The Generals Hub: Analytics for Heddonites of Slaanesh Vol. 1

Generals!

This week we’re going to talk about the hedonists of the god of excess, of pleasure, desire and obsession. Building on David Cerezo’s post, where he walks us through his particular Hedonites of Slaanesh list and its results, what better moment to talk about this depraved faction?

Hedonites of Slaanesh hasn’t enjoyed the best results throughout 4th edition. At the last GHB, Scourge of Ghyran, Frenchman Jean-Baptiste Aymes found the formula to make them work at the Games Workshop World Championship in Atlanta.

And this summer, on a random Tuesday, an announcement dropped about a new hero and its long-awaited Battletome: a tome with a lot to read, combos, and temptations. It brings us a new concept, the Paragons, and on top of that Games Workshop seems to have hit on how to make temptations work, to the point that Hedonites are right now top meta in Scourge of Aqshy.

You can check out the analysis we did on Thomas Guan’s list at Tacoma Open 2026 here, or David Cerezo’s analysis at La Voz Open 2026 here.

Battleplans

Even though we don’t yet have more than 50% sample coverage on the battleplans, looking at the battletome’s winrates in Aqshy and the good results they’ve been racking up over the last few weeks, we can justify the strength and superiority of the Hedonites: 9 battleplans above 50%, with 3 of them (Warped Ruins, Curse of the Coast, and Bloodstained Coast) above 66% WR. If we dig a bit deeper, 2 out of 3 battleplans sit at a 55% WR. These numbers are absolutely insane.

Matchups

This is where we can really see the faction’s true performance. If the battleplans already gave us a very favorable picture for the faction, the matchups give us even more information about it.

When you’ve got more than a 55-60% WR against 4-5 of the best armies in the current landscape, that explains a lot. The dominance shown over Maggotkin of Nurgle, Daughters of Khaine, Kruleboyz, Seraphon, or Sons of Behemat proves this. If we look a bit further down, we’ll find Disciples of Tzeentch, Soulblight Gravelords, Flesh-eater Courts, Ironjawz…

What’s behind this? At the end of the day, everything counts: between the 2 bubbles of non-visibility, the sheer amount of debuffs it can throw at the opponent (anti-charge, -1 to hit, stripping weapon abilities, etc.), and the Myrmidesh blocks (with a 3+ save and 5+ ward if they haven’t charged), all of it makes them formidable opponents with a high capacity for completing tactics.

What do we find at the bottom of the table? Sylvaneth, Hasut, and Cities are the most notable. Here in Spain, or more specifically in Madrid, we see the Slaanesh vs. Cities matchup as favorable for Slaanesh, but here we have the numbers telling us the opposite. The 40% WR against Hasut also carries a lot of weight, with Slaanesh being a master of concealment thanks to its double non-visibility bubble.

Top Lists

In the lists, there’s nothing that surprises us (if you’ve been following TGH’s posts every week). The most common setup is 3 drops: at the end of the day you’ll want to staple in the Shardspeaker, the Triforce, and a Sigvald or Shalaxi, and that forces you into 3 drops. Slaanesh players shouldn’t be too worried about this, since they play very comfortably in a reactive style.

On formations, Depraved Carnival is by far the most used, and this ability to move infantry D6 at the end of both turns gives you a ton of punch and possibilities.

On manifestations, there’s a small percentage of players who’ve found a niche with Aetherwrought Machineries, but the most common choice by far is still to use the ones from the battletome itself.

On heroic traits, things are a bit more spread out. It makes sense that Incensed is the most used, with almost 50% pick rate: for 1 CP, removing visibility from units that are contesting the objective and are visible within 9″ of the objective is broken. It’s really good because, on top of that, it affects ALL Slaanesh units (yes, Shalaxi too).

Centre of Attention, on the other hand, is a more playmaking trait: it applies a -1 to hit when enemies attack Hedonites and +1 to hit when Hedonites attack that unit, if it’s within 12″ of the centre. It’s very good; the problem is it’s only on a 3+.

On artifacts, not much to add: the Triforce (if you have it) will be an absolute staple with this artifact, and it’ll strip visibility from all Hedonites — except monsters or war machines — within 6″ of the unit.

On Slaanesh’s special items, there’s an extremely high pick rate for Obsession with Control: being able to give a 5+ ward to a unit just for contesting an objective (one you chose during the deployment phase) opens up a lot of possibilities, especially if you put it on the Blissbarb Seekers, with their 14″ move: you’ll go steal whatever objective you want, and good luck getting you off it… if they even can.

In Battle Tactics we have a clear winner: Siege of Ashes is going to become the most used tactic of this GHB, especially for this kind of list with so much infantry that saves so well. You shouldn’t have trouble completing all 3 tactics on the sheet.

On Burning we’re in a similar situation: the mobility that all of Slaanesh’s cavalry has gives us the ability to set up quadrants with ease, and after that it’ll come down to hunting the fugitive hero (Shalaxi loves this one) or having your heroes come out to play (which they’ll want to do).

And in combination, both Burning+Ashes and Flanking+Ashes are the 2 most popular combos. The first one dominates the most, as makes sense given what we explained above, though Flanking can have its moments thanks to the army’s great mobility.

And to close out the post, let’s get to the main course: the units.

The Myrmidesh are the great stars of this army: their ease of rallying, their defensive abilities (5+ ward if they haven’t charged, or 1s to hit against them being mortal to the attacker), plus the number of defensive layers you can stack on them (-1 to hit, anti-charge, stripping crits from the opponent) make them the army’s core block.

The Masque is stupidly good. At 120pts it’s the true gift of this army, the Swiss army knife of the Hedonites. The number of plays this hero offers is incredible, and it’ll shine in every single game.

The Triforce and the Lord of Hysteria should be stapled into every list. Players who’ve found success without them deserve a statue in Slaanesh’s hall of fame.

Shalaxi and Sigvald, on the other hand, have a justified 50%-44% split, showing that many lists go for one or the other.

And then, on the flip side, we have the Symbaresh (long live the warscroll they had in the Index) and the Daemonettes: despite having good abilities, the GHB itself pushes you toward playing with Myrmidesh and soaking up hits rather than running offensive units.

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