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Author Topic: First Hedonites list rating+how much if any will the Christmas box improve it?  (Read 1245 times)

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Offline Sumshine

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GW announced the Christmas boxes and I'm wondering how much the Hedonite box would improve what I already have.

Currently I've ordered or own Glutos Orscollion, Infernal Enrapturess, Lord of Pain, Shardspeaker of Slaanesh, The Masque, 5 myrmidesh painbringers, 5 twinsouls, 5 hellstriders w/claw-spears, 5 hellstriders with hellscourges, the dread pageant, and 11 blissbarb archers.  All that adds up to 1980 points.  The only way I see to spend 20 points is the Burning Head endless spell (which I would need to buy somehow).  Then on the daemon side that I hope to summon, 10 daemonettes, a keeper of secrets, and a hellflayer.  I don't actually know what things I can summon yet, because my codex hasn't come in.  Would my list be a lot better if I swapped out things for what's in the Christmas box?
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Offline Myen'Tal

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Hi Sumshine,

So a friend of mine plays Hedonites almost exclusively in Age of Sigmar. He also achieved a solid rank in a tourney he attended with them.


I think this box will definitely help improve your list and give you some more options you can switch things out with in case you'd like to change the unit composition.

- Slickblade Sleekers are really good!

- Use the 10 infantry to create some Painbringers, which are really useful.

- Blissbarbs you may need to wait until they receive some points adjustments, but I have seen other lists use them

I think it's a good box that will enhance or give you more options.

My friend likes painbringers, like 30 on the field lol, and doesn't use the archers so much. But 20-30 of those guys around Glutos make them difficult to bring down sometimes.
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Offline Sumshine

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Is he the guy that AoS coach interviewed on youtube?  That sounds similar to what he fielded.  I like the Painbringer models quite a bit and don't mind doing that.  I kinda don't want to use Sigvald though. 

There's a minor theme in the army about lowering leadership and dealing damage to low leadership models that I'd like to play around with.  Phantasmagoria to lower it, Soulsplice shards to shoot low ld units.  Craving stare to make failing battleshock more impactful.

Viceleader, Contorted Epitome, Synessa, and the Keeper can cast the spells (if there are other things, I don't know what they are).  I probably wouldn't want either the Keeper or Synessa to spend their time on those spells.  I'm also leaning towards not starting with a keeper on the field.  I'm not sure if the other two are any good.

I'd kind of prefer to use the Pretenders subfaction, because I play Dominions sometimes and it would amuse me.  That's also where the Craving Stare is located.  I could take mask of spiteful beauty artifact for the theme.

I think I want to play with:
Synessa, because I want this to be magic heavy force and she's the best in the battletome.
[edit]A general that I should be able to keep alive while using craving stare, spiteful beauty (so with 6" of enemy units).  [/edited]

Then I'd need a couple of other Slaanesh demon casters.  How do viceleaders and Contorted Epitomes work (especially in this list)?

I'm not really familiar with allies I could take.  Specifically, beastmen, Nurgle, and Tzeentche.  Do any of them further play around with the enemy's leadership value?  Do any of the endless spells that aren't in the Slaanesh book help with my theme?  (I ordered my battletome 2 months ago.  I hope to get it before Christmas... lol).

Edit:
I messed around for awhile and looked up some rules and came up with this:

Leaders:
Lord of Pain* (general+Commander)
Artifact: Mask of the Spiteful Beauty
Command traits: Monarch of Lies and Craving Stare
Shardspeaker of Slaanesh** (subcommander)
Dark Delusions
Shardspeaker of Slaanesh** (subcommander)
Battle Rapture (probably most of the time this will be the mystic shield castor, but seems good with a blob of 30 daemonettes)
Synessa *
all the spells
Viceleader** (commander)
Soulsplice Shards
Viceleader**
Phantasmagoria

Battleline:
11 Blissbarb Archers**
5 Myrmidesh Painbringers*
5 Myrmidesh Painbringers*

Other:
5 Slickblade Seekers**
10 Chaos Marauders*
10 Chaos Marauders*

Scenery:
Fane of Slaanesh

Malign Sorcery:
Endless Spell: Dreadful Visage
Core Battalions:
*Battle Regiment
**Warlord
Total points 1995

Depending on how that number of casters go, I could drop one of them for the masque.

This seems worth trying to me at least.  I think I will generate more depravity points more quickly with this list, but obviously isn't going to hit as hard.

Do summoned Keeper of Secrets get to pick a spell?
« Last Edit: November 19, 2021, 08:03:45 PM by Sumshine »
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Offline Myen'Tal

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So, I'll give a disclaimer here that I am not a Hedonites player, so I don't know their rules inside and out. But I've played them quite often - so here is my take.

Lowering leadership and dealing damage through it is good, for low leadership armies, but note that with how 3rd edition AoS is playing now - higher leadership armies with small model counts are going to really shrug at that combo and not care, not until at least a good number of leadership enhancing models and rules from the opponent.

Synessa is a great synergy piece to a Hedonites army.

Viceleadres are good for cheap casters to buff some units or some debuffs in a pinch.

Contorted Epitome is a great choice for casting, and it's ability to ignore Mortal wounds on a 2+ I think, makes it durable to being sniped.

As for your list -


Don't underestimate a Lord of Pain, I think he has a base ability to deflect wounds on a 5+ back at their foe as mortals, and if you sacrifice an artifact to the fane for a +1 to hit, he can hit back quite a bit hard too.

One thing to note, unless specified in a warscroll or spell description, any particular spell can only be cast once a turn. I don't know if soulspice shards meet that exception or you weren't aware, but I just wanted to mention that.

At the moment, I will say you have way too many points stored in your Leaders.

I would drop one vice leader, and a shardspeaker, and maybe the other vicelord, since three casters are usually plenty in AoS.

Definitely not enough battleline, and I think the box set can definitely help you with this!

I would add in the ten painbringers somehow, and right now I would drop the archers, because of their super inefficient points cost. They are way to expensive at the moment, but that might change entirely with the winter FAQ coming up, so I would hold off on making any extreme changes until then.

Chaos mauraders, I don't think they will be any good in the minimum 10 squad, but I never knew what made them really good initially to begin with.

That said, you are just beginning, so don't feel too much pressure to adhere to my advice. It is perfectly fine to play with the units you have, until you can acquire more that you want :).

That's my take @sumshine, let me know your thoughts and if you have any questions.
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Offline Sumshine

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I am actually really struggling with making and sticking with a list.

(Most of this post is to explain more of my reasoning for the above, but I'm not arguing at all, I am really just confused on what I should be doing.)
For the points spent on leaders thing, I got that from Evan Williams (who went 4 and 1 in a GT) in this video with AoS coach: Talkin' Slaanesh | 3rd Edition Warhammer Age of Sigmar - YouTube .  However, since I've never actually played a game before, I could be taking it out of context.  He says that Hedonites need to take 1000 points of heroes.  His list has 4: Glutos (which I have, but every list I see includes him, which makes him seem dull), Keeper of Secrets, Sigvald, and a lord of pain as the general.  He says not to take Sigvald unless he can teleport, because he is fragile and can't just run up the center.  He used Lurid Haze Invader's Host.  My issue with his list is that it doesn't seem fun to play against.  It is designed to assassinate something important with 100% certainty on turn 1.  That would really annoy me, but I listened to the Season of War recap on their GT and it also sounds like nearly everyone has a plan to do something equally terrifying, so maybe I just have to deal with it.  I am somewhat tempted to go ahead and buy the rest of the stuff for his list, just so I know the list is good.

So I don't know if I should also be taking lots of heroes or not for this particular list.  To recap my faction ideally needs to deal 1 point of damage to all enemies in a round and take 1 point (and only 1 point) of damage on everything I brought in order to maximize depravity and summon more crap.  (I know that won't actually happen.)  So having more stuff, especially when it won't die is preferable.  My subfaction Pretenders get a general with 2 command traits, one of which I want to be Craving Stare, and the other doesn't really matter to me.  They also get to reroll 1's to hit if the unit has over 10 models (kind of indicating that they want me to reinforce my stuff).  This subfaction ability actually makes choosing troops more difficult, because reinforcing things makes it less likely for me to get more depravity, since potentially 2 or 3 squads would be rolled into 1 squad in one or more places.  Lastly, I want to make use of wizards to cast 2 spells every round: Phantasmagoria and Soulslice Shards.

Starting with his list as a baseline, I removed Glutos and the Keeper because I can get a lot more units without them == more potential depravity.  Plus Glutos isn't particularly aligned with my subfaction or wizard goals.  He's very good though, so he might be something I have to take eventually.  I just don't want to start the list with him in it.

I put the blissbarb archers in there, because they can shoot twice in a turn, so they could theoretically get 1 more depravity point/turn than the painbringers.  I still need frontline units, so I left those in there.  I added the marauders because 90 points for hopefully 2 more depravity/turn.  And the slickblade seekers just because you recommended them.

A big question that I don't really understand is when buffs and debuffs stack or don't stack.  I know that there's a maximum of +-1 on armor saves.  Is the same true for leadership?  Is the same true for to hit rolls? (I have 3 different things that could subtract -1 to hit, which might be another direction to take it).

Another question supposing leadership debuffs stack is "how low do I need to get leadership for it to be worth doing to a high leadership target?"
My tools that could reduce leadership are:
Phantasmagoria (spell)
Dreadful Visage (endless spell)
Mask of Spiteful beauty (artifact)
Archaeon
Chaos Chosen
Chaos Marauders (on or off horses)
Unmade

For the sake of argument, let's say I go with Marauders, it looks like I could be reducing a target's leadership by somewhere between 6 and 12 with the average being -8 (if the spells go off).  My low morale unit is 5 and my highest is 10 I think, so either way I *could* get it down to 0.  Soulslice shards and Craving Stare (general ability) would deal a lot of damage and Dark Delusions would auto pass, which frees up command points.  All demon casters get a spell that just adds +1 to hit though, so I don't necessarily need that spell, unless the two spells stack.

Archaeon may be one of my best choices because he has a big aura, I could give him either Phantasmagoria or Soulslice Shards, and he would be the best thing to cast Dreadful Visage.  I really have no idea how to use him effectively though.  Is he supposed to be casting other spells instead?  How bad is he hurt by not being in a Slaves or Tzeentche list?  Is he still worth the points in this list?  If I did take him, then I would need 1 more caster at a minimum that would be casting either phantasmagoria or soulslice shards, whichever he didn't take.  And I'd also need a general that could take an artifact.  The cheapest option that satisfies both options that I think is good would be a bladebringer on exalted chariot, making the other commander ability the +1 to hit beasts because some random person on the internet said that makes it able to kill something that sounded impressive, but I don't remember what it was or if that was accurate.  But either way it is meant to get in close which is what enables the artifact and craving stare.  I assumed that Archaeon was overcosted with the loss of two of his abilities being Slaves to Darkness specific, but he is a Hedonite and would get the faction bonuses (if that matters at all), and I honestly don't know.  I feel like that much power makes him a big target though, especially because most people are going to ignore Archaeon as a target.  Also, I would have to use helreavers and blissbarb archers as my battleline.  I don't want to use demonettes as battleline for sure, which leaves blissbarb archers and helreavers.  I have up to 2 squads of either.  Since neither are super desirable, I'd go with the cheapest of my options 2 units of helreavers and 1 blissbarb.  That leaves me with less than 500 points to get big blobs of units and/or casters to cast the other spells.  I would prefer one of the options that reduces ld, so I'll go with marauders. 1 units of 20, just because I have so few units of hedonites that I can only have 2 coalition units.  I have just enough points to take Twinsouls, so I'll go with that.  When I look at this list, it doesn't seem like I have enough stuff on the field.  I only have 1 melee unit with more than 10 to start with, which is blah for this subfaction. This subfaction is the only one allowed to take that command trait and artifact though, so it seems like this is the one to take if I want to focus on leadership.  I also don't feel like this list has enough units in general.  It also doesn't have room to cast spells outside of my combo.  I think it'd be nice to have a mystic shield caster, a Dark delusions/Acquiescence caster, and maybe others (specifically if I had Synessa, she has a hero snipe spell that only really works with her).


Other questions: I see other people have more than 1 artifact, but Battlescribe never lets me have a second one.  I *think* all I need is more than 1 core battalion, and I always have 2.  The second one is a warlord core battallion, which I think should let me have another enhancement, and I think an artifact is an enhancement.  Shouldn't that be letting me have 3 artifacts?  It'd be nice to also have the amulet of destiny and one to throw in the Fane of Slaanesh.  Am I able to put them all on one commander?

Battlescribe also confuses me with regard to taking Archaeon.  It consisers him a coalition unit even though he has "Hedonite" keyword, but the FAQ says that you can't take a unit with the Khorne keyword as a coalition unit, and he also has that keyword.  Why would it be a Hedonite if I can't have it in a Hedonite list?  Is it or isn't it a coalition unit?

Another concern I have is whether or not the Craving Stare and Mask of Spiteful beauty abilities prevent me from doing something else important.  e.g. finest hour or all out defense.


Here is what I came up with if I prioritize getting troop blobs above 10:
Bladebringer on exalted Seeker Chariot
phantasmagoria
Mask of spiteful beauty
Craving Stare
Godbeast killer or Master of Magic

Bladebringer on Seeker Chariot
soulslice shards
artifact of some kind

The Masque

Shardspeaker of Slaanesh
Battle Rapture (this is more important with 4 bigish blobs)

Battleline:
2x Blissbarb archers
Helstriders with Hellscourges

Other troops/the blobs:
16 Iron Golems (to sit on an objective)
20 Splintered Fang (mortal wounds)
20 marauders
20 marauders
Malign Sorcery:
Endless Spell: Dreadful Visage

I could save points on the blobs by using more cultists instead of marauders and upgrade the bladebringer on seeker chariot to either hellflayer or exalted chariot depending on if I replaced one or both.  Marauders are better than any of the cultists, and only the unmade give -1 to leadership.  I'm not sure what the two new ones are like, but if I had to choose between the others in this case, I'd probably go with Unmade then Untamed Beasts.

&& I hear you on the painbringers vs blissbarb argument.  I don't think they are as needed in this list because there's a lot of front line troops in the blobs.

I'm not sure how to model the bladebringers onto the exalted chariot/hellflayer/seeker chariot.  Do I just buy a herald and throw it on the chariot somewhere? Or is it more just declaring what it is?  I really hate the herald model, so I might try to find something else if I need to do that.

Excessive rules descriptions removed or rewritten in a vague manner in accordance with forum rule 1.  Please avoid writing out rules and stats - Iris.
« Last Edit: November 22, 2021, 06:46:09 PM by Irisado »
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Offline Sumshine

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I found out today that I can't take cultists as coalition units because their new rules only apply when they are in a Slaves to Darkness army.   :(

Apparently the bladebringer just comes on the exalted chariot in the start collecting box, so that is covered.  I'm less sure about the helflayer version that came in the Shadow and Pain box.  I guess I'll worry about it if that ends up being a good combination.  I don't think that model starts with it on there.  I have no idea about a regular seeker chariot.
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Offline Myen'Tal

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I found out today that I can't take cultists as coalition units because their new rules only apply when they are in a Slaves to Darkness army.   :(

Apparently the bladebringer just comes on the exalted chariot in the start collecting box, so that is covered.  I'm less sure about the helflayer version that came in the Shadow and Pain box.  I guess I'll worry about it if that ends up being a good combination.  I don't think that model starts with it on there.  I have no idea about a regular seeker chariot.

I apologize for not responding to this, I've forgotten to answer your questions since Thanksgiving came and went.

A Herald on the Hellflayer chariot is a Bladebringer I believe - I will tell you that I've never seen nor heard anyone mention the hellflayer being worth taking over the other ones. I think people tend to bring the Exalted version, but I'm not sure how effective the regular chariot is.

But you can take a Bladebringer on all three, and I think no would fault you for announcing that whoever is leading on the chariot - you've selected as a Bladebringer.

About your previous post - I wouldn't spend too much time trying to work out what you need to be competitive. You've just started, and won't produce those winning results at tournaments anyway (can confirm, spent last three years playing warhammer and smashed at my first tournament last August - haha).

Remember, the road to mastering your army is to play what you'd like - and become familiar enough with your faction that you learn how to play with it - pros, cons, and everything inbetween. That's why I don't follow meta list, because copying those won't make you a player on the same calibre as those creating them. And I'm certainly not of that calibre myself - but I encourage you to find enjoyment in mastering what you'd like to use and play rather chase the meta - as that path leads to a lot of exhausted finances without much to show for it.

Who knows, you may one day create that super cool list that others want to borrow and copy  :).
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