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Yeah bravery bombing requires a lot of set up so the pay off needs to be big for it to be even remotely viable. Even in armies like FEC, that can easily have 20+ different damage sources that scales with -bravery, its still just a fun gimmick and not powerful enough to be actually competitive. Its kind of funny but it might actually not be bad against mortal slaanesh since we struggle with bravery, have few or bad bravery work arounds and really need our CPs.

Yeah they were only played as battleline tax in Cavalcade to get drops down and fit into Sylleske in the last book. They were overpriced at their old cost and were only taken because subfactions and BL demands. They are slightly better now I guess but it doesn't even remotely justify the points hike. It stands out even amoung many other baffling point costs.

The extreme versions are indeed not very practical, but using it to minimize the retaliation from an enemy unit is easily done and very practical. By using 6" pile ins you either place units at both sides of the unit and forces it to stretch out and get terrible frontage or just a single unit to ensure you take almost no damage in the first round of combat you can tie up units with cheaper units easily. I've had 5 blissbard seekers survive 3 rounds of combat to 20 HGB and generate 6 DPs in the process. It really ups the survivability of units by a ****** ton in certain match ups. I've had significantly more success with Seekers Cavalcade lists than anything else. Edit: That tool is pretty cool! I don't know how accurate it is but fun nonetheless, and its "Precedent Score" and "similar lists" function that compares it to tournament lists and shows their placing is pretty awesome (irrelevant right now since it compares the lists to the old book but I see potential!).

Yeah I saw the same rumor on facebook and it seems plausible. It's pretty weird way to go about it but it's not the first time a book is released with future core rule changes in mind. and suffers for it. Even if it's true though the internal balance is still pretty whack. Blissbarb seekers are an absolute steal at 180 if you compare them to the foot version and Slickblades blows all other combat units out of the water, but maybe they'll see an increase in cost if and when 3.0 and all new points drops.

Very interesting to see how Archaon performs in the new Slaanesh. Am I understanding it right that you only summoned something in 1 out of 3 games? Was the games over too fast or did you just not generate enough DP? Intoxicating Pall sadly only works in the combat phase.

I wouldn't take Fiends without Glutos anyway, and to fit both in you have to change ~1/3 of your army. In seekers cavalcade you definitely have the tools to deal with a 40 blob, just stall them with Locus and/or 2.9" cavalcade pile-in shenanigans and win on objectives. You don't have enough shooting or strong enough melee to tackle a 40 blob praetorian Morteks in honest combat. Sigwald could put the hurt on them with a good charge roll and double pile-in but he'll die in prolonged combat so you're better off removing them from play in other ways and directing your damage to smaller units. If the Morteks get into a good position before you can jam them up then its gonna be rough.

While we certainly are in a position to see point reductions I'd strongly recommend everyone to not assume that changes are coming and building/collecting a force with the hopes that they will see significant buffs. Look at Nighthaunt or Sylvaneth, the community and "prominent figures" has been in agreement that they need big buffs for years and they've basically been untouched (NH even got significant nerfs thanks to LoG). GW can be unpredictable in this regard.

Combination of factors. - As you mention everything is overcosted, so you feel like your list is smaller than it should be. - The book lacks obvious synergy pieces and sign posting. In Ironjawz for example you always take 2-3 chanters if you take a lot of ardboyz/gruntas, in DoK you take Cauldrons and priests if you take witches, in Seraphon you take Scar-vets, Starpriests and Old-bloods to support your saurus. Hedonites don't really have that so you are forced to make more decisions, which creates more uncertainty when list building. - Battalions are either bad or doesn't help much with list building (except Cavalcade). Plenty of other factions take a battalion and build around it, making up a large portion of your points. I think Seekers Cavalcade with 3 chariots for battleline in Godseekers can be very potent. Chariots are squishy and a bit of a battleline tax here but they're not in a bad place if they get point reductions. If everything wasn't so expensive I would even be tempted to take double battalion and go Cavalcade + Sybarites for crazy CP & DP generation and getting down to a 2-drop, but right now it leaves us with a weak starting board. What units are you looking to build your list around?

Honestly, even at 90pts they're expensive. They have decent wound coefficient at that point (10pts per wound) but still bad save, and their damage is still bad compared to most damage dealers in other armies. They have the mortal key word so I guess at some point maybe they might be decent with a Lord of Pain to counter their terrible hit rolls but they really need double pile ins to do some real damage. The issue then becomes that if you invest enough for them to become a threat they are probably going to get focused and die since they are still glass. Obsessive Violence is also one of the weirdest abilities I've seen on a warscroll. If you gave it to Painbringers then it makes sense but a glass cannon unit isn't gonna care about some chip damage at the end of the combat phase because they either killed enough already or they died to the retaliating unit.

Yes, but also no. Synergy is as you say when the whole is greater than the sum of its part, but that's the case for Hedonites now, otherwise people would spam the best unit and take nothing else. In WHFB you didnt have anything that buffed a specific unit or unit type, everything was universal, but units still had plenty of synergy which led to a lot less streamlined list building. Working together doesn't just mean mechanics that directly buff one another. A hammer and an anvil works better than 2 hammers or 2 anvils, because they have synergy, even if that's just basic strategy. Books that doesn't have good synergy are the ones where you see a single unit being spammed. Maybe forced synergy is the wrong term, the point I was trying to make was that I dislike books were list building is basically put on rails because some units only work when combined with specific units. If I feel like the lists has so many sign posts pointing me into a certain direction then they basically builds themselves. This leads to all lists of the same archtype looking pretty much the same. Competitive FoS, TLTQ and Koatls Claw lists all look extremely similar because the book rewards you for going with the outlined path and punishes you for breaking away from it. The LRL synergy in your example is the type of synergy I like, because it works on all units. It doesn't matter who burns their aetherquartz, it works with everything in the book. It also shores up a big weakness in the army: low bravery. I do agree that the book could use more of this type of synergy and it has some issues in this regard, like they way Shardspeakers buff doesn't help shooting but they are in the shooting battalion or the way our support heroes have 2-8" less move than units it wants to support.

But there is a lot of synergy in the book, just not the forced kind. The balance is a little wack but taking Painbringers to defend your objectives, place archers behind them to deal damage from behind protection while lightning fast Seekers steal your opponents objective or hammer into whatever is stuck in your anvil is synergy. It just doesn't have a lot of unit that are forced to be played together. I do think the criticism is fair, I just don't agree with it, but the again I find myself loving this book for the exact reason other people dislike it. I think LRL is another good example. The stone bois are kind of forced to play in a specific subfaction with specific units and battalions but the rest are very easy to mix and match freely and they have great synergy without directly making each others warscrolls be twice as good for taking them together.

Yeah I know a lot of people dislike the lack of direct synergy in the book, but I much prefer lack of obvious synergy to "synergy on rails". At first it's daunting and a bit overwhelming when there are no clear sign posts to how to build your army but this is the only thing I miss from the old WHFB days. You took a variation of different units to fill different roles. You took whatever core part you wanted the tailored the rest to properly support it. It felt rewarding and creative and I get a similar feeling from our book. When seraphon got their new book I dusted off and rebased my 7th Lizardmen but was disappointed that the book quickly put you on rails. I wanted to play skinks cause I like and had the models, so I started with 2x40 skinks then just put whatever unit buffed skinks (starpriests, priests, kroak, fangs of sotek). Whenever I tried to fit something in, the book basically just told me "no!". I wanted a bastiladon because dinosaurs but they're bad without the Thunderlizard CA, and my skink focus forced me into FoS. I wanted some I wanted some Saurus Knights because dinosaurs riding dinosaurs but without Koatls Claw and Saurus heroes they have 25% of their potential damage output. The entire list building phase felt automatic, basically pick a battleline, pick the obvious sub faction, pick all the obvvious synergies and then maybe you get a few hundred points to take something that actually feels like customization.

While true, a Kipper or 30 Daemonettes have much larger impact in such games as a single 12pt summon is 33-34% extra points. A note on the first list is that Shardspeaker debuff doesn't work with shooting so I don't think you'll get much mileage out of it in that list. I'd drop it for maybe 20 marauders to screen if needed or ambush with Lurid Haze or the Masque if you want 2 characters. I like both lists but I think the 2nd is stronger. Godseekers can generate a ton of DP quickly can be staright up busted at 1000pts. If you plan on making the army 2000pts eventually then you should get a 1000pt force that builds towards that larger army. these two

Yeah I hate the static poses of daemonettes. I played deprayed drove last book so I don't have a bunch of daemonettes already anyway so Im kitbashing mine from Unmade+daemonette parts. Mostly keep the unmade models and do weapon/claw and head swaps, but they turned out great.

I've tried out the Blissbarb seekers in my last games and they are absolute beasts in Cavalcade. Played 4x5 units and they could chip away at stuff for DP or focus down something if needed. Also not terrible in melee for an archer unit. 2.9" shenanigans is also busted and they could easily neutralize big threats by forcing horrendous pile ins. As you mentioned they are surprisingly tanky. 20 wounds on a small footprint, 2.9-ing and potentially 4+ in Lurid Haze and -1 to hit with Glutos. I actually found Slaanesh being surprisingly resilient overall. We don't have traditional survivability but between hit/wound penalties, ambushes, save buffs, decent amount of wounds and summoning we have pretty good staying power.

Its strong, very potent against most armies but useless against some (anything shooting heavy for example). This is one of those things that has a high probability of getting changed in AoS 3.0 but right now, yeah its busted. Slaanesh isn't the only army with this though, DoK for example has cheap battleline with the same ability without the need for a warscroll. Strongly disagree with "in most situations". Sometimes its way better, but old Locus was always good and it was good regardless of whose turn it is. Its 1" range as well so if I charge something with a Kipper and freeze them in place with Locus then unless I kill that unit, they just remove casualties to either no longer being in Locus range or not even being in combat, then in their turn they can charge or pile in freely. If you manage to engineer situations where it's effective then its great, if your opponent prevents you from doing so then its pretty lukewarm. I do agree that it has great potential though. My experience is very different. I usually get 2, maybe 3, 12 point summons per game and I have tons of DP enablers (this is out of 8 games). Your turn 1 generation is limited unless your opponent makes mistakes and as unit starts dying in later turns (both yours and theirs) it gets harder and harder to generate 12 per turn. It's still a very powerful mechanic but please explain how you reliably get 12 DPs at turn 2. Again, yes summoning stronk, but its not really 1200 pts. Aside from the fact that you're often not getting 4x 12p summons, daemonettes are NOT worth 330 points and those turn 4-5 summons will have much less of an impact than stuff that starts on the board. You're also limited to summoning around your Fane or heroes and summoning 30 daemonettes in your backfield in turn 4 because all your heroes are dead are worth closer to 0 pts than 330. I've mentioned it a lot before in this thread but I think the book is strong, especially if the shooting meta goes away.

I'd rather take a Keeper than a Bladebringer and Masque, but I do see the value in 2 fast Locus enablers. The warriors want shields, 5 warriors won't do any damage and you want them as tanky as you can get them because that's their only role. Glutos + Geminids is a good combo but it depends on lot on your meta, even with ´+1 to cast there are so many armies that can easily shut it down. I think endless are decent with Epitome but I've had big trouble getting them off properly. 10 drop means you usually go first though, and Geminids can do some turn 1 DP generation so worth trying out at least. Seekers cavalcade is strong and contains our best units right now, opens up a lot of abusive 2.9" play which can turn your units into absolute tanks in melee. If you take out the +CP and switch something else out you could put your 4 seeker units in the battalion.

No, in the Syll host it says that you get extra points for wounds inflicted by the keeper but thats not how DP works now. Its not the heroes that gives you the DP but the wounded unit. RAW you should still get extra DP from wounds taken though. Syll host is in the warscroll builder so clearly its still legal. It's going to be interesting to see if its addressed in the FAQ. This seems unlikely but if Syllesske host gets FAQ'd to work completely with the new rules, as in all units that generate DPs within 12" gives you 2 DP instead, then that will certainly give the army a potential shot in the arm in terms of power level since it has basically the best DP and CP generation of all hosts. Syll host seems like a perfect opportunity to bridge the gap between daemons and mortals. Still isn't gonna help against shooting though.

"Twice" doesn't mean much when you compare them to a low dmg unit. 10 Painbringers deal 10 wounds to 4+ save, which is 4-6 more than pillow fisted shield warriors (depending on how many you get into combat). I'd say 4-6 wounds is a "bit" of damage. That's why you take warriors of you want an anvil and something else entirely if you want a hammer (twinsouls, slickblades, daemonettes).

Short answer: Yes Still pretty short answer: Painbringers gain a bit of damage from -1 rend, MW procs and exploding attacks while losing MW protection. Chaos warriors might be a bit pillow fisted but they both Painbringers and Warriors fill the role of an anvil, and Warriors are a much tougher anvil (MW protection and 10 extra wounds). You also pay 30 pts more for the Painbringers so its more like 17 warriors vs 10 painbringers.

They're good in the right match up and has good synergy with Glutos but I strongly disagree that they're auto-pick. If he played double crawlers with Katakros, a very common set up, he would've plinked them off the board on turn 2 (they put 15 wounds per turn into them on avarage with Kata buffs, 11 without). They're also vulnerable to mortal procs on hit from stuff like Hearthguard zerkers or Lumineth Wardens. I guess you could argue that we will struggle against shooting regardless so might as well lean heavily into our more favored match ups. Yeah I've seen lists from some people who knows the game well who has used 1-2 blocks of 15 warriors. Really don't want to play with S2D units but with Painbringers being horrendously over costed this seems to be the way to go if we want an anvil. Yeah this has been my experience too. I think you need to either go all in on keepers (at least 3 together with other heroes in Sybarites) like in the last book or just take the 1. Two without battalion is too CP intensive and as you said we need it for battleshock. The double casting is kind of useless a lot of the time as there are so many super casters like Nagash, Kroak, Teclis, Lord of Change etc. that just shuts it down. Most spells are also situational and have fairly high casting values. Like I wrote above, unless you go all in on them they feel more like a support character for double pile ins and Locus and doing some damage is just bonus. I feel like OBR is going to be a rough match up. Shooting and Locus is going to play a big role to win. Like lock up the big block with locus in some awkward position and then shoot the smaller ones to pieces while winning on objectives.

Played another game today, this time against DoT. My list was: He played a kinda of typical changehost but some off meta picks (Guild of summoners sub and only 6 flamers, Thaumaturge with double pile in artifact). The game ended with a 25- 23 win for Tzeentch but it came down to a priority roll off where we both rolled a one (he had already double turned earlier). The game was crazy close and I was 2 brimstone horrors away from clutching it out to a 25-26 win. Keepers no longer getting to use their CA on themselves is such a giant difference, they feel more like a support unit now than a hard carry. I could've won the game if I didn't make a blunder and summon 30 daemonettes on one objective that I ended up taking without them instead of summoning them where they would make a difference (hind sight is 20-20 and all that). The match up feels very winnable and I had a much better board at the end of the game. I'm starting to warm up to Glutos. He didn't really earn his points this time either and a 2nd keeper would've been far more useful but unlike a keeper he sticks around. He provides something that we don't otherwise have; a resilient summoning base. Everything else performed well. Archers always does something and even if they die to a sneeze I much rather have opponents targeting them than slickblades/keepers. Iron golems confirms their value again. I was questioning if 2x5 warriors aren't better since they have similar stats and would fill up 2/3 battleline but the extra bodies makes a big difference (and so does the rerolls on the save). Might try out switching iron golems for warriors and archers for blissbarb seekers. All in all it was easily one of the best games of warhammer I've had, despite being against DoT which are kind of a drag. I'm convinced this book has some serious teeth by now, but the more I play it the less I care about how strong it is and the more I'm impressed by how much I like playing it.

I had another game against a competitive FS list on total commitment. My list was: Made some early mistakes and lost the general turn 1 to double magmadroths flaming away my screen and making a long charge. He rolled hot and put 5 wounds from the javelin into him and I ended up losing my last wound to the mortal bounce back from my own last attack. Counter attack from fiends and archers took them down. Glutos and fiends then swept the left flank while his lord of the lodge block of HGB got blocked up by iron golems and Glutos spell. Game ended when I could summon in 20 daemonettes on his back objective so we ended the game at turn 4 with the score being 17 vs 5. Here's my impressions of unit performance: Glutos: Fiends: Mirror: Iron golem: Playing against DoT tomorrow. Gonna try out Slickblades in Cavalcade, see how they fare.

No, if the text is in bold its a key word (in Sybarites you have Slaanesh Heroes in bold so anything with those 2 key words fit the battalion), but if its not then its referring to an actual warscroll which in this case is normal Seeker Chariots.

The spell description says "bravery characteristic" so I think it goes against the modified version, since modifiers generally say "add/subtract x from the [trait] characteristic..." Yup, banners increases the characteristic so they apply here, same with the Phantasmagoria spell. Spells that ignore those have the wording "unmodified" in them (like the special ammo from Mortek Crawlers). +1 bravery per 10 models doesn't apply because you only get that bonus in the battleshock phase when taking shock tests.