On 18th December we got the first Battlescroll for 10th Edition Age of Sigmar and there were a number of fairly huge changes for the game, in amongst them was a change to the Hedonites of Slaanesh Battle Trait Euphoric Killers. The change allows Companion weapons to benefit from the rule now and therefore have Crit (2 Hits). But what does this actually mean? It turns out Slaanesh is the God of Excess AND Excel because we’re going to need some maths to explore this change properly! We’ve also got some Maths beyond just these changes and I’ve collated some Average Damage Charts as reference for most SYBARITE and DAEMON units that you can download, print, laminate and refer to in your games!

Let’s start with the updated Euphoric Killers rule then:

Battle Trait – Euphoric Killers

While a friendly unit has the EUPHORIC keyword:

• That unit’s weapons, including Companion weapons, have Crit (2 Hits).

• That unit can use a RUN ability and still use SHOOT and / or CHARGE abilities later in the turn.

This isn’t necessarily a massive change on the surface of things, but Hedonites of Slaanesh have a selection of decent to very good cavalry units and two other units who had Companion weapons that definitely caused a bit of a stir when we first saw them – Fiends and Glutos. There is an important clarification in the change to go with this, Sadistic Spite still doesn’t work with Companion weapons.

Spell – Sadistic Spite – Casts on a 6+

Pick a visible friendly EUPHORIC unit to be the target, if cast, the target’s melee weapons have Crit (Mortal) instead of Crit (2 Hits) for the rest of the Battle Round

Keywords: UNLIMITED

Now whilst Seeker mounts of all varieties will definitely do a bit more damage, without Sadistic Spite you’re only getting the one extra hit for every 6 attacks and then the Wound roll and the Rend stay as is (and as they’re Companion weapons there’s not a lot you can do to change that!). So when Euphoric, some units got better, but how much better?

The table below shows the Increase in the average damage output of some of these units for gaining Crit (2 Hits) as a result of Euphoric Killers:

Target’s Save	2+	3+	4+	5+	6+	–
Steeds of Slaanesh	0.13	0.28	0.41	0.56	0.69	0.84
Exalted Steeds	0.21	0.41	0.63	0.84	1.04	1.25
Hellflayer	0.61	0.85	1.10	1.34	1.39	1.44
Glutos	0.93	1.42	1.90	2.39	2.88	2.91
Fiends	0.96	1.45	1.92	2.41	2.89	2.89
Slickblade Glaives (Charging)	0.88	1.34	1.78	2.22	2.66	2.66

Some notes on this table:

• This is just the amount their average damage increases by with Crit (2 Hits) not the total damage they will cause – all of that info is in the Average Damage Charts later on in this post!
• All units are at minimum size e.g. 5 for the cavalry mounts, 3 for the Fiends etc.
• I’ve included an extra column to show the increase in average damage for what is reasonably accepted to be a decent weapon – Slickblade Glaives on the Charge. This is to provide some context and perspective for these numbers.
• I’ve left off Chariots here (but you’ll see they’re included in the Average Damage Charts later on too) as ultimately they have Steeds pulling them just a slightly different number to their Cavalry equivalent but I have included the Hellflayer as it has both the Steeds pulling it and its Axle Blades that are Companion weapons so is a more significant change.
• This doesn’t include the shooting attacks for Glutos (or Blissbarb Seekers on their Exalted Steed mounts) as these weapons don’t have Companion and always could have benefited from it – the change now is these can benefit by the additional amounts above in combat when making them Euphoric
• Fiends have a bonus against anything that’s a MONSTER and gain an additional point of Rend. You can see the impact of this by treating the save as 1 worse than normal to calculate the damage against their preferred target.

So what does the table tell us? Well, we can see that Glutos and the Fiends of Slaanesh are the main beneficiaries of this change. The increase they get actually exceeds what we had gained from Euphoric Slickblades prior to this change (although, by the time you add in the extra damage from their Steeds now they still pull clear in the amount of damage increase). There are three really important caveats to consider here though:

• Firstly, this is the average increase to damage and there will be some variance here – especially with Fiends and their D3 Damage weapons.
• Secondly, this only tells us about the impact of making them Euphoric and isn’t about their raw damage output that these numbers are being added to. But fear not. We’re doing the maths to excess remember! The Average Damage Charts later on will help you with that!
• Thirdly, Age of Sigmar isn’t just a game about causing damage. That’s part of it but it’s primarily about outscoring your opponent. Causing more damage than them usually helps you towards that goal but units have value beyond their raw combat output whether it’s through movement, durability, or special rules that benefit your army or impede your opponent’s. Glutos and Fiends are both good examples of this as they bring other things to your army that you can’t necessarily get elsewhere.

All that being said, my gut feeling is that this doesn’t really move the dial on any units directly, however, what it does do is give some greater flexibility to some units but probably more in the realms of: If they were already in your list you’ll feel better about having them; and if they weren’t already in your list it probably won’t change enough to suddenly take them now. I think the main place I’ll feel the change here is that where I may have considered making one of those units Euphoric to allow it to Run and Charge previously I’m more likely to do so as there is a slight boost to their damage as well now.

Average Damage Charts

The below PDF download contains Average Damage Charts for a host of Hedonites of Slaanesh units. Personally I print and laminate tables like these for my lists when I’m going to a tournament to aid with decision making it’s all about removing the time wasted on rushed mental calculations (or guesswork!) as I weigh up what to make Euphoric, how many casts of Sadistic Spite I might need or whether I have enough damage output to help score a Battle Tactic. There are some important notes to help you get the most from this resource a little further down.

Again some things to keep in mind when using these:

• All units are calculated at the default size e.g. 10 Daemonettes and already include the bonus attack for Leaders.
• No Rend bonuses are included. e.g. If a unit has Anti-INFANTRY (+1 Rend) say or an ability that improves it’s Rend this is NOT included in the average damage. Treat the target unit’s save as 1 worse than it is to see the impact of this.
• Damage bonuses for charging ARE included in the average damage. For example cavalry units that gain +1 Damage on the charge are assumed to be charging. However, any other Damage bonuses aren’t included, e.g. a Keeper of Secrets’ Dark Temptation bonus – handily with Dark Temptation the Keeper’s average damage becomes exactly the same as Shalaxi’s on this chart so you can see whether it’s worth offering or not.
• Attack Bonuses ARE included in the average damage if they’re on that unit’s warscroll. So Daemonettes have their bonus attack for charging and the Masque’s attacks from Staff of Masks are included but none are included for Dexcessa’s Redolence of Violence or the Icon of Excess etc. being used to support units.
• I’ve kept units to their key role. So Blissbarb Archers and Blissbarb Seekers only include their Shooting Damage whereas Glutos only includes his Melee Damage.
• Average Damage on the Crit (Mortals) table includes any Crit (2 Hits) bonuses on any Companion weapons the unit may have. For example, Slickblade Seekers with Crit (Mortals) includes the attacks from the Exalted Steeds with Crit (2 Hits) applied.
• If a unit doesn’t have any weapons that would benefit from Crit (Mortals) they are shown on that table with an average damage of ‘-‘ e.g. Blissbarb Archers don’t have any damage with Crit (Mortals) as they’re unable to gain this on their shooting.
• No bonuses to Hit or Wound rolls are included in the average damage. But if you wanted to estimate this quickly (and roughly) adding +1 to Hit has the same effect as Crit (2 Hits) on the average damage. But what if it’s to calculate what +1 to Hit will do for a unit with Crit (2 Hits) you ask? Well, if you have a calculator (or are much better at maths than me!) you can multiply the average damage under Crit (2 Hits) by 1.25 for a rough estimate on the average damage now. This rough maths doesn’t work on Crit (Mortals) though due to the way that you’re sometimes skipping the Wound roll and the Save roll and that skews the damage differently.
• To that last point there are lots of instances where the Crit (Mortals) is worse than Crit (2 Hits) – essentially the better the Rend (or worse the Save of the enemy) and the better your to Wound roll is the less likely you are to benefit from using Sadistic Spite
• Some units have been left off. The Shardspeaker, Synessa, Contorted Epitome and Infernal Enrapturess didn’t make the cut I’m afraid – either because their damage output should be nowhere close to the reason you’re including them (and if you’re having to check, things are probably not going great!) and/or there are similar enough profiles included that you can make an educated guess where needed. If a few more units get added in the future then I’ll add a third sheet on to include all of the stragglers. Sorry to whoever is running the Shardspeaker as a melee threat!

Again, just to stress the main point here – damage isn’t the be all and end all in a game of Age of Sigmar, but having this at your fingertips will hopefully help with your decision making – it certainly helps me with mine.

Finally, a lot of the maths here wouldn’t have been possible without the invaluable AOS Statshammer doing a lot of the legwork for me!

Now that we have the full Battlescroll, I’ll look to do some work going back through the List Archetypes and other Tactica articles to get them up-to-date for the new rules and points and have a look at another List Archetype too in the not-too-distant future!