Slaanesh Summoning

[SwampHeart]

56 minutes ago, Kitsumy said:

Every summoning codex has his points balanced without any summoning in play.

Yeah because a Keeper without depravity is worth 360 points. Come on now. 

[Dead Scribe]

2 hours ago, Double Misfire said:

Dead Scribe, apologies for being blunt, but are your posts constructed as an elaborate satire of competitive players?

We very rarely crop up in the same threads, as if your posts aren't satire we both have very different hobbies, but everything I've seen from you pushes this weird "tournament/matched play is the only way the game is designed to be played, everything else is an ancillary after thought" line, and superiority complex using derogatory video game style language, dismissing anyone who plays the game differently to you and oft-cited competitive gaming group as "casuals" or similar.

As someone who's amassed a massive collection of miniatures and paraphernalia playing some variation of Games Workshop for the last 25 years, with tournament gaming as the least of my priorities I can accurately say that myself and many others in my position couldn't fairly describe their hobby as casual if they wanted to, and simply enjoy different aspects of it to you.

I'm sure anyone working in the Age of Sigmar design studio could assure you that the game isn't designed in an insular fashion, with matched/competitive play being only one of the often-promoted, and very supported three different suggested ways to play the game, and even if you don't choose to play the game any other way, there's absolutely no reason to offhandedly deride or dismiss those who do and tell them to get better and field units they don't want to when they're not enjoying playing against a particular rule as if they were beneath you. I don't have a whole lot of love for certain parts of the hobby that others enjoy, but gaming's a broad church, and I certainly don't make passive aggressive comments trashing things I don't like, but know full well others do when I have no reason to.

What the design studio produces  speaks more volumes than their words.  

As to the rest of your comments, there was nothing passive aggressive about anything I said.  Nor was I trashing anything that you may have liked.  I'm simply pointing out that as far as the game side is concerned, players need to figure out how to get around summoning, even if they feel summoning is super broken, because its not going anywhere anytime soon and the later releases have shown just how bonkers the design studio wants it to be.

[Kitsumy]

Eer. Sea avatar of idoneths. Cast 2 spells as keeper. Do the same dmg. But with so much lower rend. And 0 mortals not like the high rends or mortals on keper.

 

Comand traith of keeper is totally op and only it shoukd cost 100points alone.

Have 2 more wounds.with 6fnp. Where avatar have 1 more armor and no degrading stats.

Keeper have that absurdly broken ability leting 1 cloose unit fight last always.

 

So i think everyone can see how keeper alone without any summoning is allready far stronger than sea avatar. And avatar cost 420p. Where keeper only cost 360....

 

So yes. They are even way too cheap without any summon. I was being a good guy saying they were "balanced only".

 

There was a reason why old fec dragon always figthing first and 2 times had to be rebalanced. Same thing have to be done to slanesh heros .There cant be any unit figthing always first and even 2 times!

[prochuvi]

As the 80% of the top 20 armys have free summon,so numbers dont lie.

Btw even skavens have free sumon.

But dont matter,gw gonna sell more minis with free sumon due to be extra minis,also they prefer do op free sumon so all fotm players jump to these armys and they can sell more minis.

The best examples is lon that went from around 4%(when the sumon had a cost) to the most played army of tye game with the add of free sumon.

The topic is about if slanesh free sumon is broken,numbers show us that slanesh is broken and it is the top army(with skaven and fec tied). So it is due to free sumon or other aspect?

I think that free sumon is the problem and seems every other player think the same.only this dude who defnd free sumon in every post think otherwise

[Ajmaus]

19 minutes ago, prochuvi said:

As the 80% of the top 20 armys have free summon,so numbers dont lie.

Btw even skavens have free sumon.

But dont matter,gw gonna sell more minis with free sumon due to be extra minis,also they prefer do op free sumon so all fotm players jump to these armys and they can sell more minis.

The best examples is lon that went from around 4%(when the sumon had a cost) to the most played army of tye game with the add of free sumon.

The topic is about if slanesh free sumon is broken,numbers show us that slanesh is broken and it is the top army(with skaven and fec tied). So it is due to free sumon or other aspect?

I think that free sumon is the problem and seems every other player think the same.only this dude who defnd free sumon in every post think otherwise

LoN doesn't summon new models they res dead ones.. Kind of makes your whole arguement about GW just making rules to sell new more summonable models invalid.. Pick a different summoning army.. BoC they are kicking butt at all the top tables.. All herd going all in on free summoning is the talk of the town.. And nurgle whew...

The point is not all the summoning mechanics are out of control.. BoC can spend 1 cp to get 1 summoning point that gets them 1/3 the way to summoning a ungor unit. Nurgle can expext 5 plague bearers every other turn.

People can be honest here GW screwed up with depravity it auto beats multiwound units.  If the army had a glaring weakness vs multiwound units but this mechanic was to balance that out that would be intresting. But thats not the case.

[DerZauberer]

Sad how fast this topic derailed into generalizations of  "つ ◕_◕ ༽つ SUMMON OP AF NERF NOW ༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ".

There is about as much armies "summoning"right now as there is armies without "summoning" in AoS. And it's impossible to make generalizations about summoning right now, the mechanics are just way to different.  People generalizing and saying slaanesh summoning and gloomspite summoning is the same are completly lost. 

Someone remembers the warhammer community article leading into AoS 2.0 about summoning being "counterable"? That was, till then, very achievable and it still is. Nurgle? LoN? BoC? Seraphon? Tzeentch? Even Khorne? It all has some very interessting counterplay to it.

So lets look at the topic again: "Slaanesh summoning".

What is the counterplay to Slaanesh summoning? "Kill all the hereos" and "make whole bubbles around the hereos". This is counterplay to near all summoning mechanics. But else? There is no counterplay to slaanesh summoning, like denying nurgle space, denying graveside markers, dominate the magic phase, try to avoid chaff against khorne etc. Instead, Slaanesh even punishes armies with only multiwound models, e.g. all Orruks or Stormcast. So instead of being an "risk and reward" system (as you risk your allegiance ability getting nothing when your opponent handels it good), Depravity is an "Recycle" or "Flood" mechanic, as there is no real danger in charging two KoS into the army, which regenerate 1/3 of its depravity cost even when not doing anything at all. 

So my conclusion:

1. Is summoning in general "broken", "op" or "destroying the game"? Not at all
2. Is Slaanesh summoning "broken" or "op"? No, its strong but not broken.
3. Is it fun though playing against Slaanesh summoning? No, its frustating having no way to stop the enemy recycling his scary KoS.

[Grailstorm]

10 hours ago, SwampHeart said:

Yeah because a Keeper without depravity is worth 360 points. Come on now. 

You can’t be serious.

[Grailstorm]

1 hour ago, DerZauberer said:

Sad how fast this topic derailed into generalizations of  "つ ◕_◕ ༽つ SUMMON OP AF NERF NOW ༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ".

There is about as much armies "summoning"right now as there is armies without "summoning" in AoS. And it's impossible to make generalizations about summoning right now, the mechanics are just way to different.  People generalizing and saying slaanesh summoning and gloomspite summoning is the same are completly lost. 

Someone remembers the warhammer community article leading into AoS 2.0 about summoning being "counterable"? That was, till then, very achievable and it still is. Nurgle? LoN? BoC? Seraphon? Tzeentch? Even Khorne? It all has some very interessting counterplay to it.

So lets look at the topic again: "Slaanesh summoning".

What is the counterplay to Slaanesh summoning? "Kill all the hereos" and "make whole bubbles around the hereos". This is counterplay to near all summoning mechanics. But else? There is no counterplay to slaanesh summoning, like denying nurgle space, denying graveside markers, dominate the magic phase, try to avoid chaff against khorne etc. Instead, Slaanesh even punishes armies with only multiwound models, e.g. all Orruks or Stormcast. So instead of being an "risk and reward" system (as you risk your allegiance ability getting nothing when your opponent handels it good), Depravity is an "Recycle" or "Flood" mechanic, as there is no real danger in charging two KoS into the army, which regenerate 1/3 of its depravity cost even when not doing anything at all. 

So my conclusion:

1. Is summoning in general "broken", "op" or "destroying the game"? Not at all
2. Is Slaanesh summoning "broken" or "op"? No, its strong but not broken.
3. Is it fun though playing against Slaanesh summoning? No, its frustating having no way to stop the enemy recycling his scary KoS.

I would argue that anything that provides an unfair advantage is inherently broken, and there is no argument against Slaanesh summoning being unfair in my opinion.

The comparison between Slaanesh summoning and all the other forms of summoning is important regardless of different mechanics. Fundamentally they are all the same: you earn currency and exchange it for models.

Where Slaanesh becomes unfair is that they have such easy access to their currency, get it so quickly, and don’t get punished for bad play.

Two of my regular opponents are Slaanesh and Khorne and it’s hilarious how obscene the difference in summoning speed is. Slaanesh can get two Keepers before Khorne gets one Thirster.

[Dead Scribe]

I think thats also intentional though (that some armies are easier than others).  I think they have designed the game that way so that some armies are harder than others to play and some armies are on easy-mode.

LoN doesn't summon new models they res dead ones..

I think that could be its own topic somewhere and I'd love to watch the back and forth on it.  Some people find that bringing back dead units is the same as summoning because you are taking a dead unit and bringing it back to the table.  Either way you are getting more points than you started with on the table.

[Double Misfire]

10 hours ago, Dead Scribe said:

What the design studio produces  speaks more volumes than their words.  

Dedicate large sections of the General's Handbook and battletomes to other styles of play, release narrative and campaign focused supplements like Malign Portents and Season of War: Firestorm, and supply White Dwarf and the community website with articles and battle reports showcasing other styles of play...?

Quote

As to the rest of your comments, there was nothing passive aggressive about anything I said.  Nor was I trashing anything that you may have liked.  I'm simply pointing out that as far as the game side is concerned, players need to figure out how to get around summoning, even if they feel summoning is super broken, because its not going anywhere anytime soon and the later releases have shown just how bonkers the design studio wants it to be.

As is stated in my post, I wasn't solely addressing the post I quoted (which was imo, incredibly passive aggressive, written almost to dare someone to call you out on it, exactly the way I did - but hey that's a subjective opinion) but the attitude you display posting on these forums, posting misinformation that as far as I'm aware is based entirely on conjecture. If you can provide concrete proof to back up your claims, then by all means continue to post them as you have been, but until then please tone them down, or at least preface them with the fact that they are your personal opinion, and not that of Games Workshop or its employees.

[Dead Scribe]

I assume that everyone knows and understands that on a discussion forum that every post from every person is in fact only their opinion.  I would find it redundant to have to include "IMO" in front of everything that I post.

[XReN]

10 hours ago, prochuvi said:

I think that free sumon is the problem and seems every other player think the same.only this dude who defnd free sumon in every post think otherwise

It's not "only this dude", it's just a norm that people complaining about X mechanic seem to be a larger group - there is no point in being vocal about something you don't have problem with.

I also argued quite a few times and explained a lot how summoning is an okay mechanic to have in the game.

If you have problems with skaven, khorne, as FEC player I even dare say seraphon, FEC, Legions summoning - get good or don't play against those armies.

[AverageBoss]

Just going to point at that looking at an army having access to summoning and saying it automatically makes it unfair is missing a lot about the game. There are plenty of ways to balance out summoning, such as strength of units, other army special rules, lack of play in certain phases of the game, etc. If you think an army with summing should automatically get a 50% increase in costs on all models, how much of an increase should an army get that has the ability to completely dictate the enemies shooting phase? The game is complex and filled with tons of moving parts that add up to a whole. There are plenty of other games out there that have managed fair free summoning, and it usually is not addressed trough points costs.

HoS has some issues though.

[PJetski]

Is Slaanesh summoning too strong? I don't think so. I do think it has some issues, though.

When Slaanesh fights against armies with multiwound troops (Stormcast and Fyreslayers come to mind) their summoning can spiral out of control very quickly.

When Slaanesh fights armies with tons of 1-wound bodies that tarpit you forever (Gitz, LON) then it summons almost nothing all game long.

When Slaanesh fights against shooting armies that can focus down their heroes or get Daemonettes below 20 on the first turn, they usually get one wave of summons and then struggle for the last 3 rounds of the game because they run out of heroes.

Depravity summoning is very feast or famine - you either get a lot of points and snowball quickly, or get denied completely.The problem is that the HOS faction is trying to be balanced around both of these scenarios simultaneously because it has to account for all kinds of game modes and sizes beyond the "standard" 2000p pitched battle.

My proposed solution would be to limit depravity summoning to 1 unit per turn, so you would still get a steady stream of reinforcements but you can't make massive swing turns where you drop 60+ Daemonettes or 3+ heroes into play.

Edited August 6, 2019 by PJetski

[sal4m4nd3r]

10 hours ago, Ajmaus said:

Nurgle can expext 5 plague bearers every other turn.

This is so accurate, it hurts. 

@PJetski The fact that the opponent can kill two KoS and basically get a free keeper back, in it of itself, is overpowered. It is irrelevant whether your facing a multi-wound heavy or single wound heavy army. Defending this broken mechanic is futile, other then just being a devil's advocate.

Edited August 6, 2019 by sal4m4nd3r

[PJetski]

Nurgle summoning is really bad and needs to be revisited.

28 minutes ago, sal4m4nd3r said:

 

@PJetski The fact that the opponent can kill two KoS and basically get a free keeper back, in it of itself, is overpowered. It is irrelevant whether your facing a multi-wound heavy or single wound heavy army. Defending this broken mechanic is futile, other then just being a devil's advocate.

I don't think it is "broken". It is the best summoning in the game when you do it properly, but it can also be heavily disrupted by your opponent.

The Keeper that they spawn is usually not anywhere useful the turn they come back on the table, they don't have any bonuses you would normally give a big monster (artefact, battalion, command trait, etc.) and they don't get to cast spells since they enter the game in the movement phase. I am much more worried about an opponent dropping 30 wounds of Daemonettes with a +1 rerollable charge than adding another 14 wound Keeper to the table.

I think with more time and experience playing against HOS you start to see the nuance of how their summoning can change the game, and how you can play around it.

There are lots of mechanics that people thought were completely busted:

• LON respawning 30 grimghast reapers every turn
• Sylvaneth spawning woods all over the board and 2+ rerollable saves
• Immortal Stardrake
• Everblaze comet
• Stacking hit debuffs with Neferata
• 30x Hearthguard Berzerkers fighting first and fighting twice
• FEC summoning

The community eventually adapted to each of these and now they are still strong but not "broken".

Out of curiousity, which army/armies do you play? This conversation may require more context than just broad strokes - shooting is a big check to Slaanesh armies.

Edited August 6, 2019 by PJetski

[Dead Scribe]

The community eventually adapted to each of these and now they are still strong but not "broken".

Minor point:  the tournament community adapted to it.  To casual players, all of those bullet points upset them and be a negative play experience because they require a certain specific build and memorized pattern of play to counter.  

[sal4m4nd3r]

@PJetski I am a devoted competitive nurgle (oxy moron? :P) player. I play a heavy blightking list. 30 of them in my standard list, and the list I will be bringing to NOVA GT (with a slaanesh ally of course!! :D). obviously depravity points come like rain when I play slaanesh, but I have watched games with slaanesh against a competitive nighthaunt player in my group and its still an insane amount of models that get summoned. 

FEC summoning is once per game. HB can be kited/trapped. Immortal stardrak cant capture objectives and is weak to MW. LON can only res units, not summon and gravesites are easy to shut down.  There is no counter to slaanesh summoning. Slaanesh has always been a VERY fast army that hits hard, and strikes first (through various mechanics like initiative value when that was a thing, or interrupting attacks, now with the new form of ASL). But they could never take a punch to the mouth. Now they can because they just summon back what they lost. They are both as killy as they have ever been, but also more resilient then death. 

In general im not a complainer. Some in my group has been moaning about slaanesh. You either nut up or shut up. Figure a way to beat them or take your beating like a man. I'm simply pointing out that the mechanic is not balanced. I still revel the chance the play the army at the hands of a skilled player, because victory (WHEN it happens) will be that much more sweeeeeeeeet. 

[Kirjava13]

6 minutes ago, sal4m4nd3r said:

competitive nighthaunt

 

[SwampHeart]

3 hours ago, Grailstorm said:

You can’t be serious.

Absolutely I am serious, the damage output and durability a KoS at 360 is poor, especially when compared to basically any Verminlord. 

[XReN]

Just now, SwampHeart said:

@prochuvi has literally never posted anything on TGA that isn't whining, conversing with him has 0 value. 

I've been away from forum for a few days and checking on Double Turn thread today I had roughly the same impression about them.

[Grailstorm]

37 minutes ago, SwampHeart said:

Absolutely I am serious, the damage output and durability a KoS at 360 is poor, especially when compared to basically any Verminlord. 

Nothing in the game is as durable as the tank Verminlord, unless it’s a GuO or buffed up Stardrake.

As for damage output, the Keeper is far and away better than most things in the game not called a Ghoul King – even before he attacks twice.

Edited August 6, 2019 by Grailstorm

[SwampHeart]

1 minute ago, Grailstorm said:

As for damage output, the Keeper is far and away better than most things in the game not called a Ghoul King – even before he attacks twice.

Not even close, a keeper has 6, possibly 7 attacks (depending on equipment option) with no built in re-rolls and no rend better than a -2. A KoS is only damage viable for its points cost when it uses its CA on itself. 

[Grailstorm]

2 minutes ago, SwampHeart said:

Not even close, a keeper has 6, possibly 7 attacks (depending on equipment option) with no built in re-rolls and no rend better than a -2. A KoS is only damage viable for its points cost when it uses its CA on itself. 

I don’t know whether you’re just arguing for the sake of it or not, but probably best to go to PMs rather than derail the topic if you’re interested in this. I love comparing models and will happily chat Keeper damage vs other units (and how it beats most things in the game) – but I made this topic to discuss Slaanesh summoning.

[SwampHeart]

4 minutes ago, Grailstorm said:

but I made this topic to discuss Slaanesh summoning.

DP costs per summon need to increase, that's about it.