CeleFAZE

Got in a game with my tournament list against mostly daemon nurgle. I have to say the witherstave is pretty oppressive, resulted in a ton of lost hits when combined with the malus to hit that most of the daemons have. We did play the munificent wanderer's mortal wound trigger wrong, as I should have been able to override it with my exploding hits, which definitely would've helped me significanly. Despite that I was able to do a fair amount of damage, and when the twinsouls had their rerolls up they were absolutely amazing, defintitely planning on using them more moving forward. The blissbarb seekers didn't impress me much this game, but they really suffer from hit penalties so I think they'll be fine against a different matchup. My bladebringer died pretty early, but in retrospect that was due to mistakes on my part rather than the model itself, I charged too centrally, forgot my locus and all out defense in the turn they needed it most. Much better to run them up a flank and grind into a unit on its short end to minimize return swings. Synessa was actually pretty great, being able to pavane from outside of unbind range is pretty huge, and the ability to issue a command to a unit without a champion, like the seeker chariot was a major help. She also managed some decent mortal wound output, without which I would've lost an important objective near the end of the game. While it was a major slog I did manage to get a fairly narrow victory. We were doing a practice game for the tourney where grand strategies are used as tie-breakers rather than adding to baseline points, so I would've lost by about the same margin in a standard game, though playing by the correct trigger rules I likely would've kept a couple of important units in play for long enough to make a difference. Overall I think we definitely have some play in this edition. It was easy to generate a decent amount of depravity (I think I got more than 30 without trying to farm it at all) and the flexibility that the summoning provided allowed me to throw massive gobs of daemonettes onto objectives where I really needed to dominate. In retrospect I should've chosen a different grand strategy, but I think summoned seekers will be useful to capture enough terrain by the end. With more practice I think this list can excel, and I'll be sure to report back on how things go at the event itself.

Planning on running this at the next major tournament I'm going to. The plan is fairly straightforward, the bladebringer is my mortal wound meatgrinder, hellstriders as blockers and chaff, seeker chariot (only in as another unit of hellstriders had me 5 points over) as support for the bladebringer, twinsouls as a hammer, Synessa and the blissbarb seekers as ranged support, and Sigvald as a combination distraction carnifex, scalpel, and counter to heavy wardsave anvils like phoenix guard. If I summon a keeper I may use him to counter Gotrek, but I'd much rather use my speed to zone him out if I can. Allegiance: Slaanesh - Host: Godseekers Host - Grand Strategy: Predator's Domain - Triumphs: Bloodthirsty LEADERS Bladebringer, Herald on Exalted Chariot (265) in Battle Regiment - General - Command Trait: Speed-chaser - Artefact: Amulet of Destiny - Universal Spell Lore: Flaming Weapon Synessa, The Voice of Slaanesh (260) in Battle Regiment Sigvald, Prince of Slaanesh (265) in Battle Regiment UNITS 5 x Hellstriders with Hellscourges (135) in Battle Regiment 5 x Hellstriders with Hellscourges (135) in Battle Regiment 1 x Seeker Chariots (130) in Hunters of the Heartlands 10 x Symbaresh Twinsouls (370) in Hunters of the Heartlands 5 x Blissbarb Seekers (220) in Battle Regiment 5 x Blissbarb Seekers (220) in Battle Regiment CORE BATTALIONS Hunters of the Heartlands Battle Regiment TOTAL: 2000/2000 WOUNDS: 111

That's entirely fair, and a perspective I should've considered. What I find interesting is that there may be some circular logic to how GW determines summoning points, which may account for some of our increase: the more they raise points to account for summoning, the more "value" summoning has, and thusly the more points would need to go up to account for it. I'm curious as to whether we got hit with a doubly applied correction as a result of this.

Personally I'd love to see some more background-relevant armywide abilities, as the summoning is so... tragically dull for Slaanesh. Mortals should have something like combat drugs where you can take a mortal wound to the squad and gain a +1 to your choice of hit, wound, save, or bravery. Generates depravity and allows our mortals to be far more flexible. Myrmadesh should have something that underscores their martial prowess far more than just +1 to save in close combat. Something like 1's to hit from opponents deal mortal wounds to the attackers as they parry the swings. Also let the +1 save apply to ranged attacks, it's not going to break the game. All seeker-based units should have a 6" pile-in. I'd like to see all of this added, summoning weakened, and a matching point rebalancing. I think that would really make this the army that most of us wanted to play from the start. When the depravity system first came around in the GHB update, it was a decent boost, but far from game-breaking. Once it became our central army identity things went downhill real fast.

Yeah, the bravery is something that could be tweaked. Their ability gives them a +1 natively, so they're effectively 5 bravery, but making them 5 bravery base would bring them to 6 normally, which is more in line with standard mortal hedonites. Mostly I made this scroll on account of my extreme disdain for the lumineth cathalar, and how this would be a unit that would specifically be the worst possible target for their abilities, while being quite functional in a general sense. The downside to low bravery however is that they are far more susceptible to bravery-based attacks, which I feel would be a fitting weakness for what would otherwise be a fairly powerful, though not overpowered scroll.

I would go even a step further. This is a unit I would happily field: 8 mv, 5+ sv, 4 bravery, 4 wounds Claws: 2", 4 Attacks, 4+/3+, -1, 2 damage Gilded weapon: 2", 2 attacks, 3+/3+, -2, 2 damage Abilities: Slothful Advance: This unit has a 4+ ward save until it is selected to fight for the first time in the battle. Image of Divinity: Mortal hedonite units wholly within 12" of any units with this ability gain +1 bravery. Obsessive Violence: This unit may run and charge. In addition, at the end of a charge phase in which this unit successfully charged pick one enemy unit within 1" and roll a number of dice equal to the unmodified charge roll for this unit. For each 5+ that enemy unit takes a mortal wound. Slaughter at Any Cost: when this unit fails a battleshock test no models are removed as fleeing. Instead for every model that would normally flee add +1 attack to all of this unit's melee weapons in the next combat phase.

Precisely this. If someone desires a list that requires no finesse or out of the box thinking, then they will not get what they're looking for with Slaanesh. However I personally like the tools we have at our disposal, and feel that they provide enough versatility and speed to do what we need to when we need to do it. If you go into the game trying to bring an answer to every single metaphorical question your opponent can ask, you're not going to be able to do much more than tread water. If you list build and play in a way that asks questions your opponent has to answer then you have control over the situation, and that's how you have to win with Slaanesh.

You've touched on some good points, but I really do see them as a glorified screen as it were. In my experiences in the last edition I found generally that killing power is a far more uphill fight than staying power when the two clash as well-supported strategies. Considering the new wealth of options for +'s to save to combat rend, any unit with a high built-in save with its own innate save bonus is primed to take advantage of this. With this in mind, the offensive aspect of the unit really doesn't factor in to the paradigm all that much for me, as we have a great number of options for offense already. As expensive as it is I think 30 is probably the best number to run them in, and may have been the problem for the player whose feedback you saw. In a unit of 20 you only have 22/40 wounds at 3+ vs 42/60, making the total number of - rend wounds needed to kill them 102, vs 162 at 30. The efficiency is definitely better at that point. They'll need battleshock support for sure to make this work at all however, as well as multiple sources of + to saves to ensure they remain largely unrendable. Hopefully I'll have an opportunity to get some games in later this month, and I'll be sure to report back on whether this actually works out in practice.

Upon looking at our options I've been considering a big block of chaos warriors as a massive unshiftable anvil. Since they don't count for minimum battleline, but don't lose their battleline role we can still reinforce them twice. It's 600 points for 60 wounds on a 3+ save with a 5+ mw ward. Combining mystic shield with the CA and potentially oracular visions you can get them to a point where they're ignoring up to -3 rend. With lurid haze we can dump them into the opponent's backyard turn 1 to act as a huge unkillable problem that needs ~162 successful wounds or 90 mortal wounds to get rid of. Include them in a hunters battalion to keep rampages from stopping their use of CA's and they become even more oppressive. Fill your battleline with hellstriders to take care of the busywork of capping objectives and something like twinsouls and Dexcessa to carve up flanks and we have great board presence, even before daemonettes and keepers start hitting the table. I have enough chaos warriors to field two of these potentially, which I might test out in the near future. It's a huge point investment, but I don't see many easy counters to it.

Per 1.6.4 in the base rules it's the player who made the roll that picks, which is an important distinction.

The problem with Lumineth is that they bypass a lot of the built in limitations of the game in a way that is strictly advantageous. Sure, generalship helps, but the opponent is working with a handicap to start, which means if both players are of the same skill level the LRL player has a leg up.

I think the major flaw with unleash hell has more to do with the armies as they stand currently than with the ability itself. In a situation where every army had access to viable shooting options it would be just another strategic tool. The problem as it currently stands is that the armies that have decent shooting are already near the top of the pack in the meta (KO, Tzeentch, LRL, DoK, certain CoS builds, etc.) and as such it magnifies the power divide between the haves and the have nots, as it were. These already dominant factions have a new tool that serves to enhance their playstyle further with very little trade-off, while the other factions are left with the burden of finding a way to play around a new obstacle, adding a level of strategic complexity where the only reward is to break even at best.

New armies I can certainly see more significant updates for. Kruleboys and the new stormcast will likely have something for sure. Older armies probably won't see much of a change, however.

I don't expect that the FAQ's or erratas will change much. For most armies I think it will just be a spell lore clarification for unique characters and minor changes to one or two rules where there are obvious issues (like pink horrors and the cap on squad sizes). If it ends up being more than that I'll be pleasantly surprised. Though considering my own army's history with post-hoc revisions (Slaanesh nerfs) in many cases lean FAQ's are better than heavy-handed rebalancing.

It's still there, it looks like they redid the formatting so the headings you use to get to it aren't showing up on the mobile version. https://www.warhammer-community.com/warscroll-builder/

I can foresee order condensing a bit, for sure. I'm not a dwarf player, so I'm not as attached to the core identities of the various flavors, but I could see them souped into something like warclans, and I wouldn't be terribly surprised if they took the lazy way out with Kurnothi by souping the wanderers from CoS into the Sylvaneth book. I've been debating diving into playing Living City, but the prospect of an eventual kurnothi release for Sylvaneth has me hesitant. It would be nice to know what kind of roadmap there is for future releases, as I really think it would do more good than harm for sales if people could get an idea of what's on the horizon.

Slaves to Darkness have always been in a weird state of being both the posterboy faction for chaos, while also being strangely unrepresented in the rules. If I remember correctly Stormcast were on their second Battletome before Slaves even got their first, so I wouldn't take prevalence or focus as any sign of an impending update.

Since I'm a big fan of the wholesome Slaaneshi power-couple, I'll do one: Symbiotic Host Ability: The Prime Example: Syll'Esske counts as a general in addition to the chosen general for a Symbiotic Host Army, and gain the MORTAL keyword. Inseperably Bonded: Symbaresh Twinsouls are battleline in a Symbiotic Host Army, and gain the Daemon keyword. In addition when using the Fractured Souls ability for Symbaresh Twinsouls units in the army you may select either option, regardless of which was used in the previous turn. Glorious Unity: At the end of the battleshock phase you gain 1 depravity point if at least one Slaanesh mortal unit and one Slaanesh daemon unit were selected to fight in the preceding combat phase (these must be two separate units). If your general was one of these units gain d3 depravity points instead. Command Trait: Fight as One: If your general is a SLAANESH MORTAL, when you select them to pile in and fight in the combat phase you may select a SLAANESH DAEMON unit within 12" to pile in and attack immediately after your general's attacks are resolved. If your general is a SLAANESH DAEMON you may instead pick a SLAANESH MORTAL unit within 12". This counts as the first time the selected unit has fought in the combat phase, and they cannot be selected to fight again unless an ability allows them to fight a second time. Artifact: Token of The Covenant: SLAANESH MORTAL HEROES only. When you summon a SLAANESH DAEMON unit with the feast of depravities ability you may set up the unit wholly within 18" of the bearer, more than 9" from enemy models. Command Ability: Vengeful Retribution: This command ability may be issued in the combat phase when a friendly SLAANESH unit is selected as the target of an attack, that unit receives the command. When a model in this unit is slain, roll a dice: on a 4+ that model may pile in and attack with all its melee weapons before being removed from play. I'm not sure if I'd come up with a unique set of artifacts for the host, or if they would pick from one of the existing host lists. Flavor-wise Invaders artifacts would make sense.

I was playing around with an idea for a Living City list with a ton of Sisters of the Watch, when it struck me that I can do something similar with Slaanesh, just with summoning rather than movement shenanigans. This list might be absolutely terrible in practice, but I'm tempted to give it a try: Host - Lurid Haze Contorted Epitome 255 Blissbarbs x22 360 Blissbarbs x22 360 Blissbarbs x22 360 Blissbarb Seekers x5 220 Blissbarb Seekers x5 220 Chaos Warshrine 185 - Curse Battle Regiment The idea is fairly straightforward: alpha-strike with 155 arrows on the first turn, making sure to spread the damage where possible, and then get the ball rolling on momentum. From turn 2 onward curse whatever needs to outright die, and continue to farm depravity and score points with whatever I can summon. Shoot to kill for enemy support pieces and threats, and farm the rest for depravity. I'll crumple on the return swing for sure, but I think it would be completely unexpected for most opponents. Also basically anything that can be charged can unleash hell in response. With smaller army sizes on the table the initial ~28 wounds vs 4+ saves would be crippling, and it would give me the ability to bracket monsters into something more manageable right off the bat. I do wonder if it would be more efficient to run the Blissbarbs as 33 33 11 (removing a unit of Seekers or the warshrine), however.

No problem, we're all still adjusting to the new edition. Your list made me realize that I had also read one of the new rules wrong with core battalions, as I thought a commander needed to have 10 or more wounds, but it turns out only sub commanders are limited in their wounds. The new edition has really thrown off my list-making process. I like hellstriders with the new points, but it's a difficult decision between them or myrmadesh. I know I want to bring at least 10 twinsouls, so it makes sense to bring a lord of pain, but if I'm running two units of hellstriders and some blissbarbs then I could just drop him and take the twinsouls as non-battleline. However, myrmadesh are incredibly tanky in combat, and with the increased focus on MSU this edition they seem like they'd have a solid place in my lists. It's agonizing to cover my necessary bases while still fitting in what I want with these new points. I may just end up writing an all-mounted list and an all-foot list and mix and match depending on how they independently perform.

Unfortunately it is. The command ability is used in the combat phase, and the buff only lasts for the remainder of that phase.

I've taken some time to process and collect my thoughts on this. There's a forlorn hope that the survey came after this was finalized for printing, and too late for our feedback to be incorporated. I won't hold my breath for an FAQ update, but maybe next year's points won't be so oppressive. For now things are looking kind of dark, but I'm committed to making a good show of it at tournaments, and I'll report back on how things go. A handicap like this will force me to become a better player, and every victory I can scrape out will be that much sweeter for sure. I don't blame any of you who decide to bow out of the game for now, or indefinitely. However, as a community we've persevered in the face of overwhelming nerfs, and once even the threat of potentially being removed from the game entirely. We'll get through this, as we always have.

I, uh, hmm. I really don't have anything constructive to say. This is an unfortunate turn of events, to be certain.

The potential loss of S2D is sad, but I was already resigned to using them as a 2nd army after the euphoric killers change. It's a shame though, since I was planning to try out running a warshrine, and by the wording of enhancements I don't think allied priests gain access to the generic prayers.

It really feels like we were designed during the development of 3rd ed, rather than once it was fully completed.