Grave guard.....

[Dracothjay]

I’m hype to get my grave guard on the table, no joke. But I’m always finding myself taking 40 skeleton warriors and leaving my 20-30 grave guard on the shelf. 

I can see how grave guard could really perform in terms of potential for our new invocation ability, which makes bringing GG back as easy as bringing skeletons back. Also, especially in GHoN legion as they are battleline and can benefit from so many traits and vampire lord command abilities, 1+ attack from a VL and an extra attack from lord of nagashizaar to be precise. 

However, I think I’m in need of some discussion here as yes, GG are an expensive unit (which skellies can fill their role for cheaper) but their potential for damage output (depending on their loadout) and how well they could hold/pin enemy units and objectives seems all to enticing.

Questions are:

does anyone pick them over skeletons? 

What’s their best loadout?  (Personally I think great blades are the best, but I want to use them super aggressively)

What’s The best size for a GG unit? 

[Honk]

Saw some BatReps on MWG.com Luca uses them a lot 30 strong with great blades. With van hels, they minced that frostlord...

 

[Takaloy]

saw on warhammer tv twice now how two 30 man grave guards do serious work, just behind a line of dire wolves.

[Tittliewinks22]

I currently run my 20 GG along side 40 Skeleton. I'm in the process of bumping it up to 30.

[BarrowLord]

We're still at low points where I game (1,000), but I run two squads of ten.  If you set up your abilities correctly you can do a massive amount of damage and punch well above their weight class.  Four attacks each, hitting on threes, wounding on threes, negative one rend, with possible Vanhel's, and the ability to fight in two ranks.

[Nevar]

Yeah I am sure other people have seen the BatREP I watched where a handful of them tore apart a named Orruk on his wyvern-thing in one turn of combat.

Their ability to stick around with grave sites and invocation makes them extremely good at surviving long enough to put on serious hurt.  If we want something to hold the line, skeletons can do it fine.  If you want to delete units GG with great blade and Dance Macabre will remove most things.

[Dracothjay]

I think deathmarch battalion is the perfect reason to include 30 GG. Stock on on 3 x 10 skeleton warriors for Battlieline, 5 black knights and a wight king and u have a decently fast formation. I’d probably put this in a legion of sacrament list to be honest, or GHoN

[Sception]

The deathmarche battalion was pretty badly damaged by the faq changes.  I personally wouldn't really bother with it.

The main problem with grave guard remains poor comparison to skeletons, particularly defensively.  Rend, while nice, just doesn't make up for having only half as many wounds per point, especially when skeletons are already on the more fragile end for main line infantry.  Recursion helps, especially now that grave guard come back at the same rate as skeletons, but you can't bring any back if they're all dead.

As for what would fix it?  Well, relative points changes would certainly help.  Grave guard dropping to 60 per five might do it.  Alternatively, switching their unit size to 10, which would in turn increase the discount for max sized units, might also work.  Both would be ideal, imo.  Make Grave guard 10-30, 120 per ten, 300 for 30.  On the other hand, there's more than a few voices out there saying skeletons are too cheap.  Maybe nerf skeletons by removing the second extra attack from high numbers, so that the offensive output of grave guard is more noticeable by comparison?  Or leave them as is, and just increase their points to 100 per 10 / 350 for 40?  That might be enough of a price hike to make grave guard viable by comparison, though I'd worry that skeletons then might not see much play, getting instead replaced probably by dire wolves, and rankly grave guard at their current points cost compare just as unfavorably to dire wolves, and almost as unfavorably to zombies, and if basically every other unit needs a price hike to make grave guard worth considering, then the grave guard price is probably the problem.

Alternatively, grave guard could be made tougher instead of cheaper.  Maybe better armor.  Maybe better shields.  Perhaps the more elite undead units could get an improved version of crypt shields that grant their bonus against rend - and rend -1 weapons, so it would take more rend to bypass them?  Or maybe elite undead shields could do something else entirely?  -1 penalty to wound rolls against them, maybe?  Or maybe grave guard could get a defensive boost for nearby death heroes the way skeletons get an offensive boost?

Or maybe the other way around.  Maybe give grave guard a bodyguard role/rule, such that non-monster death (or even just deathrattle?) heroes within 3" of the unit could pass wounds to them like necromancers do?  Or prevent enemy attacks from targeting friendly death heroes in the shooting phase, provided those heroes are within 3" of the grave guard unit and are not closer to the firing unit than the grave guard unit is?  Something like that would give grave guard a distinct role to justify their inclusion that wouldn't hinge entirely upon their relative points efficiency as a melee block.  It would certainly put an emphasis on the 'guard' part of their name.

 

You can adjust the relative points costs and stats between grave guard and skeletons, but as long as they're both deathrattle melee blocks emphasizing offense over defense they're going to be redundant, so one or the other will be 'bad'.  Giving grave guard a distinct role apart from or at least in addition to  melee output would bypass that problem.

[themortalgod]

I think on of the fundamental design flaws with undead is that skeletons are just too good. A max size unit of skeletons with spears does a ****** ton of damage which means, as Sception mentioned, that grave guard struggle to find a good role since they aren't much tougher than skeletons, don't do more damage, but cost twice as many points. They are better now than they were before the book but in 9/10 situations they are simply outclassed by their less elite counterparts. Imo an interesting way to give them a distinctly different role is to make it so their 6s to wound also makes them rend -2 while also giving them +1 against attacks damage 2 or more. Then all of a sudden Grave Guard would  have the role of going up against stronger, tougher targets while skeletons would still be better as front line to fight the chaffe. 

[Drujeful]

In The First Cohort alongside a unit of 40 spear skeletons, would two units of 5 GG be alright, or is 5 just way too low a number for them to be decent at all?

[Honk]

51 minutes ago, Drujeful said:

or is 5 just way too low a number for them to be decent at all?

Problem is, not having them deleted by random stuff. With only 5hp, they evaporate fast and do you really want to invest 2 resurrection dice to keep them alive?!?

And although they kinda hit hard, but buffing 5 guys?!?

so, I personally can see big blender formations, but small units...nah

[someone2040]

I'm just confused why you can take Grave Guard in 5's in the first place. They come in boxes of 10. I'd probably argue they should be the same ballpark as Freeguild Greatswords (Which are 10 for 150), but you can't do that without making them 75 points per 5. That being said, Greatswords aren't great either... 

 

That being said. I think there are some issues in the effectiveness of Dire Wolves and Skeletons.

IMO Dire Wolves are definitely undercosted (although, I'm not quite sure how much). It was said people didn't really use to look at them because they weren't battleline, but nowdays I see lists which certainly have more than minimum battleline Dire Wolves. So they can't really be noneffective at those points either.

I think this is a case where GW don't really understand the value of fast cheap and arguably tough chaff. There's nothing else in the game that comes to mind that packs so much value into 60 points. Certainly they could deal with being 70 points I think, not quite sure whether or not 80 is too far.

 

Skeletons on the other hand are probably actually fine at 80 points for 10. Ultimately, other than Grave Guard potentially being slightly overpriced, I feel the bigger issue is that it's just a Skeleton problem. The fact that they're best in large numbers and then they get a discount for doing so just makes it a 'no brainer'. And most of the time, weight of attacks is just as useful as rend. Sadly we won't see a warscroll change, but I feel if they removed the extra attack at 30+ it might be alright.

 

So in summary, for GHB2018 I would probably:

Increase Dire Wolves to 70 per 5

Leave Skeletons alone (or maybe even remove/reduce the max unit size bonus).

Decrease the cost of Grave Guard to 70 per 5.

My gut feel is that 60 per 5 might be a bit cheap, so I would be inclinded to take smaller steps (There's always GHB2019 to decrease them further if necessary).

[Takaloy]

On 4/30/2018 at 4:49 PM, themortalgod said:

I think on of the fundamental design flaws with undead is that skeletons are just too good. A max size unit of skeletons with spears does a ****** ton of damage which means, as Sception mentioned, that grave guard struggle to find a good role since they aren't much tougher than skeletons, don't do more damage, but cost twice as many points. They are better now than they were before the book but in 9/10 situations they are simply outclassed by their less elite counterparts. Imo an interesting way to give them a distinctly different role is to make it so their 6s to wound also makes them rend -2 while also giving them +1 against attacks damage 2 or more. Then all of a sudden Grave Guard would  have the role of going up against stronger, tougher targets while skeletons would still be better as front line to fight the chaffe. 

i don't know if i'd pick skeletons over a pack of wolves though unless in 30/40 hordes.

Grave Guard I think needs points reduction, though having said that I think rend is super important. 

[Richelieu]

On 4/30/2018 at 8:12 PM, someone2040 said:

There's nothing else in the game that comes to mind that packs so much value into 60 points.

Seraphon Skinks.  Same number of wounds, slightly lower move, but with a ranged attack and the ability to retreat instead of attacking in the combat phase, which can sneak them past enemy units onto objectives.  They're both awesome units.

[someone2040]

37 minutes ago, Richelieu said:

Seraphon Skinks.  Same number of wounds, slightly lower move, but with a ranged attack and the ability to retreat instead of attacking in the combat phase, which can sneak them past enemy units onto objectives.  They're both awesome units.

Yes, that's true. Probably bit of hyperbole or forgetfullness on my part.

Both units basically fill the same role, extremely cheap chaff that is quite mobile that are really tough to budge by battleshock (in the case of Dire Wolves, basically immune).

I think both units will likely go up in points in the next Handbook (Otherwise, I just have to think GW are completely blind to how good mobile fast and cheap chaff is).

In general actually, I think most 60 point units tend to be quite good value. If only because they can act as chaff. Zombies maybe a bit on the weaker side because they don't have an armour save.

[Richelieu]

7 minutes ago, someone2040 said:

I think both units will likely go up in points in the next Handbook (Otherwise, I just have to think GW are completely blind to how good mobile fast and cheap chaff is).

I'm not so sure, I could see it going either way.  I think within the context of the rest of their armies that 60 points for both units is fair.  Super cheap, mobile battle line for both armies doesnt enable any really abusive lists.