AoS 2 - Hosts of Slaanesh Discussion

[kenshin620]

If anything I'm afraid that plopping down 90 Daemonettes is too good compared to other battleline options. I mean isn't that already the current slaanesh strategy?

 

Though man Slaanesh Beasts look pretty tasty. It's Desolation battalion without the downside!

[Poryague]

4 minutes ago, kenshin620 said:

If anything I'm afraid that plopping down 90 Daemonettes is too good compared to other battleline options. I mean isn't that already the current slaanesh strategy?

 

Though man Slaanesh Beasts look pretty tasty. It's Desolation battalion without the downside!

Part of it is hero command ability for second activations and immediate second activation after first attack. A block of 30 daemonettes activating 2 times can be nasty. Even the keeper activating 2 times can be absolutely brutal.

[Benkei]

6 hours ago, Poryague said:

After looking at other forums I don't think people understand how good slaanesh can be. Even without a book or understand how these abilietes work. I actually saw some one say slaanesh is completely outclassed by fec, BoK, and fyreslayers. Either they dont understand how to play slaanesh or they never played against it. When the book drops its going to surprise people.

I dunno how people can't see how strong Slaanesh is. Honestly I think this tome has the potential to be the strongest yet since 2.0; the murder potential from daemonettes coupled with Herald spam for the always strike last seems quite frustrating for the opponent

[Enoby]

1 hour ago, Benkei said:

I dunno how people can't see how strong Slaanesh is. Honestly I think this tome has the potential to be the strongest yet since 2.0; the murder potential from daemonettes coupled with Herald spam for the always strike last seems quite frustrating for the opponent

I heard a similar sentiment in my local GW; it's weird, they all said that Slaanesh was a trash army and that it's been trash for ages. Eventually they learned the truth but it was weird to see such a stigma attached to the strength of Slaanesh. 

I think the issue is that a lot of people don't play it to the best of their abilities; if you make a non-optimal Slaanesh list it really shows as making one wrong move can be the end of the game. From what I know, the Slaanesh lists used in my local were Slaves to Darkness heavy with no proper punch to the army and they didn't even realise daemonettes were good as no one had used them before.

[azmodan]

In my local store I played 5 Times as slaanesh. Won 5 Times.

Mostly becouse everyone thinks its a non copetetive army. People are not focused.

Usually it ends up with:

 "you have 60 attacks how did you hit 61 times?" .

"Man I heard slaanesh was fast but those seekers",

Or that confused look, when you try to explain all the abbilities on fiends warscrool.

[Poryague]

1 hour ago, azmodan said:

In my local store I played 5 Times as slaanesh. Won 5 Times.

Mostly becouse everyone thinks its a non copetetive army. People are not focused.

Usually it ends up with:

 "you have 60 attacks how did you hit 61 times?" .

"Man I heard slaanesh was fast but those seekers",

Or that confused look, when you try to explain all the abbilities on fiends warscrool.

The wrath and rapture update was a buff. Fiends are nasty a few people found out the hard way.  I was playing gristle gore when it first came out. The keeper with 6in pile in and daemon prince with the counter strike worried him because they had the potential to kill his strike first general. The fiends scared off his other terrorghiest ghoul king and he ended up avoiding that side of the board to make sure that his unit  got to attack the fiends first. I made some errors that game but still pushed it all the way to the bottom of round 5 and lost by 1 poimt. 

[Starfyre]

4 hours ago, Benkei said:

I dunno how people can't see how strong Slaanesh is. Honestly I think this tome has the potential to be the strongest yet since 2.0; the murder potential from daemonettes coupled with Herald spam for the always strike last seems quite frustrating for the opponent

For me, as a stormcast player who has just bought some Daemonettes to start my second AoS army, I guess I’m in the mindset that everything looks quite fragile. And you said it, there’s potential for a lot of damage from Daemonettes, but I imagine in practise it was only 2 or 3 extra hits per turn (probably 6-9 with the new tome which does sound good) from a block of 20 unless you have a really great roll. Far from guaranteed.

You know, the base comparison to Witch aelves is fine, except I play against units that are shielded by the cauldron of blood, boosted to get a re-rollable 5+ invulnerable save, often immune to Battleshock, occasionally mind razored, and can attack twice a turn. They are annoyingly survivable and punchy. My sequitors+Castellant+staunch defender + halo are quite tanky to counter. 

I can’t yet see, without having played them yet or knowing what else is in the book, how a horde of Daemonettes or seekers are meant to stand up to that. 

Clearly in this case it’s ‘attack is best form of defence’  - strike first with everything and try and do as much damage as possible. 

Should say we play 1000 points, which at current points and battletome seems quite difficult to fit much in, if you want a horde of 20 or more Daemonettes.

Edited April 23, 2019 by Starfyre

[Benkei]

Double pile in with Daemonettes is where the money is

[Carnith]

my usual flgs opponents were stormcast, beasts of chaos, skaven, or whatever 10+ year old faction some guy got on ebay and wants to proxy heavy. I win most games just simply due to speed. I also study other people's armies as I never want to go into a game where I don't know my opponents rules too to a degree so I don't have to ask them what something does. Most of my usual opponents don't look into my army and just know it's got a bunch of ******, which isn't true. Just do some ranged damage and I can't stop it, or put chaff far up the board so anything that can devour your or debuff you has to stay away. For example, keep chaff up far enough so my fiends can't get near a caster to debuff it.

[Poryague]

2 hours ago, Starfyre said:

For me, as a stormcast player who has just bought some Daemonettes to start my second AoS army, I guess I’m in the mindset that everything looks quite fragile. And you said it, there’s potential for a lot of damage from Daemonettes, but I imagine in practise it was only 2 or 3 extra hits per turn (probably 6-9 with the new tome which does sound good) from a block of 20 unless you have a really great roll. Far from guaranteed.

You know, the base comparison to Witch aelves is fine, except I play against units that are shielded by the cauldron of blood, boosted to get a re-rollable 5+ invulnerable save, often immune to Battleshock, occasionally mind razored, and can attack twice a turn. They are annoyingly survivable and punchy. My sequitors+Castellant+staunch defender + halo are quite tanky to counter. 

I can’t yet see, without having played them yet or knowing what else is in the book, how a horde of Daemonettes or seekers are meant to stand up to that. 

Clearly in this case it’s ‘attack is best form of defence’  - strike first with everything and try and do as much damage as possible. 

Should say we play 1000 points, which at current points and battletome seems quite difficult to fit much in, if you want a horde of 20 or more Daemonettes.

Since you have played witch aelfs. Daemoneetes have better form of chatecism of murder. They also have mind razor at least the rend part built in. A way to look at it is they are more self sufficient on offense without any prayers or spells compared to witch aelfs. Slaanesh has 2 activation rules and one that allows the second activation to be immediately after the first.  

Hellstriders have a bubble of minus 1 to hit. 

Fiends are elite and monster hunters 4+ in a unit have a -1 to hit and wound in close combat. 3 in a unit get -1 hit in close combat. They have -1 bubble to spells. Escort them with hellstriders.

Seekers can take out little heros or wizards that just need to go. This is one of the fastest units in the game.

[firebat]

Those terrain rules seem really bad to me. I guess for free the depravity points refund might be nice now and then and it could be good to plonk down as a bit of misdirection but for an army built around movement and positioning the hero reroll is worthless.

Also surely with all these extra depravity points the costs are going to go up because as I said in the topic in discussion, assuming the Keeper gets buffed up to 14 wounds like the BT and LoD it's buy 2 get 1 free not even accounting for them generating points on abilities and wounds they inflict.

[SwampHeart]

23 minutes ago, firebat said:

Those terrain rules seem really bad to me. I guess for free the depravity points refund might be nice now and then and it could be good to plonk down as a bit of misdirection but for an army built around movement and positioning the hero reroll is worthless.

I think it'll be almost exclusively for the Infernal Enrapturess to use as a DP generator. 

[Grimrock]

41 minutes ago, firebat said:

Those terrain rules seem really bad to me. I guess for free the depravity points refund might be nice now and then and it could be good to plonk down as a bit of misdirection but for an army built around movement and positioning the hero reroll is worthless.

How... How is rerolling to hit useless? Honestly, could someone quantify this for me? Enoby worked out the damage already, it's a huge boost. You don't need to stay around it, just deploy the terrain wherever you want your hero to be the first turn, get the buff and go. If you can't charge first turn then just hover at the edge of the effect and use it on the second turn. Please, the next time someone wants to say that it's useless just run the numbers on an exalted keeper of secrets or archaon first.

[Hebroseph]

15 hours ago, Starfyre said:

What is it do you think is making them sound so strong?

Summoning seems really viable assuming the units don’t go up in points. And the 3 hits ability is neat, but to me looks like one of those ‘sounds good on paper’ rules.

It's not a sounds good on paper rule, it IS a good rule. As an avid Daemonette player, this is an amazing rule that will only help the army as a whole. It's so good in its old form, that i often bring daemonettes as allies into my other chaos armies just for the punch they provide. an EKos swinging 11 times, fighting twice, is going to net so much extra damage from that ability its going to be amazing, probably overkill vs most targets. 

 

[Frowny]

The mortal wound to yourself is also kinda a buff. Gives you a depravity every turn, on a character sitting back who would not otherwise be injured and might not be in any danger of actually dying. Finally it gives you an indestructible way to hold backfield objectives as a summoning icon. Once your whole army has moved out of your deployment and engaged, if they try to take a home objective from you you can summon a block of deamonettes on it to take it back. And get free extra depravity. I think it's best use is for defence in that way actually.  1 enrapturess and it can cover a lot of backfield leaving you 1900 points or so to go fight the enemy.

Finally and most importantly you can block other terrain placement or wall off an area. People always underestimate just how good generic deployable terrain is. A ton of the value in my sylvaneth is just the physical terrain.

Certainly not the strongest terrain out there but I'm not too disappointed in it either. I just hate how it looks though....

 

Edited April 23, 2019 by Frowny
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[kahadin]

Just some insight as to why "Slannesh sucks!" In the minds of the community. 

So extra attack gen was what demonettes had before and it was okish. Then it got the huge nerf of being unable to chain generate attacks. They also did not have reroll 1 to hit.

They were not very good, especially without the slaanesh allegiance. Now on paper to players like me who played a lot of slaanesh at the start of aos the rr changes didn't look like anything. I had to be told they were good and even then I was skeptical until I hit the table with them. 

You really need to see it to believe it, and I think most people haven't seen it yet. 

[firebat]

2 minutes ago, Grimrock said:

How... How is rerolling to hit useless? Honestly, could someone quantify this for me? Enoby worked out the damage already, it's a huge boost. You don't need to stay around it, just deploy the terrain wherever you want your hero to be the first turn, get the buff and go. If you can't charge first turn then just hover at the edge of the effect and use it on the second turn. Please, the next time someone wants to say that it's useless just run the numbers on an exalted keeper of secrets or archaon first.

Because in any movement based army it's not about numbers on a page being big, it's about leveraging your movement to get the outcome you want at the right time. Sure in theory it gives a big model that does lots of damage even more damage but that damage is pointless if it's overkill and pointless if you're telegraphing to your opponent exactly where your attack is going to come from and since it has a short range of 6" and the terrain pieces are placed before deployment you might as well attach a big neon sign to it saying "THERE'S GOING TO BE A BIG ATTACK COMING FROM HERE". It will work beautifully against anyone who just deploys all their army right at the front and never measures how far your units can move and will prove to be largely ineffective against anyone that knows how to play well. Seriously, just wait for turn 2? and then what? wait for turn 3? wait for turn 4? If you're sitting around for even a turn you're not using the greatest advantage of the army. I've been playing it over the course of 4 editions of the game now and in general the first turn is used to re position the army and act like a 2nd deployment phase (depending on how much shooting my opponent has). Not run at the enemy like i'm some Khorne player.

It does depend where you can place it obviously. If you can place it somewhere near the middle then clearly it will be better but all the images seem to show it as being at the back and being in the middle would be pretty good so i'd expect it to be placed more like the loonshrine at least 12" away from enemy territory, if not more at the back of the board.

[Elazar The Glorified]

The backfield use is a good point actually. If it is anywhere in your terrain though I think people need to remember that in a lot of battleplans that's up to the halfway line and your summons arrive outside of 9" from the enemy. If you put that close to the centre of the board you could potentially be getting a lot of use out of it whilst still supporting your front line. Certainly as a freebie to your army for playing Slaanesh there's absolutely no downside to it even if you find the rerolling hits too situational (but as mentioned on the big scaries or when you have something you HAVE to remove can be worth its weight in gold anyway) 

 

Edit: Firebat ninja'd me haha

The telegraphing thing could be quite useful in itself. As you're paying no points for it if it makes your opponent change their deployment, or their terrain placement, or their strategy on the fly etc then it's still a huge net gain on 0pts invested

Edited April 23, 2019 by Elazar The Glorified

[firebat]

17 minutes ago, Frowny said:

The mortal wound to yourself is also kinda a buff. Gives you a depravity every turn, on a character sitting back who would not otherwise be injured and might not be in any danger of actually dying. Finally it gives you an indestructible way to hold backfield objectives as a summoning icon. Once your whole army has moved out of your deployment and engaged, if they try to take a home objective from you you can summon a block of deamonettes on it to take it back. And get free extra depravity. I think it's best use is for defence in that way actually.  1 enrapturess and it can cover a lot of backfield leaving you 1900 points or so to go fight the enemy.

Finally and most importantly you can block other terrain placement or wall off an area. People always underestimate just how good generic deployable terrain is. A ton of the value in my sylvaneth is just the physical terrain.

Certainly not the strongest terrain out there but I'm not too disappointed in it either. I just hate how it looks though....

 

I think covering the objectives is probably the best use of it. As you say it lets you run off and then summon some daemonettes back at home if you really need to with the refund being it makes summoning a unit that you don't really want to summon a bit cheaper when you want to be spending the points on more hero's ideally. 

Leaving an Enrapturess at home largely depends on other changes. It looks like the damonettes might lose the locus ability so you don't really need to keep a hero along with them so it depends if the Choir of Torments battalion changes as that thing is so stupidly good.

[firebat]

9 minutes ago, Elazar The Glorified said:

Edit: Firebat ninja'd me haha

The telegraphing thing could be quite useful in itself. As you're paying no points for it if it makes your opponent change their deployment, or their terrain placement, or their strategy on the fly etc then it's still a huge net gain on 0pts invested

I'm a seeker of Slaanesh and I rolled a double 6 for my run move 😛

Yeah the misdirection aspect is one of the points I was trying to make. Being able to put it in one place, deploy to another and then move to a third. You're free to ignore it and never use it but it's there as a back up if necessary or perhaps a counterattack point. OMG it's going to make my big hitty character even more hitty isn't going to really work though I don't think.

[Kramer]

20 minutes ago, firebat said:

deployment you might as well attach a big neon sign to it saying "THERE'S GOING TO BE A BIG ATTACK COMING FROM HERE". It wi

If that neon sign is not worth a lot in an objectives game and where you can place and point that sign... I don’t know what is. You’re describing board control. And the hedonists book is not even out yet who knows how important those extra rules are. 

Also aren’t we on AoS 2.0 what are the 4 editions of the game? Genuine question. 

[firebat]

2 minutes ago, Kramer said:

If that neon sign is not worth a lot in an objectives game and where you can place and point that sign... I don’t know what is. You’re describing board control. And the hedonists book is not even out yet who knows how important those extra rules are. 

Also aren’t we on AoS 2.0 what are the 4 editions of the game? Genuine question. 

Ok lets say 5 editions then. Just because the rules have changed the principles of the army haven't over 6th, 7th, 8th Fantasy and into AoS. Daemonettes are a bit better than they used to be, the rest plays pretty much the same.

And the objectives are either set before the game so you know where they are anyway or end up being random and you popping down your terrain piece before you know where they are isn't going to matter. That neon sign isn't worth much because it's in the context of some massively expensive unit having to run right at the enemy. Archon having to attack from within 6" of it is easy to avoid and screen for well in advance for far cheaper than he's worth. Or is this going to be one of those discussions where extra units get piled in to try and reinforce some point because instead of your board control being able to move anywhere any time and attack from any direction you've set up some point you have to attack from to make the most of your already super killy hero. I've already said it has worth from a misdirection point of view several times but deploying the terrain on one flank to make it look like you're attacking from there and then deploying Archaon or an exalted kepper on the other flank isn't making use of the reroll to hit ability, but is probably more useful.

[Poryague]

2 hours ago, firebat said:

Those terrain rules seem really bad to me. I guess for free the depravity points refund might be nice now and then and it could be good to plonk down as a bit of misdirection but for an army built around movement and positioning the hero reroll is worthless.

Also surely with all these extra depravity points the costs are going to go up because as I said in the topic in discussion, assuming the Keeper gets buffed up to 14 wounds like the BT and LoD it's buy 2 get 1 free not even accounting for them generating points on abilities and wounds they inflict.

The summoning points is going up on some units probably because there raw point cost went up. Herald of slaanesh is 60 points or 6 dp. Fiends are 180 is 18dp. The dp has a correlation to point cost and the number 6. Kos is 260 but 24dp. The kos is porbably going to be in the 300 to 360 range assuming the dp point ratio stays similiar its 30dp or 36dp. As we  can see the ratios dont need to change because the increase point cost can easily convert to dp. This does mean or heralds may not be summonable until 12dp. Infernal enrapturess is 120 but 6dp this by far the biggest outlier and will probably end up as 12dp. The herald of slaanesh is 60 but if it becomes a wizard it may be in the 100 to 120 range. If that happen it could be bumbed to 12dp. Thing will move some more drastically then others. Then others may not move at all.

[Enoby]

Maybe the new book will change this, but I've always found it a good idea to alpha strike a big hero or two; kills key units straight away, wrack up depravity points, and create two huge distraction carnifexes.  We only need rerolling failed hits once to be devistating; think about it, get your rerolls, rush in and wreck stuff, and your rerolls last until *your* next hero phase so if you get charged by your opponent then you're still an offensive powerhouse with an always strike last aura. 

[kahadin]

That's been frustrating me. I'm so certain the summon points, points, warscrolls, allegiance, and items are going to change it seems pointless to even anticipate how things will be or what to move forward with. There are even models we have no idea how they function yet. 

I'm just painting my old stuff that still needs it for now so its ready when the time comes... It's still frustrating forcing myself not to speculate yet...