CeleFAZE

I've been doing some thinking, and the general effectiveness of slickblades in addition to the newly viable non-character chariots have given me pause to reassess the viability of the epicurean revelers battalion. The current list I'm kicking around is: 340 Keeper of Secrets 150 Shardspeaker [330 30 Daemonettes 330 30 Daemonettes 330 30 Daemonettes 190 Exalted Chariot 130 Hellflayer] 180 Epicurean Revelers I normally run Godseekers on account of my army background, but due to the large units and lack of acquiescence casters I think this may be my first foray into pretenders. It also comes out to 3 drops, which while not a reliable way to control first turn, could amount to a decent chance nonetheless. I may drop the shardspeaker in favor of upgrading the hellflayer to another exalted, but I want to test out how well the shardspeaker can operate as a force multiplier before I commit to that. Also only having one hero feels... weird in a Slaanesh list. It may just be force of habit at this point, since with the Fane being a new way to summon if my heroes get assassinated it may not be necessary.

Originally I was kind of doom and gloom about the loss of euphoric killers on non-hedonites, but I've been warming up to it. It creates a very real choice when it comes to unit selection: do you pick the unit that integrates more fully into our abilities but is priced at a premium for it, or do you select the less expensive option that is still not terrible on its own, but trades opportunities for force multiplication for additional opportunities to generate depravity by virtue of being able to field more units? There really is a place for both I feel, and the real work to be done with this book is to find the balance points between the two. Having crunched the numbers, I wager that units for the only purpose of depravity generation that serve no other ancillary purpose aren't going to be a worthwhile investment. I spent a few hours puzzling out how to make a "torture pit" of chaos spawns that are intentionally harmed by friendly abilities work efficiently, and there's really no good way to ensure that you can do so for the 2 guaranteed turns of survival necessary to make their points back, much less at a net gain. However, it seems worthwhile to have more smaller units that can contribute in other ways, like marauder horsemen harassing and providing board control, or chaos warriors who are unlikely to die in a single round of combat sitting on objectives while the killier units go out to play. For this reason I think there is still a "right" way to utilize BoC and S2D units in a beneficial manner, and I look forward to testing things out when I finally have a chance to throw some dice again.

Oooh, I hadn't considered an offensive use of the lifeswarm.

The other thing to keep in mind with the locus is that only daemon hedonite heroes have access to it, which makes mortal-only armies less appealing for me. For mortal heroes at most I see myself running a shardspeaker and possibly a lord of pain if myrmadesh or symbaresh turn out to be any good.

The blissbarb seekers seem like they'd be decent support hero killers. On average they do about 5 wounds with 1-2 of them mortals. Excellent way to snipe off a foot hero in turn 1 before they get a chance to contribute.

18" range. The bows are 4+/4+ however, though everything else is correct. The mounts get 2 attacks, no rend, 3+/3+ 1 dmg. Person on the mount has a single close combat attack at no rend, 1 damage, 4+/4+.

Oh, that's definitely a mitigating factor. That certainly influences my list building when maximizing depravity, though honestly a keeper a turn is still amazing, even without chain summoning.

Welcome to the club!

Yeah, I'm really glad that marauders aren't our go-to anymore. They're still strong in lurid haze presumably, but no longer the be-all-end-all they used to be. I definitely would have preferred a buff to something else to make it more attractive than a nerf to usability for something already strong however.

If the points from Shadow and Pain still stand, having an army of small units of hellstriders backed by blissbarbs could presumably cause quite a lot of damage to units without wiping them out, possibly enough by your 2nd turn to throw down a keeper or two, or a big pack of daemonettes. The new locus preventing pile-in for enemies on a 4+/(3+ w/KoS) is also amazing at preventing full unit wipes. Edit: I also find it interesting that depravity is very similar to my wishlist version of it. Just on a turn by turn basis rather than phase by phase. Being capped at one point per unit per turn is a mitigating factor, though it does give us a tough choice between larger units for Euphoric Killers vs MSU to maximize depravity.

My hope would be a White Dwarf rehash of the Syll'Esskan host which extends Euphoric Killers to S2D Slaanesh units if not granting them the Hedonite keyword outright. It would also be a much better effect for the Slaanesh BoC battalion than what they have currently, and with Slaangors being introduced it would be a prime opportunity to revise the Depraved Drove in light of the changes.

The hugest nerf I've noticed from the leaks thus far is euphoric killers being tied now to the hedonite keyword. This sucks the wind out of nearly all S2D and beast heavy slaanesh lists.

It appears the seekers are on the same base size as fiends and chaos knights.

What I find interesting is that they specifically note that the woman on the chariot barge is a priestess. This might be telegraphing unique prayers for us, which would be pretty cool.

It's going to depend a lot on how depravity works in the new book. If fiends can generate it, and if they get a points decrease, they could reasonably work as a monster hunting unit to free up our keepers to go after prey that's less likely to take them down easily.

I think fiends may focus more on being a fast defensive/elite tarpit. The only downside to that is the role would overlap with whip hellstriders if their scrolls remain the same as the ones included in Shadow and Pain.

It's difficult to say, especially with the new seekers coming out. However, considering they were basically the "stars" of the Slaanesh half of Shadow and Pain I'd be surprised if they don't bring them in with more modern packaging and bases. I don't think it's going to coincide with this release at the very least however, since they're still available on the webstore and I imagine they'd probably be temporarily unavailable if they were being reboxed.

Dice! I've been hoping we'd get some of those for awhile now. I'm happy that Blissbarbs will be battleline, I was pretty sure they would be by the background, but you can never be certain. Also the turn counters and feast of depravities token are interesting. I wonder if those turn based effects are specifically tied to Glutos, or are an Idoneth-style rule for the faction that he has some kind of special interaction with. Super-psyched for this week.

I'd be in favor of it as long as it's distinct. Something like the old 3e Dark Eldar combat drugs, where you could take multiple effects at significant risk, or one fairly safely. It would be great if it's not a one-time use effect, but something that allows you to customize your units on the fly to adapt to situations at hand. That runs the risk of having one no-brainer always-take effect though, like we saw with the Ossiarch unit that had a similar ability with their stances.

I'm personally hoping we get some kind of combat drug mechanic for our mortals, considering all the of the potion vials on their belts. Something like the aetherquartz buffs.

I personally plan on getting the battletome before the bulk of my new mortals. While I love the new look of things, I'd rather build towards something, and knowing what the new rules are, battalions especially, will guide that significantly.

Personally, I think a balanced rate is best. Alpha strikes create rather lopsided games where it really amounts to just one player having fun while the other just removes models and generally doesn't get to have much interaction. If the casualties slow down as the game goes on the action sort of sputters out into a stalemate for objectives, and if the casualties escalate too much it creates a late game where you don't really have much left to happen by the end. A constant rate is great for that back and forth scrappy feel, and does a lot to sell the epic clashes that a setting like this naturally lends itself to.

If you look closely to where the leftmost disc is connected there's a jagged triangular piece that almost resembles a stylized mountain. Also as another poster previously pointed out, the charms resemble a hammer, helm wheel, and an axe head, which may suggest that this could be a part of Grungni's model, as he seems to have a vested interest in unifying the disparate duardin factions that could conceivably be represented by those symbols.

Agreed. They really drive not only this subforum, but create a number of great discussion threads in the general AoS forum as well. It's always great to see so much positivity online, and really overall I find the Slaanesh community here to be an amazing bunch of people. Here's hoping we get something new to discuss rules-wise soon.

I wouldn't be too concerned based on that one piece. The palanquin is effectively part of the background, with the focus on the symbaresh and myrmadesh in the foreground. As a digital artist myself, the further into the background something goes, the more gestural the details tend to become. If you look closely at any piece of art, especially digital concept art and really zoom into the background, you'll find that the brush strokes are a bit looser and the details far more vague. It's just not efficient to fine-grain every part of a busy piece like this, and it also would be kind of overwhelming to the eye to have everything as detailed as the focal points.