The new Disciples of Tzeentch tome has arrived! If you’re a collector, you’ve likely already looked into what this book will bring you, but if not you can find out right here! If you’re brand new to Tzeentch, or if you just want to know what kind of mystic filth you’ll be playing down at your local club this October, allow us to fill you in.

Who is Tzeentch?

The chaos god Tzeentch is the herald of change, represented by mutated flesh and gouts of multicoloured flames that “transform” you into piles of ash. He is also a purveyor of both secrets and lies, hatching elaborate plans so convoluted and nefarious that if one seems to have failed he can simply claim that’s how he wanted it to go all along. Oh and he’s really into birds…?

Tzeentch’s followers include his daemonic hordes of imp-like Horrors, fire breathing raincoats inventively called Flamers, and mantaray-like flying beasts called Screamers. On the mortal side you can find the avian beastman Tzaangors, some of whom ride into battle atop daemonic frisbees called Discs of Tzeentch (which are themselves living creatures), and Tzeentch’s human servants the Karic Acolytes who are basically a bunch of bird cosplayers with the physique of a WWE superstar. Wizards of various shapes and sizes also flock (heh) to Tzeentch’s banners, notably the nefarious Gaunt Summoners who transport your slower units around through silver portals and this update’s signature foot-hero model the curseling, who is actually a buy-one-get-one-free champion with 2 heads and the ability to turn his opponent’s spells against them.

Tzeentch only has 2 monsters in the roster, not counting allies from other armies, but they are his greatest servants and extremely powerful Wizards to boot. The Lord of Change is a giant, bird-like daemon who’s mixture of spellcasting, combat potential and manoeuvrability makes them a versatile unit who add a great deal of value to an army. The named version, Kairos Fateweaver, does everything the Lord of Change does but a little better. You should expect to see these centrepiece models as part of many Tzeentch armies.

How does Tzeentch play?

Tzeentch’s signature ability is Destiny Dice. At the beginning of the game a Tzeentch player can roll 9 dice and place them to one side. Before making most kinds of rolls the Tzeentch player can choose to expend one or more of the dice from their Destiny Dice and use its result in place of whatever roll they were about to make. This ability is absolutely incredible if used intelligently, and can guarantee success in game-changing plays like making a 12 inch charge to secure an objective or guaranteeing that your general survives by passing a crucial save roll.

Typically any Tzeentch list will include a variety of spellcasters churning out a varied mix of buffs, debuffs and mortal wounds. Every time a spell is successfully cast they also generate fate points which allow them to summon daemonic reinforcements so you should expect their forces to expand as the game goes on. Particularly if your opponent has a lot of wizards too, because even enemy spells will feed into Tzeentch’s summoning pool! They can also start the game with one of their signature endless spells already on the field and unable to be dispelled for the first battle round, including the powerful Burning Sigil which does mortal wounds to all enemy units in an 18” bubble and has the potential to summon a Chaos Spawn to frustrate your opponent’s movements. Frankly there are too many cool magical abilities and bonuses to list. Basically: they’re really, really good at magic.

Tzeentch has access to a lot of shooting, which combined with their magic output makes them deadly at range. Of course Tzeentch’s units tend to be quite squishy in exchange – unless they are able to buff their survivability with vital spells and abilities. The Arcane Shield spell for example can give a unit a 5+ ward, and all daemon units have a built-in -1 to be hit if they are standing close to a Daemon Hero (including the heroes themselves). Still, even fully buffed Tzeentch isn’t the tankiest faction in the game and you should treat them like the glass cannons they are. Don’t let your units get into a fight and trade blows. Make surgical strikes, only fight battles you know you can win, and abuse your relatively high mobility and summoning to control the board.

Horrors of Tzeentch have a unique ability that allows a Pink horror to split into 2 Blue Horrors upon death, who in turn become Brimstone Horrors when they die. This means that a unit of 10 pink horrors may not seem very imposing at first, but they are actually a whopping 50 wounds worth of meat shields! They are a perfect unit for holding objectives although at 250 points for 10 pink horrors it’s quite an investment for a Battleline unit that doesn’t do a great amount of damage without multiple stacking buffs. If you use them, you’re likely to want to invest in some heroes specifically to make them extra durable or extra killy and really get the most out of them.

Tzaangors and Kairic Acolytes are the other two main types of battleline, both of which are more traditional infantry with fairly well rounded stats. Tzeentch has 3 conditional battleline units however: Flamers, Screamers and Burning Chariots (which is a flamer, standing on a disc, being pulled by screamers, in a trenchcoat, trying to get into an R rated movie). On top of that they can include coalition units from both Slaves to Darkness and Beasts of Chaos, and allies from Slaanesh meaning that the range of models they can field is dizzyingly broad. In that respect, like the other chaos gods, there is a great deal of room for personalization in lists compared to other, more restrictive factions.

Should I play Tzeentch?

You’ll probably enjoy Tzeentch if you enjoy a more cerebral army. You really get what you put into this one: if you’re on top of your movement and are able to look several turns ahead Tzeentch’s rules will reward you with an army that can pull off all manner of tricksy shenanigans. It’s not the type of army you play if you just want to push everything into the middle of the board and roll dice until one side breaks. But if you mess up, you can get punished hard. The versatility of what Tzeentch can accomplish sometimes works against them, because although they can do a lot of cool things they can’t do it all at once. When the stars align however, you will walk away from the game feeling like an absolute genius. Honestly if you’re on the fence about starting this army try not to overthink it. After all, whether you’re aware of it or not, Tzeentch has already made this choice for you…