# Flamers of Tzeentch overpowered?



## NagashKhemmler (Apr 28, 2009)

Well I've seen arguments for and against and I'm divided, being a daemon player I love the models (and bought them for that reason) but I've heard lots of people say they're badly overpowered.

To put it in perspective, 6 flamers and a pyro is 225 points.

This would give one 28 empire handgunners.

Taken against say a standard enemy like an orc, the handgunners would get 9.24 hits and 4-5 woundson average.

The flamers would get 21 shots, 10 hits and 5 wounds, so fairly balanced in terms of damage output imo.

The handgunners, whilst being less survivable (lower toughness, rank and file) have a total of 28 wounds, the flamers have 12.

The flamers have a toughness and a skirmish advantage, which essentially gives them 16% less chance to be wounded and 16% less chance to be hit, for a roughly 33% advantage, bringing their survivability to 16., add in the ward save and you're at about 20 or so, in my opinion they are both roughly equal in terms of survivability.

I think the real advantage for the flamers comes from their mobility and concentration of fire. Because they're so few models it's easier to get all those shots, whilst bringing 28 hand gunners to bear is difficult, but the flamers also have an inferior range.

So at least in my opinion, they are on par with other armies ranged units in terms of damage output and survivability. So the question ends up why do people think they're so unfair?

I'm inclined to say that because of how they operate, they force an enemy to target them, leaving the rest of the daemon army unmolested and able to close with the enemy better, which really is their purpose after all. In fact the most sucessful tactics I've seen against flamers usually involve ignoring them as once you're in combat you can't be shot.

Anyways.....Just wondering what others think of flamers? With beasts of nurgle, bloodcrushers and fiends there are difficulties in rare choices for daemons, BC are double the points of flamers, beasts of nurgle aren't worth it and fiends are just so weak.

One thing I found funny when thinking about this topic, was that the daemon player can get 6 flamers for the same price as a tomb king player can get two screaming skull catapaults...I know which one I would prefer.


----------



## The Son of Horus (Dec 30, 2006)

The Blood God has my allegiance in Fantasy, and I've never been a fan of bringing guns to a knife fight. I've always felt like if you want to do a shooting heavy army, let's just play 40k-- the game's designed more for dynamic shooting. Flamers, handgunners, dwarf thunderers... they're all pretty much the same thing. I'd hardly call them overpowered, because when you do get to them (err...well, not the dwarfs, but that's dwarfs being good at three out of the four phases at the game, and their one drawback not mattering that much) they die horribly. But I can definitely see how people get really tired of their elite infantry unit getting mowed down by guns, and not having much they can do about it because there's invariably a hill somewhere. 

I'd point people who gripe about flamers being overpowered to take a good hard look at Dwarf Thunderers. Thunderers are cheaper, are arguably tougher (light armor, and most folks give 'em shields; then they've got a 4+ in close combat and are T4), and are packing reliable handguns. The damage output is actually HIGHER than a unit of Flamers, and the unit costs significantly less.


----------



## NagashKhemmler (Apr 28, 2009)

The Son of Horus said:


> The Blood God has my allegiance in Fantasy, and I've never been a fan of bringing guns to a knife fight. I've always felt like if you want to do a shooting heavy army, let's just play 40k-- the game's designed more for dynamic shooting. Flamers, handgunners, dwarf thunderers... they're all pretty much the same thing. I'd hardly call them overpowered, because when you do get to them (err...well, not the dwarfs, but that's dwarfs being good at three out of the four phases at the game, and their one drawback not mattering that much) they die horribly. But I can definitely see how people get really tired of their elite infantry unit getting mowed down by guns, and not having much they can do about it because there's invariably a hill somewhere.
> 
> I'd point people who gripe about flamers being overpowered to take a good hard look at Dwarf Thunderers. Thunderers are cheaper, are arguably tougher (light armor, and most folks give 'em shields; then they've got a 4+ in close combat and are T4), and are packing reliable handguns. The damage output is actually HIGHER than a unit of Flamers, and the unit costs significantly less.


I feel and have always felt that ranged weapons have an auxiliary role in fantasy, knock off a rank bonus, kill the un-killable in melee (swordmasters...) and so forth, but I'm strongly against pure ranged armies...I find them somewhat empty.

I think that WoC having such good armour saves can weather much of an armies shooting before closing and ripping them to shreds. Daemons have a reliable save, but it isn't good in terms of its ability to stop shots. Because of this I find that they need some sort of counter shooting unit.

Anyways, I just brought it up because I saw so many posts complaining about how overpowered flamers of tzeentch are and I was curious if anyone else thought that or not.


----------



## Lord Sven Kittyclaw (Mar 23, 2009)

I think Its just that in an army that everyone is saying is off the cheese-o scale, Its just one more good unit thats relatively hard to deal with, I think its more a general frustration, the daemons bring so many tricks and quirky units/rules to the table that people just get pissed of and of course the first thing out their mouth's when theyr best unit is immolated, is "Man those guys are so overpowered!"


----------



## AAAAAAAAARRRGGHH (Apr 17, 2009)

Agreed, its maybe not so much the flamers themselves being overpowered, its more that they are a great unit in an army that already have (way?) too many great units. 

And on the Flamers vs. Handgunners it is worth mentioning that flamers causing fear, being immune to Psych + having a good toughness and 2 attacks each (making them capable of actually beating CC units, especially after a SAS reaction) make them just a little over the top.

As to quarellers I can fairly say I would rather play Cheesed daemons than a dwarven gunline...That should be banned from Fantasy.


----------



## NagashKhemmler (Apr 28, 2009)

For me at least I think it's more with daemons that the regular counters don't work and there in lies the biggest problem. Although it's 'only' a 5+ save, it is never lost, that means high strength attacks are wasted, being more preferable to use multiple lower strength attacks, the problem with this, is that for so long there have been heavily armoured armies running around, so army lists are now more often made up of can openers in majority, which don't work against daemons.

If they left the daemonic save as it was before, that is it was lost to magic weapons I think it would be fine, I think the real problem is an entire army having a saving throw they simply cannot lose.

I've been on both sides against daemons and whilst there are really cheesy tactics, if you remove the special characters they aren't anywhere near as bad as they otherwise would be.

I think they're a powerful faction, but I don't think they are so bad that they cannot be beaten.

That said, I beat daemons by targeting the Heralds when I play them, once the Heralds go down their army is actually quite weak, as the abilities this model offers are far more powerful than the models themselves when alone.


----------



## Franko1111 (Jun 25, 2008)

NagashKhemmler said:


> For me at least I think it's more with daemons that the regular counters don't work and there in lies the biggest problem. Although it's 'only' a 5+ save, it is never lost, that means high strength attacks are wasted, being more preferable to use multiple lower strength attacks, the problem with this, is that for so long there have been heavily armoured armies running around, so army lists are now more often made up of can openers in majority, which don't work against daemons.
> 
> If they left the daemonic save as it was before, that is it was lost to magic weapons I think it would be fine, I think the real problem is an entire army having a saving throw they simply cannot lose.
> 
> ...


i agree, i always get taken down by spear bearing hordes(skeletons, goblins and clan rat) well that is if fear don't make them run and in the clanrats case they max out numbers and put a banner that lets them reroll failed tests.

on the issue of flamers of tzeench, they are the only rare I have used and now that i have im saving up for bloodcrushers. this is because they are good but for my army they serve little purpose because as soon as im in combat they do very little. for a tzeench themed army they are just another unit but the d6 shots gets people worried even though it could be a one. 

In all people seem to have the same problem playing deamons as I do wood elves, they don't work like I think they should.


----------



## NagashKhemmler (Apr 28, 2009)

Franko1111 said:


> i agree, i always get taken down by spear bearing hordes(skeletons, goblins and clan rat) well that is if fear don't make them run and in the clanrats case they max out numbers and put a banner that lets them reroll failed tests.
> 
> on the issue of flamers of tzeench, they are the only rare I have used and now that i have im saving up for bloodcrushers. this is because they are good but for my army they serve little purpose because as soon as im in combat they do very little. for a tzeench themed army they are just another unit but the d6 shots gets people worried even though it could be a one.
> 
> In all people seem to have the same problem playing deamons as I do wood elves, they don't work like I think they should.


It's usually the case I think, the new army gets people worried as they aren't sure how to deal with it and tactics need to change to combat the new foe. Daemon units for example fear many attacks more than powerful attacks and their units are best defeated when ganged up on. Because they have few smaller units this is more possible than against most armies.


----------



## AAAAAAAAARRRGGHH (Apr 17, 2009)

NagashKhemmler said:


> If they left the daemonic save as it was before, that is it was lost to magic weapons I think it would be fine, I think the real problem is an entire army having a saving throw they simply cannot lose..


Exactly my opinion! The only army in fantasy that ALWAYS gets a save. On all models. No, GW thats not overpowered 



NagashKhemmler said:


> I think they're a powerful faction, but I don't think they are so bad that they cannot be beaten.


No one are. Its just a matter of how much effort it takes to beat them or how boring they become to fight (even if you win).

But as I already said, its not so much the flamers, more the daemons in general. Not unbeatable, but they have so many things going for them that many standard tactics won't work.


----------



## NagashKhemmler (Apr 28, 2009)

AAAAAAAAARRRGGHH said:


> Exactly my opinion! The only army in fantasy that ALWAYS gets a save. On all models. No, GW thats not overpowered
> 
> 
> 
> ...


I guess that's the issue, many 'standard' tactics don't work, they've kind of upset the standard way of things and are forcing people to change the way they play the game, but being not from this world I suppose it makes sense that they change the way the game is played when they're in it. With a shift in tactics they're beatable, their special characters are completely bs, that I can't argue with, but I'm talking standard characters and standard list atm.


----------



## Tim/Steve (Jan 25, 2009)

rant

Flamers are good because they can move+shoot, get into your face/flank and ravage units at will... sure static gunlines are nasty but a unit that can be either static or highly mobile are really nasty.

I have serious problems with daemons- ogres are basically screwed no matter which daemons force gets used. We need to get the charge, hit first and kill lots of enemies to counter having feck all SCR... nurgle means we dont kill enough, slanesh means we're hit first and tzeentch means we never get there in numbers (oddly khorne is actually what I look forward to facing... until you get flying greater daemons that can hit whatever of my units from whichever side they want at will)
... I actually cant imagine what a new ogre army would look like in order to balance against daemons (though I think cave wyrms, 360 LoS and massive artillery pieces arent out of the question)- at that point (and probably not before) I will stop griping about flamers and daemons in general.

having said all that I am 100% vs daemons... you can imagine how bad my local players must be (but they have both just started to use bloodthirsters.. Im screwed).

/rant


----------



## NagashKhemmler (Apr 28, 2009)

Tim/Steve said:


> rant
> 
> Flamers are good because they can move+shoot, get into your face/flank and ravage units at will... sure static gunlines are nasty but a unit that can be either static or highly mobile are really nasty.
> 
> ...


I understand your paint, slanesh is probably the best of them all with only S3, you can survive a lot of the hits, the herald is easier to kill too, denying them that ability.

Ogres, due to how they work suffer greatly against many factions, undead being another one of them. Ogres suffer similarly against high elves due to the impact ASF has against them, in general Ogres suffer against many teams sadly, sadly because I actually quite like the faction. Gnoblar spam seems to help them against daemons, gives them some good scr and a good screen against a lot of things, I saw a bloodthirster die to a 30 gnoblar pack due to SCR, hilarity ensued. Gnoblars are a necessary part of ogre strategy imo and in sufficient numbers can greatly help ogres defeat many opponents they otherwise can't.


----------



## Tim/Steve (Jan 25, 2009)

I cant believe that gnoblars managed to kill a bloodthirster- they are S2 so cant directly wound it and can only ever have +4SCR unless they get into a flank (3 ranks and outnumber- cant take banners/musicians or have characters leading them)... that must have been a really inept bloodthirster to manage to fail to kill 4 gnoblars in a turn (at something like 7A needing 2+ 2+ to kill... with possible rerolls?).

Im kinda split about daemons if I tell the truth: I want to see diversity in the game and they are certainly different to anything else you'll face.. but GW has kinda made the differences work against the game. A lot of armies seem to be great against some enemies but useless against others, we get into a round robin of winning/losing depending entirely on which army your opponent happens to have brought along (ok ogres are not going to dominate many armiesbut anything built for slow whitling down of the enemy is gonna lose.. then they come up agsinst high elves and suddenly they have almost no chance of winning).

To wrench this back to topic- I think flamers are undercosted. Yes they are relatively expensive already but they fulfill a very specialised role in a daemon army: with little/no shooting if you take flamers its probably because you really need the shooting back up- ogres are actually a good example for this: I can choose to take leadbelchers for a little bit of shooting support but at 110pts for 2 artillery dice worth of shots (4+ to hit S4 AP) they are really rubbish (but sometimes I MUST take them anyway because I need the shooting- mostly for screamers) or maneaters- 42pts more then an irongut they have +1A +1S +1WS +1I immune to psychology and stubborn... again its a hell of a cost but sometimes its called for to fill a hole in my army.

The biggest problem with daemons is that they can be good at combat/shooting/magic in the same army without having to spend masses of points to do it (empire hangunners may be good but can an empire combat unit go toe to toe against a daemon unit? I recon if they survived a turn or 2 against a unit of plaguebearers you'ld be thanking the dice gods for your luck).


----------



## NagashKhemmler (Apr 28, 2009)

Tim/Steve said:


> I cant believe that gnoblars managed to kill a bloodthirster- they are S2 so cant directly wound it and can only ever have +4SCR unless they get into a flank (3 ranks and outnumber- cant take banners/musicians or have characters leading them)... that must have been a really inept bloodthirster to manage to fail to kill 4 gnoblars in a turn (at something like 7A needing 2+ 2+ to kill... with possible rerolls?).
> 
> Im kinda split about daemons if I tell the truth: I want to see diversity in the game and they are certainly different to anything else you'll face.. but GW has kinda made the differences work against the game. A lot of armies seem to be great against some enemies but useless against others, we get into a round robin of winning/losing depending entirely on which army your opponent happens to have brought along (ok ogres are not going to dominate many armiesbut anything built for slow whitling down of the enemy is gonna lose.. then they come up agsinst high elves and suddenly they have almost no chance of winning).
> 
> ...


Bloodthirster missed it's attacks and rolled a 12 on its leadership test for instability, failing the test by 7 iirc.


----------



## AAAAAAAAARRRGGHH (Apr 17, 2009)

NagashKhemmler said:


> Bloodthirster missed it's attacks and rolled a 12 on its leadership test for instability, failing the test by 7 iirc.


AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAA!!!!!!:laugh::laugh::laugh:

Ownage!!


----------

