AoS 2 - Hedonites of Slaanesh Discussion

[Wordy9th]

Thanks for the responses guys, that’s quite cool.

im interested in what the rules are for this though and why. Isn’t the start of the combat phase still in the combat phase? Is this clarified anywhere?

cheers!

[zombiepiratexxx]

If you look at 12.0 in the Core Rules for how the combat phase play out, there is no "start" of the combat phase specifically. There is a whole list at the bottom of the page regarding fights first interactions too. 

[Carnith]

It was fun. I had sigvald and 10 symbaresh with +1 hit/wound and reroll hits) go into 20 pinks. They did 75 damage. It's crazy they could put out that much damage. Crazy still is how the pinks still didn't manage to die. 

[azdimy]

12 hours ago, Carnith said:

It was fun. I had sigvald and 10 symbaresh with +1 hit/wound and reroll hits) go into 20 pinks. They did 75 damage. It's crazy they could put out that much damage. Crazy still is how the pinks still didn't manage to die. 

And worse pinks don t even give depravity because they don t count as being slained until they are down to brimstones only

[Enoby]

A slight buff for us in a random update...

[Lucentia]

Hah, I feel like if I'm in a position to be killing off units of Blood Stalkers and Longstrikes I've probably already one the game, but every little helps, I suppose...

[zombiepiratexxx]

I'll have to admit that my first thoughts on seeing the new Battlescroll was "if I'm already struggling to kill the top tier units, how does giving me more victory points make my army better against them?" They might have a ton of playtest data to back this up but it seems like something that doesn't actually fix anything. 

[Elazar The Glorified]

The two big bits with this to me are that firstly, it's interesting to see GW trying something other than just points changes to adjust the balance in the middle of a season. I don't know whether it will have the desired effect but definitely one to watch. The other bit is this feels like as Hedonites players we'll feel the benefit of this only in a truly competitive environment. We might not have the tools to maximise the bonus points from this, but where we will potentially feel this more is that there are lists much better than ours at removing those units so that's potentially huge amounts of VP being given away by Dragon Spam etc against other good lists so as a result the meta will shift as people re-optimise lists to get the balance between taking the good stuff and not giving up too many points to other lists. Ultimately, at this point we don't know what the new meta will look like but there's a chance that the sorts of units that are on that list that we struggle with will have less presence on tables and that certainly can't hurt us. I think with that change though, if we could get a White Dwarf boost like Beasts of Chaos have and what potentially Blades of Khorne might feel from theirs then we might actually be in a decent position. Imagine if they gave us a couple of Battle Tactics around Depravity and/or Summoning in the way that Beasts did, a new Slaangor warscroll to make them actually useful and perhaps an extra allegiance trait. Ok, I've gone into dreaming but the first bit of this post still stands. The meta will shift (in a tournament setting) so there might be some improvement on how Hedonites perform there. 

[azdimy]

Most of the priority targets in this battlescroll are units I cannot kill with my hedonites. As stated above, it will help other armies (not prime hunter ones unless they have kragnos without priority target units themselves) but will this change the competitive lists? I think we ll see less Sob but they were already  trending down struggling against Stormcasts and IJ. IDK is another one that will give them a hard time

Overall,  I m pretty indifferent regarding this update as it s not hurting us either but it is definitely not providing the help we need

Edited March 15, 2022 by azdimy

[Third]

On 3/14/2022 at 3:03 PM, azdimy said:

And worse pinks don t even give depravity because they don t count as being slained until they are down to brimstones only

This is not true

"At the end of the battleshock phase, you receive 1 depravity point for each unit on the battlefield that had a wound or mortal wound that was not negated allocated to it in that turn, or has fewer models than it had at the start of that turn."

[azdimy]

7 minutes ago, Third said:

This is not true

"At the end of the battleshock phase, you receive 1 depravity point for each unit on the battlefield that had a wound or mortal wound that was not negated allocated to it in that turn, or has fewer models than it had at the start of that turn."

And pink don t meet any of these criteria. There are no wound allocated on models as they are single wound models. And the unit typically ends up with more models after you attacked them than what they had at the start of the turn 😀

Edited March 15, 2022 by azdimy

[Elazar The Glorified]

22 minutes ago, azdimy said:

And pink don t meet any of these criteria. There are no wound allocated on models as they are single wound models. And the unit typically ends up with more models after you attacked them than what they had at the start of the turn 😀

It's a unit that's had a wound allocated to it on the turn and is still there to generate the depravity, not a mini. Doesn't matter if the mini the wound was allocated to is still there or not, the trigger for Depravity in this case is the same thing that triggers the Split and Split Again rule in the first place - a wound or mortal wound being allocated this slays a model and it splits

[azdimy]

1 hour ago, Elazar The Glorified said:

It's a unit that's had a wound allocated to it on the turn and is still there to generate the depravity, not a mini. Doesn't matter if the mini the wound was allocated to is still there or not, the trigger for Depravity in this case is the same thing that triggers the Split and Split Again rule in the first place - a wound or mortal wound being allocated this slays a model and it splits

Guess I ve been giving myself a disadvantage all this time! 😀

[Elazar The Glorified]

7 hours ago, azdimy said:

Guess I ve been giving myself a disadvantage all this time! 😀

We definitely don't need any more of them! 😂

Edited March 16, 2022 by Elazar The Glorified

[zombiepiratexxx]

On 3/15/2022 at 9:45 AM, Elazar The Glorified said:

 I think with that change though, if we could get a White Dwarf boost like Beasts of Chaos have and what potentially Blades of Khorne might feel from theirs then we might actually be in a decent position. 

Blades of Khorne's WD update is terrible. It does nothing to solve the issues that Tome already has and actually puts them in a worse spot. As bad as I feel about Hedonites, I am glad we're not Khorne. Really does seem like GW just struggles with what they want the various Chaos factions to be which shouldn't be too tough really when they have their identity. 

[Enoby]

1 hour ago, zombiepiratexxx said:

Blades of Khorne's WD update is terrible. It does nothing to solve the issues that Tome already has and actually puts them in a worse spot. As bad as I feel about Hedonites, I am glad we're not Khorne. Really does seem like GW just struggles with what they want the various Chaos factions to be which shouldn't be too tough really when they have their identity. 

On the bright side, they've at least acknowledged that we're in a bad spot with the new update, which they didn't do for Khorne - if we get a bit dangerously optimistic, it may be that GW don't see a problem with Khorne (for some reason) and so didn't see a need to give them much help in the White Dwarf.

If we're lucky, we're viewed by the designers in the same way Beasts of Chaos are and they give us just as much of a helping hand. 

While I don't think the most recent victory points update did much for us at all, what it did do is give acknowledgement from GW that we're in a bad spot. Like I said, Khorne don't seem to flash on GW's radar as an issue so we'll hopefully get better treatment than them. 

[Elazar The Glorified]

Yeah I should stress I hadn't seen the Blades of Khorne update and I'm not close enough to the army to know even having now seen it whether it would be of much help. I was optimistic for how well the Beasts one addressed some of the problems with the army and how much it's given my list writing with them a new lease of life. So yes, if we got a Beasts style update then coupled with those balance tweaks it might be enough. Typical GW managing to lower the bar always! 🙃

[Popisdead]

On 2/26/2022 at 2:26 AM, Enoby said:

 

This is recent?

 

I thought about a year+ ago he quit writing for BL.  Maybe this is just royalties coming and and tempting him to write another BL novel.

 

I hope he does.  

 

[Enoby]

2 minutes ago, Popisdead said:

This is recent?

 

I thought about a year+ ago he quit writing for BL.  Maybe this is just royalties coming and and tempting him to write another BL novel.

 

I hope he does.  

 

I think it's pretty recent (like this year), but I don't think it means he's coming back to BL. I think he just gets money when his books sell, and they're still on sale.

[Popisdead]

1 hour ago, Enoby said:

I think it's pretty recent (like this year), but I don't think it means he's coming back to BL. I think he just gets money when his books sell, and they're still on sale.

Ah yeah okay that makes sense and is clear.

[AngryPanda]

So, I’ve been wondering, by chance do you guys think we’re gonna get another book within the year? 
 

The reason I ask is because DoK are getting a new book, and they released at the same time we do. Yet within the Slaanesh book, we don’t have Synessa or Dexcessa, there’s been various point changes, and some warscroll changes as well. It feels as if within a year our book is already outdated. 

[CeleFAZE]

1 hour ago, AngryPanda said:

So, I’ve been wondering, by chance do you guys think we’re gonna get another book within the year? 
 

The reason I ask is because DoK are getting a new book, and they released at the same time we do. Yet within the Slaanesh book, we don’t have Synessa or Dexcessa, there’s been various point changes, and some warscroll changes as well. It feels as if within a year our book is already outdated. 

I wouldn't hold out hope. I've tried to not be overly negative, but order armies, and aelves in particular are clearly a favorite of the design team, and generally get updates or errata with a fair amount of regularity. Conversely after our first burst of dominance on the competitive scene we've been on the receiving end of quite a bit of negative balancing when it comes to the rules team, and it strikes me that there are edicts from the top not to allow us a chance of reaching anything resembling the level of power we had before. We'll maybe get some small bones thrown to us like the afterthought in the battlescroll update, but I would not expect another book so soon, or even to be anywhere close to the front of the line where White Dwarf updates are concerned.

At best we'll see some really cautious point adjustments in the GHB, maybe a 5-10 point reduction on slickblades and the shardspeaker or lord of pain (but probably not both). I would be unsurprised if our daemons received another point increase at the same time, possibly with the reasoning that we need to be brought in line with point costs for daemon units in other armies, regardless of comparative effectiveness.

At this point I'm moving forward with the idea that what we currently have is what we'll be stuck with for a few years at minimum, and the best we can do is try to squeeze every last drop of effectiveness and efficiency from our present toolset.

[Popisdead]

10 hours ago, AngryPanda said:

So, I’ve been wondering, by chance do you guys think we’re gonna get another book within the year? 

No.  

Primarily books are driven by model releases.  Having just had a large model release wave, I would be pretty surprised they re-write a book that is,.. a year old?  Has that ever happened (exclude 40k)?  Now of course that's not always the case.  Seraphon arguably.  I'm not sure if Fireslayers or Deepkin had new models however they had older books.  

Even Stormcast are once an edition aren't they?

The preview show this year's short term AoS releases was one Chaos (Maggotkin)?   Where there any other releases for Battletomes in that preview?

With all that's going on in the world (like,.. actual global problems) I don't see AoS Battle tome releases increasing in speed or tackling a book re-write.  

I think we would all love to see some problems addressed.  I just think if you love this army and want to play it, may as well do it.  Phonecium was written off entirely and some guy just went 5-1 at LVO with it.  To quote him "play what you love."

 

[Yoid]

Im positive about a new book coming soon. As mentioned, we don't even have Dexcessa/Synessa in our book. DoK is coming soon wich means the rule of having a recent book dosnt apply. It would be a perfect chance to release a plastic herald as the single new model. Im worried about such a book being written too early tho, beacuse I hope they got the time ro receive all the feeedback of the players, I want to see summoning greatly nerfed so we can have the core units greatly buffed. By reading the recent books (IDK and FS) our book seem clearly underdesigned and our warscrolls seem utterly undertuned. Making Slaanesh a "Prime Hunter" or wathever they called it is the prove of GW acknowledging the state of the army. Im hoping for a book coming soon (maybe even the next Chaos Battletome already anounced) and changing every single Daemon warscroll. Remember that our Battletome was more of an add-on with all the Daemon stuff copy pasted from the previous one. 

[AngryPanda]

3 hours ago, Popisdead said:

No.  

Primarily books are driven by model releases.  Having just had a large model release wave, I would be pretty surprised they re-write a book that is,.. a year old?  Has that ever happened (exclude 40k)?  Now of course that's not always the case.  Seraphon arguably.  I'm not sure if Fireslayers or Deepkin had new models however they had older books.  

Even Stormcast are once an edition aren't they?

The preview show this year's short term AoS releases was one Chaos (Maggotkin)?   Where there any other releases for Battletomes in that preview?

With all that's going on in the world (like,.. actual global problems) I don't see AoS Battle tome releases increasing in speed or tackling a book re-write.  

I think we would all love to see some problems addressed.  I just think if you love this army and want to play it, may as well do it.  Phonecium was written off entirely and some guy just went 5-1 at LVO with it.  To quote him "play what you love."

 

Which is why I’ve moved on from the army. 
 

It’s hard to enjoy something that is so poorly done. I have the models, but I’m not going to be purchasing anymore Slaanesh, nor will I be bringing Slaanesh to the tabletop when they’re in such a clearly bad spot; all while DoK get a book released within a year of their older book. I’ve moved into Battletech because it’s cheaper and easy to get into, but I might jump into 40k over the summer depending on how good the new Guard models are. 

Models being released alongside a book helps to keep books updated, but that’s not what happened with ours: the Slaanesh book is already outdated because it didn’t include Synessa or Dexcessa. The only model that DoK got was a new foot hero, and if that is sufficient to conclude there’s a new book, I don’t see why having two unique characters would stop us. 
 

I was really hoping for some sort of General Handbook update of sorts to bring us up to par at least with the overpriced points, but that never happened. Instead, we got a bandage fix that makes us “prime hunters,” which essentially is GW’s way of saying that they know of the problem, but this is the best we can do. 

If you’re right, then I’m probably not going to stick around and wait another edition for a book or for some wishful General Handbook update.

The player at LVO who went 5-1 was the exception; the vast majority of data suggests that’s within less than a year most HoS armies vastly underperform at events. Which really says something, considering when a new book is released it at minimum comes within the middle of win/loss ratios.