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Paper rock scissors has been a time honored gw tradition for a great many years.

I have not seen them generate 60 dp in a game yet, thats pretty insane, but it does make you think twice about leaving the plain jane ghouls at home.

Slaanesh is a good counter to FEC, the problem being that they aren't strong enough to wipe the FEC before they swing. And when they do, it's some very dead Slaanesh. Summoning is nice and all, but the FEC did all of theirs turn 1.

auticus wrote:
Paper rock scissors has been a time honored gw tradition for a great many years.

I have not seen them generate 60 dp in a game yet, thats pretty insane, but it does make you think twice about leaving the plain jane ghouls at home.

My opponent had 51 depravity points by turn 2

That just sounds like something was played wrong. How did they manage that?

I played a game monday and i had 27 or so in turn 2.

If he was running blightkings...

Well you're getting 3 per dead blight king. 51 depravity is likely the D3 for the general getting near them, maybe another 3 or so from some other buff, and then thats 15 dead blight kings in turn 2.

A sizable chunk of the army. Over 500 points or a quarter of the opposing army. Thats some pretty good killing.

I imagine a good chunk of it was from Slaanesh heroes taking wounds as well.

Well I had killed his KoS, chariot, epitome and masque by turn 2. I know this player and trust him implicitly. Also my maruaders has two wounds a piece.

Ouch, fleshy abundance was probably not the best choice of spell there!

Well it was because of fleshy abundance that I was able to kill his kos. But also because of fleshy abundance would have caused a kos summon...so ehhh not sure

Could've used blades of putrefaction instead!

Sidenote; hard counter to Slaanesh--90 plaguebearers. Their offense is terrible so they won't wound much but their defense is great and they have 1w. So the Slaanesh player spends most the game slapping them around and getting little depravity for his trouble. He'll get to the objectives first, but the plaguebearers will outnumber him when they do. By the time they are dead... Summon more plaguebearers!

Yep. I played a game vs goblins. I got like 25 DP the entire game.

If you know you're facing off against slaanesh, if your group doesn't care about tailoring, you'll want to minimize multi wound models.

That is the big issue with Slaanesh balance--it can be OP against certain armies. This is true with almost any build and is not inherently bad as it promotes more rounded listbuilding, but when the strong counter is that generic (and for some armies unavoidable) it is a problem.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
That is the big issue with Slaanesh balance--it can be OP against certain armies. This is true with almost any build and is not inherently bad as it promotes more rounded listbuilding, but when the strong counter is that generic (and for some armies unavoidable) it is a problem.

Yes I agree with this so much.

My looncurse gobo focused list barely notices the depravity summoning, he is limited by his own stuff dying and usual in army tricks for them.

Against my Iron Jawz so much gets summoned against my already awful army (they really need to combine bonesplittaz, Ironjawz and Greenskinz...) that I simply cannot compete.

But I will add, crushing a new KoS with Da Foot of Gork from full health is Ironjawz equivalent of a aphrodisiac...

I think one way to have better adjusted the depravity would have been to put generation for it on some of the troops for the army. Perhaps allowing them to generate it even if they die (since most only have 1 wound).

That would increase generation across the board so would require a rise in costs to summon models; but it would give Slaanesh more reason to take more troops (right now you basically always want to fill out the leaders slot which can mean nearly 3/4 of points ends up all leaders and almost no troops) and also more ability to adapt to armies like Skaven who have a lot of 1 wound models which aren't going to generate depravity and where they are quite happy to tie your keeper up for ages with weak clanrats that might never hurt it much; because its at least holding it at bay and sapping your depravity generation.

To tone it down and make it more fun in a campaign environment, I am only taking four leaders. And only one of those is a keeper.

If you’re trying to tone Slaanesh down, I think you might have missed the point of them.

If I'm trying to foster a non power gaming environment, I can't in good conscious show up with a powerlist myself.

Not only did you miss the point, you missed the joke!! Capt. Literal called, and he wants his super power back!

Sorry my bad. Text environment, its not always apparent when there is a joke.

Gir Spirit Bane wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
That is the big issue with Slaanesh balance--it can be OP against certain armies. This is true with almost any build and is not inherently bad as it promotes more rounded listbuilding, but when the strong counter is that generic (and for some armies unavoidable) it is a problem.

Yes I agree with this so much.

My looncurse gobo focused list barely notices the depravity summoning, he is limited by his own stuff dying and usual in army tricks for them.

Against my Iron Jawz so much gets summoned against my already awful army (they really need to combine bonesplittaz, Ironjawz and Greenskinz...) that I simply cannot compete.

But I will add, crushing a new KoS with Da Foot of Gork from full health is Ironjawz equivalent of a aphrodisiac...

I’m hoping for that too. A combined “waaagh!” book full of all kinds of orruks. And a combined Ogryn book too, with Beastclaw Raiders as one play style.

But anyway, I took on board that advice about changing warscrolls. Small changes for now.

Say, remind me again, how do Seraphon and Tzeentch handle summoning?

Do you have the GHB? Both Seraphon and Tzeentch summoning are in there.

But to give a rundown of how they are actually used:

A slaan general can opt not to cast a spell to general 3 summon points instead. The army also gets 1 per round for having a slaan general, and d3 if there is at least one astrolith around. This has the unfortunate effect of tying seraphon army viability to a slaan general. The slaan has 3 spells for showing up, so 9 summon points, plus the d3+1 means an average of 12 per turn. The two summons I see used are 10 skinks for 6 (objective snagging) and a bastiladon for 24. Note this means that just for bringing a slaan general and an astrolith bearer a seraphon player gets a free bastiladon every two rounds on average. The bastiladon is a extremely durable monster mainly used for its strong shooting attack, meaning it is a tactically potent option to summon to begin with.

Means to get additional spellcasts (cogs/balewind) can also be used for the slaan to general additional spells, and thus additional summon points. He is rarely used to actually cast, this is instead done by support heroes and/or a second slaan.

The seraphon also have the engine of the gods, which rolls 4d6 dice dropping one of choice at comparing it to a table to generate an effect. The notable ones are a 6-10 shooting a 25" laser that does d6 mortal wounds, and a 14-17 summoning in a free unit of 20 skinks or 3 ripperdactyls. Note that the number of dice rolled does decrease as the engine takes damage, and only when near a slaan does it get to add an extra dice then drop one of choice (the default roll is 3d6).


Tzeentch gets a summon point every time a spell is successfully cast (not unbound) by either player. This theoretically means Tzeentch summoning is much stronger against magic-heavy armies but in practice the effect is small; enemy magic armies unbind more of the Tzeentch cast attempts and thus counteract the imbalance, and the lion's share of summoning points is still often coming from the Tzeentch army itself anyways.

Additionally every time a pink horror dies the player can choose to do a MW effect or gain 2 summon points that can only be spent to summon blue horrors. Every time a blue horror dies they can choose to do a MW effect or gain 1 summon point that can only be spent to summon brimstone horrors.

I don't recall the numbers needed for Tzeentch summoning off the top of my head, but it is not that bad save the blue/brim summoning which is very spammable.

@ NinthMusketeer

Thanks for the rundown. I didn’t have the GHB at hand at the time.

I can really see the problem with Seraphon summoning already. It’s a bit similar to FEC summoning; you’re effectively just getting free units more or less. No skill or random chance involved there.

How do we fix this? Maybe change it so that a spell swap only generates D3 summoning points? Remove the +1 for having a slann general too? Too little or too much?

Tzeentch however seems to be much fairer, spammable horrors aside. Systems like that (gain a point for something happening) are the fairest and most balanced. Khorne’s blood tithe system (1 point per destroyed unit), Slaanesh’s depravity system (points for injuring models), these are are great ways to handle summoning.

Seraphon are sitting on some very dated point costs and mechanics, but are rumored to be getting a new battletome this year. I have confidence they will come out of that in a much better state. In the meantime, yeah, making it d3 per uncast spell would push things towards being a choice and take the edge off the summoning. Changing the 14-18 results on the engine to 'pick another option on the chart' is the simplest way to addressing that I can think of. (18 is essentially auto-win; double the movement and attacks of all Seraphon that round.) The other way would be perhaps halving the number of models summoned or changing the list of what is summoned.

For Tzeentch, it is a matter of addressing the point cost of pink horrors, which suffer incredibly from the fixed-cost of AoS points. The initial 10 is worth far more since it provides casting ability, 11-20 the least, and 21-30 a bit more than the previous because of size-scaling bonus. The best way as it stands would be to up the cost of the initial 10, make a huge horde discount, and just accept that 20 will never be used.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Seraphon are sitting on some very dated point costs and mechanics, but are rumored to be getting a new battletome this year. I have confidence they will come out of that in a much better state. In the meantime, yeah, making it d3 per uncast spell would push things towards being a choice and take the edge off the summoning. Changing the 14-18 results on the engine to 'pick another option on the chart' is the simplest way to addressing that I can think of. (18 is essentially auto-win; double the movement and attacks of all Seraphon that round.) The other way would be perhaps halving the number of models summoned or changing the list of what is summoned.

For Tzeentch, it is a matter of addressing the point cost of pink horrors, which suffer incredibly from the fixed-cost of AoS points. The initial 10 is worth far more since it provides casting ability, 11-20 the least, and 21-30 a bit more than the previous because of size-scaling bonus. The best way as it stands would be to up the cost of the initial 10, make a huge horde discount, and just accept that 20 will never be used.

Hopefully their new Battletome will be more in the spirit of the Gloomspite or BoC rather than FEC. Some points adjustments and a simple swap to D3 per uncast spell would work wonders. They’re still a mighty powerful army. Just not ridiculously powerful.

And as for Tzeentch, what if the cost of pink horrors was bumped up to 300 per 10? With a 40pt per 10 horde discount, for a cost of 780 for 30? Is that too much? It feels expensive but then again you’re getting so many models for that price.

That seems like a huge markup. And honestly, blues and yellows aren't good for much more than being a tar pit. I think a bump like that would see Pinkies occupying the painting shelf and not the table.

Having played against Pink horrors a few times, they seem to be more than fairly priced to me. Most of the Blue and Brimstone Horror's cost is covered by the the Pink horror's cost.

As for the Seraphon, its not their summoning that has given me the most issues but their ability to freely teleport any unit to practically any where on the board, and to a lesser extent Skinks. Now that's not to say that their summoning isn't broken and i will get into that later. As for the teleporting other armies have the ability to teleport as well but they tend to have greater restriction on this ability; casting a spell or prayer, being held in reserves or going into reserves for a round, the use of a command point, standing within range of a terrain feature, a one use artifact, ect. Seraphon with little to no effort can move a valuable asset across the battlefield and if there are any uncontested objective on the battlefield they will belong to the Seraphon. I also mentioned Skinks as being a problem. Mostly I think that they are too cheap(both in point and summon points) once you add in everything they can do. There stats don't look that bad at first but they are a dirt cheap unit with 10 models, that move 8", can back out of combat, have bravery 10, and have a ranged attack . Now combine that with the army's ability to summon 20 of them a turn and the ability to teleport 2 units a turn and you have an army that can basically grab any objective and hold it with overwhelming numbers.

As for there summoning I don't think its a problem because they can generate too many points, but rather that the cost on their summoning chart are too low. After all you can generate 100 summon point a turn but if the lowest thing to summon was 200 summon point that wouldn't mean much. Also my problem with Seraphon summoning is that all the summoning is on the Slann, and as long as it is, you will never see any of the other possible Warlord option that Seraphon should have.

Very good points Venerable Ironclad. I played against Seraphon a couple of months back and I remember some kind of frog or something allowing a unit of ripperdactyls to teleport right beside my ships. I also remember the army finishing larger than it was when it started. Both need addressing, but of course if they’re getting a new book soon then I’m confident that they will be.

Agree with Venerable Ironclad. I really don't miss the days where Pink Horrors were horrible for a low price and spawning blue and brimstone horrors, making them certainly one of the most fitting units to hold an objective.

Their price is fair, now.

Hm, I'll take people's word for it saying pinks are OK. I do maintain they need a steeper horde discount, however.


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 Future War Cultist wrote:
Very good points Venerable Ironclad. I played against Seraphon a couple of months back and I remember some kind of frog or something allowing a unit of ripperdactyls to teleport right beside my ships. I also remember the army finishing larger than it was when it started. Both need addressing, but of course if they’re getting a new book soon then I’m confident that they will be.

That's a battalion, I think it is the last means which ignores the 9" minimum (barring vanguard, but they don't count). No doubt a battletome update will fix that. The toad gives the rippers extra attacks on their best weapon if it is near you when they swing; the best-named ability of AoS "Toad Rage"!