AoS 2 - Hedonites of Slaanesh Discussion

[Marcvs]

38 minutes ago, TimeToWaste85 said:

Seeing how the Umbral portal specifically discusses sending endless spells through...you were lied to on Living City. 

They won't do damage in the turn they go through the portal though

[Enoby]

7 minutes ago, AngryPanda said:

I spoke too soon. Slaangors are awful; what the hell were they thinking? 
 

Easily a unit of Mortek Guard (130 pt) and witch elves are far, far, far superior to them; Fiendbloods don’t even come close to these standard battleline. Now I believe my initial assumption was correct: that GW knew the rules were underwhelming and purposely didn’t tease rules otherwise it would destroy hype. 
 

The leaks have been released, and suffice to say I’m not gonna buy the battletomb. I might buy Sigvald and the painbringers because they’re beautiful models and I do want to paint them up, but now that I do the math it seems that GW dropped the ball on this. 
 

Just a thought, maybe we should write to GW? Get a petition to change them to better damage and stats. In most cases I would just let it go, but rules are so bad that they might be the most overpriced and useless unit in the game. If enough people express disinterest through a petition, maybe we can promote some change? 

This is a shame to hear - though I do understand. I think we don't have anything stand out crazy, but we do have some really nice tricks. 

For example, if we combine daemons and the new seekers - let's say a Keeper and Slickblades. You can take Slickblades in our old seeker battalion (6" pile in out of 6"), and the new locus means the keeper can charge into the corner of a unit, stop the piling in with the locus, and the slickblades can pile into a model elsewhere. Only one model can attack the keeper (due to no piling in), and no models can attack the slickblades if they use their 2" range. 

I think writing to GW would help, but only after a few test games (either watching battle reports, using proxies, or table top simulator) so you can give a detailed report. I think we'll have a lot of tricks, but we're not out and out super powerful. We have a lot of power tied to our allegiance abilities

[Benkei]

23 minutes ago, Yoid said:

Slaangor are terrible for their price, old daemonettes beat them in every aspect. I cannot find new daemonettes tho, but they still cost 110 agaisnt the worst at everything slaangors that cost 140.

One of the mortal spells give +1 to hit vs an enemy unit, but you got to beat the bravery of the unit in a 2d6 roll, extremelly unreliable. The sharspeaker +1 to wound is good tho, but i cannot see it saving the slaangor warscroll, they hit on 4+.

Daemonette heroes going up 20 to 40 pts is interesting, i want to see the warscrolls, maybe now they are really good somehow, a better spell would help. If Enrapturess keep generating DP now is gonna matter a lot more because cost of DP are really low, maybe she is now a wizard or have 2 long range attacks instead of 1. I don't know, im very excited.

Painbringers seems really similar to chosen. I was planing to play chosen before the mortals were anounced. I hope they are not just worst chosen in the end, the shield got to do something.

I cannot see Twinsouls working without rend or MW output.

Chariots going up too, maybe they are better now.

Keepers going down as expected, they no longer resummon themselfs. But i can see some buffs to the stat lines if they cost so much. They are cheap DP cost tho. I hope shields, knifes and whips get a cool rework. The spell lore for greater daemons is amazing right now. (Spell that make you fly, spell that heal you, spell that block movement, charge and command abilities to an enemy hero.  All of them easier to cast than before)

We will see the long awaited rework of the keeper basic spell? Ther is a lot of warscrolls i cannot find.

The battalion that allows you to shoot blissbarb archers in the hero phase tho... Shootslaanesh is coming!

Daemonette heroes are the same, so are Enrapturesses (except no Depra gain) and KoS. The shields on Myrms lets them reroll saves. Costs are strange for warscrolls that didn't change and I agree all the mortals seem overcosted somehow, maybe GW is wary of the OP nature of the old Depravation. 

Also, they are DULL. I expected more special rules when I read the fluff, like the archers lacing their arrows with toxins and Venom doing nothing unless the +1 to wound if the Homunculus is alive is meant to represent that, and if it is I find it lazy AF. The only creative warscroll is Glutos, coincidentally the most expensive model money wise too; I guess all the love went to LRL. 

 

Sorry to crush your hopes

Edited February 12, 2021 by Benkei

[Arzalyn]

Finished looking at the demons warscrolls for changes. Basically this is what changed and stayed the same:

Spoiler

No changes:  All chariots (with or without herald), Shalaxi, Masque, Daemonettes, Seekers, Fiends.

Changes:

-Keeper: Their CA doesn't work on themselves, now it's "1 other unit." Also Delicate precision also works with missile attacks.

- Enrapturess: lots the DP generating ability, rest remains the same.

- Epitome: Changed the "locus" effect. Now affected units can't attack the epitome before it attacks. Rest remains the same.

- Syll'Esske: Esske is treat as a mount.  They dont fight two times with different profiles any more. Instead if a enemy roll 1 on a attack targeting syll'esske, they gain +1 to hit and would that unit on that combat. The command ability only give battleshock immunity now (still needs to be the general to use). They have a new ability that melee weapons of Hedonites wholly within 18" rerolls of 1 if the number of Mortals hedonites units and Daemons hedonites units wholly within 18" Syll'Esske is equal. Rest reamins the same.

 

 

Edited February 12, 2021 by Arzalyn
Corrections pointed by Benkei and Gistradagis

[Benkei]

About the epitome, the enemy unit affected by Fascination can still fight before the Epitome, they just can't attack it but can still attack other units

[Yoid]

8 minutes ago, Popisdead said:

Where are you finding much of the warscrolls?  I've found 2-3 leaks on reddit but nothing elsewhere...

In 4chan, people posted random leaks in the mountain of messages, I found Allegiance Abilities, Spell Lore of greater Daemons and Mortals, point costs, Blissbarb Seekers, Slaangors, Sigvald, Sharspeaker, Glutos, and somwone hand writed the Blissbarb Archers stat line (Homunculus make you +1 to wound for a total of 2attacks/4+/3+/-1rend/1damage. I dont think is that bad for the cost, they can run and shoot, is an extremely good stat line for shooting battleline even if they cost 160 they got 11 wounds and not 10. I can see them surviving the whole match and hurting their point cost if you do proper frontlines. But i don't really play competitive just casual with my friends, i deel like a shooty competitive army will mock the floor with you no matter what you pick in this army.

But im really happy about playing 11 to 22 Blissbarb Archers and finally playing in all phases of the game performing some decent shooting.

[Arzalyn]

1 minute ago, Benkei said:

About the epitome, the enemy unit affected by Fascination can still fight before the Epitome, they just can't attack it but can still attack other units

Thnaks for the catch! Corrected it

[AngryPanda]

15 minutes ago, Enoby said:

This is a shame to hear - though I do understand. I think we don't have anything stand out crazy, but we do have some really nice tricks. 

For example, if we combine daemons and the new seekers - let's say a Keeper and Slickblades. You can take Slickblades in our old seeker battalion (6" pile in out of 6"), and the new locus means the keeper can charge into the corner of a unit, stop the piling in with the locus, and the slickblades can pile into a model elsewhere. Only one model can attack the keeper (due to no piling in), and no models can attack the slickblades if they use their 2" range. 

I think writing to GW would help, but only after a few test games (either watching battle reports, using proxies, or table top simulator) so you can give a detailed report. I think we'll have a lot of tricks, but we're not out and out super powerful. We have a lot of power tied to our allegiance abilities

Honestly, what bothers me the most is the lack of transparency and the sketchy behavior that GW portrays. As an analogy, it’s sort of like how game developers at E3 show off these really awesome “gameplay demos” that aren’t reflective of the game’s final release. 
 

It’s the same for GW when they market to us. Leading up the release, Fiends were described as being “engines of destruction” with razor sharp claws that snip off heads, and that they’re going to be very scary shock assault units. Clearly that’s not the case. 
 

if they were just honest about what was coming, then I wouldn’t be as upset; but the fact of the matter is that GW doesn’t tease rules that they are confident in. The Dark Angels got a lot of love because they’re very powerful; other releases that are weak don’t get as much covered because they’re afraid of scaring away their customers. 
 

Don’t quote me on this, but I’m 80% confident that I heard that the covid has impacted GW’s ability to play test, which makes sense considering that the UK recently underwent another lockdown due to the new strain. 
 

However, I feel it’s just common sense just by simply glancing at the warscroll. Slaangors will be destroyed by pretty much anything point-to-point. Blood warriors, mortek guard, witch aelves, fyerslayers, etc. will slap them around without effort, and they’re all troops! 
 

In my humble opinion, people should voice their disappointment. At least it would spark discussion that can hopefully get their attention. Minimum is a +1 damage increase to their attacks. 

Edited February 12, 2021 by AngryPanda

[Enoby]

12 minutes ago, Ragest said:

Well, I truly wanted to make a full mortal list, but I don't know how.

Every mortal unit but sigvald and glutos is terrible overcosted

I'd recommend watching a few battle reports I've had a look at the slickblades and they show promise. The first picture is their damage from 5 against a decreasing save (1 to -) with no buffs. The second is with RRs from the Lord of Pain, and the third is with the +1 to wound from the shardspeaker. 

Considering they can be in a battalion that lets them pile in from 6" away (one of the cheesiest abilities in the game no doubt), they are deceptively good. 

I think we have a well balanced army that might be a bit overpointed, but I think we're paying for summoning.

[Gistradagis]

9 minutes ago, Arzalyn said:

Finished looking at the demons warscrolls for changes. Basically this is what changed and stayed the same:

  Hide contents

No changes: Keeper, All chariots (with or without herald), Shalaxi, Masque, Daemonettes, Seekers, Fiends.

Changes:

- Enrapturess: lots the DP generating ability, rest remains the same.

- Epitome: Changed the "locus" effect. Now affected units can't attack the epitome before it attacks. Rest remains the same.

- Syll'Esske: Esske is treat as a mount.  They dont fight two times with different profiles any more. Instead if a enemy roll 1 on a attack targeting syll'esske, they gain +1 to hit and would that unit on that combat. The command ability only give battleshock immunity now (still needs to be the general to use). They have a new ability that melee weapons of Hedonites wholly within 18" rerolls of 1 if the number of Mortals hedonites units and Daemons hedonites units wholly within 18" Syll'Esske is equal. Rest reamins the same.

 

 

Keepers do have a change. Their CA doesn't work on themselves, now it's "1 other unit."

[Popisdead]

1 minute ago, AngryPanda said:

In my humble opinion, people should voice their disappointment. At least it would spark discussion that can hopefully get their attention. Minimum is a +1 damage increase to their attacks. 

They have an e-mail that can get to the developers and GW constantly advertises it out.  Feel free to write a concise, clear, logical letter to them.  

[Popisdead]

Just now, Gistradagis said:

Keepers do have a change. Their CA doesn't work on themselves, now it's "1 other unit."

I wonder if that's a precursor to the 40k change where buffs only affect certain units and not themselves for AoS 3.

[Grimrock]

50 minutes ago, Enoby said:

Yeah, there is definitely weird costing. Though I'd much rather have costing as the issue because that is by far the most likely thing to see a quick change. It's hard to tell how good things are from just looking at it, but I think having a varied army is going to be key.

When playing Lumineth, I really enjoyed being able to use a bit of everything. Unfortunately the better lists tend to spam mass archers to mortal wound everything to death. I think Slaanesh lists will be like Lumineth but without the option to spam mass ranged mortal wounds. 

We're not weak, we're just well balanced from the look of it. 

Yeah honestly this release reminds me a lot of the last khorne book. Everything seemed a touch disappointing initially, but after a little while I eventually decided it had the best internal balance of any book I've ever played with a ton of fun and interesting builds. It was still weak overall, but there was a lot of fun to be had. Then gw did a couple small buffs here and there to get units into a better place and threw a huge buff to bloodthirsters so there was at least one competitive build in the book. No idea where this book will land but I'm happy to give it a shot and try some things out. Might be pleasently surprised.

Edited February 12, 2021 by Grimrock

[Gistradagis]

2 minutes ago, Popisdead said:

They have an e-mail that can get to the developers and GW constantly advertises it out.  Feel free to write a concise, clear, logical letter to them.  

I'll probably get some games going through proxys/TTS, then consider writing if the units really are as overcosted as they feel on a first read.

[Yoid]

Increase of points in the daemon range seems odd. Anyway they got the upper hand in the summon table. I can see the army performing better as a full mortal deploy with daemon summoning later. The exalted seekers seem to win the point cost war for me, 4 wounds each for a total of 20 wounds is really good in that point range. The deep looser of the battletom are Slaangor Fiendbloods, they are the new Fiends i guess.

Talking about Fiends, if im not mistaken they go down 10 pts and their stats are excellent now that they generate DP.

Enrapturess not generating DP and being more costly is weird, but you can generate 1DP with the long range attack, or around 2-3 with the multishot, and emeies hutying themselves while casting spells will give you DP too. Seems like a good investment after all, i always wanted her to be more liek a ballista dealing damage, but i will take it.

If Viceleaders and Bladebringers are not improved, i hope they got better spells in the Spell Lore. The ones for Greater Daemons greatly improved.

[Rivener]

7 minutes ago, Popisdead said:

They have an e-mail that can get to the developers and GW constantly advertises it out.  Feel free to write a concise, clear, logical letter to them.  

I encourage absolutely everyone on this thread to do this. These warscrolls aren’t just bad, they don’t even pass the most basic sniff test. Fiendbloods are more expensive than Dragon Ogors and are approximately half as good. Nobody even uses Dragon Ogors. Think about that: this brand new shiny unit isn’t even half as good as cheaper things that are bad, from an old, bad book.

Edited February 12, 2021 by Rivener

[Enoby]

2 minutes ago, Grimrock said:

Yeah honestly this release reminds me a lot of the last khorne book. Everything seemed a touch disappointing initially, but after a little while I eventually decided it had the best internal balance of any book I've ever played with a ton of fun and interesting builds. It was still weak overall, but there was a lot of fun to be had. Then gw did a couple small buffs here and there to get units into a better place and threw a huge buff to bloodthirsters so there was at least one competitive build in the book. No idea where this book will land but I'm happy to give it a shot and try some things out. Might be pleasently surprised.

Yeah, I'm in the same boat. I think we're on the same level as Khorne or Slaves to Darkness in the sense that we have no warscrolls (well, ignore marauders) that scream "wow this is fantastic!" off the bat. However, we do have a lot of warscrolls that are good - and some ways to make them better. Our summoning is really easy to do, and the tankiness of the Painbringers shouldn't be brushed off because they'll help a lot with summoning. Yeah, an extra attack would help, or a points reduction, but that can come later. For now, I'm going to explore a new battletome that has a much wider range of viable possibilities that our previous one. 

[Yokai]

10 minutes ago, Enoby said:

I think we have a well balanced army that might be a bit overpointed, but I think we're paying for summoning.

I think you hit the nail on the head here - GW might be (overly) cautious about how the change in DP and summoning will play out, and costed the mortal units accordingly. I don't think the sky is falling just yet, and I definitely won't be writing any angry emails before we have some solid data about how the combined forces of Slaanesh mortals+demons play in the wild.

[Sorrow]

I made a fool of myself when I wrote that "Overall, I am pleased".  I have been reading full tome at Imgur on a link from /tg/.

The mortals are far too much expensive for what they do. 

Also, I am was expecting  more rules that reflect actual lore. With the exception of Glutos who is masterfully written. What happened elsewhere? Zero reflection  of actual lore on rules. We debated what special rule Blissbarb archers will have, well basically boring as hell.  Symbaresh have only one weapon profile, a unit where every model is packing two different weapons? The rules overall, come as if they had zero desire to invest some creativity.

I agree with @AngryPanda completely on marketing. They did not hype, because they have very little to hype.

[Yoid]

An army of Painbringers and Blissbarb Archers seem mid tier solid, im really happy with them. 4+ rerolling saves is amazing tankiness worth the point cost, and they also deal MW wich means amazing damage output too (Not broken, simply amazing) they are up to their lore reputation. Blissbarb fall a little expensive, but as an elite shooty unit, if you properly cover them they will work well (not vs shooting armies of course, but that is the top meta)

[Graywater]

Yeah... I wouldn't panic yet. Some people were declaring that seraphon was going to be trash when the book first dropped, and look where we are now. Let's wait it out. Clearly there are some duds. There usually are. But let's see what it all looks like together.

[umpac]

19 minutes ago, Enoby said:

For now, I'm going to explore a new battletome that has a much wider range of viable possibilities that our previous one. 

This is the way.  People calling for petitions about how weak the book is are as hilariously misguided as the ones already calling the book overpowered. The summoning mechanic is a big question mark, but on paper it looks insane. Does it really matter if the mortals are 20-30% too pricey if you drop 1000+ pts of free deamons on the board? Point problem is less of an issue anyway since GHB and winter updates will fix those issues easily. As long as the warscrolls and allegiance abilities are good you're golden, and Im more than happy with ours. 

 

Also Twinsouls are absolute blenders. Fighting in 2 ranks, easy access to re-roll hits and can get to 2+ to wound with dmg 2? They are gonna dish out 30+ wounds to 4+ save easy, and that's before a keeper lets them pile in twice. And if you have a Lord of Pain nearby they can get 4+ 5++ and keep the rerolls. Only issue is that they will bounce HARD vs stuff like morteks, but that's were a ton of -1 rend shooting comes into play...

Edited February 12, 2021 by umpac

[SorryLizard]

Perhaps wait a bit, see what comboes and synergies start coming to light. Don't drop money on things for their mechanics just yet (get the stuff you want to paint/etc.), wait for the FAQ. Let the book see some play first. Make buying decisions for gameplay reasons in...I dunno, a month? Proxy stuff, TTS games, etc. for now.

Some armies really do rely on synergies and buffs to catapult their power. Seraphon for example skyrocket in effective ness once some buffs are in place. Wait and see if this book does it too before decrying it yet.

Treat it like video games. Until it's proven itself to be something you're excited to play don't invest heavily. Let the early adopters take the risks for you and go in with more information to make informed choices.

[TimeToWaste85]

I’m looking forward to this. I really am. I see the spellportal ES making it into my list each time I run a wizard heavy list to ping MWs for depravity, or Cogs every time I run a charge focused list, as well as a Warshrine. Sigvald is going to be hanging out as well for that. 
 

I don’t need a book that’s so broken that every competitive player and their mom buys it. I want my chosen god/faction from 6th edition WHFB to play the way I want where I can surprise my opponent on the table and not do what is expected. I think I’m getting that with this book. 

[Benkei]

I don't really mind if units are a little overcosted, but what gets me is the total lack of creativity and lore/stats relation with the exception of Glutos. It feels really lazy, the example with the Blissbarb arrows and the Symbaresh weapons being the most egregious one. 

Why couldn't most new units be more like Glutos and the Shardspeaker? Not powerwise but varietywise

Edited February 12, 2021 by Benkei