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Slaanesh Summoning


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Hnnn why is insulting and ignorant call noob to someone that loose against fyreslayers?it is 100% the true.

Fyreslayer have 4" move that is doubled by every other army,so if you know this and know that fyreslayers are very good at melle it is easy to think that you can easily win them only playing objetives and kiting them.also they need heroes to be decent

Now a noob-novice-people that dont know this-call it as you want if you dont like noob,gonna try go melle and delete fyreslayers units ignoring heroes etc

Then he gonna loose and blame fyreslayers are op when the true is that they are a tier2 army but he lost due to be a noob and dont know how play against them.

So i said slanesh is the most broken army now,they havent any counterplay and dont matter what do you do,it is autoloose.

The counter to slanesh is kill the heroes before they can sumon,now you cant do this at melle due to how broken is the locust.

So slanesh counter is only a full rangued army that can delete at turn1 every slanesh hero or a army that have allways atack first habilitys.

If a army havent any of those is a 100% autowin to slanesh,dont matter how skilled be the player

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31 minutes ago, prochuvi said:

Hnnn why is insulting and ignorant call noob to someone that loose against fyreslayers?it is 100% the true.

Fyreslayer have 4" move that is doubled by every other army,so if you know this and know that fyreslayers are very good at melle it is easy to think that you can easily win them only playing objetives and kiting them.also they need heroes to be decent

Now a noob-novice-people that dont know this-call it as you want if you dont like noob,gonna try go melle and delete fyreslayers units ignoring heroes etc

Then he gonna loose and blame fyreslayers are op when the true is that they are a tier2 army but he lost due to be a noob and dont know how play against them.

So i said slanesh is the most broken army now,they havent any counterplay and dont matter what do you do,it is autoloose.

The counter to slanesh is kill the heroes before they can sumon,now you cant do this at melle due to how broken is the locust.

So slanesh counter is only a full rangued army that can delete at turn1 every slanesh hero or a army that have allways atack first habilitys.

If a army havent any of those is a 100% autowin to slanesh,dont matter how skilled be the player

Locus can fail and can only target a single unit, so tag team the heroes with 2 units at once. Or just shoot them or blast them with mortal wounds from spells and abilities, or zone out the heroes so there's no room to place large units or big bases. The KoS is on a pretty big base and at the earliest it'll come down in their second turn, so with some clever deepstrikes, flying units or raw speed you can block the drop without needing to kill the hero. It has to fit in a 12" bubble 9" away from your stuff, not a lot of room to work with when dropping a big daemonette squad either. Oh and not to mention you're being hypocritical by saying your a noob for getting into melee with fyreslayers but say HoS are OP when you try to do the same with them. Both are powerful and a skilled player can abuse them, but both have  surprisingly similar counterplay: snipe the heroes or zone them out. You can use spells and abilities to move the heroes into positions you want such as the warscroll spell for the brayshaman. 

And for the record, even if it is only a once per game ability, fyreslayers can get a decent slingshot going to fling that HGB bomb up the table, such as onto a center objective in the early game or to block off an avenue of movement depending on the terrain setup. Now try playing a list with no shooting while the fyreslayers have their spell negation relic to protect the heroes that are properly bubblewrapped by the HGB. All you can hope to do is try for the other objectives on the table and contend with the rest  of there army. Sometimes it can work, sometimes your army is also slow (such as skeleton heavy LoN builds) and they can catch your slow big blobs out with there own.

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+++ MOD HAT +++

Little concerned by the number of people banding round "noobs" in a derogatory manner - not the way we expect TGA members to be talking about other members of the community.  Even seasoned veterans can have bad days and lose games that on paper they shouldn't, it could be they need more practice, had a streak of bad luck or were just outsmarted - the reaction shouldn't be to start calling them a noob because they lost.  There's a very find line between banter and being rude.

TL:DR Anybody calling other members noobs in such a manner will get warning points

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On 8/8/2019 at 8:03 PM, Vasshpit said:

Legitimately wondering why this isn't in chaos thread?...

Because I created it to discuss Slaanesh summoning in comparison to all other forms of summoning, which doesn’t necessarily mean Chaos.

Still, it has evolved into a “Slaanesh is OP” debate, it seems.

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On 8/7/2019 at 8:00 PM, whispersofblood said:

The KoS warscroll isn't worth 360 points. But, with allegiance abilities and that it provides at least 13 depravity it provides utility, that no other unit in the faction provides. And, its command ability makes it a pretty well self contained scroll. However we haven't actually seen it allied in anywhere, so there must be something about it that isn't checking boxes in the meta brain.

What makes you say the KoS isn’t worth 360 points?  Genuinely interested in this as I’ve seen it mentioned twice now. On its own, it’s fantastic. In a Slaanesh army it is exceptional value even without strike last and depravity.

On 8/7/2019 at 2:51 PM, whispersofblood said:

I'm very hesitant about posting in this thread but the level of generalisation is just too high to not push back against. So I have a few questions for those who think that HoS summoning is too easy or overpowered.

What is it about the summoning that is overpowered

The units that are being summonable?

The power of the models being summoned?

That somehow HoS summoning gives them an unfair advantage at winning the game?

That the HoS is being rewarded for doing what they would not do normally? Or behaviour that is counter intuitive to the narrative?

That it feels bad to kill a Keeper of Secrets and see a new one come on the board?

For example. People have stated the swingy nature of Depravity generation as a bug and therefore display it as a weakness in the design. But, if you consider it a feature of the narrative and see that it works as intended then it is a build issue that the HoS player must work with, meaning they can't rely on Depravity generation to cover gaps in their build. 

If people really want to discuss Slaanesh summoning be prepared to answer a lot of questions about how you and your meta approach AoS not just attitude but actual strategic demeanour, otherwise there is no common ground for understanding and its a bunch of nerds yelling at each other.

 

What makes Slaanesh summoning overpowered is a number of things. 

- It is easy and automatic summoning point generation without any form of sacrifice. You fight, you get points. You die, you get points.

- It rewards bad and careless play. Any other army in the game can be severely punished for YOLO-ing their best models into the enemy army. The very fact that, on average, a Bladebringer can charge, fight, die, and be summoned again all from one combat, is laughable. 

- The cost of summoned units is too cheap. I’ve never had a game against Slaanesh that hasn’t resulted in at least 500 points of free units. Many games I’ve seen have had much more than this. 

- You get way too many points too quickly compared to all other forms of summoning. Two of my regular opponents are Khorne and Slaanesh. The speed of Slaanesh summoning compared to Khorne is mind blowing, and Khorne has to give up Tithe abilities in order to summon in the first place... all while losing all of their points for one summon. Slaanesh gets all of their abilities for free – one of which costs 8 Tithe points, mind you – while tripling summoning speed. It takes 8 entire units dying to summon a Bloodthirster. The very least a Keeper has to do is 17 wounds before it dies – which it does on average vs a 4+ save in one turn before factoring in items, traits, exploding 6s, or mortal wounds. 

- This ties into the fact that free summoning as a basic rule is unfair in any objective based game. Units capture objectives. Summoned units help you to capture more objectives. There is no disadvantage to summoning whatsoever, because summoned units don’t even give up kill points, even though they themselves can score kill points and capture objectives. So taking an unfair mechanic and sky-rocketing its power to be better than all other armies in the game at that mechanic is overpowered.

- The only way to stop it is to kill the heroes, which is tough to do because they have some of the best heroes in the game, and some of the hardest-to-kill heroes in the game thanks to strike last and fight twice shenanigans. Then, after considerable effort, if you do kill the heroes, they just come back. It takes two units to even stand a chance against a Keeper in combat, because 5/6 of the time one of them will strike last. Unless those units are very big (unlikely) or very damaging, they will both die anyway. Then you’ve lost two key units in exchange for nothing, because the Keeper comes back.

- They get their very good summoning on top of exceptional allegiance abilities. Exploding 6s across an army is massive. Striking last is massive. Fighting twice is the most powerful single ability in the game. The combination of the three abilities is unmatched and unparalleled. Every summoned unit gets to benefit from these abilities. I mentioned above that exploding 6s costs 8 Tithe points. A Thirster costs 8 Tithe points. Compared to Khorne, in every battle where you get a Keeper on turn 2/3, it is the equivalent of 16 entire units dying by turn 2/3.

- You can take a near identical Slaanesh, Khorne, Tzeentch and Nurgle army made up of mortal units, greater daemons and other heroes. Assuming they all fight each other, who will summon the most the fastest and to the most devastating effect? Slaanesh. By definition, that is overpowered.

Edited by Grailstorm
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It rewards bad and careless play

Again - feature not bug.  It is an army that is an easier army to play, nothing wrong with that.  Not every army has to be hard to use.  If the design goal of AOS is to make the game accessible to everyone that also includes including factions that are also accessible and easy to use for everyone, as not everyone is a tactical mastermind.

 

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22 minutes ago, PensivePanther said:

Is the culprit mostly the Keeper of Secrets? If that unit was removed from the equation do you think people would still feel the way that they do about Slaanesh summoning?

The Keeper about the best but not the whole issue. It's about how much depravity Slaanesh can generate in a turn and in several turns as well as things such as the very variable amount depending on opponents. Stormcast or any multi-wound enemy are going to generate more depravity than an army build around 1 wound models. So essentially against more elite style armies (fewer models and more multiwound models) Slaanesh is capable of producing far more depravity for either making more powerful leaders or even making more units to swarm the board. 

From a balance perspective this isn't a good thing

 

Finally Keeper or not the way depravity is a cornerstone of the army means that however you build the army you pretty much must use all 6 leader slots; and since Slaanesh doesn't have any super-cheap leaders this tends to mean that you're going to have over half the army lumped into leaders. It cuts down on the potential to take larger blocks of infantry; going heavy with chariots or even taking more exotic things like fiends or allies. 

From an internal faction balance aspect this isn't a good thing. It cuts down on army variety and choice and variation. It's surprising because as of late GW has been doing really well producing battletomes and codex that have variable forms of play that are still viable. 

1 hour ago, Dead Scribe said:

Again - feature not bug.  It is an army that is an easier army to play, nothing wrong with that.  Not every army has to be hard to use.  If the design goal of AOS is to make the game accessible to everyone that also includes including factions that are also accessible and easy to use for everyone, as not everyone is a tactical mastermind.

There is a difference between an army being more powerful and an army being easier to play. They are not the same things.

The argument is that the army is far too powerful when played well and that it exceeds the power curve in a manner that is not conductive to a balanced game. You can have very easy to play armies that are simple to run and build; but which are not overpowered compared to others. The game most certainly benefits from more complex and simpler armies for players to get into; but it doesn't benefit from having armies far more powerful than the average power level. Even if its only one or two army combinations that results in that powerful state (since with the internet and modern times and just talking and doing theory; if there's a superpowered mode people will use it). 

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I don't think the army is "way too powerful".  I think its easy to generate depravity because its an easy army to run and be competitively viable with.  There are ways to shut it down and people have learned how to shut it down.  

If the argument is that it is too powerful to the casual players, well most things from a lot of other armies are also too powerful for them too because they don't want to collect and field the models that are required to play at that level.

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19 hours ago, Dead Scribe said:

Again - feature not bug.  It is an army that is an easier army to play, nothing wrong with that.  Not every army has to be hard to use.  If the design goal of AOS is to make the game accessible to everyone that also includes including factions that are also accessible and easy to use for everyone, as not everyone is a tactical mastermind.

 

I would disagree that HoS are designed as an easier to play army, GW has many more tools available to them to create a ‘simple play’ faction rather than just give them a, in your words ‘bonkers ability’. The faction is niche, contains adult themes, difficult to paint, fiddly models to assemble. These factors don’t make it very accessible.

SCE is an army that is designed to be easier to play, paint/assemble, wide range of unit types, constantly updated, included in starter boxes, poster boy for AoS material etc

Depravity points are just a design oversight that will be corrected at some point in the future, easiest fix I could see would be to adjust the cost it requires to summon each unit.

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32 minutes ago, MOMUS said:

I would disagree that HoS are designed as an easier to play army, GW has many more tools available to them to create a ‘simple play’ faction rather than just give them a, in your words ‘bonkers ability’. The faction is niche, contains adult themes, difficult to paint, fiddly models to assemble. These factors don’t make it very accessible.

 SCE is an army that is designed to be easier to play, paint/assemble, wide range of unit types, constantly updated, included in starter boxes, poster boy for AoS material etc

 Depravity points are just a design oversight that will be corrected at some point in the future, easiest fix I could see would be to adjust the cost it requires to summon each unit.

I tend to agree. The clear design problem with depravity is how variable it is by opponent - if they raise summoning requirements it may hurt them significantly vs. majority 1 wound armies. 

In some ways I'd prefer if it was about the pain inflicted on slaanesh units (not just non-lethal) - that way it is a controllable variable and retains the theme. It also makes it less punishing for opponents who are already struggling in a game.

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On 8/10/2019 at 12:49 PM, Grailstorm said:

What makes you say the KoS isn’t worth 360 points?  Genuinely interested in this as I’ve seen it mentioned twice now. On its own, it’s fantastic. In a Slaanesh army it is exceptional value even without strike last and depravity.

What makes Slaanesh summoning overpowered is a number of things. 

- It is easy and automatic summoning point generation without any form of sacrifice. You fight, you get points. You die, you get points.

- It rewards bad and careless play. Any other army in the game can be severely punished for YOLO-ing their best models into the enemy army. The very fact that, on average, a Bladebringer can charge, fight, die, and be summoned again all from one combat, is laughable. 

- The cost of summoned units is too cheap. I’ve never had a game against Slaanesh that hasn’t resulted in at least 500 points of free units. Many games I’ve seen have had much more than this. 

- You get way too many points too quickly compared to all other forms of summoning. Two of my regular opponents are Khorne and Slaanesh. The speed of Slaanesh summoning compared to Khorne is mind blowing, and Khorne has to give up Tithe abilities in order to summon in the first place... all while losing all of their points for one summon. Slaanesh gets all of their abilities for free – one of which costs 8 Tithe points, mind you – while tripling summoning speed. It takes 8 entire units dying to summon a Bloodthirster. The very least a Keeper has to do is 17 wounds before it dies – which it does on average vs a 4+ save in one turn before factoring in items, traits, exploding 6s, or mortal wounds. 

- This ties into the fact that free summoning as a basic rule is unfair in any objective based game. Units capture objectives. Summoned units help you to capture more objectives. There is no disadvantage to summoning whatsoever, because summoned units don’t even give up kill points, even though they themselves can score kill points and capture objectives. So taking an unfair mechanic and sky-rocketing its power to be better than all other armies in the game at that mechanic is overpowered.

- The only way to stop it is to kill the heroes, which is tough to do because they have some of the best heroes in the game, and some of the hardest-to-kill heroes in the game thanks to strike last and fight twice shenanigans. Then, after considerable effort, if you do kill the heroes, they just come back. It takes two units to even stand a chance against a Keeper in combat, because 5/6 of the time one of them will strike last. Unless those units are very big (unlikely) or very damaging, they will both die anyway. Then you’ve lost two key units in exchange for nothing, because the Keeper comes back.

- They get their very good summoning on top of exceptional allegiance abilities. Exploding 6s across an army is massive. Striking last is massive. Fighting twice is the most powerful single ability in the game. The combination of the three abilities is unmatched and unparalleled. Every summoned unit gets to benefit from these abilities. I mentioned above that exploding 6s costs 8 Tithe points. A Thirster costs 8 Tithe points. Compared to Khorne, in every battle where you get a Keeper on turn 2/3, it is the equivalent of 16 entire units dying by turn 2/3.

- You can take a near identical Slaanesh, Khorne, Tzeentch and Nurgle army made up of mortal units, greater daemons and other heroes. Assuming they all fight each other, who will summon the most the fastest and to the most devastating effect? Slaanesh. By definition, that is overpowered.

I would say that the main strengths of the KoS are outside of its Warscroll, and its one of the few greater daemons this is true of, the closest would probably be the Lord of Change but that is by virtue of primarily being a caster. Just based on the Keeper of Secrets warscroll you are going to hard pressed to convince people its a stronger Greater Daemon than say a GUO. Its damage potential is hard to map in instantaneous combat, and its defence is the same as the much cheaper Bloodthirster. Its a shockingly poor caster despite its 2/2 wizard profile due to the limited nature of Slaanesh magic, the short range of its spells, and the need to have nothing alive around it after combat. 

Now its allegiance abilities is probably some of the best. But opponent fight last =/= you fighting first and people falsely equating the two are only demonstrating their poor grasp of the rules and tactical limitations of said rules. Its not even "in affect" the same rule. I do think the KoS is costed up for its depravity generation though and its correct that it should be. I think part of the shock of a KoS is that it has the ability to spike so high. But some examples of its damage have people rolling 2 sixes to hit and 4 sixes to wound, or sticking to the inferior Pretenders builds. But there is nothing with the overwhelming power of say Tyrants of Blood.

Based on my reading of your argument it seems to be that HoS summon > Nurgle/Khorne = overpowered. And I don't think that is a logical inference there is no reasoning there only demonstration of its superiority. They are different factions who play the game in different ways. Your argument seems to be that all the chaos factions should summon approximately the same pace, which there is NO reason to assume that, or even suggest that is a desirable outcome. We may as well suggest Khorne is overpowered because they summon faster than IDK. Grand Alliance grouping isn't a relative mechanics balancing barometer. Nurgle summoning is the slowest, because Nurgle armies are notorious difficult to shift, the Khorne  economy is one the most flexible in the game and hyper responsive to player ability and strategic circumstance. 

I believe earlier in the thread I demonstrated how slight HoS combat abilities actually are above the damage curve. Basically, its combat damage completely revolves around the KoS. Everything that makes HoS apply damage to the opponent contained in the KoS (Locus of diversion, and Excess of Violence). Now you could argue the ease at which such a cool, fantastic model range is able to apply its core philosophy is grounds for a nerfing, but that perspective will only see every faction with 10 or less warscrolls and some good rules nerfed in a few months. 

Here is some info on Mortal Slaanesh. It has 2 rules, Euphoric Killers, and Depravity Points, but the book includes no models that buff mortal units. Everything is keyworded to Hedonites, a Mortal HoS army basically is just the KoS and chaff, or a walking speed combat army with limit depth. A Mortal HoS army is powerwise the weakest marked Mortal faction, by some margin, the game is sleeping on Mortal Tzeentch, Nurgle has some disgusting (haha) combos, and Khorne has the most straightforward Mortal approach. Slaanesh doesn't even have a mortal Warscroll Battalion

I'm going to stick to what I've been saying since the beginning. HoS are counter meta, and people aren't willing to accept that any faction should be able to shift a meta drastically. If people have a problem with alpha combat armies well you need some force that makes the risk/return on alpha combat less obvious. We had highly mobile walls with Changehost, and Vanguard Wing, people hated it, we had low drop shooting and people hated it, we have the most direct answer in the form of HoS and people hate it. Do we want to live in a world of alpha combat armies, where the best faction is the faction that can alpha combat most reliably or do we actually want some alternative playstyles and strategic depth in this game?

The most irritating thing for me is that some sizeable portion of HoS players seem to have previously been DoK players which means DoK has all but disappeared competitively. So a potentially very difficult match up for HoS is gone. People can talk about win % all they want but if the meta is all one type of strategic problem whichever faction best counters that problem will win a disproportionate number of its games compared to the expected outcome vs the number of strategic problems contained in the game. 

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 People can talk about win % all they want but if the meta is all one type of strategic problem whichever faction best counters that problem will win a disproportionate number of its games compared to the expected outcome vs the number of strategic problems contained in the game. 

This is very appropriate, and also why the current format of just recording win % and treating that as the basis for if an army is balanced or not is hugely flawed.

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1 hour ago, whispersofblood said:

I would say that the main strengths of the KoS are outside of its Warscroll, and its one of the few greater daemons this is true of, the closest would probably be the Lord of Change but that is by virtue of primarily being a caster. Just based on the Keeper of Secrets warscroll you are going to hard pressed to convince people its a stronger Greater Daemon than say a GUO. Its damage potential is hard to map in instantaneous combat, and its defence is the same as the much cheaper Bloodthirster. Its a shockingly poor caster despite its 2/2 wizard profile due to the limited nature of Slaanesh magic, the short range of its spells, and the need to have nothing alive around it after combat. 

I disagree to an extent. The power outside the warscroll is tremendous, yes. But so too is the warscroll itself. It is the only model of such power in the game that can innately pile in and attack twice, or let other units do so regardless of allegiance. This command ability and its cousins are the single most devastating command ability in the game, 6-8x the value of the next best combat command ability (+1 attack).

The average damage output of a completely naked KoS is higher than the average damage output of any naked Bloodthirster. It also casts 2x, makes enemies strike last 5/6 of the time, and becomes exorbitantly more powerful when allegiance is factored in.

1 hour ago, whispersofblood said:

But opponent fight last =/= you fighting first and people falsely equating the two are only demonstrating their poor grasp of the rules and tactical limitations of said rules

I don’t believe I equated the two. But it is a hugely, hugely powerful ability and in many situations is better and less limiting than ASF.

1 hour ago, whispersofblood said:

Your argument seems to be that all the chaos factions should summon approximately the same pace, which there is NO reason to assume that, or even suggest that is a desirable outcome

Why is this not a desirable outcome, out of interest? All summoning should be approximately at the same pace. It is a completely free ability, an additional layer on top of a game that is supposed to be balanced. Just because Nurgle can tank damage doesn’t mean it should summon slower than Slaanesh. One army fights better, one army saves better. But when you fight better and summon 3x better, then there is no need to save better too, because you have infinitely more wounds anyway.

As an example, Bloodletters and Daemonettes are very well balanced. They have the same save, and a unit of 30 bloodletters does the same damage on average vs a 4+ save as 30 daemonettes, with their exploding 6s.

However, with Slaanesh, you can very easily summon 30 daemonettes after one round of combat. All it takes is 15 wounds of damage and a dead hero. With Khorne, not only can you never summon 30 bloodletters in one go – it takes 7 dead units to be able to bring on 20.

And if they’re summoning, they’re not using their allegiance abilities. Slaanesh can use their allegiance abilities while summoning. It would be a different story if it cost depravity points to explode 6s or make units fight last.

1 hour ago, whispersofblood said:

Here is some info on Mortal Slaanesh. It has 2 rules, Euphoric Killers, and Depravity Points, but the book includes no models that buff mortal units. Everything is keyworded to Hedonites, a Mortal HoS army basically is just the KoS and chaff, or a walking speed combat army with limit depth. A Mortal HoS army is powerwise the weakest marked Mortal faction, by some margin, the game is sleeping on Mortal Tzeentch, Nurgle has some disgusting (haha) combos, and Khorne has the most straightforward Mortal approach. Slaanesh doesn't even have a mortal Warscroll Battalion

I only mentioned mortal armies to highlight how powerful Slaanesh summoning is. You can make an identical army with all four of the gods, and Slaanesh summoning will kick in with far more devastating fashion than any other.

Heck, you could just line up two keepers against two GuO, or two Thirsters, or two LoC, and not only would the Keepers kill the others, they would also summon more. Because at the very least, two dead keepers all but guarantees a third.

I don’t mean for this to descend into an argument, so I won’t keep going on about Slaanesh in general because I meant for this to be about their summoning. 

But just out of interest, if their summoning is not overpowered, and their abilities are not overpowered either, or the combination of them both is not overpowered, what are your thoughts on Slaanesh placing 6 times in the top 11 at Blackout this past weekend? Or no Slaanesh appearing below 40?

Edited by Grailstorm
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Summoning is similar to every other aspect of the game, model count, magic, movement, combat, why not make all armies the same? That isn't a reasonable suggestion. Its similar to saying every faction should have the same amount of unbinds. These things aren't directly comparable, you have to look at these things as their abstraction. Why do HoS summon models, Why does Khorne have unstoppable magic, and high rate of unbind accumulation? Its an inherent part of the faction, but you wouldn't say every faction should have some similarly paced mirror of that ability. All these factions have one thing in common they are playing the same game, trying to score points on objectives. How they specifically go about that goal varies wildly even if the focus of that strategy might be called the same thing. If Your argument is that somehow because they are all skinned in a Chaos sleeve that these 5 factions should do things similarly you are playing Chess my man not AoS.

Khorne Summoning is not the crux of blood tithe, and that people think that is a detriment to their ability to properly play Khorne. The closest mirror would be Nurgle, and in a game about taking board positions with numbers of bodies Nurgle's natural abilities to remain on the board, far outstrip HoS ability to remove models. They are playing the game from opposite directions, now you can play Nurgle like they are HoS it just won't go well, and you can in a fashion play a denial game with HoS but it looks way different. So, if the goal is to have more bodies on more objectives, so you win the game, durability is a huge factor that should be taken into account when determining how fast a faction should add models to the board, as its the eventual factor that wins the game. Also Nurgle summoning isn't locked to the location of removable characters, they can summon from their own terrain. Which means I can put a tree close enough that the front can be 9" away from an objective a summon onto said objective.

You are seeing summoning and thinking all summoning is the same, but that just isn't the case its too simplistic a view on any mechanic much less one like summoning where the specifics vary wildly from faction to faction. The engine isn't the same, how the models are summoned isn't the same, where the models can go isn't the same, what the models are isn't the same. 

I mentioned this on THWG, look at the names of the people who finished in the in the top 10 (because we are using a consistent measure) with HoS, they are all guys typically finish 4-1. Heck one is Ben Johnson, and the event was won by another fantastic player, not playing HoS. The Top 10 also include two SCE fyi. So the question is are good players playing a good army and therefor doing well. Or is the argument that Ben Johnson over achieved finishing 2nd, because HoS are overpowered? If a bunch of 3-2 players (coming from other good factions) were all of a sudden jumping up 5-10 places tournament there would be a discussion to be had. But to me Blackout says hey look, the typical cast did their thing, and Slaanesh is understandably a really popular army. I'm not trying to tell you HoS are bad army, they are good, they are specifically good at stopping the meta that exists at the moment. But IMO for something to be OP it needs to be fundamentally too powerful at playing the game, not playing the meta. And, HoS are not that. DoK, specifically Hagg Narr, are probably the last army that did that.

Also a KoS does not kill a GUO, at Max MW output it does 23 wounds passed a GUO sure. But on the more reasonable Locus goes of and you roll one '6' per attack profile, and one 6 per to 6 wound dice it does only about 4 dmg per pile-in and attack. A combat GUO after taking its 8 wounds still does about 5 dmg back to the KoS, giving the GUS a cmd point like I gave the KoS. And, it does about 3-5 MW back to the KoS on its disgustingly resilient saves. 

A KoS might kill a bog standard Bloodthirster, but Tyrants of Blood, Halo of Blood, and Rejoice in Slaughter basically create a situation where a KoS never survives to fight if you need it to not. I think all the Bloodthirsters slam 8 points of dmg past a KoS.  

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On 8/13/2019 at 1:19 PM, Grailstorm said:

The average damage output of a completely naked KoS is higher than the average damage output of any naked Bloodthirster. 

This is not true. The average damage a naked Keeper of Secrets (Sinistrous Hand) doing in one combat activation vs a 4+ safe model is ~8,4. A naked Bloodthirster of Insansate Rage does ~9,4 damage in the same scenario (and ~3,3 mortal wounds against all other enemy units within 8" in addition). 

I do agree that the Keeper of Secrets as a whole and Slaanesh are looking pretty strong right now, but feeding people with false information is not at all promoting a reasonable discussion.

On 8/13/2019 at 1:19 PM, Grailstorm said:

Why is this not a desirable outcome, out of interest? All summoning should be approximately at the same pace. It is a completely free ability, an additional layer on top of a game that is supposed to be balanced. Just because Nurgle can tank damage doesn’t mean it should summon slower than Slaanesh. One army fights better, one army saves better. But when you fight better and summon 3x better, then there is no need to save better too, because you have infinitely more wounds anyway.

Where are u getting this from? How is summoning something "extra" on everything else an army brings to the table? As far as I can see this is simply an (in my view unreasonable) assumption of yours. 

If you are picking on a single thing one amry does better than another you can make the "OP-claim" for pretty much every army in AoS. Wanderers are better at shooting than Khorne? Sounds super imbalanced if you look at only this aspect when comparing the two armies. Speaking more generally, I think your arguments are way too simple and one-dimensional.

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On 8/13/2019 at 7:19 AM, Grailstorm said:

I disagree to an extent. The power outside the warscroll is tremendous, yes. But so too is the warscroll itself. It is the only model of such power in the game that can innately pile in and attack twice, or let other units do so regardless of allegiance. This command ability and its cousins are the single most devastating command ability in the game, 6-8x the value of the next best combat command ability (+1 attack).

Idk what units your allying in with a keeper at 360pts but outside the keeper can only doubletap hedonite units. Since you typically won't have the points to ally things with a keeper then your only double tapping the keeper. And equating the greater daemons in purely combat is a bit of a false equivalency since the lord of change is mainy a caster and utility unit and the GUO is a tank that can survive a keepers oppressive combat. As for the bloodthirster, well yeah fair odds it dies if the keeper gets first swing, but the opposite can happen as well, also the bloodthirster is cheaper in points and can use tyrants of blood to overcome a multikeeper vs multithirster fight.

And on a somewhat related note regarding variance in summoning based on opponent, tzeentch can also be widely varying. I was at a tournament over the weekend and the tzeench player summoned some pinks while fighting khorne but was swimming in summoning against LoN and sylvaneth.

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20 hours ago, Isotop said:

This is not true. The average damage a naked Keeper of Secrets (Sinistrous Hand) doing in one combat activation vs a 4+ safe model is ~8,4. A naked Bloodthirster of Insansate Rage does ~9,4 damage in the same scenario (and ~3,3 mortal wounds against all other enemy units within 8" in addition). 

I do agree that the Keeper of Secrets as a whole and Slaanesh are looking pretty strong right now, but feeding people with false information is not at all promoting a reasonable discussion.

Where are u getting this from? How is summoning something "extra" on everything else an army brings to the table? As far as I can see this is simply an (in my view unreasonable) assumption of yours. 

If you are picking on a single thing one amry does better than another you can make the "OP-claim" for pretty much every army in AoS. Wanderers are better at shooting than Khorne? Sounds super imbalanced if you look at only this aspect when comparing the two armies. Speaking more generally, I think your arguments are way too simple and one-dimensional.

A naked Insensate Thirster does not average 9 wounds. Even if you give it the benefit of the doubt and say the D6 averages at 4, it only does 8 damage on average vs a 4+ save.

A naked Keeper can and will always attack twice, so even if the Thirster did average 9 wounds, the Keeper would always do more.

20 hours ago, Isotop said:

Where are u getting this from? How is summoning something "extra" on everything else an army brings to the table?

How is it not? It used to be something you had to pay for, now it’s not. Therefore it’s something extra on top of everything else an army brings to the table.

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On 8/13/2019 at 1:47 PM, whispersofblood said:

A KoS might kill a bog standard Bloodthirster, but Tyrants of Blood, Halo of Blood, and Rejoice in Slaughter basically create a situation where a KoS never survives to fight if you need it to not. I think all the Bloodthirsters slam 8 points of dmg past a KoS.  

That is a niche situation in a 3-Thirster list fully geared around combat.

It will be interesting to check back in here in a couple of months when we have some more tournament results in. 

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22 minutes ago, Grailstorm said:

A naked Insensate Thirster does not average 9 wounds.

You are absolutely correct on this one. I calculated Outrageous Carnage for hit rolls instead of wound rolls. The real average damage of a Bloodthirster of Insansate rage against 4 + safe is ~7,8 (and ~1,7 mortal wounds against all other enemy units within 8" in addition).  So I have to correct myself: A naked KoS will do more damage in a single combat activation than any BT (at least against a single target). The Bloodthirster of Insansate rage is pretty comparable, though.

27 minutes ago, Grailstorm said:

A naked Keeper can and will always attack twice, so even if the Thirster did average 9 wounds, the Keeper would always do more.

I think we are using different definitions of "naked" here. I simply calculated the raw damage output in a single combat activation against 4+ safe. I doubt that a KoS "can and will always attack twice", since CP are a limited ressource (even for Slaanesh) and I did not take any abilities of the Bloodthirsters into consideration that require the spending of an additional ressource.

29 minutes ago, Grailstorm said:

How is it not?

You are getting this the wrong way. You are making the statement that all armies, without taking summoning into account, are balanced between each other and that summoning adds a free layer of abilities not included in the strenght of an army as a whole. Summoning being a "free" rule of some sorts is not the Status Quo, therefore it is you who has to show that your statement holds true.

Maybe just give us some tangible arguments for summoning being a free, additional layer on top of an army.

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2 minutes ago, Isotop said:

You are getting this the wrong way. You are making the statement that all armies, without taking summoning into account, are balanced between each other and that summoning adds a free layer of abilities not included in the strenght of an army as a whole. Summoning being a "free" rule of some sorts is not the Status Quo, therefore it is you who has to show that your statement holds true.

Maybe just give us some tangible arguments for summoning being a free, additional layer on top of an army.

This is the basis for the whole game. If there is no attempt at balance, there’s no point in playing. I never said anything about summoning not being included in the strength of an army as a whole, though. It plays a huge part in the strength of an army as a whole.

Surely there is no need to point out how summoning is an additional layer on top of an army?

All armies with an allegiance get abilities, items, and traits.

Armies that summon get abilities, items, traits and summoning.

Some armies have it, some don’t. It wasn’t originally a thing. Now it is a thing. Points haven’t been adjusted to cater for it. Therefore it is an additional layer on top of the base game.

There is no situation in which summoning is disadvantageous. Armies do not lose anything for having summoning. Their other abilities are no lesser (see Slaanesh for one such example). Their units are no more expensive.

 

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