Alter fate and play tricks on foes with new Disciples of Tzeentch battle traits

Tzeentch is the most unpredictable of all the Chaos Gods. Nurgle’s rot and ruin is as inevitable as the common cold, Khorne isn’t surprising us when he puts an invitation Re: Slaughter in our calendars for the eighth time this week, and Slaanesh is always going on and on about how great they are at everything.

Not so Tzeentch. When we think the Changer of the Ways is going to zig, he zags. One minute he’s all about getting his armies to fling storms of mutative fire at their foes, and now, with the upcoming Battletome: Disciples of Tzeentch, he’s switched gears to craft intricate illusions nestled within illusions, while using minor setbacks to alter fate itself.* Join us as we try to keep track of these mind-bending shenanigans.

Dedicated to playing the long game, no matter what happens to Tzeentch’s forces, the God of Change considers it All Part of the Plan. When you lose the priority roll, miscast a spell or have one unbound, lose control of an objective, or have one of your shiny new Argent Shards destroyed, you gain a fate point. 

This ephemeral currency can then be spent on a few abilities, like Destined to Serve, which lets you remove damage points from the damage pool before they’re allocated to your units. Another option, Destined for Battle, lets you add 1 to a charge roll, and Destined Arcana gives you the power to boost your casting roll. Each one can be pumped up by spending additional fate points, so it’s up to you to either spend liberally to nudge fate around, or save up to give destiny one massive shove. 

A further prismatic new feather in Tzeentch’s cap is the ability to grant his followers illusory powers. By weaving Eldritch Illusions, up to three non-MONSTER units on the battlefield can be removed and put into reserve, masked by illusion. Unlike normal reserves, these are only destroyed at the end of the fifth battle round, giving you some more time to plan out last minute substitutions.

In your near endless game of Smoke and Mirrors, you can swap one unit currently on the battlefield with one that is masked by illusion. If a Gaunt Summoner is about to get perforated by some Freeguild Fusiliers, or imminently flattened by a Maw-grunta, you can switch him with something more expendable. If you’ve managed to fly some Screamers of Tzeentch up the board to a crucial objective, you can then clog it up by warping in a whole unit of Pink Horrors, and watch your foe try and shift a gibbering mass of divisible daemons. 

There are limits to your powers of deception though, as you can’t swap out a unit that was deployed via Smoke and Mirrors in the previous turn with this ability, or use it to enter combat. You’ll need to tap into the most Tzeentchian parts of your mind to make the most of this flexible ability.

Into this tapestry of shimmering deceptions and shifting fates arrives the Fatemaster. Handy enough in a fight, with four Rend 2, damage 2 attacks, they are also an expert strategist, working to further Tzeentch’s goals via the Arcanite cults. Their schemes are often Long in the Planning, and cost two fate points to execute, as wheels long set in motion turn and allow the Fatemaster to nominate a nearby Arcanite and whisk them away into reserves when an enemy unit charges near them. 

Well versed in shifting around the battlefield unseen through the use of reality-warping illusions, the Fatemaster can deploy from reserves with a Bound Retinue that is also masked by illusion, providing them with some muscle when they decide to make their presence known. 

This is just the tip of the mountain of shifting, sorcerous new rules that the Disciples of Tzeentch can use to outwit and overwhelm their foes. Next up, we’ll be taking a look at the new Argent Shards, and some of the thaumaturgical powerhouses that use them to broaden the reach of their spellcasting.

* Were they setbacks, or were they always part of the plan? We’ll probably never know.