Let's chat : the slaves to darkness /dark oath

[Kaleb Daark]

3 hours ago, Skorvan said:

I hope to see, one day, a battletome for the StD. Just for them or combine with the Everchosen.
When i start playing AoS, it was with the StD. One friend of my said to me "don't start with them, they are an old army and they are not the same as battle" but the chaos knights really attracte me, so i buy them.
3 months later, the first GHB was released and i was hopping some change for them.

When the ghb came out, i realise two things : a non-sense allegiance ability and the fact that play StD allegiance will be not competitive  as all.

With the release of the kohrne, tzeentch and nurgle battletome the gap between an army with battletome and an army without one was huge.
So, i have choose a battletome (two to be exact), and it works really well. And i'm very glad about my army of Nurgle mortal but ... the problem is you need to mix your army, you take the best of the two and combine them but ... you can't only play StD.

For me now, StD are not good but not bad. You need to combine them because there is always one unit who are better to do what you can really do and the heros can't boost them enough. For exemple, if you combine 40 marauders with Glotkin magic and Harbinger of Decay command ability, it's 40 men with 2 wounds 5+ invulnerable ... you can't do something similar with only StD and it's too bad.

So i really hope a Battletome for them because it will be the only to play them as a Pure Std army.

you'll get your wish, if the slaves were an unpopular army they would have pulled it by now.  The darkoath are your clues hidden in plain sight.

chaos warriors in blocks of 30 with halberds.  that's 60 attacks as with a 2" range they can all get in.  mark of slaanesh and use the slaanesh lords ability to get a second go in after you've charged.  120 attacks sir, before buffage?

I'm still keeping the faith and having high hopes for this faction.

[Kaleb Daark]

hopefully being able to ally with beasts of chaos as well, which is now a thing.

[Scrags]

On 6/14/2018 at 7:12 PM, Infernalslayer said:

Lord of Chaos on foot is now 40 points more expensive, probably to compensate for the free Chaos Spawn on death, or Daemon Prince replacement.

Warshrine is 20 points cheaper than last year.

The most impacting change i think is that Chaos Marauders can no longer be taken in minimum units of 10. You have to take them in 20s now.

No point changes for the Chaos Lord on Manticore who could really use a reduction or Chaos Chosen.

I believe you guys that marauders are going up to 20 base, and I assume with it a 120 minimum price tag. I was talking about it at my local game store today however and wasn't able to find the actual posting of this. 

Can anyone link me to the leak of that change?

[Xasz]

1 hour ago, Scrags said:

I believe you guys that marauders are going up to 20 base, and I assume with it a 120 minimum price tag. I was talking about it at my local game store today however and wasn't able to find the actual posting of this. 

Can anyone link me to the leak of that change?

Nothing official but it was mentioned so many times on reddit, 4chan and on TGA that I think we can treat this info with a higher level of certainty.

Alongside Lord of Chaos (on foot) being +40 and Shrine -20.

[Waiyuren]

3 hours ago, Scrags said:

I believe you guys that marauders are going up to 20 base, and I assume with it a 120 minimum price tag. I was talking about it at my local game store today however and wasn't able to find the actual posting of this. 

Can anyone link me to the leak of that change?

Wargamer online did a soul wars unboxing a few days ago on their YouTube channel. At about 119 minutes they start flipping through the ghb18. ?

[Waiyuren]

What S2D needs... is to drop a lot of the reroll redundancy and give out some different abilities! Marauders & horsemen all ready have access to rerolling 1s to hit. The khorne buffs do nothing for them. The sorcerer lord makes a lot of the mark buffs redundant in one spell. 

Warshrine? More rerolls. Chaos lord? Rerolls. Std is really good at being average, statistically. ?

 

What would i do? Asked absolutely no one. Well;

Give the horsemen handweapons AND javelins. Drop the javelin combat phase profile. Drop their points to 160.

Give the knights rend -1 and damage 2 on their enscorcelled weapons, and mortal wounds on the charge with glaives, with a 3+/3+ profile for both.

Give the chosen something... please. ?

Maybe make all those command abilities generic S2D instead of functioning only with specific units...

Make the warshrine a hero, with prayers to choose from.

I'd love some more artifacts; banners with cool names, legendary armour?

Warriors and marauders are fine as is. (I want min 10's back for the musclebros though... ?)

K thanx GW.

P.s. Please fold herds and chaos demons in, make belakor and morghur greater daemons, and give me a warqueen with command retinue on horses as a unit. ?

[Roark]

1 hour ago, Waiyuren said:

Give the chosen something... please. ?

This. It's a 3 year long oversight.

[cplhicks]

I'm currently painting up 10 old metal chosen as we speak.  I too really hope they get the buffs they deserve.  Give them an extra wound at least GW!

[Infernalslayer]

Indeed, they are eager to update other warscrolls, like they did with Nurgle, and they are updating more now. I saw one of the new warscroll cards for Liberators where the Paired Weapons option was buffed to have a different effect.

They sure can update Slaves to Darkness to make them work with each other as an Allegiance and be more relevant.

[Tasman]

As far as the marauders minimum of 20...... I rarely ever took them in units of less than 40 anyway, unless it was to fill the odd extra 60 points in a list. I can fill point gaps with ES's now so that won't be a problem.

[Enoby]

Maybe you guys can help me:

I was thinking of converting up some StD for my Slaanesh army because the army lacks mortals and tankiness, and Slaves seem to bring both. Before buying I tend to do a proxy war with them to ensure that they work well enough and they're satisfying to play. Unfortunately, Slaves felt pretty unsatisfying; they seemed pillow fisted, slow, and not all that tanky. I can't remember exactly what I ran, but it was something along the lines of two groups of 30 warriors, a chaos lord on Manticore, a Slaanesh lord on mount, and a Slaanesh lord on foot. I had a block of 40 mauraders as well. The masque was likely there too.

That may have not been the best list in the world, but even then, the warriors died in droves to a unit of 60 goblins with the command ability that makes them do 2 damage on a high wound roll, and they barely did anything in return. The heroes were killed pretty quickly too, and did very little. Besides the marauders, nothing seemed to do much of anything.

I assume I did something wrong. Is there a way to make Slaves feel more punchy? I've tried chosen but they rarely do anything (either shot to death as they're so slow or cursed with bad luck when they wound). I've tried knights too, and while they're good on a charge, they lose all momentum and seemed to become a big blob of wounds that take a little while to chew through. 

[Agent of Chaos]

Using Slaves in a Khorne army makes them more punchy with all the ways of buffing hit rolls and attacks. Not much help for you though...

Knights with glaives are a good inclusion for a Slaanesh army as you can buff them to pile in & attack twice and increase their movement should you choose the Seekers Host. The trick is to point them at something they will kill in a round or two of combat. No point chucking them at a big horde unit as they will become bogged down and ineffective as you found out yourself. A viable tactic is to run two units of knights, buff one to attack twice, next turn retreat and send in the other unit buffed to attack twice. In AOS2 you will be able to buff multiple units in the same turn, provided you have enough command points, which could lead to a pretty devastating charge of 2 units of knights with glaives attacking twice each!

Chaos warriors, with a 4+ save rerolling 1's and 2 wounds each are as tanky as battleline can get. Mystic Shield never went astray on them however  will be useless in AOS2 given rerolling saves of 1 is built into their abilities. The Hellstrider's -1 to hit banner sits nicely behind warriors or knights to make them that much harder to kill. Offensively the warriors wont do much, although arming them with halberds allows two ranks to fight at 4+ to hit instead of 3+. Generally they are there as objective holders although a big unit should be able to stick around and hold up your opponent while your elite units do the damage. Try to fit the unit in cover for a better save.

For a Slaanesh list steer clear of chaos chariots (gorebeast chariots are OK but Slaanesh ones are probably better), the warshrine and any characters outside of the Lord on Daemonic Mount (and only him as a 3rd General in an Invaders Host when you're running knights as his command ability is great for knights).

Consider Sayl the Faithless in your list. Multiple wizards will never go astray in AOS2 and his spell is great for slingshotting knights or warriors around the board. Especially great in a seekers host as the knights will have +2 to charge, +3 when including their hornblower, so after being flung by Sayl they only need a 6 to charge (which you can reroll if buffed by the Lord on Daemonic Mount). 

[CyderPirate]

Never played with Slaanesh-marked stuff, so I'm not sure what specific tools might be available, there, but I've got some suggestions from just generic StD stuff.

One of the major weaknesses of the army is there general lack of damage output, especially from the lack of rend. As a general rule of thumb, going up against something like a big mob of grots or skellies you'll either want to weaken them a bit first, take out the characters that are buffing them or fight them where they can't make the best use of their numbers. Annoyingly, the bonuses they get from numbers will still sometimes see big units of crappy soldiers throw out a crazy number of decent attacks - so you'll want to minimise the amount they can get into combat until you can strip away some of those advantages. 

For additional tankiness, a warshrine might help. Gives units withing a bubble an extra 6+ save (in the same way as disgustingly resilient or deathless minions), and can hand out an additional buff to a nearby unit on a 3+. The buffs are pretty good, and get better if the shrine and the target share a mark. Annoyingly, one of the best buffs you can get is from the unmarked warshrine, which allows re-rolls of 1 on Hit and Wound rolls. Taking that in a Slaanesh list would eat into your allies allowance, though. 

Sorcerer Lords - both the one on foot/horse and the guy on the manticore - have an ability that lets a nearby unit re-roll saves of 1.  Automatic new mystic shield is pretty good. The foot/horse one also has a spell that lets the target re-roll 1s for hit/wound/save rolls, with a casting cost of just 5+.

 

On the choppy front, the chaos lord on manticore's command ability really, really helps Warriors, especially the sword and board or halberd guys that wound on a 4+ with no rend. 

Chosen are good, solid unit on their own - and one of our few sources of rend with access to potential mortal wounds - but have an extra ability that lets you re-roll wound rolls for other StD units  if the Chosen have slain a model in that combat phase. Sometimes tricky to get into the right position, to hand out the buff to the right unit, but great if you can get it to work.

Demon princes are a good punchy unit and throw in some more rend. 

If the unit is small enough, the new burning head spell might be worth using as a defensive buff. It inflicts D3 mortal wounds, but allows units wholly within 9" to re-roll 1s to hit. Haven't tried it yet, but Warriors can shrug off mortal wounds, so might be worth it if you're not running Khorne-flavoured StD. 

 

[Gaz Taylor]

+++ Mod Hat On +++

Locking now. Discussion can be found here