CeleFAZE

What I'm concerned about is how they word the way it takes damage. If wounds are explicitly allocated to it it will generate depravity, but if not it will be a rough thing to deal with, and we'll miss out on defensive depravity if we include one in a list. Granted that's only 1 depravity per turn, but it's also 1 depravity per turn. **EDIT** Disregard! It does take wounds, making this thing a magnificent choice if we're not otherwise taking Be'lakor. Definitely want it on Glutos or Synessa. The upside however is if we focus-fire down the wizard it's bound to we do open up more avenues of depravity generation in the opponent's turn, though I expect we'll see them attached to very hard to kill monster wizards. Glutos in particular would be a great option for us, since he can wade into combat easily and with +2 overall to cast ends up being a fairly respectable caster.

That's fair, I know on occasion we get them spoiled early.

How early do we normally get white dwarf leaks? Anxiously awaiting how bad the Slaanesh update is going to be.

Going to be trying a minor alteration to the 5-0 list for an RTT in a couple weeks, here's what I'm considering: Allegiance: Slaanesh - Host: Lurid Haze Invaders Host (Host of Chaos) - Grand Strategy: Beast Master - Triumphs: Inspired Leaders Sigvald, Prince of Slaanesh (265)* - Host Option: General Synessa, The Voice of Slaanesh (260)* - General Be'Lakor, the Dark Master (360)* - Allies Battleline 11 x Blissbarb Archers (170)* 11 x Blissbarb Archers (170)* 11 x Blissbarb Archers (170)* Units 5 x Slickblade Seekers (230)* 1 x Cockatrice (95)* Behemoths Chimera (220)* Endless Spells & Invocations Chronomantic Cogs (45) Core Battalions *Battle Regiment Total: 1985 / 2000 Reinforced Units: 0 / 4 Allies: 360 / 400 Wounds: 102 Drops: 1 Does it seem like I'm hamstringing myself with the lack of seekers? I feel like I'm trading a bit of flexibility in the objective game for another monster with ranged MW potential, which I think is going to be a help with clinching "kill stuff" monster bonus points. Cogs will probably be cast by Belakor for Synessa to use for pavane and whispers, and then switch to the charge bonus once my summoning starts getting underway. Still not sure how best to handle dragons here, but if I go first, slap them with Sigvald (if there's enough of a gap to make that happen) and spam ranged non-spell mortal wounds, then follow up with Belakor-ing the unit in the opponent's first hero phase, I may actually be able to clear even a 4-strong unit off the board by the time they're able to act unhindered. If it's spread over multiple turns that could end up being a fair amount of bonus victory points. Granted if it's a stormcast list with multiple units of battleline dragons I don't think I'll be able to do terribly much.

What I could see is an army wide ability to increase rend on wound rolls of 6, much like a number of 40k melee weapons have. GW seems to really like "critical hit" style rules for Slaanesh, and this would seem likely. What I'd like to see is movement debuffs and to-hit penalties for opponents being a theme for us. Also a 6" pile-in with no movement towards closest enemy unit requirements, either as an ability for all of our mounted units, or as a command ability or a host ability for godseekers. I honestly doubt we'll see anything so significant in the White Dwarf however. More likely we'll see a new scroll for the fane that does something insignificant, like -1 bravery to enemy units wholly within 12 of it, and an army wide allegiance ability that gives us something small, like +1 bravery while fighting heroes. Or battle tactics will probably be something like "summon a keeper and make a successful charge with it" and "gain 12 depravity in a single battleshock phase", and our grand strategy will be something like "summon a unit in every one of your movement phases, including the first". So, expecting BoK level rules, as that seems to jive with GW's inability to make rules for us that have any real impact.

Not a terrible list. You've got all your bases covered, with a notable focus on double-attacking with Sigvald. Just remember to be careful with outflanking the twinsouls, as that will prevent them from getting their buff going if they're not on the board during your hero phase.

Reveal was mostly meh, aside from the chaos knights. I do like that the Thondia thing seems to be bringing in a monster that any list can use. With the focus on monsters it's kind of a feels bad moment for armies that don't have much in the way of options there, if any. Definitely going to convert my own Slaanesh-corrupted elemental if this is the case. Overall though, I was hoping to see the summer tomes revealed. They really hyped up this reveal, but for AoS it seemed to land with a wet thud more than a splash.

Skaven and Sylvaneth for summer books, teaser for chaos dwarves. 40k will be knights vs chaos knights, World Eaters teased. The other things I don't really care enough about to consider.

I've always felt this argument by GW was disingenuous at best, and an excuse for unbalanced rules at worst. Like, they really think a person that buys models solely for hobby reasons is going to amass the kind of army a competitive player will? I don't really believe it.

Not to be Debbie Downer, but we still haven't seen the new allegiance abilities. There's still a chance they've made frightful touch an army-wide ability that applies to shooting as well. If that doesn't come to pass, I'll be pleasantly surprised with an interesting, but not overly powerful shooting unit added to the game. From experience with blissbarb seekers though, 4+/4+ really hurts with ranged weapons.

I found a decent 3d printing proxy for the chariots, which streamlines the process significantly. I may not have a high self-esteem, but I don't hate myself enough to assemble 4 more of the official hand-murdering nightmare machines.

I'm in the process of gearing up for a really... odd skew list. Our biggest issues (aside from general overcosting) tend to be resilience, and dealing with enemy resilience. So I decided, what the hell, why not lean into mortal wounds to a ridiculous degree: Allegiance: Slaanesh - Host: Godseekers Host - Grand Strategy: Prized Sorcery - Triumphs: Inspired Leaders Bladebringer, Herald on Exalted Chariot (265)* - General - Command Trait: Speed-chaser - Artefact: Enrapturing Circlet - Lore of Slaanesh: Born of Damnation Bladebringer, Herald on Exalted Chariot (265)$ - Universal Spell Lore: Flaming Weapon Synessa, The Voice of Slaanesh (260)* Battleline 1 x Seeker Chariots (130)$ 1 x Seeker Chariots (130)$ 1 x Seeker Chariots (130)$ Units 1 x Exalted Chariot (200)* 1 x Exalted Chariot (200)* 1 x Exalted Chariot (200)* 1 x Exalted Chariot (200)* Endless Spells & Invocations The Burning Head (20) Core Battalions *Battle Regiment $Battle Regiment Total: 2000 / 2000 Reinforced Units: 0 / 4 Allies: 0 / 400 Wounds: 83 Drops: 2 Synessa is there to provide a little bit of ranged mortals, as well as to be a flexible way to issue commands to my non-hero exalted chariots. She's also our least expensive source of slothful stupor, which I want to have on hand to counter khorne daemon princes specifically, as their command ability really messes with my capability to do what I need to do.

I feel like 40k Drukhari are a great template for what Slaanesh should feel like as an army, basically applying something like Glutos has to the whole army. Maybe even based on currently accumulated depravity points, similar to how Big Waaugh works. It would be a cool way to differentiate the hosts too, if each one had a different "track" that the buffs followed (though I don't know if I trust GW not to make at least one host absolute trash again in that paradigm, so I may have talked myself away from it). Also Slaanesh daemons, despite only being a subfaction of the larger daemon book are excellent in 40k, basically one of the only daemon builds that is still pulling decent tournament results. It's worth noting that their summoning isn't "free" points like in AoS, where it's effectively more like reserved points for an on-the-fly sideboard. If anyone else was around in the wild west of AoS 1 that was basically how the community made summoning work when it came down to us to figure out a system of balance on our own (one that GW eventually adopted and expanded on to create modern matched-play).

You hit the nail on the head for my tournament experiences. I even find myself summoning suboptimally near the end of my tournament games due to time constraints and not wanting to seem like I'm slow-playing intentionally. Rather than a 30-strong daemonette unit that will eat up a disproportionate amount of remaining time I'll bring on a keeper, as it's just a single model and speeds things up, even if it's not the best choice. I'm in the process of getting movement trays made, but combined with splitting fire and having to be very careful with our movement it takes me an embarrassingly long time to get through a game.

I really don't understand giving the keeper and its variants so few attacks. I get that when it first hit the scene it had some of the best damage potential from the few swings it made, but power creep has made the competition do just as much damage per swing in some cases with far more attacks. Even presuming a keeper rolls 6's on all its attacks we're not even approaching the output of some of the units from recent books that cost half the points. Ultimately, we're overcosted and under-synergized. We were clearly designed for 2.0, when low rend mattered and we had 6" pile-ins from the seeker cavalcade. All that's left is unreliably effective summoning for mediocre units, in an army that doesn't start with enough on the board to create enough momentum press the advantage. My main issue is that GW seems to be aware of the problems, and just... doesn't care. Seeing the lukewarm bones we've been thrown it just seems to me that they've prioritized keeping us chained to an extremely limiting core mechanic at the expense of any real effectness. I still try to do what I can with the tools we have, but it has definitely hamstrung my enthusiasm for the game for the time being.

Considering the WD articles, I'd wager that Tzeentch is probably the most likely next god-marked army to get a book. However, this relies on expecting consistency from GW, which is far from a sure bet.

I wouldn't hold out hope. I've tried to not be overly negative, but order armies, and aelves in particular are clearly a favorite of the design team, and generally get updates or errata with a fair amount of regularity. Conversely after our first burst of dominance on the competitive scene we've been on the receiving end of quite a bit of negative balancing when it comes to the rules team, and it strikes me that there are edicts from the top not to allow us a chance of reaching anything resembling the level of power we had before. We'll maybe get some small bones thrown to us like the afterthought in the battlescroll update, but I would not expect another book so soon, or even to be anywhere close to the front of the line where White Dwarf updates are concerned. At best we'll see some really cautious point adjustments in the GHB, maybe a 5-10 point reduction on slickblades and the shardspeaker or lord of pain (but probably not both). I would be unsurprised if our daemons received another point increase at the same time, possibly with the reasoning that we need to be brought in line with point costs for daemon units in other armies, regardless of comparative effectiveness. At this point I'm moving forward with the idea that what we currently have is what we'll be stuck with for a few years at minimum, and the best we can do is try to squeeze every last drop of effectiveness and efficiency from our present toolset.

Like, they just don't seem to understand that the problem with the biggest offenders is not that they aren't rewarding enough to kill, it's that they just don't get killed to begin with, on top of punching up far beyond their weight in points. Reinforced Dragons run in living city with an allied battlesmith to rally them on a 4+ aren't getting killed by any of the low tier armies. It doesn't matter what the piñata is filled with if it's made of hardened steel and all you've got is a plastic bat. Gargants seem to be the only army that this truly impacts.

The number of fingers doesn't seem to correlate to any existing race in the setting that I can think of. However it does remind me of some of the old WHFB illustrations of spites, before AoS made them exclusively arthropods. I do wonder if maybe this could be something to do with the Kurnothi? I could imagine a little creature like this as a minor detail on a new Orion/Kurnoth model. Perhaps kurnothi spites are more mammalian-looking?

I still have yet to build Dexcessa, so I can't say much about her from experience, but I will say that Synessa makes her way into nearly all of my tourney lists. She's an excellent vehicle for heroic actions to generate command points due to her infinite range on issuing commands, and being able to cast pavane from outside most unbind ranges is an excellent way to generate depravity and harrass heroes from a distance. Being able to do all of this from extreme range also gives her a measure of safety, helping to ensure prized sorcery is maintained if you choose that for your grand strategy.

I appreciate the insights. I didn't touch upon grand strategies in my write-up as I felt that was worth its own post. Generally I've been favoring prized sorcery as it's the easiest to achieve in my lists, which almost always include Synessa. I used to do predator's domain, but it's heavily summoning reliant, and there are some games where I only get enough depravity to summon one unit, and Synessa lives to the end in 99% of my games. This edition has been a huge shift, and having not had the opportunity to play as much of it as I did 2nd edition I've found the battle tactics to be my biggest stumbling block. Grand strategies with canny opponents are usually hard to counter outside of very grave errors, either in picking one that rests on a shaky foundation or one that requires action during the game to achieve rather than preservation of list elements that can be screened effectively (though I've found pavane from Synessa to be very useful in reaching characters that are otherwise out of range for anything else). I'm in the process of converting my own counts-as Glutos, and plan to use them as my general until things change significantly for us, as resilience is just too important in this edition.

So, the tournament was an interesting experience. I had a lot of stuff to do outside of the game, so I ended up bringing a list based on what I had on hand already painted to a minimum standard. I went 1-4, though two games were entirely decided on 1 agonizing wound remaining on the targets of my battle tactics at the end, which was the difference between what happened, and what would've been a 3-2. In light of failure I'm always looking to improve, so I've been compiling some notes on battle tactics, which are absolutely the most important part of this edition. I was originally just doing this for myself as a way of sitting down and pouring through the rules to improve on my game in a meaningful way, but after giving it some thought, I realized that our little community here could benefit from discussion on these points, as we tend to get really fixated on units and combat effectiveness, which while important is actually pretty secondary to winning the game at this point. Without further ado: Battle Tactics: For ease of mentally mapping these I've separated them into easy categories, so I can remember what I can do based on function rather than just eight individual points on a list. These categories are: Kill Stuff: These are exactly what they say on the tin. You call your shot like an overconfident baseball player, and take down your target of choice. Each one of these has some nuances that make them tricky, easy, or even literally impossible depending on the situation. These are tactics of opportunity, making them first priority when the chance arises to make them happen with near certainty. Bring It Down -Literally impossible to do if your opponent has no monsters. A second, more literal version of impossible if your opponent has no monsters or mages. -Even when you have potential targets, that doesn't mean they are good targets. Don't recklessly call this on a healthy monster unless you are more than statistically likely to take it down. Dice are evil. You will roll ones. You will roll twos when you bought insurance on those ones with acquiescence. Be certain your target is going down or you risk throwing the game on hubris. Which I'll admit is a pretty Slaaneshi way to go, but it doesn't help your winrate any. -Defensively, don't get cocky and overextend your own monsters to try and nab a cheeky extra point on a kill stuff tactic. At best you'll hand your opponent a monster kill point. At worst you'll hand your opponent two extra points if they use their own monster to render yours into a greasy smear as the target of their own Bring it Down. Slay the Warlord -Never technically impossible. Everyone has one chosen general, so everyone has the capacity to be a target of this. -Not impossible is not synonymous with probable, however. There are many tough characters in the game, and the vast majority of the weird and wacky means to cheat death are based on characters, and generals more specifically. Don't go charging into Archaon just because if you win you'll get some decent points. He will ruin your day. Which to him, was just a Tuesday. -Defensively, you can make your general tough as nails, or very difficult to reach. Unfortunately for us we have a very limited list of characters that fit that description, primarily Glutos for resilience and Synessa for ability to still contribute to the battle while she's off sipping pina coladas on a hammock in the far corner of the board. You might be asking "but if we make a named character our general, won't be miss out on a warlord trait?" Very true. What's also true is that many of our warlord traits are garbage, especially if you're running one of our super-special sub-sub-factions. In lurid haze I've forgotten my warlord trait more often than I've used it, and I'll eat my non-existent hat if that's not a similar experience for most of you. The fact of the matter is this: make your warlord hard to kill, whatever that means for you. Broken Ranks -In the world of kill stuff tactics, this is the favorite child. The one that should be showered with affection and has the best prospects for a successful future. The one all its siblings resent deeply, but can't help but silently admire. -This is another one that is never impossible, unless you've murdered every potential target for it. Every army needs battleline, and frequently the throwaway chaff units are battleline. -However, sometimes those battleline units are ****** dragons. While frequently the monsters that can be fielded as battleline are of the squishier and less lethal variety, in many cases they are a nightmare of resilience. Or a nightmare of offensive capability. Or they're ****** dragons and can eat their cake and somehow have more of it than they started with after everything is said and done. The world is cruel. Again, never call this unless you are certain you can kill your target. -This one is tough for us defensively. Our battleline is either paper-thin with some degree of punch (in the base of blissbarbs) squirrely and mildly resilient on paper but will fold pretty fast to sustained abuse (hellstriders), or somewhat tanky and punchy, but require a general that is just dying to have his head mounted on your opponent's trophy wall (myrmadesh and symbaresh). This may be one you'll have to assume is going to be difficult to deny your opponent in most cases, but you can make clever use of redeploy and all out defense to try and eke out a chance of survival. Or run your battleline close to Glutos and make your melee opponents frantically scroll through rules in frustration. I guess what I'm saying here is that Glutos is a very solid entry for us competitively right now in terms of defensively denying kill stuff tactics. Objective Stuff: This is the second tier of priority in most cases. While you want to snatch up your kill stuff opportunities as soon as they present themselves, as you may not get a second chance to make a sure kill, these are more bread-and-butter kinds of tactics that are going to be easier to do but still require good selection to ensure you can make them happen with certainty. Monstrous Takeover -The battle tactic with a trust fund. The one who skates through life without a care in the world, and less regard for their place in it. It's easy, is what I'm saying. That is, if you have a monster. Not a wizard who has a non-zero chance to completely botch the monsterification process, I mean a monster. -This can be done on an objective in your own territory, as long as you have a monster to plant on it, and none of your opponent's around to cramp its style. In fact, you don't even need to control the point, just contest it, so it just kind of auto-completes as long as your big little helper doesn't dirtnap before the end of your turn. -This is a good one to do early if you have the ability to do so, as you don't want to leave this one on the table in the event that your monster comes down with an unforeseen case of arrows to the chest and has to take a surprise sabbatical before you have a chance to use it. -This one is less easy to do in certain scenarios, such as when objectives spawn in later in the game, but for most battleplans you're going to have good opportunities for this if you're running Synessa, who can just tip the edge of her base onto the objective and maintain a fair amount of bufferzone from the enemy. Conquer -Not quite the walk in the park that Monstrous Takeover is, but usually not terribly difficult to do early. Many opponents will try to get a leg up on objectives early, and so if you spot something with limited defense sitting on an objective you can reach with the numbers to easily capture it, this is probably going to be your go-to. Unless it's battleline, a monster, or for some weird reason the opposing general, then go for a Kill Stuff tactic to capitalize on your golden opportunity. Aggressive Expansion -This one is highly battleplan dependent. It's usually not hard to snag objectives early with our speed, and in missions with multiple objectives in the middle we can usually commit enough forces to sit on them for a turn and cap them before we face harsh criticism in the form of dice-based simulated violence. -If you have to fight off opposing forces to get those objectives, consider conquer instead. If the battleplan is one that causes objectives to disappear past a certain point, whether by burning or in the case of the vice, then jump on this before it ends up being impossible to complete. That is, if it is certain you can do so. Other Stuff: The third tier of priority when it comes to battle tactics. These can generally be done at any time, as long as you still have enough starting units to do so. They'll usually be relatively easy, so it's not a terrible idea to save these for those turns when you have no other good options. Ferocious Advance -So easy a caveman could do it. That caveman is not likely to be doing much else while doing so however. -Not a good idea if you need a certain run roll to achieve it. You want to be able to make this happen with your base movement +1". Move the slowest unit of the chosen three first, or you might accidentally wind up in a situation where you've outrun your ability to keep all three units in the 3" triangle of success. -Excellent for units that can run and still do stuff. Wonderful for blissbarb seekers and archers in particular, since they can do this and contribute to the fight at a distance. -Don't take three monsters just to do this tactic. All the monsters we have access to are fragile at best, and tissue-paper in a windstorm at worst. Taking three monsters, unless one is a wizard, one is Belakor, and the other is Synessa is just asking for your opponent to snap up free monster kill points. One point is not worth ceding three. This is the way. Savage Spearhead -We're fast enough that the opponent's territory, especially in the late game, is practically free real estate. -Another "in case of emergency select battle tactic" choice, which is best saved for when you've exhausted all your sure bets in priority tiers one and two. You don't want to fire this one off early when you could've capitalized on a more specific opportunity and end up having to pick uphill fights as your endgame choices. Learn from my failures. -Again, don't take monsters solely for this kind of tactic. You don't want two monsters overextending into your opponent's territory for one bonus point while potentially ceding far more. If you have a safe opportunity take advantage, but don't make it a suicide run. Hopefully my commentary on these was helpful. Again this is mostly me just collecting my own thoughts on the matter for self-reference, but I wanted to share this in hopes that it might help anyone else who has struggled with modernizing their play for the current edition.

A bit of last minute painting before representing as the only Slaanesh player at a 2-day tourney this weekend. She's absolutely getting shot off the board turn 1, but I still wanted to give her a try.

That's my thought when it comes to massed twinsouls. Our army has significant "skornergy" (anti-synergy) and twinsouls in lurid haze is a glaring example. Sigvald is definitely a consideration, however I've run Lurid Haze in this meta before, and the guys who I know will be my hardest competition are very strong with their deployment. That's also my concern when it comes to outflanking my blissbarbs, as I know they'll present targets that will be trades that allow for retaliatory charges no matter which way I go. As much control as it gives me in some ways it's a hard telegraph of intent baked into my list. As much as it gives more options the limitations in those options go one of three ways: the opponent blocks all 9" windows except for those that allow for wasted power or retaliation, I take an opportunity that will leave me overextended with a large number of points, or I get a golden shot to win the game early with a precise strike due to my opponent making a mistake. The issue with any of those routes is it's a "win more" option. It doesn't shore up weaknesses or bolster my strengths in a way that allows me to win when I otherwise wouldn't. Whereas the +1 to charge gives me a statistical edge in summoning, without which I'm at a 25% chance at making a charge (43.75% with a reroll), and with the bonus it goes up to 40% (64% with a reroll). Considering daemonettes are summoned with full options that makes summoned daemonettes more likely to succeed a charge when summoned than not, which with our 1-per-turn limitation is critical to making our summons do things that can affect the game when we need them to. Against dragons a 22-strong blissbarb unit, if it has either all-out-attack or acquiescence will kill a dragon per volley without defense buffs (part of why I want to run two units, you can only AoD one unit per phase). Then twinsouls will take out an unbuffed dragon on their own with rerolls, or a fair amount of wounds even with a 2+ save. I won't pretend I'll be able to have more than an uphill fight against dragons, however I can do a fair amount of damage, and with good placement I can keep my blissbarbs safe using the myrmadesh with enough of a buffer zone. The problem is that we have no good options against dragons even if we were to build to counter them specifically. Slickblades can't put out enough damage and get wiped on the return swing, blissbarb seekers aren't able to maximize their MW output enough to deal damage that way, and 4+/4+'s on their bows hurts. They'd be better if the shardspeaker was a more reliable caster and less easy to snipe, but the limited range on the buff and the slow speed of her makes for a general lack of synergy to put the seekers on par with foot blissbarbs. Sigvald could be good, but with any defensive buffs he's going to bounce right off and get crumped in return. I've written basically a novel here, but this has been my mental process trying to assemble a list. I don't know if I'm thinking too hard about this or not considering something obvious.

It depends on how GW intends to use the updates. For armies that mechanically clash really hard with the new edition I wouldn't doubt that the tome celestial could be used as a way to patch-fix them so they're playable, even if a new tome isn't terribly far off. Ossiarchs are probably the most likely army for that to be the case. For the vast majority however I imagine we'll see either a tome celestial or a new book for every army, but we won't see one with both until everything has one or the other. That being said, GW play pretty fast and loose with their own rules, so I'm expecting we'll see some surprises that completely buck whatever trend they'd previously committed to.