GW released a bombshell of new FAQs Friday, covering errata for the core book and lengthy FAQs for each faction. And as always, we’ve got you covered with the rundown of what’s changed and what it means for your games. In this series of Hot Take articles, we’ll be covering the changes and our initial reactions to them but for more detailed analysis, check back over the next two weeks as we dive deeper into how these changes affect the game and its factions.
Ah poor Slaanesh, how the mighty have fallen. Once the terror of the meta scene and progressively beaten down with each FAQ (and battletome) that came out they’re in a pretty rough position from where they were. Can this FAQ perhaps change their fortunes and improve their standing? Probably not! But let’s see what it does do.
The Good
- Acquiescence Spam: You can now cast Acquiescence ( A spell on multiple unit’s warscrolls) multiple times per turn if multiple units have it, and it’s a good spell too! Reroll 1s against much of your opponent’s army if you can!
- Slothful Stupor prevents entry and exit: Now it blocks receiving and issuing commands, and the same for Syll’esske’s unique spell. Very powerful!
- Painful Visage now causes hit last: What a glow up! If hit with a mortal wound, the victim is afflicted with strike last, turning this from a meh mortal wound spell to a powerful debuff genuinely worth considering.
The Bad
- Coalitions: Already covered in the other mono-god lists, but in short you can include 2 in 4 Slaves to Darkness units (with the Slaanesh or Mark of Chaos keyword), 1 in 4 Beasts of Chaos (who gain the keyword) and Archaon can be chosen to lead. This is “bad” because it’s slightly worse than your old rules, where anything with Slaanesh was fair game as part of the army. It’s not meaningfully worse though, and gaining Beasts of Chaos is potentially pretty cool. So file this under “meh”.
- Shalaxi and Painbringers gives +1 instead of rerolls – Part of the long running plan to replace rerolls with +1s when possible, it’s slightly worse though still worth casting.
The Ugly
- Page numbers: Some Typos on the page numbers here, yeesh.
- Shardspeaker loses +2 to armor and gets +1: Woof, sure everyone only gets +1 to saves now, but they relied hard on that ability to keep them alive and it’s a pure downgrade.
Some good, some bad. For an army not doing so hot it’s a bit disappointing to have a mixed bag. The good stuff is pretty good though, Painful Visage forcing hit last is undeniably a powerful upgrade for the group, and Acquiescence spam will be useful for daemon lists.
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