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OK...
making sure I'm doing this correctly,

Locus of Diversion for Hedonite Heros,
and Horrible Fascination for the Herald w/Contorted Epitome
both have the same effect,(other than Locus only allowing 1 unit per hero)
but as they are different named abilities I can use both, right?

I did this yesterday, keeping my general and the Epitome together in the middle of the battleline
allowed the Locus rolls at the end of charge phase
then Fascination at the start of the combat phase

I managed to effect 3 of the 4 Korne units that hit my line,
and was able to out fight him!

A 75% chance to neutralize the opposing battle line is great if so!
And I'll add another Herald in the middle, too, next time, to try to get that last unit as well

Yes, it does work. It’s essentially a “plan B” if the first one fails, since each enemy unit can only be affected by the Locus once, even if it fails. Our Slaanesh book has a lot of nasty tricks in it. I’m still trying to figure them all out, but it has some serious power in it. The other three real Chaos gods are seriously nervous around this book.

The other chaos books are pretty bad compared to slaanesh, and thats really bad for khorne players since their "new book" just came out.

Hysterical Frenzy really surprised my opponent (Sea Aelves)
in one of my games Saturday...
wiped out two 10man units in 2 turns! (rolled really well)

overall I'm VERY hopeful for the Army (Finally!)

This is honestly the strongest Slaanesh has ever been. We have a fast army that hits hard, and running two Keepers is a secret weapon against the enemy; they’re almost distraction Carnifexes themselves, because if the opponent focuses on them first, and kills them, you get a free one back.

Honestly, the best way to beat Slaanesh is to ignore the Keepers until all other heroes are dead. THEN kill the Keepers. Or kill the Keepers with things that outright slay, and don’t cause actual wounds (Khorne Axe, Nagash, Archaon, etc).

Keepers are what makes the army OP.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Keepers are what makes the army OP.

Fact. Some armies just buckle against Slaaensh and the Keepers. Fought against a 3 keeper list recently as Ironjaws, essentially had to fight about 2 army lists during the game as summoning gave him another 1700 or so in models between my losses and his.

Some are calling that "highly strategic and tactical"

 timetowaste85 wrote:
Yes, it does work. It’s essentially a “plan B” if the first one fails, since each enemy unit can only be affected by the Locus once, even if it fails. Our Slaanesh book has a lot of nasty tricks in it. I’m still trying to figure them all out, but it has some serious power in it. The other three real Chaos gods are seriously nervous around this book.

Nurgle armies should take a good, long look at the best way to stack to hit debuffs (big blocks of Plaguebearers, certain command abilities, etc.). Come to think of it, Plaguebearers instead of Blightkings may be the way to go against Slaanesh. Don't let her farm depravity points off of your multi-wound Blightdudes. I'm also thinking that getting more Gnarlmaws out on the table becomes even more critical than before, to do stuff like block charge lanes on that huge horde-eating lawnmower-chariot with a billion attacks that the Hedonites have.

 Kurgash wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Keepers are what makes the army OP.

Fact. Some armies just buckle against Slaaensh and the Keepers. Fought against a 3 keeper list recently as Ironjaws, essentially had to fight about 2 army lists during the game as summoning gave him another 1700 or so in models between my losses and his.

Current international summoning avg is 1300pt per game. Source: Honest Wargamer.

Are those just free points, or is there some balancing mechanism of some sort to deal with the fact that some armies play with x+1300pts more?

When I plug in the model stats etc and do a linear regression model on it, I can tell you those are mostly free extra points. They like to say that they are "balanced with summoning in mind" but I'm not seeing it.

The balancing mechanism is that the other army does a ton of mortal wounds or a ton of damage in general to offset the free summoning.

If you can neither summon a ton of free points and you don't have the ability to do shed loads of damage, don't bother showing up to the game barring some outliers.

Are the summoning armies or armies with summoning like mechanics balanced against each other, or is it just slanesh armies getting so much out of it?

The summoning mechanics are not balanced against or with anything. Some are reasonable (Nurgle, Khorne) some are ridiculous but act as a crutch (Seraphon) some are are simply OP (Death) and some are, well, Slaanesh.

Slaanesh summoning is also unique in that the army you are playing against dramatically affects it's performance--playing against Fyreslayers or Ironjawz could yield three to four times as much summoning as against Skaven or Nighthaunt. This is because Slaanesh gets summon points when its heroes wound a model without killing it (in addition to the inverse); opponents with lots of multi-wound models accordingly generate more summon points. It is also why Slaanesh armies tend to be running 2/3 to 3/4 of their points in heroes and regular troops are secondary.

Interesting,. Do most fo the armies have at least some source of summoning ,or is it limited to just chaos and undead?

About a third of armies have summoning, mostly in Chaos and Death. Seraphon have summoning as a core mechanic, while Sylvaneth have a hero that summons a unit with a spell (said hero is auto-take, so it's safe to say the faction summons).

Then you have recycling dead ynits which people contend is not summoning but basically you get points returned to the table that were dead.

Goblins and death have that.

Oh I forgot about Gloomspite, yes they have summoning too.

1/3 of all armies being good is nice. Thanks for explaining.