Legion of Blood vs. Soulblight

[FeelsDoggoMan]

Hello everyone, I’ve recently gotten some guidance towards where to progress my army after expressing my liking of the vampire theme, and my owning of the skeleton horde box. I’m going to build Neferata and now face the dilemma of choosing between whether I want to focus on soulblight and having blood Knight battleline, or the legion of blood. I’m wondering which one is more viable, and whether or not the blood knights are incentive enough for a soulblight allegiance. (With the soulblight allegiance I can still take 40 skeletons and a necromancer which add up to 390 points in allies so I don’t see an incentive for going legion of blood). 

[Arentius]

Take a look at the traits and artifacts.

If you have the cash a blades of the blood queen box is amazing value! You get the mortarch, 2 morghasts, 20 skellies, 10 grave guard and a wight king.

This'll give you a solid legion of blood army if this is where you want to go with it

[Lemon Knuckles]

14 hours ago, FeelsDoggoMan said:

(With the soulblight allegiance I can still take 40 skeletons and a necromancer which add up to 390 points in allies so I don’t see an incentive for going legion of blood). 

I'd go Legion of Blood, for the following reasons:

1. Your skeletons won't get the benefits of graveyards in Soulblight (no summoning, no recursion)
2. Your Blood Knights will hit harder in Legion of Blood, as will any VLoZDs you want to bring.  There's few things as scary as a unit of Blood Knights in the Legion of Blood on the charge.
3. You get full value out of your Skeleton Horde box (you get to bring both Neferata and the Skeletons if you wish... can't do that in Soulblight)
4. Take a VLoZD as your general, and with the right command triats and artefacts, you can have a 2+ save, re-rolling 1s behemoth with extra attacks that also gives opponents a -1 to hit you penalty in close combat.  That gives you good reason to just yell "ROAR" whenever you charge him into things.
5. The battleline tax for Blood can be as low as 180 points if you just run three MSU Dire Wolves.

 

[Sception]

In general, the legion lists are the way to run any undead outside of tomb kings and flesh eater courts.  And I guess Nighthaunt, if you have a mourngul, but honestly **** that ruling.  Gravesites are a big deal, the command traits and artefacts are generally better, even apart from gravesites, the allegiance traits are better.  Like, soulblight can get some neat stuff out of bloodlines, but the extra attack from legion of blood, while maybe a bit bland, will go farther.

Losing battleline blood knights is lame, but as already mentioned by others, a few dire wolves will fix that for you cheaply, while also supplying some speedy screens for your knights and lords.  And without hurting the classic vampire theme too much, since wolves are also associated with vampires.  If you're not a fan of the official models, fenrisian wolves are a nice looking alternative.

Unfortunately, even more than in the other alliances, death really has a huge gap between tome and non-tome lists, following the gh17, TK, and blood knight nerfs, plus the LoN reworking of key mechanics among several staple undead units to kind of hinge on those gravesites that only legions get.

[FeelsDoggoMan]

11 hours ago, Lemon Knuckles said:

I'd go Legion of Blood, for the following reasons:

1. Your skeletons won't get the benefits of graveyards in Soulblight (no summoning, no recursion)
2. Your Blood Knights will hit harder in Legion of Blood, as will any VLoZDs you want to bring.  There's few things as scary as a unit of Blood Knights in the Legion of Blood on the charge.
3. You get full value out of your Skeleton Horde box (you get to bring both Neferata and the Skeletons if you wish... can't do that in Soulblight)
4. Take a VLoZD as your general, and with the right command triats and artefacts, you can have a 2+ save, re-rolling 1s behemoth with extra attacks that also gives opponents a -1 to hit you penalty in close combat.  That gives you good reason to just yell "ROAR" whenever you charge him into things.
5. The battleline tax for Blood can be as low as 180 points if you just run three MSU Dire Wolves.

 

Hey man, thanks for the response! Now that you’ve swayed me with your multitude of points, I was wondering if you had any advice moving forward with my next purchases, and some help building a list for 1k and 2k? 

[FeelsDoggoMan]

2 hours ago, Sception said:

In general, the legion lists are the way to run any undead outside of tomb kings and flesh eater courts.  And I guess Nighthaunt, if you have a mourngul, but honestly **** that ruling.  Gravesites are a big deal, the command traits and artefacts are generally better, even apart from gravesites, the allegiance traits are better.  Like, soulblight can get some neat stuff out of bloodlines, but the extra attack from legion of blood, while maybe a bit bland, will go farther.

Losing battleline blood knights is lame, but as already mentioned by others, a few dire wolves will fix that for you cheaply, while also supplying some speedy screens for your knights and lords.  And without hurting the classic vampire theme too much, since wolves are also associated with vampires.  If you're not a fan of the official models, fenrisian wolves are a nice looking alternative.

Unfortunately, even more than in the other alliances, death really has a huge gap between tome and non-tome lists, following the gh17, TK, and blood knight nerfs, plus the LoN reworking of key mechanics among several staple undead units to kind of hinge on those gravesites that only legions get.

Cheers mate! Thanks for the wonderful insight. 

[Dracothjay]

I had a game last week as pure soulblight. I did really well and smashed my opponent.

mannfred - general (soulblight keyword)

VLoZD 

6 vargheist

3 vargheist

3 vargheist 

can’t remember what spells I took but I slaughtered quite a bit. As you can see, I love my vargheist, so I’m very keen to try out Legion of night with the nightfall pack battalion. 

As stated, soulblight is amazing allegiance, but the new legions are so much better in terms of healing capabilities from gravesites etc. Try soulblight out and other allegiances!

[Gumbalina]

I would advise against the nightfall pack.  I love the varghiests as beautiful models and strong rules but you get little to no benefit from the formation. Manfred gets a bonus to invocations against formation skeletons and the 2 units of varghiests get the bonus attack if they charge.   It's too random and very expensive.   Your better off going legion of blood and taking the general trait that allows rerolls to charge for soulblight units.  

[Lemon Knuckles]

17 hours ago, FeelsDoggoMan said:

Hey man, thanks for the response! Now that you’ve swayed me with your multitude of points, I was wondering if you had any advice moving forward with my next purchases, and some help building a list for 1k and 2k? 

Sure thing.  There's probably better qualified people here than me to give that kind of advice, but if I were planning next purchases, and given what you have and the fact that you like Vampires, I'd probably get:  30 more skeletons, a Vampire Lord flying horror, a Necromancer, and a pack of Dire Wolves.  That gives you a quick 1k army. 

When you're ready to build up, you could go for a Start Collecting FEC box (for the Vampire Lord on Zombie Dragon and the Vargheists... you won't have use for the ghouls, but you will still save money versus buying the other two separately).  And eventually if want to keep the vamp theme, you'll want to splurge on a unit of Blood Knights.  

[haneybird]

Vargheists are no longer Battleline. The only option for Soulblight is Blood Knights.

[FeelsDoggoMan]

5 hours ago, Lemon Knuckles said:

Sure thing.  There's probably better qualified people here than me to give that kind of advice, but if I were planning next purchases, and given what you have and the fact that you like Vampires, I'd probably get:  30 more skeletons, a Vampire Lord flying horror, a Necromancer, and a pack of Dire Wolves.  That gives you a quick 1k army. 

When you're ready to build up, you could go for a Start Collecting FEC box (for the Vampire Lord on Zombie Dragon and the Vargheists... you won't have use for the ghouls, but you will still save money versus buying the other two separately).  And eventually if want to keep the vamp theme, you'll want to splurge on a unit of Blood Knights.  

Thanks for the response! I’m probably going to go for the FEC starter and some skeletons for my next purchases. After that some dire wolves if I can find any online (might use space wolves wolves though they are more pricy), and gonna use Dragon Blases for Blood knights. 

[Sception]

Yeah, vargheists are an alright unit in theory, but they don't really get anything out of anything and are basically outclassed in  most any list that might want to take them, thematically.  the Legion of Night formation, in addition to being bizarrely expensive and just not very good, gives them a bonus isn't really significant, since what they'd need to be good in a LoN list is increased ability to make long range charges, not extra attacks when they do, so they will always be dramatically outclassed by harbingers as an outflanking melee hammer in LoN lists.  And while they're comperable to, or arguably even slightly better than blood knights in a soulblight list in theory, that comparison falls apart when you realize that they aren't battleline for soulblight anymore, which means you're already fielding 2, 3, or even 4 units of blood knights, depending on game size, before you even begin to consider taking a unit of vargheists, at which point your list is already over-committed to fast, hitty, but somewhat fragile for the points melee hammers, and you really shouldn't be putting any more points into that sort of unit.  In legion of blood Vargheists are again eclipsed by blood knights, this time because of the bonus attacks (all the time, not just on the charge).  That just leaves generic Mixed Death (again in a bad shape right now overall), Grand Host (where the extra boost to morghasts again has vargheists completely overshadowed by harbingers), and Legion of Sacrament.

Out of every possible list, Legion of Sacrament is about the only one where Vargheists might be considered mechancally, since they are, again, alright by default, and there's nothing mechanically pushing you towards morghasts or blood knights instead, but Legion of Sacrament, of all armies that theoretically can field vargheists, is the one where they make least sense thematically.  And the extra boosts to casting make summonable hammers like spirit hosts or hexwraiths, albeit a bit slower and/or weaker to start, more attractive due to reliable casting of vanhels.  And, if not summonables, then morghasts, while not necessarily outright better than vargeists as they are in grand host or legion of knight, are just a much better thematic fit.

Sadly, Vargheists just don't seem to belong anywhere.  Again, they're not a terrible unit in and of themselves, you're not really shooting yourself in the foot by fielding them, but I have a hard time seeing any list using them that wouldn't be better off doing something else instead.

[discoking]

I've stayed pure soulblight and have won both games so far convincingly. I just can't see myself giving up the Lords of Night allegiance ability. 

Covern Throne - general

VLoZD

3 x 5 Bloodknights

6  Vargiests 

6 Fell Bats

 

I've got another box of Bloodknights as I want to drop the Vargiests and go 2 x 5 and 1 x 10  bloodknights but getting the motivation to put them together is hard