HORRORS OF TZEENTCH 2020

Let's talk Horrors

One of the biggest changes for the Disciples of Tzeentch has to be the new Horror unit. I remember the 40k daemon army where Horrors were your shooting models with Assault 3 Range 18” shots in an edition of the game where they put bolters and shuriken catapults to shame. They just have never seemed to get back to level of ranged firepower in any version since. But we are talking about Age of Sigmar here, so let’s break that down.

Summoning daemons was a great change in AoS 2.0. Instead of setting aside reserve points to bring more stuff is way more fast and loose these days. No, every army can’t just keep piling on models.. but some models do have thematic ways to bring more troops to the battle. Regardless of your coven of choice, I am going to suggest that Horros of Tzeentch received a huge boost in the new game.

The biggest thing that people were harping on in their reviews was Split and Split Again. So when you attack a Horror unit, the wounds are first allocated to the Pinks. If they are slain, you immediately add two Blue Horrors to the unit. For each Blue Horror that dies, you can add a Brimstone Horror. So people who were reviewing the book were harping on the fact that for 400pts, a max unit of 20 Horrors, you have a unit with 100 wounds. Admittedly that is a lot of models.

This was technically how they worked previously though. Each Pink Horror gave you summoning points to make more Blues, each Blue Horror gave you points to bring on Brimstones. They were set up at the end of your movement phase, near a hero and not near enemy models though, so you kind of lost the mechanic where the Horror unit itself continues to grow (looks over at the original version of the game). The big deal here is you can continue to pile models around an objective.

The Pink Horrors went down from a 5+ Save to a 6+ Save, however they the added Locus of Change and picked up Ectoplasmic Elasticity. The first is an army-wide buff that grants them a -1 to be hit near a hero, and the second ability is a save after the save which allows you to ignore wounds and mortal wounds on a 6+. So a 5+ Save will average 3 successful saves on ten hits. Mathematically a 6+ Save and a 6+ Save after the save works out basically the same. When you figure in a -2 Rend characteristic or you are working with mortal wounds, Ectoplasmic Elasticity is clearly superior. Blues are unchanged and Brimstones got slightly better, neither have the second save and Brimstones did not have any save previously.

The Locus of Change dropping a -1 to hit into the mix if you are within 12” of a TZEENTCH DAEMON HERO is a really big deal. It turns six hits into 5, five hits into 3, or ten hit into 6. So instead of killing 6 models on ten hits, now Pink Horrors are only removing 4 slain models which gives them EIGHT Blue Horrors before making Battleshock tests. So a unit of twenty would have been down to fourteen models, and needed to make a D6+6 die roll against a Leadership 10. Now you have a unit of twenty four models on an objective and you cannot fail the Battleshock test unless you have a penalty for Bravery.

Speaking of Battleshock, unless I am wrong on this you can pick any models from the unit to flee. The pertinent passage from the Core Rules is as follows:

“If the test is failed, for each point by which the modified roll exceeds the unit’s modified Bravery characteristic, one model in that unit must flee. You decide which of the models from your units flee – remove them from play and count them as having been slain.”

So while Split and Split Again requires you allocate wounds and mortal wounds to the Pink Horrors, for purposes of Battleshock you should be able to remove Blue Horrors and Brimstone Horrors. Since models fleeing in Battleshock are considered slain, any losses would trigger adding new daemons to the unit in the case of Pink Horrors and Blue Horrors. I may have missed an FAQ or errata document that clarifies that losses from Battleshock are treated just like allocating wounds and mortal wounds, but I can’t find anything specifically that would force the losses to come from the Pink Horrors first.

Ah well, we’ll see how people are playing it.

As I stated in the beginning however, the big thing I wanted to talk about was the thing no one was talking about. I may have went a little off-topic to start with. But remember the previous book, all the Horrors used to have Magical Flames. It was their saving grace, almost like hey these daemons can shoot, which in Age of Sigmar also involves shooting in close combat.

Unit	Range	Attacks	To Hit	Wound	Rend	Dmg
Pink Horror	18”	1	4+	4+	0	1
Blue Horror	14”	1	4+	4+	0	1
Brimstone Horror	12”	2	5+	5+	0	1

If you were lucky enough to have twenty models in a unit of Pink Horrors, you could get a +1 to hit. But as soon as you took any casualties, unless you were fielding a unit of thirty it was a pretty hard bonus to maintain. So let’s see, ten Pink Horrors (or Blue) would average 5 hits and 2.5 wounds. Twenty Pink Horrors with their Flickering Flame buff would average 13 hits and 6-7 wounds. My unit up above that suffered ten hits and lost six models would have fourteen attacks, so 7 hits and 3.5 wounds on average my opponent would need to save against before removing casualties.

My argument here is that while Pink Horrors used to shoot, they really didn’t average a lot of damage especially if they had suffered any casualties. Even with an 18” range, you are not going to be clearing hordes or doing much against armored opponents. So let’s look at what changed in regards to Horror shooting.

Unit	Range	Attacks	To Hit	Wound	Rend	Dmg
Pink Horror	12”	3	5+	4+	0	1
Blue Horror	12”	2	5+	4+	0	1
Brimstone Horror	12”	1	5+	4+	0	1

So all of their ranged attacks cap at 12” now, and they lost +1 to hit. But even a lowly ten man Horror unit doubled their wound output. Ten Pink Horrors have 30 attacks now, so they average 10 hits and 5 wounds. Twenty Pink Horrors still have Flickering Flame, but it counts all the models in the unit since the unit is mixed it is way easier to maintain the +1 to hit buff. Twenty Horrors have 60 attacks and hitting on 4+ instead of 5+, which would average 30 hits and 15 wounds. That’s a 225% increase HOLY COW!!

But wait, remember my unit above that was benefiting from the Locus of Change. It only lost 4 models instead of 6, and it gain 8 Blue Horrors immediately. So it has 48 ranged attacks from the Pink Horrors and 16 ranged attacks from the Blue Horrors, that averages 32 hits and 16 wounds which is one more than a unit twenty Pink Horrors but compared to the 3.5 wounds that a unit of 14 Pink Horrors drops it is 457% increase in ranged damage from where we were. The previous Battletome with the summoning rules would have let you bring in a unit of 10 Blue Horrors on your movement phase, but on average that unit would be causing 2.5 wounds from shooting so you would still be missing out on ten wounds for your opponent to save against and like I previously noted they would inevitably have to arrive somewhere else on the battlefield.

Don’t think I didn’t forget to mention that Horrors now have the ability to bring Channeled Pink Fire to the battlefield now. In the last edition a unit of Pink Horrors was considered a WIZARD, so they have a plethora of options to choose from regarding how they cast spells. I won’t say I don’t think they’ll suffer from not having access to Realm Magic or the Lore of Change. Hopefully you still have a few other casters in your army as well. But Channeled Pink Fire is a super nice spell that every Pink Horror unit with 9 or more Pink Horrors can cast (even if another unit has also cast it).

Channeled Pink Fire has a casting value of 6+. If you are wholly within 12” of a TZEENTCH HERO, which I would recommend, you can cast it on a 5+. There are other army buffs, like the Command Ability of the Lord of Change that give you an additional +1 to cast, so it shouldn’t be too hard to land it when you need it. It gives you a further +1 to hit with your attacks if you successfully cast the spell and it isn’t dispelled.

In terms of our earlier examples, ten Pink Horrors using Channeled Pink Fire averages 15 hits and 7.5 wounds a 300% increase from the last Battletome. Twenty Pink Horrors using Channeled Pink Fire averages 40 hits and 20 wounds once again three times as many. And my unit which suffered casualties, it still has 64 attacks, so it will average over 21 wounds but is six times as effective in the next shooting phase over a unit with 14 attacks hitting on 4+.

So battlefield control, durability, and ranged attacks these new Horrors of Tzeentch are just better across the board. They are actually even better in melee because the Blue Horrors and the Brimstone Horrors keep the same attack profile as the Pink Horrors, all of them hit on 5+ and wound on 4+. And the bonus from Channeled Pink Fire affects all of the attacks they make, not just the ranged attacks.

I was just surprised none of the reviews I have seen mention the increase in damage that Pink Horrors gained in the Disciples of Tzeentch 2020 battletome. We even have a coven that gives all of their shots -1 Rend if that suits you. We have two casters that each give you a unit of ten of Pink Horrors for free. My biggest question right now is whether I want to field three units of twenty or only two and run both Gaunt Summoners.