AoS 2 - Hedonites of Slaanesh Discussion

[Popisdead]

21 hours ago, Klamm said:

Yeah I'm thinking 3 wounds is most likely but a) Iron Golems ogor breacher warscroll also has three wounds while all ogor units have at least four and b) we don't know if the slaangor are the same size as the Direchasm fella (as per the dankhold example), the blurry background models looked more big enough for a 50mm base.

Pretty sure you should be comparing Slaangors and Tzaangors not Ogors or the like.  I would imagine Slaangors will be 40 mm like Tzaangor Englightened on Foot are.  

[Golub87]

1 hour ago, AngryPanda said:

Competitively yes, as I have observed a lot of the major strong lists are tailored towards emphasizing the use of our amazing KoS and support heroes like The Contorted Epitome. There are lists that can be made that are centered on using Daemonettes, Seekers, and Fiends that can preform well, they just won’t be “optimal.”

For the new battle tomb/update, for me it’s going to come down to three factors that determine how powerful the mortals will be: rules, point costs, and battalions. A balance of these three concepts is going to tell me how viable they’ll be on the table. For even if the rules on the models are lackluster, a fair point cost and access to powerful battalion abilities can bring them up quite drastically in value. Nurgle Blightkings are a great example: poor rules by themselves, but when belonging to a battalion they can be very deadly. 

Yeah, you COULD play the less competitive list, but I find it that even with ultra-competitive list building, I just get wiped by Kroak and Co. I'll probably take a break from playing HoS till new rules and units show up. Current meta is just far too oppressive for me.

[Lucky Snake Eyes]

1 hour ago, Golub87 said:

Yeah, you COULD play the less competitive list, but I find it that even with ultra-competitive list building, I just get wiped by Kroak and Co. I'll probably take a break from playing HoS till new rules and units show up. Current meta is just far too oppressive for me.

The last tournament I was at I was aginst the kroak goon squad with 60 skinks and 3 bastilodons. It didn't help that I failed my turn 1 charges even with rerolls but still the flat 3 damage on kroak and the solar engines just kinda deleted my army. Niche counter rules wouldn't normally be a problem if it weren't for entire armies being unable to avoid certain keywords, it's why I feel bad taking zandtos in my obr against and chaos player.

[CeleFAZE]

6 hours ago, Lucky Snake Eyes said:

The last tournament I was at I was aginst the kroak goon squad with 60 skinks and 3 bastilodons. It didn't help that I failed my turn 1 charges even with rerolls but still the flat 3 damage on kroak and the solar engines just kinda deleted my army. Niche counter rules wouldn't normally be a problem if it weren't for entire armies being unable to avoid certain keywords, it's why I feel bad taking zandtos in my obr against and chaos player.

This is where I hope having a fairly large pool of mortal units to pull from is going to be a huge help. Daemons aren't really costed against the abilities that specifically hurt us more, and mortals fortunately don't have as much of an issue in that regard.

[Golub87]

The problem I have is that Kroak is surrounded with three bricks of 40 Saurus Warriors and support heroes. Now normally, we do have solutions for this in the form of anti-horde spells, Hysterical Frenzy and Wind of Chaos, but Korak just cancels my magic phase.

And blocks of Saurus are just impossible to fight in melee as they have 4 attacks each, MW on 6s to hit, and scaly skin for 30-40% damage reduction over my entire army.

That is why I feel so defeated to be honest, I am up against a list that is not even optimal for their faction, and the opponent does not even have to get his unique anti-demon stuff to go off, I still die miserably.

It is a puzzle I have been trying to crack for months now and it seems to me that it is uncrackable with our book. He has enough bodies for screening and objectives so maneuvering does not help. He wins any melee war of attrition. Magic phase is canceled. There is no shooting to speak of that can hit the support pieces.

I tried Be'Lakor, but he simply shuts down Kroak casting, he did not mitigate Saurus meatgrinders and he did not restore my magic phase, so I find him not worth it the points.

 

And this is not even the optimal Seraphon list with teleporting murderskinks 😄

[AngryPanda]

 

15 minutes ago, Golub87 said:

The problem I have is that Kroak is surrounded with three bricks of 40 Saurus Warriors and support heroes. Now normally, we do have solutions for this in the form of anti-horde spells, Hysterical Frenzy and Wind of Chaos, but Korak just cancels my magic phase.

And blocks of Saurus are just impossible to fight in melee as they have 4 attacks each, MW on 6s to hit, and scaly skin for 30-40% damage reduction over my entire army.

That is why I feel so defeated to be honest, I am up against a list that is not even optimal for their faction, and the opponent does not even have to get his unique anti-demon stuff to go off, I still die miserably.

It is a puzzle I have been trying to crack for months now and it seems to me that it is uncrackable with our book. He has enough bodies for screening and objectives so maneuvering does not help. He wins any melee war of attrition. Magic phase is canceled. There is no shooting to speak of that can hit the support pieces.

I tried Be'Lakor, but he simply shuts down Kroak casting, he did not mitigate Saurus meatgrinders and he did not restore my magic phase, so I find him not worth it the points.

 

And this is not even the optimal Seraphon list with teleporting murderskinks 😄

Something else to consider is a potential rework to depravity points. Much like how Blades of Khorne uses blood tithe to summon daemons or activity abilities that mess with the flow of battle, buff your units, or damage/debuff the enemy, I hope with the mortal release there will be a new list of abilities that doesn’t only involve summoning. 
 

Also, I’m hopeful that the archer horde unit that we will be receiving will be sufficient enough to target Kroak or other important hero units. The OBR catapult is a nasty unit to play against b/c of its damage 5 shooting attacks that can be buffed by increasing the number of shots; it’s a great tool for assassinating enemy hero units, or for causing general damage to whatever it fires at. 
 

If our spammable  archers have the ability to cause mortal wounds because of the poison tipped description from the Warhammer Community webpage, than I would consider them as a potential option. If they don’t, and it instead confers a debuff (which I’m leaning towards what’s going to be most likely), you can use them to target the large blobs of Saurus Warriors to make them more manageable to deal with in CC. 
 

Edited December 10, 2020 by AngryPanda

[Enoby]

What would we like to see changes-wise to our allegiance abilities to make sure these new models see play, and just to vary up our lists a bit?

[Elazar The Glorified]

The big thing is changing how Depravity is generated because it creates a situation currently where it doesn't pay to have  variety in your army and instead just to go heavy on efficient killy characters (who have  been quite severely nerfed so now also struggle to serve their purpose)

Off the top of my head I wonder if depravity could be set up as being generated for ongoing combats or something instead. So you get 1 Depravity point for a combat where you caused wounds and the enemy unit has survived with the promise of future pain and 2 Depravity points dor combats where you caused wounds and received wounds with the promise of even more future pain.

It would set up a nice balance you have to manage where our units want to go in and cause carnage but not too much or they won't have the chance to savour the pain but not take too much back that they die and can't gain any depravity. That way the summoning supports you when you're not steamrolling units rather than how it seemed to go, particularly initially where you could build up an unstoppable momentum and your opponent becomes a passenger in the game. 

It means all of our combat units could contribute in various ways to that wider goal and even our new missile units have a job in softening up the units that would hurt too much to engage straight away or dealing with the ones not worth the risk or that won't survive the combat anyway. Maybe even Fiends could get some use then!

[Golub87]

39 minutes ago, Enoby said:

What would we like to see changes-wise to our allegiance abilities to make sure these new models see play, and just to vary up our lists a bit?

At the end of each phase, add 1 depravity point for each enemy unit that took damage from any SLAANESH units but is not destroyed and add 1 depravity point for each SLAANESH unit that took damage but is not destroyed.

This would open up all of our units to be playable, while simultaneously reducing the paperwork needed to tally up DPs.

Edited December 11, 2020 by Golub87

[Enoby]

1 minute ago, Golub87 said:

At the end of each phase, add 1 depravity point for each enemy unit that took damage from any SLAANESH units but is not destroyed and add 1 depravity point for each SLAANESH unit that took damage but is not destroyed.

While I think this would make our lists more varied, I fear it might be too tricky to get points from not killing enemies as oftentimes it's not worth leaving an enemy alive. Maybe have it at the end of a model's activation? 

[Golub87]

Just now, Enoby said:

While I think this would make our lists more varied, I fear it might be too tricky to get points from not killing enemies as oftentimes it's not worth leaving an enemy alive. Maybe have it at the end of a model's activation? 

Well, yeah, it is a balancing act, but I kinda like it. Is the enemy unit a huge treat? Sure skip on the fun and take it out ASAP. That enemy screen unit that is not as dangerous? Leave it to the kids to play. Who knows, they might even try to defend themselves and make it even more fun.

[Elazar The Glorified]

It feels very Slaaneshi to have a sort of tantric approach to combats! Keeping them on the brink for as long as possible, extending their suffering and rewarding you with the additional resources to win the game when you do so

[Lucky Snake Eyes]

3 hours ago, Enoby said:

What would we like to see changes-wise to our allegiance abilities to make sure these new models see play, and just to vary up our lists a bit?

to start I'd like to see depravity change. Ideal solution in my mind would be 1 point for every unit that takes damage and 1 point for the sub faction specific obsession (charges, units around general, units in territory and whatever potential new sub faction obsessions) keeps it more consistent like blood tithe or sorcery.

Secondly I'd like to see some separation in mortals and daemons within the rules, the loci abilities in the other chaos books are exclusive to daemons so we'll probably go the same way now that we have mortals with the hedonites keyword. So for mortal heroes we could see a +5 shrug aura or something different (provided a shrug isn't the myrmadesh's gimmick given vasilac's rules from underworlds). It'd also be neat to seperate the 6s to hit to do different things for mortals and daemons to further separate their roles within the army, 6s hit twice for mortals and 6s get +1 or +2 rend for daemons in a similar vein to 40k daemons (although a flat rend like in 40k may be a bit much for AoS so +1 and then +2 for 20+ models seems more in line)

These rules separations would lean us more towards mixed armies and give a lot of value to units that have both the mortal and daemon keywords (presumably Sigvald and the twinsouls will have both, as a sidenote I also hope Sigvald gets the greater daemon keyword for better locus)

I'd also like to see some warscroll cleanup happen, I like what they've done with hellstriders and makes me wonder what the new blissbarbs will do (the flavour text says they ride exalted seekers which I really hope are snakes) I can see the use for the archers but the sword variant will have to be pretty unique to not overlap with the hellstriders. Fiends could use an overhaul, they try to fill too many roles and suffer for it. They're an anti-magic, debuff anvil, monster hunter? Aside from the scaling damage being useless with the current depravity their rules really kit them for only a niche set of targets aka hero wizards with 8 or more wounds. Daemonettes could also use a touch up or at least some synergy that's better than rr1s to hit, even as a 30 block they need to swing first and get a lot of 6s to average enough damage to kill out a comparable battleline. If myrmadesh are battleline then my daemonettes will be relegated to summoning sideboard anyways but that's more of a personal choice. Our chariots are fine warscroll wise but some sort of support or battalion to get some mileage out of them would help, technically most of our battalions can take chariots but they don't really benefit from any of them. I feel our shoe horning into hero hammer has left us blind to the actual lack of synergy for our cav and chariots.

 

TLDR; give the mortals and daemons different but complimentary rules, touch up some warscrolls to add more synergy to overlooked units and obligatory fix depravity.

[CeleFAZE]

13 hours ago, Enoby said:

What would we like to see changes-wise to our allegiance abilities to make sure these new models see play, and just to vary up our lists a bit?

Depravity should be changed to one point the first time a slaanesh unit deals damage each phase, and one point the first time a slaanesh unit takes damage in a phase, with no distinction as to whether the enemy died or not, as that's lopsided and obtuse. This encourages us to play aggressively and fling our units into the revelry, while also letting the ranged units have a solid reason to be doing something every turn as well. It's less bookkeeping, AND allows us a defensive edge against things like the Kroaknado, since we'd generate a specific amount of depravity in the hero phase separate from taking it in the shooting or close combat phases.

Edited December 12, 2020 by CeleFAZE

[Carnith]

Anyone got their book yet? I know my store opens up in an hour, but won't get it till closer to 1

[Enoby]

8 hours ago, carnith said:

Anyone got their book yet? I know my store opens up in an hour, but won't get it till closer to 1

I've not got Warcry but do have Direchasm - the Painbringer and Slaangor are bigger than expected! They'll look very impressive as a big unit - dwarf for scale

[Carnith]

So upon getting my book, there is nothing new. There are standard myrmadesh which appears to have no other options. The twin souls had 3 entires. 

I also built my direchasm and im surprised how large these lads on. I'm existed to see what a normal unit of slaangor look like.

[AngryPanda]

5 hours ago, carnith said:

So upon getting my book, there is nothing new. There are standard myrmadesh which appears to have no other options. The twin souls had 3 entires. 

I also built my direchasm and im surprised how large these lads on. I'm existed to see what a normal unit of slaangor look like.

What are the options for the Twin Souls? Out of what I’ve seen in the releases, they seem to be one of the more diverse units in terms of weapon option, and perhaps their stats could be a hint at what they’ll offer us on the tabletop. For Blades of Khorne, the weapon options mirror their counterparts in AoS. An example are the Bloodwarriors that have the duel-wielding axes, a goreglave, and a gore fist option; all of which are represented differently in Warcry and on the table. 

[Enoby]

Do you think we'll be keeping the 4+ shrug on the Myrmidesh? Sometimes Underworld Warbands keep the abilities of the normal unit, and sometimes the leader has a extra ability to differentiate them. If the Painbringers do have a 4+ shrug and they're not ridiculously expensive, I think they'll have a really nice place as an anvil. If they have a 2+ to hit, they might make a good killy unit too.

[Jaskier]

Good spot! I'm guessing they'd probably only have a 5+ shrug like the Lord of Pain, but I won't say no to Slaaneshi Phoenix Guard. 

 

Speaking of anvils, I tried a blob of 20 Chaos Warriors today and it's so refreshing to have something in the army that doesn't feel like it dies to a stiff breeze. Here's hoping Myrmidesh perform similarly. 

Edited December 13, 2020 by Jaskier

[Benkei]

No spear dancers is a shame, specially with how easy it would be to make the blissbarb archers box a dual kit

[Enoby]

28 minutes ago, Jaskier said:

Speaking of anvils, I tried a blob of 20 Chaos Warriors today and it's so refreshing to have something in the army that doesn't feel like it dies to a stiff breeze. Here's hoping Myrmidesh perform similarly. 

I'm really hoping Myrmidesh perform that role too - how did you find the chaos warriors were at killing things? 

 

22 minutes ago, Benkei said:

No spear dancers is a shame, specially with how easy it would be to make the blissbarb archers box a dual kit

Yeah, I find this a bit bizarre too - I feel like they had the idea for them (with Underworlds) and then got cold feet, maybe worrying about them not having an identity between Marauders and Daemonettes, so they put them on steeds? I'm not sure, because they could have been a glass cannon battleline, more pricey than daemonettes but hit harder.

Edited December 13, 2020 by Enoby

[Jaskier]

It's odd, 2 attacks each at 3+ 3+ seems decent on paper, but even with access to re-roll 1s to-hit (Syll'Esske) and a double pile-in (Chaos Lord) they just didn't do much in any of my matches. I got 17 to pile-in twice into a unit of 40 Chainrasps (a total of 70 attacks thanks to the unit champion, all with re-rolls 1 to-hit and the usual exploding 6s) and I think I only killed like 15. They were a great anvil though and let my heroes do the killing so I'm happy enough with how they went. 

[Enoby]

20 minutes ago, Jaskier said:

It's odd, 2 attacks each at 3+ 3+ seems decent on paper, but even with access to re-roll 1s to-hit (Syll'Esske) and a double pile-in (Chaos Lord) they just didn't do much in any of my matches. I got 17 to pile-in twice into a unit of 40 Chainrasps (a total of 70 attacks thanks to the unit champion, all with re-rolls 1 to-hit and the usual exploding 6s) and I think I only killed like 15. They were a great anvil though and let my heroes do the killing so I'm happy enough with how they went. 

Yeah, that's always been my impression of them - they can hold the line, but they do oddly little damage. I think a lot of it is due to their base size (with a low attack value) and their lack of rend - maybe if we're lucky we'll have a way to increase rend value

[CeleFAZE]

I'm personally hoping we get at least one or two support abilities on our new stuff that's only tied to the Slaanesh keyword, or at worst mortal Slaanesh. Or at the very least more targeted debuffs like acquiescence but non-magic, considering we really don't have the stacking + to cast that allows that go through reliably against at least 4 of the top armies that are currently in the meta.