I know their new book was recently announced, but I still want to take a look at the Hedonites of Slaanesh (HoS) current Path to Glory rules. Why do you ask? Well the comparison tells us a lot about how GW wants their rules to evolve. Are they expanded or radically altered? What elements carry through, and which are dropped?
Army Ability and Quest:
The HoS don’t have too many army-specific rules. The main one ties the number of daemon units you have the number and type of Heroes you have in your army. Also, Invader armies get to ignore the limitation on command traits.
The HoS quest is a little tricky to complete if you don’t pick your warlord carefully. Each time your warlord kills an enemy character you get 1 point. Once you hit six points, you get to complete the quest and pick a boon:
- +1 Movement
- Friendly units don’t take battleshock if within 12″
- In combat, pick an enemy unit, it takes D3 Mortal Wounds on a 2+
- -1 to be hit in melee
- 5+ ward
- Improve the rend of one melee weapon by 1
These are all pretty good rewards for most of your heroes. Some are better than others but you will want to get the whole table. You only get each reward once though.
Upgrade Table and Territories:
The HoS upgrade table is available for all units, although they only get three options:
- On a 2+ inflict D6 mortal wounds at the end of combat
- 5+ Ward until the end of a phase
- +1 Attack on all melee weapons if a unit made a charge
All effects are once per battle, but they are amazingly strong. The ability to dump mortal wounds is huge as is the addition of extra attacks. This is one of the strongest mini-tables out there. However, if you unit isn’t melee focused there’s not much here for it.
The HoS also get three territory options:
- Orchard of Flayed Flesh: Allows you to recuperate a unit for free after each battle.
- House of Hidden Vices: Allows you to reduce the glory points cost when adding, or reinforcing a unit
- Ancient Aelvan Tmeple: gives you extra Depravity Points at the start of each battle.
I am not seeing any limitations on duplicates for these territories so you can have a max of three of each. This gets a little crazy for the Temple but the odds of rolling it three times are very low.
Conclusion:
I was surprised at how solid this rule set is. The buffs are really good as is one of the territories. The quest is doable if you pick your hero wisely. Your army has a lot of maneuverability which gives you more freedom to pick your targets. It might be harder for a Nurgle army to rack up character kills. There are a lot of mortal wound and ward save abilities here and I am curious to see what will make it into their next book. If you are interested in grabbing some new models after reading all of this check out the link below:
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