Games Workshop Warhammer AoS - Hedonites of Slaanesh Blissbarb Archers

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P.S. Why are 20 wounds worth of mortal wound dealing, speedy Blissbarb Seekers only 20 points more than 11 blissbarb archers? *sigh* The leader and the Claw-Spear have access to Impaling Strike, an ability that for a Triple allows to do damage on charge (if you finish a movement within 1” of an enemy do as much as 6 damage). I made a couple of tiny changes to them by adding an Ungor head to the guy with with the poison pot, and a daemonette head and claw on one of them (because they’re spindly and I broke the original).

The Slaanesh Sybarites are the newest Age of Sigmar expansion to the Hedonites of Slaanesh army. As such the models are all, except one, brand-new and there are no discounted box available yet. The Starshard Bastilla is pretty alright, if it weren’t sharing competition with the Vanari Sentinels for a similar role. The Bannerblade is widely considered straight up bad. Lumineth really don’t need a Bravery buff. With the exception of Slaangor, who can basically just be forgotten about unless they get a new Warscroll or dropped to exactly 40 points, most of the new units will be playable once their points come down. But the level of drops that we need to see here are something in the area of a minimum of 20 points per unit and likely to be something closer to 40 points per unit. I understand that they don’t want summoning to break the army again, but they’ve already fixed that by limiting it to once a turn.Those Seeker warriors acquiring an Exalted Steed of Slaanesh can cross the battlefield at incredible speed. The best case scenario is you deep strike this unit 12” away to pepper something and hold an area of the board. The problem is, why wouldn’t I use Chainrasps for that role? The Craventhrone aren’t going to kill a damn thing anyway, so I’d rather have double the wounds for the same cost. 12” range means you can’t keep them safe from any melee units, and they’re an inefficient screen, an inefficient ranged unit and an absolutely amazing sculpt. Seriously guys, these models are great. End on a high note, right? Wrapping things up

The Myrmidesh are your perfect defensive piece, with one of the highest Toughness available in game together with a decent melee profile. But let’s talk positives – if you play Reikenor’s Condemned between now and the new book, you get to benefit from both hit rerolls for Chainrasps as well as the +1 to hit from the new warscroll which is pretty nice if you want a brief period of supercharged Chainrasps. Oh and Myrmourn Banshees have an interesting defined role now, which is nice. Another solid set. For a new player I really like this box. First, the Heroes: The Boneshaper is a solid foundation to start from. Of the 3 generic Wizard Heroes I think the Soulmason is the strongest but the Boneshaper makes a decent follow up option. I much prefer their new warscroll because now I can be aggressive with the unit and have a consistent source of rend 2 on infantry whose damage output is effectively doubled from what it was. Do I think this makes the Banshee a power house? No not really, but they’re a much better harassment unit than they were (a low bar to clear admittedly). In addition, it gives me an interesting source of non-traditional magic defenses that can be effective even against megacasters with large casting bonuses like Lord Kroak that do large amounts of aoe damage. The Sybarites are the mortal followers of Slaanesh, each exemplifying a particular trait brought to the excess, from the lowliest Blissbarb Archer to the mightiest Lord of Pain.

Target practice: Blissbarb Seeker High-Tempter, Shardspeaker, 2 Blissbarb Seekers, 3 Blissbarb Archers, 1 Blissbrew Homonculus. How to buy a Slaanesh Sybarites Warband Has an interactable warscroll ability, which requires you to get dangerously close (9″ range) and works on a 3+, giving it a not super reliable ability while the unit itself will die to an angry squint coming from most anything in the game in retaliation. The net effect is that the Hedonites battletome feels like it’s “copying the first book’s homework, but make it look like you didn’t.” with a minimal amount of effort to feel like something new. This doesn’t have to be a bad thing – both Daughters of Khaine and Disciples of Tzeentch are flavorfully similar to their previous iterations but include adequate updates for the environment they’re being put into. Meanwhile the Hedonites book went through several adjustments and got whole new units and should have felt much more well, new. Instead it feels like we have something dangerously close to being “Sylvaneth 2.0.” These inadequacies are even more stark when you put the book next to Daughters of Khaine. Let’s compare the two, shall we? Orangey/Brown fur and Yellow fabric (it’s not very visible on this guy but it’s on the shield) complimented the blue skin quite nicely and I’d finally found a really easy way to paint Orangey Yellow (Yellow ink with a Fuegan Orange wash, thank me later). I didn’t just paint one Gor though I painted his friends too. The Orangey Yellow (henceforth just yellow) worked pretty well on the banner too after a drybrush of VGC Scrufulus Brown to tidy up the streaks of Fuegan orange. If it worked well on a larger area I wondered if it would work as the main colour but I didn’t want to change the colour scheme of the Gors so I decided to look for another Chaos model that had horns and lots of fabric. Introducing the “Herdspeaker”, or Shard Speaker as GW calls them: