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Author Topic: Experimenting With Slaanesh  (Read 2583 times)

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Offline Wyldhunt

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Experimenting With Slaanesh
« on: May 29, 2015, 05:36:51 PM »
And yes, that title is meant to be a euphemism.  I've proxied one or two battles with Slaanesh back in 6th edition.  The chaos god(dess) of excess seemed to favor me with tremendous luck, but the intense amount of randomness as well as my lack of regular opponents kept me from investing in a daemons army. 

Well, I've been thinking of branching out again, so I played a couple of proxy games against a regular opponent of mine today to see how Slaanesh's playstyle fit me in 7th edition.  I put together a list that emphasized toys over boys to try and reduce the amount of money I'd have to invest in the army if I were to actually start collecting it. This is how things went: 

The first battle was over by turn 2.  My opponent brought a chaos marine list with a mix of gods represented.  He put his rhino too close to my daemon prince who slashed it up turn one.  Turn 2, he assaulted my prince with his Nurgle marines and my keeper of secrets with some Nurgle warp talons.  I won both combats despite being charged, he failed morale on both squads (just barely; hooray for sniping out characters in challenges), and both squads were swept.  We called it. 

The second battle, he put together a long fang spam list with a thunderwolf death star.  (:T) On turn 5, I was holding both objectives to his none while retaining line breaker.  Unfortunately, the game went to the bottom of turn 7 where a pair of lucky snap shots managed to kill my final model, the Masque, as she hid behind terrain on his objective. 

Impressions:
I like the general playstyle of Slaanesh.  She's fast enough that I don't have to regret being a foot-slogging army, and lots of artefacts make it easy to stay alive or spit out new squads.  My lack of innate durability is mitigated by my speed as I can easily run onto ruins and other terrain.  With some cavalry units (which I didn't have this game), I feel like I could pretty much force the battle to occur wherever I want.  Rending is nice in that it means there are very few targets I don't have a chance of dragging down with me. 

The Masque, whom I've struggled to use in the past, is all about distraction.  If you can keep your opponent occupied, her debuffs are fantastic. She nearly won the game for me by denying my opponent his necessary mobility.  Hiding her behind terrain is pretty easy, and my harlequins give me lots of practice at it (Heroe's Path). 

A mark of Slaanesh seems less than useful on soul grinders, but fleet  *does* make a difference when you really need to get that charge off.  The soul grinder in general was very helpful, but also counter-intuitive.  The warpsword seems like a curious option for it to have, and its phlegm cannon, while nice, negates the usefulness of the harvester cannon by making it snapfire the latter. Not a bad brutal  unit to take up the enemy's attention. 

The daemon prince rolled a gift that boosted its durability.  This made a huge difference in its survivability.  I never flew it.  Between wings and fleet, it was fast enough to hit my opponent where I wanted. Taking off the ground would have just ensured that it took me an extra turn to get into assault, though the added speed makes it a promising back-line-attacker.  Especially if it's my warlord with a trait to help with reserves. 

My heralds were each ML2 with an exalted gift. This worked out passably.  despite having 3 heralds and an alluress in each squad, I didn't have any special weapons.  I think this is a mistake, and I could probably use some special weapons in those squads.  I forgot to use my greater loci though.

The daemonettes performed as expected, and their icons were fantastic.  The Slaaneshi psychic powers were useful and fluffy, if not reliable.

So all in all, Slaanesh seems pretty fun.  That said, I have complaints. 

The random gifts were not fun.  There were too many of them to keep track of, so I failed to use them as a result of not being able to juggle them all in my head.  Hellfire gaze would have interfered with my movement, so I never shot it.  I also never shot my wind of chaos gift on my prince.  I don't think I ever went, "Woohoo!  I got that power I wanted!"  It was more, "darnit. Sorry. Let me check what gifts I have again."  Swapping out some random gifts for some default weapons might help with this. 

The warp storm table (despite giving me tons of extra squads with excellent luck back in my 6th edition games) was a little meh.  In the first game, it *did* let me wipe out a squad of warp talons by warp ebbing away their invul saves.  That same warp ebb cost me a herald and a soul grinder in my second game.  I consistently rolled an 8 on the table, but I don't think I  hurt more than a single model with it in either game.  It's a whole lot of rolling for not a lot of effect, and I don't care for that level of randomness on a fluff level either.  How often do we see random Khorne explosions in the middle of Slaaneshi formations in stories?  Not often. 

I also lost both my keeper of secrets and my prince to a multicharging thunderwolf squad due to daemonic instability, which wasn't fun.  I'd probably have lost the units to that deathstar either way, but losing them because of my own rule is sour.  Especially with MCs involved.  I'd much rather simply have fearless.

Final Impressions:
I like Slaanesh.  I don't particularly care for the "lol-so-random" rules like the warp storm, daemonicc instability, and the random gifts.  I get the impression that I'd really like Codex Slaanesh daemonkin if it existed.  I probably won't be buying a Slaaneshi army any time soon, but I'm very likely to buy one in the future once a few of my gripes are alleviated.

Offline Wyddr

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Re: Experimenting With Slaanesh
« Reply #1 on: May 31, 2015, 10:59:58 AM »
Yeah, the Warp Storm table sucks. I roll Warp Ebb like it's my job.

The random gifts are stupid, but if you play the numbers right you *usually* get something in the neighborhood of what you want.Greater Rewards for durability (67% chance), Lesser Rewards for deepstriking Squads (50% odds of getting a shooting attack or a reserve bonus), and Exalted Rewards for getting an Artefact (of, if you're really lucky, getting multiple rewards *and* an artefact). If you don't get what you want, you just swap for an AP2 CC weapon, which ain't half bad. Many of the rewards are a bargain for the cost, too.

As for keeping them straight, just keep a notepad. Personally, I've never really found that to be a problem.

Glad you like Slaanesh. I really do think it's the strongest single-god build in the Daemon Codex. The point-for-point value of most of their units is crazy.

To avoid much of the randomness, taking them as allies to a CSM Slaanesh army (Noise Marines!) is a great mix. Sonic Weapons really help address Slaanesh's almost complete lack of decent shooting.

Offline khaine

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Re: Experimenting With Slaanesh
« Reply #2 on: May 31, 2015, 01:03:54 PM »
The random gifts were not fun.  There were too many of them to keep track of, so I failed to use them as a result of not being able to juggle them all in my head.  Hellfire gaze would have interfered with my movement, so I never shot it.  I also never shot my wind of chaos gift on my prince.  I don't think I ever went, "Woohoo!  I got that power I wanted!"  It was more, "darnit. Sorry. Let me check what gifts I have again."  Swapping out some random gifts for some default weapons might help with this. 

I work under the assumption that I will swap the gift for one of the weapon options and then only keep the gift rolled if it has some specific use against the army I’m facing, it makes it much easier to remember what the gift is if it’s part of a bigger plan and I can’t remember a time that I’ve ever switched out for a weapon and then regretted it.

As Wyddr said a note pad can be a great help with any kind of Daemon army for keeping track of things or you can even go so far as to write the gifts on small slips of paper and put them next to the model (Or make a set of cool looking counters/markers)

  There's no stopping what can't be stopped, no killing what can't be killed

You can't see the eyes of the demon until him come calling.

This is dread man, truly dread.


"Childhood is when you idolize Batman. Adulthood is when you realize that the Joker makes more sense."

 


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