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AoS 2 - Slaves to Darkness / Darkoath Discussion


Gaz Taylor

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14 minutes ago, themortalgod said:

Perhaps I'm looking at it wrong? 

- We get some aura abilities that are really lackluster and are the sort of auras that other armies get baseline, not as their main allegiance mechanic or if it is, it is baseline static, not hero dependent.

- We get a ridiculously random and situational  Eye of the Gods table which is going to be irrelevant 90% of the time. (just as it has always been in 40k as well)

thats it for main faction allegiance abilities...

Then for sub faction we get the following choices:

- Low volume summoning with heavy restriction.

- The ability to make terrain LOS blocking and tougher Daemon Princes.  (Against some armies, on some tables, awesome, the rest of the time completely irrelevant)

- A much worse version of Hallowheart magical boost. 

- Archaon

Nothing above even remotely stands out to me as on the same level of what armies like Cities, Hedonites, Deepking, Daughters, Fyreslayers, etc get and that is before even considering that we are paying premium prices for slow units with relatively low impact. 

You mean that lackluster summoning that can basicaly charge at the same turn? With only 1/36 chance to fail?  Enemy has to always block points. There are sime very powerful combos (like nurgle dp) and many units got buffed. There were some point increses but overall the book is much much better. Maybe not OP like slaanesh but that shouldnt me the metric.

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32 minutes ago, themortalgod said:

Is anyone else pretty bummed about the Slaves stuff? I've been looking really hard to see a silver lining. I put my cities list on hold when I heard the StD book was coming, but no matter how I look at it, it feels like this isn't a ton of improvement over what we have now.

Yeah we get some allegiance abilities, but they aren't nearly as powerful as allegiance abilities of other armies.

Sure some of our units got a small buff to their warscroll, but also came with pts hikes and loss of max unit discounts so it feels like  side-grade on units that were already at the bottom of the power curve.  Not to mention being the only army that now doesn't get max unit discounts..

I just don't see anything this army is actually good at? It doesn't hit hard. Its magic is pretty weak. It has virtually no shooting. It is pretty slow. It is a bit tanky, but relative to the cost per wound, it isn't impressively tanky either.

Be'Lakor certainly is good. Sorcerers are awesome for their cost. (looking like really good candidates as allies in other Chaos armies) But other than that, I just don't see much opportunity here to climb to a better position. 



 

Ally of chaos sorcerer is ineffective because it’s only STD units. And if you think this book is same power level as previous you're high.

You say SOME units got a SMALL buff to the warscroll. Lol ok. Marauders doubles offensive output and got rend. And guaranteed minimum 8” charge. But sure slow. And no improvement. 

Warriors got reroll all saves base. Archaon is amazing. Demon princes are insanely good. Chaos lord, chieftain, warqueen, all got amazing command abilities. The auras are great. The list goes on and on 

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My biggest gripe is the lack of interaction with god books. There is now literally almost no interaction for s2d units in god armies. God army units still slightly buff s2d  though.

But i was hoping for something extra which now sadly seems impossible. 

And the fact that the god army units can't be used except as allies in s2d is such a bummer too. 

So yeah.. no real incentive for mixing armies either way around makes for a sad panda.

Come to think of it... a very nice solution would have been the stormcast 1 in 4 units thing from cities book but for the 4 god books

Edited by Dracan
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34 minutes ago, Dracan said:

My biggest gripe is the lack of interaction with god books. There is now literally almost no interaction for s2d units in god armies. God army units still slightly buff s2d  though.

But i was hoping for something extra which now sadly seems impossible. 

And the fact that the god army units can't be used except as allies in s2d is such a bummer too. 

So yeah.. no real incentive for mixing armies either way around makes for a sad panda.

Come to think of it... a very nice solution would have been the stormcast 1 in 4 units thing from cities book but for the 4 god books

Well, what more do you need in terms of allies? The 1 in four restriction would be a huge hindrance in this army with how expensive everything is,  but with allies as long as you don’t go over 400 points you could bring as many as you want without having to worry about ratios.

Edited by Acid_Nine
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Why would anyone paint 60 of those horrible old Chaos marauders when you have the beautiful elite option of Archaon, Varangaurd, and the new start collecting? Add a sorcerer and you're pretty close to something competitive without having to hide your army when guest come over 😆 

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1 minute ago, Cambot1231 said:

Why would anyone paint 60 of those horrible old Chaos marauders when you have the beautiful elite option of Archaon, Varangaurd, and the new start collecting? Add a sorcerer and you're pretty close to something competitive without having to hide your army when guest come over 😆 

dont know about marauders, but  "old" chaos knights and warriors are still great sculpts in fact, i prefer them over the new pushifit versions

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3 hours ago, themortalgod said:

- Low volume summoning with heavy restriction.

Think you miss the point of this faction. The biggest benefit is that you can swap the general, which swaps what and where your stronger auras impact. 

The summoning is pretty good though, for summoning in 10 marauders that can auto charge.

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28 minutes ago, decker_cky said:

Think you miss the point of this faction. The biggest benefit is that you can swap the general, which swaps what and where your stronger auras impact. 

The summoning is pretty good though, for summoning in 10 marauders that can auto charge.

Fair, though, I guess it depends, the Khorne strong aura is pretty good. Nurgle/Tzeentch are so situational that they won't bring value most of the time. Slaanesh and undivided ones are decent. Also, I don't see how I will have enough points to ever field 5 generals anyway unless the army is just marauder spam. 

The 6" board edge restriction is pretty limiting. Also 10 marauders isn't much of a threat. (their output below 20 models is pretty bad) It is certainly a resource so better than nothing but I just don't value it it very much. I've seen people try to use the Beastman or Living City deep strike on board edge mechanics usually to pretty abysmal results.  It is really easy to deny them any good landing spots. 

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15 hours ago, Asamu said:

They ran them with mixed weapons in the game played on the WHTV stream

I would caution relying on the WHTV stream. At the Khorne release they explicitly stated that Wrathmongers give +1 shooting attack to skull cannons and played it that way. A whole bunch of khorne players ran out and bought skull cannons hoping to have 2 shots each, only for it to be immediately FAQ'ed to only effect melee attacks. 

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2 hours ago, decker_cky said:

The summoning is pretty good though, for summoning in 10 marauders that can auto charge.

This cannot be understated enuff. As an avid Khorne player i find summoning near usless and 9 out of 10 times spend my Blood Tithe on the boons which have a much greater and immediate impact over summoning 9" away from enemy and failing the charge roll majority of time.

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I think the power of this army isn't as bad as some people are thinking. It's certainly not as point and click as some other armies and the combinations aren't as obvious but i think that's a good thing. I think the designers are getting more nuisanced, and personally I'm glad every release it's full of auto pick OP combos that are way to obvious and simple.

 

I'm thinking about making a Cabalist list. Running units of 20 splintered fang cultists let's you sacrifice snakes every turn then get them back, so you're casters are now +D3 to cast for essentially free. Alone the multiple defuss in the army you can throw out don't seem amazing, but as they stack you can really cripple your opponent.

 

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Any thoughts on a more elite list? Not a fan of horde armies, nor marauders in particular (sculpts, or conversions). Riders seem ok sculp wise.
 

Just bought 2 start collecting-boxes as a foundation, I do have Archaon but not too fond of him in casual play, have some Varanguards but seem a bit costly w/o Archaon. Oh well—any thoughts are welcome :) Have a lot of other Chaos stuff too, Khorne/Tzeentch mainly that would be fun to ally. 

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7 hours ago, themortalgod said:

I just don't see anything this army is actually good at? It doesn't hit hard. Its magic is pretty weak. It has virtually no shooting. It is pretty slow. It is a bit tanky, but relative to the cost per wound, it isn't impressively tanky either.

Competitively speaking StD has some strong things:

- fight twice that it can apply to almost everyone

- death frenzy that it can apply to everyone via Archaon

- the teleport spell (on an autocharge marauder unit that happens to have fight twice and death frenzy)

- strike first on demon princes

- kicking endless spells around, that's possible multiple activations of 1 spell

- several anti-horde spells that roll for each model

Given that sorcs double up as excellent buffers I assume StD will go as magic+tough guys or magic+marauder horde way. Sure, your magic won't go off against Hallowheart/Nagash/etc., but that is a small sample of matchups and turn 1 you can pull off teleport and buffs from outside their unbind.

 

My shot at cookie cutter tournament list would be Archaon+3x40 marauders+sorc+shrine or lord. You take his host and all this stuff is now battleshock immune and has death frenzy (and you teleport 1 blob forward turn 1 with full rerolls). And you do the whole predict double turn thing and the shrine makes him virtually unkillable, maybe shrine should be lord instead to double fight, because you can throw save rerolls on Archaon anyway.

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16 minutes ago, misthv said:

Any thoughts on a more elite list? Not a fan of horde armies, nor marauders in particular (sculpts, or conversions). Riders seem ok sculp wise.
 

Just bought 2 start collecting-boxes as a foundation, I do have Archaon but not too fond of him in casual play, have some Varanguards but seem a bit costly w/o Archaon. Oh well—any thoughts are welcome :) Have a lot of other Chaos stuff too, Khorne/Tzeentch mainly that would be fun to ally. 

Play knights.

They are probably second best unit after marauders in offensive output and they have lots of build around battalion and heroes.

Unit of knights + sorc on manticore. Unit of knights + karkadrak. All seem like solid modules that can push a flank.

Edited by Smooth criminal
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7 hours ago, themortalgod said:

Is anyone else pretty bummed about the Slaves stuff? I've been looking really hard to see a silver lining. I put my cities list on hold when I heard the StD book was coming, but no matter how I look at it, it feels like this isn't a ton of improvement over what we have now.

Yeah we get some allegiance abilities, but they aren't nearly as powerful as allegiance abilities of other armies.

Sure some of our units got a small buff to their warscroll, but also came with pts hikes and loss of max unit discounts so it feels like  side-grade on units that were already at the bottom of the power curve.  Not to mention being the only army that now doesn't get max unit discounts..

I just don't see anything this army is actually good at? It doesn't hit hard. Its magic is pretty weak. It has virtually no shooting. It is pretty slow. It is a bit tanky, but relative to the cost per wound, it isn't impressively tanky either.

Be'Lakor certainly is good. Sorcerers are awesome for their cost. (looking like really good candidates as allies in other Chaos armies) But other than that, I just don't see much opportunity here to climb to a better position. 



 

Our magic is pretty strong. Sorcerer Lord has an excellent buff, the one on Manticore has one of the best horde clearers in the game. Our lore ranges from situationally excellent to very good in general. The Chaos Icon endless spell is excellent.

We have solid Activation Wars in Daemon Prince, Sphiranx and our Spell Lore.

Our our speed is sufficient to alpha strike heroes with marauders. Our knights, Varanguard and chariots are a combination of fast and durable enough to tag an objective until our Warriors or Golems can sit on them.

 

If we can mix weapons, which there is almost no reason to assume we can’t,  our Warriors are absurdly durable.

Our only real weaknesses are unit prices in a vacuum and our deep strike being tied to a spell or a very high priced unit(Gaunt Summoner). One of those is probably going to be fixed in a GHB.

If we horde clear with Magic and maneuver our units well I don’t see any reason we can’t win games on objectives. I just think the Army is more difficult to pilot well than other armies, but I don’t think they are as punishing to ****** up with or as overpriced as Stormcast.

 

Edited by Sinfullyvannila
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I actually like the lances. Just screen  and make sure you get the charge in and they will do damage. I use them with my BoK and just giving them an extra attack and +1 to hit or something and charge them into something and they will make a nice dent. Never keep them in combat though unless you really have to stand there and take it. 

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1 minute ago, JackStreicher said:

Can you explain why? I wasn't blown away by the knight's warscroll (the lances are pretty meh)

If we go by pure math then knights just have the second best one after marauders. I would recommend ensorcelled weapons because spears fall off hard after 1 round of combat. 10 warriors for 200 with double weapons have slightly better output than 5 knight for 180, but given other stats knights are superior.

They are also fast enough, reasonably tanky, have mw save and are battleline. Pretty much a do everything unit.

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Just now, Mikeymajq said:

I actually like the lances. Just screen  and make sure you get the charge in and they will do damage. I use them with my BoK and just giving them an extra attack and +1 to hit or something and charge them into something and they will make a nice dent. Never keep them in combat though unless you really have to stand there and take it. 

Do we have a way to let the knights retreat and charge?

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