Horrors of Tzeentch roster

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VoodooMike
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Horrors of Tzeentch roster

Post by VoodooMike »

So, completely out of boredom and almost entirely because the idea entertained me a lot, I whipped up this roster of Tzeentchian horrors. The basic idea was that most rosters try to differentiate themselves by heaping on a skill that doesn't get used much, or by focusing heavily on fluff... so I wanted a roster that actually played completely different than all other rosters, and which presented a completely different experience for their opponents. Tzeentch is, afterall, the changer of ways.

Horrors of Tzeentch


Qty Title Cost MA ST AG AV Skills Norm Doub

0-16 Blue Horrors 20,000 5 1 3 5 Multiple Block, Stunty, Titchy, Volatile, Regeneration M GASP
0-16 Pink Horrors 50,000 6 2 3 7 Stunty, Regeneration, Unstable M GASP
0-4 Flamers of Tzeentch 150,000 1 6 1 10 Loner, No Hands, Take Root, Bombardier, Stand Firm, Thick Skull, Hail Mary Pass, Regeneration MAP GS

Re-rolls: 10k

Volatile

If this player falls prone for any reason (knocked down during a block, a failed dodge roll, etc) then after all results from the action are concluded, such as the armor and injury rolls against the players involved the square this player is in (or was in if they are removed from the field in the interim) becomes the location of an explosion as though the square had been targeted by a Fireball cast by a Wizard. Unlike normal fireballs, the explosion affects prone players as well, forcing an armor roll on those players as though they had been knocked down by the explosion. This also affects the Volatile player, potentially forcing a second armor and injury rolls from the same action.

Unstable

When this player rolls a Causalty or KO'd result on the Injury table he is instead considered Dead and is permanently removed from the roster. In the player's place, however, two fresh Blue Horrors are added to the roster if there is room, and those two Blue Horrors are, if possible, placed in empty squares adjacent to the square in which the player died. If no squares are available for a Blue Horror, it is placed in the reserves. The addition of the Blue Horrors to the field may allow the number of fielded players to surpass 11, and their presence is not considered illegal procedure until the end of the drive.

Discussion

If your first reaction to the roster is "what the f*ck?" then mission accomplished! If your second reaction is that you can't decide whether the roster is grossly overpowered or the absolute worst tier 3 team you've ever seen then that's absolutely perfect! Most likely it falls just shy of Ogres in terms of long-term performance, but that's totally ok!

Lets take a look at the different player types and talk a bit about what each one is all about..

Blue Horror

These are the core of the team - Blue Horrors are small, weak, fragile, explosive linemen who focus on one thing: being absolutely terrible at almost everything, and going out of their way to do those things. The Volatile skill makes Blues interesting: any time they hit the pitch they become the center of a fireball that has the potential to floor many opponents (and allies, I suppose). To this end, the goal of a Blue Horror is to find a good position and then suffer spectacular failure, be it during a dodge or an ill-advised multiple block.

Since nobody is interested in being inside the blast of a fireball, and the unimaginably low ST of horrors means that the opponent is almost certainly going to be choosing the block dice from among several, the blocking process is more of a dare against the opposing coach... do you really want to choose attacker down? Maybe you'd rather that push... maybe you'd rather your player say, in deadpan "ack, you got me" and fall over next to the triumphant horror that probably can't do much to a prone enemy.


Pink Horror

The Pinks are the functional players on the Tzeentch team. They're still not very good, but they don't randomly explode which makes them far better suited for things like... holding a ball. If you're going to score it'll probably be with a pink, though almost certainly with a pink that is strolling out of a series of explosions like an 80s action hero.

The Unstable skill makes Pink Horrors very cost efficient, as while they are moderately tough to kill due to their regeneration you'll never end up with injuries because they break into two blue horrors instead of becoming a casualty (its a fluff thing).

Given that none of the other player types on the team are ever likely to earn many legitimate SPPs, the Pink Horror is the piece where the mutation-only normal access is most likely to come into play. Horrors need to work with the versatile grab-bag of mutation skills unless they luck out with some doubles... so any play strategies you might think of for them would need to work around that.


Flamers of Tzeentch

The scary big guy of the team that... isn't really that scary when you consider its stats and skills in their entirety.. the Flamer is the primary place any TV will come from for this team. They can't move around much, and they can't hold the ball. Their job is to shower the board will small fireballs that they aim with the razor-sharp precision of a half-blind old man with advanced arthritis.

So what's the point of an expensive piece that mostly resembles one of those dancing fan-powered tube men business sometimes set up outside to get attention, but that hurls grenades seemingly at random? Well, they offer suppressing fire that can provide (mostly psychological) pressure on the other team and keep them from bunching up (which blue horrors also do)... but also the more flamers you have the better your chances they'll randomly soak an MVP at some point at which point you can improve their aim or just give them tentacles and use them as a fairly proficient living wall.

Cheapest Re-rolls in history

It won't help... that's what makes it funny. They're so miserably bad at doing almost everything that re-rolls might as well be plentiful.. they also fit well with Tzeentch fluff.


So what's the point?

The main idea behind the team came from open TV-matched online play. The team is likely absolutely terrible against agility teams as it lacks much ability to deal with dodgy players... but the team is murder on bash teams. In fact, the better a bash team is at bashing the harsher a game against Tzeentch becomes. Nothing makes Blue Horrors more excited than an opposing team chock full 'o CPOMB! The more bash-heavy an environment the more fun it is to play the Tzeentch team, with agility matches being the least interesting.

Given that the team is ill-suited to winning, or even to developing, it's hard to get deeply invested in your players... which is good because other than the flamers, the players are mostly ill-suited to long-term existence. Even mirror matches would play out like a grenade-throwing fight between children with no depth-perception standing in a mine field. All hail chaos!


Possible Alternatives

One of the ideas was to change re-rolls from being 10k to being 100k... or 200k! It's not because we don't want Tzeench to have lots of re-rolls, but because it would let the Tzeench team artificially inflate their TV so they could better position themselves to detonate among high-development bashers in open environments.

So... comments and thoughts?

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Shteve0
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Post by Shteve0 »

I like it!

A couple of thoughts I guess... Not necessarily in conjunction.

1) multiple block is maybe not great? I see what you're going for but surely repeat dodges and gfis are the best bet for detonation. Perhaps right stuff on blue and ttm on the flamers does the job better? Or decay, to pursue those -AG gold nuggets.

2) why not give the pink horrors dodge? It's an optional skill, and they're already terrible. Alternatively, MA7 and ball and chain. Alternatively, make these guys the TTM caddies and the blues the right stuffers.

3) then I'm wondering if flamers at 3/3/1/10, take root, bombardier, stand firm, hail Mary pass, Regen, volatile, B&C could be an option. Any knock down is a KO, but they explode on contact. Plays nice with the 50k babe inducement.

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spubbbba
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Re: Horrors of Tzeentch roster

Post by spubbbba »

I want a team of pink and blue horrors now, just to see the carnage that could occur from a mass chain reaction of explosions, splits and then more explosions!

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VoodooMike
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Re: Horrors of Tzeentch roster

Post by VoodooMike »

Shteve0 wrote:multiple block is maybe not great? I see what you're going for but surely repeat dodges and gfis are the best bet for detonation. Perhaps right stuff on blue and ttm on the flamers does the job better? Or decay, to pursue those -AG gold nuggets.
The point behind multiple block is that while it may increase the blue horror's chances of exploding next to an opponent, it actually increases the control the opponent has when deciding where the horror is likely to explode when using it. It's certainly a trivial bit and could be replaced with anything else that made the blues more interesting or funny.

In reality you're right, though, anyone who played the roster even a little bit seriously would use failed dodges and GFIs when possible because it would give them finer control over detonation spots. Might be funny to give them shadowing instead!

I worry that Right Stuff on horrors and TTM on flamers would make the roster abusive in a less funny way. They'd still be absolutely terrible at winning games, but they'd have much greater potential to hurt opposing players anywhere on the board. Without it the blue horrors are pretty easy to keep away from anyone you want to keep them away from, and the bombardier skill on flamers won't let them hit the broad side of a barn given their stats.
Shteve0 wrote:why not give the pink horrors dodge? It's an optional skill, and they're already terrible. Alternatively, MA7 and ball and chain. Alternatively, make these guys the TTM caddies and the blues the right stuffers.
Dodge isn't a bad idea for the pinks.. maybe reduce them to 0-8 so that every horror team at least considers blues, even if they're taking themselves seriously (having totally missed the point).
Shteve0 wrote:then I'm wondering if flamers at 3/3/1/10, take root, bombardier, stand firm, hail Mary pass, Regen, volatile, B&C could be an option. Any knock down is a KO, but they explode on contact. Plays nice with the 50k babe inducement.
I was kind'v thinking that the flamers, despite being useless with the ball, would be the long-lasting players... so I'm sort'v anti-volatility on them. I do like the ball and chain idea though... fluff-wise, flamers often throw themselves almost randomly into combat, so it suits them.

I like them being very strong, but not being able to use that strength to crush the other team. What about removing Bombardier, Hail Mary Pass and Take Root, adding B&C and Tentacle, and adding the following unique traits:

Kid Gloves: when performing a block the player must always choose the "push" result if it is available.

Warp Rage: if the player is adjacent to another player (opposing or allied) at the start of their turn, their MA becomes 8 and they must attempt to move into an adjacent player's square. Each move made by this player for the rest of the turn must be an attempt to move into another player's square. If, on subsequent moves, this player is adjacent to multiple players he must choose the square of a player other than the player he chose for his last square of movement.

The resulting Flamer is big, strong, and only barely under the control of the coach. It works well as a living wall with its high strength and tentacles, but the other team can bait it into frolicking blindly away from its position to (mostly) harmlessly chase another player or two... or three.

The main problem I see with using B&C in general, especially on more than one player on the same team, is that the actual movement is going to be tedious to perform. Less so on a digital version where the only thing a coach would really need to do is pick which of multiple adjacent players the flamer was going to go after on any square it had options about that.

Chaos in offense, chaos in defense!

It could be even funnier (and certainly make the team much, much worse) if Kid Gloves only applied to blocks made against players on the opposing team...
spubbbba wrote:I want a team of pink and blue horrors now, just to see the carnage that could occur from a mass chain reaction of explosions, splits and then more explosions!
Hah, actually that brings up a good point... the Unstable skill needs to be modified so that the splitting doesn't occur during the explosions lest it just create even more blues that will also explode during the same chain reaction. Or not, I guess. It might be funny to just leave it and let a Tzeentch team self-destruct in one turn of bad (or good) placement.

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