Lets chat Soulblight

[Koalaninja]

What do you guys think of the bat swarms? How many do you need to take to effectively block missile fire? 1, 2 or 3 squads?

[Josh]

On 10/10/2017 at 5:25 AM, Koalaninja said:

What do you guys think of the bat swarms? How many do you need to take to effectively block missile fire? 1, 2 or 3 squads?

ive used them as allies in my nighthaunt army and just took 1 unit of 2 against seraphon.

I felt they were awesome as they were helping my army against all the shooting, made my opponent want to get rid of them, just parked it up next to the lazer lizard, skinks and the skink priests.

cheap and annoying (Y)

[Koalaninja]

So building soulblight and almost at the end. My question is what to take as allies. I'm torn between 10 black knights and 2 more bat swarms and 40 skeletons + wight king with banner. Which do you think is superior? I am leaning towards the lack knights as it seems thematic in my cav army.  (Pic of my blood knight unit leader)

My list is as follows.

VLZD

Coven

vampire lord 

5 blood knights

5 blood knights 

3 varghiests

1 bat swarm 

(1600) + allies

[xspire]

On 10/11/2017 at 9:53 AM, Koalaninja said:

My question is what to take as allies. I'm torn between 10 black knights and 2 more bat swarms and 40 skeletons + wight king with banner. Which do you think is superior? I am leaning towards the lack knights as it seems thematic in my cav army.

 

If you prefer to stick with a theme rather than being super competitive then go for the black knights, would definitely be cool to see blood knights and black knights riding around the table. If you're trying to win as many games as possible, then there are other options which can do the same job as the black knights for less points. The pro's of the black knights are they are mobile objective grabbers if you want to make a last minute attempt to grab something uncontested, but also 10 should hit hard enough to knock any smaller objective holding units off of contested objectives too.

On the other hand, there's a reason so many people are allying in the block of skeletons with the Wight king, it's good value, it can be flexible in certain situations. It performs well and it's straight forward to play.

Trying out more varghs or fell bats could be a happy medium between the two options. With your remaining points you could easily throw together a mix of bat swarms, fell bats and perhaps 3 more VGs. Personally I think fell bats are slightly underrated, and I don't know if that's just because people feel that model wise they aren't accessible (of course I completely agree). The bats are kind of something you want to play test a bit and see if you like how they work and what they can do.

If you're having problems using non-GW fell bat models/proxies in your GW stores simply ask to speak to the manager and pick up 3 sets of fel bats and 1 new Firestorm allegiance box set an politely ask him to justify why they're the same price if they don't allow you to use non-GW bats. If you're polite and logical you should be able to use some cheap non-GW bats, the experience I had in this situation was a GW staff member said something along the lines of 'I don't know how I feel about you playing in store not using GW models', in a friendly manner but implying that I should change my list and not use the models, by the time I had put the bats on the counter next to a new box nothing else was said between us, as the vast difference in price and quality is blatantly ridiculous.

[Koalaninja]

Thank you Xspire for your input. I will try the fellbats at a later date and possible convert some using ghouls and Nid wings (seen someone do this well).

using soulblight in a league against my friends starting next month and excited to see how they do.

How would you load out my army (general, command traits etc.)? Would you pick the VLZD as the commander? 

[xspire]

11 hours ago, Koalaninja said:

Thank you Xspire for your input. I will try the fellbats at a later date and possible convert some using ghouls and Nid wings (seen someone do this well).

using soulblight in a league against my friends starting next month and excited to see how they do.

How would you load out my army (general, command traits etc.)? Would you pick the VLZD as the commander? 

Personally I like Blood feast because when you use it on BKs who are charging it's just lethal. With such a low model count it's probably more sensible to have the VLoZD as the general though.

[TerrorPenguin]

So I ran this last night just to have a bit of a change. It was against a mixed verminus / skyre list. Definitely a friendly game, we used the open war cards and had a 'battle for the pass' type deployment. 

Allegiance: Death

Leaders
Vampire Lord (140)
- General
- Mount: Nightmare
- Trait: Mist Form 
- Artefact: The Scabbing Plate 
Vampire Lord (140)
- Mount: Flying Horror

Battleline
3 x Vargheists (160)
- Soulblight Battleline
3 x Vargheists (160)
- Soulblight Battleline
3 x Vargheists (160)
- Soulblight Battleline
5 x Blood Knights (260)
- Soulblight Battleline
5 x Blood Knights (260)
- Soulblight Battleline
5 x Blood Knights (260)
- Soulblight Battleline

Units
40 x Skeleton Warriors (280)
- Ancient Spear & Shield
- Allies

Reinforcement Points (180)

Total: 2000 / 2000
Allies: 280 / 400
 

In my current philosophy of 'giving up on the death save' I took the trait that gives +2 and fly and dropped the wight king with his banner, just running the skeletons instead. I took 180 points of summoning with the aim of dire wolves to block up early chargers allowing me to counter charge and bat swarms to deal with any shooting. 

It went well in that I won, but I think only because a block of 40 stormvermin didn't get into me until late game and once they did they tore everything apart. I really like the direwolves for blocking early charges, but I fudged my turn by getting excited and charging them in to one of the big rat things (not a seasoned skaven player here) and dying in my first combat phase.

I'm still trying MSU vampire lords instead of the VLOZD. I'd be tempted to drop the summoning from this list for another vampire lord with spell, but I do like the utility of the dire wolves and unfortunately the vampire points cost would leave 40 spare points floating around this list, which  I find is one of the big issues with the soulblight lists.

I could just take the wolves as allies but being able to summon them gives them that first turn 'move' which I like. TBH I find summoning only really works early game or late game when the table is not too congested. Any other time and being within 18" but 9" away inevitably means that they don't end up where you want them to.  Maybe wraith fleet is the answer to that?

[Black_Fortress_Immortal]

On 10/18/2017 at 3:44 AM, TerrorPenguin said:

So I ran this last night just to have a bit of a change. It was against a mixed verminus / skyre list. Definitely a friendly game, we used the open war cards and had a 'battle for the pass' type deployment. 

Allegiance: Death

Leaders
Vampire Lord (140)
- General
- Mount: Nightmare
- Trait: Mist Form 
- Artefact: The Scabbing Plate 
Vampire Lord (140)
- Mount: Flying Horror

Battleline
3 x Vargheists (160)
- Soulblight Battleline
3 x Vargheists (160)
- Soulblight Battleline
3 x Vargheists (160)
- Soulblight Battleline
5 x Blood Knights (260)
- Soulblight Battleline
5 x Blood Knights (260)
- Soulblight Battleline
5 x Blood Knights (260)
- Soulblight Battleline

Units
40 x Skeleton Warriors (280)
- Ancient Spear & Shield
- Allies

Reinforcement Points (180)

Total: 2000 / 2000
Allies: 280 / 400
 

In my current philosophy of 'giving up on the death save' I took the trait that gives +2 and fly and dropped the wight king with his banner, just running the skeletons instead. I took 180 points of summoning with the aim of dire wolves to block up early chargers allowing me to counter charge and bat swarms to deal with any shooting. 

It went well in that I won, but I think only because a block of 40 stormvermin didn't get into me until late game and once they did they tore everything apart. I really like the direwolves for blocking early charges, but I fudged my turn by getting excited and charging them in to one of the big rat things (not a seasoned skaven player here) and dying in my first combat phase.

I'm still trying MSU vampire lords instead of the VLOZD. I'd be tempted to drop the summoning from this list for another vampire lord with spell, but I do like the utility of the dire wolves and unfortunately the vampire points cost would leave 40 spare points floating around this list, which  I find is one of the big issues with the soulblight lists.

I could just take the wolves as allies but being able to summon them gives them that first turn 'move' which I like. TBH I find summoning only really works early game or late game when the table is not too congested. Any other time and being within 18" but 9" away inevitably means that they don't end up where you want them to.  Maybe wraith fleet is the answer to that?

I would've condensed some of the knights into a unit of 10, to capitalize on the Vampire Lord's Command Ability, added another Vampire Lord, and dropped a unit of Vargheists.  This way, you can have access to 3 spells, since the Vampire's spell was basically MADE to combat horde/Skaven.  Goodjob on the win.

[xspire]

4 hours ago, Black_Fortress_Immortal said:

I would've condensed some of the knights into a unit of 10, to capitalize on the Vampire Lord's Command Ability, added another Vampire Lord, and dropped a unit of Vargheists.  This way, you can have access to 3 spells, since the Vampire's spell was basically MADE to combat horde/Skaven.  Goodjob on the win.

I agree with this, except I might of added in a Coven Throne instead of another Vampire lord and taken some of the summoning points away. I'm really not a fan of summoning small units, e.g 5 wolves / bats. I like both of these units but I think if you're summoning them you need at least another wizard otherwise you're missing out on other spells. I think the bats are overcosted, a great comparison is the shadespire warscrolls that came out today, fell bats or bat swarms compared to those is ridiculous. Unfortunately most things in soulblight need to come down by 20~ points and if we ever get some kind of future update / book I'm pretty confident we'll see some points reductions.

I've been trying to fit Coven thrones into more and more lists lately just because they're very underplayed and it's hard to get a good feel for how points efficient they are. At the moment I think they're slightly overcosted, maybe only worth 200-240 points in game, and it's not like they're great, but if you're already running 2 vampire lords it feels better to throw in something different , and as you want to stay away from the dragon and the WK, maybe a throne is something you want to try. I mean on paper 5 more BKs is probably better than a throne but could be worth trying.

As your current list stands, I think the sweetspot for 2000 points is 20 Blood Knights though, 1 x 10 and 2 x 5. 15 is usually a good number, but I think you want to try 20 - especially if you're not running a dragon or a throne etc. Maybe I overvalue Knights haha.

The problem with wraithfleet is you lose swift death which IMO is better, wraithfleet would of been awesome if you could stack it, and it's understandable why they FAQ'd it and changed it, however if you go back over all of the wraithfleet material it was designed to be played as Soulblight / Nighthaunt / Deathrattle and not as GA: Death which makes it really underwhelming now because you can't bypass the battleline requirements with 3 x DW, as they didn't update the allegiance to be able to field GA: Death units when they changed abilities. I haven't seen anyone play it and haven't heard of anyone bothering because they designed it to be played one way, changed it a week after launching it and tried to salvage their mistake by making it playable with GA: Death instead. They obviously didn't play test it enough, rushed it out, and now they've had to change it to something far inferior to what it was supposed to be.

I guess if you're set on having the skeletons, I would drop 3 Vargheists and drop your summoning points down to 80, and take 5 more Knights. If it was my list I would drop the skeletons for Knights instead I think, mostly because I don't want to paint 40 skeletons (hence why I play soulblight haha). I don't know how I feel about Vargheists, I really want to like them, I think you have to go all or nothing, running up to 6 is fine in any list but I think if you're taking more than 6 you really need to commit and throw down about 800 points on them, I say go for 6 or go for 12-15. 3 x 3 looks good on paper but in-game they're kind of meh. They're definitely viable now with swift death but in a 2000 point game what does 3 of them really do? I prefer a big chunk of 6 and if you can fit 2 x 6 in that's decent.

This is a really hard list to make suggestions for, not taking the dragon means you almost want more of everything but you just don't have the points available. I think I would drop the summoning so you wouldn't need the third Vampire Lord and go:

2 Vampire Lords

10 Blood Knights

5 Blood Knights

5 Blood Knights

6 Vargheists

6 Vargheists

This isn't exactly better than your list, it's just different. You don't use your points for screening, you play around Swift death and you abuse the huge movement capabilities you have to selectively attack portions of the opponent. You have to play a bit more carefully but you have are capable of doing a lot more damage, it's basically full offense rather than the 400ish points of defense you were using (which is fine). You could try swapping 5 Knights for a Throne.

 

 

 

 

[Requizen]

I was considering getting into a Soulblight army at some point, mostly because Vampires have always been one of my favorite monsters (Nosferatu and Hellsing, not sparkles) but also because the idea of a very durable, fairly killy army is quite appealing. However I play in a pretty cutthroat area, so plenty of things like Changehost Tzeentch, Thundertusk Mixed Destruction, etc.

What have your experiences been with Soulblight at competitive events? It looks to me that Blood Knights are expensive, but their durability and killing power seems worth it, generally. And my personal times fighting against a Vampire Lord on Zombie Dragon have given me the impression that he's quite the beatstick when he needs to be.

Also, do you guys use Allies for bodies at all? Skeletons seem like an easy add for cheap, efficient squatters and screens.

[xspire]

5 hours ago, Requizen said:

I was considering getting into a Soulblight army at some point, mostly because Vampires have always been one of my favorite monsters (Nosferatu and Hellsing, not sparkles) but also because the idea of a very durable, fairly killy army is quite appealing. However I play in a pretty cutthroat area, so plenty of things like Changehost Tzeentch, Thundertusk Mixed Destruction, etc.

What have your experiences been with Soulblight at competitive events? It looks to me that Blood Knights are expensive, but their durability and killing power seems worth it, generally. And my personal times fighting against a Vampire Lord on Zombie Dragon have given me the impression that he's quite the beatstick when he needs to be.

Also, do you guys use Allies for bodies at all? Skeletons seem like an easy add for cheap, efficient squatters and screens.

They can be competitive, a couple of people on this forum have had some good success with them in the last few months, I believe Moon placed well at Facehammer 2017. A reason why some people might say they aren't competitive is building an 'all comers' list is hard as some of the units are overcosted and they're also EXTREMELY unforgiving.

If you charge the wrong unit and get stuck in prolonged combat, or for example if your blood knights get charged before you can charge, it has a significant negative impact on your performance. You have to plan your movement a few turns ahead because if you go for a risky long range charge, fail and then get charged next turn your power gets slashed in half. You have the same kind of problems with positioning and magic, if you waste your spells or if you allow yourself to get shot to hell just to be an extra 1-2 inches up the board, you'll have no fun or success.

I've watched people charge a VLoZD into a horde unit and just get stuck for the rest of the game and only get 1/4 of it's points back over 2-3 turns, and then complain that Soulblight isn't viable.

Building and playing a soulblight army is like making a cake, if you use a wrong ingredient making it, or if you miss a step whilst making it, it tastes like ******.

 

As for allies, it's a tough one to balance, skeletons are probably the best thing you can ally in at the moment. Some people say they keep ally points for summoning and are still doing really well in their games but it's really hard to believe them. I don't know how they can be using and relying on their early game spell casting for summoning and still doing well, relying on 1-2 vampire lords to summon in 300/400 points of extra units is such a waste in my opinion. You leave your already expensive units on the table exposed for the sake of trying to bring in more inferior units. If you want to summon in soulblight I always suggest keep it small, with maybe 2 options. You don't need a huge chunk of points to be able to summon a whole toolkit of units depending on the situation, generally in soulblight you can build a list and leave yourself 160ish points for summoning if you really wanted to. For example, in most cases your initial list lacks ranged defense (bats), and lacks bodies for objectives etc (skeletons). 160 of summoning lets you plug both of those gaps, and it's not going to eat all your spell casting up throughout the early game.  An easy logic to live by is the less vampires you have, the worse summoning is for your list.

The question is, do you take allies? Giving over 400 points to non-soulblight units is pretty hard, 2000 points is tight enough as it is. Lots of people do use allies though. My personal preference and experience has always been - every time I try to fit allies in, it always works out easier to just do a GA: Death army instead. If I'm playing soulblight it's generally full soulblight and maybe (rarely) 10-20 skeletons. Is 40 skeletons with a WK awesome for soulblight? Yeah. I can never fit it in though.

[Black_Fortress_Immortal]

5 hours ago, xspire said:

They can be competitive, a couple of people on this forum have had some good success with them in the last few months, I believe Moon placed well at Facehammer 2017. A reason why some people might say they aren't competitive is building an 'all comers' list is hard as some of the units are overcosted and they're also EXTREMELY unforgiving.

If you charge the wrong unit and get stuck in prolonged combat, or for example if your blood knights get charged before you can charge, it has a significant negative impact on your performance. You have to plan your movement a few turns ahead because if you go for a risky long range charge, fail and then get charged next turn your power gets slashed in half. You have the same kind of problems with positioning and magic, if you waste your spells or if you allow yourself to get shot to hell just to be an extra 1-2 inches up the board, you'll have no fun or success.

I've watched people charge a VLoZD into a horde unit and just get stuck for the rest of the game and only get 1/4 of it's points back over 2-3 turns, and then complain that Soulblight isn't viable.

 

Agreed. 

I've found over a few games that VLoZD isn't as useful as 3 Vampire Lords in many cases.  3 spells are amazing (ESPECIALLY the vampire-specific debuff), it spreads out your Deathless Thralls save auras, and gives more viability in capturing objectives.

I would take allies (skeletons) and take the Swift Death bloodline, to help ensure that you do NOT get 1st turn charged, and can setup defensively if they force you to go 1st.

[Requizen]

Don't you lose a lot of punching power by not taking a VLoZD? Or are Blood Knights enough? 

[Goddin]

Requizen,

 

I am a big fan of Soulblight and that is my second army after my Stormcast.  I also like the elite army nature of it.  I run the following list:

VLoZD	440
Blood Knights	260
Blood Knights	260
Blood Knights	260
Arkhan the Black	320
Mourngul	400
cairn wraith	60
	2000

 

The Mourngul and Cairn Wraith are technically reinforcement points because they are summoned.  Arkhan is the ally and he summons the others (easily).  I like that everything regenerates when it kills models and everything hits pretty hard.  My scene is not super cutthroat, but this takes on even some pretty good lists.  Getting stuck in tarpits is a problem, as is getting whittled down from afar.  But I feel each time I play it as if I lost because of something I did, not because my list was just outclassed.  That being said, I mostly face stormcast, sylvaneth, brettonians,  gor herd, general order, flesheaters, etc.  I don't see too many Tzeench, murderhosts, beastclaw, or tough khadron overlord players.

Note that the list I wanted (Arkhan and cairn wraith replaced with Neferata to be all vampires and mourngul) is 20 points over 2k.

 

[Black_Fortress_Immortal]

10 hours ago, Requizen said:

Don't you lose a lot of punching power by not taking a VLoZD? Or are Blood Knights enough? 

Blood knights do enough on the charge, imo.  VLoZD's "big" attacks are 2 bites that are 4+/3+, which is not that good considering there's no reliable access to +hit/wound buffs.   Don't get me wrong, the lance on the charge is super deadly, are the other attacks, but I like having options with some little units.  Even with mist form, it's tough tot "retreat" sometimes in the proper direction due to the obscenely large base size.  Also, giving 10 Bloodknights +1 attack from the Vampire Lord's command ability maths out to the same as the rerolls, if not better when in conjunction with reroll 1's on the charge for Dragon Warriors.

[WoollyMammoth]

Soulblight is not an army, its a list. Id rate it a third-string army at best. The only reason we are talking about it is because it got an allegiance. The allegiance is not good, we are talking about +2" move and -1 to target the general, compared to a laundry list of awesome things that a good allegiance does for an army.

Along with the half decent allegiance, we got a swift kick to the teeth, raising the VLoZD and Blood Knights up in points, moving them from really good and well costed to way overcosted. They are both valuable scrolls, but now you have to pay a ton for them. You end up with a very low wound army that will melt to mortal wounds. One Tzeentch magic phase could easily melt half your army.

The VLoZD is the most tanky general in Death, and one of the most in the game. Now you can make him tankier with -1 to hit when a nasty hero charges him. Even so, he suffers massively from the fact that his dragon can no longer be effected by anything, so he should have gotten a point decrease with that nerf, but instead he got an increase. You can't compare him to something else because a general that simply wont die is priceless. 

I understand the idea - vampires are sweet. They used to be amazing. One vampire at the front of a unit of zombies or skeletons, used to move up, the zombies and skeletons couldn't do diddly but the VL would move the speed of lightning, attack first, slaughter half a unit all by himself then run down the unit and kill it all by himself. Or he would fly across the board in a unit of black knight cavalry like a heat seeking missile of ultimate death. Meanwhile he would be raising his whole army back from the dead, casting death winds to kill units, raising zombie walls to screen his advances, all the while healing himself and his units and monsters.

Those days are long gone, now you have an overcosted weakling that might remove an attack from a unit, which is good but a lot of times situational. No more lightning reflexes, no more dominating the entire board with magic, no more insane red fury slaughter. Per lore, he should be the greatest infantry hero in the game. I don't care what his points are - just make him epic again.

Meanwhile we get more and more kicks while we are down. Instead of turning the named Von Carsteins into generic counterparts (like you see with other armies) they are completely squatted. Now, Mannfrend and Neferata, greatest of the vampires ... are no longer vampires. Neferata is great but she is overcosted. Her command ability is simply that she is dead sexy ... why does she have to be commanding? Suddenly she is ugly as hell if she is not the general? Its an awesome ability, misplaced as a Command Ability. 

Lastly, the biggest and hardest kick, the massive increase in points to the VLoAT, and completely neutering him of soulbight. Even if he was still soulblight, there would be hope for this army, but he is now only available in Death.  

Soulblight needs the same thing everything else in death does, more more more models. But more so than most, they need a complete re-invention and rewrite of every scroll. I really don't know why they bothered to make a half decent allegiance out of this afterthought army, especially while massively neutering it at the same time. The only thing that makes this army good is our own love for Vampires and vampire concepts, desperately trying to bend their lack of models and poor rules into a fun themed army. 

Overall I'm very worried for vampires. Its not an IP that GW can keep. Dwarves have become Duradin, jumping around naked as Fyreslayers or as Kharadron sky pirates. Lizardmen are celestial daemons. I don't know what elves will be, but its not likely the elves we know. Vampires were a counter theme to the humans and the empire in the old world. Now there is no more empire. Overall it seems more likely that soulblight will simply be trashed the way of TK. At this point there is less models to discontinue than TK had. Otherwise, they will be reinvented as dark Stormcast or something not vampire-like at all. The truth is, vampires are a concept of the old world, and that is now gone forever.  

[bsharitt]

So browsing around the interwebs, it seems that Dragon Blades have long been the conversion base of choice for Blood Knights. Those of of you that have done the Dragon Blade to Blood Knights conversion, what did you do(aside from the people who are just running stock Dragon Blades painted red)? I'm in the building of a lot of Hexwraiths and I'm thinking the left over Black Knight pieces will be good conversion fodder, maybe at the very least swap out the shields.

[WoollyMammoth]

@bsharitt
Looks like they renamed Dragon Princes to Dragon Blades.
They work amazing, are less than 1/3 the cost. Even without converting anything they look awesome, but they are very easy to convert and look great. I've converted one fairly standard with lances but with a few extra bits like capes, then another unit I did with a ton of kitbashing giving them headswaps and brutal looking swords.  

[Kyriakin]

Wooly 

On 26/10/2017 at 6:28 AM, WoollyMammoth said:

Soulblight is not an army, its a list. Id rate it a third-string army at best. The only reason we are talking about it is because it got an allegiance. The allegiance is not good, we are talking about +2" move and -1 to target the general, compared to a laundry list of awesome things that a good allegiance does for an army.

Along with the half decent allegiance, we got a swift kick to the teeth, raising the VLoZD and Blood Knights up in points, moving them from really good and well costed to way overcosted. They are both valuable scrolls, but now you have to pay a ton for them. You end up with a very low wound army that will melt to mortal wounds. One Tzeentch magic phase could easily melt half your army.

The VLoZD is the most tanky general in Death, and one of the most in the game. Now you can make him tankier with -1 to hit when a nasty hero charges him. Even so, he suffers massively from the fact that his dragon can no longer be effected by anything, so he should have gotten a point decrease with that nerf, but instead he got an increase. You can't compare him to something else because a general that simply wont die is priceless. 

I understand the idea - vampires are sweet. They used to be amazing. One vampire at the front of a unit of zombies or skeletons, used to move up, the zombies and skeletons couldn't do diddly but the VL would move the speed of lightning, attack first, slaughter half a unit all by himself then run down the unit and kill it all by himself. Or he would fly across the board in a unit of black knight cavalry like a heat seeking missile of ultimate death. Meanwhile he would be raising his whole army back from the dead, casting death winds to kill units, raising zombie walls to screen his advances, all the while healing himself and his units and monsters.

Those days are long gone, now you have an overcosted weakling that might remove an attack from a unit, which is good but a lot of times situational. No more lightning reflexes, no more dominating the entire board with magic, no more insane red fury slaughter. Per lore, he should be the greatest infantry hero in the game. I don't care what his points are - just make him epic again.

Meanwhile we get more and more kicks while we are down. Instead of turning the named Von Carsteins into generic counterparts (like you see with other armies) they are completely squatted. Now, Mannfrend and Neferata, greatest of the vampires ... are no longer vampires. Neferata is great but she is overcosted. Her command ability is simply that she is dead sexy ... why does she have to be commanding? Suddenly she is ugly as hell if she is not the general? Its an awesome ability, misplaced as a Command Ability. 

Lastly, the biggest and hardest kick, the massive increase in points to the VLoAT, and completely neutering him of soulbight. Even if he was still soulblight, there would be hope for this army, but he is now only available in Death.  

Soulblight needs the same thing everything else in death does, more more more models. But more so than most, they need a complete re-invention and rewrite of every scroll. I really don't know why they bothered to make a half decent allegiance out of this afterthought army, especially while massively neutering it at the same time. The only thing that makes this army good is our own love for Vampires and vampire concepts, desperately trying to bend their lack of models and poor rules into a fun themed army. 

Overall I'm very worried for vampires. Its not an IP that GW can keep. Dwarves have become Duradin, jumping around naked as Fyreslayers or as Kharadron sky pirates. Lizardmen are celestial daemons. I don't know what elves will be, but its not likely the elves we know. Vampires were a counter theme to the humans and the empire in the old world. Now there is no more empire. Overall it seems more likely that soulblight will simply be trashed the way of TK. At this point there is less models to discontinue than TK had. Otherwise, they will be reinvented as dark Stormcast or something not vampire-like at all. The truth is, vampires are a concept of the old world, and that is now gone forever.  

This is so true on every level (but I would also have mentioned the sad state of the offical GW bats, and 3rd party alternatives not being viable in an official GW setting).

Whether its by folding warscrolls into existing ones (i.e. Vlad, etc.) or removing keywords from those that survive with generic names (e.g. most of the Wanderers), GW is slowly phasing out the "old" in steps that are small enough individually to not make big waves (except fir TK and Brets), but will inevitably lead to an effectively squatted status in a few years.

I want to do Darkling Covens, as i love regimented Dark Elves. However, your posting feels like it could have applied to that faction too.

[WoollyMammoth]

@Kyriakin
The heroes in silver tower hint that the dark elves might get continued however my theory is that they will become a Slaanesh cult next year and get a new slaanesh elves army.

GW pivots in different directions on a regular basis now. With the success of Total War they may fold back into old-world esque stuff. The newest novel has a vampire in it. The Elves might be elves and maybe vampires will even be vampires again too. The lack of death stuff might be because next year Nagash becomes the main protagonist (instead of Chaos) and Death gets lots and lots of new stuff. Who knows what will happen.  But one thing that has remained constant is the fact that they release totally new armies instead of supplementing old ones. The best bet we have is a reinvention like Seraphon and FEC. But there is just not enough models to support a reinvention of Soulbight, so who knows. I'm interested to see what happens with Deathrattle. It might be the first large supplimental army where they add a lot of new models to a bunch of old ones. We have seen it a little with Treelords/dryads and 'Ardboys (black orcs).  

[flowerpot_chimp]

On 10/25/2017 at 11:28 PM, WoollyMammoth said:

Along with the half decent allegiance, we got a swift kick to the teeth, raising the VLoZD and Blood Knights up in points, moving them from really good and well costed to way overcosted.

Whilst I agree with the overall thrust of your argument, this is strictly untrue. Nothing in Soulblight had any changes in points at all (VLoAT aside) from 2016 to 2017 handbook: ZD was always 440, blood knights 260 and coven throne inexplicably still 260. 

 

On 10/25/2017 at 11:28 PM, WoollyMammoth said:

Overall it seems more likely that soulblight will simply be trashed the way of TK. At this point there is less models to discontinue than TK had. Otherwise, they will be reinvented as dark Stormcast or something not vampire-like at all. The truth is, vampires are a concept of the old world, and that is now gone forever.  

I'm not quite so pessimistic? Vampires have featured in the background (Mannfred is explicitly referred to as a vampire in the novels iirc?) so the concept of vampires within AoS lore does still exist. I think what GH17 means for Soulblight is more likely that they're 'done', this is what the faction will be now bar maybe minor points tweaks until a second edition of the game comes out or whatever.  I hope they don't get Tomb Kings'd, as the VLoZD and coven throne are lovely kits!

On 10/26/2017 at 3:48 AM, bsharitt said:

So browsing around the interwebs, it seems that Dragon Blades have long been the conversion base of choice for Blood Knights. Those of of you that have done the Dragon Blade to Blood Knights conversion, what did you do(aside from the people who are just running stock Dragon Blades painted red)? I'm in the building of a lot of Hexwraiths and I'm thinking the left over Black Knight pieces will be good conversion fodder, maybe at the very least swap out the shields.

Please excuse my terrible photography and painting! Dragon Blade horse and legs, Empire Knight horse heads (you have to chop the Dragon Blade heads off), a mix of Dragon Blade/Cold One Knight torsos, Cold One Knight weapons and shields and then bitz box for heads. Unfortunately the Empire Knight kit has been discontinued, and the headswap is good for making them feel more vampiric and less like, well, Dragon Blades. I'm not sure what kit you'd use instead, maybe Chaos Knights but those might be waaaaay too big. I'd love it if anyone had any recommendations actually as I want to do a second unit some time!

 

 

[WoollyMammoth]

@flowerpot_chimp
Thank you for the clarification, for some reason I thought the dragon was 400 and the Blood Knights were 240 before. I guess everything is the same which is a bit over-costed. I generally don't mind overcosted for genuinely good scrolls like these; but there is just not enough models in the army.

I hope the mention of vampires in the lore means something, but we cannot be sure. TK were a big part of the end times lore but a few months later they were ended, despite that there were some really good plastic kits in there. TK was most likely discontinued because they are reinvented as the Katophranes of Shadespire, which will probably be a new Death army at some point. Models-wise soulblight is almost completely resin, apart from the 3 big plastic kits which are thankfully tied to other kits which are still important and active. This is probably the saving grace for Soulblight, that they cannot figure out how to squat them and make these extra kits make sense. That and they don't have a new IP concept to turn them into yet. So they decided to give them allegiance to make them decent for now, and keep the vampire lore strong, but they do not likely have any intention of properly supporting soulblight now or in the future.

[flowerpot_chimp]

1 hour ago, WoollyMammoth said:

Thank you for the clarification, for some reason I thought the dragon was 400 and the Blood Knights were 240 before. I guess everything is the same which is a bit over-costed. I generally don't mind overcosted for genuinely good scrolls like these; but there is just not enough models in the army.

The Ghoul King on Zombie Dragon was 400 in the old handbook and went up to 440 in 2017 (WHY???) which is probably where the confusion comes from. I'm in two minds about Blood Knights costing 260, they're pretty expensive compared to other heavy hitting units (Morghasts, Kurnoth Hunters, ****** Fulminators) and a bit more finesse to get work but when they do work they're so good.

1 hour ago, WoollyMammoth said:

So they decided to give them allegiance to make them decent for now, and keep the vampire lore strong, but they do not likely have any intention of properly supporting soulblight now or in the future.

I suspect this is exactly on the money.

[Josh]

prob to stop them being used as allies?

[Black_Fortress_Immortal]

On 10/25/2017 at 6:28 PM, WoollyMammoth said:

Soulblight is not an army, its a list. Id rate it a third-string army at best. The only reason we are talking about it is because it got an allegiance. The allegiance is not good, we are talking about +2" move and -1 to target the general, compared to a laundry list of awesome things that a good allegiance does for an army.

Along with the half decent allegiance, we got a swift kick to the teeth, raising the VLoZD and Blood Knights up in points, moving them from really good and well costed to way overcosted. They are both valuable scrolls, but now you have to pay a ton for them. You end up with a very low wound army that will melt to mortal wounds. One Tzeentch magic phase could easily melt half your army.

The VLoZD is the most tanky general in Death, and one of the most in the game. Now you can make him tankier with -1 to hit when a nasty hero charges him. Even so, he suffers massively from the fact that his dragon can no longer be effected by anything, so he should have gotten a point decrease with that nerf, but instead he got an increase. You can't compare him to something else because a general that simply wont die is priceless. 

I understand the idea - vampires are sweet. They used to be amazing. One vampire at the front of a unit of zombies or skeletons, used to move up, the zombies and skeletons couldn't do diddly but the VL would move the speed of lightning, attack first, slaughter half a unit all by himself then run down the unit and kill it all by himself. Or he would fly across the board in a unit of black knight cavalry like a heat seeking missile of ultimate death. Meanwhile he would be raising his whole army back from the dead, casting death winds to kill units, raising zombie walls to screen his advances, all the while healing himself and his units and monsters.

Those days are long gone, now you have an overcosted weakling that might remove an attack from a unit, which is good but a lot of times situational. No more lightning reflexes, no more dominating the entire board with magic, no more insane red fury slaughter. Per lore, he should be the greatest infantry hero in the game. I don't care what his points are - just make him epic again.

Meanwhile we get more and more kicks while we are down. Instead of turning the named Von Carsteins into generic counterparts (like you see with other armies) they are completely squatted. Now, Mannfrend and Neferata, greatest of the vampires ... are no longer vampires. Neferata is great but she is overcosted. Her command ability is simply that she is dead sexy ... why does she have to be commanding? Suddenly she is ugly as hell if she is not the general? Its an awesome ability, misplaced as a Command Ability. 

Lastly, the biggest and hardest kick, the massive increase in points to the VLoAT, and completely neutering him of soulbight. Even if he was still soulblight, there would be hope for this army, but he is now only available in Death.  

Soulblight needs the same thing everything else in death does, more more more models. But more so than most, they need a complete re-invention and rewrite of every scroll. I really don't know why they bothered to make a half decent allegiance out of this afterthought army, especially while massively neutering it at the same time. The only thing that makes this army good is our own love for Vampires and vampire concepts, desperately trying to bend their lack of models and poor rules into a fun themed army. 

Overall I'm very worried for vampires. Its not an IP that GW can keep. Dwarves have become Duradin, jumping around naked as Fyreslayers or as Kharadron sky pirates. Lizardmen are celestial daemons. I don't know what elves will be, but its not likely the elves we know. Vampires were a counter theme to the humans and the empire in the old world. Now there is no more empire. Overall it seems more likely that soulblight will simply be trashed the way of TK. At this point there is less models to discontinue than TK had. Otherwise, they will be reinvented as dark Stormcast or something not vampire-like at all. The truth is, vampires are a concept of the old world, and that is now gone forever.  

False.

VLoZD and Blood Knights points stayed the same.

Mannfred and Neferata are Vampires, but not Soulblight.

WIth Allies, and for Soulblight to be competitive, I doubt is meant to be run alone.  GHB2017 has been out for 2 months.  They lack hordes/screening units, and rely on buffing up your charge to kill anything that moves.  Swift Death +2" AND allowing to move as if flying is huge... you ignore models/terrain, allowing the possibility of crazy charges over lines.  They neutered VLoAT so that you can't easily get a braindead 1st turn charge, but instead you have to setup a strategic charge.  There's a reason why there's an Artifact to allow a reroll for charges, since you'll be crossing your fingers.