CeleFAZE

Fiends are a tough sell, unfortunately. They will do some damage, but the same points of daemonettes is usually more durable and damaging. Where they could have a place would be in an anti-caster focused list, alongside an enrapturess and an epitome or two. I can't vouch for something like that since I haven't personally tried it, and considering there are at least two armies in the game with no non-allied spellcasting, it's kind of a risk to go all in on. That being said, if Tzeentch ends up being the next major threat in the meta we'd want whatever we can muster to keep them from getting their spells through and accumulating their points for summoning.

Try to make a list of what abilities you need to remember and what phases they happen in. There's a lot to keep track of, but it'll get easier with practice. Also remember that you get extra depravity points as godseekers depending on how many of your units charged that turn, which is something I always forget. Aside from that if you go aqshy for your army's realm of origin and take at least one warscroll battalion (supreme sybarites is usually a good pick) you'll be able to take the thermalrider cloak and the girdle of the realm racer for two flying characters.

Absolutely. They're brilliant models, and it strikes me as so strange that they structured everything in the slaanesh rules to make them synergize so poorly. I personally wonder if DP being character-only was a late-stage design choice, and they didn't bother to change the rules for fiends to compensate.

Fiends suffer from being very good at something a Slaanesh army specifically wants characters to be doing, while not being characters themselves. I've used them before, and while they are fairly effective offensively and decently defensive in melee (though still quite vulnerable to shooting) if taken in large enough numbers, they simply aren't terribly optimal. I think if the meta becomes more caster heavy, possibly after the Tzeentch book drops, we might see a token unit being used alongside an enrapturess and an epitome to really put the whammy on mages. Even for that situational purpose they're expensive though.

I have to second that, daemonettes outside of Slaanesh allegiance are a hard sell, especially in a army where you have the option of marauders.

If they expand the kurnothi into a full release in the future I think those would work well as a base. Otherwise if you're going with converted namarti as gors then I would probably look to eternal guard or sisters of the watch as a base for the ungors. Kairic acolytes might also work, but you'd need to find a source of bows for any ungor raiders you make.

So how are we feeling about running the sorc lord on manticore alongside an epitome with hysterical frenzy? The two spells largely do the same thing, but being able to double-dip with them seems like it would make us insanely good at clearing hordes, which in a post-marauder meta is going to be super important.

Yeah, I've really wanted to run mortals for so long that I'll take any excuse to make them viable, especially if I can do so in a godseekers list. On that note, I think marauders are amazing for us. S2D lists have issues keeping them in radius for the extra hit buff, but since we give it to them baseline we're free to let them do exactly whatever they need to, with or without support. With godseekers they get an absolutely disgusting 8 inch minimum charge, and they benefit well from acquiescence. I'm not looking forward to building 40 of the jerks. The horsemen are also good for generating depravity by retreat -> charging in godseekers. Anyone have any good ideas on how to make chaos warriors useful for us? I love the models, but I'm a little stumped on how to make them really shine, especially when for the same price we've got hellstriders.

Pleasurebound warband. It and the 3 other god-specific battalions have a little text blurb explicitly making them multi-faction, to my recollection. I'll have to double check in a week or so when I have the book in front of me to be 100% on it.

You are correct. There's one S2D battalion that we don't have to ally in explicitly but it's basically a conditional seeker cavalcade, which I don't see as being much use to us aside from keeping our drops low.

It's only for the Syll'Esskan host, unfortunately. I'm still mulling over the change, we got hit pretty hard but it wasn't undeserved, ultimately. Locus on a 5+ is worst for lists without keepers (which aren't likely to be seen, really), and is going to make them more necessary than before. This also makes the Epitome even more useful, to the point where I might expect to see 2 of them in some lists. Probably worthwhile now to bring in some allied sphiranxes as a way to shore up the change as well. Alongside princes that always attack first I think we're actually not terribly bad off in the realm of dictating combat. As for the change to depravity, it's a mixed bag. Everything largely is 5 points more expensive, with the only exceptions being daemonettes and keepers. I'm not entirely sure if this is going to solve our problems with list homogeneity, or just make everyone optimize harder for DP generation to compensate. I would've liked to have seen a larger increase in prices and allowing all of our stuff to generate depravity instead, so we can have more variety in lists and chaos warriors/knights and fiends would immediately have a place in the army. Buuut I suppose that would be a more fundamental change than tweaking numbers. We're going to have to adapt, but it's not a huge shift. Not the change we needed to make the army more fun, but at least the change the game needed to be more balanced.

What weapon choice are people taking for their soulgrinders? The sword seems powerful, but the claw could have potential too.

Correct, spell lores are locked to your allegiance, so if you're going Tzeentch for the dice you'll only have access to the Tzeentch lore.

If you pick the god-specific allegiance you can include any S2D units that can be marked for that god without problems, but you won't receive any of the S2D allegiance abilities or the S2D spell lore, though if your book has a spell lore for mortal wizards they can pick from that. If you're going Slaves to Darkness for your allegiance however, any of the warscrolls outside that book will have to be allies.

I'm looking at despoilers currently: Daemon Prince (Sword, General: Radiance of Dark Glory, Armor of Tormented Souls, Slaanesh) Sorceror Lord on Manticore (Whispers of Chaos, Slaanesh) 5 Chaos Warriors (HW+Sh, Slaanesh) 5 Chaos Knights (Lances, Slaanesh) Soulgrinder (Slaanesh) Eightfold Doom-Sigil (point filler)

He's got the hedonite and mortal keywords, so between a keeper and a chaos lord we can make him fight 3 times in a combat phase. I'm not sure he's 800-points of good, but we can certainly make him do work.

Take a contorted epitome for its ability to make things strike last in radius around it, even outside of slaanesh allegiance. Also it gets rerolls to unbind, and can unbind twice a turn. Fiends give -1 to cast and enrapturesses make your opponents reroll successful casts (and occasionally do mortals) and can dispel endless spells.

New thought, between the following we can have anywhere from -6 to -13 bravery to an enemy unit, outside of battleshock: Horrorghast -1-2 Dreadful Visage -1 Mindstealer Sphiranx -2 (Allies) Chaos icon -1 (Not allies if marked) Unmade -1 (Allies) Phantasmagoria -0-6 Is Soulslice Shards a viable offensive option now? Even against bravery 10 on average you're putting out 3 mortal wounds, assuming the lowest possible debuff. You can then follow up with cacophony, which should reliably deal its damage to everything in radius. The horrorghast is a little risky since it affects us too, but for the slaanesh units the visage should offset that fairly well. Against anything that can be hurt by battleshock you could throw in knights for the additional -1, and if only one hero is in range use Syll'Eske to lock them out of command abilities. The new book is presenting some interesting options.

The Syll'Esskan battalions require that you use the host. I'm not convinced we'll receive that harsh a nerf, especially considering the strength of recent releases. That being said I do enjoy the Syll'Esskan host on a conceptual level, and I really want to try and make it work better with the new book.

I'm kinda mixed on the new rules. Everything seems more resilient, but the synergy has been limited significantly since hedonites and S2D work off mostly different keywords for buffs, so you're going to have to work with two sets of moving parts in a combined list like the Syll'Esskan host. My opinions could change drastically when we see the points costs, though. The karkadrak lord seems like a good choice for us, he's like a smaller, resilient character chariot. I imagine he was probably what the designers had in mind for the required mounted character in the Syll'Esskan battalion. He also buffs knights, which seem a bit better now. The warshrine has a larger radius, but is now wholly within, so I'm kind of split on its usefulness. Marauders seem better, with more streamlined weapon choices and minimum 7" charges which is wickedly awesome. Marauder horseman still seem useful for double duty as retreat-chargers for godseekers and mobile ranged support, now with longer range. The warriors are better, but are apparently 100 pts for 5, so got a little more expensive. All the warcry stuff can't be marked, which is really upsetting, but I might still ally in some unmade to pin down key enemy units. All in all it looks playable if the points are right, but you're probably going to be most competitive going pure daemons still. To be fair though, this divide existed even when we still had our mounted lord and foot lord, so it's nothing we haven't already had to adapt to before.

Any word on whether the Warcry units can be marked?

Was there any indication the warcry units can be marked now?

Slaanesh - 5 keepers (or 4+Shalaxi), 3 min squads of hellstriders, supreme sybarites and seeker cavalcade battalions. You'll even have 140-160 points left too.

He's.. okay-ish? I'd probably consider him about as optimal a choice as fiends. That is, a solid unit in any other army, but just isn't enough of what we need where we need it. His ability is a great "gotcha" kind of thing, but because of the locus making the important targets go last anyways it really doesn't feel like points spent efficiently, especially since he doesn't have the locus ability either. I'm willing to give the prince another look after the S2D book comes out, if he gets an updated scroll and can still be marked I'd be eager to see what he can accomplish.

Price increases have definitely impacted my spending to some degree, but the bigger factor is discontinuation uncertainty. I've been a Slaanesh daemon player for years, and have really wanted to dive into the mortal options to branch out, but after the CoS purge my buying is frozen until we know for certain what's staying. I'm kicking myself over having picked up the S2D start collecting set, since after the whole Greenskins thing we can't even trust that anything in there is going to stick around, especially with the rumored new releases including a different start collecting set. I just want to be able to dive in, buy some stuff and have fun, but GW has thrown a huge wrench in that with the possibility I might be wasting a significant investment by doing so.