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Most of us Dark Eldar players are at least somewhat familiar with Freakshow tactics (if you aren't here's a nice link http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/645774.page) and how they work with the LD based attacks that the harlequins, craftworld, and corsairs have, in addition to the unfortunately lackluster soulfright, as well as a large number of LD debuffs from the different factions. The main one of these LD attacks is psychic shriek, which is available to all the eldar psykers, and is generally a great tool, even outside of a freakshow list, but inside of one is absolutely devastating. There are some others, like Mirror of Minds, which under ideal circumstances can instantly kill anything with a LD. There are quite a few interesting combinations you can have with all the Eldar races combining, but for this thread, I'm wondering about something a little less lore friendly. How good is a Freakshow list made up of Dark Eldar, Haemonculous Covens, and Slaaneshi daemons?

They are a fast moving assault army that hits hard, is rather squishy, has some good LD based psychic powers, have a 5++ on everyone, and can take a lot of psykers. That may sound a lot like the Harlequins, but their troops are much cheaper, though less powerful in melee, and the heralds with ML2 are of comparable price and utility to shadowseers. They can't join any Dark Eldar units, or even be close to them at all, but given the mobility of both factions they can dance around that distance easily while still keeping enemies in range of both the LD debuffs and the LD attacks.

The main draw of the Daemons over the Harlequins, to me, is the discipline of Excess (from the base codex) which has a weaker PsyShriek in nova form, and a blob melting power that shreds through low LD single wound units. This makes the Slaanesh powers quite a bit better for freakshow than Phantanmancy, though less useful for anything else. Taking a 95 point ML2 herald of Slaanesh has a 2/3 chance of getting one of the freakshow powers (the other power is also great), and the second power can be PsyShriek, meaning that there is no chance of a bad power, which brings some much needed reliability. If you bring a KoS you can do the same, keeping it at ML2, or you can roll on Malefic and do summoning, and potentially get Cursed Earth as well.

A general list idea for this type of army would be along the lines of
DE CAD
Succubus w/Armor of Misery and Glaive
3-4 Warriors in venoms
2-3 haywire scourges or triple lance ravagers

Grotesquerie in raiders

Daemons CAD
3-4 heralds
2-3 daemonette units


From there you can add on whatever you think the list needs.

What are everyone's thoughts on this idea?

Surely the nurgle Herald with the bell that gives a blanket -1 to ld is worth taking?

While more negative LD is good, doesn't Nurgle lack any LD based attacks?

The new Night Lords legion has a bunch of leadership reducing special rules and wargear, not to mention nasty psykers that can take telepathy and keep up with speedy slaanesh and dark elder.

The problem is I don't think the Slaanesh powers are very good. You may get that one game where a cacaphonic choir off that kills half horde army and you feel pretty good. Most of the time though its Ld 9-10 and so on average even with the reductions you are doing little to no damage on 2d6.

Psychic shriek is more reliable - but in that case a Farseer seems a better vehicle than a Slaanesh Herald with more potential upside in other powers.

The Slaanesh force needs to bring more and while I like daemonettes & seekers I don't think they cut it.

 Badablack wrote:
The new Night Lords legion has a bunch of leadership reducing special rules and wargear, not to mention nasty psykers that can take telepathy and keep up with speedy slaanesh and dark elder.

Could be a cool combonation. Plus adds some actual durability to the army other than just the grotesques

Tyel wrote:
The problem is I don't think the Slaanesh powers are very good. You may get that one game where a cacaphonic choir off that kills half horde army and you feel pretty good. Most of the time though its Ld 9-10 and so on average even with the reductions you are doing little to no damage on 2d6.

Its quite easy to stack -3/4 LD, and there are plenty of armies and units that are LD8, which makes it much more reliable. And its not just cacophonic choir, there's also the nova, which could do well in the right circumstances, and a power that removes overwatch, which is great in an assault army.

Psychic shriek is more reliable - but in that case a Farseer seems a better vehicle than a Slaanesh Herald with more potential upside in other powers.

The Slaanesh force needs to bring more and while I like daemonettes & seekers I don't think they cut it.

Well of course replacing them with a Farseer would be better. Just replacing all the allies with Craftworlds would be better since the base of the army is quite a few steps below craftworlds, That's mentioned in the standard Freakshow tactics, but this is to look at potential demonic allies instead

StevetheDestroyeOfWorlds wrote:

Its quite easy to stack -3/4 LD, and there are plenty of armies and units that are LD8, which makes it much more reliable. And its not just cacophonic choir, there's also the nova, which could do well in the right circumstances, and a power that removes overwatch, which is great in an assault army.

Okay what about the Doomstone?

At the start of each fight phase enemy non-daemons have to take a leadership test. If they fail they lose 1d6 leadership for the rest of the game. If a model is reduced to 0 leadership is removed as a casualty with no saves of any kind.

Now normally this is pretty weak - people don't fail leadership tests often enough and even if they do 1d6 ld hardly hurts. It has to go off repeatedly and in that time you might as well just kill them - or have them kill you.

Here though it might work - especially against character heavy deathstars.

Throw in say -3,-4 to Ld. Maybe get terrify to make it -5. Even Ld 10 characters would then fail 72% of the time. On Ld 6 its nearly 60% of the time.

They then have a 1/3 or 1/6 chance to just die even before the combat has begun.

It feels a bit like a gimmick but it might work.

Tyel wrote:

StevetheDestroyeOfWorlds wrote:

Its quite easy to stack -3/4 LD, and there are plenty of armies and units that are LD8, which makes it much more reliable. And its not just cacophonic choir, there's also the nova, which could do well in the right circumstances, and a power that removes overwatch, which is great in an assault army.

Okay what about the Doomstone?

At the start of each fight phase enemy non-daemons have to take a leadership test. If they fail they lose 1d6 leadership for the rest of the game. If a model is reduced to 0 leadership is removed as a casualty with no saves of any kind.

Now normally this is pretty weak - people don't fail leadership tests often enough and even if they do 1d6 ld hardly hurts. It has to go off repeatedly and in that time you might as well just kill them - or have them kill you.

Here though it might work - especially against character heavy deathstars.

Throw in say -3,-4 to Ld. Maybe get terrify to make it -5. Even Ld 10 characters would then fail 72% of the time. On Ld 6 its nearly 60% of the time.

They then have a 1/3 or 1/6 chance to just die even before the combat has begun.

It feels a bit like a gimmick but it might work.

That sounds actually pretty amusing. I think I'm gonna try that out at some point.

remembering with the right locus the slaanesh herald can choose who he fights in the challenge so has a better chance of surviving 1-2 rounds of combat. especially against multi character death stars.