Next Death Battletome

[AthlorianStoners]

5 hours ago, smucreo said:

It would be cool to see a faction of spirits that possess stuff, sort of like automatons and animated armor. They could have a mechanic where every time one of the animated armors are killed the spirits in there go to reinforce another guy in the unit, giving him + to hit or an extra attack or something.

Thats an awesome idea! Would you go Gothic, or Steampunk?

[smucreo]

Well, steampunk is the easy thing to imagine if one is talking about automatons, and gothic if talking about animated armor and stuff, so... I guess it depends haha That said, I imagine the under realms of death to be more gothic like!

[Jgregs]

For a Death Rattle battle tome I would be happy with-

Special rules - something like -1 to enemy bravery if they are within 3 inches of a key word "skeleton" unit with 20 or more models . Or you can reroll the amount of models that return to a unit with a banner if they are within 6 inches of a death hero. Or +2 to summoning keyword "skeleton" units for a wight king that takes a command ability that makes him a wizard.

a few more battalions

a screaming skull catapult / skeleton ballista dual kit

the ballista could have a skeleton strapped to it and if it hits a monster the skelton digs its way into the monster and causes a subsequent mortal wound in every one of your hero phases on a  D6 _ 4 + 

[Sception]

the minimum content from a death battletome such that It would at least keep my somewhat low satisfaction with this game stable instead of actually making it worse is:

• An actual deathrattle spellcaster.  Not a command ability to let a wight king cast shield and bolt, and actual lich or skeleton mage unit with their own model, and their own actually good signature spell.
• Grave guard worth taking.  Preferably by changing the grave guard rules to make them actually better than regular skeletons (+1 armor save and wound for the same price would be a good start).   Battalions that make them worth taking as more than just a tax would be an only barely tolerable but still rather disappointing alternative.
• Black knights worth taking.  Preferably by changing the black knight rules to make them actually good (+1 attack and -1ap for the same price would be a good start).  Battalions that make them worth taking as more than just a tax would be an only barely tolerable but still somewhat disappointing alternative.
• skeleton warriors not made dramatically worse than they already are.
• wight kings better.  don't care how its done, but they're kind of disappointing right now, for what should be a cool and desirable character.

That's the minimum from a deathrattle book to keep my, again already pretty low, interest in the game stable.  That won't bring me up to positive or excited, but it would stop me from feeling even worse about the game.

Unfortunately, right now I'm expecting  a deathrattle book that lacks any of that.  One that has no native spellcaster, does nothing to improve wight kings, grave guard, or black knights beyond making them battalion taxes, and that makes skeleton warriors worse - mostly likely by splitting them into two units, neither of which are as strong as the current unit due to having different/weaker horde bonuses.  The kind of book to make me seriously consider quitting the game altogether.

[Gotrek]

14 hours ago, Sception said:

Unfortunately, right now I'm expecting  a deathrattle book that lacks any of that.  One that has no native spellcaster, does nothing to improve wight kings, grave guard, or black knights beyond making them battalion taxes, and that makes skeleton warriors worse - mostly likely by splitting them into two units, neither of which are as strong as the current unit due to having different/weaker horde bonuses.  The kind of book to make me seriously consider quitting the game altogether.

Dude, have you seen the recent battletomes? BoK, DoT, sylvaneth...i mean the "weakest" book in the past year imo was the KO and thats only because of the lackluster heroes. Have some faith, they've been putting out solid work. 

[Sception]

three years without releases or interest in the undead has my faith cut down to nothing.  People complain about skeletons, I'm expecting a nerf there, mainly in the form of removing their second extra attack from numbers.  Similar complaints about usable death rules/units have led to similar nerfs out of GHII and the updated TK rules.  As for the other deathrattle units, they've had a couple chances to change the rules on wight kings, grave guard, and black knights already, and have shown no indication that they think there's anything wrong with them as they currently are, so I don't expect substantial improvement there outside of maybe expensive formations.  And oldhammer ranges have not been getting much in the way of new models - nothing for flesh eaters or ogres, little for savage orcs, etc - so I'm not expecting anything completely new to shake things up either.

The rules might end up strong, particularly if they misjudge some of the formation bonuses.  That happens some times, because GW still, afaict, doesn't playtest anything, but strong or overpowered rules from brand new factions that the studio is actually excited about don't fill me with confidence for their treatment of afterthought hold overs from the old game, which is basically what the entire grand alliance of death is.

[someone2040]

11 hours ago, Sception said:

And oldhammer ranges have not been getting much in the way of new models - nothing for flesh eaters or ogres, little for savage orcs, etc - so I'm not expecting anything completely new to shake things up either.

Technically, Sylvaneth, Khorne Bloodbound and Tzeentch Arcanites are all armies that were migrated from 'oldhammer'. It's just people tend to forget it since they got a ton of new models to go with them (and in general, are made up more of newer models than old) while the likes of Bonesplitterz and Beastclaw Raiders didn't get any new models to go along with them.

Sylvaneth for example are almost 50-50

Old : Treelord/Variants, Dryads, Branchwraith

New : Alarielle, Drycha, Branchwych, Kurnoths, Tree Revenants/Spite Revenants

[angrycontra]

I think it's extremely pessimistic to assume that death rattle release will be nothing more than some small rules rewrite with their existing range. Now yes, GW has done similar thing with armies such as flesh eaters, pestilens, bonesplitterz and bcr, but each of those armies had at least something going for them model, theme and rules -wise.

Pestilens has few stand out models (corruptor and furnace) and they have this whole strong plague theme going for them (they are one of the most well known skaven clans too). Flesh eater courts have really creative and fun lore surrounding them and their model range is fairly new and good looking (also cool big monsters). Bcr on the other hand is full of cool big monsters and the whole theme of nomadic ogres trying avoid being frozen by everwinter winds is pretty unique. Now bonesplitterz is indeed one of the more simpler releases, but they still have a lot of theme and flavour going for them. I can see the appeal of running around with bunch of savage half-naked orks and again the whole monster hunters lore is a cool thing.

Aaand then we have death rattle... Faction of what... skeletons? As hard as I try, I can't figure how Gw could make interesting lore to fit these guys. They currently have no real theme other than being your average scary spooky skeletons. They even lack models compared to rest of the armies and have no cool monsters or hero options. I doubt Gw would be making them into some boring "skellies with spears", "skellies with swords"-nonsense either (and again, yes they sort of did that with bonesplitterz but only when the weapons changed completely like 2 weapons instead of 1 and shield or bow). But let's say they did. Let's say deathrattle is indeed one boring faction to receive a battletome. Why wait for so long? We've had a dry 6+ months with no proper releases. Throwing some cheap battletome would've been at least something but instead we've had nothing. Also I'd like to throw argument that gw is not stupid. They know that death players have been asking for new models and they know some cheap release at this point won't satisfy them. All those armies I mentioned earlier were released during the first year of AoS (first full year). Since then, they haven't even touched any of the old factions other than in ghb 2017 (which again begs the question, why would gw not give deathrattle proper allegiance stuff in ghb instead of giving soulblight some, despite the fact that soulblight have almost 0 models in plastic range).

Now finally, if Gw indeed makes deathrattle into this boring cheap faction with no new models (or even without some repurposed khemri guys), I'm gonna come here to say how wrong I was and will dedicate part of my life to call gw cheap hacks and tell everyone how ****** they are. BUT... it's too early for that. Being pessimistic and complaining about their business practices won't change the new death battletome/faction (we don't even know if it's going to be called "deathrattle" in the first place) so the only thing to do is to wait and see.

[Gotrek]

29 minutes ago, angrycontra said:

Aaand then we have death rattle... Faction of what... skeletons? As hard as I try, I can't figure how Gw could make interesting lore to fit these guys. They currently have no real theme other than being your average scary spooky skeletons. They even lack models compared to rest of the armies and have no cool monsters or hero options

When we get the deathrattle book o fully expect to see at least 1 centerpiece model  (skeletal titans, or bones of a magmadroth/stonehorn, something along those lines) and a wizard. As for what they can do with the fluff... they did it with the TK, why cant they do it again?

[angrycontra]

5 hours ago, Gotrek said:

When we get the deathrattle book o fully expect to see at least 1 centerpiece model  (skeletal titans, or bones of a magmadroth/stonehorn, something along those lines) and a wizard. As for what they can do with the fluff... they did it with the TK, why cant they do it again?

What I primarily meant with my earlier post is that deathrattle without any such centerpiece models like you mentioned would be boring and dull faction lorewise. I'm quite optimistic on seeing something really cool coming for the next death battletome.

[Warboss Gorbolg]

I just recently finished reading the Realmgate novels and it has really sparked my interest in the Death factions.  I'm pretty excited and optimistic about how it appears that the narrative is pivoting towards Death for a time.

Regarding Deathrattle, my guess is that all we will get will be a mounted Wight King on some sort of small/medium monster, hopefully a dual kit monster.  A lot of released AOS factions are pretty small and I think that Deathrattle will remain that way as well.  A lich-type spellcaster and a war machine dual kit would be nice as well, and help give Skellies their own niche within Death.  I also think that the background for Deathrattle will stay pretty vanilla, representing humans from bygone eras, but that would be fine with me.  Giving Wight Kings more free will/personal motivations would go a long way towards making them more interesting, IMO.

I think that the big makeovers and medium/long term focus in Death will be Soulblight.  The Realmgate novels left me with the impression that GW still thinks of vampires as the heart of the Death Allegiance.

[Elmir]

Looking at these teasers for Malign portents, I think we will be seeing more models soon. Even though they really are keeping the lid on them quite tightly via the rumourmill. 

[Sception]

The tone is certainly on point, but still no hint of new models tied to the campaign apart from a herald for each alliance.  Not even anything undead looking in the rumor engine.  And we've seen previous campaigns come and go without any apparent influence on the model release schedule.

Again, the tone of the teaser videos spot on, and it's certainly a encouraging sign that Death might start to matter in the narrative at least, but I just can't get myself to raise my hopes for new models until I actually see new models.

[NinjaDetective]

I guess its a bit if wat deathrattle needs to funtion as a faction and what we want.

I thinj we need a lich tyoe wizard/priest model, a buff character and some shock troops, in my opinion neither black calvary or grave guard hit hard enough. 

 

Would like

-krell to come back as a new mortach.

A behemoth of some kind, maybe A monster like a bone giant or a big war machine made of bones. 

Would actually g8nd undea syormcast yo be interesting, but nit sure they would fit deathrattle.

 

[Arkanaut Admiral]

I'm no expert, but I've got two ideas for Death:

This isn't my own idea, but I think that the death mage and dead walkers ought to be merged together.  So you'd have necromancers as the leaders (maybe including ones on big monsters and winged nightmares) with zombies as the rank and file, which are backed up by dire wolves, corpse carts, apprentice necromancers and zombified monsters.  These could be the 'infiltrator' death faction, hiding in the cities ready to strike just like tzeentch arcanites.

Meanwhile, the death rattle faction could really go down the 'dead kingdom' route and become something like the bretonians and tomb kings were.  Skeleton spearmean, skeleton archers, skeleton cavalry and chariots, skeleton artillery.  Real world tactics and units, except they're all dead.  With the wight kings leading them having personalities and such.  Maybe at the risk of annoying people, something a bit like the necrons.  Or literally the death inverse of the free guilds?  Skeleton cannons and musketeers?  

[AverageBoss]

My extended Death wishlist is as follows (though I honestly only expect 1-2 of these to happen):

I want some keyword additions and mergers (Neferata and Manfred gain Soulblight, zombies and necromancers merging together, etc). Make Death as flexible as Chaos is. StD for example can be run as GA: Death, StD, DoT, HoS, BoK, and Nurgle.

The Deathlord generals should have an ability allowing them to be the general of any Death army without consuming ally points.

Plastic Vampires. Heroes, Blood Knights, and some form of infantry unit and I would be happy.

A Deathrattle mage. Probably a Liche.

Make Black Knights wights again (and make wights in general better).

Bring back skeletal crossbowmen.

New skeleton chariots. Perhaps a light version with warriors and a heavy version with wights.

New Black Coach model.

A spell lore that all Death armies can use.

A serious look at the points values across the Death GA. Because they honestly do not hold up.

Death armies should have more ally points than the other 3 GAs. This is both for fluff and mechanical reasons.

[Arkanaut Admiral]

What is the current fluff with vampires?  I'm a little bit in the dark with them.

[Gotrek]

4 hours ago, Arkanaut Admiral said:

What is the current fluff with vampires?  I'm a little bit in the dark with them.

They exist...thats pretty much it.

[bsharitt]

6 hours ago, Gotrek said:

They exist...thats pretty much it.

Wellat least it's more than Tomb Kings got.

[Spiny Norman]

I'm so diasppointed that the Terrorgheist was shoved into the FEC faction. FEC was clearly a rushed move to have at least a death faction with so-so up to date models at the release of AoS.

My actual hope is to connect the death factions again, so they're viable to play together and we get rid of these incomplete 'faction'-slices.

 

 

[Sete]

I think the battle tome will be a mix.

After reading the undying king I expect the following:

Zombies, recently deceased villagers etc.

Undead Dogs/wolf's. A fast harassment unit.

Big bats as a fly harassment unit.

Bone Giant as a heavy hitter.

Some new skellies 

Some sort of necromancer hero

Vampires as bruiser foot/horse 

Vampire hero

Deathlords.

[shinros]

On 12/28/2017 at 11:02 PM, Sete said:

I think the battle tome will be a mix.

After reading the undying king I expect the following:

Zombies, recently deceased villagers etc.

Undead Dogs/wolf's. A fast harassment unit.

Big bats as a fly harassment unit.

Bone Giant as a heavy hitter.

Some new skellies 

Some sort of necromancer hero

Vampires as bruiser foot/horse 

Vampire hero

Deathlords.

I thought roughly the same thing considering it seems Deathlord's use any of the undead at their disposal. Deathlord's only answer to nagash. 

 

Since the female necromancer(can't remember her name been ages since I read the book) has an army of skeletons and FEC by the end. 

  

[Karchev23]

While i really want a deathrattle expanded release. My DREAM is Vampires with mortal underlings, no not flesh eaters

[AthlorianStoners]

Pretty hopeful after seeing the extent of the Nurgle Release. I don't think it takes much to turn Death into a well developed faction. These are all hypothetical, optimistic and unlikely, but, we can only dream. Anyways, these are some ideas I had for each faction. As an aside, I think that all Deathlords should be able to taken with any Death faction without using allies points and the following ideas will also have this factored in. 

Soulblight 

Spoiler

 

Soulblight is in a very poor position, with a large majority of its kits being in resin. That being said, its clear theme creates many clear ways for the faction to be expanded. It currently has only 6 Warscrolls (7 if Vamp on Nightmare is counted) and half of them are resin models. 

• Vampire Lord on Zombie Dragon 
• Vampire Lord
• Coven Throne 
• Fell Bats 
• Blood Knights 
• Vargheists

To build this faction out, they obviously need more troops, more HQ options and more elite choices. To that end, I suggest the following: 

• Vampire Thralls - Human servants, these Thralls are the main Battleline for the faction. high numbers, low saves and the like. They would be similar to Kairic Acolytes/Blood Reavers. A cool ability I feel, would be if any vampires could feed on the thralls at any time, removing a thrall but returning wounds to the vampire feeding on them. 
• Newborn Ferals - an elite infantry unit, these would be newly turned vampires that are uncontrollable in their bloodlust and rage. Having been overwhelmed by their new powers, they charge headfirst into battle. A melee based unit, they would have an ability similar to horrors where the unit can cast one spell and unbind one spell, to represent the elder vampire directing them. A dual kit with the Vampire bloodguard. A three model kit, the Newborns would wear little armour and take dual weapons. 
• Blood Guard - the blood guard would be the other half of the Ferals kit. More armoured and stronger defensively, they protect their lord or commander from all threats. 
• Blood Guard Cavalry - Powerful cavalry units, these are mounted Blood Guard. Unsure what their mounts would be at this time, perhaps some batlike creature to differentiate them from other cavalry units out there. 
• Vampire Sorcerer - A support hero, the sorcerer would be there for dispels, friendly buffs and regenerating other heros/units. 
• Vampire Champion - The champion is a melee focused hero, the monster hunter of the army. 
• Vampir King/Queen - a new elite choice, the King/Queen would be a better version of the current Vampire Lord, but a bigger point sink. 

The factions gameplay theme would focus on keeping the hero's/elites at full strength, while the thralls do most of the grunt work. 

 

 

Deathrattle

Spoiler

 

Deathrattle is one of the more fleshed out Death factions. I can easily see them being fleshed out into a proper, well balanced army. As it stands, they have half a dozen war scrolls, with the Wight King on mount as an option. The range needs diversity and depth more than anything else. Some immediate changes I would make would include buffing Black Knights, splitting Skeletons into Spearmen and Infantry. I would also bump Graveguard up to two wounds to be a semi elite infantry choice. 

• Wight King w/Axe
• Wight King w/Blade
• Skeleton Spearmen 
• Skeleton Infantry 
• Grave Guard 
• Black Knights

After these changes, I would like to see these units added: 

• Wight Lord - A new powerful hero, in the same vein as the new wights mentioned below. 
• Bonesinger - A spellcaster hero, the Bonesmith is adept at regenerating units and gets bonuses when enemy units near him are killed, creating more material to replenish friendly units with. 
• Bone Giant - Pretty self explanatory here. Bigass Giant skeleton, with lots of options. 
• Wight Infantry - Large, three wound unit that would serve as the elite infantry of the faction. Powerful and hard hitting, they would be the new calling card of the faction. 
• Bone Trebuchet - A dual kit with the tower, this would offer powerful ranged support. 
• Siege Tower - A dual kit with the Trebuchet, this would offer ranged support and transport for some units. 

 

The other factions i'm at a loss with. 

[Sception]

I keep waffling back and forth between wish listing and smacking myself back down with realistic expectations based on how we and other legacy factions have been treated in AoS so far.

Wish List: expand Deathrattle with unit ideas taken from tomb kings, just redone in the gothic deathrattle style.

• skeleton wizards
• skeleton archers
• skeleton chariots (including ridden by heroes)
• skeleton light cav
• skeleton war machine (dual kit catapult/trebuchet & weird arcane engine)
• skeleton and/or animated statue monstrous infantry
• skeleton and/or animated statue monstrous cavalry
• skeleton and/or animated statue monster (unridden/ridden by hero/ridden by a handfull of skeletons)
• skeleton and/or animated statue giant (dual kit beaty & magic variants)

That's a lot of units, so maybe split them into multiple release waves between multiple battle tomes, the way there were multiple stormcast battletomes before they all got put together.

Then you could cancel the TK rules support altogether and just say 'use the closest equivalent deathrattle unit'.  Which would sound like another blow to veteran TK players, but would actually be a huge boon, because it would mean they could be sure of ongoing rules support going forward.

All that plus heavily revised rules for wight kings, grave guard, and black knights to make them actually effective units to begin with.

...................................................

But then I remember that I'm talking about support for a legacy faction in AoS, and the best I can reasonably expect is:

• a command ability to make a wight king a minimal wizard with blast & shield
• skeleton warriors as two different units - one with spears and one with swords - neither as good as the current rules.
• grave guard as two different units - one with great weapons and one with shields - neither any better than they are now.
• black knights entirely unchanged.
• maybe a new infantry support hero or two.  maybe.
• a bunch of formations that try to get people to buy more black knights and grave guard by making them required taxes.

Maybe the formations will be good enough to make the rest competitively viable as a subfaction apart from Death as a whole, so long as you make liberal use of ally points for necromancers.