CeleFAZE

I actually like hellstriders, in theory. They're one of the fastest battleline units in the game, which can make a real difference in the scenarios where battleline units score more. While their wounds per points are not as efficient as slickblades, when taking into account their 50% higher save and bravery of 8 with an icon, they aren't in totally dire straits. I would love to see them come down in price, but they're certainly not the worst choice in the book as they currently stand.

I'm not certain how well the karkadrak lord will do on his own. He won't have anything he can support, and without our more offensive buffs he may have trouble dealing damage. If you have them available you may be better served by swapping him and the enrapturess out for the masque and a bladebringer on exalted chariot.

Allegiance works based on keywords, and our allegiance is based on the Slaanesh keyword, so beasts of chaos in a depraved drove battalion can be added in as normal, you don't need to make them allies. Anything that does not have the slaanesh keyword but is in our ally list would be allies, which has a 400 point limit in 2000 point games, and only 1 in 4 units in your army can be an ally unit. You are correct that allies do not gain our allegiance abilities, and they cannot count for battleline requirements (though they still count for limits on behemoths, artillery, and leaders). Also note that the depraved drove only gives the slaanesh keyword, not the hedonite keyword, which excludes them from benefiting from some abilities, like our exploding 6's to hit from euphoric killers. It's a little intimidating at first, but once you get the hang of how keywords work in the game it's fairly straightforward.

I like it, it seems fairly tanky between the twinsouls and slickblades. The only thing that could be a challenge would be the LoP's fragility as your depravity generator for charges. Which general trait were you considering for him?

It's weird. It's annoying to have to worry about, but to have battleshock actually matter for us now makes the battleshock abilities we have (battle rapture, Syll'Esske, Glutos, Scarlet Cavalcade, etc) actually do something. For those times I'm not running Syll'Esske or Glutos I might actually give the cavalcade a try. The charging rule is hard to make work, but an exalted bladebringer with the artifact and the trait could make for a decent leader to support our exalted seekers.

You could use skink heads without the crests as head swaps for the daemonettes, and paint them scaly. If you mod your marauders out of splintered fangs you could try swapping some of the daemonette claws for snake arms (something like Baigan's boss form in Final Fantasy 4). Admittedly I'm not sure how easy the snake swarms would be to use for bits like this. Fiends are already rather serpentine, so they might work with head swaps (maybe from cold one mounts?). Otherwise for fiends you could try modding them from raveners (size may be an issue), or the old tomb kings snake units if you run across any.

I wouldn't write off the CP expenditure too quickly. Most armies will have somewhere between 6-7 CP over the course of an entire game, and they'd probably much rather prefer to spend it on more important parts of their strategy. Since most of these abilities affect an area you can spread around your damage with either variety of blissbarbs, or cacophonic choir from a keeper and force some difficult choices for your opponent. The more command points you force them to spend early, the less they'll have for where it really matters later. Of course OBR are going to be fully immune, which I personally regard as terrible design, but at least you have choir and soulslice to fall back on in that case.

Don't forget dreadful visage, horrorghast and ravening direflock (from an allied brayshaman). With those added you can get up to -9 bravery.

You can always get soulslice shards into the list to give you a nuke that can basically deal close to 2d6 mortals per cast if stacked with your other bravery bombs. Also, for non-ossiarch opponents you can utilize Syll'Esske's and the Keeper Lore's spells that shut off the use of CA's. It requires a lot of moving parts, but the payoff would be pretty devastating if successful.

I approve of this combination of my two favorite armies. Slaanesh with a sort of neo-Egyptian vibe is exactly what I'd love to see on the table.

Playing around with the idea of a fully mounted Godseekers army, here's the current list: Glutos Syll'Esske (they count :P) Seeker chariot Scourgestriders x5 Scourgestriders x5 Blissbarb Seekers x5 Blissbarb Seekers x5 Slickblade Seekers x5 Slickblade Seekers x5 Seeker Cavalcade Mesmerizing Mirror I figure the hellstriders can work as active chaff and objective sitters, while the various exalted seekers do their thing, with Glutos and Syll'Esske running to keep up. I might swap Syll'Esske with a seeker chariot bladebringer, as I'm not 100% sold on them, but I love the model and how hilariously it plays to the theme, while providing mass battleshock protection for the early turns before Glutos can take over in that regard. I also love their CA shutoff spell, when I actually manage to cast it.

This is basically how I view them. Unless you can get a first turn charge in (with an effective threat range of 20-21" depending on host this generally not happening) it's almost always preferable to take the 5+ shrug first turn. It forces a really tough choice on your opponent: try to kill them with shooting and risk leaving some alive to generate depravity, or take a full-strength unit to the face that will be rerolling hits when they arrive. The +1 save CA isn't bad on them to go all in on tankiness for a turn, but I like it more in theory on myrmadesh, as a rerollable 3+ is such a tough nut to crack, and since the CA only works in combat it's guaranteed to work with their rerolls. I do like the idea of using the LoP to shore up symbaresh though, allowing them to always have rerolling hits when needed is really nice.

They could expand Ironjaws with new units, they're basically the destruction analogs to stormcast. That or do gloomspite. Night goblins were part of the skull pass boxset for fantasy back in the day, so it wouldn't be a first for them.

Out of curiosity, what is the list you used?

Oh, I would've been over the moon if we'd had a new boobsnake lord in this release. I'm tempted to convert something that evokes that in the right size to count as a bladebringer. Despite the costs, this list is technically 2000 points on the nose, so I may give it a go and see how it works out.

I really look forward to a repricing of our points. Having the ability to field a decent mob of myrmadesh and symbaresh alongside slickblades is what I really want to get out of this book. Currently a list I'm considering is: Lord of Pain Bladebringer on Seeker Chariot Myrmadesh x10 Symbaresh x10 Symbaresh x10 Slickblades x5 Slickblades x5 Nobles of Excess Seeker Cavalcade I'd really like to fit in a shardspeaker and upgrade the bladebringer to exalted, and maybe squeeze in some blissbarbs. With some point reductions a lot of that would be possible. I think the most jarring thing about the new book is that I want to build the kind of lists I used to, and that's just not what this tome is about. Having so few heroes makes the list feel naked, but I can actually field units that get to interact with the allegiance abilities in a more direct way, and that's pretty cool. It would be nice to be able to field more of the support pieces that let us really shine, and the new book forces disappointingly hard decisions.

This isn't an observation for bladebringers specifically, but I've been thinking that among our choices for 2.9" locking shenanigans with the cavalcade, it's probably more efficient to use normal chariots for that, and let the slickblades do the killing that they're way better suited for. If you're in the applaudable position of not gaming weird technicalities in the rules, then the hero chariots are okay, certainly. The bladebringers bring utility (and blades, presumably), and if you are in a matchup where spellcasting is possible without ludicrous unbinding capabilities from your opponent, then acquiescence is great. If not they're still a platform that can use the command ability that provides the same benefit. I'm personally interested in testing out scourgestriders as offensive blocking buddies for slickblades, as with the 4+ save and -1 to be hit if they charge, they may be a decent choice for the role, and also fill battleline requirements. They're absolutely overcosted for what they are, but that's just the reality of everything but slickblades for us at the moment.

We won't really have 100% confirmation until we receive the next FAQ of legal supplements. However I imagine WotEC will continue to be legal until at least the Belakor book, for the sake of his subfaction, as well as the Knights of the Empty Throne faction.

Is that skull resin printed?

30 is basically there to ensure my investment in the battalion sticks around, as any summoned daemonettes won't have the mortal wound generating abilities. Also they get the 2 hits per 6 until they take 11 wounds, which is nice, but not reliable with so much shooting around. In all honesty I might be going about things wrong, the better list could easily be something like: 340 Keeper of Secrets 400 Glutos 180 Epicurean Revellers 110 10 Daemonettes 110 10 Daemonettes 190 Exalted Chariot 190 Exalted Chariot 190 Exalted Chariot 190 Exalted Chariot 90 Chaos Warriors x5 But I wanted to field buckets of daemonettes, since I have such a ludicrous amount of them on hand.

What leads me to think blood knights is the subtle extending point at the tip, which is a common element with the sollerets on vampire armor.

It depends on the look you're going for. If barbarians are what you're aiming for the Frostgrave Barbarians kit works pretty well, and they're quite cost effective. You will need to find some extra shields however, as they don't include enough for the whole squad and they'll also need standard bearers and musicians.

Kroak with skinks, saurus guard and bastilodons is one example right off the top of my head that has proven results with a multi-pronged approach. Also most cities lists I've faced (at least one from a top regional player) utilize a mix of unit types between offense and defense, with a strategy that utilizes both to great effect. Heavy skew lists run the risk of a bad matchups that can tank you hard, for instance certain heavy offensive lists will bounce right off defensive skew. I've had decent experience against KO and honestly they really don't worry me all that much. Our damage dealers have the movement speed to be kept out of radius of a number of threats out the gate, and one option that fully removes all or a portion of our heavy hitters from the board until the end of our first movement phase. We also have the ability to tailor our reinforcements to whatever we need for any given opponent, which allows for us to re-tailor on the fly for basically any matchup if we play smart. We're not point-click-win like some armies, but we have the tools to thwart them in a number of annoying ways. There's no denying that we are certainly overcosted in areas, with at least one absolute dud in the book (looking at you, slaangors). But there are some tools for delightfully janky play that can throw a wrench in our opponent's gears, some that no other books really have. We're one of the few books that can switch off an opponents use of command abilities (by two separate means), and while he is certainly overcosted we also have one of the only models in the game that simply ignores damage negation with fairly strong attacks.

You can mix in S2D and daemons/mortals pretty well, though you'll have to consider the roles a lot more carefully than you would before. For a combined arms approach you could go with chaos warriors as cheap, durable battleline to sit on objectives or charge-block (let's be honest, they weren't going to be killing much even with euphoric killers), and slickblades as mobile offensive hammers with a keeper as a force multiplier and source of locus. Adding in the Masque gives you a cheap source of locus that's largely self-reliant, and surprisingly durable while doing so. A shardspeaker can provide debuffs that don't really care about keywords, and ambushing marauders are still decent in lurid haze, even if they aren't quite as effective as they used to be. We're not the dominating powerhouse we were at our initial book's release, but I don't think we're nearly at the bottom of the pack as some people fear. We just have to make smart use of all the tools at our disposal in tactically efficient ways, rather than maximizing a way to flood the board with bodies like we used to. I think as more tournament results come out and people puzzle out effective builds we'll seem a fair bit better than at first glance.

Upon considering this further, I think this may be the better list. It still feels weird to be running a single hero in a Slaanesh list, but I suppose this is the future. Pretenders Host: Faultless Blades (since there's literally no downside to taking it in this context) 400 Glutos 180 Epicurean Revellers 330 30 Daemonettes 330 30 Daemonettes 330 30 Daemonettes 190 Exalted Chariot 190 Exalted Chariot 50 Command Point This gives me a super resilient general to keep the rerolling ones going for most of the game, and a way to top off my mortal wound generating chariots to keep them going for as long as possible. After crunching the numbers the exalted chariots are far and away the more efficient option, and actually are just about on par with the slickblades offensively, or better depending on how many units the soulscent can hit for extra attacks. I won't get the double pile-in of the keeper, but with the shooting-heavy meta I don't expect that the keeper would stick around for very long anyhow.