Jaskier

@Inquisitorsz Agreed about Archaon, I tried using him in Syll'Esskan Host just after the new Slaves book dropped and was really surprised at just how strong they made him, especially with the addition of the Hedonite keyword. Also 100% spot on regarding the spells, on first read-through of the book that no-movement spell literally made my jaw drop. That among all the other tools the book has make me seriously question anyone who says it's a weak battletome, it seems like the hold-up for some is putting them all to good use and prioritizing which ones to include. I really think Varanguard should have been able to choose an extra circle with that battalion, it was such a no-brainer addition but as it stands I just can't see paying that many points for versatility being worth it. @Death1942 Seems like I misremembered some details after all 😁 no Daemonic Power in the list, but honestly the Warshrine buff and Aura for +1 Damage on 6s to-wound kind of render that moot. I can't comment on the Chosen other than they're filling up the Plaguetouched, though even 5 of them buffed up are a fairly scary unit in their own right and another method of unlocking re-roll wound rolls for his army.

Mr Slaves to Darkness himself went 5-1 at Cancon with a Slaves to Darkness allegiance Plaguetouched list in Despoilers, and his only loss came to the nastiest Fyreslayers list at the event which took 3rd place. This is all my based off my recollection from chatting to him so I apologize if I get anything wrong, but he's incredibly pleased with the book and definitely proved how strong they can be. Plenty of others were also impressed with the book in general and believe it's being under-estimated because it requires a lot of planning just in the list development stage alone (the Mark system and all the various synergies they unlock.) Off the top of my head his list included Be'lakor (not in the battalion), a Nurgle Daemon Prince with the Sword of Judgement, 1x40 Marauders and 1x20 Marauders (possibly 2x20), a Sorcerer Lord, a Warshrine and plenty of other goodies. He was using his super low drops to usually take first turn, then buffing up his big Marauder blob with Daemonic Power/Oracular Visions/Bloated Blessings/etc, teleporting them and then getting them stuck in immediately thanks to their near guaranteed 9" charge. Despite the nerf to it which was in play at Cancon, the combination of Bloated Blessings and Plaguetouched meant that his deathball would not only mince you with their attacks, you'd get minced for attacking them too (those mortal wounds add up). Be'lakor would use his Dark master ability on the scariest or most important enemy unit and, thanks to it lasting until his next hero phase, it forced the opponent to have to pick between taking a double turn and having a high chance of their best unit being rendered useless for two turns straight, or giving up the double turn completely to a list that could absolutely punish you for it. His Daemon Prince with the built in +1 to-hit absolutely tore things up with the Sword of Judgement, and in general I'm sure being Despoilers helped a lot with being able to make sight-blocking terrain on the fly. Based on my own reading of the book - disregarding results - is that Be'lakor, Daemon Princes, Sorcerer Lords (of either flavour), Chaos Lords (of the foot and Karkadrak variety), Warshrines, Marauders and Sphiranxes at minimum are all incredibly strong units that complement each other. The thing about Slaves to Darkness compared to other books is that it's hugely synergy-based, which is why it might seem like nothing stands out on their own - it's because you're supposed to build your list around the idea of each unit complementing each other and having a specific role. The above list did that in spades, and the results speak for themselves.

I'd say it definitely is, especially if you run the 5++ bubble command trait either on it or another nearby hero. Corruptors are already amazing assassins with the Sword of Judgement, and this relic is arguably better because it isn't affected by negative to-hit modifiers (and from memory, there's no good/easy way to combine +1 to-hit with the SoJ on a Corruptor?) It's also extremely tough with the double 5++ (I can't be bothered doing the maths but I think you ignore something like nearly 50% of all damage taken!) if you aren't running Be'lakors sub-faction. I'm looking at trying three/four Verminlords, the Changeling, the Masque (you need god-marked heroes to summon daemons in this allegiance) and a mix of Horrors and Daemonettes as a side project. This allegiance is amazing specifically because it gives people like me an excuse to collect cool models tied to armies I otherwise can't afford or don't want to play, and I adore the Verminlord models.

You can take others after you've taken that one. Treat the forced artefact/command trait as a "tax" to unlock the special abilities of the sub-faction, but after that you're free to do what you wish. My major concern with that Invaders sub-host is that you lose out on part of the command point farm (Glory Hog) and your artefact slots are generally highly valuable, so being forced to waste one on +1 wound is a hard pill to swallow because you probably should also be taking the Rod of Misrule as your second. I do like the ability and command ability, though, especially the synergy both have with Marauders. If you can manage to ambush them alongside a Sorcerer Lord, you can give them re-roll saves as well and suddenly your scary ambushing blob is also extremely difficult to kill, especially if you manage to cast Daemonic Power on them too. It seems purpose designed with Slaves and their re-roll saves abilities in mind, but it also really helps out things like Shalaxi (2+ re-rollable save when fighting heroes!), 6-strong Fiends, Archaon, etc. The ambush also helps you protect vulnerable units/characters from alpha strikes which is going to be critical as Tzeentch/Kharadrons become more popular. I'll certainly give the list a spin but I see it forcing you to build around it; I don't think a typical three Keeper Invaders list gets much out of it, for instance.

I ran Daemonsteel Contingent at Cancon (I spoilered my list below for those who are curious), and didn't have too much experience with it prior to the tournament (only 3 games, and none of them were against meta lists) but I managed to go 4-2 with my two losses both being super close. Every opponent I've faced with them agreed that Daemonsteel Soul Grinders are super strong for their points, and my personal reflection is that being in Syll'Esskan Host means if you can get the rest of your list right then you aren't too worried about the 'Grinders not generating depravity points. 740 points total for 3 big monsters who literally tick all but one box (no depravity generation) - they're fast, good shooting, good range (forces people into bad situations/mistakes), good melee, don't degrade too harshly, super tough, big base for blocking/forcing people to go into them for objective capturing - is an absolute steal. They don't get much love buff-wise from anything in particular (i.e. there's no way to make them double pile-in), but I found that Acquiescence/Overwhelming Acquiescence were useful to give them re-roll 1s to-hit for both shooting and melee, and Syll'Esske pairs well with them for the re-roll 1s to-hit bubble in melee specifically if I failed to cast either form of Acquiescence. Despite how reliable their attacks are (I went Daemonbone Talon for the guaranteed 4 attacks at 2+ to-hit over the Warpmetal Blade) with everything hitting on 3+ at worst, I found they can actually be quite swingy - particularly with the single attack shooting weapon and melee weapon. In one game, my Grinders kept rolling 6s to-hit on the big metal claw and doing D6 mortal wounds plus a regular hit (yay bonus hits for Slaanesh!) which helped win me the game against a strong Thunderquake list; without those 6s on the claw, I very likely wouldn't have killed my opponents' Ethereal Engine of the Gods and lost the game on points in Three Places of Power. In another game, I failed something crazy like 9/12 shots with the Phlegm Bombardment simply by fluffing the hit roll without any modifiers involved; when those shots hit, they really bloody count at -2 Rend and 3 Damage a pop, so missing so many of them really hurt. Overall though they are very self-sufficient and if you roll average to well you'll absolutely be pumping out wounds with them. The only real concern I have with running them is that there's no way to heal them outside of running an Endless Lifeswarm (they don't benefit from either Slaanesh healing spell) so you do have to be mindful of how you use them; they are cheap and should very much be treated as sacrificial for the purposes of keeping your characters alive so you can keep the summon-chain going, but losing one still hurts. I would also say I'm certain the list I ran is not the strongest list to run Daemonsteel Contingent in, but I was working with what I had (I have most of the Daemon options but not so much the mortal) and also aiming for the +D3 command points for the even daemon/mortal split. If I wanted to improve it, I think I'd either drop a Soul Grinder and try and fit another Keeper in, or forgo Keepers entirely and focus on other heroes like the Sorcerer Lord on Manticore. Even alone, that one Keeper with the Cloak was an absolute terror in every game, but difficult to say if I can really afford to run it alongside three Soul Grinders and all the other stuff one needs for Syll'Esskan Host summoning shenanigans.

No, it just means it comes out of your ally points. You don't normally see allied battalions because most battalions don't fit in the standard ally limits (whether too many points or too many units).

Has anyone else noticed how messy our summoning values are? The Fateskimmer (24 fate points) costs literally doubling the fate points of a Fluxmaster (12 points) despite being separated by 10 regular points to include in your army list, like....what!? Even weirder, the Fluxmaster and Changecaster have the same fate points values, despite the disparity between their actual points being bigger than between the Fateskimmer and Fluxmaster! Only just noticed this as I'm building a Fateskimmer now and was trying to figure out if it was a decent option for a list.

I do like the sound of Verminlords with a double 5++ 😁

I've settled on something along these lines, it's intended to be a balanced list heavily favouring the ambush aspect of Living City (1460 points of the army are in reserve!), and it has a strictly aelven theme (gonna be doing some converting!); Living City - 2000 Points Dreadlord on Black Dragon - General, Ironoak Artisan, Lance of Spite and Repeater Crossbow, Spear of the Hunt - 300 Celestial Hurricanum - Ironoak Skin - 280 Sorceress - Cage of Thorns - 90 10x Darkshards - 100 10x Darkshards - 100 10x Darkshards - 100 3x Scourgerunner Chariots - 150 20x Sisters of the Watch - 320 10x Sisters of the Watch - 160 4x Desolators - 400 A few things to note; I know Handgunners would be a better fit for this army than Darkshards if only for the Long Rifles and sniping characters out from afar, but converting aelven Handgunners just sounds like a royal pain, and I'd dearly love to have 40 Sisters of the Watch but there isn't a good way to do it and not compromise my ambush/non-ambush ratio. I feel like having two solid melee threats is ideal for this type of list to win a flank and take objectives, and 30 Sisters of the Watch with a Hurricanum will still mince most things they point at (I have to compromise a lot to get the extra 10 Sisters in there if I want to go heavy shooting, I thought about dropping the Desolators and going all-shooting but that doesn't seem like a competitive build.) Idea is to stick the Dreadlord, Hurricanum, both Sisters of the Watch units and Desolators in ambush for turn two/three alpha strike, with the Sisters paired with the Hurricanum to shoot stuff and the Dreadlord paired with the Desolators for shoot-move-charge shenanigans. Darkshards, Scourgerunners and Sorceress hold the field and get me early objective points. As far as specific unit choices are concerned, the Dreadlord seems the perfect fit for the ambush-shoot-move-charge tactic (I looked at the Drakesworn Templar as well, but decided the Dreadlord was way more efficient) and the Hurricanum just seems like a must in general for buffing shooting; in comparison, the Nomad Prince requires valuable CP, doesn't do tonnes of mortal wounds and only buffs Sisters. Sisters of the Watch are just phenomenal, especially with the stand and shoot - I split them into two units so my opponent has to do likewise to deal with them all (too many ways to just obliterate a single big unit easily.) Darkshards are solid little defensive units and perfect for holding my backfield objectives, and of all the options to combo with a Dreadlord that I looked at (including 20 Dark Riders!) the Desolators ended up being the best overall fit - I can see why other lists use them after doing some comparisons. The Sorceress is a fun little support hero, and I always feel having a minimum 3 heroes is mandatory when the hero-oriented battleplans are in play. I had 150 points spare after all that and it just seemed like there was no better way to spend them than on 3 Scourgerunners; it's crazy how efficient those things are! Interested to hear your thoughts!

The sad thing about collecting Genestealer Cults is that the individual models aren't the worst in terms of pricing, but the super low points costs of everything means you need absurd numbers of them. Such a cool army with an insanely high price of entry I'm hoping the Lumineth strike a good balance between elite and good prices; after Bonereapers, my expectations are actually pretty high that they won't break the bank.

Seems almost a guarantee we'll get an Archer unit, but I'm really curious about what else they'll bring to the table. Did I read correctly that even the basic infantry are units of wizards? I'd love a more martial-oriented spin on an all-caster army as a counter-point to Tzeentch, something that fits thematically alongside the Sacrosanct chamber, perhaps?

There are points for the battalions; all of it is very much Matched Play legal. In fact, it seems like it's intended as a 'stealth' update for the Maggotkin battletome, what with four distinct sub-allegiances. I haven't seen much on it but generally there's no "here's some free extra rules with no tax" ala 40K, the Slaanesh stuff forces you into mandatory command traits/artefacts as tax for the extra abilities, for example. Definitely a well done supplement in my opinion.

Horrors are easily the best summon overall, and Tzeentch Heroes are for the most part absolutely fantastic right now, so definitely seems a no-brainer to have one or two of those in there for that reason alone.

My hold-up is that Slaves to Darkness units themselves aren't explicitly part of the Khorne/Nurgle/Slaanesh/Tzeentch battletomes, but you can run their units in those books as part of that army without being counted as allies (the same way it works for marked Beastmen) as long as the units have the appropriate Mark of Chaos. Are those books the exception rather than the norm? I just checked the rules on allegiances for clarity and it is keyword based, so the Gaunt Summoner on foot should absolutely be usable in Slaves to Darkness allegiance without needing to count as an ally, unless I'm missing something that makes the god-marked books distinct in this area? I'm 99% sure I've got it right, I just find it weird that Warscroll Builder doesn't accommodate this when it works the other way for the Tzeentch/Slaanesh/etc books. Just means manually inserting extra info into the notes section, no big bother! Thanks for the answer! As far as Soul Grinders are concerned, I will say this; I can say from personal experience that they are fantastic in the Daemonsteel Contingent, but sadly that's a Slaanesh-exclusive battalion. Outside of it, they seem like they're good all-rounders, and definitely combo well with the Despoilers traits.

Quick question; the Gaunt Summoner on foot (in the Tzeentch book) has the exact same keywords as the Gaunt Summoner on Disc, including the Slaves to Darkness keyword. In much the same way as running Tzeentch-marked Chaos Warriors/Knights/etc in a Tzeentch allegiance army, surely I can run the Gaunt Summoner on foot in a Slaves to Darkness allegiance army, right? I only ask because Warscroll Builder defaults to treating him as an ally (which I can change thankfully) and it prevents me from selecting him as a General, or to receive artefacts/spells/command traits/etc.

Tossing up between Living City and Tempest's Eye for a shooting-based aelf-themed army, but leaning towards Living City for the shenanigans and general reliance on skill over dice. Tempest's Eye seems more like a blunt, dumb instrument oriented around getting the Soulscream Bridge off (and I hate relying on spells, especially with Tzeentch and Nagash hanging around) or chaffing really well whereas Living City at least can't be 'denied' other than by good positioning from your opponent. I'm wanting to run strictly elf units, and want one-two melee threats to ambush (the Dreadlord on Black Dragon is an obvious one, I'm leaning towards Drycha for the second as I already have a Sylvaneth army, or another flying unit to move/charge over chaff walls) and ideally two twenty-strong blocks of Sisters of the Watch as well. Thinking Darkshards for battleline/'feet on the ground' to allow other units to ambush (I know Handgunners with a Long Rifle are better for this role, but don't know how I'd convert elven ones), a Hurricanum and some other elements to taste. I like the idea of Desolators over a monster like Drycha for ambushing, but the lack of aelf-theme puts the kibosh on those 😅 I'll share some potential lists once I've got a firmer idea of the direction I want to go in; I'm very eager to join the ranks!

It's important to note that it isn't by any means guaranteed - it requires you to roll a 10+ on 3D6, and the only modifier available for it is a +1 to the roll from a command trait. Of course you do have better odds of rolling a 10+ on 3D6 than you do rolling a 9 or lower, but it's definitely not something to rely on. It probably averages out to about three summoned units out of a five turn game. In fairness, that paired with Gaunt Summoners in Be'lakor's legion would probably make a better 'flood the board with Horrors' list then a Multitudinous Host 😅

Not useful for Slaves specifically but as a Slaanesh player I'd definitely look at giving him the Fane buff. Tossing up between him and the Epitome for a SoJ carrier is basically a question of reliability (Prince) versus utility (Epitome). It's so good to see Princes (and Belakor especially) being so strong now regardless of how you run them though. I currently have the genesis of a Slaves army and am looking at running Warrior-heavy Despoilers for something fun and different. It can't be understated how good this book is!

The Sword of Judgement is pretty good on the Daemon Prince actually; the Daemon Prince has an in-built +1 to-hit on the charge, meaning the SoJ triggers for every 5+ to-hit rather than 6+. Pair with the sword for two extra mortals on 6s to-hit and you've got a nasty assassin that always strikes first. Give him re-rolls and he definitely competes with some other strong picks with the SoJ (i.e. a Contorted Epitome) and has the inherent value of striking out of sequence while being pretty darned resilient. Definitely not the best carrier around but I know of at least one Slaves list at Cancon that used him to consistent, fantastic effect. Another point to note is that unlike most of the 'good' SoJ carriers you see, the Daemon Prince flies - it's much harder to screen him out. There's been a lot of games where my SoJ-wielding Epitome hasn't quite been able to get into the heroes I want it to kill when I needed it to, and having no guarantee of striking first (i.e. if I fail a Locus and need to pick another more important unit to fight with first) is a big deal. As for sword versus axe on him, from what I gather the sword is only better if you're running (perhaps fittingly) the SoJ.

In all the madness about Changehost and Horrors in light of the Cancon results, I want to give a special shout-out to Ash McEwan. He placed 5th at the event with a very mixed Arcanite-themed Guild of Summoners list and only had 1 Lord of Change in his summoning pool (his starting list had zero) and only 10 Horrors (summoned from 1 Gaunt Summoner.) If you follow the Australian scene then you'll know this is very much more to do with Ash being a Masters-level player than the list he ran, but it's still inspiring to see an Arcanite/mortal-heavy build do so well in such a competitive field despite the daemonic side being the one that's getting all the attention right now. I've had my own Arcanite army since the first Tzeentch book dropped and it's really helping motivate me to finally get them painted and tournament-ready.

I want more variety of builds from Slaanesh most of all. I want to run a list that isn't hero-heavy that works well in tournament play; I'd love to play 6+ Fiends but currently there's just no good reason to. There's just too much reliance on the Hedonite keyword for the mortal stuff to compete with the daemon stuff unless you go all-in on them, but then it can be argued that just running them in a Slaves allegiance with the Slaanesh auras is the better option. We'll see what WotE holds for us, but I'm not expecting it to massively shake our list-building up (because ultimately, while it's a fun sub-allegiance, Syll'Esskan Host didn't either.)

Wasn't there a battalion in one of those older campaign/big books literally called the Sons of Behemat or something along those lines? EDIT: Yep, found it; it was a battalion consisting of 5 Giants!

They're absolutely terrifying, but they really should be. I'm fine with the buffs they got, and the giant alpha strike range (24" movement + charge!) makes for a very interesting game. They aren't that difficult to kill though, even if you combine the right traits/artefacts (i.e. Ethereal) - you just need to focus them down, but that should be what you do against most monsters anyway.

I wouldn't be surprised at all if the Hysh Aelves have a rule designed to let them more appropriately face Hedonites of Slaanesh - their allegiance rules reflecting/opposing each other (Slaanesh makes you fight last, Hysh Aelves fight first) would be fitting thematically, and would obviously tie them in with the old High Elves. It'd obviously be an interesting mechanic to balance if the entire army has it 'on' permanently, unlike say Idoneth who have it for a single round. I'm not expecting them to have that as a stock allegiance rule purely because it seems like balancing around it would be difficult, but it would be cool. It's a shame we don't appear to be getting Tyrion with this army, but it's great to see Teclis given such a grand build-up given how important he is both in WHFB lore and AOS lore. I'm hoping he's in the Morathi bracket - a very powerful model that doesn't eat up over a quarter of your army and provides something unique and different from what can be brought elsewhere would be ideal. It's a nigh guarantee he's going to be one of the top wizards in the game.

Hey guys, do we know what time the seminar/reveals should happen roughly? I saw a rough time on Warhammer Community (Thursday night USA, Friday very early morning UK) but that's about it. Thanks, super excited!