The most clever trick to remember with this is that the Counter-Offensive Stratagem can only be used after a charging unit has fought, so if you have several units that havenвЂ™t charged, you can prevent an opponent from using Counter-Offensive by activating those units before your units that charged. ItвЂ™s really only good because the entire Daemons army can have it, and all of them can fight. ItвЂ™s going to do its best work when you have units that are already in combat, either having charged or been charged the turn before. This is an ability that sounds a lot better than it is, if only because making it work can be difficult. If an enemy did charge, you alternate activating units, starting with the player whose turn it is. Units with this ability always fight first in the Fight phase, even if they didnвЂ™t charge. Slaaneshi units can make up for this with a psychic power (more on that below), making it both more repeatable but less reliable and harder to set up. Slaanesh units tend to be solid in melee, but you only get one shot to do any damage youвЂ™re going to do - all of the вЂњfight againвЂќ stratagems are locked behind the Mark of Khorne. Because of this, they tend to want their monofaction bonus more than the other godsвЂ™ daemons. Some of this can be mitigated with the Delightful Agonies psychic power, but generally, Slaaneshi units are built for speed moreso than durability. Slaaneshi Daemons in particular are among the least resilient options available to the army, with Daemonettes topping the list. It particularly doesnвЂ™t look great when compared to extra attacks and strength on the charge, disgustingly resilient, and an improved invulnerable save. вЂњFighting firstвЂќ has largely not been such a great ability in 8th edition and itвЂ™s clear that GW doesnвЂ™t really know what to do with it. Slaanesh units have access to some solid powers and some good tricks for casting them. With the Locus of Swiftness, Slaaneshi Daemons can advance and charge in the same turn, helping them close the distance they need. Slaaneshi Daemons have high movement values, and the Honour The Prince Stratagem gives EmperorвЂ™s Children a near-surefire way to make charges out of Deep Strike. Slaaneshi units are no slouches in the melee department, either - both on the Daemons side and the Chaos Space Marines side they have some incredibly powerful melee options that can tear through enemy units. This turns squads of bikes, Noise Marines, Obliterators, Terminators, and Havocs into double-shooting monsters and creates an incentive to take large squads. For Chaos Space Marine units, the mark of Slaanesh has been the go-to blessing for shooting units, owing almost completely to the Endless Cacophony Stratagem, which allows a SLAANESH Infantry or Biker unit to shoot again at the end of the Shooting phase. Slaaneshi forces are split into two major factions that weвЂ™ll be talking about today: Daemons of Slaanesh and Chaos Space Marines devoted to Slaanesh.

Richard CozartвЂ™s Slaanesh-Heavy Chaos Soup.

Non-Slaanesh Chaos Space Marine Warlord Traits.

We are writing this article in the first week of January, 2020, shortly after the release of Psychic Awakening II: Faith and Fury, and Chapter Approved 2019вЂ™s Balance Update. So weвЂ™ll be focused on those units and strategies that align with the proclivities of She Who Thirsts.ДЄs with our previous article, every tactics article represents a specific place and time.

In part because the Chaos faction is massive, in part because there are many Slaanesh-specific strategies worth looking at, and in part because while many competitive strategies call for souping daemons, most Chaos players prefer to avoid that kind of apostasy. While normally our Start Competing articles focus on an entire faction, as with our Start Competing: Khorne article, weвЂ™re focusing purely on Slaanesh here. ItвЂ™s a brave new world out there for followers of the Dark Prince and weвЂ™ve been eager to revisit our tactics article with an eye toward the changes. Massive points drops to many of the Daemons of Slaanesh and Chaos Space Marine units that work best with the Mark of Slaanesh, combined with new rules like Hateful Assault and the EmperorвЂ™s Children content from Psychic Awakening, have changed the game entirely.

When we first published our tactics article on Slaaneshi units back in July, some new units had just hit battlefields but in the time since, weвЂ™ve seen a massive shift, both in terms of the meta becoming saturated with marines, and in terms of the Slaanesh-aligned units themselves. ItвЂ™s been quite a year for Slaanesh in 40k.

Greater daemon of slaanesh