Golub87

I use Splintered Fang and The Unmade as marauders. Just place them all on 25mm bases and you are good to go. It's not like those great models will ever see play as their original warscrolls.

We sure can. That said, Lurid Haze is the only one that is worthwhile IMHO.

I think that this is going to be our main foil. So, how do we live in our current shooting meta? Tips, tricks, tactics, unexpected use of units... All is welcome. I'll start by saying that it seems to me that the common Seeker unit will be a good addition in any list that hopes to go against shooting. Unit that fast will force the opponent to make a choice - shoot at them or shoot at a more valuable unit, loosing those crucial early shooting turns or risking that the seekers will then tie up their shooty units in melee. It is by no means a perfect (or even all that good counter) but it seems like it could work.

We might want to start making specialized topics given that we have a shiny new subforum for our shiny new battletome.

So the game is over. We played 2000 pts Total Conquest and the opponent surrendered when I won the priority in the 4th turn. Lists in spoiler Game flow So, I have to say, this tome is incredibly exciting and I feel like I am actually playing an army. Not a single unit in the list disappointed (even the humble seekers did their thing and had a role). Debuffs are very strong and make our units resilient and Fiends almost unkillable in melee. I lost one fiend due to 3 MW from geminid that was swung back at me and 1 wound that somehow got trough from all those attacks from general and knights over the course of several turns. Glutos is a beast and is worth every point. His spell is game changing and his debuff aura is oh so good. I forgot that he has a RR to charges and I forgot to activate his 5++. That said the opponent never targeted him, citing that he is too defensive and that he will try to focus on other units. Shardspeaker is also a nice little support caster. Slickblades are fantastic! They are deceptively tough and killy. Regular Seekers are scary fast, 14" move + 2d6 run (rr if within 12" of general) + run and charge mean that they can pretty much get anywhere T1. They are a nuisance for the opponent who has to choose between dealing with them or focusing on more dangerous things in front. Speaking of nuisance for the opponent, Marauders are awesome now! Not nearly as killy as they were before, now they show up and wreck things, if the opponent lets them. Of course, it is still 20 wounds so any resources directed towards them are not spent on dealing with other things. It is weird, the only change was that they lost Euphoric Killers and that actually made them better. I guess because you do not sink 320 into 40 models that can make some dmg but that will get priority from the enemy to be killed and then they just melt due to low bravery. They are actually far more useful now, given that they are still as mobile as ever, easy to slip in the backlines with Lurid Haze and yet it is hard for the enemy to justify targeting them as they are just not as dangerous as the other stuff. Without keepers, army is also not nearly as CP hungry as it used to be. I spent 1 CP total to RR charge for Fiends. Aside from being very excited over the new book, I am also very scared to go against a ranged army. Soulscream Bridge Irondrakes and KO seem like very tough opponents. Those kinds of matchups will be the hardest methinks.

Yeah, that is pretty much how I will run it.

Yeah, I am a bit suspicious of deathstars too. Ranged armies are the biggest of my worries atm as I do not see an effective way to fight them. I have been thinking about plain old Seekers to be honest. They do not have impressive attacks, but they have greater threat range than most shooters (14" move + 2d6 run + RR charge). They will not kill much and will die, but they can tie up a shooting unit for a turn or two until we get other pieces in position to threaten them. KoS is good, but as you said I would rather have board presence and summon in. Plus, I have seen enough KoS on the table, I can do without for a while Marauders are fine with me, so are CW. I will be playing a very casual test game vs CoS demigriff list tomorrow morning. I will definitely go as a Lurid Haze host. Outflank target likely being the Marauders. So far I am pretty set on my first 1600 pts Glutos 400 Shardspeaker (General, Artifact) 150 6 Fiends 360 5 Seekers 150 11 Blisbarb Archers 160 11 Blisbarb Archers 160 20 Marauders 160 Geminids of Uyi-Gish 60 Remaining 400 could either be: The Masque 130 Syll'eske 200 Umbral Spellportal 70 or 5 Slickblade Seekers 200 5 Slickblade Seekers 200 I'll see if I can post the results and impressions once the game is over.

I am thinking about trying out a list build around Glutos and Fiends. What is everyone's opinion on that combination? Is 6 Fiends enough or should I aim for 9? Shardspeaker and Geminids look good in combination with them as well. Glutos, Speaker, 6 Fiends and Geminids come out to 1070pts. How would you round out that list? How would you play it?

Honestly I still see Sybarites as one of the best if not the best battalion. We will not be going full herohammer, but I still think that lists will be 3+ heroes. They will just eat up less points. What other battalion comes close to affordability and utility?

I am curious about this. How do you envision matchup vs LRL with Glutus and what makes him so good in it?

So I have been thinking about the Blissbarbs and I really can't seem to justify taking Archers over Seekers. Seekers are 180 pts vs Archer's 160 pts. But for that 20 point difference you get almost double the wounds on a much faster unit. Offensive output of Archers seems to be greater, with 20 attacks and 3+ to wound, but Seekers lose attacks much slower as they take wounds and have MW on 6s. They will last longer and get into range easier thus probably get more shots over the course of the game. I do not think that more bodies on Archers will matter for objective holding in most cases. Am I missing something? Other than that, Glutus, Fiends and Shardspeeker seem to be a brutal debuff combination. Daemons overall look better than ever, I really dig the changes to Locus and Depravity Generation. Contorted Epitome, KoS, BB on EC, Daemonettes... all looking great, especially when summoned in. Hell, even Infernal Enrapturess seems cute with her shooting attack, plinking something long range for that DP. Twinsouls seem fine for someone else's meta. I routinely face coalesced Seraphon so they are quite useless there and my local group is really heavy with good saves. Painbringers... not sure about those yet. They seem overcosted for what they do. I'd rather have 10 CWs but I might change my mind. Slaangors are the saddest beautiful models that will never see play except as a meme. Maybe not even then. Sigvald is odd and I would love to use the dude, just have no idea how. He is fragile yet he does not do anything aside from hitting stuff up close. What will his average of 7 attacks do against 20 HGBs? He will kill some and then die, not even getting back a fraction of his pts. Marauders will not be the offensive powerhouse they once were, they will stay OK, but will be of better use as screen than can bite a bit. I am incredibly and overwhelmingly fine with that. It is what they should have been all along. LoP seems good, but then I compare him to StD equivalents like Shrine and Sorc and it just does not seem to be worth it. Maybe with Glutus or Sigvald? Going with Glutus seems deathstarish and with Sigi just seems like doubling down on something that is not really good to begin with. Slickblades just seem to be too fast for LoP to be useful. I find it hard to find a use for the guy. Slickblades seem OK. They have not impressed me, but I am optimistic. ES seem good for depravity generation. Especialy Geminids in combination with the debuff train. All that said I see a few problems: We do not really have good casters, no way to get even +1 to casting rolls. Teclis and Kroak just shut down our magic phase hard. Vs magic heavy armies we will lose the whole phase of the game. Our shooting is not good enough to trade with dedicated shooting armies and we are not resilient enough to stand up to them. We are slightly less vulnerable due to not having an over-reliance on heroes as much, but we will still be a low wounds army due to the way everything seems to be over-costed. And this time, if they shoot our Keeper off the board in a turn (easily doable), we do not get ANY DP instead of being third of the way to the next one. So against shooting heavy armies we stand to be picked apart. This translates to KO, Tzeench, Seraphon and Lumineth continuing to wipe the floor with us easily. So no change there, but at least we get to lose against those with more diverse lists and we get to actually play the tome at every stage, starting from list building, instead of the tome playing us. Those are the armies that need to be taken down a notch anyway. So overall, I find this good. And I also expect the points to go down for a lot of units.

The introduction of specific type of excess that is not sex bodes well for the future of Slaanesh. Happy New Year to everyone indeed!

This happens frequently with all types of media. All the time someone will tell me that the movie X is bad. When asked to elaborate, they reach for inconsequential stuff like "plot holes" and "this character did this and that was dumb" or "everyone was boring" etc. Thing is, those people are right, most of the time, they just do not have an in depth understanding of cinematography to express themselves correctly. They are not going to say that movie did not engage them because of the too static shots, bad use of camera angles, bad pacing of the script, poor usage of music in key moments... They will just grab the surface level things that they can recognize. Art is all about evoking a certain reaction and feeling in the audience and using various tricks to get that across. This goes for literature as well. You do not want to repeat sentences of the same length because that will sound monotonous. You want to use the right words to describe things to evoke certain emotion. You need, pacing, contrast... Those are the things that will draw the reader to the next page, not plot details. All that said, I find AoS lore to be exceptionally poor. It makes me want to engage with the world less, not more. I love the models and painting. Hobby side is fantastic for me. Game is, eh OK, good excuse to roll some dice with friends. The background lore is just... incredibly bad. The only emotion it conveys to me is embarrassment. I feel insulted reading it. Any reminder that Mortal Realms exist make me want to paint and play less, not more. The Old World had a very sardonic quality to it. The contrast between the high fantasy of Tolkien and the grim setting of the 30 year war. It was funny and witty and the writing was not half bad (notably because the writers had freedom to pull the dial back from 11). The elements of AoS lore were clearly set in line with 40k which was more successful and popular than fantasy. Similar to movie industry, panicking in post production and cutting up a product that you have to conform with current trends tends to have bad outcomes. 40k has the Emprah, so you need a figure like that. Let's retcon Sigmar the God who was formed in the realm of chaos from all the need for protection by the citizens of the empire into actually being Sigmar the Dude that is most notable by being really good at smashing Orcs with a hammer. They are one and the same now. He also has his own elite dudes in heavy armor because every Emprah needs his Spess Muhreens. Also, like in 40k, no one is really good here, but some are clearly very very bad, so better be working for our bootleg Odin. He might be bad but he is the best we have and his mighty warriors coming from vaguely-nordic-sounding places will protect you from evil sexual deviants and people who hate law&order. I do not want to go into the impact certain subsections of miss-aimed 40k fandom had on some corners of the web. I also do not think in any way that it was GW's intent, but at this point they are very much "Unfortunate Implications: The Game Company". To be fair, they have been very slowly moving away from that and I am really eager to see what will they do with the new Hedonites. Aside from clear import of 40k elements into fantasy, AoS has problems all of its own. The themes and the mood are reminiscent of 80's and 90's power metal comics. Classical myths re-imagined for the xtreme and radical metal teens and it is not a flattering look, especially given that it is played with 100% straight face. Everything is the biggest, baddest, strongest, most awesomest thing ever! If everyone who has any agency is larger than life then there is not much life to talk about now, is there? Human life is just a grain of sand on the boot of Sigmar. And if there is no life than what is the point of the story? 40k with all its faults, at least embraces the way the setting overshadows the individuals as one of its central themes and that connects back to the individual. AoS has no such connection. Even the Greek myths and Nordic sagas that AoS supposedly emulates (lol no) had surprisingly down to earth problems and plots like infidelity, grief, estrangement from family, infidelity, friendship, envy, infidelity, loss and many others. Big monsters and wars were mostly a backdrop for this. Art is only as relevant as it relates to human life. Mortal Realms presumably have plenty of dung collectors and rat catchers, but it is not about them. When you have this art direction that everything has to be as bombastic as possible it drowns out the human experience. This need for metal epicness also produces some of the most silly literary moments I have ever seen. Opening narration of Soulbound is especially bad in this regard with so much cringe packed into each paragraph. What really takes the cake as the most embarrassing thing committed to paper is the word "Necroquake". It is just amazing how bad writing can be pulled off in a single word, I genuinely did not think it possible. Shout out to Flesh Eater Courts who are one of the most amazing things to come out of GW. They are hurt a little bit by the mythic scope of the setting. More details on personalities and courts involved would do wonders for them, but they are great. That good old dry humor that works on multiple levels. And with that to circle back to Old World (because that is what the topic is about and I did not just totally realized that I wrote a damn essay about something else entirely) - I am not thrilled that the old world is happening. I was hoping for a more fleshed out Mortal Realms, a change of tone to something less ridiculous and a change of protagonists from boring entities like Sigmar and Morathi and those types to people who are actually relatable in some way. My fear is that the Old World will not be a success and that it will prompt GW to drop the idea of down to earth witty settings and just continue to roll with... this...

Oh sure, we can only comment on what it seems that we are getting. Right now, it seems that Slaanesh is getting all kinds of tools. We shall see what those tools are made of. Any one of those new units (or old ones for that matter) can be broken good or broken unusable. At the end of the day, to me at least, the most important thing is if the army is fun to play and fun to play against. I find that in the last battletome GW terribly missed the mark on both of those so right now I am torn between being elated at the new book and fearful of its contents. 😅

We joke around, but it seems that Slaanesh is getting the tools to play in every phase of the game. The army had about average magic phase with good spells and lots of casters, but none of them exceptional. Quite fast but no TP shenanigans. Good in melee but not very durable. Now we are getting shooting (with hints of MW) and durability in the form of heavy infantry, as well as some new centerpiece models that will likely give out buffs. I do not think we will see changes that will put our magic phase on par with Seraphon or Lumineth or Tzeentch. We will also probably not get the mobility or shooting on par with Kharadron. These are quite safe assumptions. That said, I am concerned that a Slaanesh list will be able to include all these elements quite cheaply in the army, without making any tradeoffs. This is the current state with Serpahon and it is quite frustrating to play against. I hope that I will get a well rounded army that will have a plethora of options, as long as they remain just that - OPTIONS. Meaning good internal balance where different builds are all valid (unlike current Herohammer state of Slaanesh battletome) and good external balance where I am not feeling that I can include all the tools I need to counter any kind of army I come up against (looking at you Seraphon). Overall I am quite fearful that GW will mess it up, but on the other hand I feel like there is no way the book can be worse than what we currently have. And they are putting it out so fast after the last one, they have to be aware of the issues with it right? Right?

That's not how you spell Maertyeal

This is 40k Inquisition. The "I" at the bottom of the holster gives it away.

Well, yeah, it is a balancing act, but I kinda like it. Is the enemy unit a huge treat? Sure skip on the fun and take it out ASAP. That enemy screen unit that is not as dangerous? Leave it to the kids to play. Who knows, they might even try to defend themselves and make it even more fun.

At the end of each phase, add 1 depravity point for each enemy unit that took damage from any SLAANESH units but is not destroyed and add 1 depravity point for each SLAANESH unit that took damage but is not destroyed. This would open up all of our units to be playable, while simultaneously reducing the paperwork needed to tally up DPs.

So, here is a bit of a tricky question from a complete Tzeench noob. My local group is organizing a campaign and I have decided to give EC Tzeench a go (mainly because my current Slaanesh army is not capable of scratching the lizards). While I have a solid grasp of how 2000 pts Tzeench army would function, the issue is that the campaign is slowly winding up, we are starting at 600 and going up in 200-400 point increments. My concern here is that I will miss something critical along the way and get a non functional army at some point stages. Starting with a Lord of Change and 10 Pinks seems to be a no brainer for first 600, and then adding a blue scribe as soon as I have the points, but where do I go from there? Do I expand Horrors? Add another unit of 10? Splash into flamers? Add another caster hero? As far as the requirements are concerned I need another battleline at 1000 and third one after 1500. It is an intricate army, and I am concerned that I will miss something. My main target is Kroak with most likely a contingent of buffed coalesced Saurus Warriors and Guard. I have a feeling that Arcanite army would be easier to grow, but it is obviously less powerful than daemon one and I really really want Kroak dead this time around. As we are playing TTS, models are not a concern. Thank you all in advance

The problem I have is that Kroak is surrounded with three bricks of 40 Saurus Warriors and support heroes. Now normally, we do have solutions for this in the form of anti-horde spells, Hysterical Frenzy and Wind of Chaos, but Korak just cancels my magic phase. And blocks of Saurus are just impossible to fight in melee as they have 4 attacks each, MW on 6s to hit, and scaly skin for 30-40% damage reduction over my entire army. That is why I feel so defeated to be honest, I am up against a list that is not even optimal for their faction, and the opponent does not even have to get his unique anti-demon stuff to go off, I still die miserably. It is a puzzle I have been trying to crack for months now and it seems to me that it is uncrackable with our book. He has enough bodies for screening and objectives so maneuvering does not help. He wins any melee war of attrition. Magic phase is canceled. There is no shooting to speak of that can hit the support pieces. I tried Be'Lakor, but he simply shuts down Kroak casting, he did not mitigate Saurus meatgrinders and he did not restore my magic phase, so I find him not worth it the points. And this is not even the optimal Seraphon list with teleporting murderskinks 😄

You just made an enemy for life.

Yeah, you COULD play the less competitive list, but I find it that even with ultra-competitive list building, I just get wiped by Kroak and Co. I'll probably take a break from playing HoS till new rules and units show up. Current meta is just far too oppressive for me.

I certainly hope so, at the moment I feel like we are very railroaded into a single type of list (herohammer)

Yeah, what they posted now seems to be a bit of a rush job, I do not think this was planned. Still gotta give it to them, they are quite fast on the draw.