CB42

1-2 Keepers, Epitome, 1-2 Bladebringer on Exalted Chariot, maybe an Enrapturess; 20-70 Daemonettes; 0-10 Hellstriders; 0-5 Seekers OR 20 Seekers; and the supreme Sybarites battalion or the epicurean Revellers battalion if you’re Pretenders. You could also consider the Cavalcade battalion if you wanted to drop the Daemonettes and go heavy on Hellstriders and Seekers (I’d lean towards something like 3 x 5 Hellstriders and 20 Seekers to really get value out of it).

I’ve been playing a pretty similar list in tournaments. I tend to bring 30 Daemonettes, an Infernal enrapturess, and 5 Seekers for summoning. A start collecting box (built as a Bladebringer on Exalted Chariot) and 2 boxes of Daemonettes would be a good “summoning sideboard”. My baseline summoning is to drop in Daemonettes and, with Chronomantic Cogs up and Godseekers allegiance, go for the rerollable 6+ charge from summoning. I bring in Seekers when I want additional mobility for late game objective grabbing, and I bring in the Enrapturess as anti-magic when I really need to. Depraved Drove is great because it gives you access to Ungors, who are ultra cheap screens and battleline; Bestigors, who are the best Slaanesh units in the game in terms of damage output; Ungor raiders, who are an even better screen than Ungors and can secure objectives right after deployment (but often don’t make the cut into my lists because) and Great Bray shamans, who are a cheap way to cast Cogs from outside unbind range, then move 11 inches forward to get a block of 30 Bestigors wholly within 12 inches of the GBS, then give them another 3 inches of movement. Ive had a ton of success with Depraved Drove, it’s great for the alpha strike, and don’t feel obligated to pack the list full of heroes to generate depravity! If you kill everything with the Bestigor alpha strike and you generate enough depravity to summon a few MSU Daemonette squads, there’s no need to build your entire list around summoning! Don’t let them peer pressure you into it! Below is my list that got me 3rd place at the Bay Area Open and 2nd place at Mythicos Triumph. If you don’t want 20 Seekers, you could easily replace them with 30 Bestigors and another Great Bray shaman. Frees up 80 points and makes you 3 drops instead of 4.

Per our FAQ, endless spells do not generate depravity.

They have enough speed that even in a unit of 20 you should be able to spread them out wide enough to get all of them or at least most of them in. Additionally, a large portion of your damage is via the licky tongues, so you need to get them within close range anyways.

I think it's absurd to talk about it as if it's a potential problem when the real problem is that players like HollowHills will lash out at GW for including female models in explicitly mixed gender armies. When there is absolutely zero evidence of one issue (GW won't feel comfortable with all-male lines) and tons of evidence of the opposite (GW releases tons of all-male lines versus two all-female lines and is comfortable with mixed gender lines being 90%+ male), the real concern should be that GW doesn't feel comfortable releasing as many female sculpts as their artistic vision suggests they should. Do you think that, in all the years of GW operating and producing miniatures, no one at GW has had the artistic vision of female guardsmen? The artistic vision of female space marines? Female cultists? The artistic vision of female necrons, or tau, or orks? Except for a few HQs here and there, it seems like the player base has mostly pushed against artistic vision only when that artistic vision is of female models, and that's super weird to me.

The Fyreslayers battletome just came out and is explicitly all male. Skaven, goblins, FEC are all male or androgynous. Khorne is all male except for three heroes. Beasts of chaos are all classically male Minotaurs. The ONLY recent battletome with more than 10% of their models looking female would be Slaanesh. Tell me again how a limited time model for stormcast and the existence of two all-female lines (slaanesh and Daughters) means you’re afraid there’s no artistic room for all-male lines.

Sadly, unfortunately, you’re not alone. Many people agree with you, which is why I didn’t want to imply that you’re the problem; you’re just one of many. Lore-wise there are female stormcast. Because there are women who are heroic warriors in life who then get called upon by Sigmar and changed by magic to be superhuman. The models should reflect this gender split. I frankly don’t care that you dislike the idea of women in fantasy as breaking your immersion. There are women in fantasy in the lore, and there should be women in fantasy in the model range. If you don’t like that, you don’t have to use any female sculpts! Just use male sculpts. You’ll certainly have a MUCH easier time than someone trying to only use male sculpts for mixed gender armies. But don’t try to pretend that fantasy lore should match your personal conceptions of what doesn’t need to be realistic (apparently everything but gender) and what needs to be realistic (apparently just gender).

It’s strange that when GW starts adding some female miniatures, but still well fewer than half of the range, people call it a gender equality crusade. I think that when people say that, they say a whole lot more about themselves than they do about GW. And I don’t think they get to excuse their choice of words by saying “oh, it’s just because it used to be 100% male and now they’re trying to balance it”; a crusade is a loaded term that you shouldn’t throw around lightly. When people go to GW and can’t find enough male models to make up 25% of their armies that are mixed gender in lore, then you can call it a crusade. But right now, many mixed gender armies have all male or primarily male miniatures, and if GW gets backlash from the community for literally just including a few female torsos and heads on sprues, or including a few female heroes amidst a veritable wave of male hero models, that speaks to a mindset that many people in our community have really, really wrong.

It’s a relative value type of thing on the alpha strike - a Keeper of Secrets fighting twice has the potential to do 38 wounds (plus 6s explode into 2 hits), while 30 Daemonettes fighting twice has the potential to do 120 wounds (plus 6s explode into 3 hits). Obviously they’re not directly comparable like that, but killy hordes tend to be more efficient at dealing damage than behemoths. And when you’re taking 3 keepers, you just don’t have room in your list to go hard on bringing alpha strike units that can consistently cross 18-24 inches to hit someone in their own deployment zone. Daemonettes can do 18 inches about 2/3 of the time, but they can never do 24 inches. And small units of Hellstriders aren’t good alpha strike units. Which is why I like huge units of Bestigors and Seekers for my alpha strike. What 3 Keepers does is make it really, really hard for enemy units to fight them if the 3 keepers are bunched up - any units that charge them will be fighting last, and going with all 3 keepers first will destroy most units. But it does mean you’re overloading one side of the board instead of contesting both sides unless you break up the 3 Keeper ball of death. The value of the keeper list is really not in its alpha strike - it’s in the summoning. My alpha strike list generates 18-30 depravity by turn 3. 3 Keeper lists generate closer to 70-80 depravity by turn 3. I tabled a 3 Keeper list and took no damage on any of my heroes or multiwound models, and he still managed to generate 55 depravity, and that’s an absolute worst case scenario for him. Chaos warriors are garbage right now, although some people have found a use for them as tanky objective holders. The cheapest battleline would be small units of Ungors if you’re taking the Depraved Drove battalion, so they’re good for putting bodies on the field. Hellstriders are good pure Slaanesh battleline because they’re relatively cheap at 100 points and are fast enough to steal objectives. Daemonettes can be used to get 10 bodies on the field, but they work best in larger groups. Seeker Chariots as battleline are fun but not worth their points, in my opinion. They don’t have the bodies for holding or stealing objectives, and they don’t have as many attacks as Daemonettes or Hellstriders.

I think there are three main directions to go - more alpha strike heavy (which my list is all the way in that direction), more summoning heavy (which a three Keeper list might embody) or something in between (ex: 6 heroes and 50 daemonettes). I personally think alpha strike / board control lists are better against top tier armies right now. I personally like having tons of bodies for board control and tons of mobility / damage for an alpha strike because it allows me to deny whatever the other player is trying to do and then hit them in the face. Bodies let me deny deepstrike from Evocator/Sequitor/Gavriel bombs; they let me screen against turn 1 charges from other Slaanesh players; they let me deny entire halves of the board from ambush style deepstrike like FEC; and they let me hold objectives for far longer than I should when someone is clearly going to table me eventually and I'm trying to hold onto an early lead. In contrast, replacing those bodies with more heroes, it gives the other player room to start outplaying you. Even if you get the Locus off, if someone drops 10 Evocators into 10 daemonettes, then you fight first with the daemonettes, and then the Evocators can pile a few models within melee range of a Keeper, that Keeper has a high chance of dying before it can fight. If you're fighting Skaven and your heroes are on your front line and 39 plague monks with Death Frenzy are sent into your heroes with Lauchon the Soulseeker, it doesn't matter that you can Locus them and fight first - everything you love is going to die because that's what plague monks do. If you're engaging FEC dragons with your keepers and FEC ghouls with your daemonettes, you don't have the bodies to prevent the 2 archregents from summoning 40 ghouls onto your backline objectives. You might still win eventually through summoning, but you're now playing from behind. Alpha strike heavy lists let you force the other player to play from behind. With the extreme mobility afforded by Bestigors (4 inches faster than Daemonettes) and Seekers (8+1d6 inches faster than Daemonettes) backed by Chronomantic Cogs, I can choose my fights. I can hit the other person on turn 1 no matter where they are on the board, and I can hit key targets while securing objectives. Most of my alpha strike will die, but they'll kill far more than their points in value first, and in doing so will disrupt whatever plan the other player is trying to enact. From that point forward, the other player is down in points and I have any surviving Seekers plus summoning to steal objectives they don't defend, and I have 60 ungors plus summoning to hold my own objectives or slow down their attempts to take my objectives. My list isn't perfect - it struggles against Fyreslayers and Nurgle in particular, who have sufficiently tanky units that I can't alpha strike them if they build their list right - but it has good matchups against FEC, DoK, and Slaanesh, and solid matchups against Skaven and LoN, and I'll take a bad matchup against Fyreslayers to get good matchups against all the other top tier armies. I haven't played against fish yet, but I believe that with my 60 models of screen, I'll be able to prevent them from dropping eels onto my valuable units, and if I can charge their eels instead of their eels charging my besties / seekers, then the game will favor me pretty heavily.

Hey folks! This was me. I managed to go 4-1 and took second place at Triumph, and I did a pretty big write-up on the Hedonites of Slaanesh page. This was my second time using this list - I also took third place at the Bay Area Open AoS GT with it, also going 4-1. I'm happy to answer any questions that you have! Congrats on the Players Choice win! Hopefully you had fun playing against Dutch - I didn't play his Slaanesh list, but I've heard about how it plays and I'm curious to play against it. I managed to play against every other Slaanesh player at the tournament besides Dutch, though. I took a lot of Ungors for a couple reasons. The first is that, to take the Depraved Drove and use Ungors as my battleline, I had to take at least 3 units of Ungors anyways, and the upgrade from 10 Ungors to 40 Ungors is only 140 points. The second is that there's a LOT of summoning and deepstrike in the meta right now, and 40 Ungors can screen one's entire back line against Evocator drops or archregent summoning. The third is that there's a LOT of fast armies in the meta right now (including a lot of Slaanesh!) and 40 Ungors can be used to screen my entire army - I don't like to use them that way because then it's harder to get them out of the way when I want to move up, but I can. The fourth is that I just don't have the points for more Bestigors unless I drop the Seekers, and the 20 Seekers have been super useful for me - they can be selected to fight twice from the Keeper and they never have issues crossing 24 inches to reach the enemy. They're also less impacted by terrain - Bestigors like nice big flat surfaces and struggle when terrain screws with getting 37 inches of uninterrupted Bestigors stretched out across enemy lines. Seekers, on the other hand, can just go over and around terrain because they move faster than anything in the game. I suppose I could drop 40 ungors down to 10 and take 10 Bestigors instead, but 10 Bestigors just don't do enough damage by themselves, in my opinion. The most important reason I take 40 ungors, though, is that they're good against screens. Especially skaven screens. Specifically skaven screens. God, I hate skaven. 40 Slaaneshi Ungors can be sent into 40 clanrats and they'll kill a whole bunch of clanrats - about 20 or so. The clanrats really won't kill a ton of Ungors in return. And then the ungors will usually be able to survive the hero phase, forcing the skaven player to shoot them (and not my important stuff) or to leave my screen blocking their movement, which restricts their ability to get plague monks out on the table past our collective screens. The goal here is to force them to either screen less or pull their plague monks up to kill my screen in their front lines, so that my bestigors can hit them next turn and kill off their plague monks or get past their screen to their shooting. And they perform this role as 200 point battleline rather than 300 point non-battleline. Edit: Depraved drove is buffed by being near enemy heroes with artifacts, not my own! But that still makes it highly likely that I'll be able to reroll charges and if I can get my bestigors into a hero with an artifact, rerolling hits with 3 attacks per model 4/3/-1/1 does a LOT of damage. Knocked a terrorgheist with Ethereal Amulet down to 1 wound with 9 bestigors at BAO. I was SO CLOSE to one shotting that stupid thing.

In fairness, the community agreed with your interpretation until, like, 3 months ago when the FEC faq came out. I personally would rather it be the way you interpreted it because, in a world of fight first and you fight last, it allows for other armies to have some counterplay... but no, GW made sure that the best you can do is swinging first once against a FEC dragon before it fights twice and kills you.

I’m not sure I agree with this - I don’t believe passing precludes you from using the unit later, it’s just that both players passing in succession ends the combat phase. So theoretically you could pass, someone activated and piles into you, then you now have a selectable unit and fight back. There was an faq about FEC stuff, I think, where people were asking something similar - if something fights at the start of the phase and isn’t in combat, then you pile in later, do they lose their activation because they passed on it at the start of the phase? And the answer was no, they can still fight after someone piled into them.

You pile in each model towards the closest enemy model to that model, even if it’s not in combat with you. If you have 30 Bestigors or 20 Seekers, that means you can charge one model within 0.5 inches of (not scary enemy unit) then use your charge roll to get just outside 3 inches of (scary unit) with the rest of your charge distance. (Scary unit) is not considered in combat or selectable for combat, but since one of your models is in combat with (not scary unit), your unit and (not scary unit) are both selectable for combat. When it’s your time to pile in, you pile in and attack (scary unit), getting around fight first shenanigans.

I’m not convinced the Doppelgänger Cloak is necessary. It’s just really good against keepers, FEC, and Bloodthirsters. Thermalrider Cloak or Cameo or rod of misrule or sliverslash or ghyrstrike are also all good artifacts to consider.

Triumph GT: my rundown of my games. I ended up getting second place. My list is attached. At 4 drops, I had choice of turn in all 5 games. General strategy: Either plan for second turn and screen with my Ungors, holding Bestigors and GBS on one flank and Seekers, Epitome, and Keeper on the other flank (hedonite heroes always start within 6” of the Fane); or plan for first turn, drop my heroes first then Seekers then battalion last, hoping to avoid making it clear that I was taking first turn until I had to. GBS is always deployed 10” back from where he needs to be to get my besties going fast so that he can cast Cogs from outside unbind range if I’m concerned the Epitome might get unbound. If I’m facing a monster heavy list (Slaanesh, Sylvaneth, FEC), I take the wound on my Epitome for those sweet sweet rerolls with the Sword of Judgment and reroll anything that’s not a 6 to hit with the piercing claws. Against other lists, I take the wound on my Keeper. Game 1: Victory vs Skaven on Scorched Earth. His list was 100 clanrats, 2 Warp lightning cannons, 6 jezzails, and some casters. He castled up on 2 of his 3 objectives and I took first turn to keep him from pushing his screen out onto the board - I wanted to hold him in place while I whittled away his screen from two sides on turn 2. I used my Seekers and Keeper to kill 20 clanrats holding his third objective and I sent 40 Ungors into his screen of 80 clanrats, killing a fair number. This forced him to spend his next turn dealing with them while shooting at my Seekers (I kept my keeper out of range of his jezzails and WLCs). On my next turn, I slammed my Bestigors into his surviving clanrats in front and my remaining Seekers into his clanrats on his side, and I killed all his clanrats, both his cannons, and locked his jezzails into shooting my Bestigors, not my Keeper, at which point he conceded. Game 2: Victory versus Khorne on Focal Points. His list was a bloodthirster (the pile in 6” one), 20 bloodwarriors, 6 skullcrushers, 3 priests, a secrator, and some reavers. We both deployed to take first turn, which forced me to actually take first turn instead of letting him have it, which was frustrating - I didn’t want to fight him in my territory with my screens dead. I killed his Mighty Skullcrushers and a unit of reavers with my Seekers and Keeper, and I killed half his bloodwarriors and a priest and a unit of reavers with my Bestigors. Didn’t manage to get the bloodsecrator. His Thirster kills my Bestigors, then moves 6” from my Keeper. I pop my Doppelgänger Cloak so he can’t attack my Keeper if he piles in, so he piles into my Seekers instead and kills them. His bloodwarriors charge into my Ungors and I tarpit him while continuing to hold the objective. He gets the double turn, kills more Ungors, and kills my Keeper now that my Cloak is down. On my turn, I take a wound on my Epitome, summon 2 x 10 Daemonettes to hold or seize objectives, and I go kill his thirster with my Epitome and Daemonettes. At this point, I’m pretty far ahead and still have some depravity - he makes a last ditch play to summon some Bloodletters and tries to kill both my Epitome and my Great bray shaman, but his letters fail their charge, and he concedes because I can guarantee a win with summoning. Game 3: Victory versus Slaanesh on Total Commitment. His list was 2 keepers, 50 Daemonettes, 5 Seekers, Epitome, Enrapturess, geminids. He deploys to try to take my left flank if I give him first turn; I decide to screen and give him first turn. He kills 40 Ungors with his Keeper and his Seekers, then on my turn I slam 30 Bestigors into his Keeper and Seekers. I charge the Seekers and set my Bestigors up in a big circle 3.5” away from the Keeper so that the keeper can’t be selected to fight until after my Bestigors have piled in even if he locuses me. I bring the keeper and Seekers down to 1 hp left each, but he kills my Bestigors. Meanwhile, I kill his other keeper with my Epitome, steal one of his objectives with my Seekers, and start whittling down his other heroes and Daemonettes with my Keeper. I double turn him and finish off his first Keeper and Seekers, summon some Daemonettes, and generally accept that my board position isn’t ideal. He summons a keeper and more Daemonettes, kills my Keeper, then resecures his objective on my right flank. I use Ungors as road blocks on my right, I use summoned Daemonettes to take his objective on my left flank, and my one surviving Seeker runs around distractingly to steal undefended objectives, forcing him to commit his forces for a few turns to really secure my right side. By the time he starts heading to my left side, I have a large objective lead and several units of summoned Daemonettes slowing down his keeper and Daemonettes, and he concedes when I win priority top of turn 5 as he has no way to catch me. He ended up placing 8th at the tournament. Game 4: Loss versus Nurgle on Better Part of Valor (which I always lose on even though my army is crazy fast and should, on paper, be amazing at). His list had 40 plague monks, 2 x 5 blight kings, Rotigus, 10 chaos knights, 30 Plaguebearers, an allied epitome, and a hero holding The Witherstaff, which hard counters us - rerolling hits of 6 is the worst thing to deal with. I made a huge mistake this game and thought my Keeper + Seekers would be able to kill his Plaguebearers and blightkings holding one objective. They could not. Not even close. Not even fighting twice. I almost sniped his hero with the witherstaff with my Impaling Claws (he’d placed his hero within 3” of where I could pile in) but I rolled poorly and he ended up surviving. So my seekers and Keeper got nullified and tarpitted. My Bestigors killed his plaguemonks and 1/3 of his chaos knights, but then my besties ran from battleshock. He stole most of my objectives but didn’t burn them, and his chaos knights killed my Ungors. I managed to use my GBS and Epitome to summon Daemonettes and make charges to secure 4 of 6 objectives, and since I wouldn’t be able to hold any with his chaos knights on the table, I burned all 4 for 5 points. At this point, he offered me a minor loss: we were running out of time and he said he could burn one objective for 1 point, wait one more turn before dice down and burn the last objective, then he’d win the tie on kill points. I didn’t accept this because he could just castle and hold the last objective until turn 5 and get 9 points instead of 5, so he could guarantee he won if not for dice down, so I conceded for the major loss. I just didn’t have enough left on the board to break through his defensive castle that survived a Keeper and 20 Seekers. He ended up in 4th place at the tournament after losing in the finals to Slaanesh. Game 5: Victory versus Slaanesh on Shifting Objectives. His list used 3 Keepers (normal, soulfeaster, and Shalaxi), plus 2 x 10 Daemonettes, 1 x 5 Hellstriders, the Epitome, and 6 fiends. I screened my army really carefully, gave him first turn, and he failed most of his charges - he got his keeper into 40 Ungors but rolled poorly and only killed 25 of them after battleshock. On my turn, I used my Seekers to kill 10 Daemonettes and 2 fiends and I took one objective; my Bestigors killed 10 Daemonettes, 5 Hellstriders, and put 3 wounds on his Epitome; my Keeper killed his Keeper; and my Epitome with the Sword of Judgment rerolling hits killed his soulfeaster. Then, I double turned him, killed his Epitome and Shalaxi, and he had 70 depravity and no heroes to summon with. He conceded when he had just 4 fiends left on the board and I still hadn’t lost a full unit. He ended up placing 7th at the tournament. Had I not double turned him, it would’ve been close - but getting that double turn really sealed the game for me. And the way locuses interact - If multiple things fight at the end of the phase, first ALL of the player whose turn it is stuff goes, then ALL of the other player’s stuff goes - means that locuses really just benefit whoever’s turn it is, which let me kill all his keepers. In the end, I took second place, and I’m pretty happy with going 4-1 against some pretty strong lists! I’ve now played against 3 Slaanesh players in a tournament setting and my list does really well in the mirror matchup, which is good because Slaanesh is going to feature heavily in the meta going forward!

I’ve been running a block of 20 Seekers alongside a Keeper of Secrets. The 20 Seekers fighting twice, with exploding 6s into 3 hits on the first set of attacks, tends to kill whatever needs to be killed, and their speed is insane - great both for getting off a turn 1 charge and for stealing objectives turns 3-5. Centigors are more comparable to Hellstriders, the centigors force more saves on the charge but the Hellstriders are a LOT better on later turns after the first, so its a balancing act. And of course, the Hellstriders are battleline, which is nice. I think centigors are best as MSU 5 man squads for stealing objectives as cheap alternatives to Hellstriders or seekers, or I might consider using 20 of them - but I feel like if I’m using 20 centigors I’d rather use them in nurgle for blades of putrefaction, and if I want them for an alpha strike, I’d rather upgrade them to 20 Seekers for 160 points. Hellstriders should always be with clawspears. Always.

An Abhorrant Archregent in an Invaders army with rod of misrule wouldn’t be terrible for access to summoning anywhere on the board, forcing opponents to screen their own back line or lose their objectives... but for 200 points and 2 CP I’d rather have an Epitome and two fight twice activations. 15 Hearthguard Berzerkers and the endless spell Lauchon the Soulseeker would be legit in any army, but I’d rather take 30 Bestigors and Cogs and 1cp. I think the mercenary system so far is best for armies that have extra CP but are weak in terms of summoning or damage output. While we can get extra CP, we already are pretty good at whatever the current mercenaries do. If we really need ranged allies, I’d currently look towards Ungor Raiders - 40 of them are great at screening and solid at shooting - 40 shots at 4s and 4s but rerolling 1s and 2s to hit is decent.

My WIP Fulgrim that will be a Keeper of Secrets proxy. I used the new Abaddon model’s upper half (with the back of the helm cut off) with baby Morathi’s hair. Arms are Drachnyen and the Talon of Horus from Abaddon, Morathi’s spear, and a claw from a Fiend. Lots of green stuff was necessary to close gaps to get the back of the model to fit.

The way I use Ungors, they have one of three purposes: * Screening half the board against deep strike (ex: stringing them behind my lines for 72 inches to prevent FEC or stormcast from summoning behind me onto my objectives or to then charge Evocators into my forces from behind). The choice of sword or spears is irrelevant here. * Screening against a charge and fighting back if they survive. Enough will die that any survivors can fight in two ranks, so the sword is better than the spear. * I charge them across the board with Chronomantic Cogs up and a Great Bray Shaman boosting their movement to slam into a screening unit that is spread wide. Unless I double 1 the charge, I will be able to spread them out to fight in 2 ranks - enough that the sword is better than the spear. As for a Bladebringer on Exalted Chariot, I’m considering adding one if I can free up the points, but I really love my 20 Seekers and I don’t want to drop them down to 30 Daemonettes.

It’s complete garbage except for the Fyreslayers matchup, where it (or any wall or movement reduction endless spell) is good for limiting Hearthguard mobility. I’d drop it in an instant, though. edit: I was getting on the subway before. To expand: I don’t find it that useful because, with a casting value of 5, it’s super easy for anyone with access to a spellcaster to dispel. So while I might want it against, say, Skaven on Duality of Death to mitigate their shooting, their ease of dispelling it means it ends up doing nothing for me. Had I played the FS matchup better, and had the objectives not dropped right on top of his HG berzerkers, I would have been able to keep placing it right in his path and it probably could have slowed him down by an additional turn. Add in moving some of my units of Ungors 3” away from his Hearthguard, and I think I could’ve won... again, had the objectives dropped in reasonable places and had I not tried to alpha strike him. So I’m going to keep it in my list for now - I like it more than soulsnare shackles because FS can ignore shackles on a 4+ but they can’t ignore the model placement of an impassable wall.

Because SoJ already does enough work (I 100-0’d a Keeper and a Terrorgheist) and I needed Doppelgänger Cloak for the Gristlegore FEC matchup. And I needed to be Godseekers for Thrill Seekers for the turn 1 charge. Look, you can rebuild the entire army around buffing the SoJ gimmick, but I like having it as an option rather than my main way of winning. For winning tournaments, it helps against monster heavy lists (and won me those matchups), but is a useless gimmick against enemies that screen properly or don’t use heroes on the front lines (shootcast, Skaven, eel spam, etc)

I run Chronomantic Cogs and Godseekers, so with the Epitome’s base 12 inch move, that means that you’re looking at a move and charge of 17” plus 2d6. So the way I use the Epitome with the Sword is that I deploy the Epitome within 6” of my Fane, take the reroll hits on the Epitome, cast Cogs with my Great Bray shaman from outside unbind range, then move my Epitome up to kill an unscreened monster or hero if possible. If monsters and heroes are screened, I instead take the wound on my Keeper for the rerolls and move my Keeper up with my Seekers and run my Epitome to 5” away from someone I want to use the Locus and fascination on without getting into combat. I try not to have my Epitome in combat with anything other than heroes and monsters.

Definitely agree with SwampHeart on Gors, unfortunately. And if you're going to use MSU style play, 10 Bestigors outperform 10 Gors by so much that it's not worth considering the Gors. Something else worth thinking about: 40 Ungors are better for screening than 30 Gors. I was at a tournament recently where I was playing against melee stormcast and I needed to screen against him dropping 20 Sequitors, 10 Evocators, and Gavriel Surecharge behind my lines. 40 Ungors, spread 1 inch apart each, were able to cover my entire rear side plus part of the two sides, and even better, since they are on 25mm bases (which are less than 1") I could place other large units like my 30 Bestigors on either side of a line of Ungors and still remain within coherency. And 3 x 10 Ungors are better for screening than 2 x 10 Gors are because you have 3 MSU units rather than 2, and neither one will survive taking a hit anyways, so you'd rather just have more units in that case.