AoS 2 - Hedonites of Slaanesh Discussion

[Benkei]

4 hours ago, Yokai said:

Well, if each and every army matched their fluff everyone would be invincible, right? There need to be some semblance of gameplay balance first and foremost.

Granted, some units are probably overcosted even when considering the summoning powers, but let's see how they perform over a few games first. There is already some valuable information given in this discussion by people playing, so progress is being made!

How come then that some armies are allowed to match their fluff and other don't? And matching their fluff hardly means being invincible at all, that's a pretty ridiculous statement as I'm not talking about the power of the book (even if it seems pretty meh) but about its uniqueness and fitness to the fluff of the army. 

Edited February 15, 2021 by Benkei

[Enoby]

8 hours ago, Silphid said:

Pondering the following list; would appreciate oponions as I am new to Hedonites (My mains being DoK, skaven & Sylvaneth)

Lurid Haze Host

Glutos

Lord of Pain

Syll'Esske

3x Blissbarb Archers

2x Fiends

2x Slickblade Seekers

The intent is to surprise attack using Lurid's ability Glutos, Fiends, and LoP if I get a lucky D3 roll. My assumption is that Glutos supported by Fiends in the opponent'S backfield should create a significant/survivable threat.

Syll'Esske , archers and slickblades march up the board to reinforce Glutos attack. Summoning is obviously meant to fill holes as my opponent tears them apart

 

What are your thoughts on such an approach for a list? (no battalions Gasp!)

I reckon this could work well, but I'd recommend putting the fiends into one unit to get that -1 to wound (unless they already are) 

I keep forgetting how tanky Glutos is; considering he can get on a 2+ save rr1s with that CA too...  

Edit: that said, not 100% sure on the LoP as he may get left behind. Maybe a Shardspeaker instead? 

Edited February 15, 2021 by Enoby

[JackStreicher]

No matter how you put it:

In general GW has too few to zero quality control when it comes to rules and that is a shame and lowers the product’s perceived value.

The Art team does an amazing job

The Sculpers do an amazing job

The rules-writer... too many, too little communication, a massive lack concerning quality control (both rules themselves and wording), no common goal.

[whispersofblood]

To build on what I said earlier, here is what I imagine the archtype of a competitive Timmy build would be.

Glutos - 400
KoS - 340
Bladebringer on seeker - 190
Bladebringer on Seeker - 190
6 Fiends - 360
20 Daemonettes - 220
11 Blissbarb - 160
11 Blissbarb - 160
Fomoroid Crusher
Supreme Sybarites
Geminids - 60

The ability to heal your heroes in the hero phase after earning depravity off of them with the fomoroid using the footprint of the fane seems like fane seems like a decent engine. You could easily gain 4+ Depravity in your hero phase. He also has a shooting attack that can do some damage in the mid to late game. You will want to position your fane pretty aggressively though.

Basically it is designed around getting glutos and the 6 fiends into the the opponents army pinning them in with -2 to hit, and -1 to wound on the fiends, and then retreat and charging with the bladebringers, healing them up as you go along. Glutos should be able to keep the fiends pretty healed up.

I think putting no retreat on the KoS will be useful in a Godseeker build, but in invaders obviously it will be the +1 wound artefact or Rod of misrule. There is a bit of a choice to be made between the fly spell and the heal spell on the KoS, but the blade bringers can either go Hero phase ranged dmg or heal spell.

Imo  Glutos should be spamming Judgement of Excess as the horde spell, as the Bladebringers have other more useful spells then Hysterical Frenzy.

I would consider going Lurid Haze even if just for the CMD ability to put Glutos on a 2+, CP generation, and the ability to deploy the bladebringers up the field

Daemonettes are really just a screen and early DP generation. Real daemonettes get summoned in to play for board control.
 

edit** you can also take Daemon Princes instead of the Bladebringers but you lose locus

Edited February 15, 2021 by whispersofblood

[Yokai]

48 minutes ago, Benkei said:

How come then that some armies are allowed to match their fluff and other don't? And matching their fluff hardly means being invincible at all, that's a pretty ridiculous statement as I'm not talking about the power of the book (even if it seems pretty meh) but about its uniqueness and fitness to the fluff of the army. 

That is true, but what I wanted to express was that fluff as written is a poor metric to gauge how the army will perform at the tabletop. The writers at GW will write all kinds of heroic/horrific nonsense to build hype, but very little of that fluff survives contact with a competitive environment. To expect otherwise is to set oneself up for perpetual disappointment.

[Overread]

Also fluff varies a lot. Just like in reality no "army" or faction is ever perfectly set in stone. 

We'll see stories where Witch Aelves charge legions of Deamonettes and slice through them with ease; only to then get a story where one witch aelf is putted against a few and struggles to win at all. Another story you'll see Slaanesh being faster than anything else; in another they'll be overtaken by Ossiarchs in a race (ok perhaps not that extreme ;)) . 

Also remember that the lore and fluff gets adapted differently by different authors. One might latch onto the depravity more so than others; another onto grace in battle; another onto the musk and mind twisting elements. What the author chooses and focuses on will influence how the description focuses with regard to the characters and forces in their story. Plus in the end the stories of how armies work are only ever guidelines and will never translate perfectly to a tabletop game where, in all honestly, we play with skirmish levels of models on the table. You'll never get that perfect 300,000 rank and file  block of Cities of Sigmar troops standing against 10,000,000 skaven clanrats experience (even Total War Warhammer can't get that far )

[Enoby]

6 minutes ago, Overread said:

Also fluff varies a lot. Just like in reality no "army" or faction is ever perfectly set in stone. 

We'll see stories where Witch Aelves charge legions of Deamonettes and slice through them with ease; only to then get a story where one witch aelf is putted against a few and struggles to win at all. Another story you'll see Slaanesh being faster than anything else; in another they'll be overtaken by Ossiarchs in a race (ok perhaps not that extreme ;)) . 

Also remember that the lore and fluff gets adapted differently by different authors. One might latch onto the depravity more so than others; another onto grace in battle; another onto the musk and mind twisting elements. What the author chooses and focuses on will influence how the description focuses with regard to the characters and forces in their story. Plus in the end the stories of how armies work are only ever guidelines and will never translate perfectly to a tabletop game where, in all honestly, we play with skirmish levels of models on the table. You'll never get that perfect 300,000 rank and file  block of Cities of Sigmar troops standing against 10,000,000 skaven clanrats experience (even Total War Warhammer can't get that far )

As an aside, I remember one of the Realm Gate Wars books had Lascillion and his group of mortals use a giant tower of sacrifices which they burned and the pain summoned a KoS inside of the city to break them in and summon a load of daemons. So I think depravity and summoning has been a pretty big part of the lore too.  

[Juicy]

In black temple, the slaanesh is pretty sweet written. When i see gluton he's a perfect example of how i thought the new slaanesh would be. Skin deamons aswel.

[Overread]

11 minutes ago, Enoby said:

As an aside, I remember one of the Realm Gate Wars books had Lascillion and his group of mortals use a giant tower of sacrifices which they burned and the pain summoned a KoS inside of the city to break them in and summon a load of daemons. So I think depravity and summoning has been a pretty big part of the lore too.  

Back in the Old World the only way you got demons was through summoning. Indeed Demons being an army of their own is a fairly newish thing - in the past they were additions to a Chaos Army. The idea being that a big concentration of Chaos warriors and mages would generate enough belief and magical energy that demons could manifest in the world. 

They had living battering rams and siege towers and everything back then - even demons bound to huge cannon. 

 

Eventually Demons became their own army in the Old World; then they became their own separate god armies in AoS. Indeed with the vast amounts of energy in the Mortal Realms Demons seem to manifest quite readily now. 

[Enoby]

1 hour ago, JackStreicher said:

The rules-writer... too many, too little communication, a massive lack concerning quality control (both rules themselves and wording), no common goal.

I do agree that there are issues in the rules team; the biggest one (as you mentioned) is no common goal. For example, I'm very happy our archers aren't doing 1MW on a 5+ to hit, but it's likely another book will have more high MW shooting or cheap units and cheap summoning. 

I'd like it if all writers had a say in all books (with a head writer for each) so things felt more on the same level. Maybe they do this, but it doesn't feel like it considering how differently some battletomes are designed.

[LeonBox]

Does anyone know who's actually responsible for writing new rules, and whether or not there's some sort of overarching guidelines that they all need to adhere to? For instance, there must surely be some kind of rubric for determining how new models are to be pointed. 

[Klamm]

Between placing an order for a box of seekers, 2 Painbringers/Twinsouls and a Shardspeaker, I worked through my disappointment about the release and have just decided to play them as Slaves to Darkness.

Like, a mortal army isn't making use of Locus or Depravity, and at that point the only thing I'm getting in Slaanesh allegiance is Euphoric Killers, which I can get through mark of Slaanesh in an S2D force anyway. It actually works out, the only Daemons I wanted to run were Princes, so I think I'm doing a Despoilers list where everything has mark of Slaanesh:

Spoiler

 

Heroes

• Daemon Prince (Paragon of Ruin, Doombringer Sword) 210
• Daemon Prince (Armour of Tortured Souls) 210
• Sorcerer Lord (Binding Damnation) 110
• Chaos Lord 110
• Shardspeaker 150

Units

• 20 Marauders 160
• 20 Chaos Warriors 360
• 5 Chaos Knights 160
• 5 Chaos Chosen 140
• 8 Iron Golems 70 
• 6 Furies 100

Other

• Battalion: Pleasurebound Warband 160
• Endless Spell: Either Geminids or Mesmerising Mirror 60

2000 points

 

In terms of Proxy, I need to make chosen and the knights. The Twinsouls as Chosen proxies, I'll probably use the slickblade heads to make them look a little more uniform and make one a musician. 

Turning the Slickblades into Knights looks a little trickier. I want to convert their wargear to match that of chaos knights, which means shields (painbringer spares) and either swords or lances. It's hard to know without the kit in front of me, but it looks challenging to repose. I'll probably have to forego my preferred lance loadout as well, just do sword and shield. I guess I can always use them as slickblade seeker allies, since aside from euphoric killers they weren't benefiting that much from the Slaanesh allegiance anyway. 

 

[azdimy]

That fact that we did not get neither standards nor musicians in the new mortal units is interresting. This simplifies the warscroll greatly which is good for the game but makes the warscroll less competitive as we get less bonus rules as I don t believe gw take these into account when costing units

[Ragest]

1 hour ago, Enoby said:

I do agree that there are issues in the rules team; the biggest one (as you mentioned) is no common goal. For example, I'm very happy our archers aren't doing 1MW on a 5+ to hit, but it's likely another book will have more high MW shooting or cheap units and cheap summoning. 

I'd like it if all writers had a say in all books (with a head writer for each) so things felt more on the same level. Maybe they do this, but it doesn't feel like it considering how differently some battletomes are designed.

Maybe Slaneesh started the shooting nerf but man, Stalkers are right there making MW at 6, so don't know what are they trying to do.

[Enoby]

1 minute ago, Ragest said:

Maybe Slaneesh started the shooting nerf but man, Stalkers are right there making MW at 6, so don't know what are they trying to do.

Yeah, stuff like this is what confuses me. I like this book because it is toned down stats wise, but it's a shame they're not toning down every book. 

Unrelated, but I'd also like to try this list:

Invaders Lurid Haze

Glutos (400pts)

Syll'Esske (200pts) - general

Lord of Pain

11 Blissbarb Archers (160pts)

11 Blissbarb Archers (160pts)

11 Blissbarb Archers (160pts) 

5 Slickglaive Seekers (200pts)

5 Slickglaive Seekers (200pts)

5 Slickglaive Seekers (200pts)

Seeker Cavalcade (160pts) 

Basically hoping Lurid Haze makes up for the LoP's speed problem to support the Slickglaives. I'd have to ensure at least one CP is saved for the battleshock phase for Syll'Esske to keep all Slickglaives in the game. Glutos is their to help protect them with his aura and also be a tank himself and harrass other units with his spell. 

[JonnyTheKing]

2 hours ago, whispersofblood said:

To build on what I said earlier, here is what I imagine the archtype of a competitive Timmy build would be.

Glutos - 400
KoS - 340
Bladebringer on seeker - 190
Bladebringer on Seeker - 190
6 Fiends - 360
20 Daemonettes - 220
11 Blissbarb - 160
11 Blissbarb - 160
Fomoroid Crusher
Supreme Sybarites
Geminids - 60

The ability to heal your heroes in the hero phase after earning depravity off of them with the fomoroid using the footprint of the fane seems like fane seems like a decent engine. You could easily gain 4+ Depravity in your hero phase. He also has a shooting attack that can do some damage in the mid to late game. You will want to position your fane pretty aggressively though.

Basically it is designed around getting glutos and the 6 fiends into the the opponents army pinning them in with -2 to hit, and -1 to wound on the fiends, and then retreat and charging with the bladebringers, healing them up as you go along. Glutos should be able to keep the fiends pretty healed up.

I think putting no retreat on the KoS will be useful in a Godseeker build, but in invaders obviously it will be the +1 wound artefact or Rod of misrule. There is a bit of a choice to be made between the fly spell and the heal spell on the KoS, but the blade bringers can either go Hero phase ranged dmg or heal spell.

Imo  Glutos should be spamming Judgement of Excess as the horde spell, as the Bladebringers have other more useful spells then Hysterical Frenzy.

I would consider going Lurid Haze even if just for the CMD ability to put Glutos on a 2+, CP generation, and the ability to deploy the bladebringers up the field

Daemonettes are really just a screen and early DP generation. Real daemonettes get summoned in to play for board control.
 

edit** you can also take Daemon Princes instead of the Bladebringers but you lose locus

I like this concept, needs tweaked though, it’s maybeeeeee just a bit too many points 😅

[azdimy]

Was it too much to expect from gw to have the wrath of the everchosen hedonites subfactions included in our new battletome? 😥

[Enoby]

2 minutes ago, azdimy said:

Was it too much to expect from gw to have the wrath of the everchosen hedonites subfactions included in our new battletome? 😥

They're not included unfortunately, but I think they are still playable

 

 This is a nice take on our book

[whispersofblood]

And the Johnny list as promised.

Godseekers

KoS - 340
Sinistrous hand
Speed-Chaser
Enrapturing Circlet
Progeny of Damnation

KoS - 340
Sinistrous hand

5 Slickblade Seekers - 200

5 Slickblade Seekers - 200

5 Blissbarb Seekers - 180

5 Blissbarb Seekers - 180

Seeker Chariot - 130

Seeker Chariot - 130

Seeker Chariot - 130

Seeker Cavaclade - 140

Basically the idea is pin as much stuff in as possible with 6" pile-ins, using the 2" reach on the Slickblades to do some moderate dmg, without taking much back yourself, and doing moderate damage with the Blissbarbs around the table particularly to heroes. Seeker Chariots are good a blocking and with retreat and charge can get around the board quite well. 
But you need to lock down units with the no retreat from the general and locus no pile-in

no retreat, denying the enemy pile-ins and grinding away until you can summon, expendable daemonettes to charge and finish units off. But, the real strength is pinning units in place. I think it is a really rewarding Johnny list, that is low enough drops to be competitive. But I anticipate the most seen list will be some honed version of the first one I posted.

[JonnyTheKing]

200 Slickblade seeker x5

200 Slickblade seeker x5

400 Slickblade seeker  x10

180 Blissbarb seekers x5

160 Blissbarb archers x11

160 Blissbarb archers x11

160 Blissbarb archers x11

340 Keeper of Secrets 

150 Shardspeaker 

Extra CP
 

this is the list I plan to try

Keeper of Secrets: Just a solid hero and the best place to put command traits and artefacts and can allow me to double pile in with Seeker units 

Blissbarb Archers: 3 units cover my battleline and are able to pepper units generating Depravity as the game goes on

Shardspeaker: can provide some support where needed and also another summing spot other than the Keeper or Fane 

Slickblade Seekers: General damage for a decent price and decent wounds, holds the enemy forces back before daemons flood the board

Blissbarb Seekers: Provides quick firepower if needed somewhere, also didn’t have the points spare to make them Slickblade 😅

Unsure on which sub allegiance I want to take yet so left blank, but I think as a list it has some potential to do some cool stuff, some changes I’ve considered is maybe scrapping a unit of Slickblade Seekers for a Bladebringer on seeker chariot or potentially swapping the Blissbarb Seekers, the extra CP and the shardspeaker for Glutos potentially since I love him and his crew so much, could provide some very cool support to the list, however I’d be sacrificing a lot of my list to do so

[Enoby]

A bit of a random fact, buying one of all of the new releases gets you a 1960 point army Not that it would be a good army, but it is the one I'll be testing first to get a feel of the units

[Third]

Had my first new book TTS game today, and overall it went exactly as expected.... 

.... Our new book is over the mountains more fun to play than the old.. Really enjoy the new possible plays you can make 🙂

Not only that, but my hot take puts us right about in the fat middle, which is perfect, because the game is better off bringing Seraphon and Co. down a notch, and Sylvaneth and Co. up a notch if I am asked.. 

If they had differentiated our daemonic warscrolls more, given us some new command abilities, spells and sub alligences, this book had been 10/10 

Instead its a good book, but with several flaws that is probably sadly beyond FAQ fixing.. Still happy though 👍

Edited February 15, 2021 by Third
Fat fingers 😅

[Enoby]

59 minutes ago, Third said:

Had my first new book TTS game today, and overall it went exactly as expected.... 

.... Our new book is over the mountains more fun to play than the old.. Really enjoy the new possible plays you can make 🙂

Not only that, but my hot take puts us right about in the fat middle, which is perfect, because the game is better off bringing Seraphon and Co. down a notch, and Sylvaneth and Co. up a notch if I am asked.. 

If they had differentiated our daemonic warscrolls more, given us some new command abilities, spells and sub alligences, this book had been 10/10 

Instead its a good book, but with several flaws that is probably sadly beyond FAQ fixing.. Still happy though 👍

That's really good to hear! What did you use in your list? 

As for abilities we'd like to see, after playing a bit, it might be a good idea to email the rules team. Not to complain, just to say what we'd like to see - especially on Depravity Points being used to buff  We may end up seeing these in Broken Realms style books

Edited February 15, 2021 by Enoby

[JackStreicher]

4 hours ago, Klamm said:

Slaves to Darkness.

Hello darkness my old friend.... S2D Are actually worse than the new Slaanesh ^^(unless you Love Nurgle and unless you are keen on Khorne Daemon Princes)

[Enoby]

Just now, JackStreicher said:

Hello darkness my old friend.... S2D Are actually worse than the new Slaanesh ^^(unless you Love Nurgle and unless you are keen on Khorne Daemon Princes)

Slaves to Darkness are a bit of a disappointing army (well, besides some set ups of them - but they're disappointing compared to the way most people want to play them), but they give the option of a full mortal army at least without losing allegiance abilities that said, the conversions for most models are so easy between mortal Hedonites and and Slaves to Darkness, it's easy to jump between then

I'm definitely much happier with our book compared to S2D, but mostly because most of our warscrolls show potential (points nonwithstanding) and our allegiance abilities are better thought out.