AoS 2 - Hedonites of Slaanesh Discussion

[ibel]

1 hour ago, Stormy1486 said:

*eye roll* seriously gw. Thanks for all these 5 points.

Mebbe I can play the list if there is a points drops for slaanesh in 6 months

Change 1 Sickblades for Blissbard Seekers ?! They okay, u can put them in the Back on an Objekt and shoot 2-3 Units for DP.

[Carnith]

So I had my first game of 3rd yesterday. I wanted to take slaanesh, I really did, but I struggled hard to figure out what you even take at 1k. 

[TimeToWaste85]

25 minutes ago, Carnith said:

26 minutes ago, Carnith said:

So I had my first game of 3rd yesterday. I wanted to take slaanesh, I really did, but I struggled hard to figure out what you even take at 1k. 

Sigvald

synessa w/Cogs

two units of hellstriders

dread Pagent. 
 

just under 1k and I would feel comfortable dropping that on a table 

[Trav]

12 hours ago, Carnith said:

So I had my first game of 3rd yesterday. I wanted to take slaanesh, I really did, but I struggled hard to figure out what you even take at 1k. 

I had fun with this list last night for my fist game with hedonites and aos 3.

Allegiance: Slaanesh
- Host: Invaders Host
- Grand Strategy: Hold the Line
- Triumphs: Bloodthirsty

Leaders
Lord of Pain (155)
- General
- Command Trait: Skin-taker 
- Artefact: The Rod of Misrule 
- Host Option: General 
Shardspeaker of Slaanesh (150)
- Lore of Pain and Pleasure: Dark Delusions

Battleline
11 x Blissbarb Archers (180)
5 x Myrmidesh Painbringers (160)
5 x Symbaresh Twinsouls (185)
5 x Hellstriders with Claw-spears (135)

Total: 965 / 2000
Reinforced Units: 0 / 4
Allies: 0 / 400
Wounds: 51

[Nagashfan]

@Enoby I’m curious as to how competitive Mike sees Sigvald and what he would use for a competitive list with him?

[Enoby]

2 hours ago, Nagashfan said:

@Enoby I’m curious as to how competitive Mike sees Sigvald and what he would use for a competitive list with him?

He said:

 

"I really rate him think he needs a keeper to support him with a double pile in but his ignoring ward saves is a big plus"

So definitely a positive opinion

[Carnith]

51 wounds is very small. My ironjawz list was 79 wounds at 1k with nearly everyone rocking a 4+ or better save minus the one caster I had. 

I guess the game plan of that list would be to have enough cp to keep throwing combat bonuses.

[Selpharia]

So I’m not a particularly good, or even a mediocre painter, but I finished my twins and I wanted to share, because they’re my favorite models to come out in a good long while. Looking forward to having them terrorize some battlefields once they have some mortal minions to accompany them!

[Carnith]

I got a game tomorrow vs what I assume will be boc (friend's main faction)

List found below 

Allegiance: Slaanesh
- Host: Lurid Haze Invaders Host (Host of Chaos)
- Grand Strategy: None Chosen
- Triumphs:
The Masque (135) in Command Entourage
Sigvald, Prince of Slaanesh (265) in Command Entourage
- Host Option: General
Shardspeaker of Slaanesh (150) in Command Entourage
- Artefact: Oil of Exultation
- Lore of Pain and Pleasure: Battle Rapture
Bladebringer, Herald on Exalted Chariot (265) in Battle Regiment
- General
- Command Trait: Feverish Anticipation
- Artefact: Amulet of Destiny (Universal Artefact)
- Universal Spell Lore: Flaming Weapon
22 x Blissbarb Archers (360) in Battle Regiment
- Reinforced x 1
5 x Hellstriders with Claw-spears (135) in Battle Regiment
5 x Hellstriders with Claw-spears (135) in Battle Regiment
5 x Slickblade Seekers (230) in Battle Regiment
5 x Slickblade Seekers (230) in Battle Regiment
Dreadful Visage (90)
Battle Regiment
Command Entourage - Magnificent

Total: 1995 / 2000
Reinforced Units: 1 / 4
Allies: 0 / 400
Wounds: 108
 

I ran into either running shackles and myrmadesh or a shardspeaker and visage. I went with shardspeaker and visage for some strikes last, an additional spell, and the +1 to wound on a unit. 

[Nagashfan]

3 hours ago, Carnith said:

I got a game tomorrow vs what I assume will be boc (friend's main faction)

List found below 

Allegiance: Slaanesh
- Host: Lurid Haze Invaders Host (Host of Chaos)
- Grand Strategy: None Chosen
- Triumphs:
The Masque (135) in Command Entourage
Sigvald, Prince of Slaanesh (265) in Command Entourage
- Host Option: General
Shardspeaker of Slaanesh (150) in Command Entourage
- Artefact: Oil of Exultation
- Lore of Pain and Pleasure: Battle Rapture
Bladebringer, Herald on Exalted Chariot (265) in Battle Regiment
- General
- Command Trait: Feverish Anticipation
- Artefact: Amulet of Destiny (Universal Artefact)
- Universal Spell Lore: Flaming Weapon
22 x Blissbarb Archers (360) in Battle Regiment
- Reinforced x 1
5 x Hellstriders with Claw-spears (135) in Battle Regiment
5 x Hellstriders with Claw-spears (135) in Battle Regiment
5 x Slickblade Seekers (230) in Battle Regiment
5 x Slickblade Seekers (230) in Battle Regiment
Dreadful Visage (90)
Battle Regiment
Command Entourage - Magnificent

Total: 1995 / 2000
Reinforced Units: 1 / 4
Allies: 0 / 400
Wounds: 108
 

I ran into either running shackles and myrmadesh or a shardspeaker and visage. I went with shardspeaker and visage for some strikes last, an additional spell, and the +1 to wound on a unit. 

Let us know how she goes!

[Enoby]

Credit goes to therealaslum on Instagram. They've sculpted a large exalted seeker out of greenstuff - I think it looks really canny, especially it's little tongue 

 

Edited July 11, 2021 by Enoby

[TimeToWaste85]

2 hours ago, Enoby said:

Credit goes to therealaslum on Instagram. They've sculpted a large exalted seeker out of greenstuff - I think it looks really canny, especially it's little tongue 

 

Why not just use a Seraphon Troglodon? That’s what I did. Easy, minimal conversions needed (although I kept the arms)

[Enoby]

10 minutes ago, TimeToWaste85 said:

Why not just use a Seraphon Troglodon? That’s what I did. Easy, minimal conversions needed (although I kept the arms)

I think this was a hobby project by them rather than a working conversion it's considerably bigger than the exalted seeker by the look of other pictures, so I imaging they just wanted to try their hand at sculpting rather than converting a GW model

Edited July 11, 2021 by Enoby

[Selpharia]

So I had a second game against Soulblight that went much better for me, and a few smaller games against Lumineth with a similar trajectory.  The enemy list was a lot less rush down, but I also made some tactical changes that definitely helped. They’re not earth-shattering, but very well might help.

1) using Hellstriders to wall off your more valuable stuff. I imagine this is pretty standard, but I saw mike do it in one of the screenshots and it made a lot of sense. Hellstriders placed end to end can create a thin wall of flesh that buys you time because the opponent has spend phases moving up to, then through, the wall.

2) Redeploy: The biggest difference between this game and last game was that my Keeper didn’t get overwhelmed. This was because, once Vhordrai came roaring in, I had her step back a bit, He still got the charge, but none of his friends did, so when he whiffed, there was no insurance, so the Keeper took a chunk of wounds off him, healed in my turn, and cut him down. So much of our stuff can’t take hits, but can get where it wants to counter, which makes anything that lets a unit just not be there into something super valuable.

Bullying: This was a big change for me, coming from the 2019 battletome, but you really don’t want a standup fight if you can avoid it. It’s really tempting to try to use the speed of the army for a decapitating strike, but the game and the army make that hard. I had the most success playing a very harlequin playstyle, avoiding confrontation, and whittling away, even when there were big monsters and other hammers bearing down (Thanks, Twinsouls!) taking attacks of opportunity and trying to create problems in many places, to force the opponent to either split forces or cede a side to me. Avoiding having most of the army killed in turns 1/2 paid geometric dividends once I could claw back territory with Daemonette hordes. It’s harder to do in some matchups of course, especially with gods, who are usually very hard to sidestep.

 

Overall observation, about 5 games of 3.0 in, is that a lot of our best units are like lotto tickets, with a bunch of exploding sixes, buffs over time, or specific spike scenarios (e.g. chariot heralds charging multiple units). I tended to lose when I bet big on one or two tickets(the Keeper, the twins) But when I spread my bets around, played cagey and patient, and focused on getting small gains but doing more to make sure that I got another bite at the apple next turn, and could buy more tickets via summoning, I did much better.

Again, this isn’t to say there are no problems, or it’s not hard and frustrating, or that it will be super easy now. I expect to lose a buuuuuunch, especially against really hard lists. But I think, for me, orienting around skirmishing and learning how to make that work is an interesting challenge to keep me playing through the current lean times.

[TimeToWaste85]

Fair. But that’s a LOT of green stuff and time. Troggy isn’t too expensive (if you sell off the others from box) and has a lot of similarities to seekers. Probably best to remove the arms though for accuracy. I was lazy. 

[Enoby]

6 hours ago, Selpharia said:

Again, this isn’t to say there are no problems, or it’s not hard and frustrating, or that it will be super easy now. I expect to lose a buuuuuunch, especially against really hard lists. But I think, for me, orienting around skirmishing and learning how to make that work is an interesting challenge to keep me playing through the current lean times.

Thanks for the write up

Yeah, I think this is about where I stand too  It's a lot like our 2017 lists which really were much more about the player than the lists (I know that's normally the case, but much more so in Slaanesh - we have no easy list that will feel 'good' when just ran into the opponent). 

I think that's why I've had a very different philosophy with Slaanesh vs Blades of Khorne. I played BoK for about a year, but it was just so bland to play. Tbf, I was probably a very bad BoK player, but 'clever' plays felt hard to make when you have 'elite' troops at 3/4/-/1 attacks and all lists revolve around a banner man and priest, with no mortal hero being able to swing an axe properly to save their life. Slaanesh could lose just as badly, sometimes worse due to our generally poorer defence, but I think our speed and much more toolboxy summoning helps us feel like a much more active army. When I lose with Slaanesh, it feels like it was a mistake on my half, or at least that I was very unlucky. When I lost with Khorne, sometimes it was a mistake, but it often felt like "I buffed them so much but they still hit like silly string".

I think that this current Slaanesh feels like 2017 Slaanesh, which was personally my favourite iteration. Not that we don't have issues, I'd really like to see some points drops, a real mortal spell lore (tbh just a redo of all spells), better Synessa casting (would have been fluffy if lowest casting roll was always a 6), and a Slaangor warscroll rewrite. But in general, we're a lot of fun to play, we just don't do well when not played by an engaged player

[whispersofblood]

On 7/6/2021 at 10:36 AM, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

I don't play Slaanesh so I'm not 100% aware of all the interactions that might boost the viability of Flaming Weapons on the Keeper, but generally I think the spell gets overrated a bit at the moment.

Flaming Weapons competes for a cast with Arcane Bolt for melee heroes. With the new rules, you can expect 2 mortal wounds out of a Bolt. How Flaming Weapons compares to that depends a bit on how much you value normal wounds compared to mortals, but I think valuing a mortal wound as highly as 1.5-2 regular wounds is an OK rule of thumb (given that they ignore saves). So you would probably need about 3-4 wounds out of Flaming Weapons to break even.

Flaming Weapons only increases the damage of one of your melee profiles by one, so you want one with a lot of attacks that hits often. For the Keeper, that's probably the Great Blade, at 3+/3+ and up to 4 attacks. 3+/3+ is just about a 50% change to hit, so you will probably get about 2 extra rend -1 damage out of the deal. I think that's just not enough to make Flaming Weapons worth using over Bolt.

Of course, there are a few other factors at play here. The Keeper gets two casts, so you could do both Flaming Weapons and Arcane Bolt. Slaanesh gets double taps on 6s, which brings up the numbers a bit. Arcane bolt is slightly harder to cast, which I did not account for. But still, I think in a lot of cases Flaming Weapons is not worth going out of your way to pick up, and I'd mostly prefer running spells that situationally have a larger impact.

The KoS is a bit of an aspirational beatstick, 6s to hit being an additional hit, and 6s to wound causing MWs means flaming weapon at the end of the stack could be quite impressive. 

But it's not something to plan off of. 

[Carnith]

So I had my game today using the list I posed earlier. We ended turn 2 due to time. Sigvald cut through some skyfyres and some gor. The exalted chariot moved up a little, I didn't get double turn, and was bogged down in combat with my opponents shaggoth and more gors. Shardspeaker summoned dreadful visage, did some mw's and it got dispelled, moved up with a flank and died to skyfyres. Masque jumped into combat with slickblades, made a heroic level of saves, lived with one wound!... and died to arcane bolt in battleshock phase. 

Slicks did a lot of work chopping everything they came across. They charged bestigors and a beastlord, killed a bunch, got charged by a ghorgon, a chimera, while his shaggoth charged my chariot. My chariot took no damage from the shaggoth, and the slicks activate and merc'd the chimera before some enlightened wrecked them due to them already activated and taking 12 damage before being removed by the ghorgon. 

So on bottom of 2, Sigvald, 2 hellstriders are alive on left flank. Center had 4 slicks with a bunch of archers alive with chariot engaged with some gor and hellstriders. Right flank was gone though. A keeper was summoned. 

Going into three, he took third, I realized I got to remove an objective. I would've probably had 30 daemonettes the following turn as well. I think I could've taken the game in time. 

------

No monsters in the list should probably rectified with probably Dexcessa. but I'm sturggling with a lack of heroes in the list. 

I figured swapping sigvald with Dex if i'm not in lurid haze, but I just end up feeling like theres not enough heroes or I'm left with an awkward number of numbers, that while I could add an endless spell, I have too many things to go off that casting an endless spell could leave me without buffs. 

[KrispyXIV]

2 more good games today, with one crushing win and one loss by a single point.  

I lost the second game because I failed to accomplish a Battle Tactic twice, which was brutal

Synessa continues to be a significant carry and possible MVP, especially with Cogs to give her a second cast and a +1 casting terrain to park her on and hurl infinite range Pavane's from.  Worst decision I made all day was to throw her into combat to try and benefit from her melee attacks, which resulted in her untimely death.  

Exalted Bladebringer also remains deadly strong when it comes to actually making enemy units go away.  

I really want to like Dexcessa, but she continues to be pretty OK.

Be'lakor is much better than OK, he's great.

Summoning is SUPER strong when it comes to versatility and having the right tool for the situation - but look out for those tactics that require models from your starting army to do them.  The game I lost I was going to table my opponent, but I literally couldn't accomplish any tactics last turn because either I had used all of them OR I couldn't do the remaining ones with summoned units.

[Elazar The Glorified]

Great write-ups @Carnith and @KrispyXIV some more useful insight to keep adding to the collective! 😊

From my games so far Battle Tactics are pretty huge and I think with the way the battlelplans score largely leading to otherwise tight games (at least from my experience so far - plenty I've still not tried though) that's where we're going to win or lose so I think a little like list building in 40k around your secondaries there's probably some merit to at least having an eye on what you'd potentially be looking to use for certain battle tactics and working out whether that tends to mean you need to pick them early before attrition means you're relying on summoned units and/or whether certain units arw worth wrapping in cotton wool until the opportune moment.

Wizards in particular I think are going to be incredibly important as they can get you the bonus VP for the Monster related Tactics with Metamorphosis without offering up the bonus points for killing monsters all game (but still risk and reward for doing so when they cast it as they're then a prime target) Contorted Epitome is the obvious choice but I struggle for points with the Epitome alongside others I really want in my list.

[Carnith]

Also something I want to try again was 20 blissbarbs. The way our board was set up, there was a lot of line of sight blocking terrain as our GW store gave us a board with lots of deathworld 40k terrain. With my opponent throwing the BoC bull in front of me, I couldn't move up with the rest of my units, so I had to shift them over. The best they could do was unleash hell into dragon ogors that charged them, which did kill one, they survived combat fairly well but still needed inspiring presence. The next turn they continued to shoot into the dragon ogors and needed slicks to come save them and the chariot. 

Maybe outflanking them for 41 shots right away might be good? But Sigvald definitely needs to be shifted upwards since he is super slow. 

[Feorag]

Having finished off my final bits of beasts of chaos after my slaaneshi painting break it is time to get back on it with my 3rd party LOP.

Also working on the two gw ones I have at the same time I just like having things in 3s and they have to be different! 

 

 

 

[LeonBox]

So I could use a little advice. My opponent, hyper-competitive killjoy that he is, is going LRL again (I'm pretty damn tired of facing them at this point, it's basically every battle) and I could use some advice on a decent list to counter their shenanigans. I have to assume magic is basically a write-off, so I may go light on wizards and put the points elsewhere. I think Glutos is still a good choice because of his tankiness and debuff abilities, but I'm unsure about anything else. 

[JackStreicher]

2 hours ago, LeonBox said:

So I could use a little advice. My opponent, hyper-competitive killjoy that he is, is going LRL again (I'm pretty damn tired of facing them at this point, it's basically every battle) and I could use some advice on a decent list to counter their shenanigans. I have to assume magic is basically a write-off, so I may go light on wizards and put the points elsewhere. I think Glutos is still a good choice because of his tankiness and debuff abilities, but I'm unsure about anything else. 

With Slaanesh? I don't think you actually have a chance... 😕

[Enoby]

2 hours ago, LeonBox said:

So I could use a little advice. My opponent, hyper-competitive killjoy that he is, is going LRL again (I'm pretty damn tired of facing them at this point, it's basically every battle) and I could use some advice on a decent list to counter their shenanigans. I have to assume magic is basically a write-off, so I may go light on wizards and put the points elsewhere. I think Glutos is still a good choice because of his tankiness and debuff abilities, but I'm unsure about anything else. 

I know Michael won with that list posted previously against Teclis Lumineth, but I'm not sure how they won. I'd take a guess that it was more of an objective game

I think the key is killing Teclis, or killing everything he supports, but that's easier said than done. How well protected is he/the archers? 

If there's a way to reach him, trying as hard as possible to get first turn with Lurid Haze Sigvald double pile in with a KoS may be your best bet. 

Is it Sentinals who tend to be the problem unit besides Teclis? If so, maybe tagging them first turn with Hellstriders would be a good plan. A unit of Hellstriders may die to unleash hell, but they're cheap and having a follow up unit may be a good plan.

I think the quicker you can cause them hassle, the better the chance you have - especially if you can tag all of his good units first turn in combat. Glutos is also good if you can stick him into a unit of sentinals because he's a pretty bad target to shoot and he does okay damage. 

It really depends on how he plays, but if there's any opening on Teclis (including from behind) then that should be exploited. If not (and even if so) then the archers should be tagged asap with Hellstriders and/or the Masque (for a safe tag).