This month is bringing a massive host of updates to Age of Sigmar as the setting transitions to Ghyran, the realm of life. Each army is getting two whole pages of additional rules and optional alternative warscrolls for you to use in your games and we are very excited about all of it! Before we get stuck in, a thank you to Games Workshop for providing us with these rules as an early release to review.
Tzeentch have had a pretty good run of fourth edition so far but with an almighty skew towards the Daemon side of things, with competitive listbuilding largely coalescing around chickens, horrors, flamers and leaning into control and the burning mechanic. Now it’s not been entirely Daemon focused, and both versions of goat on disc have seen success, but not at the same rate, and that still leaves vast swathes of the army untouched competitively. This Scourge of Ghyran update feels like one of the more ambitious we’ve seen, with a decent push for mortals and also the melee prowess of the faction.
Battle Formations
Two new battle formations to compete against Wyrdflame Host, which offers the powerful ability to subtract 1 from wound rolls of enemies that have the burning keyword.
Masters of Fate
Symbiotic Madness is the ability here, and it’s a passive that hands out crit (2 hits) to Arcanite unit’s melee weapons whilst they’re wholly within 12″ of a friendly Daemon unit. The obvious combo here is to boost up armies that run heavy on Tzaangor Enlightened on Discs of Tzeentch. Enlightened are already a decent choice with the synergies available to them, but using a cheap unit of Screamers to give them crit (2 hits) is a legitimate option. It feels like the designers intent here is to give another boost to the Ghyran version of Kairic Acolytes, and we’ll get to them below.
Spellweaver Coven
You get a pretty kooky ability here in Sorcerers of War – once per turn (army) in your combat phase you can pick one of your wizards that is in combat and they can use a non-summon spell ability as if it were your hero phase, but can only pick themselves or enemy units in combat with them to be the target. This is an extremely niche ability, but there’s use-case for it. One of the new artefacts is quite good on a melee build Lord of Change and the specifics of this ability hit some (possibly unintended) wonky bits of the spell casting rules that could make them pretty scary to be in combat range of.
Specifically, 5.0 Jealous Mages and Fickle Gods states that “No more than 1 friendly Wizard can cast the same spell per turn […] Keep in mind that each unit can still only use any given spell of prayer ability once per phase”. What this means is that if a unit casts a spell that is not unlimited it locks out every other friendly wizard from casting that spell for the turn, but the rule of one only prevents that unit from casting the spell again for that phase. Essentially what this battle formation is doing is letting you double dip on a spell at the risk of the caster being in melee. So your Lord of Change can cast Tzeentch’s Firestorm in the hero phase, then charge in and cast it again in the combat phase. If this is the intended outcome of this battle formation it’s cool and unusual and might see some play. If it gets FAQ’d to not work like this, it’s not great.
Artefacts of Power – Esoteric Treasures
Mutating Blade
Pick a melee weapon on the user and change their attacks characteristic to 2d6. Good old PeNgU1N oF d00m rules for the changer of ways, a classic, and brings Tzeentch up to somehow having three melee weapon artefacts. This is actually not too bad, the sword was the preferred option on a Lord of Change anyway, and changing the attacks from 4 to 2d6 is going to be a big upgrade most of the time. That this competes directly with a flat +1 to cast and banish rolls artefact is a shame, but it’s totally usable.
Arcane Syphon
Once per turn in your own hero phase you can pick a visible manifestation, friendly or enemy, within 12″ that was not set up in the same turn and on a 3+ it gets banished and you can heal the bearer of this artefact for the value of the manifestation’s health characteristic. Most manifestations are coming in between 6-10 health so that’s potentially a big heal and not having to spend other resources on getting rid of them is nice to have. Again, this is competing with +1 to cast and banish and it’s really hard to see past that, but this is no slouch of an artefact.
Spell-Catcher Amulet
This is a fun one, once per turn in your own hero phase if you banish an enemy manifestation you get to make an attempt to summon one of your own manifestations without it ‘counting’ as a spell ability use. Neat and very thematic to do an uno reverso manifestation bit. As with all of the Ghyran artefacts here, I can see this getting played, though it’s the most niche one as there’s whole matchups where this will do nothing for you.
Warscrolls
Here’s the other side of the push for Arcanites to be mixing it up in melee, to we think mixed success. Even if these end up less efficient than your standard Daemon control business, I think these are two of the more exciting warscroll reinventions that have come out of Scourge of Ghyran so far.
Ogroid Thaumaturge
Clinging on as one of the last survivors from the Silver Tower boxed release, the Thaumaturge has basically never been very good, being kind of squishy and mediocre at both magic and melee. The melee profile here has improved a lot, with the irritating staff attacks disappearing in favour of doubling the attacks of the hooves and horns up to 6. 6 attacks with damage 3 on the charge is pretty spicy for a little guy, but the problem’s always been getting it in there and staying alive. Fortunately, this warscroll has solutions to both problems. Soul-deep Devotion gives the Thaumaturge a 4+ ward if it’s in combat range of a non-hero Arcanite unit, with the usual downside that successful wards get passed off as damage to that unit.
Second is the really unusual Wrath of the Thaumaturge, which is once per turn (army) in any charge phase and if the Thaumaturge is not in combat but another Arcanite unit anywhere on the board is, then the Thaumaturge gets to teleport to within 1″ of that Arcanite unit, in combat range of enemies, and counts as charging. This is a wild teleport, and if you’re running a few units of Arcanites could give your opponent a real headache as to where the support is coming, as the Thaumaturge could be hiding at the back of the board and still teleport straight into combat. A 130 point wizard that also fights and teleports it a very tempting thing. If anything makes me pause on a recommendation it’s that those 6 attacks hit on a 4+ and are only rend 1, so we’re in pretty swingy territory. If you can get the +1 to hit off of the Burning Sigil of Tzeentch manifestation, and you decide to go Arcanite heavy, I can see this being a decent pick.
Kairic Acolytes
IÂ love these, just a total reimagining of what the unit is supposed to do. Previously Kairics were this chaff infantry screen with some bad shooting and ability to make the shooting a bit less bad if you rolled a 5+ and they were terrible. Ghyran Kairics (Ghairics) trade all of that in for becoming a weird melee hammer. The shooting has gone, and the glaive has gone as its own profile. Their main melee profile is, by default, only mildly better than the original as it’s 2 attacks that hit on a 4+, wound on a 3+ with no rend and damage 1. That’s not a melee hammer, but the new abilities are what make them.
Empowered by Magic gives the unit +1 damage if it’s wholly within 12″ of any manifestations. This is, you might have noticed, doubling their damage immediately. Keeping them near manifestations to unlock it is relatively annoying and gives your opponent some play to get rid of it, but Tzeentch are very very good at casting and 12″ is a decently large area with some of the base sizes of endless spells out there. The Vulcharc is now a once per turn (army) ability that picks an enemy unit within 12″ and gives any Kairic Acolyte units that target them +1 rend. Now we’re at 2 attacks that hit on a 4+, wound on a 3+ with rend 1 and damage 2. That’s a real combat unit! Throw in bonuses to hit from the Burning Sigil and crit (2 hits) from the new battle formation and a reinforced unit is kicking out some pretty serious damage.
Now there’s an obvious downside here (OK, beyond juggling endless spells to keep them buffed) and it’s that this is a melee unit with 1 health and a 5+ save. They’re gonna die. The good news is these guys are still extremely cheap and a reinforced unit costs just 200 points for something your opponent cannot afford to ignore. They don’t particularly need babysitting with heroes, can just plug and play into a list (you really don’t need to chase the crit (2 hits) thing) and ask you to cast the spells you want to cast anyway. Will these oust Horrors as the top dog for Tzeentch? Probably not? But they do very different things and I think we will see a shift towards more melee choices for Tzeentch armies.
Final Thoughts
This is a cool one. I hope it does give us some meaningful shake up to the internal balance of Tzeentch, the Daemon half of the army has been so much stronger for so long. At the very least, this does unlock new playstyle options and ways for Tzeentch to get more aggressive and in your face, if you can set up the combos. If nothing else, I expect crit (2 hits) Enlightened on disc to pick up in play, as that archetype was already strong. Finally, if you take the 2d6 attack artefact on a Lord of Change and roll 12 sword attacks, write in. Let me know how that goes.
Have any questions or feedback? Drop us a note in the comments below or email us at contact@goonhammer.com. Want articles like this linked in your inbox every Monday morning? Sign up for our newsletter. And don’t forget that you can support us on Patreon for backer rewards like early video content, Administratum access, an ad-free experience on our website and more.
