Yoid

Shardspeaker of Slaanesh is the dream herald we always wanted. She got an automatic effect once per turn like the chaos sorcerer lord, you pick an enemy unit within 9 and roll a dice, on a 3+ your army got +1 to wound rolls vs that unit. The spell have a range of 12, difficulty of 6 and make an enemy unit suffer -1 to wound rolls. Is not gonna be that easy to use, but i really like that support capabilities.

That is what is writen in the battletome, could be an errata. Spanish version often comes with multiple errata compared to the english one, may be the same case for the italian. It simply say "for each unit in the field of battle that suffered a wound, or mortal wound, and it was not negated, or have less models than at the start of the turn" The last part may be to be covered about "slay" effects that not really deal wounds. It does not say "Your turn" or "Your army" or "Slaanesh units" or anything like that. The only mention to Slaanesh or your is "You can use depravity points to summon Daemons of Slaanesh units" and "Add to your army" and "Wholly within 12 of a friendly Slaanesh Hero and more than 9 from any enemy unit"

Im reading the leaks and Oh My God. Summoning builds revolving around shooting and tanking are gonna be broken. As it reads you generate DP at the end of the battleshock phase (Both yours and the enemy) 1 point for each unit (both your and your enemy) that suffered a wound or mortal wound or have less models than at the start of the turn. 6pts to summon 10 Daemonettes 10pts to summon 20 Daemonettes 12pts to summon 30 Daemonettes or a Keeper of Secrets. It is so hard to wound (and not completely remove) 6 enemy units with Blissbarb Archers and Infernal Enrapturess and Seeker Chariots charging in a turn? Because that mean you can easily summon a Keeper of Secrets each turn, you just need some tank frontline to survive until the points are banked, and if they hit your frontline you get even more points now. The numbers seems... broken. I can foresee a future nerf to the values same history as our old Battletome. But, the good thing is hero hammer is gone for good. In fact probably big heroes are gonna underperform in the Depravity system ¿400pts to generate just 2DP one from you and one from your enemy? Nah, 4 MSU of 100pts to generate 8 seem way better. Of course most MSU are gonna explode if the enemy retaliate or charge. Still exploding 6s go to triple hit when you are at 20+ models, but MSU is better for Depravity Point generation now. Different lists, different playstyles. Maybe MSU and then summon blobs of 30 daemonettes. I don't know, is so exciting! Why warhammer community didn't hyped this? Where they mad? Locus goes in a 4+ in regular heroes (and 3+ in the Keeper) but now only prevent the pile in move. I like the change, i was mad about locus being useless in small heroes, now it got a good use, you can avoid a big chunck of retaliate with it, but the other player will probably enjoy the fight too.

Vince pointed the other day in Warhammer Weekly that they tried to hype Sigvald in Pretenders, the host that allow you to pick 2 command traits, while named heroes cannot actually take command traits. So they are probably just missing the point of everything with the previews.

Not having Daughters of Khaine previews make sense because the range was updated very recently in Broken Realms Morathi and everyone expect the new Battletome to mostly be that updates going to an official Battletome, the sub-faction teased were the already existing ones too as long as im concerned. They can only preview the new endless spells and that's it. But Slaanesh existed for 2 years aprox and have core issues that were obvious since so long, like depravity and fiends and the failed design of our small heroes, there is a lot of fuel on that. DoK already fixed the old warscrolls in BR-Morathi, we still are waiting for that treatment. Maybe they got a marketing strategy of not talking about old models to sell more of the new toys instead. New toys are 2x the price of old ones after all.

No mention of depravity yet may mean they are gonna cover it in another article, wich may be good if the system have some changes, i doubt about GW not promoting the summon feature in one of the previews. Sadly they still can do an article like the ones we receive with "This is how summoning works" and just copy paste the current battletome rules. This one was about sub-factions, they will probably do one about allegiance abilities and talk about summoning, exploding 6s and locus (or whathever of that is now gone and replaced) I been waiting years for a proper ranged unit in the army to play in all phases of the game with my group of casual players, so im really happy about blissbarb archers coming, im all about female barbaric erotic designs and that's why i love daemonettes, keepers and specially fiends. So for me they are the core winners of the release. Reading about them rerolling 1s on a Pretenders army while in units of 10 or more (Even in MSU they start at 11 wich is something) is incredibly interesting. I hope they change some of the traits and artifacts of the sub-factions, that may deeply change how they play even if the core rules are the same. I also wish for revisited spells, specially the useless in Pretenders Viceleader and Bladebringer spell to be changed (From rerolling 1s to +1 to hit or +1 to wound or -1 rend, maybe something more creative like 6s exploding in one additional hit, or simply rerolling all hits. Or in a similar scale of power just change it to rerolling 1s to wound instead of hit) I can see at least a proper mortal spell lore, the current one is horrible.

They already comented about Blissbarb archers being the battleline, since daemonettes (and maybe hellstriders) are gonna be battleline too, i think they already have the mele+ranged(+possibly cavalry) battleline covered. By the way they were talking i bet myrmidesh and symbaresh are not battleline. They still may have special rules like Sigvald making them battleline or something.

I think everything is going to be monopose. But seekers and myrmidesh/symbaresh come with 10 different heads, and with the myrmidesh you can replace some swords with the symbaresh weapons, then you can equip your symbaresh with some myrmidesh swords. As long as one unit have shields and the other dont they will be easily recognizable, that give you a lot of customization to do at least 4 variants of each (regular build, change of head, change of weapon, change of head + weapon) the only tricky one may be the guy with the two handed sword, but it may not be so out of place in a unit were the other 9 guys got shields. Also the leader of the Myrmidesh got a cloak but the leader of the symbaresh got a weird mirror, you can combine this pieces randomly too to create different leaders. Slaangor will be monopose the same as fiends, but same as fiends the unit will probably be 3-9 models. You can use the one from Dread Pageant to repeat the models only once instead of twice. If they are the same as Fiends the leader of the unit will have a different head for the non-leader variant and probably two pincers instead of a pincer and a weapon, that make for another model not being exactly repeated.

That image is not a real scene, is cheap photoshop making all units together, you can easily tell by Glutos perspective, his base is way off respective to the others. So it may be that no real base size comparison can be seen there. Myrmidesh may be on 32 and still be really elite, i think they will be more similar to chosen than regular chaos warriors, otherwise they would be sold in boxes of 10. They surely will have 4+ save and some kind of special defense from the shield. They aren't battleline like the chaos warriors so they can punch a little above their points, probably having rend. Symbaresh will lack the defensive special rules but will hit way harder. I hope Fiends get some love. It seems like daemons will not be drastically changed, but small changes like depravity system or point cost of units would greatly help the daemon size. Something as small as having -2 rend in the tails or having the -1 to hit and -1 to wound always active and not only in units of 6 models may probably save Fiends. Most heroes are 10 to 20 points overcosted to cover their Depravity generation, if Depravity change i can see most of them going down 10 or 20 points. Viceleaders, Enrapturess, The Mask, Bladebringers on regular chariots, all of them need to be 20 points cheaper to compete with the heroes of other armies that do similar things. That may change with the new spells tho, specially if they reworks the spell on Viceleaders and Bladebringers to something more useful.

Slaanesh is still good, but is still good by the wrong reasons due to bad internal balance. Slaanesh will keep performing good (maybe not top, but good) because the Keeper of Secrets is still broken. Daemonettes will keep overperforming because you can most likely summon 30 for free once your KoS get to close combat, so 330 points for free, if they made the charge (wich they can reroll once for free) or the KoS survive till the next turn, they fight twice too by expending 1 CP... so they hit like 660 points suddenly. If you remove the Keeper of Secrets from the book, Hedonites of Slaanesh turn into ultra trash tier. The only good pieces in the book are Bladebringer Exalted Chariots and Contorted Epitome, occasionally Infernal Enrapturess if the enemy got heavy magic, otherwise she is 140 points of dead weight. Every other troop underperform compared to the points it costs. The Hedonites of Slaanesh dilema is they are trying to balance the whole Depravity Point System based on the Keeper of Secrets capacity of exploiting it, to the point is impossible to use with Viceleaders, Infernal Enrapturess, Contorted Epitomes and Bladebringers. The Bladebringer on Exalted Chariot is really close to be able to use it, but she got the added handicap of not beign able to generate DP with the mortal wounds effects, that is the real damage output of the chariot. She will probably be able to use the DP system as good as the KoS if that abilities triggered it. So if you take out the KoS, the DP system do nothing (you know, not nothing, but not enough to make a difference). Meanwhile they keep increasing the point cost of the troops to compensate for the DP, but the DP is balanced for KoS only, and this compensation is a little stupid because troops dont generate DP, increasing the points of the troops do nothing to fix the KoS generating DP problem, only make new problems in wich your starting not summoned army is trash, swifting even more power to the Keeper of Secrets. I happen to own Wrath and Rapture, this box came a little before the battletome was anounced, so it was before the KoS was updated, and everything was balanced for the army to work without a Keeper of Secrets, the summoning points were in the GH and were much more lower than now, Daemonettes costed 100 points, they got built in rerolling 1s, the Infernal Enrapturess costed 100 points, this is arguably too low if the enemy got magic casters, but if the enemy got no magic caster, this is a really good cost, i wonder who decided to priced her as "perform normal vs mages and underperform when not" instead of "perform normal in every game but when the enemy got mages it overperforms" and you can tell this is a problem with powercreep design philosophy, when some battletomes are tought as "sometimes underperforming, otherwise normal" and some are tought as "Sometimes overperforming, otherwise normal". The exact same thing happened to Fiends, they were costed at 140 points, wich is arguably too low (im fine with them being 160 points if they reach that number someday) but is again the same philosophy disonance, in W&R they were design thinking "If they fight 1 wound enemies they perform normal, if they fight 2+ wounds enemies they start to overperform, peaking at super performing vs 4+ wound enemies" and now is the reverse "They perform normal vs 4+ wound enemies, they underperform a little vs 2-3 wound enemies, they are utterly trash vs 1 wound enemies" due to being priced so insanely high. Then you got the other power creeped battletomes that are design with the overperforming philosophy. And don't get me worng, KoS is a superperforming piece, but is the only piece that got that deisgn in our battletome... by mistake... because they cannot figure out how to balance DP for everyone and they leave it in a middle spot that make every other hero underperform in DP while the KoS is still above overperfoming. Edit: So i remember it wrong, Fiends was 180 and Infernal Enrapturess was 120. I remember the point cost being lower, but may be because people liked to guess about the points before the product was out, as it was anounced with a lot of time before finally releasing. It may be too because the most common comentary on Fiends going from 180 to 210 was "I thought they should have lowered them to 140 because they do nothing" Anyway, everything was cheaper and Daemonettes cost was 100 points with built in rerolling 1s.

I said a lot of things to specify what i was saying, in short what i said is they are the worst battleline still in use (arguebly in use, because hellstriders are way more popular). As you said the army synergy is something to account, Daemonettes cannot perform in other armies because they cannot afford loosing the exploding 6s, in the same way other battlelines cannot simply work on slaanesh because the only buff slaanesh got is rerolling 1s. Although maybe some of them may actually benefit from exploding 6s enough. If battlelines actually come with acces to all their buffs, then i must say, probably any battleline but the ones wich role dosn't make any sense in our army would be better, while they will keep not taking daemonettes because they underperform in comparison. I think Daemonettes are fairly costed at 10 points per model, 100 points per minimum size unit, 300 points per maximum size unit. So before i only considered them balanced in blocks of 30, and now i consider them plainly unbalance in every case. And im not trying to convince you about my point, i understand your point, im simply looking at my numbers and data wich point to a way different conclusion. You will ear a lot in this thread about BoC and StD battlelines being way better, my experience suggest about this not being an isolated case, and actually being true in almost every other army too. Slaanesh keep holding because other parts of our army are broken, and yes you can simply take hellstriders if daemonettes are bad (wich i consider overcosted now too) but that is plain deny of them needing help, i don't think one should justify a unit being unbalance pointing to another more balanced unit that you can take instead, because i want all units to be balance (something impossible to achieve, but that is another topic)

I think hellstriders were balance and didn't deserve the nerf, they can only grab objectives at long distances, wich is not bad for 100 points. Marauders are probably really strong in slaanesh, that is true, even when they are not part of the battletome. They have been nerf recently too, but probably deserved. Still is not like the old times when we got access to the best of the best, the other battletomes power creeped over us while we get nerfs. What i stated is Daemonettes being really bad and the other options being considerably average in the power scale, not bad, but not specially good either. There are pieces of slaanesh that are still broken, like the Keeper of Secrets, but i don't like the way GW keep nerfing everything instead of the broken pieces, the underpowered pieces need buffs too. At least Fiends have started their way to a reasonable point cost, still a long path to walk tho.

Slaanesh battleline used to be one of the best in the game some years ago, but now that all armies got new battletomes and the new warscrolls are heavily power creeped, that is no longer the case. They keep nerfing slaanesh troops points because of the DP the keepers can produce instead of fixing that issue in other way, i think Daemonettes are now one of the worst if not the worst battleline in the game (yes, i know there are some worst battleline options, but all armies got access to better battleline units). Part of Daemonettes being bad is that they baked the allegiance ability of exploding 6s into the point cost of the unit too. The only buff they got access to is rerolling 1s to hit. Meanwhile the other armies usually got 3+ to hit or 3+ to wound, -1 rend is now universal no longer the slaanesh theme, most battleline is 10 wounds with 4+ save, but Daemonettes got only 5+ save and that is quite huge, it mean they negate 1 out of every 3 wounds instead of 1 out of every 2 wounds, and once you take into account the universal -1 rend they are negating 1 out of 6 wounds instead of 1 out of 3. Other armies can further improve to hit, to wound, rend, numbers of attacks or damage per attack with command abilities and spells, but we cannot do any meaningful buff to daemonettes, they are outdated. The problem is GW keep looking at the daemonettes the keeper of secrets summon and say "Yeah, those Daemonettes are busted, keep nerfing them." But the Daemonettes a Keeper of Secrets summon with DP and the ones you get in the army by paying their point cost are like two completely different units in term of balance, they should nerf the Keeper of Secrets and buff the Daemonettes. I hope they rework depravity in the next editions of AoS. Would like to see the rule changed to "Every time a unit take a wound or mortal wound for the first time in every phase you get a depravity point" suddenly depravity get fixed and some things in the army that dosn't have too much value become viable (chariots generating 1 depravity in the charge phase, enrapturess generating 1 DP in the shooting phase, equiping your Keeper of Secrets with a whip to generate a DP in the shooting phase, no longer generating infinite DP with your keeper, being able to play a heavy troop list and still get DP...) And this compensate us a little when fighting armies with heavy magic or shooting, generating the extra depravity in the enemy hero phase and shooting phase.

Starting with mortals and then summoning the daemons and keepers seems viable, almost everything in HoS were nerfed and almost everything in StD were buff. I also read something about StD being a counter of the MW spam meta armies due to the chaos shields that save MW on 5+, so they may be somewhat good vs Tzeench and Lumineth. Im just disappointed about having to play other armies models to make our army worth, having some dedicated mortals for slaanesh like the other gods would help with that feeling.

Yeah, i feel like you need at least 90 daemonettes to make the battalion worth it, and im not sure about that now that is even more costly to do so. Why pay so much fot the battalion when you can simply deploy another unit? A regular exalted chariot is gonna do the same job at the same price and even add some more wounds and tankines to the army, i guess you do it for the artifact and CP, but then that lead you to a hero meta again, and running triple keeper is plain better than working your way aroung 90 daemonettes and epicurean. The battalion don't affect Fiends whathsoever, and the mortal wound is instead of your regular damage and not in addition, so is basically increasing the rend of that specific wound to infinite, not increasing the damage output of the unit by much. Regular 30 daemonettes have an average damage output of 16.9 against 4+ save, epicurean revellers 30 daemonettes have an average damage output of 19.8 against 4+ save. So you are increasing the damage output by 2.9 wounds per unit, 8.7 between three units. Meanwhile an exalted chariot have an average damage output of 7.5 aganst 4+ save when not charging and 9.6 against 4+ save when charging, and it also deal such damage in an hybrid form of regular attacks and mortal wounds. Regular exalted chariot is deceptively good for the point cost, is what the fiends of slaanesh were supposed to be, but accurately costed for the damage output and survability. yes is not tanky for the cost, but 9 wounds with no damage profile make it hit at full strength until destroyed, wich cannot be told about the fiends, the damage output of the chariot charging is the same one of the fiends when attacking 4+ wound enemies, while the damage output of the chariot while not charging is just 0.5 wounds below the fiends when hitting a 2-3 wound target and 0.6 above the fiends hitting 1 wound targets, the chariot got 4+ save while the fiends got 3 extra wounds and -1 to be hit in mele and 5+ save while loosing 33% of their damage output every 4 wounds. Exalted chariots are the only accurately costed unit in the army in my opinion, everything else is overcosted except for the keepers who are probably undercosted or maybe actually fine after the nerf. Got my eye on chaos chosen currently, 140 points 10 wounds 4+ save and an impresive damage output of 8.5 against 4+ save with hybrid regular damage and mortal wounds. Now that is what i wanted the fiends to be. They are slow compared to the rest of our army, but not that slow compared with regular troops in other armies, and their point cost for that output is insane compared with anything, 10 Daemonettes cost 110 and have a damage output of 4.6 against 4+ save, this guys hit almost double hard and survive even more just for 30 more points, you are sacrificing run and charge in the process. Yep they are not battleline but still is an extremely good unit like the regular exalted charior. About the fiends generating depravity, i already tought of it in the past, just a simple rule like the infernal enrapturess, for each fiend model in the battlefield you generate 1 DP point in your hero phase, may be nice, but then what happen is that they will become staple in the keeper spams list, they will not really unlock a new type of list if simply start generating depravity. I would prefer having the -1/-1 always instead of when they are 4+ models, or being fairly costed at 160 (170ish) points, or a complete warscroll rework, whathever. Imagine the -1 to hit affecting your other units too, like daemonettes figthing alongside fiends are -1 to hit, or their weapons having -2 rend, or their wounds being 5-6 per model, or their save being 4+ or they exploding 6 always counting as having 20+ models so they explode into 3 hits. They may be so awesome, they simply aren't. The guy who designed the battletome was clearly not a fan of stacking buffs, the old slaanesh warscrolls where all about stacking locust to buff the army, hellstriders having a protection bubble of -1 to hit, i miss those tactical concepts, while now the only buff you can do is rerolling 1s in a million different ways and that's it. Well, i guess we may count excess of violence, but that forces you to play regular keepers all the way. Would be awesome if the old protection bubble of the hellstriders were now on the Fiends, and instead of exploding 6 into three hits when 20+ models having it as a sort of bubble for the heralds so you got to make them fight alongside the daemonettes (or having they explode in 5 and 6 instead) i really love buffs based on tactical formations.

Anvil of Apotheosis is the name of the hero creator in the General's Handbook 2020, it include points and the sugestion to give it a try in tournaments for tournament organizers, plus i remember some tournaments already using a custom "Create your own general" rules some time ago, i remember the youtube videos talking about that tournament. Since all HoS heroes are overcosted due to Depravity Points, but there is no such overcost in the Anvil, it heavily favour slaanesh and allow us to fix some of the disadvantages of our regular heroes. I was preparing my own version of hinterlands when this was anounced, using the Anvil is extremely good as a level up system, i feel like it is the future of path to glory too, would be cool if the path to glory section of the battletomes is changed to a path to apotheosis section with specific rules to create and upgrade your army heroes and troops and this start a new age of path to glory games. About the Fiends, i tought about some battalions too as a way to fix the "Slaanesh can only be played for Depravity" problem. would like some battalions that includes only troops and give some powerful powerups to them so people start considering playing heavy troops armies with few heroes, while still allowing to take the heavy heroes but weak troops aproach. Like, a battalion that includes all the troops in the battletome but the heroes and heavily increase the offensive or defensive capability of the army. Battallions is the perfect way to fix this problem because you cannot summon troops with the bonuses they give, so you got to strictly choose between summoning focus or battalion focus and cannot heavily lean to both at the same time. Like, let's say, the offensive battalion give all the troops +1 attack, or -1 rend, or improve the exploding 6 to exploding 5+, that would be really flavourful to slaanesh main themes, we have lost the "Queens of rend" theme to other armies, we got no troops with -2 rend in the army, only the Keeper of Secrets and Daemon Prince got that. Well i guess Infernal Enrapturess have -3 rend but she deal 1 wound per shooting turn on average for a total of 5 wounds at the end of the game... yikes that is not worth 140 points, even when she is worth for the antimagic, she cannot fulfill the rend theme. Also Knights charging with lances got -2 rend... meh, rend used to be the theme of Daemons of Slaanesh back when the battlelines don't used to have rend, now is rare that one battleline dosn't have plain better stats than Daemonettes and rend too, they are simply overcosted due to Depravity and the Keeper of Secrets being actually strong. Would be really cool if the fiends had -2 rend so they could fulfill the role of heavy infantry/monsters made to shred tanks that the regular troops can only scratch, but they got a sad -1 rend in the massive claws and stingers wich make little sense. Then a defensive battalion, giving +1 save may be what the army need to finally have an anvil, imagine hellstriders saving at 3+, daemonettes at 4+, Fiends at 4+ with the -1 to hit would still be harder to play as anvil because they are extremely overcosted for their wound characteristic, but would still work way better than now. Anyway +1 save may be not so flavourful to our troops, although i can see this battalion as being so masochistic that their bodies endure great pain and wounds that would otherwise kill them, while the other the offensive battalion is the one of the sadistics that enjoy the pain of their enemies to the point of being way more lethal and merciless with them. Anyway, some more flavourful effect and not so generic as giving +1 to save may be to give a 6+ ward save and in addition every time you negate a wound or mortal wound this way the unit does a MW to an enemy nearby while frenzied from the masochistic joy, i just don't like the 6+ ward saves so much because they are too swingy, but it may be a more flavourful way to do an slaanesh defensive battalion. Other effects for battalions that may be interesting. A Daemonette/Seekers battalion that increase the chance of the icon summoning back models to a 5+ or a 4+, or even simply a battalion that allow you to recover slain models every turn in a similar way. An exclusively Fiend battalion that give +1 to save or +1 wound per model or -1 rend to their weapons, just any way to actually make them worth their points, maybe a battalion that allow you to regenerate all wounds allocated to a Fiend model in the unit at the end of the combat phase, and if there is no fiend wounded you can summon an slain fiend model instead. So many ways to make the troops interesting and useful. Would you pay from 100 to 200 points for such an upgrade to the troop roster of the army? And then since battalions cannot be summon with Depravity, this move away from the heavy hero meta problem. (There is nothingb bad with that style of play, im just saying not being able to play any other thing to the same degree of success is a problem in list building variety)

They explained that the last year, it is so you can keep the core GH for the new rules that come every year but throw away the points section and only keep the most recent one. Basically it make all the rules in the core GH never obsolete for narrative and open play so you can have all your core GH as a neat compendium of optional rules, while you only have one small booklet with all the current points. (This system got some faults, like the points that will come in the errata online, you'll never got them unless you print them as a separate book. They should make all the points adjustments online in a printable format in my opinion, but then, not a lot of people would buy GH as a product) Talking about other things, as i expected the anvil of apotheosis heavily favour slaanesh, you can make some really fat heroes that are cheap and produce a lot of depravity, and it give access to buffs that we dont usually have, you freely choose between having a command ability of +1 to hit or +1 to save, or being a mage with some interesting spells. One of the spells is range 12 difficulty 7 does d3 MW and give -1 to save rolls. Other is similar to hysterical frenzy range 12 difficulty 6 roll a dice for each model in the enemy unit and on a 5+ is a MW. Other is difficulty 6 and gives a 6+ ward save in a 12 bubble, The last one range 12 difficulty 6 pick an allied unit and you can return a number of slain models that have a combined wound characteristic of 1d3 or less to that unit. All of this looks really powerful compared to our overcosted mages and their pity aquiescence. It seems like a really basic hero with really basic weapons cost 50 points, then you can equip it with decent weapons from 10 to 30 points including a decent range weapon if you want to play it from a safe distance as a support tool. Then you can make it really beasty and powerful by investing more points, you can make something similar to a keeper of secrets with 250 points, sure it will not have the excess of violence command ability nor locust of diversion, but having a fat killy monster so cheap generating lot of depravity may be a great tool, You can do something like a really fat and unequiped monster with 13 wounds paying 200 points, but then it will hit somewhat soft (It will hit almost as a vanilla keeper of secrets wich is not that bad for 200 points hero that is gonna return at least 12 DP now that i think of it, but he cannot double the activation himself, this is like a soulfester KoS really well priced).

I sincerely expected the Keeper to go up to 400 because is the only real broken piece in the list, and everything else to go down (except the exalted chariot wich is fair priced) I didn't expected everything to go up, specially since triple keeper is like 60 points up now but they still perfom the same while using DP points to summon and no regular points. Im happy about the fiends, their real price should be closer to 160 (170-ish) but i was worry about GW ignoring them again, going down to 190 is a good start, i really want an elite army of just these things XD Sadly the changes arent agressive enough to shape the meta, the lists will be the same but with a little less amount of things on them, and i was hoping for non hero heavy armies to become a thing. This is a massive nerf to the usual competitive list with triple keeper, contorted, supreme sybarites, triple hellstrider, cavalcade. If you add up everything is a 150 points nerf to the list. But fiends aren't cheap enough to be useful. I expect some massive drops to the winrate of the army, it may no longer be a competitive favourite like the other giants, wich is not strictly bad if all the other unbalanced armies get the same nerf hammer, but i doubt so.

Yesterday i was looking for leaks on points, there are some captions for other factions, but not for slaanesh yet. One interesting thing may be the anvil of apotheosis, the new character creator wich have rules for narrative, open and matched play. GW didn't pull the trigger on making it matched play official, but include point values and encourage tournament organizers to give it a try in competitive play. The way Hedonites of Slaanesh works is having everything overcosted to compensate for the allegiance abilities, specially summoning, so the anvil point system probably favour us by not having such tax in points, hero points of characters made with the anvil of apotheosis will probably land closer to how slaanesh was priced before the battletome. As far as i have seen with the leaks, there will be no way to give the hero the Hedonite keyword, so no locus, but he will have the Slaanesh keyword. Creating a Daemon of Slaanesh Hero with 10 bravery, 5 wounds, 5 movement and 5+ save cost 50 points, we still got to see how much points cost the weapons and archetypes just to know how DP efficient is the smaller hero, and then check the skills and mounts, we may be able to build exalted chariots that are better costed. Even so i doubt that we can make a better Keeper of Secrets because it will end looking more like the soulfeaster, not bad, but unable to compete with the excess of violence command ability. Maybe we can make something like the soulfeaster way cheaper tho, and play it fairly costed at least.

So i was doing some really heavy point/efficiency mathhammer chart showing survival factor per point and damage output per point for all the slaanesh units, even when the chart will take some more time to finish, i just realized something that may be obvious for most people, and that make me feel like a moron for not noticing before, but this thing is too interesting and i got to share it with everyone right now. Exploding 6s into two hits got the exact same mathematical value as having +1 to hit. Exploding 6s into three hits got the exact same mathematical value as having +2 to hit. Talking about averages: For every 6 dices you roll at 4+ to hit you get 3 hits and 3 misses. For every 6 dices you roll at 3+ to hit you get 4 hits and 2 misses. For every 6 dices you roll at 4+ to hit with exploding sixes into two hits you get 4 hits and 3 misses. For every 6 dices you roll at 2+ to hit you get 5 hits and 1 miss. For every 6 dices you roll at 4+ to hit with exploding sixes into three hits you get 5 hits and 3 misses. Yes, dices does not always score as their averages, and exploding 6s may feel more swingy specially when rolling few dices with MSU and heroes, but got the same mathematicall value while using big samples, so in fact our allegiance ability gives +1 to hit to everything we enlist, wich feels mindblowing to me.

Probably quiet due to quarantine, meta cannot change while people is not playing the game. As far as i know, triple keeper is still the more powerfull strategy (or simply keeper spam in some variants that may start with two) and playing any other thing is taking a handicap on yourself. Is no longer the monster it was before, as the nerf of DP makes everything cost 50% more to summon, so the DP engine can be destroyed more easily, also there is OB Petrifex, shooty KO and DoT, and damage mitigation Seraphon (that can also build in a shooty fashion) who works as direct counters to our army while being fresh and extremely popular. With the general's handbook 2020 being close, i got my expectations in some points adjustments for the non-hero less useful troops and even the low tier overcosted heroes. I hope for 10 to 20 points reduction in Daemonettes, Seekers, the small Chariots, Hellflayers, Viceleader, The Masque, maybe the Bladebringers in small chariot and hellflayer as well, basically everything that is underused in the base lists, while keeping the DP cost as they are. Then Fiends need a massive discount bigger than just 10 or 20 point, going down to 180 may be a good start, but i feel like they will still be overshadowed by the heroes, as they do the same job as a Keeper or Bladebringer on Exalted Chariot or Daemon Prince but wihtout generating DP, would like to see them down to 170 or even 160 so they actually see some play. I understand that they designed the battletome with overcosted heroes because they generate DP, so you are effectively paying for 1.5 models instead of just 1. But for some reason they did this with the troops too, they are way more costly for their stats than similar options in the other armies (this arguably apply to our foot heroes too, before DP point nerf i understand why, but after the nerf there is no way a Viceleader can compensate the overcost with DP generation, meanwhile i look at Sylvaneth with more powerfull foot magicians and also summoning, and i see their heroes cost 80 points instead of 120) So i hope for troops discounts, maybe even a point cost nerf in the Keeper (Maybe even a discount in Shalaxi and Soulfeaster, we all know the OP part is the command ability on the regular Keeper) It may be too hard/impossible to change the meta of our lists just with that, but at least people would not be as punished to try new things or play some troop heavy lists in non competitive games.

You get both, you are forced to pick the Faultless Blades artifact as your first artifact and command trait as your first trait. Then you proceed to pick secondary artifacts an traits from the battletome list as normal. You get all the benefits of both things, Faultless Blades is basically a specialization of Pretenders, more rules in exchange to be locked into that first artifact and trait.

I think you are talking about slaanesh exploding 6s and not about Strength of Godhood, correct me if im worng. Yes, the extra hit is a normal hit that goes to "to wound" rolls, but lets say it fail to wound. Can you proc Strength of Godhood from the mortal wounds inflicted by the non-extra hit? Same doubt for the 6s to wound in the keeper of secrets.

I got some rule question i cannot find the answer anywhere. Recently started to play AoS with a box of Wrath and Rapture, and i converted my fiends with some daemonettes bits to be Daemon Princes. Now im playing with the sword more of the time because my friend is starting a Nighthaunt collection and he ignores rend, so y find more useful to fish for 6 and do mortal wounds. I got my eye in the pretender command trait Strength of Godhood, wich allow to add 1d3 damage to a successful atack in the step 4 of the atack sequence. So here is mi problem. Can a hit with a roll of 6 that turns into 2 mortal wounds and end the atack sequence benefit from Stregth of Godhood? I notice Keeper of Secrets got a similar rule when they wound on a 6, making the atack sequence ends too. Does they loose the chance to use it too? It may seem obvious, but i found it counterintuitive, and im not sure if the rule launch you forward to step 4 of the atack sequence and allow the trait to apply, or actually negate the atack sequence acting like an ability and making the two things unable to interact with each other. As an extra i leave some pics of my conversion, im kind of an artist specialized in fantasy designs with some erotica, so i really like the base of the new fiends (and wish the range to return for a more "Diaznette" style in the future) and inmediatly knew i wanted to turn them into some kind of Daemon Princess. I actually designed a similar character for Black Library last summer, but my story about a slaanesh warband was rejected, will leave her concept art over here so you see the similarities with the final model i converted.

You may have two of each (two musicians, two banners, two icons) 1 of each for every 5 models.