LeonBox

Does anyone have any suggestions for Skryre Acolyte proxies/alternate models? They're $15 for one, which is utter insanity when you start trying to buy enough to field a unit or two. I have no idea why they're still sold individually when it's a minimum of 5 for a unit.

Excellent! I have like 75-ish clanrats right now, a WLC, a Doomwheel, 20 Plague Monks, 4 rat ogres, 10 night/gutter runners and a mish-mash of different characters, so I think I have the makings of a decent 1k list already. Add to that the roughly 3000 points of stuff I recently bought (app shopping is so dangerous) and I've got a stew going.

Hey guys, I'm a Slaaanesh main but I've had a bunch of Oldhammer Skaven models mouldering away in a storage box for a long time. I dusted them off, bought a Start Collecting, bought the Broken Realms Clan Skryre battalion, and it pretty much snowballed from there. Basically, my old clanrat models (actually a friend's, but he abandoned them a long time ago) are pretty beat up and a lot of them are missing shields/spears. My question is: I assume the sprues have both spear and hand weapon options, so I'll be able to salvage a bunch of weapons from my newly ordered clanrat boxes?

I definitely like the idea of using the Epitome as a way of handling Annihilators, but they can only be in one place at one time and if he elected to deepstrike both units in such a way that they could only charge the Epitome, sounds like he wasn't thinking things through too carefully. It's a neat trick but I can see my opponent finding a way around it.

How did you accomplish this, exactly? The enemy cannot attack the Epitome until it has attacked first, but don't you want him targeting the mirror to tank the MWs?

Part of it was bad rolls for sure, but looking back I definitely shouldn't have committed two expensive units to that flank on turn one, especially with the threat of a double. The problem with Dexcessa is I feel I'm wasting them if I don't get them into combat as quickly as possible, but they're so damn fragile (especially with no ward and no access to one) that keeping them alive but also maximising their potential is very tricky. If I were to play again I'd go Godseekers, replace Dexcessa with Synessa (the former is just not great against SCE) and make my list a 1-drop. I'd deploy extremely conservatively and either force my opponent to take turn one or, failing that, minimize my movement turn 1 to limit his deepstriking options. Perhaps exclusively run Hellstriders as battleline to tank the Annihilator drops.

Well I just had my shortest ever game -- I conceded at the end of turn 1 after my opponent killed Dexcessa, Sigvald, and 11 Blissbarbs and also got the double. He was SCE. Long story short: 2 drops each, my opponent won the roll-off and had me go first, and I ambushed his "weak" flank which was spear battleline guys, general, masked wizard and Yndrasta about 12-14" away in the centre. His other flank had Gotrek and 5 spear guys so that was basically unassailable. Sigvald and Dexcessa both charged his spear guys, no other viable targets being in range. Sigvald and Dexcessa combined managed to only kill 4 spear guys, and my Blissbarbs, who'd also ambushed, put two wounds on the wizard. On his turn I put finest hour on Dexcessa, not realising the utterly insane MW output of SCE would render it irrelevant. To make matters worse, 2 x 3 Annihilator units came down and put through 5 unsaved mortal wounds on Sigvald (my rolls tonight were, and I cannot stress this enough, just utterly cursed, while my opponent was seemingly making every 4+ save and getting a 3 for all his d3 wound rolls). Yndrasta shooting finished Siggy off, Dexcessa died to MWs, my opponent got off a 9" charge to hit the Blissbarbs and killed most of them with MW output, and I conceded. So yeah. New Stormcast are a super rough matchup for us and losing the priority roll both matches against them hasn't helped. I'm not really sure what to do against their high armour saves, deepstriking capabilities and frankly insane MW output. I lost 750 points to them in turn one! Almost enough to make me miss facing LRL. Almost.

Interesting, I wouldn't have thought this to be the case. Isn't most of our MW damage not "in addition" but "and the attack sequence ends" though? Does this affect the stats?

I'd imagine it's due to Euphoric Killers, but their inconsistency on when mortal wounds are applied is very annoying. Why do Sentinels do them on their hit rolls but Blissbarb Seekers do them on their wound rolls (this one doesn't even have the excuse of Euphoric Killers)? Why does a Terrorgheist do a straight 6 MWs on a 6 to hit, but Keepers do them on their wound roll?

Exactly, and I can imagine Glutos and/or Sigvald having a gang of groupies and hangers-on that would toss themselves to the wolves in order to impress their masters. Give me the Slaanesh equivalent of Skavenslaves!

They are definitely tough for an elite army like us to deal with. I feel like we should definitely have some cheap throwaway Hedonite cultists that could deal with stuff like this -- drugged-out dagger suicide cultists like the Blissbarbs, but lacking their bows and way cheaper. I don't want to have to ally in ungors for this kind of thing, but they might be necessary. I agree that it's not great we don't have any native priest options (and, indeed, only one priest option across the whole of Chaos). Glutos would be the obvious choice but he's already very powerful.

Yes I think this is important to bear in mind -- a Keeper is not going toe to toe with most other monsters anymore, or even specialized hero characters. I charged a summoned Keeper into Yndraste (the Stormcast lady on the ruined stairs) last and put a paltry two wounds on her, even with 5 mortals from a claw (my opponent rolled well on his 4++). The Keeper then died outright from a combination of her unleash hell (5 wounds) and her spear attacks (my opponent rolled well on his attacks, and if you're noticing a pattern here then you're a sharp cookie). It made me pretty damn salty until I realised that she was a terrible target for the Keeper anyway, but it still does annoy me how ineffectual the Keeper is these days. My all-mortal list in general didn't do amazingly. My opponent had, roughly: 2x3 drop-pod Captain America guys (Annihilators?) 2x5 spear battleline dudes 2x5 bodyguard dudes Yndraste Guy with bird-dog Guy with big banner Mask-wearing wizard girl from the Dominion box Gotrek (sigh) My brave boys and girls ready to rock: I put all 42 of my Blissbarb shots on Gotrek turn 1 (my opponent forced me to go first, as we each had two drops and he won the deployment roll) and managed 2 wounds through all-out defence and his 3++. These were promptly healed back with heroic recovery, which really makes Gotrek all but unkillable. Annihilators are pretty nasty and you need to keep vulnerable stuff well screened. My Blissbarbs were too far forward and ate a charge from both units (one on a re-rollable 7 and the other on a re-rollable 9). I only got one round with the Slickblades. My opponent got Gotrek into them on a long charge (what are the odds?) after a CP re-roll and promptly wiped them out. Blissbarb Seekers are decent, but very reliant on those sixes for mortal wounds. If I didn't get any they tended to do very little damage. Twinsouls are not great against Stormcast with those high armour saves across the board. They ended up stuck fighting Annihilators, which with their native 2+ armour save are the worst thing for them to be fighting. The Keeper, as mentioned, got summoned, charged, died. Very sour on them right now I have to say, but in retrospect I should have summoned a Daemonette blob. Slaangors died to a triple charge without raising a claw. I failed a 9" charge (8" with Godseekers) with them and didn't want to waste a CP, and then they ate a triple charge from Yndraste, Lord with bird-dog and bodyguard dudes. Overall thoughts: our lack of rend really, really hurt here because SCE have such high armour saves across the board. I was also severely punished for not taking our best answer to both Yndraste and Gotrek, Sigvald. I'm beginning to find it's almost never a good idea not to include Sigvald, he's just too good to pass up.

Wish me luck fellas, I just got my commissioned mortal models back and am fielding a fairly ridiculous all-mortal list tonight (yes -- even Slaangors!): Allegiance: Slaanesh- Host: Godseekers Host- Grand Strategy: Dominating Presence- Triumphs: InspiredLeadersGlutos Orscollion, Lord of Gluttony (475)*- Lore of Pain and Pleasure: Battle RaptureLord of Pain (155)*- General- Command Trait: Battle-lust- Artefact: Cameo of the Dark Prince- Host Option: GeneralBattleline22 x Blissbarb Archers (360)*- Reinforced x 15 x Symbaresh Twinsouls (185)*5 x Myrmidesh Painbringers (160)*Units3 x Slaangor Fiendbloods (150)*5 x Slickblade Seekers (230)*5 x Blissbarb Seekers (220)Endless Spells & InvocationsEmerald Lifeswarm (60)Core Battalions*Battle RegimentTotal: 1995 / 2000Reinforced Units: 1 / 4Allies: 0 / 400Wounds: 114Drops: 2 My opponent is going a new army -- Stormcast Eternals -- and I've never faced them before, so if nothing else it's gonna be quite a nice change of pace.

Condolences friend, I too have to frequently face LRL and they are an eminently infuriating army with a million tricks and get-out-of-jail free rules like the Cathallar, shrine re-rolls, free shrine CP, Aetherquartz versatility etc etc etc. Rough that the Cathallar cost you your Slickblades -- I'll be fielding mine for the first time tonight and will not forget to hold a CP back for their battleshock tests. I'm quite worried about their overall fragility anyway -- they seem like too much glass and not enough cannon, but the models are beautiful and I should give them a go. It sounded like his Loreseeker was doing a hell of a lot of damage! I've never seen him do all that much really, just be super-annoying with his objective-denial shenanigans and occasionally throw out a dangerous spell near/behind my lines. It does seem very unfair that, in addition to the summoning tax built into our points, we are further penalized with more than a third of the battle plans being unachievable with summoned units. Sure would be nice if we were not extremely reliant on summoning to keep us in the match!

Your Drukhari is showing!

Yeah the (I guess fluffy?) 6" limitation on a lot of our spells is, well, limiting. Before Synessa there was nothing in our army that could cast Pavane that you wanted within 6" of anything worth casting that spell on, and the healing spells are also very hurt by their range. This is a good point. As @Enoby said, every Slaanesh wizard should just have access to Acquiescence as standard.

Keepers are far, far too swingy for what they do, and at present are a very overcosted support piece whose best utility comes from their command ability. As others have pointed out, they have too few attacks for what they're supposed to do and no easy access to re-rolls (unless you've got Acquiescence coming from somewhere). A Keeper throwing the Lurid Haze artefact into the Fane used to be my go-to for hitting on 2s, but their big attacks (the claws) are simply too unreliable. They're supposed to be pretty amazing fighters and I wish this was reflected in their statline, but they're usually fairly mediocre. The issue with the Keepers is exactly why Glutos, in addition to his suite of buffs and utility options, feels fairly costed. His attack profile is not overwhelming but fairly decent and, importantly, much more reliable than the Keeper's. His claw attacks are lower damage but spread over more attacks, which means that they have less of a chance of fluffing. It feels super bad when you roll a bunch of 1s and 2s in succession for the Keeper claw attacks, and that's much less likely to happen with Glutos'. Ditto Sigvald, who reliably does AMAZING damage on the charge due to -2 rend and D3 damage spread across a lot of attacks. Rend is a huge issue for us and something I'd like to see is a spell that increases the rend of a unit by 1. I think it's pretty thematic (aren't we supposed to be about razor-sharp claws and such?) and would be a nice addition to our extremely lacklustre bunch of "beat bravery to do x" spells.

I mean... if your Glutos is still in sub-assembly it sounds like you're not really playing many games, especially with the newer models, and you're basing all your outrage on tournament win rates (which, with the peculiar global situation we're currently in, are not necessarily representative of the faction's true status). Slaangors are bad, nobody's disupting this. Our units are overcosted. However, our units are overcosted because our summoning is crazy strong. It's super easy to generate 10-12 depravity per turn and if you're not seeing a Keeper and 20-30 daemonettes every battle then either your opponent is denying you DPs or you're doing something wrong. I've played a good number of games in 3.0 now (6 maybe?) and my opponents don't see my army as a pushover. They fear Glutos, they really fear Sigvald and they have to always plan for the fact that I'm gonna drop a Keeper or a big Daemonette blob anytime from turn 2 onwards. Slaanesh is still viable.

@Enoby little bit late to the party on this. Questions all look good but there's a small typo here -- this should be "tweak".

Hellstriders with scourges vs claw-spears is simple for me: scourges is 2 attacks with the same profile of 3/4 but no rend. Double the attacks minus rend seems better to me than half the attacks with 1 rend and a situational 2 damage (I've not done the maths so I could be wrong).

I absolutely love this (as I've mentioned once or twice, I have a soft spot for Shalaxi) and it would be great to see Shalaxi get the love they deserve. I actually had Shalaxi versus Petrifex Nagash a few weeks ago, where she got Hand of Dusted. She is the sole source of -3 rend in our army but I didn't charge Nagash because I didn't see the point -- he's 16 wounds with a 2+/4++, re-rolling armour saves of 1, so she would have perhaps put a temporary dent in him and then died to his counterattacks.

Thanks for the write-up, interesting to read! I imagine Tzeentch is a pretty tough matchup for us (my two armies are Tzeentch and Slaanesh, so I never really have to face them) with their tough screens and potent shooting, so it sounds like you did well against them. Be'Lakor sounded 100% necessary in this to stop Kairos' shenanigans -- Lords of Change of any flavour are very difficult for most armies to stop, let alone us with our lack of casting/unbinding bonuses (why did we need to lose the Epitome's re-rolls to unbind, exactly?).

How many Boltboyz did he field in total, out of interest? Sounds rough losing Be'Lakor like that.

A guy in my neck of the woods (China) is selling this entire Slaanesh army for around 800 pounds: Beautiful work, especially on the bases, but does not match my colour scheme at all.

I hear ya. Bravery is really the one thing you can go after with LRL (the new range eliminated their other weakness, movement, pretty much completely) and the Cathallar just totally negates it.