Golub87

Well, given the scope of the leak, full previews are due any moment now.

That boot looks like a high society 40k imperial one. Inquisitor, officer, noble, rogue trader - something along those lines.

Wow, new Slaanesh models are really great.

Care to share what you made? It seems to me that efficient combat heroes are very hard to make without being quite over-costed.

Has anyone here experimented with Anvil of Apotheosis? I have been looking into it and it seems that a good option for us would be a dirt cheap commander hero with +1 armor save CA and an extra CP at the start of the game. That should be 90pts without any stat upgrades or fancy weapons.

Not really, most Slaanesh stuff works with StD units. You absolutely will be generating DP with all the StD heroes. Mortal spell lore of Slaanesh is bad, quite worse than StD one, so Sorcerer Lord will be of marginally less utility. His warscroll spell is very good, but can only target StD units. You CAN take StD endless spells if you have StD Sorcerer as well as the Slaanesh ones, so that is a nice bonus. The problem with synergies is mostly coming from StD side. StD buffs tend to exclusively target StD units. For example, you will never use CA on Manticore or Karkadrak Lord.

Marauders are a staple in my lists. Combined with Lurid Haze suballegiance outflank ability they can tip the whole game. Chaos Warriors can fulfill the role of a last minute cheap battleline for 90pts. Block of 15 can be very tanky, but I have not found the way to make it work, too expensive and you want as much points as possible in heroes, not troops. Lord on Karkadrak is also quite good. I use him to tie up units with no rend. His good armor and regeneration will make sure he stays alive and his ton of attacks will munch trough the unit. Like the Hero on the Exalted Chariot, he is a good chaff killer, a bit more tanky but less killy. Knights and Chariots are meh... Warshrine is good, but not in Slaanesh lists, as you don't want too many troops to begin with. Both Manticore variants are quite decent, though they do suffer from a bit of "jack of all trades, master of none" - not as good on the defense as Karkadrak, not as good on the offense as the Keeper. Sorcerer on foot is decent, if you have a good StD Hero to buff. Lord on foot is overshadowed by the Keeper who has better fight again command, since the Lord is limited to StD keyword.

Not going to give you a list, but general guidelines: 1. Do battlelines as cheap as possible. My start are 5 Chaos Warriors, but you can upgrade those to 10 Daemonettes if at the end of list building you have throwaway points. Daemonettes can be used as screens better, but are 20 pts more expensive. I fit in at least one block of 20 Marauders as they are best outflankers. 2. Heroes are stars of the show. Keepers of Secrets and Contorted Epitomes are best we have. Hero on Exalted Chariot is great vs chaff. If you are willing to dip into StDs, Manticore and especially Karkadrak are decent options. Some people roll with Archaon. Not my cup of tea, but I can see it. 3. Suballegiance that I find works best for me is Lurid Haze Invaders host from the Wrath of the Everchosen book. You get all the abilities from the regular Invaders Host. The artifact gives +1 wound, I just put it on a Keeper and toss it in the fane turn one for rrs to hit. General trait is... acceptable. Command ability is quite good, giving a unit +1 to save once per combat faze. The ability to outflank with d3 units is immense. I usually do that with Marauders and guarantee a first turn charge with them. They usually cause enough distraction for really killy stuff (like Keepers) to get their charges on turn 2. Sometimes those Marauders even kill support pieces. 4. Battalions and artifacts are mandatory I think. Supreme Sybarites is the best one and the artifact I pick up is the Rod of Misrule. We are CP hungry. Keepers give out double activations. Giving out armor saves, various re-rolls, making sure that charges happen... Very very CP hungry. Battalion and artifact are there to give you those CPs that you need. Also, battalion will make you a 4-drop army, most of the time (all heroes go in it and then you have three battlelines). 5. When it comes to summoning, Daemonettes and Seekers are best. 10 or 20 Daemonettes for that last minute objective grabbing, 5 Seekers a bit earlier (say turn 3), for their unparalleled mobility, allowing you to threaten stuff that is far away. Do not count on summoning Keepers unless you are playing SoBs or some other monster list. In general, focus on heroes, forget about troops, except what you must take. I love the Fiend models, but they just don't cut it. Try to not get bogged down with enemy screens (that is why outflank is so important in my game plans), but to hit key pieces. This will situate you for a much better late game, as you will have more depravity to summon reinforcements to hold the objectives and kill enemy troops. Again, outflanking helps with this, as the opponent will leave some openings that you can exploit.

Even if cultists were battleline, marauders would still outshine them rules-wise. Marauder models, on the other hand, are horrible. That is why I run my beautiful cultist models as marauders. At the end of the day, that is exactly what cultists are - bunch of tribes and groups that are affiliated with one or more chaos gods. I am honestly surprised that the GW went to such lengths to write janky and largely inconsequential rules for each individual cultist group (this model has two wounds! this model has a week ranged attack! this model has a special hat!). It takes all this extra effort in writing all these warscrolls and it just introduces unnecessary complexity in a tiny part of the army without actually giving more options to the player because they are all terrible. I would really like to hear the reasoning behind the design decisions that went into cultist rules. Someone had to have had the idea and someone made the call to approve it. What were they thinking? I am really puzzled...

I would second this. Currently, short of few specific builds (like Varanguard), you are better off just taking your favorite slaves units and running them in your preferred god allegiance. I can run an entire slaves army, Lord on Manticore or Krakadrak, Sorcerer, Knights, Warriors, Marauders, Warshrine, the works... as Hedonites, and while far from optimal Hedonites list, it is much much better than Slaanesh marked StD list.

The way I see it, you got three options: 1. Pickup some Daemons. 10-20 Daemonettes and 5-10 Seekers are always useful to have in your box for that last minute summon to grab the objectives. On the more flashy side, Keeper is an amazing model that is currently very useful. Syll'Eske is a bit more risky pickup, but with hints that we will get a MORTAL/DAEMON battleline I think that we will be seeing some great lists with them. Cons here are that it seems that we are getting a new battletome, meaning that there is a chance (not a big chance, but a chance) that summoning is removed entirely or at least significantly reworked. It is also likely that Daemon portion of the book will be underpowered when compared to mortal one - it is just good business sense on part of GW. 2. Get some mortals - Shadow and Pain box is an option, there you get Lord of Pain and Hellstriders, as well as 10 Daemonnetes to summon and a bonus chariot. But LoP and Striders are a bit underwhelming atm to be honest. Best current targets are marauders. Their sculpts are horrible, however, so I just use Splintered Fang and the Unmade as marauders. Those are some great models and fit well into Slaanesh aesthetic. Risk here is that, while currently great, they may get overshadowed by other mortal options come new book. 3. You could wait until we know more. This is the smartest option probably, but it is no fun.

TBH I love them. They remind me of Bruce Campbell scene in the Escape From LA ❤️

I am definitely getting both DAEMON and MORTAL vibes from him. Same goes for twin souls. This is fairly evident I think. If Syll'Esske host remains focused on balancing it will be much easier to construct with these. Now wild speculation time: I do not think Sigvald will be a caster and while he will be solid in a fight, I think his primary use will be in utility and force multiplying. Similar to Katakros but more front-line. Not sure why I feel that way, but I do. Maybe something along the line of the more models he kills the better buffs he gives to his army?

There is what seems to be five unidentified units in the background of the reveal. Slaangors behind the twin souls and an unidentified model on the cliff to the left of them (base can be seen clearly on the white surface, but the model is cut off at what seems to be third of the way up). Behind the Painbringers there is much more going on - Lord of Pain can be seen to the left, opposite him is an unidentified hero with a staff with circular gold head with blue energy ball inside it. Behind them there seems to be some large model, similar to warshrine. Looks like a gold palanquin on the back of some brutish creature . Then all the way to the right a hand with a bow can be seen. If you cross reference direchasm Slaanesh what we have seen here, you will see that the heavily armed warrior is clearly some sort of Painbringer, we have a Slaangor that matches those in the background of the reveal (but is not the same model) and we have a light infantry archer, along with a spear armed counterpart (indicating a possible dual box of light infantry?). As for the wild speculation what those things actually do, my guess is that our heavy infantry will be similar to Chaos Warriors in stats but with more focus on offense than on defense. 6" move (can't really see 5" for Slaanesh), 4+ save, 2 wounds. There will be some rend. Painbringers will have some sort of an ability tied to their shields. Twin souls will have some kind of debuff ability. I hope that Sigvald will be more creative than LoP rules-wise. I hope that Palanquin-thing will be a buffer similar to Warshrine, rather than another large base that dishes out the damage (we don't need those). Of course it all hinges on the allegiance ability reworks. If it stays as is, it will just mean that Sigvald gets added to the rotation with Keepers and everything else gets FOR PAINTING ONLY keyword.

That puts us at how many new warscrolls? Sigvald, LoP, two armored units are 100% confirmed, that is 4. Then we have Slaangors, Archers (and quite possibly Spears as an option), Hero in the background, that big model behind the hero, and tall model on the cliff to the left of Slaangors, so 5-6 more? 9-10 new warscrolls sounds like a new book, meaning new allegiances and subfactions... let's hope that GW puts some thought into it, rather than releasing first draft like they usually do with Chaos, resulting in nonsense, broken or useless. My preference for depravity would be to generate 1 DP at the end of phase for each unit that took damage but was not destroyed. That would give equal usefulness to units and heroes, while reducing bookkeeping as you would count much less points per turn and it would avoid annoying situations with KoS charging into multi-wound, multi-model units and then figure out how many wounds were not lethal.

This is sensible and needed, therefore I am 95% sure that GW is not going to do it. Honestly, Chaos needs only 8 keywords: 5 for gods and undivided and mortal/beast/daemon. STD should be just MORTAL, HEDONITE should be just SLAANESH etc.

Ah, of course, I just misremembered it. Thank you.

I started playing AoS with Slaves army, but now I run them in Slaanesh force and they work much much better. Look into what God allegiance would work for you and run them there.

Correct me if I am wrong, but wasn't it clarified sometime ago that keywords referring to the specific name of the god army and god keyword are interchangeable? Meaning that anything that applies to HEDONITE applies to SLAANESH as well? Still, Lord of Pain is quite underwhelming even if his command ability could go on any StD SLAANESH MORTAL, there are still much better buffing options (aforementioned Warshrine or Chaos Lord). Lurid Haze is THE host for me. That said, you only get to ambush d3 units so you want to get something hard hitting and fast in the opponents backfield (like Marauders, they have all but guaranteed charge). Lurid Haze command ability is also huge, giving +1 save to a chosen unit. On the flip side, its artifact is underwhelming (+1 W) so you can just toss it in the Fane. You will be wanting a sybarites battalion for extra CP generation anyway, so you can pick up a more interesting artifact trough that.

I tried running it vs Kroak Seraphon - it dies quite miserably to any amount of MW generation at range and it does not hinder spellcasters all that much. I find Contorted Epitome to be the best anti-caster leader we have. It is all but immune to MW snipes and it has two unbinds with rr and it does other stuff with 4+ Locus bubble after rolling for regular Locus and somewhat decent melee profile. Enraptures is a great model, but the most use I find for it is to be a backfield leader hero to be kept out of harms way in order to maintain summoning ability.

If we get DP generating aura on a hero that is literally a game changer as we can run competitive troop heavy Slaanesh all of a sudden (yay for fiends)

Played first game vs Gargants. Keepers are frighteningly effective in the match up and produce buckets of DP. I had 60+ in my second turn and from that point on chain summoning started. I felt bad for the other guy with his brand new army. I was scared at first as we played a scenario where only heroes can capture objectives , but gargant player may choose to count models instead. Along with other objective control shenanigans like moving them, my impression is that they WILL control objectives so the only way to win is to kill them. Their Longshanks rule, as written, does nothing, so just screen your Keepers and Manticores and make sure to get those charges. My 1500 list was Faultless Blades, Keeper with Living Whip (here is a matchup where the hand does nothing) and Sliverslash applied to pincers Manticore Lord with Blade and Lance with Contemptuous Brand and Hunter of Godbeasts Contorted Epitome Infernal Enrapturess 5x Chaos Warriors 5x Chaos Warriors 5x Seekers of Slaanesh He was running Warstomper with 2x3 Mancrushers Overall I find that we will have no issue with the new army. Locus is an excellent counter and depravity generation is trough the roof. Getting spells off is also very easy.

What army placed first? As for Daemonettes, point for point, I found that Marauders outperform them by a huge margin.

Honestly, Cultist units are quite bad due to the fact that they simply can't get any of the four gods keywords which means that they don't benefit from the best allegiance abilities of the STD armies and they can't be included in god specific armies. And even beyond that, their statlines are nothing special. On the other hand, best battleline in StD are marauders, but their models are old and hideous. So I run Cult units as Marauders. I use Splinter Fangs as Slaaneshi Marauders. Nice models and good rules, win-win. As for Knights and Warriors, see if you can get some older models on ebay or the like. Rules wise they are nothing to write home about, but old models are nice. New ones are too much.

So a particular Seraphon list has been the bane of our local meta for a while now, running undefeated for well over a month. We play on 1500pts with min 2 battlelines. It is a variation of: Kroak, Slaan, Astrolith Bearer, 20xTemple Guard, 15xTemple Guard, Purple Sun and Vortex (ES can be varied, but these are his favorites). Surprisingly, he plays as coalesced and his typical strat is to get both casters, astrolith and a unit of guard on one objective and the other unit of guard on the other, transfer all the wounds from casters to the guard and snipe opponents key pieces with spells. I preped a list of my own to counter it this evening: Allegiance: Slaanesh - Host: Lurid Haze Invaders Host (Host of Chaos) LEADERS The Contorted Epitome (210)- General- Command Trait: Feverish Anticipation - Lore of Slaanesh: Hysterical Frenzy Keeper of Secrets (380)- Sinistrous Hand- Artefact: Oil of Exultation - Spell: Progeny of Damnation Infernal Enrapturess, Herald of Slaanesh (140) Chaos Lord (110)- Reaperblade & Daemonbound Steel UNITS 40 x Chaos Marauders (320)- Axes & Shields 5 x Chaos Warriors (90)- Hand Weapon & Shield 3 x Fiends (190) ENDLESS SPELLS Mesmerising Mirror (60) TOTAL: 1500/2000 WOUNDS: 95 The idea is to set up a first round charge with 40 outflanking marauders and chaos lord who will give them double activation that will grind trough the temple guard bubble around the casters, while pushing CE, IE and Fiends will hopefully mess with his casting enough in the first turn or two to prevent him from doing critical damage. Fiends also act as decent reserve in case that marauders get too thin by the fight with the guard to take care of casters on their own. KoS is a bit of a wildcard, capable of supporting the main attack or going off on his own to hunt the smaller unit of temple guard. Leftover warriors are there to fulfill the battleline and to hold the backfield objective. What do you think? Am I missing something?