AoS 2 - Hedonites of Slaanesh Discussion

[Carnith]

Just now, Rivener said:

Just please, PLEASE don’t do nothing. Don’t just assume it’ll all work out in the end, or that silent play testing is the only path forward. Email GW today and tell them you are concerned, and if you need to get games in before you make any final decisions, fine, but tell them at first glance there are some real fears.

No one is planning to do nothing. The suggestion is play a few games and test how it all feels. If you feel your games are just horribly imbalanced and you can't possible ever win with a mixed army, then go ahead. Slaangors are probably the only thing in the book that need a points adjustment. Also, I think that our hedonite units are points increased due to summoning might be a poor excuse when people are just passing on our warriors for chaos warriors due to just being bodies to get depravity. 

[Overread]

Emails today won't do much to generate any real data. Just yesterday everyone was jumping for joy; now its the bitter cold morning after and everyone is thinking again. Give it another day and it will be jumps of joy again. It's too swingy and uncoordinated. 

A steadier slower approach with carefully measured and defined parameters; maths and playtesting produced with clear suggestions and highlighting specific issues. Right now it would be "I don't like points on X they went up" for the most part. Thing is its all random, there's no uniform approach that owuld get any kind of uniform response. For each "That unit is overcosted" there's another counter-argument from another corner. 

[JackStreicher]

20 minutes ago, Carnith said:

book that need a points adjustment.

An errata: the gilded blade should be a weapon EVERY slaangor wields. That is all, Unit fixed and it might even be worth 40€

[Gorthor21]

The game is more of a living document that takes time to get right.  As everyone has been saying on the last page just say something and GW might listen.  The models haven’t even been released so give it some time and they might change the rules as points  in the right direction to balance them out with the other factions.

[Enoby]

26 minutes ago, Rivener said:

Then do both! Email them today saying the matched play costs for most units, especially the newest releases, are not correct based on even the most cursory comparisons to other options in the same army. That a basic mathematical comparison unequivocally agrees with that initial concern.

Then, say you are going to play with the points as written and provide additional data. These are not mutually exclusive, actually they are best together!

Just please, PLEASE don’t do nothing. Don’t just assume it’ll all work out in the end, or that silent play testing is the only path forward. Email GW today and tell them you are concerned, and if you need to get games in before you make any final decisions, fine, but tell them at first glance there are some real fears.

I will do something if I feel we're struggling, but I think it may be counteractive for us to write into them before testing as it's easier to write those complaints off and end up seeing other researched complaints as less valid. I think 5 games with different lists against different armies would give us a good overview to send to the designers.

[Third]

5 hours ago, LeonBox said:

Somebody pointed out something regarding Glutos' command ability: only a single attack gets the benefit of healing wounds back, which means a max of 2 wounds healed back on Glutos if one of his palanquin-bearers were to kill something with one wound left. Not nearly as sexy as it first seems. 

While a FAQ would be helpful, I really don't read the rules the same way. 

Rules as written states that you do not allocate wounds before all attacks by the unit has been made.

So I know I will play it as still being good, unless they ****** it up in the FAQ 😉

[Yokai]

1 hour ago, Rivener said:

Just please, PLEASE don’t do nothing. Don’t just assume it’ll all work out in the end, or that silent play testing is the only path forward. Email GW today and tell them you are concerned, and if you need to get games in before you make any final decisions, fine, but tell them at first glance there are some real fears.

Nah. Writing emails about how the sky might be falling down because someone on the internet said so won't accomplish much. I will play games first, and then act accordingly.

[Sorrow]

It is true that a proper and in-depth analysis must be done before any email be sent to GW.

That being said, a email document is already being created.

For the purpose of adding the thoughts of everyone who are not entirely happy or expressed concern to various degrees with our new rules, I am going to tag the following users: @AngryPanda@Rivener@Benkei @Poryague@Klamm@yukishiro1@JackStreicher@Feii@Inferno@azdimy

The initial draft of the document will be posted by user @AngryPanda

Edited February 14, 2021 by Sorrow

[JackStreicher]

Thx! @Sorrow

[Ragest]

I would be very concerned if gw decideds to balance a game based on angry emails sent by people with a clear conflict of interests.

I have to remember that seraphon players made a massive outcry the day the tome was released.

Just enjoy the theorycrafting , make lists and learn the army. I actually saw a pair of competitive lists an we are on day three.

Edited February 14, 2021 by Ragest

[Poryague]

Let's play fix a unit 

Starting with shardspeaker 

The +1 to wound should be give 1 of your own units +1 to wound

The spell has 2 possible fixes extend the range to 18 or pick 1 of your own units and now anything that targets them gets -1 to wound in the combat phase.

Now it's on par with a chaos sorcerer lord. With small changes.

[Carnith]

Well remember, they also decided to nerf us initially from an outcry of people. We deserved SOME of the nerfs, but not nearly all that we were given. 

The book now is very fair. 

[Overread]

31 minutes ago, Sorrow said:

It is true that a proper and in-depth analysis must be done before any email be sent to GW.

That being said, a email document is already being created.

For the purpose of adding the thoughts of everyone who are not entirely happy or expressed concern to various degrees with our new rules, I am going to tag the following users: @AngryPanda@Rivener@Benkei @Poryague@Klamm@yukishiro1@JackStreicher@Feii@Inferno@azdimy

The initial draft of the document will be posted by user @AngryPanda

I'd draft the message then wait 2-3 weeks at least and see if all the points are still valid.

I say that only because right now the good and the bad are all up in the air theories. It's armchair theory crafting and it needs time in the wild and people need more than 24 hours or less to really process the information and changes. Right now most of the complaints are "my thing isn't as good as thing thing in another army". Which can be valid ,but can also be missing the wood for the trees and overlooking how that model fits into the army and performs as a whole army; not just as an individual.

 

I'm all for group work in improving and providing feedback to GW, really its the best thing we can do. But at the same time i think such things are best done at the right time, with the right supporting information, testing and evidence. Right now is just too soon; we don't even officially have the books or models or anything in hand yet. Feedback now is too liable to be erroneous and is more likely to be overlooked by GW. 

[Enoby]

Just thought it was worth looking at the other Chaos Chosen type models compared to our own, only using buffs available on the warscroll and always on allegiance abilities. In the table, the twin souls are rr hits but the Tzaangor are not (because realistically they are usually dead if they strike last), however I will note down twin souls unbuffed and Tzaangors buffed underneath. 

Tzaangors buffed by striking last: 9.51 damage against a 4+ save

Twin souls choosing not to rr hits: 6.66r (fitting) against a 4+ save (we definitely want to be rr if we can help it)

In a normal situation, that is Tzaangors aren't attacking last at full strength and Twin Souls have chosen to rr hits, the Twin Souls are the clear winner across all units damage wise. 

Points for these units are, and damage per point (dpp) against a 4+ save:

Blightkings: 140, 0.0476 dpp

Chosen: 140, 0.0529 dpp

Skullreapers: 180,  0.0457 dpp

Tzaangor enlightened: 100, 0.0469 dpp

Twin Souls: 170, 0.0539 dpp

This shows that, when looking at how much damage you get per point (used mostly just for comparison), Twin Souls are worth their cost compared to other chosen equivalents. While other factions can get other buffs that may put them above Twin Souls, I only wanted to look at the always on abilities or the abilities that are very likely to happen (as in, nothing more than saying it happens need to happen for it to trigger); while we could add a blood portal man (his name completely escapes me but I think it's blood something) or Chaos Sorcerer Lord into the mix, that's more points and much more likely to go wrong (being out of range or having to support another unit or just being dead) and we have our own buffs anyway. 

In addition to this, Twin Souls have the option to reduce their damage for a 5+ shrug and they have 8" move (which surprised me when I looked at it - they're as fast as a giant!)

[umpac]

Just played a game on TTS against a friends Fyreslayers on Knife to the heart. He had 2x20 HGB, 20 vulkites, a magmadroth and a bunch of foot characters in the speed subfaction (so not Hermdar, but otherwise the list is tournament level). I played 2 KoS, Sigvald, 2x5 Slickblades, 1x5 Painbringers, 3x11 Archers and Wheels of Excruciation. Obviously we're both new to the book and my friend is new to FS so it was a game full of mistake but heres my take away:

- Summoning isn't as easy as I though. Even though I played endless spells and a ton of archers to maximize gain I didn't reach 12 DPs until turn 3, and had 11 DPs at the start of turn 4. I think 2x 12-point summons are gonna be reliable, but 3-4 is going to be luck and match up dependent. Still thats 660-680 pts summoned.

- Double keepers make the new Locus very reliable. and very strong if your opponent doesn't play around it. Clipped a unit of HGB and they were stuck hitting back with 2-3 guys per keeper which I just out healed until I ground them to dust with Sigwald. This is very reliant on opponents making mistakes, if he had clumped up better before taking the charge he probably would've killed the keepers.

- Sigwald is not a 260pts character. Even with 3+ 4++ he just died to the HGB unit once they hit back even though only 3-4 had the range. He killed 10 zerkers before going down though, but that was with a 9 attack charge and double pile ins against the ideal target. He doesnt provide any value outside of combat prowess (no spells, no CA, no ranged attack, no special abilities). 

- Slickblades are great. One unit took down a Magmadroth themselves but died to bouncing MW + battleshock. Bravery 6 on these guys is ROUGH so probably want to stick them near a hero or something.

- Archers underperformed a lot. Very little damage and 3 units were overkill to put out spread pressure and generate DPs.

- Wheels still suck. Wanted them for the DP gen but they did more damage to me than to my opponent and mostly hit stuff that got damaged anyway.

I ended up grinding through enough HGB thanks to the 2 Keepers grinding down enough zerkers for me to summon in 50 daemonettes and swarm his objective and win in turn 4. I also rolled god like for the entire game and he rolled terrible. First impression is that the book felt good, but not great. I won largely due to match up unfamiliarity and luck, but I think there is potential here.

[Carnith]

2 minutes ago, umpac said:

Just played a game on TTS against a friends Fyreslayers on Knife to the heart. He had 2x20 HGB, 20 vulkites, a magmadroth and a bunch of foot characters in the speed subfaction (so not Hermdar, but otherwise the list is tournament level). I played 2 KoS, Sigvald, 2x5 Slickblades, 1x5 Painbringers, 3x11 Archers and Wheels of Excruciation. Obviously we're both new to the book and my friend is new to FS so it was a game full of mistake but heres my take away:

- Summoning isn't as easy as I though. Even though I played endless spells and a ton of archers to maximize gain I didn't reach 12 DPs until turn 3, and had 11 DPs at the start of turn 4. I think 2x 12-point summons are gonna be reliable, but 3-4 is going to be luck and match up dependent. Still thats 660-680 pts summoned.

- Double keepers make the new Locus very reliable. and very strong if your opponent doesn't play around it. Clipped a unit of HGB and they were stuck hitting back with 2-3 guys per keeper which I just out healed until I ground them to dust with Sigwald. This is very reliant on opponents making mistakes, if he had clumped up better before taking the charge he probably would've killed the keepers.

- Sigwald is not a 260pts character. Even with 3+ 4++ he just died to the HGB unit once they hit back even though only 3-4 had the range. He killed 10 zerkers before going down though, but that was with a 9 attack charge and double pile ins against the ideal target. He doesnt provide any value outside of combat prowess (no spells, no CA, no ranged attack, no special abilities). 

- Slickblades are great. One unit took down a Magmadroth themselves but died to bouncing MW + battleshock. Bravery 6 on these guys is ROUGH so probably want to stick them near a hero or something.

- Archers underperformed a lot. Very little damage and 3 units were overkill to put out spread pressure and generate DPs.

- Wheels still suck. Wanted them for the DP gen but they did more damage to me than to my opponent and mostly hit stuff that got damaged anyway.

I ended up grinding through enough HGB thanks to the 2 Keepers grinding down enough zerkers for me to summon in 50 daemonettes and swarm his objective and win in turn 4. I also rolled god like for the entire game and he rolled terrible. First impression is that the book felt good, but not great. I won largely due to match up unfamiliarity and luck, but I think there is potential here.

Wheels got updated to not effect Slaanesh units. 

[swarmofseals]

I strongly advise against emailing GW without any actual play experience. If you take the time to test and send them thoughtful and well detailed feedback there is a good chance they will listen.

Some of you may not know me, so I'd like to point to one of my older posts:

I can't give a lot of detail, but my involvement has increased since then and I can say with a great deal of confidence that the team is very open to and is eager to receive well thought out feedback.

I encourage all of you to give this tome some time before judging it. I don't say this out of a desire to blindly trust GW or to push the idea that we should just shut our eyes and assume everything will be OK. I say it because this battletome has very powerful mechanics that are completely unique.

No other battletome has summoning potential that even comes close to what Hedonites can do. I acknowledge that not everyone may want to play a summoning army, but for better or worse that is what Hedonites are right now. No other faction can realistically summon 1000 points of reinforcements in a game like Slaanesh can, and as a result the warscrolls must be overcosted to compensate for the summons.

Personally I think it would have been cool if the book had been designed with two major subfactions and two hosts per subfaction like the Seraphon book, one built around summoning and the other more traditional. That way Slaanesh players could realistically choose either playstyle.

But we've got what we've got and a straight analysis of the warscroll efficiencies that ignores the summoning just isn't going to give a realistic picture of how the faction plays on the tabletop. 

The power of the summoning is also very difficult to predict conclusively just based on looking at the numbers. We're going to need to play a lot of games before we get an idea of how it plays in practice.

Crunching the numbers shows clearly that some of the warscrolls are not good enough compared to other options within the faction. Slaangors and Hellstriders are probably the most obvious culprit. I'll definitely be passing along this feedback quickly because it's clearly not an external balance problem.

But before we conclude that everything is overcosted we need to play a lot of games and see how the faction works in practice. I crunched the numbers in the old battletome when it first came out and found that everything in that tome was overcosted relative to the rest of the game as well, and yet the faction ended up being at the absolute top of the heap for an extended period of time.

[Sorrow]

An in-depth statistical analysis of each unit in absolutely necessary.  As is actual game data.

Nobody is sending anything until we have that.

[Benkei]

2 hours ago, Overread said:

Emails today won't do much to generate any real data. Just yesterday everyone was jumping for joy; now its the bitter cold morning after and everyone is thinking again. Give it another day and it will be jumps of joy again. It's too swingy and uncoordinated. 

 

I haven't seen anybody jumping for joy since we have all the info. What i see are overpriced pillowfisted units with no finesse required to play, and for me this should be anathema to all Slaanesh is supposed to be going by the lore.

Edited February 14, 2021 by Benkei

[JackStreicher]

@swarmofseals what is your Impression on The DoK book?

[Poryague]

44 minutes ago, Enoby said:

Just thought it was worth looking at the other Chaos Chosen type models compared to our own, only using buffs available on the warscroll and always on allegiance abilities. In the table, the twin souls are rr hits but the Tzaangor are not (because realistically they are usually dead if they strike last), however I will note down twin souls unbuffed and Tzaangors buffed underneath. 

Tzaangors buffed by striking last: 9.51 damage against a 4+ save

Twin souls choosing not to rr hits: 6.66r (fitting) against a 4+ save (we definitely want to be rr if we can help it)

In a normal situation, that is Tzaangors aren't attacking last at full strength and Twin Souls have chosen to rr hits, the Twin Souls are the clear winner across all units damage wise. 

Points for these units are, and damage per point (dpp) against a 4+ save:

Blightkings: 140, 0.0476 dpp

Chosen: 140, 0.0529 dpp

Skullreapers: 180,  0.0457 dpp

Tzaangor enlightened: 100, 0.0469 dpp

Twin Souls: 170, 0.0539 dpp

This shows that, when looking at how much damage you get per point (used mostly just for comparison), Twin Souls are worth their cost compared to other chosen equivalents. While other factions can get other buffs that may put them above Twin Souls, I only wanted to look at the always on abilities or the abilities that are very likely to happen (as in, nothing more than saying it happens need to happen for it to trigger); while we could add a blood portal man (his name completely escapes me but I think it's blood something) or Chaos Sorcerer Lord into the mix, that's more points and much more likely to go wrong (being out of range or having to support another unit or just being dead) and we have our own buffs anyway. 

In addition to this, Twin Souls have the option to reduce their damage for a 5+ shrug and they have 8" move (which surprised me when I looked at it - they're as fast as a giant!)

Probably better to compare them to models in same point range.

Save	Twin soul	Tzangor on disc	Twin soul rr	Tzangor on disc rr
2+	1.78	3.64	2.67	7.32
3+	3.56	5.5	5.33	11.08
4+	5.33	7.36	8	14.85
5+	7.11	9.22	10.67	18.61
6+	8.89	11.08	13.33	22.38
-	10.67	11.17	16	22.58

So that would be tzangor on disc. Also it should just be model to model. I am sure though that allegiance abilities add to cost but for now we should ignore that sense this harder to weight.  So under model vs model of equivalent points. 

Twin 170 is .047 

Tzang disc 180  is .082

This also means they are competing with  models like eels etc. 

[swarmofseals]

6 minutes ago, Benkei said:

I haven't seen anybody jumping for joy since we have all the info. What i see are overpriced pillowfisted units with no finesse required to play, and for me this should be anathema to all Slaanesh is supposed to be going by the lore.

I think Slaanesh is going to have a weird playstyle now. Basically what you want to do is trap and harass the opponent, tying them down with precise charges, strategically preventing pile-ins, and dealing chip damage to as many units as possible in order to summon a ton of extra daemons to eventually overwhelm the opponent. It's absolutely finesse and it's very sadistic. I see it as being extremely in line with the lore. I think if you try to brute force it you are going to have a bad time.

4 minutes ago, JackStreicher said:

@swarmofseals what is your Impression on The DoK book?

I think it's a nerf (and a necessary one) compared to the post-Morathi previous book, but that once people figure out how to play it it will be very good. I'm not sure if it will be "A" tier or "S" tier, but I think it will be one or the other. I've been playing a LOT of DoK recently and I think it will require some adaptation for sure. I don't think Witch Aelf/Sister of Slaughter spam is going to be the go-to anymore, although they may still see some play. Shooting lists have a chance to be oppressively good, but I'm not sure. I played a lot of heavy shooting lists with the old tome under Morathi rules and found that a mix of shooting and melee worked best, but I also may not have tried the optimal shooting strategies. So I think it's possible that a snake "gunline" will be the top build, but I also think a hybrid melee and shooting build could be better. Some will depend on how the meta shapes up, of course, and I think both versions will be viable.

[umpac]

44 minutes ago, Carnith said:

Wheels got updated to not effect Slaanesh units. 

Yeah actually the old was like that as well, good catch. Too much new stuff to keep track of so it slipped my mind.

[Enoby]

16 minutes ago, Poryague said:

So that would be tzangor on disc. Also it should just be model to model. I am sure though that allegiance abilities add to cost but for now we should ignore that sense this harder to weight.  So under model vs model of equivalent points. 

Twin 170 is .047 

Tzang disc 180  is .082

This also means they are competing with  models like eels etc. 

Sorry, forgot about the disk variant. However, I think we should look at units as we can't buy singular models in AoS and we pay for the unit - I do see the value of looking at models generally, but in AoS when the discussion is about a unit being worth it, I think looking at the unit as a whole suffices. 

On allegiance abilities, I didn't want to include or mention depravity as it's too variable and speculative, but I think we should include Euphoric Killers as it's always on to the point it could be written on the warscroll and nothing would change ruleswise*. Unlike the other allegiance abilities, nothing can go wrong with EK and so it should always be included.

That said, I agree it's very hard to measure cost in relation to allegiance abilities.

*in a Hedonites army

Edited February 14, 2021 by Enoby

[Poryague]

12 minutes ago, Enoby said:

Sorry, forgot about the disk variant. However, I think we should look at units as we can't buy singular models in AoS and we pay for the unit - I do see the value of looking at models generally, but in AoS when the discussion is about a unit being worth it, I think looking at the unit as a whole suffices. 

On allegiance abilities, I didn't want to include or mention depravity as it's too variable and speculative, but I think we should include Euphoric Killers as it's always on to the point it could be written on the warscroll and nothing would change ruleswise. Unlike the other allegiance abilities, nothing can go wrong with EK and so it should always be included.

That said, I agree it's very hard to measure cost in relation to allegiance abilities.

I meant unit vs unit that's what that comparison is as well as similar pointed units.  I also understand looking at just damage is not perfect as well. Its more complicated with a unit that is somewhere in between offense and defense. The 3 culprits that caused the problems have been toned down significantly. Stopping pile in is OK  its situational and ONLY daemon heroes can use it. Summoning as written appears to allow 1 summon a turn so there is no holy ****** moment as 700+ points appear all at once and slamm into you. The kos ca only targets other units so to use it on a kos you need 2. Yet some units points still went up a lot with subtle changes if any. Some lost abilities and saw no change in points. 

Edited February 14, 2021 by Poryague