AoS 2 - Slaves to Darkness 2 Discussion

[Kurrilino]

On 6/7/2020 at 3:44 AM, Xasz said:

How did the book/lists develop in the past ~6 months?

I was initially disappointed and shelved the idea but did someone figure something interesting out (from a competitive standpoint)?

Nope, sadly not.

 

It actually got worse. People realized you have to play the marauders, one trick pony and even then you are basically

helpless against most stuff.

Looking at the new books of Bonereapers already hurt but the new Lumineth book just broke peoples spirit completely.

Those books have a great flow of lore influencing abilities and strong units with multiple list builds.

We have a book where one half is not playable with the other half, paired with weak abilities and useless but way overpriced units.

If someone would ask me i would think this book was written a long time ago for AOS 1.0 It's just no fun to play against AOS 2.0, not to mention the AOS 2.5 armies.

But with that said, it's a long time since someone had something positive to say, so step forward and lift our spirits.

[Xasz]

I figured as much.

The only thing I found so far, that seemed somewhat enticing, is some Archaon Plaguetouched list from Sweden.

Which is fine by me, as I played a similar setup before the book dropped but it's just Archaon and Marauders doing their thing, again.

The book is such a letdown (from a powerlevel perspective, the new models, fluff and artworks are great!),  it rivals my constant displeasure with BoK.

[Charleston]

On 6/17/2020 at 12:51 AM, Shaquilleoheal said:

anybody  trying the despoilers legion?

I end up playing despoilers quite often as I like monsters, lack the gaunt summoner for Cabalists and don´t have any marauders to make use out of ravagers.
 

They have some neat perks, but most option focus around having monsters around and buff thoose. This is the main issue as thoose buffs don´t make your Slaughterbrutes, Warshrines, Manticores and Soul Grinders good enough to compete. Your enemy will still be able to erase one by one, without bothering your heal. Meanwhile, there are still some upsides I really like. The big Aura of your general makes positioning easier. The artifacts are all in all good. Having a cavalery lord strike first after charge or beeing able to protect your units from shooting better is always welcome. The +D3 Command Points Mantle is also a sweet goodie. The doom-blade also helps when you already know that your opponent will play something like Nagash, Allarielle, Stardrakes or a Dread Saurian. Blocking an LOS is also a nice feature when playing against ranged factions and when having enough terrain arround. The Generals traits also offer some nice picks. Having another Heal on any unit on a 3+ is a nice buff. Moving D3 units 5" before the battle can also be handy.

But Despoilers suffer mostly from the monsters we have. The Manticore-Options are okay, althrough the lord is too expensive and only provides a joke of a command ability. Slaughterbrutes really lack rend. Having a -2 Rend on Claws and -1 rend on their jaws would make them good but now they are a joke. An overpriced joke. While I can´t judge the Mutalith because I never used it, I also never heard about people calling it usefull or good. Soul Grinders are the biggest letdown due to their lackluster 4+ to hit on almost all profiles. There are so many factions that can provide a -1 to hit, and even without, with so few attacks that hit so bad the Soul Grinder remains an overpriced distraction carnifex. If we could provide it at least a full reroll to hit rolls...but nope.

I hope that GHB will adjust some point values. Chariots should go down to 100pts, Slaughterbrutes at 140-150, Lord on Manticore 240, Sorcerer Lord 230, Soul Grinders 180 and so on. Meanwhile I am sure we will see only minimal adjustments: Like Marauders go up to 180 and nothing else change.

 

Edit: Wait, there is actually a full to hit reroll in the warshrine if khorne marked. have to try out if this makes the sould grinder valid enough to play it.

Edited June 26, 2020 by Charleston

[Salyx]

Unfortunately, the Soul Grinder can Not be buffed via the Shrine, because He lacks the mortal keyword. 

However, all the units you mentioned are surprisingly effektive in a Khorne army. Shrines can re-roll all prayers near the Altar, a Soulgrinder can get +1 to Hit and +2 attacks (Bloodsecrator and Wrathmonger) on All weapons and the Chaos Lord on Manticor in a Goretide with +1 damage on the lance and Gorecleaver can potentially destroy everything.

With Marauders in a Khorne army, you can basically wreck everything with the combination of Chaos Lord and Marauders Chieftain. Pile in twice, pile in when dying, full re-rolls to Hit and wound, +2 attacks and the +1 to Hit. This is a unit with up to 480 attacks, hitting on 2s re-rolling, wounding in 4s re-rolling. That's 233 damage against a 4+ save.

So, in conclusion, Slaves to Darkness work much better in god-specific armies. However, they also have their strengths. I went to a one-Day tournament and got 2-1, only losging against an ETERNAL Conflagration and an unlucky turn roll-off. 

[Darksider]

9 hours ago, Charleston said:

I end up playing despoilers quite often as I like monsters, lack the gaunt summoner for Cabalists and don´t have any marauders to make use out of ravagers.
 

They have some neat perks, but most option focus around having monsters around and buff thoose. This is the main issue as thoose buffs don´t make your Slaughterbrutes, Warshrines, Manticores and Soul Grinders good enough to compete. Your enemy will still be able to erase one by one, without bothering your heal. Meanwhile, there are still some upsides I really like. The big Aura of your general makes positioning easier. The artifacts are all in all good. Having a cavalery lord strike first after charge or beeing able to protect your units from shooting better is always welcome. The +D3 Command Points Mantle is also a sweet goodie. The doom-blade also helps when you already know that your opponent will play something like Nagash, Allarielle, Stardrakes or a Dread Saurian. Blocking an LOS is also a nice feature when playing against ranged factions and when having enough terrain arround. The Generals traits also offer some nice picks. Having another Heal on any unit on a 3+ is a nice buff. Moving D3 units 5" before the battle can also be handy.

But Despoilers suffer mostly from the monsters we have. The Manticore-Options are okay, althrough the lord is too expensive and only provides a joke of a command ability. Slaughterbrutes really lack rend. Having a -2 Rend on Claws and -1 rend on their jaws would make them good but now they are a joke. An overpriced joke. While I can´t judge the Mutalith because I never used it, I also never heard about people calling it usefull or good. Soul Grinders are the biggest letdown due to their lackluster 4+ to hit on almost all profiles. There are so many factions that can provide a -1 to hit, and even without, with so few attacks that hit so bad the Soul Grinder remains an overpriced distraction carnifex. If we could provide it at least a full reroll to hit rolls...but nope.

I hope that GHB will adjust some point values. Chariots should go down to 100pts, Slaughterbrutes at 140-150, Lord on Manticore 240, Sorcerer Lord 230, Soul Grinders 180 and so on. Meanwhile I am sure we will see only minimal adjustments: Like Marauders go up to 180 and nothing else change.

 

Edit: Wait, there is actually a full to hit reroll in the warshrine if khorne marked. have to try out if this makes the sould grinder valid enough to play it.

I play despoilers sometimes too. I spam a lot of nurgle daemonprinces. They are fantastic, strike first in combat, heal wounds on 4+, if you park them near terrain your enemy can't shoot them that easy and with their command ability you dish out mortal wounds in return.

The disadvantage is, you don't have a lot of models in your army.

 

[Eldarain]

@Darksider Are you using the FAQd Nurgle CA? Dish out doesn't sound right.

[Smillis88]

Just curious if archaons slayer of kings ability can be stopped by a enemy ability that makes you rr wounds of 6? 

[The World Tree]

2 hours ago, Smillis88 said:

Just curious if archaons slayer of kings ability can be stopped by a enemy ability that makes you rr wounds of 6? 

I would suggest you have to reroll wounds yes,

[Darksider]

21 hours ago, Eldarain said:

@Darksider Are you using the FAQd Nurgle CA? Dish out doesn't sound right.

Ah didn't see that it got faq'd.  Than only D3 wounds=(

[Eldarain]

I felt they over nerfed it. I thought it was a cool counter to some of the craziest "bucket of dice" units.

It's not like they haven't been adding stuff that crazy to the other recent books.

[Midjithero]

The only lists I’ve not played are Ravagers.  The style never interested me.  However, with LRL now out, the only thing I see that will be somewhat viable against them will be Host Of the Everchosen.  Anyone disagree??

Hopefully with today’s announcement of the GHB dropping next weekend, we will see some much needed points decrease on certain units, but honestly I fear the only thing that’ll happen is that Marauders and the Darkfire Daemonrift will go up in points and make us even more underdogs than we are currently.  

[Eldarain]

I hope Varanguard Knights and Chariots come down. But I too am expecting nerfs.

[MitGas]

3 hours ago, Eldarain said:

I hope Varanguard Knights and Chariots come down. But I too am expecting nerfs.

Yeah, indeed, that would really be the final nail in the coffin.

[RocketPropelledGrenade]

Unless we get a lot of points decreases with the upcoming GHB (and I mean pretty damn serious ones near across the board), I'm going to be quite unhappy with the new release. Preview text seems to indicate Realm Artefacts are being severely limited, which means no more Dimensional Blade Karkadrak. Leaving that Hexed Battleaxe at -0 Rend is gonna be painful. And as a Ravagers player, there is not a single good offensively oriented artefact to replace it with.

[Grimrock]

21 minutes ago, RocketPropelledGrenade said:

Unless we get a lot of points decreases with the upcoming GHB (and I mean pretty damn serious ones near across the board), I'm going to be quite unhappy with the new release. Preview text seems to indicate Realm Artefacts are being severely limited, which means no more Dimensional Blade Karkadrak. Leaving that Hexed Battleaxe at -0 Rend is gonna be painful. And as a Ravagers player, there is not a single good offensively oriented artefact to replace it with.

Well limited doesn't necessarily mean removed, it is possible that the artifact for one of the realms is still -3 or -2 rend but... Yeah it does feel unlikely. Without that artifact or something similar I can't imagine ever taking him outside of mayyybe a khorne allegiance army in Goretide. I'm expecting some point drops but nothing super significant honestly. They usually seem pretty hesitant to make big cuts.

[Eldarain]

Will be interesting to see how the community reacts to it. It suggests you can still take Malign Sorcery artifacts yet also implies you decide on the realm and artifact you have access to at the table.

Which seems odd.

*Reading it again it seem Malign is out and if you don't like the artifact from the realm generated immediately pre game you can pick one of the others from these new realm options.

Feels rather like tailoring to me and if it's one artifact per realm a lot of factions that are leaning on certain items to stay relevant might be in trouble. Looking at Aetherquartz and Ethereal in particular.

Edited June 29, 2020 by Eldarain

[Grimrock]

10 minutes ago, Eldarain said:

Will be interesting to see how the community reacts to it. It suggests you can still take Malign Sorcery artifacts yet also implies you decide on the realm and artifact you have access to at the table.

Which seems odd.

Not sure what you mean? From reading the leaked image the paragraphs for picking which realm you're fighting in and which realm your army is from are separate just like they are currently. Also it specifically says the ghb artifacts are instead of the ones in Malign Sorcery, you can't use MS for artifacts at all as far as I can tell. 

[RocketPropelledGrenade]

1 hour ago, Grimrock said:

Well limited doesn't necessarily mean removed, it is possible that the artifact for one of the realms is still -3 or -2 rend but... Yeah it does feel unlikely. Without that artifact or something similar I can't imagine ever taking him outside of mayyybe a khorne allegiance army in Goretide. I'm expecting some point drops but nothing super significant honestly. They usually seem pretty hesitant to make big cuts.

Unfortunately, I committed to Ulgu in my paint scheme, including painting realm icons on a banner and the like. I mean, I like Ulgu lore-wise and enjoy the idea of my army being from it...but ouch.

[Grimrock]

4 minutes ago, RocketPropelledGrenade said:

Unfortunately, I committed to Ulgu in my paint scheme, including painting realm icons on a banner and the like. I mean, I like Ulgu lore-wise and enjoy the idea of my army being from it...but ouch.

Oof, yeah that's tough. Still not impossible but much less likely. Here's hoping for the best I guess. 

[RoyalDachshund]

Lads, anyone know any decent lists revolving around Archaon? I have an itch for painting this model

[Midjithero]

3 hours ago, RoyalDachshund said:

Lads, anyone know any decent lists revolving around Archaon? I have an itch for painting this model

So, because of the new release of LRL, I figured the only thing that “might be” competitive with them in the meta, I was planning on a Nurgle Archaon build.  HOWEVER, that was 24 hours prior to knowledge of the GHB2020 coming out this upcoming Saturday, so it’ll probably change.  But the list is as follows:

Archaon

Chaos Lord

Chaos Sorc Lord

Harbinger of Decay

40 Marauders, 20 Marauders, 10 Marauder Horsmen w/ Javelin

Warshrine

all marked Nurgle to take advantage of -1 hit General aura and +1 save from Warshrine.  Archaon also makes your army battleshock immune and gives a second CP per turn which counters 2 of LRLs new features (double cp spell and redirecting battleshock modifiers).  Harbinger and Warshrine give FNP, and Archaon’s Will of the Everchosen is a redundancy to both Sorc Lord and Warshrine.  
 

no clue how this will look though with potential updated points, but we will see.

[Spears]

I think it would be nice to see Varangaurd be better rather than cheaper. Giving them the mw save that everyone else with runeshields seems to get would be a start.

[Grimrock]

7 hours ago, RoyalDachshund said:

Lads, anyone know any decent lists revolving around Archaon? I have an itch for painting this model

This is the one that I've been playing with:

Allegiance: Slaves to Darkness
- Damned Legion: Host of the Everchosen (Sixth Circle)
Mortal Realm: Aqshy

Leaders
Archaon the Everchosen (800)
- General
- Aura of Chaos: Khorne
- Spell: Mask of Darkness
Chaos Lord (110)
- Reaperblade & Daemonbound Steel
- Artefact: Thermalrider Cloak
- Mark of Chaos: Khorne
Chaos Sorcerer Lord (110)
- Mark of Chaos: Nurgle
- Spell: Spite-tongue Curse

Battleline
40 x Chaos Marauders (300)
- Axes & Shields
- Mark of Chaos: Khorne
3 x Varanguard (300)
- 3x Ensorcelled Weapons
- Mark of Chaos: Khorne
5 x Chaos Marauder Horsemen (90)
- Javelin & Shield
- Mark of Chaos: Khorne
5 x Chaos Marauder Horsemen (90)
- Javelin & Shield
- Mark of Chaos: Khorne

Behemoths
Chaos Warshrine (170)
- Mark of Chaos: Khorne

Total: 1970 / 2000
Extra Command Points: 0
Allies: 0 / 400
Wounds: 118
 

Of course this'll change in a few weeks. The likely loss of the thermal rider cloak might mean that the chaos lord won't exist in the list anymore (not much point for him to be there if he can't keep up with Archaon anyway), and potential point changes might add/remove some models. I'd be pretty happy to put an allied Bloodstoker in actually. 

Edited June 29, 2020 by Grimrock

[WHYGW]

 

Is there any reason to hire manticore lord?

Unlike the Daemon prince, which became a very good unit with this change,

the god keword ability has been changed to the default specification,

manticore has lost all god keyword abilities.

If he was a nuggle, he was a 3+ save

If he was Khoren, he could file a 6" file in.

Why did GW just get rid of this ability?

He seems to have no advantage over Chaos lord on karkadrak!

Only when you lift the shield, you get a 5+ MW ward and a lower deal.

He's basically a 4+ save and he's a MONSTER, so he doesn't even receive LOS.

It cannot be hidden by the disposer's abilities. Even the points are high. Manticore is ugly. But I want this friend to use it.

Is there any reason to hire this friend?

[Dressedspring1]

Being able to fly is one reason, but generally the chaos lord on karkadrak is more appealing. The sorceror lord on manticore is something I’ve found performs well though, you want to take at least one sorceror lord in most lists anyway so the extra points to give it the mobility of the manticore and some combat capability is very worthwhile. You’re not going to send it into your opponents most dangerous units, but it can fly over things and hit back line support characters very well and is quite good at clearing cheap screening units. The unique spell is also excellent