Dose GW even look when they change things?

[PhantomBaz]

Hello, 
I'm Slave to Darkness player, I've been looking through the GH17, some of the things are good, the drop in prices, the re-roll on marks of chaos, though it can negate some thing i.e i take the mark of Khorn mostly so no point in taking two hand weapons... and so on (just an example). The alliances/battle-line  are  good steps, meaning i can take Knight has battle-line and a BloodSecrator.
That said, there does not seem to be any alliances for deamons of chaos for anybody apart from Ever-Chosen. Surely ever Chaos fraction should be able to dip into Deamons of Chaos! 
Looking also at Monster of chaos, who are not allied with Slaves, the Slaughterbrute has an ability, Runes of Binding, which is only relating to Slaves of darkness....

so as the title says, does GW look at what they've wrote previously before updating/changing things?    

   

[Stevewren]

Ok, I sort of see your point, but, as another take you can take the Blades of Khorne allegiance and mark all your StoD models, and then take all the chaos models you fancy with that gods keyword (including the Slaughterbrute). 

You can do the same thing with the tzeentch book. The only benefit to stay as Slaves to Darkness would be to take a mixed list or an unmarked list, both of which seem to be not very strong from a matched play or narrative perspective

[PhantomBaz]

1 hour ago, Stevewren said:

Ok, I sort of see your point, but, as another take you can take the Blades of Khorne allegiance and mark all your StoD models, and then take all the chaos models you fancy with that gods keyword (including the Slaughterbrute). 

You can do the same thing with the tzeentch book. The only benefit to stay as Slaves to Darkness would be to take a mixed list or an unmarked list, both of which seem to be not very strong from a matched play or narrative perspective

yeah, i've only have the Grand Alliance book at the mo, but thinking about getting the Tzeentch book. but wouldnt this then mean its no longer Slaves to Darkness. Ive always thought that Slaves to darkness were more banded together regardless of there allegiance to one or the other, but for the "course". Being able to dip into and use anything from the 4 chaos gods.

[Killax]

The way it works out now, or I believe was intended based on a lot of TGA comments is that keywords like Khorne, Nurgle, Tzeentch, Slaanesh or Chaos will more or less form your Allegiance. The great thing about Slaves to Darkness remains that they can be Chaos and Slaves to Darkness while having a mix of all these Keywords, meaning you can indeed do what you want and gain the benifits. So to me Slaves to Darkness works out well enough.

Where I do agree is that Daemons of Chaos in general now is worked out half well and half not. For example Khorne, Tzeentch and Slaanesh have an obvious mix while Nurgle and Chaos Daemons are left out for unkown and unclear reasons. You can mix them under the specific god Allegiance (due to Keywords) but I agree there are still several sub-Factions that make little to no sence. However they made little to no sence since the inception of Age of Sigmar and luckily some logical combinations have been formed to a Faction.

I think it's important to note that GW is not one person and GH2017 is not created by one person. This means that inconsistancies in design creations will likely appear unless someone within the design team will give a standardized design approach to the team. For now it all works out better in some parts and worse in others. I believe that GH2017 could have been a bigger succes without the Allied rules but simply have Allegiances rewritten to having one per army and having it work only for the models who share the Allegiance Keyword. Adding units who don't have Keyword X or Y are usually tertiary picks anyway due to lacking synergistic options, this is where the game competatively speaking revolves around.

[Tasman]

It appears that, as far as allies go, the only demons not available to the StD is Demons of Chaos. And that amounts to just Be'lakor, furies, and soul grinder.  What's more troublesome to me, from a purely  list building perspective, is the lack of Monsters in allies. No  way to use those unless you're playing mixed lists or going with a specific allegiance.

That's ok for me, as I tend to run Alliance specific armies anyway, but for those who have, perhaps, a lesser range to their collection, it could be problematic.

Looks as if StD are going the way of being used mainly as allies to other builds, at least for the units that can't be brought as battleline.