most part otherwise entirely useless, and they're expensive. There's also the cost of the 2 cultists you'll need for the corruption. That's a lot of power points! "But other players can also play into his hand by playing their cards with magic symbols!" Yeah, but if other players are playing those cards, chances are they're being played in contested regions, and Tzeentch is the worst god in the game for confrontation.

Your only hope is setting up a stronghold in some ignored corner like the badlands, troll country, or Norsca. If the starting warpstone is in the contested populous regions, you're screwed. If you do that though, you're boned for victory points and you're still not going to keep pace with the others for dial advancement (you need a bare minimum of 2 advancement tokens to get two ticks, more likely 3-4. Warpstone and magic tokens just aren't going to be consistantly common enough for that to happen).

His other big problem is the complete lack of synergy between his dial advancement and victory point efforts; his is the absolute worst in that regard (even Khorne). The manual says he has a shot at either a VP or dial advancement win, but we can't possibly see how he can expect a VP win. His stats are too weak to muscle out others from high score areas, and all of his upgrades/points are dedicated to mitigating the most difficult dial advancement condition in the game, not to give himself an advantage over the other gods, but simply to try and keep parity with them. Slaneesh can prevent combat and his high defense units from dying, which helps both his VP and dial efforts. Same with Nurgle's cultist and greater demon upgrades. Khorne is so good at his dial advancement that he doesn't need much upgrade help for VP, but his greater demon upgrade is there as an option for that. Tzeentch's cultist and greater demon upgrade serve only to desperately try to keep your options open as you try to relocate and be left alone.

Then there's his chaos cards. Again he seems to draw the short straw out of all the gods. Half of them are entirely useless for anything but trying to mitigate the most difficult dial advancement in the game (dazzle, that one that stays if he kills a unit (good luck with that)). Teleport is useless against cultists (you're paying 1 point and a card slot to teleport them away when the other player can simply spend 1 point to teleport/resummon them back), plaguebearers (same deal), and not really worth the bother against demonettes. Warp shield's one utility is keeping your Lord of Change alive, but then they can still kill your cultists and you still lose. Meddling of Skaven is almost always a waste of a point. Tzeentch is supposed to be the master manipulator, and the manual even says that his strength is using tons of low cost cards to control the game flow and stall, but every other god is better in this regard. Khorne gets a much better teleport (Khorne! The most inflexible and unsubtle god!) and can freeze everyone's corruption efforts, nurgle is a much better staller, and Slaneesh gets much better manipulation/manuevering cards in addition to being a better staller (all those power points). Everyone says Khorne is the power point hungry, but I say it's Tzeentch. You have to constantly spend points to relocate warpstone, summoning your Lord of Change for the magic symbols, and keeping 2 cultists in all those areas.

So where does that leave Tzeentch? It seems like the best he can hope for is to influence who wins, but can never hope to win himself. He's the worst at both dial advancement and victory point accumulation. He has the worst chaos cards. Two of his upgrades are mandatory and even then you're just playing catch up instead of getting huge advantages like zero cost lepers or defense 2 seductresses. He's just a weak god with too difficult goals.

How to fix him? I"m not sure. He definitely needs better chaos cards (2 power points for dazzle? Seriously?). His dial advancement condition needs reworking too. Reducing it to only 1 warpstone/magic would probably be too much. Reducting it to only one corruption token in a 2 warpstone/magic region would probably be better. It would free up more power points and cultists to try and spread out and snag more corruption VPs.

If over 100 collective games have yet to see a Tzeentch victory, something is clearly wrong.

"1. Do peasent kills advance Khorne's track? At first we said yes but the wording says "enemy figures" while peasants seem to be referred to as "tokens" rather than "figures"."

No, Khorne does not gain a dial advancement token for killing peasants.

"2. When Slaneesh is controlling a unit can he spend points to resummon it to another region?"

Yes. He even gains the figure with all of it's upgrades. So (iE) Slaanesh could re-summon a Tzeentch cultist and let him take a warpstone token with him if possible.

"3. How are the discards chosen from the "Meddling of Skaven" card? Random? The owning player chooses (kind of useless then)?"

The afflicted players chooses wich cards to discard.

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Tzeentch won via VP in our very first game of CitOW and has since allways been a strong contender for victory in the folowing games.

Played right, you can win with every chaos god in the game.

"The main problem is Tzeentch has one of the most difficult dial advancement conditions (based entirely on luck, warpstone hurts your efforts, the requirement of 2 means you'll always have the least number of viable dial advancement regions out of anyone)"

Please take note that there is an error on Slaanesh's player card. Slaanesh needs to place two corrpution in an area where there is also one or more hero or noble tokens. Which is sometimes not very easy, too, if your enemies play right.

I think the best strat. for winning with Tzeentch is to invest in whatever regions possible early on to get your first upgrade Acolytes.

Now with the ability to move warpstones around, you can steal ruination from any other player on the board and determine ruination almost at will. Whenever Nurgle or Slannesh invest in a region for a couple of turns jump right in there with at least 3 cultist and 3 warpstones to complete runination. You will most certainly get 3 to 4 VP for contributing to ruination (cultists) that round and a strong bid for first or second place. Also the more dial clicks you get (and lucky OW cards) the more warpstones get placed, eventually you can work your way up to move 1 warpstone for every cultist you own. 6-8 cultist plus 6 warpstones equal ruination and you ruin the regions that people are not paying attention to.

Furthmore, you can also try to ruin Populous regions to block Nurgle and "trap" Noble and Hero tokens in ruined regions to thwart Slannesh. Khrone still will cause you grief, but nothing more than usual.

As far as stalling with Tzeentch, yeah the cards for the God of manipulation are a little weak. But, Tzeentch has 12 cards that cost 0, while Khorne has 4 and Slaanesh and Nurgle have 8. This does allow stalling on a certain level.

I've found winning as Tzeentch to be harder than the other Gods - but a lot more satisfying. Acolytes should be your first upgrade, period. This gives you the flexibility you need to move around the board, creating a potential dial advancement for just two power.

I think Tzeentch -can- win via dial advancement or victory points, but that he more or less has to decide which at the start of the game. My dial advancement wins have often involved holing up in Norsca, Troll Country and Kislev and playing the card that makes other people have to play two more to summon into the region - this potentially gives you three dial advancements from those regions. As regards VP, you will suck at domination (because you need to gets lots of stuff in one place for that, and things tend to end badly with that) - so ruin as quickly as possible, using warpstone to help, to amass VP quickly. Once you've barricaded those regions, or whatever plan you need, start messing with the other Gods plans. Even Dazzle can be game-changing if you play it after everyone else ran out of power in a contested region.

I've found people can miss the possibility of double warp shield in a region to protect both cultists

phobiandarkmoon said:

You mean 3 dial advancement tokens of course, right? Max dial advancement you can get is 2 per turn, regardless of the # of tokens. 3 tokens should/could earn you two ticks though.

Dam said:

Yeah, that was exactly what I meant to say, and certainly how we play it

The card that increases summoning costs in a region by 2 (temporal stasis?) is the only Tzeentch card I'd call great, but he only gets 3 of them.

He just seems overly dependant on setup and old world card luck. If the warpstone starts out in contested populous regions you're screwed. You won't be able to start moving them around until turn 3 at the very earliest (assuming your cultists don't get slaughtered).

His stalling and manueverability are superior only at the very beginning before other gods get their upgrades, but at the beginning you're pouring all your resources into struggling to get those all important first 2 dial ticks.

Slaanesh is more dependent on the opening board layout than Tzeentch. Tzeentch can control his own destiny by placing and using other gods' magic cards. A lot of his cards are great cards - including Drain Power and Teleport. Nothing screws up your plans than by having a Power Point deducted when they are so limited to begin with. Also, work your way to a region only to have Tzeentch blast you across the board, or escape the same way.

ColtsFan76 said:

Slaneesh relies on randomly placed starting tokens, but his dial requirement is easier. He only needs a single qualifying token whereas the best Tzeentch can hope for in the beginning is one warpstone + magic symbol that you usually have to pay yourself (other gods' card will be in contested regions where you'll get stomped, hopefully the other gods know better than to place magic symbols in Tzeentch stronghold areas).

And that's the thing, his dial advancement is just a harder version of Slaneesh's (in addition to ruining his dial regions faster), and he has a longer dial track on top of that!

The importance of teleport really drops off past the early game. You can screw with other players' starting locations and that's about it. Beyond that you're just spending one point to move a cultist (or plaguebearer) that your opponent can just move back with one point, or playing "Khorne control" for everyone else on your dime.

Slaanesh is limited to two regions. Khorne and anyone else can get in those regions and block him quite effectively. Tzeentch has 3 starting regions and has the OW deck in his favor. It may be a slow go the first round or two but this game isn't won in 2 rounds.

Teleport's value continues to be strong throughout the game. If you move the last figure out of a region, it is not just a "mere power point" to bring back the figure - especially a warrior.

Timing in this game means a lot. Waiting to see what your opponent's do and taking advantage of grabbing the last slot our keys to Tzeentch's path to victory. He is master of change and playing in unconventional ways will reward you.

You make a claim that Tzeentch cannot win and I am putting out there he is the one that nearly wins a majority of the games we have played. So perhaps you are not thinking creatively enough in regards to what his cards can do.

Nearly?

.

There are four gods. I have seen them all win. To me, a majority of wins is 50%+1. He hasn't topped out at that type of ratio but he does lead the pack in the games I have played. So perhaps it is better stated, he has won more than any other single god in the games I have played.

I think the main problem with Tzeentch is experience.

You can't pick Tzeentch up and win the first time around like you can with Khorne or Slaanesh. In my group, only the people with more than 10 games under their belt stand a chance of winning with Tzeentch and by then, they are very strong contenders.

The thing is our Tzeentch players have tried the suggestions here. The very first game it was deduced that you have to hole up in a corner and try to off hands manipulate stuff. We've tried corner warpstone hoarding, teleporting cultists+warpstone to ruin enemy regions, teleporting hostile figures, but haven't had any success. The best he could hope for was a dial tick per turn and second place ruination; if he made a serious push for first place ruination (basically blowing all your powerpoints surprise teleporting in 6 cultists) in any region worth anything then Khorne or Nurgle would show up and slaughter him since he already spent all his points on cultists.

Like the other guy said, he pretty much has to choose from the very beginning if he's going for a dial or VP upgrade. It makes him one of the more in flexible gods in the game (compared to Slaneesh who can accumlate dials and points from nobles), which is odd considering his nature.

Does anyone have a turn by turn play of a Tzeentch win that wasn't due to a lot of old world card luck?

1) Sounds like your group also likes to work over Tzeentch pretty hard. Maybe everyone is just convinced he can't win so they abnormally target him?

2) I know the Warpstone+cultist ruination works in our group. The Tzeentch player usually looks for regions that other players are not intrested in or the best would be regions with Slaanesh's Field of Ecstasy. It also helps to seed areas before hand as you are going to lose a few cultist. I also find canceling Nurgle's Rain of Pus cards (+1 to Nurgle units) helps make Khorne find tastier options.

We just finished our 3rd online game with 4 experienced players. This is the 2nd win for Tzeentch. I didn't play him and the game started before this thread so I didn't record, or recollect exactly how he did it. But Tzeentch played a good game of getting his defenisve cards up so it wass too expensive to target him. On the 4th round, he managed to get the rest of us to our Power Points first (by playing teo Drain Powers in a row) so he was able to stall and get more power points. He was left with 5 or 6 when the rest of us were out. He was then able to target two regions to ruin and got extra help from the Warpstones he carried over from other regions. He won int he 4th round with 56 points.

I don;t buy the Tzech can't win. My game group went crazy over this game and plays again and again and again. The wins between the Gods are pretty close to equal. I do think its a very well balanced game.

Tzeech does play well as a manipulater. The trick is to not be to direct about it but REALLY be a behind the scene manipulator. Stay quiet, stay out of the way, and use your trick cards to make other players more attarctive.

For some out of the box tzeech thinking do somthing bold like HELP another play. For example. Teleport a slannesh cultists onto a hero or noble token don;t give a good reason for it, and watch other players jump on them. I must admit, playing tzeech well involves somtimes looking beyond game mechanics and playing the group, and you can;lt tell me ANY group can;t be played......

I actully find that slannesh is the most likey to get srewed by nobel tokens. Sure they only need the one token, BUT they can;t creat them. Get your two tokens in populas zones and near the center, and you will STRUGGLE to get even that first dial click. Those games can be the most frustrating as you have NO controll over you destiney, especialy if those zones burn fast and you can;t use the token mocing card on it.

Dywnarc said:

Slanny does have those Hero/Noble mover cards in the deck. Can't recall how many copies, two at least (yeah, luck of the draw and all that).

Dam said:

Besides which, in that situation I find it's best to delay as long as possible and then go for a VP win, starting where the other players haven't concentrated. This works especially well if Khorne is camping on your noble tokens expecting you to run over there

Tzeech does play well as a manipulater. The trick is to not be to direct about it but REALLY be a behind the scene manipulator. Stay quiet, stay out of the way, and use your trick cards to make other players more attarctive.

For some out of the box tzeech thinking do somthing bold like HELP another play. For example. Teleport a slannesh cultists onto a hero or noble token don;t give a good reason for it, and watch other players jump on them. I must admit, playing tzeech well involves somtimes looking beyond game mechanics and playing the group, and you can;lt tell me ANY gro

I actully find that slannesh is the most likey to get srewed by nobel tokens. Sure they only need the one token, BUT they can;t creat them. Get your two tokens in populas zones and near the center, and you will STRUGGLE to get even that first dial click. Those games can be the most frustrating as you have NO controll over you destiney, especialy if those zones burn fast and you can;t use the token mocing card on it.

A couple times we tried this approach, but it's such a thin margin between laying low and laying TOO low that we ended up not cashing in on victory points. It just seems entirely dependent on saving up your stasis cards and getting all 3 by the time you make your warpstone teleport move, or saving up your drain power cards, but if you save those up then you're not getting any new cards at draw.

Tzeentch's biggest strength has seemed to be that there really aren't any old world cards that specifically screw him, and the one blessing of your not being able to keep up in dial advancement is that you'll always have the lowest threat and can direct the OW cards, but even then it comes down to luck of getting god specific screwing cards (sue for peace on Khorne, remove all corruption for Nurgle).

I don't think Slaneesh is more screwed by starting placement than Tzeentch. He gets cards that can permanently move those tokens while Tzeentch has to spend points every turn creating magic symbols or wait for an upgrade to move warpstone.

OK. You're right. Tzeentch can't win.

ColtsFan76 said:

Chill, buddy. We're talking game mechanics, not insulting your mother.

I'm just telling what's been happening when we tried this stuff in our group. The general ideas haven't been working so I asked if anyone had specific play by plays.

I really don't see a discussion. For everything that is brought up, you have a reason why it doesn't work.

I have followed this game since it came out. There are Khorne can't win threads, Khorne can't lose threads. And the same for each and every god in this game. We all have the same game we all have the same components. Hopefully, we all have the same rule interpretation and playing with the same errata and clarifications. So what's different? Play style. This game is subject to group think.

So if you don't see how Tzeentch can possibly win then it is most likely "how" you and your group are playing the game and not seeing the possibilities. You have some solid paths to explore and if it isn't working then you probably aren't using them at the right time. Timing is important in this game so you don't invest heavily in a region only to have an opponent screw with you.

But it is hard to lay out an exact winning strategy because this is a game of chaos and 4 players are going after very different and overlapping goals. So you just need to see what possibilites exist and take advantage of them when you see an opening.

But all I see is you knocking down what ideas are out there. This isn't philosophical suggestions. They work. Tzeentch is a real competitor in the game and it is pretty finely balanced even though it is not symmetrical.

What would you want to see in a play-by-play? The total moves of all parties involved? I believe that would be almost impossible to write down. Even writing down Big Blue only would be difficult.

How about you post a play-by-play of your next game here, with you playing as Tzeentch and we can see if there is anything obvious?