u/ntin

GM agreed to buy back my current Blazer EV. I was looking at replacing it with a 2027, but I haven't seen any rough estimates for when they might start arriving.

Finished up GW Tacoma Open today. I played pure Slaanesh Daemon Legion of Excess and Warptide, went 3-1 in the first pod, 1-2-1 in the second, and finished as the second highest-ranked Chaos Daemon at the event. My tied game was against the first-ranked Chaos Daemon player.

I was in the first stream game on Day two, if anyone is interested.

Little background about myself: I won ITC Best in Faction Slaanesh three times and have been repping competitive Slaanesh Daemons since 8th edition. When the giga Slaanesh Daemons nerf happened in March 2025, I dropped off 40k. So I missed that last 1/3 of the edition.

I got an 11th edition RTT in before GW Tacoma Open, but I was mostly coming in unpracticed and lacking a lot of codex and meta knowledge. I made a lot of movement mistakes and misplays throughout the event. I have a lot to work on and improve in future games. A few wins were purely due to luck; the right dice happened at the right time. None of my opponents made any big mistakes. I had eight very educational 40k games; all my opponents were great, and I would like to play them again when I am more caught up on 40k.

Game recap-wise, there wasn’t anything particularly illuminating that happened. My main takeaway is that I was either able to charge and clear stuff, or my opponents played keep-away with uppy-downy or just shot me off the table. Not being dismissive of my opponents, they all did a good job playing their respective armies. Those were just the three outcomes to my games, just not a lot of nuance on my part, as I have to commit, as I don’t have the option to stand and shoot from objectives. As this just isn’t a very dynamic army.

My list was:

Detachment: Legion of Excess + Warptide.

Disposition: Priority Assets.

Syll’Esske (attached to Daemonettes)

KoS /w False Majesty

KoS /w Dreaming Crown

Shalaxi Helbane

The Masque

60 Daemonettes: 3 with +1S, 2 with -1CP heroic improvements.

3x3 Fiends

I think my grab bag style of an army was pretty unoptimized. I think I need to lean more into skew by dropping all the Greater Daemons for more units. I know there are a few winning Slaanesh Daemon lists that abuse the Thieves of Pain stratagem. That is just such an unfun archetype to play and play against. That might be the only viable list though for the current state of the game.

Some observations and thoughts from the event that I had:

1. Not having scout, infiltrate, or uppy-downy is brutal for trying to play 11th. I missed out on many points this past weekend due to my limited mobility. I need Seekers in my next list; mine are all on the old bases, and I was too lazy to rebase before the event. I might break down and buy non-Slaanesh Daemons with Flesh Hounds. I was just being outmaneuvered by most of my opponents.
2. The have-and-have-nots of Chaos Daemons is just rough right now. So many of my opponents have re-rolls, sustains, lethals, +1 hit/wound, etc. that weren’t tied to expensive centerpiece characters. Without those tools to smooth out dice randomness each combat phase, it gets swingy, and I had way too many combats bounce off.
3. Everything is so lethal now; doing Seductive Gambit without a Thieves of Pain battery is way too risky, and that makes the result too unreliable for me to lean on.
4. Keepers of Secrets feel bad to play. Some layouts have choke points where that 3" base gets stuck at terrain piece intersections. I had a couple instances where they couldn’t pile in/consolidate and were caught in the open.  
5. Syll’Esske attached to Daemonettes has so many anti-synergy things with Legion of Excess that I didn’t realize until they were on the table. I am not bringing that combo again. They make a Cavalcade of Blades roll of 6d6 instead of 11d6. There’s no interaction with False Majesty, Dreaming Crown, or the Thieves of Pain stratagem, and it opens the unit to both anti-monster and anti-infantry attacks.
6. Overcharging some of the psychic attacks is not worth it for the Keeper’s psychic attack. The whole attack just feels that much more underwhelming now.
7. Priority Assets was pretty doable. I struggled more with secondaries than with primaries.
8. Small Fiend units were letting me down this entire event. On paper, they sound good, but they just don’t kill anything on average unbuffed. They mostly became my action units, as Daemonettes were accomplishing more fighting.
9. The extra heroic improvement on Daemonettes didn’t really come up too much. They are too fragile of a unit to survive long enough to attempt either version of heroic. If I have the spare point, sure, but I don’t think it's worth planning around.

And if GW does read these for some feedback. I don’t want to be an armchair game designer or advocate for a race-to-the-bottom decrease in points. My honest feedback is that you need to look at what each Slaanesh Daemon unit does compared to peer Chaos Daemon units and ask: why should I include X instead of Y? What is a Daemonette doing better than a Bloodletter? What is a Keeper of Secrets doing better than a Lord of Change or Bloodthirster? What is Legion of Excess providing that provides a unique play experience over other detachments?

I think Slaanesh Daemons has lost the plot in terms of game paradigms over 10th. A lot of things that were once Slaanesh's domain are now Khorne's. A Bloodthirster or Bloodletter is just better at all target types than a Keeper of Secrets or Daemonette. The classic quantity vs quality of attacks difference is mostly gone now. Slaanesh units, in many instances, just feel like a weaker version of Khorne, with no substantial difference in points. Khorne is also getting more speed and mobility. Great for Khorne players, but this all erodes the purpose of Slaanesh units, and it isn't fun playing the great-value version of Khorne units.