AoS 2 - Hedonites of Slaanesh Discussion

[Poryague]

4 hours ago, Nagashfan said:

Where these rules at

Go to reddit and search you will find it. If I understand what they showed how we build armies is changing significantly.

[LeonBox]

47 minutes ago, Jaskier said:

The loss of Seeker Cavalcade does sting a bit, but that one drop battalion is looking mighty spicy for us. 

Are we definitely losing Cavalcade? 

Also, I don't believe the rules for the new battalion have been posted (and I'm not sure if this is allowed; if not, I'll remove): 

Pretty good for roasting hordes, their nerf nowithstanding. 

[Enoby]

Something absolutely massive for us is that, of all the new battleplans I've seen, we start 18" away.

I think this could be one of the biggest changes of them all of us, and in mostly positive way. 

Beforehand, without Lurid Haze, it was very difficult to first turn charge with a large number of units. We were the "fast" faction, but our move capped at 14, meaning we needed to get lucky to charge with much at all. 

Now, moving the KoS, Slickblades, fiends, Dexcessa, Archaon, the Masque (this is super important - they need to roll a 1 to run to pile into their screen and tie something up), most chariots, daemonettes running on a 6, hellstriders, and Syll'Esske on a decent run roll need between a 6" to a 3" charge (importantly with the KoS only needing 4"). Twinsouls can also first turn charge on a 10.

This is absolutely massive for us. We have effectively added 6" to our movement. Other armies with 6" move troops and 10" move cavalry will be struggling or find it impossible to get in - certainly not likely enough to build a strategy around it. Faster armies (Lumineth is the only one I can think of off the top of my head, maybe Tzeentch) don't tend to be as combat focused as us and so want to keep back and shoot.

So long as there are no nasty surprise changes (e.g. summoning costs), we are in one of the strongest positions for benefiting off 3rd. 

[LeonBox]

The horde changes make me think summoning will also take a hit. Summoning 30-daemonette blobs when they seem to be limiting hordes so much might be a non-starter. 

[Enoby]

5 minutes ago, LeonBox said:

The horde changes make me think summoning will also take a hit. Summoning 30-daemonette blobs when they seem to be limiting hordes so much might be a non-starter. 

Very possibly, but from what I understand about how summoning is treated currently, it's ignored for restrictive and beneficial meta keywords (e.g. battleline, behemoth, leader) so it might well be ignore reinforcement restrictions too.

That said, even if not, a KoS is a very attractive summon.

Also, apparently someone leaked Dominion Points costs and everything is priced highly, so they're expecting a 3e points hike. I have no clue if that will hike our points - if it does, that sucks, if it doesn't, we've kind of got a points drop comparatively speaking 

[pnkdth]

On 6/9/2021 at 10:18 PM, Sorrow said:

I think this is new, I do not see it here: https://www.warhammer-community.com/broken-realms/

Anyway, Sigvald and Glutos went against each other, that is why no Hedonites reached the city.

Story: https://www.warhammer-community.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/GoOdPej7qcXOKbTT.pdf

Good catch! Neat, they actually expanded upon the previous confrontation between the two. This outcome is also incredibly in character since Sigvald was pretty much about to cut Glutus' head off had he not been interrupted. 

Edit: It also seems reinforcement points are only relevant for Path to Glory.

Edit2: I'm giving up on what is what on the reveals till I get the full picture. 

Edited June 11, 2021 by pnkdth

[zombiepiratexxx]

Slaanesh is up for their Faction Focus

[Poryague]

So the faction article is well a dud. Nothing new probably going to be the case for the other factions unless they slip in something in one of the other ones. The core battalion article is more interesting. It looks like matched play will have different battlpacks for new ways to play matched play.

[Enoby]

I think they missed a lot of the really good stuff that we're gaining. I'm going to do my own short write up soon with all of the ways 3e will help us, and how it will hurt us, and how it compares. Might help put things in perspective  

[TimeToWaste85]

At least they answered that summoned units bypass the reinforced unit rule. I built my kits as Twinsouls, not Painbringers…I might need two more kits. Time will tell. 

[Cambyses]

Nothing new in the faction article but that's to be expected. I do find it funny that they called out Myrmidesh and Symbaresh in the articles though, as even currently I don't think there's actually anything wrong with those units rules-wise, they're just straight up over-costed, which may or may not change in the new edition.

However, most of the new rules previews do seem to benefit Hedonites - more MSUs on the table (more depravity), ways to buff our shooting, and the fact that most of our damage output is on hero models could all be interesting shakeups in the list-building phase. Everything depends on points costs though, as even currently I think there's not much wrong with the book other than being overcosted, which may or may not be still true in the new edition - worst case scenario they could see our summoning as a problematic mechanic and just smack the whole faction with another points hike to play it conservatively.

[CeleFAZE]

These faction articles have largely been hit or miss, especially the SBGL article which gave no new information and seemed to have been written by someone who likely doesn't play the faction. However our article at least answers the question of whether or not we can summon larger units to bypass the reinforcement point system.

The mentioning of symbaresh and myrmadesh was interesting, though I think the more telling omission is slaangors. You'd think they'd have said something about their 2" reach, but it seems they are aware of the sorry state of the unit internally at least.

[Enoby]

Okay, I've got the time to go through some changes. I think, at the moment we have a good idea of what's going on with AoS 3. Of course, there could be a huge difference when we get the full rules, but by the sound of it there have been no leaks that are very scary sounding. I'm going to go through the unconfirmed leaks too, but if they end up being false or not what we thought, then just discount them or glean what you can.

Command points

Command points are now not something that can be stored, but are now much easier to generate. The ways we currently know that are generic to all factions are getting 1 or 2 at the beginning of the round (whether you go first or second), an extra 1 here when the general is on the battlefield, they can also get 1 point from heroic inspiration either on a 4+ or a 2+ (easier when the general is alive). Finally, you can get a command point from the warlord battalion or the command entourage battalion. This means, in a single battle round, any army (going first) can get 6 (1 for the turn, 1 for the general, 2 for getting heroic inspiration off twice, and 2 for taking both battalions and gaining both points on the same turn). If we are realistic, heroic inspiration will only go off one out of two times (with the general alive), and we will only count one battalion because it's unlikely someone would burn both command points at once, if they even take two battalions at all. So realistically, an army is getting between 2 and 4 (based on whether they want to take the battalion and whether they want to spend their hero abilities on trying to get a command point).

On its own, looking outside of hosts, Slaanesh doesn't have much in the way of command point generation. But if we take a look at the invaders host, that all changes. The invaders host opens up three ways to get command points: rod of misrule, glory hog, and a general dying. Not only that, having three generals means we have three chances to not have our general die; in addition, if one general does die then we get the benefit of improved heroic inspiration as well as keeping the command point from having a general. Finally, Dexcessa gives a free command point effectively. The absolute maximum we can get in a battle round when going first is 14+2 free ( for the turn, 1 for the general, 2 for getting heroic inspiration off twice, and 2 for taking both battalions and gaining both points on the same turn, rod of misrule gives 3, glory hog procs both turns for 2, and all three generals die + Dexcessa's free point). We should not aim or expect this at all; this is totally unrealistic and probably means something has gone wrong if it happens. If we look at it realistically, in a turn with Dex where we are looking for command points (and remember, it will be a choice - we have control of how many we want to try to go for), we will probably get 7-8+free (1 for general, 1 for turn, 1 for rod of misrule, 2 for Glory Hog - enemies will be dying left and right, more on this later - 1 for the battalion, 1 for heroic inspiration, possibly one for a general death, and the free one from Dex). If we are not looking for command points (if we just don't seem to need them this turn), we should get 5+2 free.

This means that our turns where we are not going out of our way to get any extra command points, we gain pretty much as many command points as a normal army who is trying their hardest to get as many CP as possible. 

Please note, we really need to see when command points disappear. If they disappear right at the end of the battleround then glory hog is less important as it will proc at the end of the battle round and so not see much as much benefit. It is still a free cp for inspiring presence though, and it means if we see an enemy unit die we can go more all out on command abilities in that phase, knowing we'll have one spare for inspiring presence. 

Final opinion: Excellent in Invaders, Average in other hosts

New command abilities

Of course, we could get as many points as we want, but that won't matter if we can't use them on anything useful. 

The generic command abilities known/predicted are: All Out Attack, All out Defence, Inspiring Presence, At the Double, Forward to Victory, Unleash Hell, and Redeploy. I'll go through each of these.

It is important to note that, when we're getting 7 command abilities in invaders to use a battle round, we can pick and choose what we'd like here 

All out attack: This one is really nice for our troops, especially Twinsouls. A unit of 10 of them will output the following on average: 9.7 vs 2+, 19.4 vs 3+, 29 vs 4+, 38.8 vs a 5+, 48.5 vs a 6+, and 58 vs a -. Combined with the shardspeaker, we can get +1 to hit and +1 to wound - this means daemonettes having 2 attacks at 3/3/-1/1, and importantly can be summoned in and still benefit from these buffs. Great command ability, especially when concerning the blissbarb archers - a unit of 33 of them with 2 attacks each at 3/3/-1/1 in the shooting phase so it doesn't stop it in the combat phase? Yes please

All out defence: This one isn't quite as good for us, but that doesn't mean bad at all. It means we can get some nice defence against shooting units. With Dexcessa, we can act like they have a 3+ save in the combat phase unless we choose not to (or to give it to someone else). As mentioned in the article, painbringers on a 3+ rerolling save is very nice, and they can actually hit back unlike chaos warriors, but putting chaos warriors on a 3+ rerolling save isn't a bad idea at all. And of course Glutos will be a massive tank as always, with that -1 to hit adding to that annoyingness to budge.

Inspiring presence: In all honestly, this one has the chance to hurt us, but it hurts everyone. However we can't deny that our mortal units struggle with poor bravery values. However, on the other hand, we do have a few ways around bravery: Glutos's third battle round, Syll'Esske, Dexcessa, and Battle Rapture. Battle rapture is really good because it gives you knowledge before arriving at the battleshock phase, so you know what to save for. Syll'Esske can definitely benefit from the smaller board size too as they'll get more in their bubble, and we get a tonne of command points so we can always keep one spare. If we're honest, Dex's ability is a bit useless unless you're running very large blocks of daemonettes and don't want to risk the banner. Glutos takes more time to get going so isn't super reliable. 

At the double: this is fine... we have a few options to run and charge, but not that many to be honest. The one key use I can see it for is for Dex to give it to themselves for a lovely 18" flying move for a big flank

Forward to victory: As good as it ever was, though only being able to use it once does provide a niche use for scarlet cavalcade as it allows the more units to benefit. A nerf if we can only use it once, but not one I'm particularly worried about for reasons we'll go into later, as well as many of our units getting rerolling charge for free anyway

Unleash hell: there are only three units that really benefit from this for us - Synessa, Blissbarb Archers, and Blissbarb Seekers. Other than that, this one could really hurt us depending on the army. Us taking some big damage before we can even get into combat means we're going to have to be really careful about what we charge. On the other hand. if we have faith in Dexcessa, they can charge over a screen and put an end to the shooting unit so they stop doing it. It is very important to consider the Masque here as she keeps that lovely 6" pile in and so can tie up troublesome shooters. 

Redeploy: this is interesting, but I think we need to know a bit more before really giving a full idea on it. It increases a charge by d6" effectively; it hurts us, but we can get so close to most units that it shouldn't bother us too much. It could also be helpful, but besides trying to rescue a hero out of shooting LoS I think this could be pretty niche. 

Important to note is that, from all of our info we have, units can use their own command abilities on themselves so the penalty from invaders may not matter than much if the generals do end up getting too close, but try to avoid this. 

Overall, these command abilities are looking nice for us. They're not quite as good as a double pile in, but we won't always have a keeper and sometimes we need to kill something first pile in so an immediate +1 to hit is better. In addition, the +1 to save not being locked behind Lurid Haze is very nice as it gives us more options. I should note that these command abilities are good for pretty much everyone, except factions that have access to similar things already. However, in Invaders as we've discussed we can cherry pick the best command ability at every phase and use pretty much what we want, allowing us to be very adaptive.

Final opinion: Very good in Invaders, average in other hosts

Endless spells

While we currently cannot comment on the generic endless spells, we can look at our own. First things first, every faction who can use endless spells will benefit from this - more damage and more control is better, after all! However, we have two advantages that others do not: our allegiance ability directly benefits from all endless spells activate in the hero phase. While most other factions just get some extra damage, we now get depravity points from these endless spells where we often didn't before as it was not in a phase that they did damage, and we get double the chance to do damage. In addition to that, so long as it remains unchanged, we have the Wheels of Excruciation. This is major: let's say that an opponent has four units within 12" of each other (very likely to happen for reasons we'll go into later); we run across them, almost certainly do 1 damage at least, get to do this twice, for 8 depravity - also known as a unit of fiends for free. 

Final opinion: Very good

Coherency

Let's get this out of the way, fiends are hurt by this unless understrengthing a unit is better than previously. However, on the whole this benefits us in two major ways. Besides daemonettes and marauders, we rarely used any units at a large size, and both of these are on 25mm bases and so are less hurt by coherency because they can reach over ranks. Twinsouls are good because they have that 2" reach, allowing them to get 10 in easily while still remaining in coherency. 

Importantly we often lack in defence besides a few units, so large units not being able to attack before we get to attack them is very important. 

Final opinion: Good

Reinforcement points

Overall, I don't think these hurt us very much. We don't have some unit that we want spam and we can get around these restrictions through summoning. Also, we won't be hit as often by mega buffed large hordes, which always used to hurt us.

More importantly, like coherency, this pushes people towards MSU and we just love that. With endless spells and even chariots, we can share pain around a lot of units to get big depravity every turn. I reckon we can quite easily earn a KoS every turn without really trying for it

Final opinion: Very good

Hero abilities

These benefit everyone, but many armies don't have a good hero/monster option. For example, Tzeentch can heal their Lord of Change but that's pretty minor when they don't really have much of a combat role. A Bloodthirster can have a Their Finest Hour, but they only have a 10" move so can't always determine a charge (more on this later). Like before, we'll go through each hero ability. 

Heroic leadership: as mentioned, good in invaders where we can have a dead general and keep our current general. Mostly to be used if we calculate we need more command points - the filler ability. 

Heroic willpower: we're unlikely to need this, and tbh it's a bit of a nerf as we don't want to lose our endless spells and this makes it easier to do 

Their finest hour: you have to love this on any of hour fast heroes, probably best used on the KoS (who has dumped their artefact for a +1 if we have a spare, or just used a +1 to hit command ability) before it first turn charges the enemy lines, but also great on late game Dex and Sigvald when he gets himself in there. Very very nice for us 

Heroic recovery: we have very good healing already, but one of Glutos's main drawbacks is that you need a daemon to come along with him to give him a hand, which isn't always reliable. Now, if you will Glutos to survive he will do so. Healing 2d3 a battleround with a 3+ (or 2+ save), - 1 to hit him, and a 5+ ward? Yes please. Also helps keep Sigvald alive - with his 4+ ward save, each of his wounds is worth 2 effectively, so this means every healed wound is also worth 2. Also, our heroes all have high bravery so no need to worry there - Glutos is in range of himself

Overall, we can make good use of these and like command abilities they give us more options. Our battletome doesn't have many inbuilt choices, but that's now supplemented by these.

Overall opinion: Good

Monster abilities

Unlike some factions, all of our in book monsters are also heroes, so we gain double the benefit. Of the monsters we have access to, the Keeper and Dex are both reasonably priced and do good damage now we can buff them a lot. Archaon is an absolute tank and murder machine, but what's new. 

Roar: this will hurt us a lot, in all honesty, but we have the speed to try avoid or tie up monsters. We really like command abilities, so being able to be denied them is going to hurt (esp on the double pile in). That said, we can only be hit by this once per turn, so there's not a massive issue, and we can use it on others if we're worried about them using a command ability 

Stomp: Nice and basic. It helps up the damage of some of our monsters, and as has been mentioned before, Synessa can overwatch for D6 MWs and then stomp of D3 which can finish some units off outright. Also nice to drop a stomp on a unit that we won't attack to rack in depravity 

 Titanic Duel: probably hurts more than it helps we we usually have good to hit values compared to most monsters, and we can get +1 to hit through a few other ways. Our monsters also don't do well when slugged in the face, but at least our commonplace -1 to hit can help mitigate this

Smash to rubble: because of our speed, and especially Dexcessa, I think this is a really great utility tool for us as a way to take out a key piece of the opponent's army. Our fane can get got, but our fane is more like a 'decent little extra' rather than our game plan, so losing it isn't the end of the world.

Overall opinion: Above average (maybe good) 

Battleplans

We haven't seen all of them yet, but from the look of it these battleplans are pretty simple. They're hard to read, but I can tell that we are seeing 18" deployment gap which is fantastic for us. We can first turn charge very easily with most of our army, and many armies cannot. Armies with 10" max move still have an unreliable 8" charge, and their troops are often on 5" move. This means that they can't reach us first turn but we can reach them, meaning we have an advantage either way. 

Also, I can't see it on the battleplans I'm reading, but it looks like there are no bonus points for meta tags (battleline etc) so now our summoning units are just as effective as capturing the objectives as before. 

There is also a rumour than monsters and heroes will count for more models when taking an objective, which is generally good for us 

Overall opinion: Very good

Points increases

It is rumoured that all armies are going up about 10%. Whether this is good for us or not depends on whether we are going to get boosted, or if we already have been. Until then, we can't say

Overall opinion: Dependant, good or potentially very bad

Hit and wound capping

Probably overall bad. While we're not losing any buffs, we are losing some utility on debuffs - there's little reason to give look our sir to Synessa, or for Dex to care about the overwatch penalty as it's already inbuilt. The one benefit is that we don't have to worry about anyone buffing themselves sky high; also acquiescence gives rerolling 1s to hit, which seems to have become much rarer now  
 

Overall opinion: Bad

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

Overall, I think AoS is much better for us compared to other armies when we used the Invaders host, and generally better for us when we use the other hosts. 

So long as people haven't let the turbulent reaction blind everyone to our potential, I think we have  a very high chance to reach high tournament placings, but also have more engaging gameplay with the new hero abilities, monster abilities and very importantly command points and abilities. We will remain as a finesse faction with no instant win button, but now we have options to buff our units considerably and depravity points have received a massive accidental buff that I think will lead to a very tool box faction where we can select a different buff and summon every phase, able to adapt to the enemy with ease. 

I hope this helps sum up the good and bad of the new changes   

[Thor]

1 hour ago, Enoby said:

Okay, I've got the time to go through some changes. I think, at the moment we have a good idea of what's going on with AoS 3. Of course, there could be a huge difference when we get the full rules, but by the sound of it there have been no leaks that are very scary sounding. I'm going to go through the unconfirmed leaks too, but if they end up being false or not what we thought, then just discount them or glean what you can.

Command points

Command points are now not something that can be stored, but are now much easier to generate. The ways we currently know that are generic to all factions are getting 1 or 2 at the beginning of the round (whether you go first or second), an extra 1 here when the general is on the battlefield, they can also get 1 point from heroic inspiration either on a 4+ or a 2+ (easier when the general is alive). Finally, you can get a command point from the warlord battalion or the command entourage battalion. This means, in a single battle round, any army (going first) can get 6 (1 for the turn, 1 for the general, 2 for getting heroic inspiration off twice, and 2 for taking both battalions and gaining both points on the same turn). If we are realistic, heroic inspiration will only go off one out of two times (with the general alive), and we will only count one battalion because it's unlikely someone would burn both command points at once, if they even take two battalions at all. So realistically, an army is getting between 2 and 4 (based on whether they want to take the battalion and whether they want to spend their hero abilities on trying to get a command point).

On its own, looking outside of hosts, Slaanesh doesn't have much in the way of command point generation. But if we take a look at the invaders host, that all changes. The invaders host opens up three ways to get command points: rod of misrule, glory hog, and a general dying. Not only that, having three generals means we have three chances to not have our general die; in addition, if one general does die then we get the benefit of improved heroic inspiration as well as keeping the command point from having a general. Finally, Dexcessa gives a free command point effectively. The absolute maximum we can get in a battle round when going first is 14+2 free ( for the turn, 1 for the general, 2 for getting heroic inspiration off twice, and 2 for taking both battalions and gaining both points on the same turn, rod of misrule gives 3, glory hog procs both turns for 2, and all three generals die + Dexcessa's free point). We should not aim or expect this at all; this is totally unrealistic and probably means something has gone wrong if it happens. If we look at it realistically, in a turn with Dex where we are looking for command points (and remember, it will be a choice - we have control of how many we want to try to go for), we will probably get 7-8+free (1 for general, 1 for turn, 1 for rod of misrule, 2 for Glory Hog - enemies will be dying left and right, more on this later - 1 for the battalion, 1 for heroic inspiration, possibly one for a general death, and the free one from Dex). If we are not looking for command points (if we just don't seem to need them this turn), we should get 5+2 free.

This means that our turns where we are not going out of our way to get any extra command points, we gain pretty much as many command points as a normal army who is trying their hardest to get as many CP as possible. 

Please note, we really need to see when command points disappear. If they disappear right at the end of the battleround then glory hog is less important as it will proc at the end of the battle round and so not see much as much benefit. It is still a free cp for inspiring presence though, and it means if we see an enemy unit die we can go more all out on command abilities in that phase, knowing we'll have one spare for inspiring presence. 

Final opinion: Excellent in Invaders, Average in other hosts

New command abilities

Of course, we could get as many points as we want, but that won't matter if we can't use them on anything useful. 

The generic command abilities known/predicted are: All Out Attack, All out Defence, Inspiring Presence, At the Double, Forward to Victory, Unleash Hell, and Redeploy. I'll go through each of these.

It is important to note that, when we're getting 7 command abilities in invaders to use a battle round, we can pick and choose what we'd like here 

All out attack: This one is really nice for our troops, especially Twinsouls. A unit of 10 of them will output the following on average: 9.7 vs 2+, 19.4 vs 3+, 29 vs 4+, 38.8 vs a 5+, 48.5 vs a 6+, and 58 vs a -. Combined with the shardspeaker, we can get +1 to hit and +1 to wound - this means daemonettes having 2 attacks at 3/3/-1/1, and importantly can be summoned in and still benefit from these buffs. Great command ability, especially when concerning the blissbarb archers - a unit of 33 of them with 2 attacks each at 3/3/-1/1 in the shooting phase so it doesn't stop it in the combat phase? Yes please

All out defence: This one isn't quite as good for us, but that doesn't mean bad at all. It means we can get some nice defence against shooting units. With Dexcessa, we can act like they have a 3+ save in the combat phase unless we choose not to (or to give it to someone else). As mentioned in the article, painbringers on a 3+ rerolling save is very nice, and they can actually hit back unlike chaos warriors, but putting chaos warriors on a 3+ rerolling save isn't a bad idea at all. And of course Glutos will be a massive tank as always, with that -1 to hit adding to that annoyingness to budge.

Inspiring presence: In all honestly, this one has the chance to hurt us, but it hurts everyone. However we can't deny that our mortal units struggle with poor bravery values. However, on the other hand, we do have a few ways around bravery: Glutos's third battle round, Syll'Esske, Dexcessa, and Battle Rapture. Battle rapture is really good because it gives you knowledge before arriving at the battleshock phase, so you know what to save for. Syll'Esske can definitely benefit from the smaller board size too as they'll get more in their bubble, and we get a tonne of command points so we can always keep one spare. If we're honest, Dex's ability is a bit useless unless you're running very large blocks of daemonettes and don't want to risk the banner. Glutos takes more time to get going so isn't super reliable. 

At the double: this is fine... we have a few options to run and charge, but not that many to be honest. The one key use I can see it for is for Dex to give it to themselves for a lovely 18" flying move for a big flank

Forward to victory: As good as it ever was, though only being able to use it once does provide a niche use for scarlet cavalcade as it allows the more units to benefit. A nerf if we can only use it once, but not one I'm particularly worried about for reasons we'll go into later, as well as many of our units getting rerolling charge for free anyway

Unleash hell: there are only three units that really benefit from this for us - Synessa, Blissbarb Archers, and Blissbarb Seekers. Other than that, this one could really hurt us depending on the army. Us taking some big damage before we can even get into combat means we're going to have to be really careful about what we charge. On the other hand. if we have faith in Dexcessa, they can charge over a screen and put an end to the shooting unit so they stop doing it. It is very important to consider the Masque here as she keeps that lovely 6" pile in and so can tie up troublesome shooters. 

Redeploy: this is interesting, but I think we need to know a bit more before really giving a full idea on it. It increases a charge by d6" effectively; it hurts us, but we can get so close to most units that it shouldn't bother us too much. It could also be helpful, but besides trying to rescue a hero out of shooting LoS I think this could be pretty niche. 

Important to note is that, from all of our info we have, units can use their own command abilities on themselves so the penalty from invaders may not matter than much if the generals do end up getting too close, but try to avoid this. 

Overall, these command abilities are looking nice for us. They're not quite as good as a double pile in, but we won't always have a keeper and sometimes we need to kill something first pile in so an immediate +1 to hit is better. In addition, the +1 to save not being locked behind Lurid Haze is very nice as it gives us more options. I should note that these command abilities are good for pretty much everyone, except factions that have access to similar things already. However, in Invaders as we've discussed we can cherry pick the best command ability at every phase and use pretty much what we want, allowing us to be very adaptive.

Final opinion: Very good in Invaders, average in other hosts

Endless spells

While we currently cannot comment on the generic endless spells, we can look at our own. First things first, every faction who can use endless spells will benefit from this - more damage and more control is better, after all! However, we have two advantages that others do not: our allegiance ability directly benefits from all endless spells activate in the hero phase. While most other factions just get some extra damage, we now get depravity points from these endless spells where we often didn't before as it was not in a phase that they did damage, and we get double the chance to do damage. In addition to that, so long as it remains unchanged, we have the Wheels of Excruciation. This is major: let's say that an opponent has four units within 12" of each other (very likely to happen for reasons we'll go into later); we run across them, almost certainly do 1 damage at least, get to do this twice, for 8 depravity - also known as a unit of fiends for free. 

Final opinion: Very good

Coherency

Let's get this out of the way, fiends are hurt by this unless understrengthing a unit is better than previously. However, on the whole this benefits us in two major ways. Besides daemonettes and marauders, we rarely used any units at a large size, and both of these are on 25mm bases and so are less hurt by coherency because they can reach over ranks. Twinsouls are good because they have that 2" reach, allowing them to get 10 in easily while still remaining in coherency. 

Importantly we often lack in defence besides a few units, so large units not being able to attack before we get to attack them is very important. 

Final opinion: Good

Reinforcement points

Overall, I don't think these hurt us very much. We don't have some unit that we want spam and we can get around these restrictions through summoning. Also, we won't be hit as often by mega buffed large hordes, which always used to hurt us.

More importantly, like coherency, this pushes people towards MSU and we just love that. With endless spells and even chariots, we can share pain around a lot of units to get big depravity every turn. I reckon we can quite easily earn a KoS every turn without really trying for it

Final opinion: Very good

Hero abilities

These benefit everyone, but many armies don't have a good hero/monster option. For example, Tzeentch can heal their Lord of Change but that's pretty minor when they don't really have much of a combat role. A Bloodthirster can have a Their Finest Hour, but they only have a 10" move so can't always determine a charge (more on this later). Like before, we'll go through each hero ability. 

Heroic leadership: as mentioned, good in invaders where we can have a dead general and keep our current general. Mostly to be used if we calculate we need more command points - the filler ability. 

Heroic willpower: we're unlikely to need this, and tbh it's a bit of a nerf as we don't want to lose our endless spells and this makes it easier to do 

Their finest hour: you have to love this on any of hour fast heroes, probably best used on the KoS (who has dumped their artefact for a +1 if we have a spare, or just used a +1 to hit command ability) before it first turn charges the enemy lines, but also great on late game Dex and Sigvald when he gets himself in there. Very very nice for us 

Heroic recovery: we have very good healing already, but one of Glutos's main drawbacks is that you need a daemon to come along with him to give him a hand, which isn't always reliable. Now, if you will Glutos to survive he will do so. Healing 2d3 a battleround with a 3+ (or 2+ save), - 1 to hit him, and a 5+ ward? Yes please. Also helps keep Sigvald alive - with his 4+ ward save, each of his wounds is worth 2 effectively, so this means every healed wound is also worth 2. Also, our heroes all have high bravery so no need to worry there - Glutos is in range of himself

Overall, we can make good use of these and like command abilities they give us more options. Our battletome doesn't have many inbuilt choices, but that's now supplemented by these.

Overall opinion: Good

Monster abilities

Unlike some factions, all of our in book monsters are also heroes, so we gain double the benefit. Of the monsters we have access to, the Keeper and Dex are both reasonably priced and do good damage now we can buff them a lot. Archaon is an absolute tank and murder machine, but what's new. 

Roar: this will hurt us a lot, in all honesty, but we have the speed to try avoid or tie up monsters. We really like command abilities, so being able to be denied them is going to hurt (esp on the double pile in). That said, we can only be hit by this once per turn, so there's not a massive issue, and we can use it on others if we're worried about them using a command ability 

Stomp: Nice and basic. It helps up the damage of some of our monsters, and as has been mentioned before, Synessa can overwatch for D6 MWs and then stomp of D3 which can finish some units off outright. Also nice to drop a stomp on a unit that we won't attack to rack in depravity 

 Titanic Duel: probably hurts more than it helps we we usually have good to hit values compared to most monsters, and we can get +1 to hit through a few other ways. Our monsters also don't do well when slugged in the face, but at least our commonplace -1 to hit can help mitigate this

Smash to rubble: because of our speed, and especially Dexcessa, I think this is a really great utility tool for us as a way to take out a key piece of the opponent's army. Our fane can get got, but our fane is more like a 'decent little extra' rather than our game plan, so losing it isn't the end of the world.

Overall opinion: Above average (maybe good) 

Battleplans

We haven't seen all of them yet, but from the look of it these battleplans are pretty simple. They're hard to read, but I can tell that we are seeing 18" deployment gap which is fantastic for us. We can first turn charge very easily with most of our army, and many armies cannot. Armies with 10" max move still have an unreliable 8" charge, and their troops are often on 5" move. This means that they can't reach us first turn but we can reach them, meaning we have an advantage either way. 

Also, I can't see it on the battleplans I'm reading, but it looks like there are no bonus points for meta tags (battleline etc) so now our summoning units are just as effective as capturing the objectives as before. 

There is also a rumour than monsters and heroes will count for more models when taking an objective, which is generally good for us 

Overall opinion: Very good

Points increases

It is rumoured that all armies are going up about 10%. Whether this is good for us or not depends on whether we are going to get boosted, or if we already have been. Until then, we can't say

Overall opinion: Dependant, good or potentially very bad

Hit and wound capping

Probably overall bad. While we're not losing any buffs, we are losing some utility on debuffs - there's little reason to give look our sir to Synessa, or for Dex to care about the overwatch penalty as it's already inbuilt. The one benefit is that we don't have to worry about anyone buffing themselves sky high; also acquiescence gives rerolling 1s to hit, which seems to have become much rarer now  
 

Overall opinion: Bad

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

Overall, I think AoS is much better for us compared to other armies when we used the Invaders host, and generally better for us when we use the other hosts. 

So long as people haven't let the turbulent reaction blind everyone to our potential, I think we have  a very high chance to reach high tournament placings, but also have more engaging gameplay with the new hero abilities, monster abilities and very importantly command points and abilities. We will remain as a finesse faction with no instant win button, but now we have options to buff our units considerably and depravity points have received a massive accidental buff that I think will lead to a very tool box faction where we can select a different buff and summon every phase, able to adapt to the enemy with ease. 

I hope this helps sum up the good and bad of the new changes   

My man you are absolutely Trucking it at the moment, i'm stoked to see what the changes will bring. Great job. 

[Trav]

Im actually looking forward to smashing up my skaven mates gnawholes

[TimeToWaste85]

1 hour ago, Trav said:

Im actually looking forward to smashing up my skaven mates gnawholes

That sounds so so very wrong. *checks, in Slaanesh thread*. Carry on usual 😆

[Trav]

13 minutes ago, TimeToWaste85 said:

That sounds so so very wrong. *checks, in Slaanesh thread*. Carry on usual 😆

Haha yeah I did think that after I posted it. Oops!

[AngryPanda]

11 hours ago, Enoby said:

Okay, I've got the time to go through some changes. I think, at the moment we have a good idea of what's going on with AoS 3. Of course, there could be a huge difference when we get the full rules, but by the sound of it there have been no leaks that are very scary sounding. I'm going to go through the unconfirmed leaks too, but if they end up being false or not what we thought, then just discount them or glean what you can.

Command points

Command points are now not something that can be stored, but are now much easier to generate. The ways we currently know that are generic to all factions are getting 1 or 2 at the beginning of the round (whether you go first or second), an extra 1 here when the general is on the battlefield, they can also get 1 point from heroic inspiration either on a 4+ or a 2+ (easier when the general is alive). Finally, you can get a command point from the warlord battalion or the command entourage battalion. This means, in a single battle round, any army (going first) can get 6 (1 for the turn, 1 for the general, 2 for getting heroic inspiration off twice, and 2 for taking both battalions and gaining both points on the same turn). If we are realistic, heroic inspiration will only go off one out of two times (with the general alive), and we will only count one battalion because it's unlikely someone would burn both command points at once, if they even take two battalions at all. So realistically, an army is getting between 2 and 4 (based on whether they want to take the battalion and whether they want to spend their hero abilities on trying to get a command point).

On its own, looking outside of hosts, Slaanesh doesn't have much in the way of command point generation. But if we take a look at the invaders host, that all changes. The invaders host opens up three ways to get command points: rod of misrule, glory hog, and a general dying. Not only that, having three generals means we have three chances to not have our general die; in addition, if one general does die then we get the benefit of improved heroic inspiration as well as keeping the command point from having a general. Finally, Dexcessa gives a free command point effectively. The absolute maximum we can get in a battle round when going first is 14+2 free ( for the turn, 1 for the general, 2 for getting heroic inspiration off twice, and 2 for taking both battalions and gaining both points on the same turn, rod of misrule gives 3, glory hog procs both turns for 2, and all three generals die + Dexcessa's free point). We should not aim or expect this at all; this is totally unrealistic and probably means something has gone wrong if it happens. If we look at it realistically, in a turn with Dex where we are looking for command points (and remember, it will be a choice - we have control of how many we want to try to go for), we will probably get 7-8+free (1 for general, 1 for turn, 1 for rod of misrule, 2 for Glory Hog - enemies will be dying left and right, more on this later - 1 for the battalion, 1 for heroic inspiration, possibly one for a general death, and the free one from Dex). If we are not looking for command points (if we just don't seem to need them this turn), we should get 5+2 free.

This means that our turns where we are not going out of our way to get any extra command points, we gain pretty much as many command points as a normal army who is trying their hardest to get as many CP as possible. 

Please note, we really need to see when command points disappear. If they disappear right at the end of the battleround then glory hog is less important as it will proc at the end of the battle round and so not see much as much benefit. It is still a free cp for inspiring presence though, and it means if we see an enemy unit die we can go more all out on command abilities in that phase, knowing we'll have one spare for inspiring presence. 

Final opinion: Excellent in Invaders, Average in other hosts

New command abilities

Of course, we could get as many points as we want, but that won't matter if we can't use them on anything useful. 

The generic command abilities known/predicted are: All Out Attack, All out Defence, Inspiring Presence, At the Double, Forward to Victory, Unleash Hell, and Redeploy. I'll go through each of these.

It is important to note that, when we're getting 7 command abilities in invaders to use a battle round, we can pick and choose what we'd like here 

All out attack: This one is really nice for our troops, especially Twinsouls. A unit of 10 of them will output the following on average: 9.7 vs 2+, 19.4 vs 3+, 29 vs 4+, 38.8 vs a 5+, 48.5 vs a 6+, and 58 vs a -. Combined with the shardspeaker, we can get +1 to hit and +1 to wound - this means daemonettes having 2 attacks at 3/3/-1/1, and importantly can be summoned in and still benefit from these buffs. Great command ability, especially when concerning the blissbarb archers - a unit of 33 of them with 2 attacks each at 3/3/-1/1 in the shooting phase so it doesn't stop it in the combat phase? Yes please

All out defence: This one isn't quite as good for us, but that doesn't mean bad at all. It means we can get some nice defence against shooting units. With Dexcessa, we can act like they have a 3+ save in the combat phase unless we choose not to (or to give it to someone else). As mentioned in the article, painbringers on a 3+ rerolling save is very nice, and they can actually hit back unlike chaos warriors, but putting chaos warriors on a 3+ rerolling save isn't a bad idea at all. And of course Glutos will be a massive tank as always, with that -1 to hit adding to that annoyingness to budge.

Inspiring presence: In all honestly, this one has the chance to hurt us, but it hurts everyone. However we can't deny that our mortal units struggle with poor bravery values. However, on the other hand, we do have a few ways around bravery: Glutos's third battle round, Syll'Esske, Dexcessa, and Battle Rapture. Battle rapture is really good because it gives you knowledge before arriving at the battleshock phase, so you know what to save for. Syll'Esske can definitely benefit from the smaller board size too as they'll get more in their bubble, and we get a tonne of command points so we can always keep one spare. If we're honest, Dex's ability is a bit useless unless you're running very large blocks of daemonettes and don't want to risk the banner. Glutos takes more time to get going so isn't super reliable. 

At the double: this is fine... we have a few options to run and charge, but not that many to be honest. The one key use I can see it for is for Dex to give it to themselves for a lovely 18" flying move for a big flank

Forward to victory: As good as it ever was, though only being able to use it once does provide a niche use for scarlet cavalcade as it allows the more units to benefit. A nerf if we can only use it once, but not one I'm particularly worried about for reasons we'll go into later, as well as many of our units getting rerolling charge for free anyway

Unleash hell: there are only three units that really benefit from this for us - Synessa, Blissbarb Archers, and Blissbarb Seekers. Other than that, this one could really hurt us depending on the army. Us taking some big damage before we can even get into combat means we're going to have to be really careful about what we charge. On the other hand. if we have faith in Dexcessa, they can charge over a screen and put an end to the shooting unit so they stop doing it. It is very important to consider the Masque here as she keeps that lovely 6" pile in and so can tie up troublesome shooters. 

Redeploy: this is interesting, but I think we need to know a bit more before really giving a full idea on it. It increases a charge by d6" effectively; it hurts us, but we can get so close to most units that it shouldn't bother us too much. It could also be helpful, but besides trying to rescue a hero out of shooting LoS I think this could be pretty niche. 

Important to note is that, from all of our info we have, units can use their own command abilities on themselves so the penalty from invaders may not matter than much if the generals do end up getting too close, but try to avoid this. 

Overall, these command abilities are looking nice for us. They're not quite as good as a double pile in, but we won't always have a keeper and sometimes we need to kill something first pile in so an immediate +1 to hit is better. In addition, the +1 to save not being locked behind Lurid Haze is very nice as it gives us more options. I should note that these command abilities are good for pretty much everyone, except factions that have access to similar things already. However, in Invaders as we've discussed we can cherry pick the best command ability at every phase and use pretty much what we want, allowing us to be very adaptive.

Final opinion: Very good in Invaders, average in other hosts

Endless spells

While we currently cannot comment on the generic endless spells, we can look at our own. First things first, every faction who can use endless spells will benefit from this - more damage and more control is better, after all! However, we have two advantages that others do not: our allegiance ability directly benefits from all endless spells activate in the hero phase. While most other factions just get some extra damage, we now get depravity points from these endless spells where we often didn't before as it was not in a phase that they did damage, and we get double the chance to do damage. In addition to that, so long as it remains unchanged, we have the Wheels of Excruciation. This is major: let's say that an opponent has four units within 12" of each other (very likely to happen for reasons we'll go into later); we run across them, almost certainly do 1 damage at least, get to do this twice, for 8 depravity - also known as a unit of fiends for free. 

Final opinion: Very good

Coherency

Let's get this out of the way, fiends are hurt by this unless understrengthing a unit is better than previously. However, on the whole this benefits us in two major ways. Besides daemonettes and marauders, we rarely used any units at a large size, and both of these are on 25mm bases and so are less hurt by coherency because they can reach over ranks. Twinsouls are good because they have that 2" reach, allowing them to get 10 in easily while still remaining in coherency. 

Importantly we often lack in defence besides a few units, so large units not being able to attack before we get to attack them is very important. 

Final opinion: Good

Reinforcement points

Overall, I don't think these hurt us very much. We don't have some unit that we want spam and we can get around these restrictions through summoning. Also, we won't be hit as often by mega buffed large hordes, which always used to hurt us.

More importantly, like coherency, this pushes people towards MSU and we just love that. With endless spells and even chariots, we can share pain around a lot of units to get big depravity every turn. I reckon we can quite easily earn a KoS every turn without really trying for it

Final opinion: Very good

Hero abilities

These benefit everyone, but many armies don't have a good hero/monster option. For example, Tzeentch can heal their Lord of Change but that's pretty minor when they don't really have much of a combat role. A Bloodthirster can have a Their Finest Hour, but they only have a 10" move so can't always determine a charge (more on this later). Like before, we'll go through each hero ability. 

Heroic leadership: as mentioned, good in invaders where we can have a dead general and keep our current general. Mostly to be used if we calculate we need more command points - the filler ability. 

Heroic willpower: we're unlikely to need this, and tbh it's a bit of a nerf as we don't want to lose our endless spells and this makes it easier to do 

Their finest hour: you have to love this on any of hour fast heroes, probably best used on the KoS (who has dumped their artefact for a +1 if we have a spare, or just used a +1 to hit command ability) before it first turn charges the enemy lines, but also great on late game Dex and Sigvald when he gets himself in there. Very very nice for us 

Heroic recovery: we have very good healing already, but one of Glutos's main drawbacks is that you need a daemon to come along with him to give him a hand, which isn't always reliable. Now, if you will Glutos to survive he will do so. Healing 2d3 a battleround with a 3+ (or 2+ save), - 1 to hit him, and a 5+ ward? Yes please. Also helps keep Sigvald alive - with his 4+ ward save, each of his wounds is worth 2 effectively, so this means every healed wound is also worth 2. Also, our heroes all have high bravery so no need to worry there - Glutos is in range of himself

Overall, we can make good use of these and like command abilities they give us more options. Our battletome doesn't have many inbuilt choices, but that's now supplemented by these.

Overall opinion: Good

Monster abilities

Unlike some factions, all of our in book monsters are also heroes, so we gain double the benefit. Of the monsters we have access to, the Keeper and Dex are both reasonably priced and do good damage now we can buff them a lot. Archaon is an absolute tank and murder machine, but what's new. 

Roar: this will hurt us a lot, in all honesty, but we have the speed to try avoid or tie up monsters. We really like command abilities, so being able to be denied them is going to hurt (esp on the double pile in). That said, we can only be hit by this once per turn, so there's not a massive issue, and we can use it on others if we're worried about them using a command ability 

Stomp: Nice and basic. It helps up the damage of some of our monsters, and as has been mentioned before, Synessa can overwatch for D6 MWs and then stomp of D3 which can finish some units off outright. Also nice to drop a stomp on a unit that we won't attack to rack in depravity 

 Titanic Duel: probably hurts more than it helps we we usually have good to hit values compared to most monsters, and we can get +1 to hit through a few other ways. Our monsters also don't do well when slugged in the face, but at least our commonplace -1 to hit can help mitigate this

Smash to rubble: because of our speed, and especially Dexcessa, I think this is a really great utility tool for us as a way to take out a key piece of the opponent's army. Our fane can get got, but our fane is more like a 'decent little extra' rather than our game plan, so losing it isn't the end of the world.

Overall opinion: Above average (maybe good) 

Battleplans

We haven't seen all of them yet, but from the look of it these battleplans are pretty simple. They're hard to read, but I can tell that we are seeing 18" deployment gap which is fantastic for us. We can first turn charge very easily with most of our army, and many armies cannot. Armies with 10" max move still have an unreliable 8" charge, and their troops are often on 5" move. This means that they can't reach us first turn but we can reach them, meaning we have an advantage either way. 

Also, I can't see it on the battleplans I'm reading, but it looks like there are no bonus points for meta tags (battleline etc) so now our summoning units are just as effective as capturing the objectives as before. 

There is also a rumour than monsters and heroes will count for more models when taking an objective, which is generally good for us 

Overall opinion: Very good

Points increases

It is rumoured that all armies are going up about 10%. Whether this is good for us or not depends on whether we are going to get boosted, or if we already have been. Until then, we can't say

Overall opinion: Dependant, good or potentially very bad

Hit and wound capping

Probably overall bad. While we're not losing any buffs, we are losing some utility on debuffs - there's little reason to give look our sir to Synessa, or for Dex to care about the overwatch penalty as it's already inbuilt. The one benefit is that we don't have to worry about anyone buffing themselves sky high; also acquiescence gives rerolling 1s to hit, which seems to have become much rarer now  
 

Overall opinion: Bad

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

Overall, I think AoS is much better for us compared to other armies when we used the Invaders host, and generally better for us when we use the other hosts. 

So long as people haven't let the turbulent reaction blind everyone to our potential, I think we have  a very high chance to reach high tournament placings, but also have more engaging gameplay with the new hero abilities, monster abilities and very importantly command points and abilities. We will remain as a finesse faction with no instant win button, but now we have options to buff our units considerably and depravity points have received a massive accidental buff that I think will lead to a very tool box faction where we can select a different buff and summon every phase, able to adapt to the enemy with ease. 

I hope this helps sum up the good and bad of the new changes   

I agree with everything you’ve said, and I’m also super excited for 3rd edition. If there are point increases across the board, then I have a feeling we’re going to be in a great spot with the rumored changes you’ve addressed (assuming that we don’t get point increases ourselves and it depends on how much the increases are for the other armies).

I feel that something Slaanesh, as well as a many other chaos armies, need to be considering is how reinforcements are going to affect mass chaos warriors and marauders. It’s going to be a far more costly taking big blocks of chaos warriors to hold objectives, or marauders to deal damage. If warriors go up in price, taking them with additional reinforcements will take up a big chunk of one’s army, and may not be worth it in many lists. 
 

I’m also wondering how much the core battalions will cost, assuming you have to pay for them, which can be a big factor in determining how they’ll be incorporated. I can definitely see some invader lists being super strong in terms of command point generation using the warlord battalion by synergizing 5-10 man blocks of either painbringers or twinsouls to maximize damage via command abilities. 

[Sorrow]

Thus far, things are looking very promising for us. Huge thank you to @Enoby for his detailed analysis.

I just hope our rules were written for AoS 3. It would be funny if we found out that our rules were actually written for AoS 2 and we get a point increase across some units that are already priced too high, looking at Slaangors/Painbringers/Twinsouls.

[Rawenwing]

21 hours ago, Enoby said:

Okay, I've got the time to go through some changes. I think, at the moment we have a good idea of what's going on with AoS 3. Of course, there could be a huge difference when we get the full rules, but by the sound of it there have been no leaks that are very scary sounding. I'm going to go through the unconfirmed leaks too, but if they end up being false or not what we thought, then just discount them or glean what you can.

Command points

Command points are now not something that can be stored, but are now much easier to generate. The ways we currently know that are generic to all factions are getting 1 or 2 at the beginning of the round (whether you go first or second), an extra 1 here when the general is on the battlefield, they can also get 1 point from heroic inspiration either on a 4+ or a 2+ (easier when the general is alive). Finally, you can get a command point from the warlord battalion or the command entourage battalion. This means, in a single battle round, any army (going first) can get 6 (1 for the turn, 1 for the general, 2 for getting heroic inspiration off twice, and 2 for taking both battalions and gaining both points on the same turn). If we are realistic, heroic inspiration will only go off one out of two times (with the general alive), and we will only count one battalion because it's unlikely someone would burn both command points at once, if they even take two battalions at all. So realistically, an army is getting between 2 and 4 (based on whether they want to take the battalion and whether they want to spend their hero abilities on trying to get a command point).

On its own, looking outside of hosts, Slaanesh doesn't have much in the way of command point generation. But if we take a look at the invaders host, that all changes. The invaders host opens up three ways to get command points: rod of misrule, glory hog, and a general dying. Not only that, having three generals means we have three chances to not have our general die; in addition, if one general does die then we get the benefit of improved heroic inspiration as well as keeping the command point from having a general. Finally, Dexcessa gives a free command point effectively. The absolute maximum we can get in a battle round when going first is 14+2 free ( for the turn, 1 for the general, 2 for getting heroic inspiration off twice, and 2 for taking both battalions and gaining both points on the same turn, rod of misrule gives 3, glory hog procs both turns for 2, and all three generals die + Dexcessa's free point). We should not aim or expect this at all; this is totally unrealistic and probably means something has gone wrong if it happens. If we look at it realistically, in a turn with Dex where we are looking for command points (and remember, it will be a choice - we have control of how many we want to try to go for), we will probably get 7-8+free (1 for general, 1 for turn, 1 for rod of misrule, 2 for Glory Hog - enemies will be dying left and right, more on this later - 1 for the battalion, 1 for heroic inspiration, possibly one for a general death, and the free one from Dex). If we are not looking for command points (if we just don't seem to need them this turn), we should get 5+2 free.

This means that our turns where we are not going out of our way to get any extra command points, we gain pretty much as many command points as a normal army who is trying their hardest to get as many CP as possible. 

Please note, we really need to see when command points disappear. If they disappear right at the end of the battleround then glory hog is less important as it will proc at the end of the battle round and so not see much as much benefit. It is still a free cp for inspiring presence though, and it means if we see an enemy unit die we can go more all out on command abilities in that phase, knowing we'll have one spare for inspiring presence. 

Final opinion: Excellent in Invaders, Average in other hosts

New command abilities

Of course, we could get as many points as we want, but that won't matter if we can't use them on anything useful. 

The generic command abilities known/predicted are: All Out Attack, All out Defence, Inspiring Presence, At the Double, Forward to Victory, Unleash Hell, and Redeploy. I'll go through each of these.

It is important to note that, when we're getting 7 command abilities in invaders to use a battle round, we can pick and choose what we'd like here 

All out attack: This one is really nice for our troops, especially Twinsouls. A unit of 10 of them will output the following on average: 9.7 vs 2+, 19.4 vs 3+, 29 vs 4+, 38.8 vs a 5+, 48.5 vs a 6+, and 58 vs a -. Combined with the shardspeaker, we can get +1 to hit and +1 to wound - this means daemonettes having 2 attacks at 3/3/-1/1, and importantly can be summoned in and still benefit from these buffs. Great command ability, especially when concerning the blissbarb archers - a unit of 33 of them with 2 attacks each at 3/3/-1/1 in the shooting phase so it doesn't stop it in the combat phase? Yes please

All out defence: This one isn't quite as good for us, but that doesn't mean bad at all. It means we can get some nice defence against shooting units. With Dexcessa, we can act like they have a 3+ save in the combat phase unless we choose not to (or to give it to someone else). As mentioned in the article, painbringers on a 3+ rerolling save is very nice, and they can actually hit back unlike chaos warriors, but putting chaos warriors on a 3+ rerolling save isn't a bad idea at all. And of course Glutos will be a massive tank as always, with that -1 to hit adding to that annoyingness to budge.

Inspiring presence: In all honestly, this one has the chance to hurt us, but it hurts everyone. However we can't deny that our mortal units struggle with poor bravery values. However, on the other hand, we do have a few ways around bravery: Glutos's third battle round, Syll'Esske, Dexcessa, and Battle Rapture. Battle rapture is really good because it gives you knowledge before arriving at the battleshock phase, so you know what to save for. Syll'Esske can definitely benefit from the smaller board size too as they'll get more in their bubble, and we get a tonne of command points so we can always keep one spare. If we're honest, Dex's ability is a bit useless unless you're running very large blocks of daemonettes and don't want to risk the banner. Glutos takes more time to get going so isn't super reliable. 

At the double: this is fine... we have a few options to run and charge, but not that many to be honest. The one key use I can see it for is for Dex to give it to themselves for a lovely 18" flying move for a big flank

Forward to victory: As good as it ever was, though only being able to use it once does provide a niche use for scarlet cavalcade as it allows the more units to benefit. A nerf if we can only use it once, but not one I'm particularly worried about for reasons we'll go into later, as well as many of our units getting rerolling charge for free anyway

Unleash hell: there are only three units that really benefit from this for us - Synessa, Blissbarb Archers, and Blissbarb Seekers. Other than that, this one could really hurt us depending on the army. Us taking some big damage before we can even get into combat means we're going to have to be really careful about what we charge. On the other hand. if we have faith in Dexcessa, they can charge over a screen and put an end to the shooting unit so they stop doing it. It is very important to consider the Masque here as she keeps that lovely 6" pile in and so can tie up troublesome shooters. 

Redeploy: this is interesting, but I think we need to know a bit more before really giving a full idea on it. It increases a charge by d6" effectively; it hurts us, but we can get so close to most units that it shouldn't bother us too much. It could also be helpful, but besides trying to rescue a hero out of shooting LoS I think this could be pretty niche. 

Important to note is that, from all of our info we have, units can use their own command abilities on themselves so the penalty from invaders may not matter than much if the generals do end up getting too close, but try to avoid this. 

Overall, these command abilities are looking nice for us. They're not quite as good as a double pile in, but we won't always have a keeper and sometimes we need to kill something first pile in so an immediate +1 to hit is better. In addition, the +1 to save not being locked behind Lurid Haze is very nice as it gives us more options. I should note that these command abilities are good for pretty much everyone, except factions that have access to similar things already. However, in Invaders as we've discussed we can cherry pick the best command ability at every phase and use pretty much what we want, allowing us to be very adaptive.

Final opinion: Very good in Invaders, average in other hosts

Endless spells

While we currently cannot comment on the generic endless spells, we can look at our own. First things first, every faction who can use endless spells will benefit from this - more damage and more control is better, after all! However, we have two advantages that others do not: our allegiance ability directly benefits from all endless spells activate in the hero phase. While most other factions just get some extra damage, we now get depravity points from these endless spells where we often didn't before as it was not in a phase that they did damage, and we get double the chance to do damage. In addition to that, so long as it remains unchanged, we have the Wheels of Excruciation. This is major: let's say that an opponent has four units within 12" of each other (very likely to happen for reasons we'll go into later); we run across them, almost certainly do 1 damage at least, get to do this twice, for 8 depravity - also known as a unit of fiends for free. 

Final opinion: Very good

Coherency

Let's get this out of the way, fiends are hurt by this unless understrengthing a unit is better than previously. However, on the whole this benefits us in two major ways. Besides daemonettes and marauders, we rarely used any units at a large size, and both of these are on 25mm bases and so are less hurt by coherency because they can reach over ranks. Twinsouls are good because they have that 2" reach, allowing them to get 10 in easily while still remaining in coherency. 

Importantly we often lack in defence besides a few units, so large units not being able to attack before we get to attack them is very important. 

Final opinion: Good

Reinforcement points

Overall, I don't think these hurt us very much. We don't have some unit that we want spam and we can get around these restrictions through summoning. Also, we won't be hit as often by mega buffed large hordes, which always used to hurt us.

More importantly, like coherency, this pushes people towards MSU and we just love that. With endless spells and even chariots, we can share pain around a lot of units to get big depravity every turn. I reckon we can quite easily earn a KoS every turn without really trying for it

Final opinion: Very good

Hero abilities

These benefit everyone, but many armies don't have a good hero/monster option. For example, Tzeentch can heal their Lord of Change but that's pretty minor when they don't really have much of a combat role. A Bloodthirster can have a Their Finest Hour, but they only have a 10" move so can't always determine a charge (more on this later). Like before, we'll go through each hero ability. 

Heroic leadership: as mentioned, good in invaders where we can have a dead general and keep our current general. Mostly to be used if we calculate we need more command points - the filler ability. 

Heroic willpower: we're unlikely to need this, and tbh it's a bit of a nerf as we don't want to lose our endless spells and this makes it easier to do 

Their finest hour: you have to love this on any of hour fast heroes, probably best used on the KoS (who has dumped their artefact for a +1 if we have a spare, or just used a +1 to hit command ability) before it first turn charges the enemy lines, but also great on late game Dex and Sigvald when he gets himself in there. Very very nice for us 

Heroic recovery: we have very good healing already, but one of Glutos's main drawbacks is that you need a daemon to come along with him to give him a hand, which isn't always reliable. Now, if you will Glutos to survive he will do so. Healing 2d3 a battleround with a 3+ (or 2+ save), - 1 to hit him, and a 5+ ward? Yes please. Also helps keep Sigvald alive - with his 4+ ward save, each of his wounds is worth 2 effectively, so this means every healed wound is also worth 2. Also, our heroes all have high bravery so no need to worry there - Glutos is in range of himself

Overall, we can make good use of these and like command abilities they give us more options. Our battletome doesn't have many inbuilt choices, but that's now supplemented by these.

Overall opinion: Good

Monster abilities

Unlike some factions, all of our in book monsters are also heroes, so we gain double the benefit. Of the monsters we have access to, the Keeper and Dex are both reasonably priced and do good damage now we can buff them a lot. Archaon is an absolute tank and murder machine, but what's new. 

Roar: this will hurt us a lot, in all honesty, but we have the speed to try avoid or tie up monsters. We really like command abilities, so being able to be denied them is going to hurt (esp on the double pile in). That said, we can only be hit by this once per turn, so there's not a massive issue, and we can use it on others if we're worried about them using a command ability 

Stomp: Nice and basic. It helps up the damage of some of our monsters, and as has been mentioned before, Synessa can overwatch for D6 MWs and then stomp of D3 which can finish some units off outright. Also nice to drop a stomp on a unit that we won't attack to rack in depravity 

 Titanic Duel: probably hurts more than it helps we we usually have good to hit values compared to most monsters, and we can get +1 to hit through a few other ways. Our monsters also don't do well when slugged in the face, but at least our commonplace -1 to hit can help mitigate this

Smash to rubble: because of our speed, and especially Dexcessa, I think this is a really great utility tool for us as a way to take out a key piece of the opponent's army. Our fane can get got, but our fane is more like a 'decent little extra' rather than our game plan, so losing it isn't the end of the world.

Overall opinion: Above average (maybe good) 

Battleplans

We haven't seen all of them yet, but from the look of it these battleplans are pretty simple. They're hard to read, but I can tell that we are seeing 18" deployment gap which is fantastic for us. We can first turn charge very easily with most of our army, and many armies cannot. Armies with 10" max move still have an unreliable 8" charge, and their troops are often on 5" move. This means that they can't reach us first turn but we can reach them, meaning we have an advantage either way. 

Also, I can't see it on the battleplans I'm reading, but it looks like there are no bonus points for meta tags (battleline etc) so now our summoning units are just as effective as capturing the objectives as before. 

There is also a rumour than monsters and heroes will count for more models when taking an objective, which is generally good for us 

Overall opinion: Very good

Points increases

It is rumoured that all armies are going up about 10%. Whether this is good for us or not depends on whether we are going to get boosted, or if we already have been. Until then, we can't say

Overall opinion: Dependant, good or potentially very bad

Hit and wound capping

Probably overall bad. While we're not losing any buffs, we are losing some utility on debuffs - there's little reason to give look our sir to Synessa, or for Dex to care about the overwatch penalty as it's already inbuilt. The one benefit is that we don't have to worry about anyone buffing themselves sky high; also acquiescence gives rerolling 1s to hit, which seems to have become much rarer now  
 

Overall opinion: Bad

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

Overall, I think AoS is much better for us compared to other armies when we used the Invaders host, and generally better for us when we use the other hosts. 

So long as people haven't let the turbulent reaction blind everyone to our potential, I think we have  a very high chance to reach high tournament placings, but also have more engaging gameplay with the new hero abilities, monster abilities and very importantly command points and abilities. We will remain as a finesse faction with no instant win button, but now we have options to buff our units considerably and depravity points have received a massive accidental buff that I think will lead to a very tool box faction where we can select a different buff and summon every phase, able to adapt to the enemy with ease. 

I hope this helps sum up the good and bad of the new changes   

Absolutely perfect breakdown, we are indeed shaping up to be in a really strong spot in the 3.0 meta. I don’t know if this needs clarification or not but, should we generate extra cp as per invaders rule about generals? In that case you could keep your warlord trait general alive and lose one of the other two and still generate a cp on a 2+ 

[Yoid]

22 minutes ago, Rawenwing said:

Absolutely perfect breakdown, we are indeed shaping up to be in a really strong spot in the 3.0 meta. I don’t know if this needs clarification or not but, should we generate extra cp as per invaders rule about generals? In that case you could keep your warlord trait general alive and lose one of the other two and still generate a cp on a 2+ 

I doubt it. The most probable outcome Rules As Intended is that we still get the General Alive CP as long as one of our Generals is alive, and that we can opt to the 2+ roll as long as non of our Generals is alive.

[Enoby]

 

4 hours ago, Sorrow said:

Thus far, things are looking very promising for us. Huge thank you to @Enoby for his detailed analysis.

I just hope our rules were written for AoS 3. It would be funny if we found out that our rules were actually written for AoS 2 and we get a point increase across some units that are already priced too high, looking at Slaangors/Painbringers/Twinsouls.

Thank you

Some more good news for us is that, from a source who leaked a lot of rules before and the twins, we have not been touched points wise and everyone else has been besides Soulblight.

Bad news is chaos warriors are less good for us (min units of 10) and Archaon has had a gargantuan points hike. Though this makes pure hedonites much better

 

Edited June 12, 2021 by Enoby

[Selpharia]

I know this is largely a theoretical exercise at this point but as a Slaanesh player who ended up taking a Harlequin holiday, I’m hoping to get back in as 3.0 launches, with a list that uses the twins and feels both flavorful and fun. Despite the grousing from other corners of the Internet, I find the skirmishing, death by inches playstyle fascinating

Here’s what I have so far, open to suggestions:

Host: Godseekers

Leaders(3):

Keeper of Secrets (340) <General> (Enrapturing Circlet) (Speed-chaser) {Progeny of Damnation}

Dexcessa (280)

Synessa (260)

Battleline(3):

Blissbarb Archers(x11) (160) 

Blissbarb Archers (x11) (160)

Daemonettes(x10) (110)

Other Units(3):

Slickblade Seekers(x5) 200

Slickblade Seekers(x5) 200

Symbaresh Twinsouls (x5) 170

Endless Spells(1):

Mesmerizing Mirror (60)

Total:1990 

Still coming to grips with the changes from 2019, hopefully I haven’t missed anything critical

[Jaskier]

44 minutes ago, Enoby said:

 

Thank you

Some more good news for us is that, from a source who leaked a lot of rules before and the twins, we have not been touched points wise and everyone else has been besides Soulblight.

Bad news is chaos warriors are less good for us (min units of 10) and Archaon has had a gargantuan points hike. Though this makes pure hedonites much better

 

Archaon jumping up that much isn't a surprise, but Morathi still feels too cheap at 660 relative to the other 'divine' units. 

Our points not changing and our rules being particularly suited to the new edition (from what we know) make it obvious to me that this book was written with 3.0 in mind. Chaos Warriors being more expensive and minimum ten means Myrmidesh are about to get a whole lot more popular. Thanks for sharing as always! 

Edited June 12, 2021 by Jaskier

[Poryague]

Well that's a big change to arcane bolt.  

Edited June 12, 2021 by Poryague