CB42

So I took this list to the Bay Area Open, and I ended up going 4-1 and placing 3rd (out of 20)! I switched to Godseekers so that I could take Thrill Seeker on my Keeper for the turn 1 charge on maps where we start 24" apart without needing to take Thermalrider Cloak, because I felt like I needed Doppelganger Cloak for the Gristlegore FEC matchup (and I was right!), and I felt like I wanted the Sword of Judgment because it's super broken good on the Epitome with the Fane (and it won me 2 matchups single handedly!). Game 1: Victory on Shifting Objectives versus Feast Day Flesh Eater Courts (2 archregents, bunch of flayers, 50 ghouls, some courtiers, one terrorgheist with an Ethereal Amulet). I gave him first turn, he didn't screen properly, and then my Epitome with the Sword of Judgment took a wound from the Fane, got reroll all hits, and then went up to his Terrorgheist and I rolled 9 dice, rerolling all dice that were not 6s. I ended up with 4 6s and dealt 15 mortal wounds to his terrorgheist, killing it instantly and ignoring its Ethereal nature. Meanwhile, I used my 40 Ungors to hold one side, my 30 Bestigors went into his Flayers and 20 of his ghouls (wiping the ghouls and tying up the flayers) and my Keeper + 20 Seekers killed 30 ghouls and a bunch more flayers. I ended up summoning 30 Daemonettes and controlled 2/3 of the board, and he conceded at the end of round 3 when he had 3 models left. Game 2: Victory on Border War versus Invaders Slaanesh (2 bladebringers on exalted, keeper, enrapturess, epitome, 2 x 30 Daemonettes, 1 x 5 Helstriders). His list has a lot more depravity generation and CP than mine (for more fight twice shenanigans), but my list is a lot more maneuverable and fast. He played for the turn 1/2 double turn so that he could cross the field and charge me rather than letting me charge him, but then I got priority turn 2 and alpha striked him. I managed to kill his keeper with my epitome (sword of judgment rerolling hits) before his keeper could act, my 20 Seekers and 40 Ungors killed his 30 Daemonettes and one of his Bladebringers, but his screening meant that my Bestigors only killed 5 Helstriders before getting killed in turn. He resummoned his Keeper but I was able to use my Seekers to come kill his daemonettes after I'd already secured 3 of the 4 objectives, and my keeper killed his new keeper. He conceded at the end of round 3, but we exchanged contact information to continue to chat about Slaanesh going forward. He ended up placing 4th in the tournament. Game 3: Loss on Starstrike versus Fyreslayers (30 HG berzerkers, 15 HG berzerkers, 4 buffing heroes, 1 grimwrath berzerker, and some vulkites). I tried to alpha strike him, failed (my seekers and keeper killed his 15 HG berzerker unit but my bestigors only killed 6 HG berzerkers off the big unit), but it ended up not mattering - the first objective landed in the center of the field next to his 30 berzerker death star, and then my objective landed 12 inches from that, so even if I still had all my units and tried to kite him, he could just camp on the two objectives in the center of the board next to his scary unit. He ended up winning the tournament, so I don't mind losing to him too much. Game 4: Victory on Battle for the Pass versus Melee Stormcast (2 x 20 Sequitors, 1 x 10 Evocators, 1 x 5 Liberators, Gavriel Surecharge, Lord Arcanum on Gryph Charger, Meteor, buff heroes). He dropped his meteor into my lines, buffed up one unit of Sequitors and dropped his Evocators into my screen, and even though I guaranteed that my keeper fought them twice before they got to attack, my keeper mostly whiffed and his 6 surviving Evocators killed my Keeper. Then I sent in my Bestigors and killed all 20 of his unbuffed Sequitors before any of them could attack, used my Seekers to kill his Evocators and Gavriel Surecharge, and then tied up his buffed up Sequitors so that they couldn't completely pile in in one direction - half of them had to head towards my Seekers and half had to head towards my Bestigors. Then my Bestigors retreated onto his backline objective and I summoned 30 Daemonettes to hold the left side of the field while 40 Ungors held my back line and he was left with one single objective for his tied up 20 Sequitors. He said the game was probably over and was ready to concede end of round 2, then conceded for real at the end of round 3. Game 5: Victory on Total Commitment versus Gristlegore Flesh Eater Courts (2 ghoul kings on terrorgheists - one with gryph feather charm and one with something else, 2 archregents, 3 x 10 ghouls in ghoul patrol, one ghoul courtier, Cogs). This game was super close. He knew exactly what I wanted to do and he deployed basically at his back line. I gave him first turn and he backed even further up onto his two objectives, but I'd screened out his summoning, so he chose not to summon. He split his terrorgheists across the right and left sides, but both archregents were next to his general fight-first terrorgheist on my right side. I spent one round moving up 6 inches so that I could charge next turn but he couldn't charge me with anything other than his terrorgheist into my Ungor screen. Turn 2, I get the double turn, and I alpha strike him. My bestigors kill 18 of his 2 x 10 ghouls on the left and bring his terrorgheist down to 1 hp (SO CLOSE to wiping all his ghouls and his monster), and my Keeper locus'd his terrorgheist and activated doppelganger cloak. My Seekers fighting twice take 5 wounds off his general and kill his 10 man squad of ghouls and brings one of his archregents down to 1 wound, and my Epitome kills that archregent. He keeps trying to fight with anyone other than his terrorgheist - after all, if I fight first, my doppelganger cloak will be wasted, and he can Feeding Frenzy and almost certainly kill my Keeper. If he fights first, he HAS to attack my Seekers with his terrorgheist, and that means that he might get killed by my Keeper fighting twice. We end up in an activation war where I end up spending a CP to activate my Epitome a second time without attacking (was within 3" of the second archregent even if I was blocked from piling in), and that forced him to activate his terrorgheist before my Keeper of Secrets. He kills 18 Seekers, I kill his general Terrorgheist, then I roll a 1 on battleshock for the Seekers and get 3 back. From this point on, I screen out his summoning so he can't take any objectives on the right side of the board, he wins the left side of the board, and I have a small advantage. He tries to secure the win by summoning 3 flayers 9" away from my objective riiiiiight in between the radius of 2 screening units (I'd left a small gap and he took full advantage of it) and he made the 9" charge onto the objective, but I'd summoned 10 daemonettes to reinforce the point, and he never actually got control of the objective from me. Meanwhile, my 2 surviving seekers after killing his archregent went all the way across the board and took my objective back on the left side. At that point, there was no way for him to mathematically come back, and he conceded halfway through turn 5. Overall, I'm super happy with my decisions with my list and my artifacts. I played poorly in the game I lost versus Fyreslayers, and I've now learned that I basically have no way of killing 30 Hearthguard Berzerkers, but I'm definitely happy with placing 3rd in the tournament, losing only to the winner of the tournament!

40 Ungors are good at what they do, but for combat, they're okay. I mostly use mine for screening or killing enemy screens. Don't rely on them to do a ton of damage and battleshock ruins them, though. Use them to back up your Bestigors and Daemonettes, who will be the ones doing real work.

I personally run Thrill Seeker so that I can get my Keeper into combat turn 1 as part of my Alpha Strike on deployments where both sides start 24 inches apart (and I'd drop Thrill Seeker for Speed-Chaser if I had Thermal Rider Cloak). But that's for a very specific type of list, I agree with you that on the vast majority of lists Speed-Chaser is basically strictly better.

You can kill anything other than 20+ Hearthguard berzerkers; don’t even try to kill them. Play keep away. If they’ve got 600 points in 30 H Zerkers with a 4” move, don’t fight them - play keep away. Mortal wounds won’t help much with their 4+ shrug. I actually recommend sending in a Keeper early on against their Vulkites or something to fight then die and generate a ton of depravity, then use that depravity to summon a bunch of 10 man Daemonette squads. Run and move these squads 3.1” away strung out in an 18” line from the H Zerks and that’ll slow them down. If you have endless spells like Prismatic Palisades or soulsnare shackles, use these as well to slow them down. Anywhere where the H Zerks are not, you can go fight and kill. Squads of 15 H Zerks are doable, but difficult to bring down - I killed 12 with a Keeper of Secrets and then double activating 12 Seekers into them, so I threw a ton of dice at the board and only ended up killing a dozen. Wherever they don’t have 20+ H Zerks, fight them and hold those objectives. If any heroes leave themselves exposed, kill those first. But accept that anything that gets charged by the H Zerks will do nothing and then just die, and play around that fact.

It feels like you're arguing in bad faith. Is +1 to hit nothing in comparison? Or is it so good that it's the final and most expensive reward that Khorne can buy? Quite frankly, you're making a lot of really bad, hyperbolic arguments. Is pile in and attack twice on a unit good? Definitely. But the comparison between one unit fighting twice and +1 attack from a Megaboss is a bad comparison because you're ignoring that a Megaboss on Maw Crusha gives +1 attack to every single unit within 15". So +1 attack on 5, 6, 7 units versus fighting twice on 1 unit? Suddenly the Megaboss on Maw Crusha looks incredibly overpowered, right? You're upset and because you're upset you're choosing to ignore context or literally any argument other than things that support your hyperbolic claims, but come on. You've reached the point where you're contradicting yourself in order to try to advance your hyperbole.

I’ve been playing BoC Slaanesh in two tourneys in the past month and I’ve placed 2nd at the battlegrounds GT in Boston (pre-battletome) and 3rd at the Bay Area Open GT, so maybe that might be it. I’d be curious to hear if anyone else has been seeing tournament success with BoC Slaanesh.

I think we’re going in circles. That said, if someone tries to use your interpretation at a tournament, I would expect a judge to be called, and I would also expect the judge to side against you. If the wording is ambiguous and open for argument, they’re likely to lean towards the decision that doesn’t allow triple stacking mortal wounds because it feels more like a semantics exploit. My 2 cents as someone who plays Slaanesh at tournaments.

Result and trigger = ‘roll a dice for each enemy unit that is within 1” of a model from this unit after the model from this unit finishes a charge move’. It’s all referencing one model. Full unit clarification: Do this each time you move a model as part of the charge phase, though it’s still only units next to the one model that moved each time. Again, you are arbitrarily separating the sentence into completely independent parts that don’t interact. It’s one sentence. sidenote: The fact that it says “after the model finishes a charge move” instead of “after a model finishes a charge move” shows that the model finishing the charge move is the same as the model an enemy unit is next to. “The model” means it’s a dependent clause.

I think I am simply reading the rule as it is written and you and dark are adding a line break in the middle of a sentence so that the two parts of the sentence no longer reference each other.

Within 1” of a model after the model finishes a charge: it’s the same model. Other models in the unit are not the model that finished a charge. The later section states that mortal wounds are inflicted after each move because those models may also move within 1” of units and you’d roll for those units. That has no bearing on rolling multiple times for the units that are not next to a totally different model from the model that finished a charge. You’re looking at the controlling wording being “next to a model” and then assuming that “the model finishes a charge” is completely, 100% independent. But it’s not. It’s the same sentence. The model that finished a charge is the same model that a unit must be next to to roll for mortal wounds.

Nope. Absolutely incorrect. They affect every unit within 1” of the model that just finished a charge. It’s one sentence discussing being near a model after the model finishes a charge, but you and dark are trying to interpret them as separate sentences and then ignore the second part.

It’s interesting that the part you chose not to bold shows that your interpretation is probably wrong. It doesn’t say roll a dice for each unit within 1” of a model from this unit after ANY model finishes a charge, it says after THE model finishes a charge. So you roll after each charge, but only for units next to THE model that finishes a charge move, not every single model in the unit.

Yeah, I definitely don’t read it that way. roll a dice for each enemy unit that is within 1” of A model after THE model finishes a charge. This seems pretty clear that you don’t get to trigger each one multiple times, you trigger each one once. No loopholes here.

People will complain, and it sounds like your friends will complain no matter what. You have a few options here - you can help them build lists that do use incredibly strong things to lead to more balanced games (as well as talking them through how to play around the Locus, like charging 3 units to an area where there's a Keeper so they can't all be Locus'd, and screening out your Keeper and Daemonettes from getting to their key units). But in my experience, even better list building and some discussion of tactics doesn't get people to stop complaining. Someone can be netlisting and if their skill isn't there it won't help them win games. It'll just keep them from losing games solely off of list quality. Another option, and one that I've done with some of my less competitive friends: Play imbalanced games! If you play at a more competitive level, try playing games of 2000 points vs 2500 points, or 1500 points vs 2000 points. The extra points and inherent advantage from playing with extra points will make them less likely to complain that your army is unfair, and the additional challenge will make you a better player - at 2000 vs 2500, it's not enough to rely on the Locus and strength of the Keeper / Daemonettes to just stomp enemy melee, you have to work for that win. This is doubly true at 1500 vs 2000. This one can be a hard sell if your friends have big egos, but if they are willing to play an imbalanced game, I suspect this might be the best option. The final option is what you've been proposing. I'd say in this case, remove the things that are valid to complain about and tell them they're being ridiculous if they complain about the rest. Let's be honest here: Slaanesh is, right now, a very powerful army. I don't think it's quite DoK or Skaven tier, but it's real close. If they're not playing a tournament level list or a top tier army themselves, they're starting from behind before any skill comes into play. More than that, though, are things that aren't overpowered but feel bad to play against. When you charge and get Locus'd, that feels bad. When you lose half your forces but kill half the other guy's forces, then he summons everything back, that feels bad. Yeah, the non-Slaanesh player still got outplayed and could have played around it, and maybe we pay in points costs for the summoning, but that won't change how it feels. Minimizing your army's ability to use the Locus and limiting how much you summon will make the army feel more fair - even if you use very strong units. Running 90 Daemonettes in an Epicurean battalion, and then winning in a traditional "I attack, you attack" fashion will feel much less bad for the losing player than if you'd run 2 Keepers and Syll'Esske, killed a bunch of stuff, lost them, then summoned 2 more Keepers to the field, even if all else is equal. I suspect that, if your friends will complain no matter what, at least this will pull some of the teeth out of those complaints - the army will feel like a strong but traditional army to fight against rather than a new and unfair army to fight against.

Plans for a more casual list that opponents won’t complain about: No Keepers No Epitome No Syll’Esske Max 1 Bladebringer on Exalted Chariot No Bestigors Max 3 heroes (to limit depravity generation) Basically everything else is fairly costed or overcosted.

So looking towards the minimum number of purchases: One more start collecting box, the new Hedonites of slaanesh battletome, a Keeper of Secrets, a Contorted Epitome, and the Fane of Slaanesh. In your purchases, you’d end up with a little over 2000 points of units. One thing worth noting: With these purchases, you’d either want to build 2 Bladebringers on Exalted Chariots, or you’d want to build 1 Bladebringer on Exalted Chariot and 2 Seeker Chariots (instructions for Seeker Chariots can be found online). Tentative list, Godseekers Host: Leaders: Keeper of Secrets (General, Thrill Seeker, an artifact of your choice, spell: progeny of damnation), Contorted Epitome (spell: hysterical frenzy), Bladebringer on Exalted Chariot (spell: lash of Slaanesh), Infernal Enrapturess (spell: soulslice shards) Battleline: 30 Daemonettes, Seeker Chariot, Seeker Chariot Other Units: 10 Seekers, 5 Seekers Battalion: Supreme Sybarites It’s not a perfect list, but I think it matches up reasonably well against semi-competitive but not tournament-level lists. Quick ways to improve it even further: Buy 30 more Daemonettes, a box of 5 Hellstriders, pick up Chronomantic Cogs off of eBay... and if you really want to splurge, maybe find a way to fit a second Keeper of Secrets in there.

Sure, I'm thinking of having my Great Bray Shaman cast Spellportal, have my Epitome cast Cogs, and then have my Epitome cast Hystical Frenzy through the portal. Then next round, the Epitome can dispel the spellportal, activate Cogs for the extra spell, re-cast spellportal, and cast Hysterical Frenzy through it again.

Hold up one second. This is brilliant. Epitome with portal and Hysterical Frenzy is suddenly a threat to deal an average of 10 mortal wounds to a block of 30 models, or 13 mortal wounds to plague monks. And you can cast both the portal and Frenzy from outside unbind range.

Hm, I think I agree with you. And if you are able to Locus the GK and then charge it with the fiends, you force them to burn the doppelganger cloak with Fiends that they have a lower chance of wiping, which frees you up to try to finish them off with a Keeper later on once they no longer have the cloak. I just.... uh. Spending 420 points on Fiends just feels bad - I don't like running them unless I'm building my army around them with the Wrath and Rapture battalion to give them +1 attack (I feel like they're too swing-y for their points and also only good against monsters/heroes/stormcast), and that locks you into Pretenders with a unit of Fiends and also a unit of Seekers... I was willing to do that when Fiends cost 360, but not now that they cost 420 points. I'd rather sacrifice my Thermalrider Cloak (and instead take a Doppelganger Cloak on my Keeper to deal with AGKoTG with a Doppelganger Cloak) than force a quarter of my army to be Fiends is what I suppose I'm saying.

So I'm actually planning on featuring Seekers and Bestigors pretty heavily in my list for a tournament this weekend. Basic list: Godseekers, Depraved Drove (30 Besties, 40 Ungors, 2 x 10 Ungors, GBS), Keeper (run and charge, Doppelganger Cloak), Epitome (Sword of Judgment), 1 x 20 Seekers, Cogs, Prismatic Palisades (to fill out the last 30 points). 4 drop army, only one Keeper, but 20 Seekers will do about as much damage as 20 Bestigors - not super impressive on their own, but they will almost never fail a charge on a deployment 24" apart, they can be selected to fight twice, and if they survive the first round of combat, they jump up to 6 attacks each instead of 4 attacks each. General game plan when not dealing with significant screening: Drop the Fane near where I'll place the Keeper, Epitome casts Cogs from outside unbind range, Bestigors are launched to murder everything on one side of the board, Keeper and Seekers are launched into the other side. One CP is saved for helping either the Besties or the Keeper run 6" to get into combat (whoever rolls lower on the run roll); the other one is used so that the Seekers can fight twice. One bestigor tags one unit so as to minimize the damage when that unit fights before the bestigors, and the rest of the bestigors set up shop 4.1" away from units they want to attack (to take advantage of the 4" pile in). Keeper goes in first into a unit that'll get Locus'd and the Seekers tag that unit and set up 3.1" away from everyone else they want to fight. Keeper fights first, then enemy has to fight the Bestigors with very few models being able to pile in to reach them, then Seekers fight, crippled units get to fight back against the Seekers, then Seekers fight again, then the Bestigors fight, and finally if any survived, the unit that got locus'd and hit by a Keeper and 2 sets of Seeker activations gets to fight. I think this type of Alpha strike can basically lead to turn 1 concessions from any army that didn't screen properly. Against armies that are screening properly: Send in 40 Ungors turn 1 to fight the screen, and with rerolling 1s and 2s to hit and also 6s explode into 3 hits, 40 Ungors are expected to force about 22 saves - which is enough to seriously weaken or cripple most screens, especially as someone starts to move out onto the map. This forces the enemy to spend their turn still in their deployment zone killing my screen, and they will have limited screening potential for the turn 2 attack when the Bestigors and Seekers and Keeper enact game plan 1, just a turn later. It's not a perfect strategy, but I think it will be enough to give me a good chance at winning rounds at top tables. Against armies that want to alpha strike me: I can use my 3 units of Ungors to screen my own army, hold my Seekers 1" back from my Ungors, and hold my Besties 4" back from my Ungors. That way, the Seekers can pile in to fight and kill a model so that on my turn they can wreck someone's day with 6 attacks, while the Besties can countercharge and get those sweet, sweet 3 attacks. Unfortunately, my local scene doesn't have a ton of AoS players, so most of my tournament practice comes from, uh, playing in tournaments. Not an ideal practice strategy, but I've managed to see success (2nd place at an 18 player tournament a month ago) with pre-battletome Slaanesh - I expect that it will be significantly easier to place highly with post battletome Slaanesh.

Large monsters generally have a degenerating stat profile on their warscroll. For example, for the Keeper of Secrets, the damage on the Impaling Claws goes from 5 all the way down to 2 at the lowest "bracket", and the Elegant Greatsword goes from 4 attacks down to 2 attacks. So dealing enough damage to force someone to be using a worse "bracket" profile is known as bracketing the monster. This impacts some more than others - it's pretty potent against our Keeper of Secrets because of how much it reduces our primary damage sources for the Keeper, but it doesn't have much of an effect on an Abhorrent Ghoul King on Terrorgheist (AGKoT) because their main sources of damage don't get touched.

If there’s no space for a 100mm diameter base to land, a flying Keeper can’t assassinate the target. In my experience, Skaven tend to bunch up quite a bit at the beginning, when you’d be looking to assassinate their heroes early. Doppelgänger Cloak means you can’t target the enemy with melee attacks until they’ve made melee attacks first. So if you send in a Keeper and Epitome, even if you force the AGKoT from fighting first to fighting at the end of the combat phase, you won’t be able to target it until it’s attacked first, and when it attacks first it also Feeding Frenzies. So it will likely kill the keeper and might also kill the Epitome. Slothful Stupor does seem like a good option to mitigate damage by preventing Feeding Frenzy. That said, I still don’t think any of these are great options - an AGKoT still has a solid chance of killing a Keeper with one activation even when slothful stupor’d.

I love Ungor Raiders but I would use them as MSU, where they’re less effective for killing screens but more effective for screening out enemies and holding territory, and I can spread them out around the board. I might fiddle around with using them in a larger group, see how that works out. It does have the benefit of allowing a Bestigors charge T1 instead of using a block of 40 Ungors to kill screens and not getting the Bestigors charge until T2. Most FEC AGKoT with Doppelgänger Cloaks have a ton of built in healing - they automatically heal some wounds, they have spells to heal more, and an endless spell that is basically a full heal for one unit each turn (Chalice). And bracketing them doesn’t reduce their damage by much. So I don’t know if playing for the bracketing would be effective.

What do you find is the best way to deal with heavy screens? Ex: 3x20 Clanrats spread across the board with plague monks 4” behind them. I’ve added a unit of 40 Ungors so that I can send it up the board to pile into an enemy screen and hopefully wipe their screen by forcing ~22 saves and then making them deal with this big pile of trash in their face, but I was wondering what your strategy would be. Suicide the bestigors to kill their screen? I know that charging keepers over the front line would work for trying to kill heroes, but sometimes there isn’t enough space to place a 100mm base even with fly. Second question: How would you deal with a FEC king on gheist with fight first, fight twice, and Doppelgänger Cloak? Do you send in both keepers and accept that one will die? I’m considering putting a Doppelgänger Cloak instead of thermalrider for the sole reason of this one matchup, but I don’t love that decision.

As long as they're marked Slaanesh, they will be considered Pretenders / Seekers / etc. However, StD heroes will not be considered Hedonites and will not have access to the Locus of Diversion. That said, StD heroes will be considered Chaos Slaanesh heroes and will generate depravity points.