AoS 2 - Hedonites of Slaanesh Discussion

[Rachmani]

With how the Hedonites got treated this GHB so far, I wouldn't rule out a Warscroll change for Slaangors on Saturday.

[azdimy]

I have just ordered loads of blissbarb archers and symbaresh twinsouls to bolster my ranks 😀

Now find some child labors to assemble those archers because I will not suffer through that ever again

[Sonnenspeer]

17 hours ago, azdimy said:

Now find some child labors to assemble those archers because I will not suffer through that ever again

Not sure what is more exhausting, the assembling or the painting 😅

What is a little sad if you want several units of Archers is that you don't have any options in the kit and customisation is also not easy.

Edited June 25, 2022 by Sonnenspeer

[Tizianolol]

Guys if I summon 30 demonettes, are they galletian veterans? 

[azdimy]

4 hours ago, Tizianolol said:

Guys if I summon 30 demonettes, are they galletian veterans? 

Yes they are

[KrispyXIV]

First game vs an experimental Nurgle list running Blightkings went interestingly, and determined that no, Blightkings can stand up to Bounty Hunter Twinsouls.  

[Wordy9th]

Interestingly enough I played a game vs Nurgle yesterday which had a GUO, Spume, and 20 Blightkings. 

His spume charged those ten blightkings into 20 of my blissbarbs and wiped them, it was looking dicey but he played incredibly scared and ran his GUO away from my Epitome Summoned Purple Sun. 

The key moment came when my Krondspine and 10 twinsouls charged his ten blightkings. Roar went off and 7 blightkings died to my ten bounty hunting twinsouls and the rest ran away! Roar is really powerful for twinsouls, as its effectively -1 rend for Twinsouls to prevent the all out defence. 

A funny moment came later in the game when it was decided already, but I charged 30 Daemonettes I summoned into a purple sun debuffed Great unclean one, ready to deal devilish damage with double exploding hits. They did 8 wounds and lost 17 to the attack back xD. 

What is a weird feeling though is losing 20 blissbarbs and still having 80% of your army left. A novel feeling that feels.. good! 

[JackOfBlades]

Is there a reason to take fiends instead of more twinsouls?Aside from just liking one unit more, the only reason i can think of is to take 3 if you really want the malus to cast.

Edited June 27, 2022 by JackOfBlades

[Wordy9th]

No, but the question raises the new problem with the points changes. 'Why would I take X when I can take more twinsouls' is an issue of internal balance caused by GW pricing them at 130 while leaving other units grotesquely over-costed.

[JackOfBlades]

39 minutes ago, Wordy9th said:

No, but the question raises the new problem with the points changes. 'Why would I take X when I can take more twinsouls' is an issue of internal balance caused by GW pricing them at 130 while leaving other units grotesquely over-costed.

"Grotesquely" over-costed 🤣

Out of pure curiosity i would love to know what has been going on with the design team for the Hedonites tome, as the whole process has been strange since the start and these bizarre point changes continue that trend. Sure, the point reductions are great competitively - but the way theyve been executed, with some units getting massive buffs while others that have been called out as underperforming for years are ignored, is so strange. Do you have any guess?

Edited June 27, 2022 by JackOfBlades

[pnkdth]

2 hours ago, JackOfBlades said:

Do you have any guess?

They want to push the mortal kits. Daemon kits are old and icky. Mortal kits are expensive (model per £) and people suddenly will need to buy plenty of them. Lots of lists suddenly want 3-4 units of PBs or several units of Twins. Plus, every list also seem to have 3 blissbarb archers too.

I mean, from a Hedonite perspective it is a lot better than before but it is also hard to ignore the not so subtle hand of GW influencing my thoughts and decisions. I would have wanted daemons to be more viable but I guess they've already recouped the profits from those kits as most people already have enough of them.

[JackOfBlades]

10 hours ago, pnkdth said:

They want to push the mortal kits. Daemon kits are old and icky. Mortal kits are expensive (model per £) and people suddenly will need to buy plenty of them. Lots of lists suddenly want 3-4 units of PBs or several units of Twins. Plus, every list also seem to have 3 blissbarb archers too.

I mean, from a Hedonite perspective it is a lot better than before but it is also hard to ignore the not so subtle hand of GW influencing my thoughts and decisions. I would have wanted daemons to be more viable but I guess they've already recouped the profits from those kits as most people already have enough of them.

Ah yes, that makes sense. But then i wonder why they did nothing for the brand new slaangor and blissbarb/slickblade seeker kits, i guess they figured pushing the other kits was enough for now or something.

Edited June 28, 2022 by JackOfBlades

[Ninruviel]

Or they want to focus on the infantry for this season and will focus on cavalry for the next. Then, blissbard/slickblades will have a huge points drop to boost them (and/or a new battletome)

[zombiepiratexxx]

9 hours ago, JackOfBlades said:

Ah yes, that makes sense. But then i wonder why they did nothing for the brand new slaangor and blissbarb/slickblade seeker kits, i guess they figured pushing the other kits was enough for now or something.

Slickblades were the best damage unit of the new tome when it came out, presumably they've sold tons of those kits as they were the best unit we had. Now they can get people to buy more of the other mortals. 

If I was being cynical that is. 

[Sonnenspeer]

Can Sigvald kill Gotrek? 🤔

[KrispyXIV]

10 hours ago, JackOfBlades said:

Ah yes, that makes sense. But then i wonder why they did nothing for the brand new slaangor and blissbarb/slickblade seeker kits, i guess they figured pushing the other kits was enough for now or something.

Less cynical outlook - its an experiment.  

Provide the faction with a couple of decent value options with clearly decent stats but few complications, and see if folks running those break the summoning mechanic/faction mechanic and if the faction balance is fine.  If  it does break, partially revert changes and back to the drawing board.  If things look good, expand 15% discount across the board and open up options once the mechanics have been stress tested. 

While the possibility of sales driven malice exists, personal experience reminds me that most folks are just plain folks, and the design team at GW has a lot of ground to cover (R&D plus maintenance of the entire range of factions, testing, etc.). 

Most likely they're trying to get things right without making things worse. 

[KrispyXIV]

1 hour ago, Sonnenspeer said:

Can Sigvald kill Gotrek? 🤔

In theory.

Gotrek doesn't get his ward, but so far as I know his basic save and damage reduction are fully intact, meaning sigvald still has to get 6 wounds through (not exactly reliable) and past Gotreks normal save.  

[Sonnenspeer]

5 hours ago, KrispyXIV said:

damage reduction

Ah, forgot that all his attacks go down to 1, that would hurt Sigvald a lot. Maybe with some additional chip damage from a unit of Archers and a 10+ charge I would still risk it 😅

[KrispyXIV]

Has anyone else considered using an allied Wizard to take advantage of the new and improved Endless Spells? 

As an example, unless I'm grossly misunderstanding something, for instance, the Blue Scribes can push out a Purple Sun on a 2+ which can't be unbound - which could be nice for setting up Blissbarbs to do work.  

Not needing to roll that 8 or push through unbinds feels like a big deal. 

[Enoby]

9 hours ago, KrispyXIV said:

Less cynical outlook - its an experiment.  

Provide the faction with a couple of decent value options with clearly decent stats but few complications, and see if folks running those break the summoning mechanic/faction mechanic and if the faction balance is fine.  If  it does break, partially revert changes and back to the drawing board.  If things look good, expand 15% discount across the board and open up options once the mechanics have been stress tested. 

While the possibility of sales driven malice exists, personal experience reminds me that most folks are just plain folks, and the design team at GW has a lot of ground to cover (R&D plus maintenance of the entire range of factions, testing, etc.). 

Most likely they're trying to get things right without making things worse. 

In all honesty, I think this less cynical outlook is the most likely.

GW definitely likes money, but if they wrote and pointed Slaanesh in regards to money, they've done a very poor job of it. Despite the new release costing them a lot to create, the rules writers seemed to hardly have the time to do much of anything with the new book - and we're the second lowest win rate at the moment, well under older armies that GW probably care about less profits-wise.

But even ignoring that, if these decreases were all in it for the money, I think they'd have also included Slaangors, Glutos, and especially the twins in these decreases/rewrites. I doubt they would have bothered with Sigvald as he's our best selling model already. If this was to make money, they've not done a good job about it (it would have been easy to give Slaangors -2 rend and 2 damage to sell more boxes, and yet they didn't). If 90% of HoS players already have Sigvald then this points drop won't boost his sales, if 75% have Painbringers/Twinsouls and Blissbarbs then the drop may have resulted in a few more boxes (as people may already own a good number), but a Slaangor rewrite (or mega-drop) would likely boost theirs by a significant amount as a smaller proportion will have bought them (especially in large quantities). 

I think this is an earnest attempt at targeted balancing, where they're seeing what buffing the core units does so they can make better changes to the rest of the army. If we continue to perform poorly then I think most other units will see a similar buff in the future. 

[Big Kim Woof-Woof]

Blimey. You're not a true Hedonite general if you've never accidentally put at least one wheel on backwards while assembling an Exalted Chariot. 

[Rachmani]

So it’s like a… wacky action chariot then? >.<

[zombiepiratexxx]

3 hours ago, Big Kim Woof-Woof said:

Blimey. You're not a true Hedonite general if you've never accidentally put at least one wheel on backwards while assembling an Exalted Chariot. 

You don't understand why people talk about how annoying that model is to build until you experience it for yourself! 

[pnkdth]

10 hours ago, Enoby said:

In all honesty, I think this less cynical outlook is the most likely.

GW definitely likes money, but if they wrote and pointed Slaanesh in regards to money, they've done a very poor job of it. Despite the new release costing them a lot to create, the rules writers seemed to hardly have the time to do much of anything with the new book - and we're the second lowest win rate at the moment, well under older armies that GW probably care about less profits-wise.

But even ignoring that, if these decreases were all in it for the money, I think they'd have also included Slaangors, Glutos, and especially the twins in these decreases/rewrites. I doubt they would have bothered with Sigvald as he's our best selling model already. If this was to make money, they've not done a good job about it (it would have been easy to give Slaangors -2 rend and 2 damage to sell more boxes, and yet they didn't). If 90% of HoS players already have Sigvald then this points drop won't boost his sales, if 75% have Painbringers/Twinsouls and Blissbarbs then the drop may have resulted in a few more boxes (as people may already own a good number), but a Slaangor rewrite (or mega-drop) would likely boost theirs by a significant amount as a smaller proportion will have bought them (especially in large quantities). 

I think this is an earnest attempt at targeted balancing, where they're seeing what buffing the core units does so they can make better changes to the rest of the army. If we continue to perform poorly then I think most other units will see a similar buff in the future. 

Like in most companies it is a balance. In my experience it is all about selling good design to corporate/business people. On the one end you have the design team who likely want to make the best game they cane but on the other side you have sales telling them these are our objectives.

Even though it might sound cynical I call it being a realist. Companies who end up being publicly traded will end up having a big focus on meeting quarterly goals, stock value, and giving investors a solid return on investment. I wouldn't put GW in the same sentence as Blizzard Activision/EA but we're getting there.

With Slaangors I think it comes down to ROI, i.e. measuring putting time into creating a new warscroll versus just reducing points on other kits they want to sell. This is why certain factions languish in purgatory for so long as time and effort cost money and there has to be proper incentives to make that push.

At least that's been my experience working in design. It is a constant battle to sell your ideas to management. I get it, it is a business, but on the flip side every time GW raise their prices or release a FOMO box people go, "they're a business, of course they want to make money." I do not think what I'm proposing is much different. Since everyone is now running Blissbarbs/PBs/Twins, I think management is due for a bonus.

That said, I'm still quite happy with the change since we're in a lot better place now than before. Plus, on the list of anti-consumer things GW have done this doesn't even make it on the list. Point changes + the WD update has been good to us.

[Jaskier]

Other than stabbing myself a few times, I didn't have too much trouble building my Exalted Chariots.
Now, painting them? Different story.