whispersofblood

I'm very hesitant about posting in this thread but the level of generalisation is just too high to not push back against. So I have a few questions for those who think that HoS summoning is too easy or overpowered. What is it about the summoning that is overpowered The units that are being summonable? The power of the models being summoned? That somehow HoS summoning gives them an unfair advantage at winning the game? That the HoS is being rewarded for doing what they would not do normally? Or behaviour that is counter intuitive to the narrative? That it feels bad to kill a Keeper of Secrets and see a new one come on the board? For example. People have stated the swingy nature of Depravity generation as a bug and therefore display it as a weakness in the design. But, if you consider it a feature of the narrative and see that it works as intended then it is a build issue that the HoS player must work with, meaning they can't rely on Depravity generation to cover gaps in their build. If people really want to discuss Slaanesh summoning be prepared to answer a lot of questions about how you and your meta approach AoS not just attitude but actual strategic demeanour, otherwise there is no common ground for understanding and its a bunch of nerds yelling at each other.

My advice is to bank the experience, and start a list from scratch.

Yeah I don't know if there is anything there tbh. Archaon doesn't get much from being Slaanesh, don't have many things that proc off of the Slaanesh Keyword, other than Battle Traits and Locus needs Hedonite. It probably looks like a Slaves to Darkness army, with 1 or 2 Epitome, slightly better combat and summoning.

Dreadful visage is significantly harder to cast. Clawspears are best at the current price.

Again, the game is the battleplan though. The real problem is that people aren't actually playing the game, its like if you just focus on War in Risk its a path you *can* take to win the game but its definetly not optimal if you are playing against anyone with some experience. They key to playing a battleplan against HoS starts at the strategy phase, you have to clearly identify how you are going to win the game. Is it control the majority of objectives early on and sacrifice them over the remaining turns? Is it let the HoS split up their army to take the objectives and then fight the HoS piecemeal? Because a HoS army can build momentum very quickly its important to disrupt their momentum, and make sure you stick to your plan. Charging and killing and seemingly vulnerable KoS because it is within reach without support may not be the best move. You have to identify more than what is on the board right now, things like how many Depravity points does the player have, where on the board are his heroes, who's turn is next, is their a priority roll coming up. These are important because it is very likely that the KoS is coming back at the bottom of your opponent's movement phase. Since you can't kill the KoS generally speaking without them fighting, it might just be better to claim the objective or make your move towards the objective and let the KoS charge you. That way you kill the model in his combat phase and you get to play your turn without a KoS on the board. Or maybe his heroes are in non-optimal positions to summon, and you jump on the KoS so that the opponent has to wait a turn to summon or summons into a non-optimal position. That is how you must be thinking, you can just roll into a HoS army and kill it and hope for the best after they summon. That being said, since I started playing HoS I've been focusing on summoning where and when I want to, which means stopping people purposely or accidentally doing the very things I'm telling you to do. Playing against HoS is probably more of a strategy and tactical level match then people are willing to admit to themselves. But, realistically if you look at the Warscrolls and point costs, the army isn't really all that impressive, a ton of models are 3+/4+ at best, they do on average throw a decent amount of dice about, but also heavily rely on rend -1. There isn't a ton of mortal wounds, and the battalion that does give MW to only Daemonettes is expensive and doesn't really lower your drop count since you need a lot of heroes. The models are not durable at all, so targeting objectives and keeping your models outside of 6" of a hero when you charge is the best strategy to get points on the board. Do not trade! Trading with HoS is a fast way to lose the game, since I will just summon the right unit I need in the context of the game. maybe heroes, seekers, fiends or 10/20/30 daemonettes.

I suppose if your idea of fun is running your army into the army who ever you so happen to be playing I guess that is one way to look at it. However AoS is a game about getting points on the board, the fun is in finding a way to stop your opponent getting points and stopping your opponent from stopping you from getting points. Different armies do that in different ways, and you need to be prepared to adapt to the ways different armies do this. HoS are pretty good at beating up the traditional elite bully unit, so maybe you need to switch up how you use those units in your HoS match up. HoS are just asking a different set of questions then people are used to. And, in the normal human way that we always do when we encounter something that even slightly challenges our worldview, people are kicking up a fuss. When in reality the game was already moving into a more MSU direction to help deal with the offensive power becoming more and more prevalent in the game, and the increased focus on objective play.

I play several armies, they all have varying relative strengths and weaknessess. It may be harsh but the truth is not all armies do all things equally and pretending that isn't so just leads to disharmony. In this match the opponent decided that his army was strong enough to fight the entirety of a combat army, a strong one at that. Even if it was true that his army was strong enough to do that, its still a terrible choice of action as you leave yourself open to misplay or poor luck. Ignoring that NH aren't actually that vertically fast, or that strong a combat army. Trying to alpha without significant movement enhancers just stretches out your army or leaves you heroes open to retaliation, this is especially true against HoS who have Locus of Diversion but theoretically against BoC with the Taurus, or anything that fights start of phase. Further just because something is called a separate phase doesn't mean it in itself is a separate component of a mechanism. For most armies the combat phase is simply the resolution of the movement phase. That is where the majority of the interaction transpires, combat is just pile-in and dice rolling for the most part. But all the advantages and mechanisms that move the result in one way or another are determined in the movement phase. Ignoring interactivity, better part of valour has 6 objectives and a 27" from the deployment line to the objective, the NH player's strategy was suicidal in a match where holding objectives that you can destroy, with an army with deep strike puts them at a strategic advantage. They traded that advantage for what? To pretend to be a alpha combat army?

This is a pretty perfect example of how people will start to assume HoS are op. When in reality they massively misplayed the game.

Weakest in the game... I'm not sure how you play AoS but furies have an extremely powerful rule. Iron Golems might be the best chaff/blocker units in the game. Untamed Beast are ok, useful if you live in a meta with a lot of alternative deployment tricks. If you just want more infantry hammers, the sure they are "weak".

My suspicion is that warscrolls will lose marks and the book will include warscroll battalions that give the mark keywords to the units inside. Much like BoC do, this gives the rule writers some constraints they can use to limit the number of unintended interactions. Thus they can give StD a lot of their power through battle traits,"tribe" rules, and warscroll battalions. While leaving the unit warscrolls themselves rather more plain and competitive against the god specific warscrolls. What we want is a situation where a chaos warrior in a StD army is comparable to a Blood warrior in a Khorne army. But, taking a Chaos warrior in your Khorne army via the battalion isn't much worse than taking your Blood warrior. I would consider letting Heroes have marks that unlock abilities that only work on units with the StD or Mortal keyword. I would also love if the 8 tribes in Warcry because the 8 tribes in the book, and let each unit become battleline. Because... Well 8.

It's not that straight forward unfortunately. I think HoS and Depravity in particular are a different sort of animal to play with and against then any of the other top tier factions. So yes on simple observation you aren't incorrect, but a lot of the strengths and weaknesses come from in the table play. Key to playing against HoS is knowing which heroes to kill and when to kill them. Players who don't understand this are going to get rolled, because they are giving up their place in the interaction as the opposition to Depravity. Many players see KoS and think it's big and killy they need to bring it down last turn. But, in reality it doesn't do that much outside of combat, and when you kill it I will just bring on a new one possibly closer than the one you just killed. Opponents to HoS need to start seeing each hero like a deep strike beacon. Looking at the board and figuring out where the HoS player can spend those points to bring new units on. It isn't any different in that regard then playing SCE, or Ghoul Patrol. The difference is that you have to maintain that concentration until the game is won similar to a unit like heartrenders. Stopping them, either by zoning or killing the model that puts those units in prime territory to play a role in the game. I think two KoS lists will stick around because realistically we lack a mobile, affordable, punchy unit. But, there are definitely reasons to not go that route as a HoS player Pretenders notwithstanding. Ironically I don't think most HoS armies include the tools to defeat HoS armies which is an interesting mirror match to say the least.

The Warcry stuff is great have you guys taken a look at the warscrolls?

He can't get a spell from any Battletome. He doesn't have the keywords for Slaanesh spells, and he isn't in a Beast of Chaos army to use the Wild. He does give you someone to cast the BoC endless spells though.

That isn't how locus works. If that is how people are playing around your parts they are at best misunderstanding the rule, and at worst cheating. You get one roll per Hedonite hero (notice not Slaanesh), you can only roll on a target unit once, so if you fail there is no second chance with a different Hero(there is an exception), and it is at the end of the charge phase. So there is some play there with pile-in moves. The Epitome, has a similar rule called Horrible fascination. Which is AoE, at the start of the combat phase, which is against before Pile-in moves. This is the second bite at the Apple, on a 4+. Only a greater Daemon has a 2+, everyone else is on a 4+ including the epitome. Locus also doesn't stack, with horrible fascination (the epitome) so a charging Gristlegore GKoTG still fights before the KoS.

That would be if they gained activate at the start of phase. Tyrants of Blood is more similar to the Slaanesh Daemon Princes ability.

Pretty much.

The problem is there is no overlap of rules, so no unusual synergy. Or nothing like adding a necromancer to nighthaunt level good. This faction was pretty DOA tbh.

Locus of diversion is at the end of the Charge phase, so you can wait for the HoS player to pile-in within 6" of you. But, that requires some on the spot calculations about where to put models.

There isn't much point trying to stock up on magic defence, beyond maybe a spellweaver or incantor for the auto unbind. The new meta will have magic armies with min 5 casts, and most likely 6 or more. The points are better spent on doing what IDK do well, which is fighting. Also the IDK spells are not really all that appealing anyway. My fix for Namarti is make them both 100, cap their unit sizes at 20, and leave them be.

I assume you are talking about Warcry. I don't think you've looked at the profiles of each unit, and how that would translate into Warcry abilities. Ishlaen have 0 rend on any of their attacks for example, doesn't shoot, doesn't do mortal wounds and have fewer wounds

I've gone back to the King build in a few test games. Basically I play control with Reavers and Ishlaen, and then turn 3 charge as much of the opposition's army with 12 Morrsarr as possible. Its... Fine I guess. Without Voltaic blast it wouldn't work though.

Tbh the armies that take a long time to play are typically the ones putting models back on the board, not coming off.

Anyone have any in game experience with Ssyl'esske?

I found Prosecutors with Javelins did decent ranged dmg, but I suppose that was sometime ago, but you might be better off taking skywardens as allies for the same role.

Fiends are badly priced though. Our focus on hero models is a combinations of factors. One depravity is a hero dependant allegiance ability. Two our battalions really aren't that attractive, and Supreme Sybarites is internally reinforcing. We need to lower drops so you have to take a battalion, one you take one you generally max it out, and generating CP requires heroes to use those CP of which the KoS offers the best return. Pretenders is the worst host overall, so the incentives to taking one very strong hero aren't really there. There aren't that many warscrolls that synergize with the KoS (which lets be honest the model is amazing everyone is going to take it). There are only 4 warscrolls with the hedonite keyword, that aren't heroes themselves or for a small point bump have the hero keyword. Our only model with a shooting attack is a hero. Our only unit that does mortal wounds natively also a hero. Lack of fly means our units can get effectively walled off from taking objectives. That is just internally, which means there is no meta influence yet. I would still argue there are several builds available. The BoC build, pretenders build, and the generalist build, that is a lot of highly competitive builds. There are also many more casual builds which are quite good. Generally the meta at the moment is focused on killing certain models at the exact time and place you need to kill them. And, battleplans further entrench these pressures onto army construction. Our heroes do those things better than our units, and given that the fewer heroes you take the harder it is to generate depravity decreasing generation or increasing the amount needed will only further encourage taking heroes. Until of course you make summoning impossible to do realistically. So change depravity points all you want, but these pressures will remain the same and list will spend the majority or at least half their points on heroes. And, that is fine not every faction needs to play and look the same way.