by Eric Hoerger

After making a major impact on the UK‘s AOS scene, including with his tournament-crushing 5-0 Bulk Ardboyz list, Eric recently returned to his native USA and their 40K scene. Eric plays armies from right across the game and has built a reputation for creating strong and unique competitive lists, so let’s join him on his journey back into the Mortal Realms. Today Eric considers whether there is competitive life in Slaanesh beyond the Blissbarb gunline, and what that might look like.

In Magic: The Gathering, one of the main deck archetypes is Control. It generally involves cards focused to counter your opponent’s cards before they enter the battlefield, destroying them once they are on the battlefield with removal effects, and reducing their effectiveness when they do make it through.

I’m currently re-engaging with AOS after taking a six-month break, and in looking at what I want to play again, I looked at my partly-finished Slaanesh force built in Spring last year when the book came out. I love the models and they are some of my better painted units, but the “meta” list that I was painting up just didn’t feel right for what I want Slaanesh to do. A shooting-focused Slaanesh list doesn’t generate as many Depravity points now that opponents know just to take the incidental mortal wounds, and the updated Lookout Sir makes it much more difficult to target smaller characters in shooting. So where does that leave us?

This article is my attempt to fall in love with Slaanesh again, but from the control mindset. We are going to focus this article, and resulting list, on optimizing for two things: save debuffs, and attacks debuffs. Slaanesh are a very fragile army—at least until you get to 36 depravity—and while many units have a fair number of attacks, there isn’t a lot of high rend in the book. In addition to these two focuses, we will add fast units that give us early-game options to gain depravity through Euphoric Killers.

Stacking reductions in attacks particularly hurts monsters and cavalry with multiple attack profiles, as well as hordes counting on volume to do damage. The units we will choose generally have a 4+ save, but we can easily get +2 to save with mystic shield and all-out defense. That profile can’t take a full attack from most combat units, but it can take a reduced hit and keep on chugging. The save reduction is basically bargain-basement Hoarfrost for many of our units to hit far above their weight.

For process, I reviewed each warscroll and endless spells available to Hedonites of Slaanesh and their allies and categorized them into an excel spreadsheet by their debuff type*. I then went through and highlighted which ones were more reliable or cost-effective to identify a shortlist for inclusion. This article includes table excerpts of the excel spreadsheet in the key sections.

Attack Debuffs

Across the Hedonites battletome, endless spells and allies, there were seven options that debuff attacks. Of those, we focused on the bottom four. We knew we generally wanted to be in Pretenders, as that has the best combination of abilities, but there is play in using Invaders for this style as well. As for units, the Shardspeaker becomes a lock as it provides both attacks and save debuffs, and the Twinsouls can be battleline if led by the Lord of Pain.

The mortals in the HOS book generally have better support and the Lord of Pain gives out a fantastic buff of +1 to hit and wound, so the Symbanesh Twinsouls weren’t a hard sell. I considered keeping the Keeper of Secrets in the list, but at 400 points and having an underwhelming combat profile, he was a necessary cut. The Keeper can do a lot of little things, and there is definitely an argument to include him, but I felt we were staring to run out of critical mass of bodies with him in.

Save Debuffs

As for save debuffs, there are seven options across all the warscrolls we have access to. The Shardspeaker as mentioned previously meets both categories we are trying to fill. The Blissbarb Seekers’ debuff is very reliable if somewhat pricy, but it comes with a highly mobile unit that I like even at its higher point value.

The Changecaster is a really interesting selection as it has longer range and a decent means of ensuring it has a chance of going off, but comparatively the body you get it on isn’t as high value as the Chaos Gargant, who can also do monstrous actions for us. The Chaos Gargant is also more reliable than the Jabberslythe, who has to roll for his buffs and can only debuff heroes, so the Chaos Gargant wins the one ally slot here. Everyone’s least favorite endless spell—Purple Sun of Shyish—also fits this theme and so makes the list, but I’d probably rather have the Dreadful Visage endless spell to give out fight’s last. Hurler of Obscenities is also a great trait I’d use often if I went Invaders, but we are Pretenders.

The List Concept

Allegiance: Slaanesh
– Host: Pretenders
– Grand Strategy: Glutton for Depravity
– Triumphs: Inspired

Leaders
Lord of Pain (140)*
– General
– Command Trait: Strength of Godhood
Shardspeaker of Slaanesh (130)**
– Lore of the Magnificent: Soulslice Shards
Contorted Epitome (230)**
– Artefact: The Crown of Dark Secrets
– Lore of Primal Frost: Hoarfrost

Battleline
5 x Symbaresh Twinsouls (140)*
5 x Symbaresh Twinsouls (140)*
10 x Hellstriders with Claw-spears (300)*
– Reinforced x 1

Units
5 x Blissbarb Seekers (220)*
6 x Slaangor Fiendbloods (240)*
– Reinforced x 1
5 x Slickblade Seekers (220)

Behemoths
Chaos Gargant (150)*

Endless Spells & Invocations
Purple Sun of Shyish (80)

Core Battalions
*Battle Regiment
**Andtorian Acolytes

Total: 1990 / 2000
Reinforced Units: 2 / 4
Allies: 0 / 400
Wounds: 127
Drops: 4

So how does this all come together? At the surface, its not as overtly scary as 55 Blissbarb Archers, Be’lakor and Epitome. However, it’s also much better at surviving an aggressive push and then hitting back. We have two reliable and one 4+ chance to reduce incoming attacks, which is massive if we can line up the positioning correctly. This will seriously dent first-turn combat alpha-strikes from cavalry units and monsters, and makes them very susceptible to counterattacks from our heavier hitters in the Slickblades, Hellstriders, and Slaangor. The Hellstriders don’t look like much, but they throw 41 attacks that we can get to rend -7 and hit on 2s and 3s without command abilities.

We managed to put four sources of -1 to save into the list: Blissbarb Seekers, Chaos Gargant, Purple Sun, and Shardspeaker. We also have three sources preventing use of command abilities: Roar from the Chaos Gargant, Horrible Fascination from the Contorted Epitome, and the Soulslice Shards spell.

This list is an extreme example of what can be done with debuff stacking, and I have not yet put this on the table. On the surface, it appears to line up better than traditional lists for the melee grind, and should allow units that have gone down in points to do more damage and survive longer than first expected. Slaangor surviving to get to use their fights-last drastically increases their damage.

Ultimately, this exercise has been good to get the creative juices flowing on what you can do with a less-explored aspect of an army that is performing poorly, despite having a fantastic set of grand strategies and battle tactics.

What do you think, Slaanesh players? Is something like this viable, or just a meme?

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*I’ve seen the Excel sheet and it you can tell that a lot of work went into it – Pete

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