Total War Warhammer/Tactics/Slaanesh

This is the general tactics page on how to play Slaanesh in Total War: WARHAMMER.

Why Play Slaanesh?

• You prefer Speed and using your mobility to outmaneuver and tear apart your enemy as opposed to the simple rip and tear.

• You want to play the only army in the game that is non-binary inclusive.

• Because fuck armor, your crab claw ladies don't give a fuck about it.

• Because you're a sexual deviant and this is the best way to show your horniness without going out in public. (Though since this game is T rated the more sexual parts of Slaanesh are toned down, at least until some of the modders have their say IT ALREADY HAPPENED, but granted, what do you expect?)

Pros

• Speed: You ARE the fastest army in the entire game. Your cavalry, chariots, and Legendary Lord have a base speed of 100, daemonettes outrun most skirmishers with base speed over 50, and even slaanesh marauders have above average cardio with 38 speed. Your army will run circles around everyone else, wood elves and beastmen included.

• AP: Heavy armour shouldn't be a problem for you in the slightest. Factions that rely on armour like Dwarfs and Warriors of Chaos will dread when you come on to the battlefield.

• Cavalry and Chariots: With numerous varieties of both Cav and Chariots you have the ability to be a really strong threat while on the move. Sure, Heartseekers and Hellstriders probably won't beat Grail Knights in a fair one on one fight but their sheer speed will mean that back line is probably doomed. Plus the chariot variety means an armored front line is going to suffer.

• Flanking Potential: Cavalry aside, many of your units are fast and have "Devastating Flanker" as well. You can expect to be one of the best factions for penetrating a soft spot in the enemy's army.

• Fatigue fighting: Fatigue heavily penalizes melee attack and armor stacking to -30% melee attack and -25% armor when a unit is completely exhausted. Melee defense remains surprisingly good with only a maximum -10% penalty from fatigue. This significantly benefits you since most of your units rely on melee defense and ward saves for survival. While you're not going to outlast Nurgle or any faction with lore of life, your army of half naked tarts will fight. . .well not better but less bad compared to other factions the longer a battle drags on.

• Immunity to Fear: A big part of the Mark of Slaanesh on the tabletop was immune to psych. This is carried over as Immune to Psych for your mortal units. Combined with all your daemons being unbreakable, you really won't give a shit about big scary monsters or units.

• Diplomacy: Few mortals can resist the God(dess) of Pleasure. Unlike other Daemonic Forces, you have diplomatic options at your disposal. This can be useful to close off a front with a non-aggression pact or even ally with factions who otherwise would refuse to talk to you. As of immortal empires, you can dominate any human or elf faction as your vassal including legendary lords. This allows you to recruit allied units to patch the holes in your roster and bring some extra cannon fodder armies to support you on the campaign map.

• Discount Campaign Armies: Slaanesh is deceptively powerful on the campaign map due to his ability to pump out free 20 stack disciple armies almost at will. They can't reproduce exponentially like Khorne's armies can, but they stick around alot longer. Great for backline garrison duty or to be sacrificed in the field skaven style to keep your real armies from taking casualties.

• Leadership Shenanigans: You cant rout the demons you spend most of your time fighting in the realm of chaos campaign but you're great at routing the high elves, dark elves, and Brettonians that you'll spend most of your time fighting in Immortal Empires.

• Doomstacks: patch 1.2 gave greater demons bound spells instead of being crappy spell casters, now all the monogod factions except khorne can get the up to 2 uses of their entire respective demonic spell lore as bounds spells for each greater demon they bring, this has made bring 17-19 of these in a doomstack by far the most overpowered army comp in campaign, Every single greater demon now provides like a hundred extra WOM worth of spells for free. once you can afford a pure stack of these there is basically no reason to use any other unit anymore. you can easily wipe 2-3 full enemy stacks and cheese your way through the endgame. ironically this mean that in campaign Bloodthirsters went from being probably the best greater demon to the worst overnight. This applies equally to slaanesh, nurgle, and tzeentch but not khorne or legions of chaos.

Cons

• Fragile: The downside of having an army of half naked monster girls/boys/things? There isn't a ton of armour to go around. Expect to be taking a punishing on the way in (Not that Slaanesh has an issue with that) if you aren't using ward saves. Which you should since Slaanesh units have some bound ward save abilities which are generally far more impactful than armor. The problem is fixed a bit with CoC giving you armored units, though most of your army will still be pretty squishy.

• Lack of Ranged: You can't hump your opponent to death from the other side of the map. You have one ranged unit in the form of Marauder Horsemen. Seriously, even freaking KHORNE has more than that. You have no chance at playing defense.
• Lack of Fliers: When Furies are the best flying unit you have, it's safe to say you aren't a faction that is designed around dogfighting and controlling the skies. You are easily the weakest Monogod faction when it comes to the air. you do have Demon princes now, and Azazel in multiplayer but this does not make an air force.

• Monster fighting: The only way for you to fight big, ugly, single entity monsters is to bring big, ugly single entity monsters of your own. Against factions like Skaven and Vampire Coast, your soul grinders/keeper of secrets will be forced to hide in a treeline not contributing to the battle until your opponent's missile units are completely tied up.

• No Flexibility: The other monogods are one dimensional too but you have it the worst. Everyone fighting you knows you're going to bring a fast glass cannon army. Like your other chaos monogod siblings, you do one thing well and can't do much else. Somewhat ironic that the factions closest to chaos are the most predictable opponents.

• Autoresolve hates you: Get ready to fight a lot of really one sided fights because Autoresolve thinks your Exalted Daemonette stack will get decimated by that one ten unit stack of Kossars.

• Fast Games: Because of their fragility and need to be maneuvered correctly to win, expect Slaanesh games to be quick, regardless of who wins. Slaanesh will either completely slaughter the enemy or run into a brick wall and crumple to dust. If you like long, tense game where the winner can be decided at any moment you won't get that from Slaanesh too much.

• Bad Replenishment: You would think the guys who have orgies every day and have limitless daemons from hell on their team wouldn't have issues replenishing their numbers. You would evidently be wrong, have fun watching your army sit in a city for 4 turns to heal back casualties.

• DLC: Sorry but trends are trends and some of your better units are for Lord Packs. If you want respectable armor or 1 ranged unit, you better fork up for the Champions of Chaos. From a launch standpoint you got Tzeentch and Nurgle beat, but you could use some more mortals/boob snakes.

• Not beginner-friendly: a bit of an odd one sure, but it has to be said, Slaanesh is not a faction for beginners with no range units, no somewhat tanky monsters and all of your units being made of used condoms where even a cheap unit of archers can kill your lord in milliseconds, Slaanesh heavily punishes you for one mistake and one has to sell their soul and become the dark lord of micromanagement if you want to win consistently as Slaanesh, especially in multiplayer.

Faction Traits

• Daemonic: Undead with extra steps, really. Once your daemonic units lose enough leadership, they'll begin to lose health and fade back into the Warp in the same vein that undead units crumble away. The good news is that even if your daemons are doomed to evaporate, they'll at least stick in and fight to the last model.

• Devastating Flanker: A bunch of your units have this special ability which doubles their charge bonus when attacking an enemy unit from the flank or rear. Considering your Furies and all your cavalry have Vanguard, as well as the obscenely high speed of your army overall, this incentivizes you to try to encircle the enemy as quickly as possible and... well no way to say this that's not going to be a double entendre, Hit them hard and fast in the rear!

• Sensuous Seductions: Like with the other Chaos god armies you have a battlefield resource that unlocks map-wide abilities as you accumulate it. As with the other daemonic factions these battlefield resources have three tiers and when you use one of them it reduces the resources you've accumulated so far. This one is gained by killing units that have negative morale, meaning you can keep replenishing these abilities so long as there are still units on the battlefield to kill. The three abilities (in order of strength and cost) are:
  • Fascination: A direct-damage spell that also causes Rampage on the target. Use it to force fliers to land and cause enemies to rampage into bad matchups.
  • Narcissism: An AoE snare, similar to Net of Amyntok.
  • Sweet Sorrow: An AoE buff to speed and vigor.

Lords

Legendary Lords

• N'Kari: He's big, he's fast, he's purple, and he's got four nipples. Has a blistering 100 speed, which means he's a single entity monster that can keep up with warhounds and light cavalry. This guy can blitz across the battlefield and right into your "backline," which is good because he has only 5 armor and needs to hurry if he doesn't want to get turned into Swiss cheese by ranged units. His offensive potential is extremely high, and you can stack physical resist and ward save to make him quite durable in melee, but best used to hit and run/flank. Also a caster of the Lore of Slaanesh, but you're probably better off putting skill points elsewhere, use a hero caster. His special abilities include:
  • Harvester of Souls: heals him when nearby units are complete destroyed (this stacks)- combine with high ward and he'll be extremely tough, especially when fighting enemies that crumble instead of routing.
  • Willing Prey: debuffs an enemy's melee attack and defense.
  • The Witstealer Sword: massively boosts his AP and base weapon damage.-Alternative live dangerously and take the Sword of Slaanesh from his chaos realm first visit if possible and enjoy a greater demon with well over 100 speed 60-70% physical resist/40% ward and a sword of Khaine equivalent, doing 1.2k weapon damage.

• Prince Sigvald the Magnificent (DLC, Multiplayer only): Similar to Warriors of Chaos, take Sigvald if you want an affordable footlord who refuses to die to anything your opponent throws at him.

• Azazel (DLC, Multiplayer only): Giving Slaanesh a flying duelist lord completely changes his multiplayer meta since Slaanesh only had furies to contest the skies prior to the Champions of Chaos DLC. No longer will you be stuck impotently shaking your fist at the sky while flying caster lords and skirmishers poop all over your groundbound forces. More importantly, he's very reasonably priced and costs about the same to bring into a multiplayer battle as Alarielle on her hawk or Harkon on his terrorgheist. Just be careful with him, he's a glass cannon like most Slaanesh units and will die quick if not microed well. And don't be afraid to hit the land button to hide in your own army if the enemy has air superiority.

Generic Lords

• Exalted Keeper of Secrets: Same as Blood boi, Bird Boi, and Plague Boi. The Exalted Keeper of Secrets acts as the lord while the standard one is a monster you can recruit. An anti-large AP monster with the Lores of Slaanesh and Shadows that can get around the battlefield very quickly. Believe it or not it's slower than a Bloodthirster and less mobile since it can't fly. That said it has a lot of nasty special abilities, including a Mortis Engine effect against low-leadership enemies, AoE hexes that causes rampage or reduce melee attack, and an activatable buff that massively boosts its melee damage over the course of three stages. Also gets some regen while killing broken units. plus the usual devastating flanker. kinda fragile and dependent on micro but potentially very deadly.

• Daemon Prince of Slaanesh (DLC): Not sure why anyone would ever use this guy. He doesn't differentiate himself from an exalted keeper of secrets other than having a grab bag of Lore of Shadows + Slaanesh spells instead of going all in on one or the other. His special ability selection is worse than an Exalted Keeper's, even if he is a bit cheaper. Unfortunately stuck with the terrible warriors of chaos blue skill tree in campaign and can't reduce upkeep costs at all.

• Herald of Slaanesh: A hybrid lord with the Lore of Slaanesh and/or Shadow magic along with AP in melee. Think a Loremaster for the High Elves only faster and frailer. Can ride the Steed of Slaanesh, Seeker Chariot, or Exalted Seeker Chariot. You'll want to stick to the Steed of Slaanesh unless you're a micro god, she's naked and unarmored no matter what mount you choose and the chariot mounts make her a bigger target for missile fire. Will also realistically be your only Lord choice in the early campaign as you can't get the Exalted Greater Daemon without evolving one of these things like a Pokemon. Like other daemonic Herald lords she also has three "locus" abilities, which include:
  • Grace: A ward save that greatly improves melee defence and physical resistance. -By far the best, helps fragile Slaanesh units survive
  • Swiftness: An augment which greatly improves charge bonus, speed and charge speed.
  • Beguilement: A hex which reduces leadership and melee defence.

• Chaos Lord of Slaanesh (DLC): Your token mortal lord who also happens to be your only generic lord option with good armor. Unfortunately, he can't get manticore or chaos dragon mounts like WoC chaos lords can. Probably best off skipping him. Heralds have more long term potential in campaign after your lords pokemon evolve and in multiplayer, you're better off spending a bit more for Sigvald if you want a tanky anchor for your front line. Similar to the Daemon prince they have a terrible blue skill tree with no upkeep reduction options.

Heroes

Generic Heroes

• Alluress: A hero version of the Herald, like for the other three gods. Same spell lores and mounts. Also has Devastating Flanker. Take her if you want a fast caster to follow your lord around around casting spells to rampage/net/nuke enemies around them. The chaos sorcerer has much better armor and is a far superior caster due to his unique skills while the alluress is more fighty in the long run since she can spec points into a yellow tree while the sorcerer can't. You're probably better off going for a sorcerer in most scenarios, though, the alluress can shine if you put her in a single entity doomstack of cultists/keepers of secrets where she can buff your entire army with her locus abilities.

• Cultist of Slaanesh: A Dark Elf cultist and a skilled fighter with a number of unique abilities including Devastating Flanker and "Gate of Slaanesh." The gate is a one-time summon of a unit of daemonettes in MP but can up upgraded in campaign to 3 daemonette summons and later one Keeper of Secrets per battle. Can be mounted on a Chaos Steed for added mobility or a warshrine for added tankiness. Actually have very good melee stats and ok armor (by Slaanesh standards at least), good duelists or anti-infantry. In campaign, you can quickly make a doomstack of these ladies by spamming cult buildings and at 250 gold/turn upkeep, they make for a very affordable doomstack too. Remember that their real power is the 3 demonettes and one keeper of secrets they each bring on top of their base abilities.

• Chaos Sorcerer of Slaanesh (DLC): A more support oriented caster hero with good armor and the ability to ride a chaos warshrine mount. Like the Alluress, comes in lore of shadows and lore of slaanesh variants. This is your guy if you want a caster who spends most of their time hiding amongst the infantry casting AoE + support spells. They have campaign skills to reduce cooldowns or miscast chance and are much better as a pure caster than the alluress, and they can get a skill that heals them while casting so they have built in miscast resistance.

Units

Infantry

• Devoted Marauders of Slaanesh: Slannesh's warriors of pain and seduction (no, not those guys. or those guys. Look, Slaanesh has a lot of freaks working for them, ok?) The big difference between these guys and normal Mauraders is that they have Immune to Psych, meaning they are far less likely to run than their cousins in the Warriors of Chaos and Norsca. The standard version also have shields and bonus damage vs infantry. As far as expendable chaff goes, they're pretty damned good for their price. In campaign one of the easiest to get followers gives -15% upkeep to these and the can all get Soporific Musk from the tech tree alongside -10% more upkeep. They are actually very cost effective as long as they're fighting lower armor troops and do decent versus more elite units as well, and they are your only unit to global recruit in one turn. Like most of your units they do badly in auto resolve but perform great in manual battles.

• Devoted Marauders of Slaanesh (Spears): Your only anti large infantry. Increased speed compared to most infantry makes them a bit better at trapping cavalry + chariots, but don't count on them to win vs meaner monsters like Terracotta Sentinels or greater daemons. Pretty crap early tier spearman, after the early game drop them.

• Devoted Marauders of Slaanesh (Hellscourges): Patch 2.2 restored their base AP damage, they are back to being the best cheap troop choice for the early/midgame. Good defensive stats and very cost effective.

• Forsaken: A fast damage dealer notable for being your first decent armored infantry in campaign. Lack of AP means you'll want to replace them with Chaos Warriors or Exalted Daemonettes in the mid-lategame. Honestly crap, basic Marauders are already pretty good at chaff killing and these are overpriced for what they do.

• Daemonettes: Very fast, very AP heavy, and very squishy Daemonic infantry unit. Roughly equivalent to Wardancers, stats wise, but considerably faster. Has Devastating Flanker. Consider that a unit of Seekers serves basically the same role but can cycle charge and flank better while also having poison, and aren't much more expensive. You may be better off using Marauders as a frontline and using chariots and cavalry over Daemonettes as flankers. They are more than twice as expensive than Marauders, and a lot of what they do is better done by other units. Honestly they are just too overcosted for what they do, early on Marauders are much, much more efficient in both campaign and multiplayer.

• Exalted Daemonettess: Faster, killier, sexier Daemonettes. Roughly equivalent to Bladesingers, stats wise, but considerably faster. Has Devastating Flanker and the Soulscent passive ability, which increases their AP and melee attack when within range of an enemy unit whose morale is wavering or lower. Same issue as basic Daemonettes, since they should be used to flank ask yourself if you should just use a Hellflayer, Exalted Chariot, Fiends, or Heartseekers instead given all are faster, deadlier if cycle-charged, and have poison. Still a good unit of course, and much better than basic Daemonettes. They do have a unique charm ability that debuffs enemy melee attack so can be stacked used with Soporific Musk, lord auras, and spells to put a disgusting amount of debuffs on an enemy. Try to only have them engage targets that are suffering from things like Soporific Musk, your lords debuff aura, poisoned etc. If you stack enough debuffs they take barely any damage in melee and will absolutely rip your enemies apart. They don't auto resolve well at all unfortunately, and are slow to replenish and recruit.
  • Bringers of Beguilement (RoR): These ladies come with Perfect Vigor and a contact rampage effect, so use them to try to lock an enemy in place and keep them there for a proper pounding. Also nice that they don't lose combat effectiveness as the fight goes on.

• Chaos Warriors of Slaanesh (DLC): Finally a tough frontline unit for Slaanesh to Hammer and Anvil with, and with physical resistance, Immune to Psych, and slightly better speed plus strider they do a great job at holding the line and killing lightly armored units. They fill a niche fill the big gaping hole in Slaanesh's army, and fill it well. Slaanesh exclusive whip variants make for especially tough anvils since they possess good armor, good melee defense, shields, and expert charge defense.
  • Mirror Guard (RoR) (DLC): Identical to the warriors of chaos unit. Has Immunity to Psychology, a melee def buffing aura, and a statline almost as good as Chosen despite being much, much cheaper. Mirror Guard are the perfect anvil to pair with Slaanesh's many glass hammers and will likely feature in most competitive multiplayer armies.

• Chosen of Slaanesh (DLC): Same as the warriors but stronger. Whip variants were completely garbage at launch with zero AP damage. Patch 2.2 fixed that, Hellscourge Chosen are now one of the best elite infantry in the game and can even beat Black Orks in a knock down drag out fight.

Missile Cavalry

• Marauder Horsemen of Slaanesh (DLC): A cost efficient skirmisher that's also your only ranged option. Can fight relatively well in melee for light missile cav thanks to devastating flanker. An alternative to hellstriders with less melee power but the option of ranged fire too, probably will become obsolete late game in campaign.

Cavalry

-all of these except Chaos knights come with poison

• Seekers: One of the fastest units in the entire series, unfortunately they don’t have any armour, so cycle charging is your best strategy when using them. Has Devastating Flanker and Vanguard deployment, making them well suited for getting right up in the face of range-heavy armies.

• Heartseekers: Named after the unit champion of Seekers, these things are a straight upgrade. Unlike your regular seekers these guys have the Soulscent passive ability which increases their armour piercing and melee attack capability when within range of an enemy unit with morale wavering or lower. Also has Devastating Flanker and Vanguard deployment.
  • Eternal Entourage: In addition to Perfect Vigour these ladies and their snake-raptors buff the melee attack and weapon strength of nearby allied heroes and lords. Useful for an alpha strike on the enemy general and will still be hitting pretty hard even in the late stages of a battle. Still fragile as all hell.

• Hellstriders: Comes with lances (or pincers rather) or hellscourge whips. Lance variants get bonus anti-large, hellscourge variants oddly have improved armor piercing damage unlike other hellscourge units. Lance version are a cheap answer to light cavalry, but wont do crap to to heavy cav and are bad versus infantry. Hellscourges are pretty decent anti-infantry light cav. these are respectively 40% or 30% cheaper in multiplayer than seekers but lack devastating flanker and AP. They do have the soul hunters ability which improves their leadership, charge bonus, and damage resistance as they kill models. Best used to run down skirmishers and broken/shattered units. great cost effective unit in multiplayer but in campaign they should probably be replaced with seekers or chariots later on.

• Chaos Knights of Slaanesh (DLC) Your armored heavy cav. As expected, they're significantly more mobile than other chaos knights and come with strider + devastating flanker, for mono slaanesh these wont put out anywhere near the offensive power of heartseekers but are much more durable to prolonged melee and ranged. Probably go heartseekers most of the time but by no means a bad option. sword and shield may be preferably to lances, they already have good charge bonus from devastating flanker so the much better melee stats may be preferably to even more charge, but depends on how religiously you cycle charge them probably.

Chariots

• Seeker Chariot: A low model chariot unit with poison, magic attacks, fear, and Devastating Flanker. Has a ton of armor piercing damage and is fast enough to outrun warhounds. Can plow through damn near any infantry squad without charge defense when moving at max speed. In-game physics is probably similar to real life physics where increasing speed results in an exponential rise in kinetic energy. Avoid ramming cavalry, monsters, and warhounds, they'll bring your chariots to a dead stop where they'll be quickly torn apart due to their near-nonexistent defensive stats. Get used to using these guys in campaign, disciple armies tend to include 3-4 of them who will make up the majority of their killing power.

• Hellflayer: Upgraded seeker chariots with the soulscent ability that increases damage for every nearby enemy with wavering morale. Skip it, enemy morale plummets after the chariots hit, not before and seekers/hellstriders are better at running down routing enemies than chariots are. Two turn recruitment makes it unsuitable for campaign and cost efficiency concerns makes it unsuitable for multiplayer.

• Exalted Seeker Chariot: A single-entity chariot that will mow down any heavily armored infantry it comes across. Has Poison, Perfect Vigour, and Devastating Flanker. While it has great stats, it's crippled by high cost and the fact that it only gets one model per squad. Exalted seekers and lower grade chariots give much more bang for the buck.

• Chaos Chariots of Slaanesh (DLC): A heavily armored chariot with mundane attacks instead of the poisoned, magical, armor piercing attacks of seeker chariots. Has strider so it doesn't get penalized for charging uphill or through water. Moves at slightly better than average for a chariot speed instead of the formula one racer speed of seeker chariots. Take them if you want a chariot that doesn't spontaneously vaporize from lack of micro.
  • The Sibilant Slaughtercade (DLC): An upgraded chaos chariot with vanguard deployment, poisoned attacks and the soul hunters ability that increases damage resistance, leadership, and charge bonus as it racks up kills. If it gets pinned while mowing infantry that isn't anti-large just leave it there, unlike most chariots it will win that fight.

War Beasts

• Fiend of Slaanesh: Imagine even faster, bigger, rat ogres with a debuff aura and you’d get the idea. Would be able to keep up with the rest of your forces, but unfortunately has just as much armour as the rest of them. Has the Soporific Musk passive ability which lowers enemy melee defense and melee attack. also has devastating flanker combined with 95 speed making them function like monstrous shock cavalry, good melee stats for monster's when combined with soporific musk.

• Chaos Furies (Slaanesh): Essentially the same as the other furies, acting like daemonic harpies with buffs from their god. In this case, speed, armour piercing and Devastating Flanker. Most importantly it has Vanguard deployment, which means it can deploy alongside your cavalry units for punishing encirclements. Since they are your only flying unit they can remain valuable far past other factions furies despite being a tier 1 unit, and their armor piercing means they can reliably do some damage to anything they get a good rear charge on. Also two turn global recruitment time makes them disposable and easy to replace no matter what stage of the game you're at.

Monsters

• Chaos Spawn of Slaanesh: Has the Soporific Musk ability like fiends, though it was bugged and didn't work until patch 1.2. They function as cheaper but slightly worse fiends basically, not much reason to use them once you can afford fiends instead, at least in campaign. they do have high non ap weapon strength so they might be slightly better at chaff killing but that's not something Slaanesh needs help in.

• Chaos Warshrine of Slaanesh (DLC): A big, slow support monster with a mortis engine like AOE HP drain effect. Ironically less useful for Slaanesh's army than warriors of chaos. This warshrine is built to win grinding battles of attrition and does not work well with the mobile shock tactics that the rest of Slaanesh's roster excel in. If however you decide to skip the flank playstyle and go for a Marauder/Chaos Warrior/Chosen death blob this thing is a god send. - it works just fine with Slaanesh mauraders as a front line of chaff or chaos warriors. in campaign you may wish to just use this as a mount for sorcerers or cultists instead of bringing by itself.

• Soul Grinder of Slaanesh: A purely melee version of the Soul Grinder with 75 speed, anti-large, and lots of armour piercing damage. May be preferable for most uses to the keeper of secrets because they have actually good armor and fill a similar role. it is easily the toughest endgame unit you have access too. In multiplayer, these guys are near mandatory in certain matchups since they're your best answer to big, single entity beatsticks. In campaign, you have little reason to use them after finishing the research that gives all Keepers of Secrets 2 free casts of every lore of Slaanesh spell.

• Keeper of Secrets: Your Greater Daemon unit is fast, has lots of weapon strength and armor piercing, as well as Blissful Rapture, Devastating Flanker, and Strider. Can cast two bound spells from the Lore of Slaanesh: Lash of Slaanesh and Acquiescence. They're powerful melee killers but they need to flank and cycle charge for best affect due to their low durability. Take advantage of their high mass and slippery animations to run in and out of the fight. Consider pairing them with N'Kari or an Exalted Keeper to form high-damage goon squads. Soul Grinders are Tankier and might be better for prolonged brawls. Campaign tech tree can give them the whole Lore of Slaanesh as bound spells. Good targets for buffs to weapon damage like Mind Razor or the Slaanesh rampage buff. With the abillity to get up to 2 casts of every lore of Slaanesh spell free as bound spells from campaign techs these guys are very deadly and versatile, they lack a soul grinders armor but free magic makes them much deadlier. In campaign put your lord with as many hero's as you feel the need for and a Doomstack of just these and you'll have no trouble. For an example of how to abuse the magic to the fullest, use 17-19 of these, paralyze the entire enemy army with Phantasmagoria on each unit, drop Pavane and Slicing shards on every enemy unity then flank them before Debuffing them with Acquiescence and finally rear-charging in with Hysterical frenzy and I guess you can lash them too if anything is left.
  • The Marquis of Masochism (RoR): The Marquis swaps out the usual KoS spells for Phantasmagoria and The Enfeebling Foe, which is good in multiplayer but somewhat annoying in campaign since he won't benefit from increased Slaanesh spells from research. It also gets a special ability that heals it when near units with low leadership, which increases in effect as more nearby units lose their leadership. Phantasmagoria really shines in combo with this ability, as it both nets enemies in place and lowers their leadership in a wide radius. Drop it on the Marquis' head and watch his health shoot up while he slaughters anything nearby. Also he is a literal reference to Hellraiser. "I have such sights to show you!" You aren't hiding anything CA!

Artillery

None to speak of.

Multiplayer Strategies

Slaanesh is all about one thing, going at your opponent as fast as possible. Oh, they will resist, but you'll get your way in the end. Slaanesh really needs to find that perfect vulnerable position and slide right in. Don't go for grinding here, get into the habit of rhythmically pulling in and out to get the best result possible. Be sure to conserve as much of your unit's energy and fight too, you don't wait to climax too early. If all goes well eventually everything will come together in one big- SNAP I'm the embodiment of ecstasy and excess and even I was getting sick of the sex puns! Ok fine, you have a ton of mobility, AP and dps on your units but they will fall apart really fast if they meet stern resistance. Your units are built to flank, so if you try to take a frontal fight with any semi sturdy faction you are going to get massacred. The lack of ranged and fliers also means you will have to get to that backline the old fashioned way. It will be a Micro heavy army that will reward good timing and have one of the higher skill floors in the game. Now go teach those ungrateful bastards our horny ways!

• Beastmen: One of a few factions hornyer then you! (Rimshot). They're the only faction with somewhat comparable speed to you, so expect a game of trying to get a charge off while not being charged in turn. Their archers and hybrid Artillery in the Cygor might force you to be a little bolder then you might otherwise want. Over all: an interesting match up.

• Bretonnia: This matchup is a bit complicated. Brettonia's missiles + infantry won't be too much of a problem. Men at arms are dead meat to chaos marauders and you can easily outmaneuver screening forces if they're silly enough to box up around ranged units. Their cavalry is a different story. While they're quite susceptible to your abundant AP, they're better at extended combat than you are especially if they brought lore of life and perfect vigor grail knights. More dangerously, Bretonnia has the best flying cav in the game. Even if you out-race their infantry and put their cavalry on the run, Pegasus Knights have absolutely free reign to pick and choose their fights. Need to pull out of an engagement turning sour? Well, those Pegasus Knights just swooped in and boxed in your forces. However, you have two potential ace in the holes. First, Brettonia hates fighting single entity monsters. Bringing a soul grinder will really throw a monkey wrench in their plans. Second, bringing a lore of Slaanesh caster on a fast mount allows you to screw with their mobile units by AOE snaring them with phantasmagoria and forcing them to rampage with Pavane of Slaanesh. Use it to snipe lords, ruin counter-charges, and force knights into bad positions where they can be rear charged.

• Chaos Dwarfs:

• Daemons of Chaos: They're going to bring khorne and nurgle units. see their sections for how to deal with that, otherwise do your best to abuse speed and try to snipe their low-powered lords with a keeper of secrets or N'kari.

• Warriors of Chaos: Now this is a fight you'll love to take. Big, slow armored infantry with virtually no ranged options make for very easy prey for your speedy armor shredding daemons. You can effortlessly dive in and out of combat as you wish. Just try to shut down any Hellcannons and Marauding Throwing Axe Horsemen they may have brought with them and you'll be golden. As of the Champions of Chaos DLC, this matchup has become much more dangerous now that the Warriors of Chaos can bring flying duelist lords, flying cavalry, and the same hellstriders from your roster.

• Dark Elves: Oh look, another faction geared heavily against armored factions! Unfortunately for you, they are flexible enough to still engage non-armored units with the same or similar degrees of lethality compared to your one-note tune. What's worse, is they have chariots and infantry who can do so from range. Anti-large also frequents their forces, which can be particularly dangerous to your own chariots and monsters. The good news is that you still outspeed them and can easily run down their missile units, even fast ones like scourgerunners and crossbow dark riders. Also, consider disengaging when murderous prowess triggers and reengaging after it wears off.

• Dwarfs: Oh man, if you can micro well you are going to have a field day with Dwarfs. You have pretty much everything that they hate fighting from an affordable AP frontline, fast flankers to dive the backline and chariots galore. Daemonettes will make the most cost effective front line with a few screening marauders infantry to eat missile fire. As for cav, Seekers are the punchier option, hellstriders are the more affordable option. Both can easily dive those cannons and guns before they can do much damage. Even your furies have AP and Devastating Flanker, which will make them great for killing dwarf ranged units. With three options of chariots to pick from (go for normal seeker chariots, they'll be available in more numbers) you should be able to punch through their lines and dry hump that silly book of theirs. Really, the only thing that won't work are monsters as Dwarfs have plenty of missiles and Anti Large, so Fiends, Spawns and KOS can stay at home, meaning a Herald, Sigvald, or Azazel will be your best Lord option. If you can micro well you can dominates this match up but if not... well, prepare for a lot of your skimpy crab ladies to get turned into sexy ground beef.

• Empire:

• Grand Cathay: Similar to fighting Vampire Coast. Cathay is going to noobbox under sky junks and you have neither the ranged units to shoot them down nor the air force to challenge Cathay's air superiority. Also like the vampire coast, you're going to have to pull down Cathay's monsters with marauder spears or hide a big anti-large monster in the woods until all of Cathay's ranged units are tied up. Your only hope is to rush into danger close range where the sky junks can't get a good shot without blasting their own infantry into the afterlife. Then hope that their army breaks before your army evaporates.

• Greenskins: Greenskins are awful at charge defense and dealing with large units in general, you can get alot of mileage from cavalry, chariots, and fiends. Since they have less of an air presence than you do, Azazel is a good lord pick for rear charge leadership bombs and furies make for great harrassers since greenskins don't have a way to stop them from going where they're needed.

• High Elves:

• Khorne: A very rough matchup. Khorne players will ditch their chaos warriors for bloodletters that are just straight up superior to your daemonettes. No ranged units and khorne's propensity for counter-charging you makes this a very painful matchup as 'hammer and anvil' runs into khornes 'just hammer'. Abuse magic as best you can and make use of your speed to take favorable engagements if you can.

• Kislev: An irritating matchup, since almost every infantry unit of theirs can pepper you with low AP ranged fire and hold surprisingly long thanks to by our blood. Go wide with tons of marauders, you'll need to tie up as many of them as possible if you don't want to get shot to death.

• Lizardmen: Stacked in your favor, so long as you don't stay stuck in for too long. Saurus based formations will be child's play to your forces. Slow and heavily armored, even your infantry will be able to cycle charge them with impunity. Larger dinosaurs will be at your tender mercies as well, Soul Grinders, Keepers of Secrets and even just Marauders with Spears or massed AP infantry will be suited to dealing with the heavily armored beasts, but watch out for their healing. Skinks are the opposite of Saurus, being relatively quick infantry that will grind you down one poisoned dart or javelin at a time. You are still much faster than they are, and by using acquiescence and sopofiric musk, you can easily make a meal out of them once you catch them; even daemonettes can handle skinks if you can get the charge off. Units to be particularly wary of will be the Terradon Riders. You can do virtually nothing as they rain poisonous javelins from the sky, crippling and slowing your forces to be a better match for Skink Cohorts or Chameleon Stalkers. So long as you keep on the move, cycle charge their forces and try to waste as much ammo as you can, they'll eventually be forced to commit to a losing fight. Furies are a must-pick here as terradon riders can be reliably countered by them without backup.

• Norsca: A rough matchup, norscan beserkers have no armour but a fuck ton of infantry-shredding power, You might be tempted to bring along marauders with their anti-inf bonus to counter but any norscan player worth their salt WILL bring mammoths which you have little to no options to deal with.A tough matchup but winnable if you can manage to take favorable engagements with your speed but if the norscan player wises up and turtles up you're in for a rough time.

• Nurgle: Nurgle's fliers will be a thorn on your side the entire match. Your fliers are no match for his and an inopportune rear charge by bloatflies + furies will really mess you up. That and your marauders/chaos warriors will lose to his in a fair fight. But the match still favors you because Nurgle has several big achilles heels for you to take advantage of. He has no anti-large, soul grinders + keeper of secrets will easily murder any big monsters he brings. He has no anti-charge and can't stop your chariots + cavalry + monsters from ploughing through his troops. And the sluggish speed of his army means he can't reliably block your fast movers or run away when you cast pit of shades or slicing shards on his front line.

• Ogre Kingdoms: Ogre artillery comes with enough meat to hold off your attacks until backup arrives and in most cases can simply 'pull through' your attacks with higher mass and they WILL bring artillery. Ogre strategy against you is to abuse your lack of anti-large and just ram you around the battlefield and eat through your roster. expect leadbelchers to cut you apart on your cycle charges and hold their own if you do manage to dive them. as for counters bring your daemons and chaos spawn and try to abuse your magic the best you can. expect a very painful battle.

• Skaven: You'll be able to dive their backline in record speeds, but you should not underestimate the firepower they can plug you with before you reach them. They'll likely have hordes of Skavenslaves to simply tie down your forces through unarmored bodies alone, so try to keep on the move.

• Slaanesh: You're definitely going to want to bring the lore of Slaanesh on a mobile caster for this one. The winner of this mirror match will be whoever better positions their army and being able to ruin your opponents maneuvering is too big an advantage to pass up.

• Tomb Kings: This is going to be a difficult one. You can win the infantry game, but you can't win it quickly since skeletons are great at buying time with their lives. And you will need to win the infantry game as quickly as you can, sepulcre stalkers + necrosphinxes easily outclass your anti-large and you'll need all the help you can get to push their constructs off the field. Be on the lookout for a lore of light lich priest on a skeletal steed, a single net of amyntox can swing the battle against you if you're not careful. Consider bringing Azazel to assassinate their lords/heroes, Tomb Kings aren't going to win the air war with their piss weak carrion.

• Tzeentch: Tzeentch's ground units are squishy, and bad at melee, and not as fast as yours, so you should use that to your advantage by encircling them and shredding them in melee as quick as possible; they are probably the only Daemons you'll be okay with sticking around in melee with, but you should be charging as much as possible still just for the Charge Bonus. All those ranged shots won't matter if you're already up close and give them no chance to use it. Do not under any circumstances let any flamers live, they will melt through your infantry like paper and is more than worth taking furies soley to tie them down until your other units get there.

That being said, Tzeentch also has the most flyers out of the 4 gods, so you should expect a Tzeentch player to take some of them just to fuck with you; screamers or doom knights will intercept your chariots. Tzeentch also has Barrier, which nullifies the first few hits they take in combat, which will be your charge. Models will still get thrown, they just wont get hurt right away.

• Vampire Coast: This may be a hard one since most of your anti-large comes on big monsters that will get shot to pieces if the vampirates look at them funny. Go wide with marauders and daemonettes, you won't need anything tougher to take on zombie deckhands. As for the giant enemy crabs + necrofexes, you can hide your own monsters somewhere and not commit them until after you tied up their ranged units or you can try dogpiling them with seekers + marauder spearmen. Neither option is ideal, but they're the only choices you got. Also consider bringing Azazel. Harkon on his overgrown vampire bat can fight off furies and allow the coast's flying skirmishers to bully your forces all game long, but Azazel can ruin his day and clear the skies for your furies to run down any deck droppers your opponent decided to bring.

• Vampire Counts: The Vampire Counts might be your comrades in terms of shunning ranged weapons but beyond that they're very different from you. You have almost no flyers, Vampires have a bunch. Your units hit really hard but are super fragile, while the undead excel at grinding you down with blobs of durable chaff. This second part is the biggest problem for you, as wars of attrition are the ultimate bane of your existence. All those flying units will also mean your great speed still won't give you your choice of engagements, as the vargheists can charge you but you can't charge the vargheists. Your best bet is probably going to be to act as a scalpel, cutting the enemy lords an heroes neatly out of their army. If you can do that the rest won't matter. Unfortunately, since a lot of their lords can take flying mounts, that will be easier said than done. Definitely bring Furies and anything that can act as an assassin or elite anti-large. The fact that their units don't route is good and bad for you. Bad because you can't stack your army abilities while fighting them, and good if you bring N'Kari as when they die he can get a ton of heals.

• Wood Elves: Calling it now, this will be an interesting mashup. You both are going to be fast, and very squishy, so dealing with their archers should be easy. However, your lack of armor on your nude beasts will make them easy targets. So basically a drag race of vegans vs virgins. Likely to go very poorly for Slaanesh as Slaaneshi armies will be paying for AP that is not going to do anything to the hippies, and Slaaneshi armies tend to be very allergic to missiles, which the wood elves are just about the most shoot happy faction in the entire game.

Campaign Strategies

• General: Gifts of Slaanesh should be given to every lord (friend and enemy) that you can find, get the tech that boosts disciples gained from gifts and you'll quickly get a nearly unlimited amount of disciples which turns into nearly unlimited disciple armies. you can use these defensively instead of offensively and can easily pull off keeping a defensive army in every province you own, possibly even EVERY SETTLEMENT you own. The defensive benefits of this are massive and it allows you to field only minimal offensive armies keeping your economy strong, and slaanesh already has the best economy out of all the demon factions, you can build an impressive empire of vassals, defended by tons of free disciple armies. Most of the order factions that threaten you can be seduced into compliance. Its actually a very easy faction to play in campaign. Your cults are most useful to give seductive influence and diplomatic boosts or allow you to recruit more cultists to spread more cults, the disciple granting cult building actually kind of sucks because its measly 5 per turn is nothing compared to the 25 per turn gifts of slaanesh give you. and the disciple army spawn cult is useless, it only spawns with like 5-6 units. Its more efficient to wait for minor factions to be wiped out or confederated before seducing them. To quickly seduce a faction have a cultist spawn a cult in one city, then build the cultist recruitment building to recruit a new cultist who spread to the next city etc, and then repeat with every settlement (you can disband excess cultists when done, if needed). After every settlement has a cult have the mass of cultists spam hero actions on every lord till they all have gifts of Slaanesh, then just wait. It doesn't matter if they declare war on you even. you can simply force them to vassalize once seduction is maxed. You can also destroy the cultist buildings then replace them with the diplomacy boost ones to give a massive boost to diplomatic relations. Nkari's double vassals tribute means you actually get a lot of money from your vassals.

• Immortal Empires: N'kari begins in Chrace on the northeastern side of Ulthuan. You'll start with a cult in Saphery and communication with Morathi and can get a head start on seducing both of them so you can force vassalize them later. There's two ways you can kick off the campaign. Take over Ulthuan or sail east and take over Brettonia. Whichever you choose, I recommend vassalizing Cothique or Eltharian so they can cover your flank and so you can ally recruit Lothern sea guard. Slaanesh is lacking in ranged + anti-large and Lothern sea guard can do both jobs relatively well. Also, send a cultist to Norsca when you get the chance. Slaanesh is super popular amongst the chaos types and pretty much all of them will sign trade agreements with you the moment you show up. Ironically Slaanesh plays kind of like evil high elves with tons of vassals and diplomacy. His campaign goals just require you to conquer or vassalize all of Ulthuan then faff around until you reach the occupy/raze/sack requirement. After you take Ulthuan just leave 1-2 disciple armies in every province of the outer ring as defense (or even every outer settlement) then focus on seducing nearby large factions like the dark elves or brettonia as a buffer and source of tribute. you may need to wipe out hexotle or alith anar, but the empire should be too far away and distracted to pose you any real threat. Probably Don't bother with defense buildings in your settlements, your disciple armies are than enough combined with garrisons. Focus all in on economy, maybe skip with resource buildings because your trade income even with tons of resources is pathetic, you only get like 100 gold per trade agreement even with all of ulthuans special resources.

Total War: Warhammer Tactics Articles
General Tactics	Tactics Magic Banner Immortal Empires
Total War: Warhammer	The Empire Dwarfs Greenskins Vampire Counts Bretonnia Warriors of Chaos Beastmen Wood Elves Norsca
Total War: Warhammer 2	High Elves Dark Elves Lizardmen Skaven Tomb Kings Vampire Coast
Total War: Warhammer 3	Kislev Khorne Tzeentch Nurgle Slaanesh Grand Cathay Ogre Kingdoms Daemons of Chaos Chaos Dwarfs