AoS 2 - Hedonites of Slaanesh Discussion

[Overread]

Summoning in general is always a huge issue to balance into the game when some armies have it and some don't. I also think that when its built into an army as a major feature that's always there it can also curtail design choices.

 

Heck who remembers the first Tome for AoS - where no one took anything but almost all leaders because of summoning. So many build choices locked out because of the mechanic back then and even then you basically wanted to just take all keepers. It didn't promote choice but denied choice by giving one overwhelming mechanic that if you ignored you were always playing worse than best with the army. 

 

[Arzalyn]

Someone in the rumor thread got the white dwarf earlier and posted this sneak peak. Summonless Slaanesh may be a possibility now?

 

[pnkdth]

Could have been interesting but wasn't.

The last bit of hopium is reserved for significant points decreases in the GHB so we can actually afford to lose enough models to make use of 'revel in pain.' After that, let's Hope™ for an improved tome in 2+ years.

 

[CeleFAZE]

3 hours ago, Arzalyn said:

Someone in the rumor thread got the white dwarf earlier and posted this sneak peak. Summonless Slaanesh may be a possibility now?

 

This is literally something I suggested for mortals. That's actually pretty cool. Imagine 10-strong units of exalted seekers and painbringers/twinsouls rallying on 5+. Hopefully there's more, but this more than nothing.

[azdimy]

This white dwarf update seems to do very little to help the faction. It s not nothing and it does give narrative players a buff for not summoning but summoning is better than these buffs.

Rally on 5+: our units die to a stiff breeze only use will be if you survive shooting

+2 mvt: nice buff but summoning 30 deamonettes for 12DPs will be loads better

5+ ward: by the time the faction has 18DPs and not summon, it will have nearly nothing left on the table to be relevant

[Khendall]

This WD...

Edited May 9, 2022 by Khendall

[CeleFAZE]

I was expecting a nerf, and frankly this is better than I'd thought would happen. We can farm depravity fairly quickly, so it's not unreasonable to get to 18 within a turn or two, and we can still summon and use these abilities, which gives us the flexibility to slam down a unit of 30 daemonettes if it's game-winning.

Overall, I think this is another tool in our box, and I'm interested to use it.

Edited May 8, 2022 by CeleFAZE

[Enoby]

I've been having a look at these and initially I was a bit "meh" on them, but actually I am optimistic for one reason - certainly much more than I was with Khorne. Why? Well the big thing is the reason for the design. 

So for Khorne, people had been saying for ages (longer than us) all of the issues with Khorne. They wounded on 4s, had no rend, Bloodtithe is awkward to use, cheerleaders are needed to be average in combat... basically everything you didn't want the God of Blood to be. And what did they do? Gave him a 6+ spell shrug and slightly altered the altar. 

Not only was this weak in game, but it didn't fit the narrative of Khorne at all.  More than that, it told everyone that the design team didn't know/didn't care/didn't agree with Khorne's issues. This is possibly the worst news Khorne fans could have because not only is the new rule bad, but there's little chance it getting better because the designers don't seem to know the problem. 

---

Enter our new rules. They're okay - they provide options to non-summoning Slaanesh which is sorely needed. I very much doubt these will change our place in the meta. I think they are undertuned and they could have done more with them.

However this is not a Khorne situation. In this case, the designers have identified a problem (summoning being such a focus in Slaanesh) and tried to fix it. Even if not fully successful, they have identified an issue and we know that they know and so we may see further improvement in the future. In our new book, whenever it comes out, we can be more confident we'll get something like this but hopefully more advanced. 

--- 

So I'm happy with these - they're not amazing and won't massively improve us without a points change to match. But the reason I'm happy with them is because they now give some sort of option - a way to play without needing to summon. 

It's not a fix, but it's a step in the right direction.

[Carnith]

Maybe we don’t see a points drop because models could get a 5++ now and we gotta pay for that too

[KrispyXIV]

I think the timing/game flow of these abilities is extremely helpful.  One of the big problems with Summoning is that I often ran into situations where I could generate a significant number of DP, but I might be two opponents turns from being able to benefit from them - essentially, generating tons of resources which could theoretically be great, but I had to hope I could hold on until I could theoretically make use of them with no benefits.

But now, you can generate DP, benefit from them in the opponents turn, and then dump them on your turn - and hopefully, replenish enough to get back to your 5+ ward for their next turn.  

You can also Rally on a 5+ before spending the points you had to qualify for that for summons in a later phase.

These benefits don't solve the lack of 'punch' that seems endemic to Slaanesh, but I think they are decently well designed and play well with the pacing and 'flow' of the army.

[azdimy]

My biggest disappointment is that rhis Depravity table doesn t address the lack of damage our army can do and it chose to focus on resilience instead very mildly

[Carnith]

I would loved first first on charge, or some bonus to damage on the charge. With armies gaining a 3+, units like Symbaresh cannot compete. I've blown every buff I can on them just to do minimal damage. It's weird to be an elite army in terms of models and yet not even have elite stats. 

[Jaskier]

I saw someone complaining in another topic about this update somehow 'overtuning' the army thanks to the 5++ which I find to be a pretty absurd claim. You have to get to 18+ DP to access that 5++, and you have to forgo summoning at least to some degree to reach that mark. Slaanesh units are already typically fragile, especially for their cost, and everything being way overpriced relative to other armies means you aren't necessarily getting as much value out of that 5++ as armies like Nurgle do - especially in the high lethality meta we have where DPs can, depending on the matchup, be quite hard to get as units can very easily get wiped out by burst damage. 

Of course, this is before points changes help balance the faction further, because that's what is really holding this army back. Rallying on a 5+ and the +2" move are easy to use and get to because you use them before the end of the movement phase, meaning even if you are planning to summon something in a turn you will get full value out of those before you summon. Getting to 18+ for a 5++ ward and forgoing summoning to get there when considering how easily we fold to high power shooting before getting to that point is my big issue with it, but again, that's something having more units on the field thanks to point drops will help alleviate. 

TLDR; these are decent to good, but like all our other rules are held back by our overpriced units. Ironically the 5+ Rally and 5+ ward make us really good against low damage/attrition armies that typically use those kinds of rules. The +2 move can be clutch too. 

[Lucentia]

I dunno, it's not a nothing update like many of the tome celestials, like, these rules do function and do something for the army, however, it feels to me like it's just pulling in-game decision making in yet another direction.  Playing hedonites, in my experience, is already caught between scoring VP and scoring DP, where you want to let units live for DP but need them dead for objectives, and this update kind of just throws another layer of decision on top of that by incentivising hoarding DP for the bonuses, which feels like a misstep for a faction already sat on a knife's edge.

That said I do like that the first two bonuses can be used and you can still summon later in the same turn, and there are occasions where you'll have lots of DP but no opportunity to spend them yet, so as I say they're not completely useless rules or anything.  But I don't think they really do much to address the pressing weaknesses of the current Hedonite rules, certainly I don't think you could run a successful non-summoning list just off the back of these, our generally low damage output remains untouched, and I'm not going to suddenly start wanting to put Keepers in my lists just cos they might get a juicy 5++ at some point.

However, if we see some key points drops with the GHB maybe this'll be enough to make the army at least a bit more fun to pilot.

[Enoby]

After sleeping on it, I'm more happy with the update, and will be happy if/when we get a big points decrease in the GHB.

At the moment, we can quite comfortably get 12 depravity on the first turn of the second round, and 18 at the end of turn 2 (to be spent round 3) isn't unusual even without trying too hard. With points decreases this should be even easier, so we may end up being able to get a 5+ ward early on in the game.

While summon-less Slaanesh may not quite work at the moment because the ward takes too long, with points decreases this time could be considerably reduced and we could easily obtain a 5+ ward save and summon later without losing it. 

Fingers crossed for the GHB... 

[Elazar The Glorified]

My priority was always the Grand Strategy and the Battle Tactics as that's a big part of how games are won and lost. I'm not 100% sure on where I am with the Grand Strategy. It's an interesting one certainly but it's going to be so dependent on the lists you're up against to score it so I don't think it does enough to make me want to move away from the 1-drop Battle Regiment at army building stage.

The Battle Tactics are a bit more interesting with two that lean into how we might be playing our lists and one that feels a bit of a Hail Mary to me. Death by a Thousand Cuts if you're going for shooting list in particular should be doable as you can still spread around the wounds for Depravity but just split a few shots from each unit to pip those wounds to score it. Alternatively, there's usually at least one bad that needs to be dropped early in most enemy lists so this feels like it's a nice way to score for focussing down an enemy without having to guarantee the kill for things like Bring it Down, Broken Ranks etc so you can save those for more definite kills.

Enrapturing Blur is more situational but it may as well be called 'Sigvald Gonna Sigvald' as it's what we want to do with him half of the time anyway so could have some merit although in the early rounds I'm more likely to be looking at scoring the movement and objective based battle tactics before the middle gets too clogged up so is probably going to be more for if Sigvald hangs on for long enough to go for something squishier later but I can definitely picture there are times I'd pick this.

The Grand Feast is certainly thematic. But unless you're going for some harming your own units shenanigans I don't see how you ever justify going for this over any of the other Battle Tactics as it requires quite a turn to pull off. If they'd given us some extra way even as a one-off to generate Depravity - such as a Command Ability then this might have some (limited) value but as is...

Edited May 9, 2022 by Elazar The Glorified

[CeleFAZE]

1 hour ago, Elazar The Glorified said:

My priority was always the Grand Strategy and the Battle Tactics as that's a big part of how games are won and lost. I'm not 100% sure on where I am with the Grand Strategy. It's an interesting one certainly but it's going to be so dependent on the lists you're up against to score it so I don't think it does enough to make me want to move away from the 1-drop Battle Regiment at army building stage.

The Battle Tactics are a bit more interesting with two that lean into how we might be playing our lists and one that feels a bit of a Hail Mary to me. Death by a Thousand Cuts if you're going for shooting list in particular should be doable as you can still spread around the wounds for Depravity but just split a few shots from each unit to pip those wounds to score it. Alternatively, there's usually at least one bad that needs to be dropped early in most enemy lists so this feels like it's a nice way to score for focussing down an enemy without having to guarantee the kill for things like Bring it Down, Broken Ranks etc so you can save those for more definite kills.

Enrapturing Blur is more situational but it may as well be called 'Sigvald Gonna Sigvald' as it's what we want to do with him half of the time anyway so could have some merit although in the early rounds I'm more likely to be looking at scoring the movement and objective based battle tactics before the middle gets too clogged up so is probably going to be more for if Sigvald hangs on for long enough to go for something squishier later but I can definitely picture there are times I'd pick this.

The Grand Feast is certainly thematic. But unless you're going for some harming your own units shenanigans I don't see how you ever justify going for this over any of the other Battle Tactics as it requires quite a turn to pull off. If they'd given us some extra way even as a one-off to generate Depravity - such as a Command Ability then this might have some (limited) value but as is...

I wrote off the battle tactics as probably going to be terrible from the start, as most of the battle tactics in tome celestials are just worthless fluff that can't be relied on in any way. I think Death by a Thousand Cuts is probably the only innately playable one, and while it isn't the most synergistic with depravity generation it's easy to pull off, and that's really what you want in your tactics by the end of the day. If tactics gave more or less points depending on how difficult they were to complete, I'd see some use for things like the Grand Feast, but without an additional incentive I don't see it ever coming up.

On a different note, the more I chew on this update, the more interesting I find it. We're generally going to have around 6+ depravity banked, even if we intend on summoning. If you haven't achieved that much depravity by the end of your first turn, you're already in a bad spot to begin with. Secondly, we benefit from the extra movement before summoning happens in a turn, and this is huge. An extra 2" of movement on the hero you're summoning from can oftentimes be the difference between summoning a full 30 daemonettes, or 20. Having the ability to move a hero just a bit more can be massive, and beyond that it allows us an even better degree of board control, especially with units like painbringers and foot blissbarbs, which have a harder time getting around by virtue of movement 6.

What about the 18 point bonus? It can happen organically in some situations: say you've just crested 12 points, maybe more at the top of the round. Your opponent goes next, and you have some combats going on, maybe your opponent miscasts, terrain wounds them, or you have some disease tokens on you but still manage to get some wounds out in those combats. That can easily put you at 18+. Then you get double-turned. Normally a double-turn is a death sentence for us, as we're not normally resilient enough to weather it. Now however, our blissbarbs are saving like plaguebearers, and our painbringers are 3+/5++ in melee. We're way more prepared to survive the round at this point, and can swing back with a 30-model unit of daemonettes. If we took ranged fire we can try and rally back some models, and we have the movement to get where we need to be.

My last few tournaments, I normally had one game that I lost hard, no question. In most of those cases, I know for a fact that they were way better players than me, playing strong armies. However, most of my other recent losses have been a hair's breadth from winning. Similarly, my wins were usually also pretty close nailbiters. I think this update could be that slight bump that elevates us from the very bottom of the barrel to a point where we have at least a fighting chance. We have that one more set of tools that give us a benefit while we're already doing what we normally would, as well as a more situational bonus that's pretty significant. It could have been better, I would've preferred far more offensive buffs for the army instead or in addition, but this isn't nothing.

I'm working on a few lists at the moment to decide how I want to try and leverage the new changes. I think we'll need to carefully consider the possibility of reinforcing units, and what units are worth reinforcing. I also think these changes will be useful for the next GHB environment, considering that battleline units are going to be a big thing, and summoned units do not have a battlefield role. It's not going to be like it is currently, where if we desperately want monster stuff we can just morph a wizard into one, or summon a keeper. I think we're very close to a big meta shift, and having a method of increased battleline recursion, speed, and resilience is going to be very useful for us, especially when those first two can be utilized without adversely impacting our summoning.

However things shake out in this new season, more tools is better than less. Sure, it's not what we wanted, but it's what we have, and now that it's a known quantity I'll be doing what I can to squeeze as much effectiveness as I can out of it.

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

I like that this update gives Hedonites one of the thing everyone has been asking for: An alternative use of DP. This will certainly help ease new players that don't have full summoning side boards into the faction.

The buffs are also all very useful. As a Death player, I can attest that the value of a 5+ rally is higher than you might think. Especially since rally returns whole models, so it's good even on cavalry and other multi-wound units.

+2" movement is always good for any playstlye, but especially for infantry heavy armies. Mobility wins games and this is a big mobility buff.

The 5+ ward requires you to make concessions in terms of summoning, but on the other hand Amulet of Destiny was a 5+ ward on one hero, and that was so good that it had to get nerfed down. Getting a 5+ ward on every unit, including heroes, is huge.

The best thing about these buffs in my opinion, though, is that you don't really have to choose between them and summoning. You can stick to the previous summoning game plan of 30 Daemonettes and still make use of the movement and rally buff. It's free value, even if you don't build around it.

I really feel the army is just a few point drops away from being in a fairly reasonable place now.

 

[Enoby]

4 hours ago, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

I really feel the army is just a few point drops away from being in a fairly reasonable place now.

I definitely agree here - I think if we had a large reduction, we would be a much stronger army. Like you've said, a 5+ army wide save is really good; if we can get this to happen early and regularly (by having more units) then we should be at least tanky enough to last longer into the game. 

It's quite nice too because if you've got a large amount of your army left, keeping the 5+ ward save is a good idea if there's no plan for a summon. If your army is struggling, you can get 30 daemonettes and still have enough DP to rally better next time. 

I think the rally will be important for ensuring we don't crumble too early on; units of 10 twinsouls will benefit quite nicely from this early on should they be shot. 

[Khendall]

22 hours ago, CeleFAZE said:

"so it's not unreasonable to get to 18 within a turn or two "

Guyz, we have a Tzeentch intruder here

[Khendall]

13 hours ago, Enoby said:

After sleeping on it, I'm more happy with the update, and will be happy if/when we get a big points decrease in the GHB.

Yeah, Blissbarb Archers going 170 to 165 and KoS 420 to 415

Mark my words

[Khendall]

4 hours ago, Enoby said:

I definitely agree here - I think if we had a large reduction, we would be a much stronger army. Like you've said, a 5+ army wide save is really good; if we can get this to happen early and regularly (by having more units) then we should be at least tanky enough to last longer into the game. 

It's quite nice too because if you've got a large amount of your army left, keeping the 5+ ward save is a good idea if there's no plan for a summon. If your army is struggling, you can get 30 daemonettes and still have enough DP to rally better next time. 

I think the rally will be important for ensuring we don't crumble too early on; units of 10 twinsouls will benefit quite nicely from this early on should they be shot. 

Yeah, just a few points drops away

[CeleFAZE]

4 hours ago, Khendall said:

Yeah, just a few points drops away

You're viewing all the aggregate data since the edition started. Last I took a look we've done a bit better as the meta has shifted more recently. Not stellar certainly, but there's some improvement.

But yeah, we're in a bad place, and I'm not going to argue that this update has brought us to a fully competitive spot. However I'd rather try to make what we have work rather than just stew in the negative. Honestly what will produce more actionable improvement is more data, and so I'll continue to go to what tournaments I can to add to that aggregate, and let you all know how it goes. If we start to do better, maybe it's not as bad in practice as it is in theory. If I get absolutely wrecked hopefully those results can help the decision-making moving forward, even if it's a tiny part of it.

What else can we do?

[Jaskier]

As I've discussed in depth before, Blissbarbs are in an unfortunate spot where dropping them too much can break the army, as - especially with this new update - making them too cheap would make getting to those high Depravity totals all too easy. Acting like a minor drop to them would leave them in a "bad spot" is a bit disingenuous as they're already one of our best units. 

Keepers should be around the 360-380 mark I think, maybe a bit cheaper.

Edited May 10, 2022 by Jaskier

[azdimy]

1 hour ago, CeleFAZE said:

You're viewing all the aggregate data since the edition started. Last I took a look we've done a bit better as the meta has shifted more recently. Not stellar certainly, but there's some improvement.

But yeah, we're in a bad place, and I'm not going to argue that this update has brought us to a fully competitive spot. However I'd rather try to make what we have work rather than just stew in the negative. Honestly what will produce more actionable improvement is more data, and so I'll continue to go to what tournaments I can to add to that aggregate, and let you all know how it goes. If we start to do better, maybe it's not as bad in practice as it is in theory. If I get absolutely wrecked hopefully those results can help the decision-making moving forward, even if it's a tiny part of it.

What else can we do?

I think the fact the Slaanesh is not even present in many 2 day events is also important data for gw to rework the faction. I did like the challenge to play an underperforming faction for over a year now but as I see no meaningful change are being.made, it is time for me to move on and play another faction for now where I can finish my games in time and have a fighting chance against every/most factions showing up at competitive events

Edited May 10, 2022 by azdimy