MothmanDraws

Its going to be a question of raw sales vs amount produced, there have been some chats about it here and there. I think 3rd is great set and will be a popular edition but some things will hit this starter over others 1.Unlike 40k most people dont have a stormcast army, and unlike marines which like 80% of the players have some form of marine army, or imperial army they can ally to, AOS forces from what ive seen people like their set armies with limited allies. Orruk warclans are similar as I usually see mono clan forces. If the stormcast were say cities of sigmar I could see more people slotting them in. 2.If you dont have either stormcast or greenskin army there is no reason therefor to get the box, I have hedonites and gloomspite so im not jumping to get it. Also as much as I love kruelboyz I do think the sculpts for the nighthaunt were more novel, other gaming systems likely would want them. 3. Kruelboyz are competing vs 40k orks, if you collect both systems you are choosing between kruelboyz now or 40k orks soon. Also many destruction players may have just spent their hobby money on Kragnos 4. No instore/limited hype, I remember in run up to titanicus I was in store often and would get on hype train with friends knowing they were buying in, or more likely to be caught up in moment and buy in. With lockdown ive not played any hobby in a good few months. (cursed city also hits the box game market better being self contained and easier to play at home) 5. The anti scalping set ups worked, stopping them buying 20-30 each is great, but technically that still hurts the sales of the box as 5-10 scalpers could probably have picked up 200 units between them, and if scalpers see that its not instantly sold out they might drop their plans to scalpt it. We will likely never know the numbers of sales or numbers printed, its possible GW over corrected stock levels after success of cursed city and indomitus, but corrected for a box that due to timing and other stuff might not be as popular. The real questions are going to be "did it sell enough" because shareholders like to see stuff like "sold all stock with desire for more". I think they will want to have sold atleast 75% of stock printed and say rest of 25% was from preventing scalpers, but this is also wave 1 of 2-3 according to some stores so could be issues if wave 1 doesnt sell depending how many copies are on other waves. This however is only really bad for GW, its great for us as we have ready access to the product.

Ye summoning as focus is odd when that feels like Tzeenches gimick to create the never ending horde while big wizards sit at back. For me the gods gameplay should be Tzeench -summoning, low melee damage output, poor defence but wins through using numbers to hold enemy still while wizards do the actual damage. A board control magic army doing it through cycling bodies through summoning, if you break through and kill the wizards they are dead. Nurgle -Slow, extremely durable, can go zombie wide or elite with big tanky dudes. Focus should be on attrition, minimal summoning just to keep ranks up, magic should be either damage other time or slow heals, board control melee army doing so through hard to kill units. Reliant more on troops than heroes, Khorne -Aggressive and tanky, very much a bruiser army that just wants to get stuck in. High natural armour saves, rewarded for any deaths on battlefield. No gimicks or magic, high raw stats on units.Focus on blocks of units doing most of the damage (quality of skulls dont matter over the amount of them) carnage ensues as summoning pushes them further (I actually think slaaneshes current tempo is more khorne fitting). So melee heavy army with middling speed, units are the focus of damage with a few heroes. Slaanesh -Finesse and speed, great stats to hit, middling to wound and decent to no armour. Should be about control through movement and debuffs. Heavier focus on heroes and elite units, Combined arms focusing on only taking the fights it wants to. Summoning minimal but specific to needs at the time vs block unit spamming. Doesnt want to delete units but do just enough to hurt and cripple them. Better Magic than Nurgle, but more focused on debuffs than healing. Honestly to me Tzeench and Khorne feel more fitting to be more summoning heavy

Doesnt help that it feels the optimum way to play slaanesh is 90% old daemonettes, hellstriders and seekers which all look like ass compared to new stuff.

With 3.0 rules in mind I wouldn't mind if the hosts were adjusted as some are weak Invaders The best host, honestly I think lurid haze should just be built into it Godseekers Solid, keep the extra movement, maybe build in the exalted speed knights for pre game move on mounted units or bake in scarlet cavalcade Pretenders Currently only really works for a super keeper and not even very good of a one, Personally id change the rule for "general can have up to 3 command abilities, and has no limit on the usages of finest hour". This not only makes the super keeper more reliable, but means if you want to run a named character in pretenders they actually get a little more out of it. Bake faultless blades into the host if I could design two extra hosts for glutos and sigvald -Sigvalds Mirror guard- MYRMIDESH PAINBRINGERS in this host gain re roll wounds. Sigvald cannot be targeted whilst within 6" of a friendly MYRMIDESH PAINBRINGER unit. Gain 1dp for every unit Sigvald destroys in combat Command ability- Mirror shields- , units in combat with targeted Myrmidesh painbringer units must re roll successful hits -Glutos' Banquet-"CONSUME EVERY DROP" For every unit Destroyed within 6" of Glutos treat the battle round for grand gournmand as 1 higher than it currently is. Gain 1 depravity for each unit destroyed this battle round. Command ability- Driven by hunger- target unit within 6" of glutos may run and charge Id give the twins one that basically means they can transferred suffered wounds to the other, so dexcessa takes a hit, synessa can take the wounds. Command Ability swaps the models places on the battlefield.

The kits I think left that hedonites could do with is small, probably saved for some future thing -Foot slickblades -new daemonettes -new seekers/chariots -mounted lord of pain/wizard new daemons could be justified in a 40k release leaving really just foot slickblades and a mounted hero as things the army wants to have. The new hero could easily just be a "broken realms" style drop sometime in future. For rules that would be nice on a mounted lord either command ability to advance + charge, or something funky like "once per turn can give the redeploy order or an aura of +3 to redeploy move". I feel Slaanesh as faction should have more access to redeploy, we are supposed to be fast and glass canon, having ability to easily move back when charged will help. It also is thematic with teasing opponent. Honestly I was expecting either blissbarb archers or blissbarb seekers to have a retreat when charge option built in to represent them more as skirmish archers. Skill wise that lets hedonites play more into skillfull positioning that is punished if you mess up and only take fights that we want to take.

Honestly no I dont think so, even our cheapest battle line is costing us 680 (masque+viceleader+3xhellstriders) we are better off spending rest on either upgrading those to our own battle line options or spending rest on semi useful stuff. as you are looking at 880+ points just bringing in 10 warriors of chaos or block of marauders after that.

INVADERS -Warlord Battalion- (extra relic) Dexcessa 280 Lord of pain 155 (general) -glory hog -rod of misrule Shardspeaker 150 (general) -battle rapture -arcane tome blissbarbs 180 painbringers 160 painbringers 160 -Vanguard detatchement- sigvald 265 (general) slickblade seeker 230 slickblade seeker 230 allies untamed beasts 70 untamed beasts 70 Triumph-Inspired 1950 What im working with atm, think im correct in how enhancements work where you get 1 of each category then the battalion adds 1 to one of the categories. Dunno what to do with final 50 points, can drop slickblade to blissbarb seeker for extra 10 and take a life swarm or burning head+palisade. Its really hard to spend last bits. The intent of list is to just try hold ground a little and pray sigvald can do some stuff, he can pop the vanguard bonus for a charge re roll if he needs it. Untamed beasts are kind of just there for some extra msu, could fire the burning head through them and an enemy. Shardspeaker to keep bravery and throw out endless spell or some shields, maybe buff up units if lucky. Gameplan is sigvald pushes in, tries to do what he can, supported by slickblades if they keep up, dexcessa is there for the 2nd turn pressure. Idea is to just try to pressure opponent into staying in their deployment zone while rest of units set up on objectives. Might shift it to lurid haze for better turn 1 defence or better attack angles.

do you know how big she is compared to a 40k sister, im thinking of converting her to be a living saint, she looks about a head taller to me which should be fine. I think my issue with her head is I dont think the side cut matches her lore, the lore is making her out to be semi wild with implied she is a little twisted by khorne. I think a more wild haircut or a head like blacktalons.

I think the other thing to look at with points in summoning is how efficient is the army outside of it, summoning is an army mechanic and replaces stuff like light of the bad moon, aetherquartz or other ability values in an army. lets say for example you on average get 2 big summons in slaanesh a game, 2x30 daemonettes or 2x keepers in old points that was bringing a value of between 660-680, so slaanesh playing to decent level was managing to get out 2700 ish point armies over course of a game. The other ability the army has is exploding 6s which is ok, but really with size of units outside of 30 blocks of daemonettes was like 1-2 hits here and there, nothing crazy. Even with summoning people felt like slaanesh was between 10-20% overcosted with a summoning tax, as a force which is working out to between 2-400 points(lets call it 300), this would on average leave the value of our allegiance ability and summoning as being worth about 400 points average as the value our summoning can bring which is about the points for your 3rd turn summon. So at that point slaanesh is playing sub optimally(cant kill enemies, has to deal with enemy units therefore being stronger), has worse base units, all in hopes that the 3rd turn summon is enough to turn the game. its also worth noting that that 400 we were getting was the value of our allegiance ability effectively and whatever synergy/troop quality we lost to be a summoining army, so up against whatever points value in addition aetherquartz would be giving you, or bad moon, which are value bonuses to armies that can not be turned off unlike summoning. Though if I was to make a guess I think with the lack of synergy in the army most hedonites are rocking up with a 1600-1750 pt army vs a 2300 pts (decent army with 100pts from internal synergy/allegiance ability value) in the hopes that if they play perfect they will stagger out 2700 points of value across the game. There is a clear intended design for slaanesh, its supposed to be a slow burn army as it toys with enemy, it wants to maim them first turn to make them impotent, then 2nd turn let them live and play with their food before 3rd turn finishing the deal. However outside of sigvald very little hits hard enough turn 1 to gut punch the opponent and our units cannot take the punishment back due to either being too few in number or being elite pricing but not durable. Technically the new points mean we are getting more raw value out of summoning with the 2x30 blocks or 2 keepers being 840 in value, but god knows how much the actual army is paying for the ability to work towards unlocking that value with id argue we are paying 25-30% overcost. The actual hedonites units dont have the staying power to fight at 70% the size of a normal army, with only ability they can rely on being there is exploding 6s which they have to rely on to get the engine going to actually find the value in the summoning. I legit think gw priced hedonites on assumption that army can get 6 keepers over whole game, vs the mostly likely outcome being 1-3, 3 only really happening if you are massively outplaying opponent.

wait for the hedonites book faq surely they will fix it wait for kragnos, surely those models will fix it wait for 3rd the new core rules will fix the army (did a little until today) wait for 3rds points to bring everyone else to our costs this should balance us out wait for FAQ to the GHB surely that will save us after that already see rumblings of "dont worry the next points change in 6 months will sort it"

honestly I think keeper with ward save will probably do fine, shalaxi is good but also is still a 1 attack with the spear

lord of pain 155 dexcessa 280 sigvald 265 shardspeaker 150 blissbarbs 180 painbringers 160 painbringers 160 slickblades 230 slickblades 230 dread pageant 130 (1940) Armies are so painfully hard to build now, even with old rules I struggled to put them together, before hand this list would probably do fine as I could squeeze something cool in. I cant even afford any of the slaanesh endless spells because they start waay to high of a cost.

The thing with summoning for hedonites though is out of the chaos gods their summoning isnt that much crazier or some undead summoning, we get 1 unit a turn, outside of very specific builds we cannot get a turn 1 summon(which require us to go 2nd and opponent to perfectly spread damage for us), turn 2 and 3 are usually turns we get something out. But slaanesh summoning requires you to play anti to the game, you dont want to kill units(runs counter to what sigvald, dexcessa and keepers are good at), you want to spread damage thin and you want your units to all take damage and deal with low bravery and opponent knows easily how to counter it (wipe units). The new secondaries are variations on kill stuff or take objectives so now we have to give up the depravity from killing the unit to score. Our army is glass with poor bravery so dies to stiff breeze. We have great output on all our heroes, but most of them die to focus fire (they are solid at doing stuff and fixing themselves up if they take minimal damage). The general consensus on the Hedonites in 3rd was that they were priced for 3rd and even looking at playing field now the old points would have made hedonites not amazingly pointed but decent. Slaanesh players were finally starting to look positivly on their army with 3rd ed rules feeling like they explained the previous high cost somewhat, then we find out that no we must pay more for it.

I saw the points changes last night.... I joked a few a while ago about slaanesh points going up and people said I was being doom and gloom..... There legit has to be someone on the warhammer aos rules team actively trying to damage the army at this point, this is beyond forgetting to check the units they were pricing.

Though generally I think some value in locus has been lost, with big single units, small 5 man units becoming likely the focus we wont be tying up large 30-40 man blocks as often. It will still be useful for controlling stuff. I need to see other armies points increases to fully judge our strengths honestly. If they all match ours it will be fine, though I still think internally our points are a little jank(blissbarb archers at 160 to 180 for cav) I struggle to make lists that feel rounded in hedonites, could really do with some of the lesser heroes going down by 10-20 and blissbarbs down by 20, slaangors as usual either need drop or rewrite.

I would love to pick the brain of our rulebook writer who thought "pathways of the dark prince" was a interesting spell as book was designed with 3rd in mind. A "the caster can fly" for 7+ is cool, oh wait generic spells let you now do "any unit can fly for 8+" guess this adds to our list of spells that are minorly different versions of either "heal d3" "do mortals based on some gimick", Cute that only keeper and synessa get access to pathways, so 50% of the casters who can use that spell doesnt need to. Guess the true magical power of slaanesh is "budget vanilla spells" Honestly outside of points stuff the spell lores for slaanesh have been a weird part of the book, I feel we have way to many spells that are the same, or get same effect for some weird minigame Lore of slaanesh - 4 different "does mortal wounds", a spell that may or may not lower bravery, a decent heal Forbidden lore- discount generic fly spell, the cool spell to turn off heroes, the same healing spell as lore with minor tweaks (only one of these feel "forbidden" mortal lore- battle shock immune, another mortal wound spell, a 4+ to cast to get slightly better than 50/50 odds to get +1 to hit ghost mists might be useful, though its range is 6" might be worth on bladebringer herald heading up and putting smoke into terrain

New stormcast guy just gained a better version of dexcessas free command ability (daemons only), im expecting synessa and dexcessas command stuff is not going to be unique and will be a fairly basic/standard thing in most forces. New priest rules are cool, shame glutos' friend group doesnt get priest rule New coherency rules also, might be worth keeping seeker units as only 5 models so they can more actively screen

The lurid haze alpha strike will be strong -sigvald goes in, pops finest hour and lurid haze buff for all his buffs, fights twice due to keeper baby sitter, 10 slickblades tie something else up and keeper makes a charge if it can -turn 2 either sigvald dies and you move buffs to keeper and give it finest hour or sigvald carries on repelling this will require likely half to 3/4 of opponents forces giving you time to set up rest of board. If you can also fit dexcessa in she would be 2nd or 3rd turn threat aswell

I have a proposed buff for pretenders, because its about the perfect singular leader, let them have permanent finest hour active.

Sigvalds Finest hour in lurid haze for +2 to his save and +1 to wound will be pretty fun.

Aaaw ye its looking good for slaanesh in 3rd, only one of the twins gets look out sir, the seekers loose their battalion, glutos looses his look out sir. When people rumoured that hedonites was written for 3.0 they never mentioned that they were "written to be bad in 3.0" Only thing needed is to find out that hedonites were not pointed for 3.0 as some rumoured and faction gets another points bump in the handbook, slaangor to 180pts lets goooo. At least confirmed you dont have to shoot every model in unit, so we don't have to overkill a unit with blissbarbs (not that you really could)

I probably wouldn't play them but I kinda would love to do very in depth water effect swamp bases. I think removing red from the pallette, make whole force more rotten looking with pale skin would be a very strong look/

Oh cool so we get an universe lore reason why the twins suck

Actually looking close the twins are even worse, initial rumour was synessa had all spells + infinite range on them. Turns out its only her warscroll and pavane of slaanesh inifnite range...... So she is a 1 cast wizard, all spells, no casting bonus, infinite range on 2 spells (not even the best ones). The only value she might have actually now is take her as tzeench ally so kairos knows her spells and can actually get them cast.