No More Excuses: Paint Deals, Slaves to Darkness Banners, and New GHB Tactics
Hobby motivation arrived in the most dangerous form: a sale
Sometimes army-building starts with grand plans, careful list design, and deep rules analysis.
And sometimes it starts with: “there are discounts on Army Painter paints and primers, so we might as well order today.”
That was very much the mood this time. We spotted a sale on Army Painter hobby supplies and immediately felt that familiar rush of hobby optimism. Add a set of cheap brushes from Temu, and suddenly the classic excuse of “we can’t paint because we’re missing supplies” starts falling apart fast.
Honestly, this is one of the most relatable parts of the hobby. Before new units hit the table, before the list gets polished, there is always that little logistical phase where we convince ourselves that buying primer is basically the same thing as making progress.
Slaves to Darkness list ideas started rolling immediately
The conversation quickly moved from supplies to actual army-building, and this time it was Slaves to Darkness doing the heavy lifting.
A particularly interesting reminder was that each S2D unit can take a banner and a Mark of Chaos. That kind of detail is exactly the sort of thing that can quietly shape how an army plays on the table. It’s easy to focus on warscrolls, points, and headline abilities, but these faction-level choices often do a lot of work.
From there, Tzeentch came up as a standout option, especially for armies that expect to deal with shooting or want more flexibility in positioning. The combo sounded spicy:
- teleporting out of combat
- a 4+ ward against shooting
That is the kind of rule package that immediately makes us start imagining annoying, slippery units that refuse to die when the opponent wants them gone.
As was very correctly observed in chat: that starts feeling almost like a 2+ save in practice against certain threats.
The new General’s Handbook looks like it will matter a lot
The other big topic was the new General’s Handbook and, more specifically, how the new battle tactics work.
The immediate reaction was that they look pretty serious, and also very different from the more flexible approach many of us got used to. The big detail here is that these tactics apparently need to be completed one after another, in sequence.
That alone changes a lot. Instead of picking the best tactical option for the board state in a given round, it sounds like players may need to think several turns ahead and build lists that can realistically keep the chain going.
That has a real impact on army-building:
- units need to survive long enough to score in sequence
- mobility matters even more
- list construction may need to support specific turn-by-turn plans
- late-game scoring could become much more scripted
Which naturally led to the question: can you do all three in turn five, for example?
That feels like exactly the kind of rules interaction players will be poking at early on. Depending on the wording, this could either open up some clever comeback play or shut down last-turn tactical stacking completely.
Initial impression: pretty brutal
The final verdict from first contact with the rules was simple: srogie. Brutal. Harsh. Serious business.
And honestly, that tracks.
Whenever a new handbook changes how scoring works, it tends to ripple through everything else:
- what units we rate highly
- how greedy we can be in list design
- whether we build for raw damage or scenario play
- which defensive tech suddenly becomes premium
If battle tactics are now more rigid and sequential, then resilient, mobile factions with good utility pieces may gain a lot. And if Slaves to Darkness can combine that with strong Marks of Chaos choices, there may be some very interesting builds to test.
So what’s the actual hobby plan?
Right now, the plan seems simple:
- order paints and primer while the sale lasts,
- grab some budget brushes,
- stop pretending the lack of supplies is the problem,
- keep digging into Slaves to Darkness options,
- figure out what the new Age of Sigmar General’s Handbook really means for list building.
This is one of those very classic hobby moments where buying paint, reading rules, and dreaming up future armies all happen at the same time. No models finished yet, no event report yet, no final list yet — but the gears are definitely turning.
And sometimes that is exactly how an army starts.