AoS 2 - Hedonites of Slaanesh Discussion

[azdimy]

Why is Sigvald not a Deamon? The locus would be nice on him so that s probably why

[Enoby]

9 hours ago, azdimy said:

Why is Sigvald not a Deamon? The locus would be nice on him so that s probably why

I think, lore wise, he's just not a daemon - he's like an exhalted mortal, more like Archaon.

[Wordy9th]

I've been doing a fair bit of list building of late as a new Slaanesh player. I apologise for how much is in this and if these questions have already been answered in the past, any up to date comments on any of these units are appreciated!

So far the units that seem 'good' are:

Sigvald

Glutos

Bladebringer on Exalted Chariot

Symbaresh Twinsouls

-------------

Those units I feel are good for their points, now to the 'good for Slaanesh' list.

Contorted Epiotome? (It's a lot of points for 2 casts and what seems a pretty random and situational ability)

Hellstriders? (They're our only screens right now it seems - also why on earth do they have a 4+? They're naked!)

Seekers (both slickblade and blissbarb versions, super expensive but really versitile)

Painbringers (uh, vindictors but a bit worse?)

---------------------

Units I'm not sure about -

Shardspeaker (she seems really good but there's so many caveats such as short range and rolling 3+).

Blissbarb archers (They seem like they would do work if you went really heavy into them (like 44-66), I'm still not sure if having them as min battle line is a good option, and if they should be reinforced or not).

Lord of Pain. The 'tax' to get battleline seems questionable.

Fiends - seem too expensive for what they do, why wouldn't I get slickblades instead?

Seekers - 2d6 run and charge and an extra attack for the same cost as Daemonettes? They seem alright to me.

All the chariots. The exalted chariot seems miles better than the others for the double mortal wounds hit. I have a spare chariot from the Shadow and Pain box, and I'm wondering what to build it as.

The Dread Pageant, seem pretty good for 130 points?

 

 

 

 

[Lucentia]

I'd move Hellstriders up into the simply good category, relatively cheap, ideal 5-model cavalry screens, fast, 4+ base save can be a big deal sometimes.  (They have a 4+ cos of their shields, fyi, it's, like, a 5+ base plus 1 for the shields, I guess.)

Shardspeaker I don't rate that high, her ability is too flakey to rely on, and she only has access to the mostly worthless mortal spell lore.

Blissbarbs are okay, sometimes you need something a 3rd battleline that can sit around and plink at stuff for depravity.  I'd be scared to reinforce them cos of their awful bravery.

Lord of Pain has kind of decent damage for a melee hero, and is moderately tough, I don't think you're throwing immediately just by putting him in a list, but yeah, he doesn't make the 'good' list for me.

Seeker Chariots can be kinda cute, but like most of the demon stuff their stats are bad for their points so you'd want to summon them, but then there are normally better options to summon!

[Elazar The Glorified]

I think a few of those things are synergy dependent. Lord of Pain is I think actually a really good support hero. If you're running Twinsouls he gives them their rerolls back on the turns they're getting their ward save thanks to his command ability and on the other turns he can be giving Glutos rerolls instead. That he makes your Twinsouls a Battleline choice is an extra boon, especially if you're using Sigvald as that means you're in Invaders and Lurid Haze and so having him as an extra general is a no-brainer.

I've alternated running Blissbarbs as smaller units and reinforced and my preference at the minute is for one reinforced unit. It stops them being an easy pick for your opponent for Broken Ranks and if you're running Glutos you can benefit from his Battleshock buffs and/or Battle Rapture (not like there's a better mortal power to take for him really...). A unit of 22 Blissbarbs can focus things down fairly well with All-Out-Attack or spread around wounds if you're trying to farm Depravity.

Twinsouls are one of our best melee units. They're not without their flaws but I still really value them. My regular opponents have learnt to be quite scared of these now!

The Dread Pageant are one of our most cost-effective units for output. They're never going to be the best unit on the field but they're a perfect little toolbox unit and my next choice to go into the Mists with Sigvald when running Lurid Haze as left be they can score plenty of points and make a nuisance of themselves and if your opponent focuses on them, they're one of our cheaper units, can tank a bit through Vasillac and don't count against the battle tactics for you.

Sigvald is a one-trick pony but it's a trick that keeps opponents thinking and that's always a bonus!

 

[azdimy]

On 3/25/2022 at 4:04 AM, Enoby said:

I think, lore wise, he's just not a daemon - he's like an exhalted mortal, more like Archaon.

From what I ve seen, he s achieved deamonhood and is now very much a deamon despite his mortal appearance

[Lucky Snake Eyes]

So I finished the tournament, here are the results:

Round 1: vs Nurgle

Opponents list was glottkin, 20 blight kings, sorcerer and lord of blights. Battleplan was savage gains. My opponent left an opening big enough for Sigvald to slip through and get a double pile in from the keeper to wipe a unit of blightkings and the sorcerer turn one so I took a big lead off his back objective. I kept the momentum up and left him with only the glottkin at the end of the game. Pulled a 44 - 34 win.

Round 2 was also nurgle on survival of the fittest. This time with GUO, lord of afflictions, 20 plaguebearers and a bunch of pusgoyles. Sigvald whiffed hard and the keeper even harder doing a combined 5 damage between the two of them and immediately dying in the following turn. It was downhill from there and I was tabled by bottom of turn 3. I had 8 points to my oppoenents 32.

Last round was against hallowed knights stormcast on veins of ghur. My opponent ran a castle of gardus, lord relictor, celestant prime, krondys, 2 stormdrakes, 10 vindicators and 5 liberators. It wasn't as big of a blowout as round 2 but after the vindicators sigvald killed killing him on the fight on death and self destructs, then being revived by call for aid... It started going down hill. The stormdrakes tanked everything I threw at them and I was tabled by bottom of 3. I brought 30 daemonettes on the fane on top of 4 for a few more points and then they got wiped out. 22 - 56 for my opponent.

 

Man are we in a rough spot when it comes to cracking armour. And while I dodged any big shooting lists, I'm afraid to bring exalted bladebringers and glutos to risk losing out on drop count to a shooting list that will cripple me turn 1.

[Carnith]

Found the one slaanesh player at Adepticon GT. Even brought slaangors, the absolute Chad. 

[Lucentia]

I played in a one-day local tournament yesterday, only very tiny, just 10 players, but there were some strong lists in the mix.  I managed to go 2/1, only losing to the first place player, winding up with the second place trophy (and best painted to boot!) I was going in with the aim of winning at least one game, so I'm more than happy with the results!

My list was the fairly standard strong core set-up with Glutos, 10 Twinsouls, and Sigvald.  Hellstriders for screening and objectives.  Blissbarb Archers and Seekers for depravity points and picking off weakened targets, and with a flaming weapon Exalted Chariot rounding things up.

Round 1 was First Blood against a beautifully painted Flesh-Eater Courts list, however, this was against a fairly new-ish player and was a fairly by the numbers game, so I won't go into a full account, one of those games were you can summon a Keeper in the late turns just for fun.

 

Game 2 was Feral Foray vs Stormcast Eternals, this was the list which won first place overall, and you can probably guess at much of its construction, not quite the hardest Stormcast list in the world, but still with 6 Longstrikes and 2 dragons pulling most of the work, whilst Bastian and a couple of chariots are already kind of tough targets for Hedonites to deal with!

To be totally honest I wasn't trying my best in this match, the amount of effort you've got to put in just to draw even with a list like that makes the game kind of a drag for me, screened off as best I could round 1 but one chariot made a 12" charge to obliterate a Hellstrider unit and tie the Exalted Chariot up, 12 wounds on a 3+ save puts our chariots to shame!  Though the Longstrikes failed to do any real damage to Glutos even after using the hero phase shooting CA.  Glutos got his spell off on the dragons and I had to risk pushing up heavily to avoid just getting shot off the board, but the Blissbarbs only managed to inflict a single wound on the Longstrikes, which proceeded to Translocate far out of range, and Sigvald chumped his ward saves and died far too quickly.  I managed to cling on till round 4 and snag a few extra battle tactics running my remaining units around, but it was a fairly predictable rout against a list where luck has to be very much on my side to stand a chance.

 

Round 3 was Tectonic Activity vs Daughters of Khaine, naturally this was Morathi and her bow snake companions, though not the full 15 Blood Stalkers with scattered chaff that you generally see, this was more of a combined arms approach, but still quite scary!

Fortunately I do have a large DoK army myself and have played with them frequently, though not so much with their 2.0 tome, so at least I was ahead in terms of knowing my enemy here!  Unlike the last game the LoS blocking terrain on this board was quite good, so I was able to limit the Blood Stalkers sight lines a bit, they actually failed to kill the Exalted Chariot that I had left exposed as bait with a combined hero phase and shooting phase volley!  Of course it probably also helped that the first thing Morathi did in the game was miscast Mindrazor and deal 3 unwardable wounds to herself...

As well as the bow snakes this DoK list was using 10-model Witch Elf units as melee darts, soaking up all the melee buffs as high-damage throwaway pieces that were hard to ignore but also difficult to prioritise over, say, all those bow snakes and such, which was quite neat to see.  The Shadow Queen went in hard on my left flank, which was basically just the chariot and some Hellstriders, but Glutos's -1 to hit aura helped to stymie the output of both her and the witch elves on the right flank.  I was debating whether to try and just Crippling Famishment the Shadow Queen and run away from her, but I decided it was probably best to try and pin her in place, I would've preferred to use Glutos for this probably, but he was out of position so Sigvald had to do his best, which is on the one hand is good cos he's basically guaranteed to knock off 3 wounds per turn, but risky cos a few bad saves and he could just die.  The Hagg Nar command trait remains quite potent, I expected my Blissbarbs to be much better at killing 6+ save Witch Elves than they actually proved, but the Seekers were at least able to charge an isolated Hag Queen to snag the prime objective.

Sigvald managed to squeak on with 1 wound remaining as my opponent won priority, but he opted to try and use the Blood Stalkers to take out Glutos instead of freeing up the Shadow Queen, this allowed me to knock the last 3 wounds off of her in my charge phase with the chariot, allowing Sigvald to make a glorious 12" charge into the Blood Stalkers and wipe out half the unit, with Glutos joining in on the other side to finish off the rest whilst the Twinbloods removed the Slaughter Cauldron.  After which it was basically just cleanup.  I certainly had luck on my side for this game, and my opponent was ultimately too cavalier with the Shadow Queen, but a win's a win, in the end!

I love this image cos it looks like some shining knight squaring off against a monstrous serpent-woman, but in the lore it's kind of the opposite, cute!

[pnkdth]

Matt's 5-0 list: https://www.tabletop.to/gt-odz/list/mateusz-eljasz

Very interesting list. I imagine he is using Siggie and the Chimera as tactical missiles (chimera also solid source of MW/DPs). Archers do what they do and Synessa and Belakor use their toolbox. The mounted elements for objective play. No idea how he utilised summoning but either case. 5-0 is damn impressive and I like it because there's a lot more HoS in the list than some of the jank we've seen before.

[Wordy9th]

I do get sad where I see allied units holding up a weaker book, but it is what it is. Was there any info on what was summoned? It seems that chariots (though I don't know which ones) and daemonettes are the go to.

Interestingly on the Honest Wargamer stats page, Seekers are in the top three most popular units taken for tournaments?

[Enoby]

Oooh some big (hopefully) news for us...

[Lucentia]

Haha, that'd better be the biggest white dwarf they've ever published if it wants to paper over the cracks in this tome!  Here's hoping for something juicy at least.

[Jaskier]

I'm expecting us to get an extra allegiance rule that de-incentivizes summoning somewhat. I wouldn't expect any points changes unfortunately, but still, this is very exciting!

[Enoby]

I'm cautiously optimistic, but we should definitely keep our expectations low just for our own sakes.

I thought it'd be helpful to go over what isn't likely to be improved, mostly on the basis that these changes would be too large or would be in the GHB.

Things that are very unlikely to be changed:

- Points reductions as they're almost always restricted to GHB and December updates

- Warscroll rewrites, again as they're usually restricted to GHB and December updates, and GW may think this would be too hard to keep track of in a White Dwarf

- Allegiance ability overhauls. While we may see tweaks and additions, the core of the book will stay the same. On the bright side, small changes/additions are pretty likely if not certain

- Similar to before, but changes to our summoning is unlikely. Perhaps there will be additional rules like "if you have more DP, your army is stronger so you don't need to summon", but the summoning table itself unlikely to change and I doubt they'll make any changes to the depravity rules.

On the bright side, I think the below are possible/likely to change:

- Changes to each host to reflect the fact that warscroll battalions are no longer used; even if this is just a removal, I hope it will be replaced with something else 

- An additional allegiance ability, though no clue what it could be. It may be a small change, but we can hope for Excess of Violence to work on shooting, a benefit for not summoning, and a way to buff our units (perhaps tied into the previous rule)

- We will almost certainly get more core battalions, battle tactics, grand strategies. They probably won't be good but who knows.

- If we're very lucky, and this seems to only happen rarely but it's possible, we may get our own unique spin on the core rules such as BoC's monstrous actions and Ossiarch's command abilities. It would be great if chariots had their own set of monstrous actions

- If we're very lucky, but I do think this is unlikely, we'll get a new host

[Jaskier]

I think unique heroic actions make a lot of sense for us.

[Enoby]

1 hour ago, Jaskier said:

I think unique heroic actions make a lot of sense for us.

I agree - it'd be a nice boost, especially for some of our lesser used heroes. Even if it was one per host, it might breathe life into things like the KoS. 

I'm just wondering, what have the other White Dwarves been like? From the ones I've seen:

- Ossiarchs: Big changes to their command abilities, including new ones. Overall, a good change to make them more in line with other armies. I think it gave them one or two more heroic actions too.

- Slaves to Darkness: Very small, pretty disappointing changes that just allowed some of the least used heroes to take marks and let cultists be battleline sometimes. A good narrative section though. 

- Beasts of Chaos: A pretty huge change which upgraded their herdstone and gave them interesting monstrous actions.

- Khorne: I think this has been considered the worst so far, giving this already rubbish army just a 6+ save against spells, which is worse than one of the Cities of Sigmar armies. 

So far the results have been pretty mixed, and there's not really a general pattern to it.

You may initially think "oh, Beasts of Chaos were so bad they just wrote loads to make them better", and that would be sensible, but then Khorne (who has been struggling for nearly just as long) got one of the worst updates. 

The absolute best case scenario is that the writer looked at the survey and took in as much as possible for this update. This, however, is pretty unlikely due to the sheer number of changes.

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

50 minutes ago, Enoby said:

I agree - it'd be a nice boost, especially for some of our lesser used heroes. Even if it was one per host, it might breathe life into things like the KoS. 

I'm just wondering, what have the other White Dwarves been like? From the ones I've seen:

- Ossiarchs: Big changes to their command abilities, including new ones. Overall, a good change to make them more in line with other armies. I think it gave them one or two more heroic actions too.

- Slaves to Darkness: Very small, pretty disappointing changes that just allowed some of the least used heroes to take marks and let cultists be battleline sometimes. A good narrative section though. 

- Beasts of Chaos: A pretty huge change which upgraded their herdstone and gave them interesting monstrous actions.

- Khorne: I think this has been considered the worst so far, giving this already rubbish army just a 6+ save against spells, which is worse than one of the Cities of Sigmar armies. 

So far the results have been pretty mixed, and there's not really a general pattern to it.

You may initially think "oh, Beasts of Chaos were so bad they just wrote loads to make them better", and that would be sensible, but then Khorne (who has been struggling for nearly just as long) got one of the worst updates. 

The absolute best case scenario is that the writer looked at the survey and took in as much as possible for this update. This, however, is pretty unlikely due to the sheer number of changes.

Soulblight Gravelords gained an extra rule that gave all VAMPIRE LORDs the option to make a SUMMONABLE unit fight immediately after they fight in combat. Other than that, there were targeted buffs for Legion of Blood, which was previously probably the worst subfaction. They are playable, perhaps even good, now. Gravelords also gained two forgettable mount traits. The Grand Strategies and Battle Tactics were bad to situational.

Cities of Sigmar gained two mount traits, one for griffins and one for black dragons. The griffin trait is actually good. They also got one good battle tactic out of the update. I think that was it? Both this update and the one for Gravelords felt appropriate to me. Neither of these factions were struggling and they just got some minor goodies/quality of life stuff.

II think that only leaves Seraphon, who got a scenery-based allegiance ability and two mount traits (one of which is a special monstrous action). I think they got a usable battle tactic or two, as well.

Edited March 30, 2022 by Neil Arthur Hotep

[Rachmani]

Y‘all forgot Sons of Behamat, who got bosses of the stomp!

[Elazar The Glorified]

To be fair the last couple of these have had Warscroll rewrites but on the faction scenery piece. Certainly a possibility that extra rules can be baked into the Fane as it also adds some balance as it can be Smashed to Rubble. We'll have to wait and see but as my other army is Beasts of Chaos it was great to see such an elegant approach to how they've been buffed and if we get something even half as impactful we can be in a much better position. Don't underestimate how useful an extra few Battle Tactics might be as well. Even if in isolation they're not amazing there's always a use for more options, particularly in certain missions and match-ups where some of the core ones become very tricky to score without a turn to set them up first etc. Options to keep us scoring are always valuable. I'm going to hope for perhaps an allegiance ability to buff the Slaangor. That way they can dial them up a fair bit without worrying about them suddenly being awesome in other armies (or Beasts if they ever get round to fixing their keywords...) I'm going to sit here with everything crossed until this lands, hoping that they give them something insane like native fight twice on the charge or something. No, I won't dial back my expectations! 😂

Edited March 30, 2022 by Elazar The Glorified

[Enoby]

Thanks for the other White Dwarf info @Neil Arthur Hotep and @Rachmani  It does look like most of them are proportional to their armies, with Khorne being the exception (maybe Slaves to Darkness too, but they didn't really need much help - they have some bad warscrolls, but their allegiance abilities are mostly fine if not a bit restrictive). 

If we get something proportional, then being one of the worst armies win rate-wise, we should theoretically get something at the Beasts of Chaos level. On the other hand, Beasts of Chaos were infamously bad for a very long time and they attempted multiple fixes before this one, so it probably won't be on their level. 

 I don't want to presume too much, but the loudest complaints have been "too many points" and "too much of a focus on summoning" (and "Slaangors suck" but that may be a GHB fix). 

They can't fix the points but they can do something about the summoning. Even if it it, as mentioned before by others, a bonus for storing depravity over spending it. 

In all honesty, I'd love this and it'd go a long way to fixing an army if the rules were good enough.

Even if it was a "spend X depravity for Y buff this turn", that'd still be a nice alternative. 

Things like extra rend, run and charge, automatic Locus of Diversion, always strike first on one unit - all would be thematic buffs.

[Rachmani]

I think the Hedonites biggest problem in that sense is that they’re stuck inbetween DoK & Khorne in the sense of „what abilities would be fitting to express an orgy spiralling out of control“. And those two armies basically cover the ecstasy of bloodshed already. So Slaanesh get that weird - but thematically fitting - we feast, we f*ck, we spill some blood (and food and wine) and kill a bunch and our excitement lures in demons from the warp and it it all goes southways from there. 
 
So I don‘t see that going away anytime soon.

[Enoby]

6 minutes ago, Rachmani said:

So I don‘t see that going away anytime soon.

I think Depravity Points as a concept work very well, but I do think summoning is the thing our book does best. Unfortunately, summoning at the cost of your initial army (e.g. few buffs, middling warscrolls, expensive points) doesn't feel fun or thematic.

Depravity Points, as they work now, would work well for a group of niave cultists. They'd have rubbish stats and poor buffs, but they'd summon their masters to bring about the real army. In an army that was thematically about weaker mortals getting tricked by powerful daemons, current depravity points would be great. To be honest, it would make lore sense for Tzeentch to have the best summoning.

But currently the lore is that our army is full of supremely skilled warriors who value perfection of their craft. Even Blissbarbs, the lowest of the hosts, have good skills with a bow. Summoning is seen as an honour and a blessing, but it doesn't really play out that way. Instead of a powerful army of knights who prove themselves in the name of their god to receive some support from daemons, it's a medium-skilled army of very few knights who need the help of daemons to do much of anything.

Summoning should stay, but it should be toned down to allow the army to stand on its own.

[azdimy]

I d like to see a ward save for all our deamons as an allegiance ability and the locus of diversion changed.

Here is my take on a new locus for 3.0:

At the end of the charge phase pick an ennemy unit within 3 inches. On a 4+ that unit cannot iissue or receive command in the next combat phase. Greater deamons add +2 to the roll

Edited March 31, 2022 by azdimy

[Jaskier]

12 minutes ago, azdimy said:

I d like to see a ward save for all our deamons as an allegiance ability and the locus of diversion changed.

Here is my take on a new locus for 3.0:

At the end of the charge phase pick an ennemy unit within 3 inches. On a 4+ that unit cannot iisse or receive command in the next combat phase. Greater deamons add +2 to the roll

I guess the only issue there is that ward saves are Nurgle's thing, and GW likes to keep AoS Daemons distinct from one another. It's definitely the simplest and most lore-accurate way to improve the army though.