Jump to content

Blade of the blood queen army


Jgregs

Recommended Posts

I am so tempted to pick up this box.

Does anyone have experience playing an army like this? Neferata's " Dark Mist " spell seems like it would be insane on a large unit of grave guard.

the contents as shown come out to around 1100 points. to bring it up to 2000  i would probably just add a vamp lord on zombie dragon and more skelies / grave guard.

 

PreviewNov19-BloodQueen3haXmas.jpg

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Probably better to use the GG as skeletons. GG are super meh compared to nearly all of the new AoS elite units > 1 wound, 1 base damage, 4" move...

Skeletons are better in nearly every situation, for the points. You get twice as many wounds and they get up to twice as many models back per turn. When you have enough skeletons they also have more attacks.

I say this about graveyard etc a lot on different threads, and I wanted to make it clear i'm not having a go at people's own ideas, but it's a very expensive hobby and I want people to make sure they're buying the best unit for themselves to have fun with, and that they don't waste their money on units that look good on paper or GW makes sound good but they're actually not. A lot of my comments on this forum are based around trying to save people money or get the best for their money rather than get ripped off by buying lackluster units that they won't enjoy playing with.

In regards to Neferata, if she's being used as a general, I'm a fan. She works well with 40 or 80 skeletons & a WK bubbled up.

Building the morghasts as harbingers also works out well as they have a huge threat range, 18" summon, 3d6 charge.

I think this box is definitely a good start to an army, if you can get it at 3rd party price (usually 20% off) I think it's also good value.

Assuming you bought 10 more skeletons and used the GG for skeletons,  that would be 1020 points - pretty nice chunk to start with.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Neferata is amazing, but after playing mannfred last night in my list as general he just blew my mind out how destructive he is. 

I'm it depends on your play style. If you want a more defensive, tarpit army go skellies and neferata for that -1 to hit, bring a mournghoul for an extra -1 to hit aswell.

if offence is your style then my friend, mannfred is truly all about in your face a rip it apart. His command ability in conjunction with morghast, vargheists or anything with a 3+/3+ is amazing.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

I've played this exact list with the addition of Black Knights and a Necromancer. It's a great starting point for getting into Death (my first AoS army) and I can confirm that the Mortarch kit definitely lets you swap riders very easily. Build one Dread Abyssal Mount  and it will fit each Mortarch. Mannfred, Neferata and Arkhan are great fun to play, each with their own style. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This box is actually a decent starting point at a decent price, but it has some shortcomings:

1) not enough skeletons.  Skeletons wanted to be run in blocks of 40 even before that horde discount.  You'll want at least 20 more skittles.

2) grave guard are kind of meh.  I don't suggest using grave guard as skittles, imo they look too different, plus they don't have the spears, which is generally what your skittles want.  With great weapons they're alright, particularly as part of a legion of death or whatever the formation is called that helps the mobility, but that would require more skeleton units (which are meh at less than huge sizes, and you don't need three huge units), AND some cavalry, which are themselves even more subpar than the grave guard.  They look nice, but they're a vanity unit.

3) the wight king is the worst wight king set up.  Of all the possible wight kings, sword & board infantry is the worst.  Less maneuverable than mounted, less damage and less durability than great axe, doesn't have the support properties of the banner.  And this model, while fantastic, is rather difficult to convert into the more useful great axe or banner configurations.  And unless you build your mortarch as arkhan, you won't even be using his decent command ability, making this guy a vanity unit as well.

4) needs more caster.  You need to get a necromancer in there.  It's non-negotiable.

5) needs more battle line.  The skeletons want to be in one big (bigger, honestly) unit, and that leaves you very lacking in battle line units.  With deathrattle allegiance you could count the grave guard as battle line (plus black knights, if you go for the legion of death formation), but the problem there is if you're trying for that, you've already got a ton of ally points, between the mortarch, morghasts, and compulsory necromancer, ballooning up the amount of stuff you have to buy to make running it all legal.

 

Again, it's a nice box of nice models for a nice discount, and a better start to collecting the undead in AoS than we've seen before, but it's still far from smooth sailing.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I already have 10 skeletons and a necromancer, and I've been thinking about buying this box as the next step for my army, here are some lists that build from there that I thought of. 

What do you think? I think the transition between them is kind of smooth and it builds up pretty easily from the battleforce box.

Neferata and Mannfred would both be carrying the summoning artifact to guarantee summoning the morghast, the wight king would be carrying the infernal standard and ignore the Deathlance on the VLOZD, I haven't looked at his equipment so I just put it there as placeholder until I see what he can do.

2000mannfred (1).pdf

1500mannfred.pdf

1000arkhan.pdf

2000neferata (2).pdf

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Based on maths/theory-hammer, Mannfred's Command Ability works equally well on anything that uses the normal hit/wound process — it will increase their average damage output by 13/36 (slightly more than a third).

Neferata's Dark Mist on the other hand works best with heavily armoured units that aren't already ethereal, and her command ability works best if you can stack it with other to-hit penalties. In theory this does mean she works better with Grave Guard than with Skeletons — it's just that GG aren't great to begin with. Sadly, one of the best synergies she has right now is with Ushabti and a Necrotect. Failing that, she does work quite well with Blood Knights — although again, they aren't that great to begin with.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 hours ago, Squirrelmaster said:

Based on maths/theory-hammer, Mannfred's Command Ability works equally well on anything that uses the normal hit/wound process — it will increase their average damage output by 13/36 (slightly more than a third).

Neferata's Dark Mist on the other hand works best with heavily armoured units that aren't already ethereal, and her command ability works best if you can stack it with other to-hit penalties. In theory this does mean she works better with Grave Guard than with Skeletons — it's just that GG aren't great to begin with. Sadly, one of the best synergies she has right now is with Ushabti and a Necrotect. Failing that, she does work quite well with Blood Knights — although again, they aren't that great to begin with.

You are right, I'm probably going to run the Mannfred list for now then. Does it look good? Would you change anything?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It looks ok to me. I'm not exactly a top-tier tournament player mind you. And I do think Neferata is still viable, it's just a little hard to access her full potential right now. She'd probably end up putting Dark Mist on herself or the VLoZD most of the time, which isn't a bad option either (if you were running Neferata, I'd definitely take the shield option on the VLoZD. With Mannfred, I'd maybe consider the chalice instead).

I will point out, though, that you don't need to decide in advance what units you'll be summoning — only how many reinforcement points you'll set aside. You'll get more out of summoning if you have a few different units to choose from, unfortunately that means buying more models. Having a fixed plan for summoning is ok too, it's just again not quite squeezing the full potential out of your army.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, Squirrelmaster said:

It looks ok to me. I'm not exactly a top-tier tournament player mind you. And I do think Neferata is still viable, it's just a little hard to access her full potential right now. She'd probably end up putting Dark Mist on herself or the VLoZD most of the time, which isn't a bad option either (if you were running Neferata, I'd definitely take the shield option on the VLoZD. With Mannfred, I'd maybe consider the chalice instead).

I will point out, though, that you don't need to decide in advance what units you'll be summoning — only how many reinforcement points you'll set aside. You'll get more out of summoning if you have a few different units to choose from, unfortunately that means buying more models. Having a fixed plan for summoning is ok too, it's just again not quite squeezing the full potential out of your army.

Just pointing out real quick that you can have both the Shield and Chalice on a VLoZD (and there is absolutely no point in not taking both all the time). The description reads:

"...Some carry an Ancient Shield emblazoned with dark heraldry, and a few also bear a Chalice of Blood..."

The only choice you have to make is between the Lance and the Sword.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

6 hours ago, 5kaven5lave said:

Getting this box as a start to a Death army as it looks sweet. Think Flesh Eater Courts are my fave faction though, could a start collecting box slot into this one to get it more towards 2k?

Cheers!!

I would actually say the value is pretty poor on this particular box, compared to the SC boxes and Battleforce boxes from years prior

The Skeleton Horde box saves you roughly $53 USD.

FEC box: $40 USD


Malignants box: $36

Blades of the Blood Queen: $76 in savings

Besides 2x Malignant boxes (in which case you are building an entirely different army anyways), you are better off just picking up any 2 SC boxes.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Eh, I disagree.  If you want ghouls, then of course 2x FEC is a better bet.  But even if you want ghosts, you probably don't need or want two coven thrones / mortis engines.  Heck, if you're running a nighthaunt army you probably don't want any of either.  And as for the skeleton horde, sure, the first one is a great deal, but unless you're specifically going out of your way to collect one of each of the mortarchs, then the second box is overwhelmingly a waste, basically spending us$85 for one box of skittles and one box of black knights.

IMO, Blade of the Blood Queen definitely gets you closer to a playable army than 2x malignants or skeleton horde.  2x FEC is arguably better, but even then that's kind of over-stacking on big things.  Sadly none of the start collecting boxes currently available for Death focus exclusively on infantry/cavalry units & heroes, they all put most of their value into a single huge centerpiece when almost any starting death army would be better served by more regular units, because Death is, overall, a horde faction.

For instance, 30 skeletons, 5 black knights, and a wight king would be a better army starter than the skeleton horde box, even though it would theoretically be less of a discount.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Honestly, I miss the old battalion boxes, which did focus on basic core infantry and cavalry.  No big monsters, no centerpiece units, no characters, just the basic grunts you needed to get an army together.  Both the Vamp Counts and Tomb Kings boxes were great ways to build up your base line units, giving you a solid foundation that you could add fancier characters & elites to.

With AoS theoreticallly built for smaller games, the new start collecting boxes are fine in principle, but for horde armies 'one box little things, one box medium things, one box big thing' doesn't really cut it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 4 weeks later...
On 12/1/2017 at 8:24 AM, Sception said:

2) grave guard are kind of meh.  I don't suggest using grave guard as skittles, imo they look too different, plus they don't have the spears, which is generally what your skittles want.  With great weapons they're alright, particularly as part of a legion of death or whatever the formation is called that helps the mobility, but that would require more skeleton units (which are meh at less than huge sizes, and you don't need three huge units), AND some cavalry, which are themselves even more subpar than the grave guard.  They look nice, but they're a vanity unit.

3) the wight king is the worst wight king set up.  Of all the possible wight kings, sword & board infantry is the worst.  Less maneuverable than mounted, less damage and less durability than great axe, doesn't have the support properties of the banner.  And this model, while fantastic, is rather difficult to convert into the more useful great axe or banner configurations.  And unless you build your mortarch as arkhan, you won't even be using his decent command ability, making this guy a vanity unit as well.

Grave Guard can be good with the right synergies in place. A Wight Kings Lord of Bones command ability, combined with a Necromancers Danse Macabre lets them deal up to 6 attacks a turn. You also want the legion of death battalion to add movement and regen. 

My suggestion would be to go deathrattle allegiance with the legion of death battalion and 2 morghast archai for the rend, and a necromancer. A mortarch would be great, but I think the Necromancers spell is more important, and you would need the Wight king to be the general for your allegiance anyways.

Something like;

Mounted Wight king w/ banner

Wight king on foot

40 skeletons w/ spears

40 skeletons w/ spears

40 skeletons w/ spears

15 grave guard w/ great swords

10 black knights

Legion of death

Allies

Mounted Necromancer

2 Morghast Archai 

Total: 2,000

4 drops, 2 artifacts, +1 to banner regen, +4 to movement. It keeps it Deathrattle allegiance so you have 5 battle line units. Nice buffing synergies with necromancer and Wight king to turbo charge a units attacks, and the Morghast to deal high rend damage to targets that require quality damage over quantity.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

while grave guard with wight king's command ability and necromancer's spell can make up to 6 attacks a turn, regular skeletons in a big unit can make up to 8.  And that doesn't seem like a lot more, but then you remember there's twice as many skeletons for the points, and you can fit about twice as many into combat thanks to their reach, so you're actually looking at 16 attacks compared to 6, and the skeletons fill a battle line slot, and the grave guard aren't even significantly tougher than individual skeletons - meaning they're actually even more fragile when you look at them point for point, and the whole idea of grave guard being anything other than a vanity unit falls apart.

Now, don't get me wrong, the guard aren't terrible.  And there's nothing wrong with fielding some vanity units, so long as you know going into the battle that that's what you're doing.  It's ok to prioritize aesthetics over mechanics sometimes, and if you do so with open eyes you won't be bitter and disappointed if it happens to go poorly for you on the tabletop, while at the same time you'll be able to better appreciate the victories you do get.

Hopefully grave guard will get re-tooled whenever the Deathrattle battle tome rolls in.  I'm not exactly crossing my fingers, though.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 12/29/2017 at 10:13 PM, Sception said:

while grave guard with wight king's command ability and necromancer's spell can make up to 6 attacks a turn, regular skeletons in a big unit can make up to 8.  And that doesn't seem like a lot more, but then you remember there's twice as many skeletons for the points, and you can fit about twice as many into combat thanks to their reach, so you're actually looking at 16 attacks compared to 6, and the skeletons fill a battle line slot, and the grave guard aren't even significantly tougher than individual skeletons - meaning they're actually even more fragile when you look at them point for point, and the whole idea of grave guard being anything other than a vanity unit falls apart.

Now, don't get me wrong, the guard aren't terrible.  And there's nothing wrong with fielding some vanity units, so long as you know going into the battle that that's what you're doing.  It's ok to prioritize aesthetics over mechanics sometimes, and if you do so with open eyes you won't be bitter and disappointed if it happens to go poorly for you on the tabletop, while at the same time you'll be able to better appreciate the victories you do get.

Hopefully grave guard will get re-tooled whenever the Deathrattle battle tome rolls in.  I'm not exactly crossing my fingers, though.

Your discounting the better to hit, wound, and rend of the grave guard. 8 attacks with a skeleton will net about 1.6 wounds, 6 attacks with a grave guard will net 2.6 wounds with -1 rend. You will need to get double the number of skeleons in to make them better. If you can't, whch can be often, the grave guard are better.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, bonzai said:

Your discounting the better to hit, wound, and rend of the grave guard. 8 attacks with a skeleton will net about 1.6 wounds, 6 attacks with a grave guard will net 2.6 wounds with -1 rend. You will need to get double the number of skeleons in to make them better. If you can't, whch can be often, the grave guard are better.

Assuming spears and a hero within 18", the skeletons should net about 2 wounds for every 8 attacks (don't discount the "serve in death ability"). With a 2" range compared to the 1" range of GG, I'd say getting twice as many in is not unrealistic. Of course, the GG have rend -1 which matters (but it's hard to put a value on it), and remain at full hitting power until the last model dies, which is probably more significant tbh.

Trouble is, it doesn't change the fact that skeletons have almost twice the toughness per-point. Those figures also assume a Wight King's command ability, which is gonna have better synergy with GG than skeletons. With Neferatta as the general, you wouldn't have that, so you'd be comparing 6 skeleton attacks to 4 grave guard attacks instead.

If GG had two wounds each, at the current points cost, I'd consider them about the same value-for-points as skeletons, maybe even slightly better. As it stands, they offer about the same hitting power (depending what you're up against), and only half the toughness. With nothing else in their favour, why bother?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...