Will we see an updated LoN Battletome in 2020?

[Bayul]

3 hours ago, BoneHeart said:

the NH part will get a mortis engine at some point

I wouldn't read to much into that. That could easily be an oversight. I'd love to try one in Legion of Grief at some point though.

The reason why I took a look into this thread is this doleful sentence on Goonhammer:

Quote

Arkhan the Black and Nagash, two of the best Heroes in the book can now be taken in Ossiarch Bonereapers lists which has made the Legions of Nagash book pretty irrelevant.

https://www.goonhammer.com/meta-analysis-age-of-sigmar-cancon-and-lvo-part-1/

I hope that something will happen for Death this year, considering the Necrofex Colossus-ish rumour mill images. Personally as a LoG player it wouldn't be to much to ask for my army to become a proper Legion in a fresh LoN book and Lady Olynder actually becomes a efficiant Mortarch in Legion of Grief. 

[Dolinarius]

tbh I still don't know where GW wants to go with death. 

The idea with Legions was good, but imho didn't go far enough...

Legion of Sacrament

Arkhan as a leader + OBR Mini with OBR Ruleset

Legion of Night

Manfred as the leader + Deathwalkers + Deathrattle + Deathmages + graveyards

Your classic resurrect subfaction.

Legion of Blood - I personally think, GW should combine it with soulblight and bring a new twist to it instead of a knew SB battletome.

Neferate as the leader + vampires + bats and some new kits like vampire infantry on food and new blood knights

Specialized on fast attacking, elite armies that can fly. 

Legion of Grief

Lady Olynder + NH + the ****** mortis engine

NH can stay as the are, but make the bravery bomb a thing.  

 

No separately NH, Soulblight, OBR etc. just choose a legion, with their unique mortarch, playstyle and modelrange. This way, you finaly bring order to this soup faction!

Admittedly radical but I can't see why this shouldn't work out?

Edited January 27, 2020 by Dolinarius

[Sception]

I would like a major refresh of the death alliance overall just in terms of what the subfactions are and how they interact with each other, but I'm beginning to doubt that will ever happen since the designers seems to be moving away from alliances in general as more than just a background concept.  Chaos still has that overlapping allegiances thing between factions and marks, where you might run 'slaves to darkness' or 'skaven', or you might run 'nurgle' with some slaves to darkness, skaven, and daemon units, but factions in Order, Destruction, and Death seem to be more and more segregated, with OBR in particular being about the most divorced a faction has been from the rest of its alliance in AoS to date, with no allies at all and rules that would leave little point to taking any even if you could.

[TheEccentric1851]

Seeing as we've gotten Kharadron Overlords and Disciples of Tzeentch now this year, and we're going to get the Lumineth Realmlords and then Sons of Behemat around late spring/summer time, you can see there is at least one battletome so far for each Grand Alliance except Death so far. So it makes sense to balance it and give us a Death Battletome some point this year. There are a couple of options they could do for this:

New Faction: Probably got a 95 percent chance of not happening this year, because we got the Ossiarch Bonereapers last year plus the fact that the Lumineth Realmlords and Sons of Behemat probably are the full representation of this years new factions. However, a couple of the rumour engines do show some death looking stuff, so I guess something isn't totally impossible? However my bet is this won't be the case. If anything, seeing a Vampire tome if not Soulblight is probably the best thing they could give us.

Soulblight: Something we should have, at least some form of one tome for vampires. If they split Soulblight from the Legions of Nagash to get their own battletome, while keeping them in there similar to the Nighthaunt, then we could see a brand new great tome for Death. Give us a new vampire hero on foot, a unit with two different builds on foot, new Fell Bats and new Blood Knights, with endless spells and potentially a scenery piece if really wanted and boom, an army appears. Only a few kits, like 5 or so would be needed and a release like this around the later part of the year would be good. You could even release them around Halloween to make the theme of a vampire army just right. 

Deathrattle: Much like what Soulblight could have as being a separate force but inside Legions of Nagash, Deathrattle is sadly a less likely option for a battletome. New skeleton beasts and heroes would've been great to see, but the Ossiarch Bonereapers have already taken that space and so a Deathrattle army of spooky scary skeletons is out of the questions for now most probably. Keeping them in the legions is fine, but their own tome would be unexpected and cool to see. But again, not at all likely.

Deadwalkers: Like Deathrattle, not likely. A zombie army full of animate corpses would be cool, with a zombie hero perhaps and several corpse units. Tying in the Necromancer and Deathmages in general with this army could be cooled thematically, focusing on reanimating the dead on full scale. But while this would be interesting, there may be a lot to have to add to make them their own faction separate from Legions of Nagash.

Legions of Nagash: Probably my bet for this to appear with a new book this year, potentially with the models I named in the Soulblight and other bits above, but other models I'd like to see redone would be Dire Wolves and a new Wight King on Skeletal Steed model, with a possibility for another hero on foot, like a zombie hero or something. Just generally a new remake of old models, similar to the Slaanesh release when a lot of the old models got updated for here. Legions of Nagash should also get some endless spells, and be the last of the current four armies to get their own, and a scenery piece could also be here like a graveyard or a catacomb. 

At very least, if we do see only Legions of Nagash redone, let's hope we don't get the same scenario as the recent Seraphon had and none of the old models get updated or added to. As much as we could get a scenery piece, it's becoming a bit frequent in AOS armies so far and personally I'd like to not have too many more for armies. For beginning collectors you don't want to spend 35 pounds on a scenery piece to make your army work while for the same cash you could boost up your collection up with more units and heroes. Legions of Nagash should have model redoes and if they don't or if any of the armies that could split don't I'll be disappointed. 

Edited April 23, 2020 by TheEccentric1851

[LordPrometheus]

Along those same lines, I'd love to see some sort of GHB/Death tome general update that lets Nagash lead the Nighthaunts with their rules, or really lead any Death faction for that matter. It doesn't make any sense that the god of Death can't lead his own armies and has to lead a soup list instead, except OBR. And let him know all the spells too, just like OBR.

Just would be thematic and make Naggy more useful.

[Nightseer2012]

I think I would settle for a Seraphon-esque rework of our book by the end if the year (early 2021 because if the virus?).  I wouldn’t mind new kits, but I would much rather a polish job on the rules we have (integrating Legion of Grief properly, fixing the broken battalions, making each legion more characterful like Dolinarus suggested above), and then maybe a terrain piece/upgrade our graveyards to full terrain.

 

I don’t think LoN needs too much, just a re-work in the wake of a lot of power creep to reset our synergies.

[Lich King]

4 hours ago, Nightseer2012 said:

I think I would settle for a Seraphon-esque rework of our book by the end if the year (early 2021 because if the virus?).  I wouldn’t mind new kits, but I would much rather a polish job on the rules we have (integrating Legion of Grief properly, fixing the broken battalions, making each legion more characterful like Dolinarus suggested above), and then maybe a terrain piece/upgrade our graveyards to full terrain.

 

I don’t think LoN needs too much, just a re-work in the wake of a lot of power creep to reset our synergies.

I agree with this - we definitely need some rewording and reworking of certain abilities/words. I think they’re gonna wait on doing a particular Soulblight book first which will further update the other Mortarch warscrolls. After much of that is complete - I see a new Legions of Nagash book update which will have several soup or themed armies depending on which Leaders you choose. They may even do something where you can “Ally” other warscrolls but let them use your army Allegiance Abilities since it’s Nagash and his powerful friends which are essentially the center of Death.

It won’t happen this year but if AOS 3.0 is coming next year - then it may come out then.

[AHexInScarletRed]

Don't you think that LoN will eventually give way to separate books? Arkhan and Nagash already comfortably reside in OBR, Neferata and Mannfred are fine off, sharing a potential Soulblight Book with Deadwalkers incorporated - the only thing holding its own against this is Legion of Grief, which doesn't make sense to be released if Legions was considered a band-aid (Or does it? I haven't been doing the hobby actively for too long, are armies published between books an indicator of what's to come?). I wouldn't mind another LoN book, as I like mashing Vampires with Ghosts (the looks <3), but I don't think LoN is going the CoS route, with the little amount of armies Death has. 

Edited April 24, 2020 by AHexInScarletRed

[Lich King]

27 minutes ago, AHexInScarletRed said:

Don't you think that LoN will eventually give way to separate books? Arkhan and Nagash already comfortably reside in OBR, Neferata and Mannfred are fine off, sharing a potential Soulblight Book with Deadwalkers incorporated - the only thing holding its own against this is Legion of Grief, which doesn't make sense to be released if Legions was considered a band-aid (Or does it? I haven't been doing the hobby actively for too long, are armies published between books an indicator of what's to come?). I wouldn't mind another LoN book, as I like mashing Vampires with Ghosts (the looks <3), but I don't think LoN is going the CoS route, with the little amount of armies Death has. 

I certainly hope not. I am for example very much like you in that I enjoy grouping certain units together over others. To me - OBR was absolutely the worst looking army AOS ever designed and would hate to think I must use those units to field Arkhan or whoever. 
     Giving people free choice to do what they’d like with their models has always been a plus in AOS - given mercenaries , allies and grand alliances. One final update down the path for Legions of Nagash ( just tome) would be more than enough to satisfy people like us who enjoy a true combined death force like the past.

[Nightseer2012]

Agreed, at this point I find myself not actually wanting to start an OBR army anytime soon.  I like the LoN style of overwhelming an opponent with numbers vs the specialist units of OBR.  They would be shooting themselves in the foot if they sequestered Arkhan or Nagash into OBR.

[Bademeister]

i think (and hope) there will be a new Death Battletome. I think it's gonna be Soulblight. 

Soulblight wouldn't be that hard to bring on the table. Flesh Eater Courts Start Collecting Box would be fine. 1 Vampire Lord on Zombie Dragon, 3 Vargheist and 10 Ghouls, which could be the new Soulblight Battleline. Just bring a new Pack with Stormcast or something and given each a new Hero on a Mount. I could imagine something like Nighthaunt already has. +1 to Hit / to Attacks from Vampire Lord on foot / on steed. 

Make the Bloodlines individual allegiances like all other new armies already have. A new unique resurrection which could be similar to Slaanesh. Each time a hero kill an enemy model you can heal a Soulblight unit wholly within 18" for half of the the wound characteristic, rounded up.  If no wounds are currently allocated to a unit you have picked, you may instead return a number of slain models to it that have a combined Wounds characteristic half to or less than the wound characterist of the slain model.

[Sception]

On 12/21/2019 at 6:10 PM, KK9T said:

I'd love to see Soulblight splinter away from Nagash under Mannfred and Neferata. They could do a SC box with a new mounted Vampire Lord, new Blood Knights and Soulblight foot soldiers much like the new Slaves to Darkness SC box. Perhaps some bat monsters and a Nosferatu looking caster hero.

Any splintering away from nagash is simply not going to happen.  Nagash IS the death alliance, other key figures can plot against him, but they can't actually break from him, and if they did then you'd basically have to move them to another alliance.  What, are you going to make soulblight an order army?  FEC destruction?  Death is an underpopulated alliance already.  Plus, lore wise, it's well established that the mortarchs /cant/ oppose Nagash directly.  Scheme to undermine him sure, but not defy him directly.  That's half the point of mortarchs, to put the forces of death under leaders that nagash can leave to their own devices without worrying that they'll turn against him.

Also, why Mannfred AND Neferata?  They hate each other almost more than they hate Nagash?

Honestly, from a faction aesthetic and narrative perspective, I stand by my position that vampires as a concept and the Soulblight faction in particular is nowhere near as large or conceptually diverse as it needs to be to justify two mortarchs.  That's the big reason I'd personally like to see Mannfred somehow merged with the Carrion King and moved over to FEC (though I don't think that's any more likely than Mannfred or Neferata breaking with Nagash).  Two soulblight mortarchs is already one mortarch too many.  They're redundant.  Ideally one should be pushed somewhere else, and if you're only keeping one then Neferata's a much better paragon of what the Soulblight are and what they represent in AoS.  Mannfred's low, bestial cunning, lack of courtly refinement, and preference for brute intimidation over subtle diplomacy are out of place with the Soulblight's role as rulers of Shyish's mortal populations and infiltrators into the high societies of the Order factions.

What Soulblight are in AoS is exemplified by Neferata.  The things Mannfred does, the terror tactics, the skulking in the shadows, the preference for undead beasts and monsters over ordered regiments, even the melancholy obsessions with and hallucinations of the old world - that's all FEC stuff.  It's not for nothing that I think Mannfred is a better fit for the abhorrents.

[KK9T]

1 hour ago, Sception said:

Any splintering away from nagash is simply not going to happen.  Nagash IS the death alliance, other key figures can plot against him, but they can't actually break from him, and if they did then you'd basically have to move them to another alliance.  What, are you going to make soulblight an order army?  FEC destruction?  Death is an underpopulated alliance already.  Plus, lore wise, it's well established that the mortarchs /cant/ oppose Nagash directly.  Scheme to undermine him sure, but not defy him directly.  That's half the point of mortarchs, to put the forces of death under leaders that nagash can leave to their own devices without worrying that they'll turn against him.

Also, why Mannfred AND Neferata?  They hate each other almost more than they hate Nagash?

Honestly, from a faction aesthetic and narrative perspective, I stand by my position that vampires as a concept and the Soulblight faction in particular is nowhere near as large or conceptually diverse as it needs to be to justify two mortarchs.  That's the big reason I'd personally like to see Mannfred somehow merged with the Carrion King and moved over to FEC (though I don't think that's any more likely than Mannfred or Neferata breaking with Nagash).  Two soulblight mortarchs is already one mortarch too many.  They're redundant.  Ideally one should be pushed somewhere else, and if you're only keeping one then Neferata's a much better paragon of what the Soulblight are and what they represent in AoS.  Mannfred's low, bestial cunning, lack of courtly refinement, and preference for brute intimidation over subtle diplomacy are out of place with the Soulblight's role as rulers of Shyish's mortal populations and infiltrators into the high societies of the Order factions.

What Soulblight are in AoS is exemplified by Neferata.  The things Mannfred does, the terror tactics, the skulking in the shadows, the preference for undead beasts and monsters over ordered regiments, even the melancholy obsessions with and hallucinations of the old world - that's all FEC stuff.  It's not for nothing that I think Mannfred is a better fit for the abhorrents.

You make good points, and you obviously know more about the lore than I do. I just figured Mannfred is a vampire so he would lead Soulblight. I stand corrected.

[Lich King]

The problem with the Death GA is that it already has too many sub factions. To me - FEC can keep their lore and all but should’ve never been it’s own separate army. There simply are not many boxes for it to have existed as a stand alone instead of just keeping the basic 4 or 5 units and having them with LON. I was never a fan of mixing and combining new “cheap excuse” builds for an entire new warscroll- just so it seems as if there’s more choice aesthetically than there actually is.

  So LON should’ve always had FEC within it - and at the same time cut out some fat - including old warscrolls like the Coach, Bats, Zombies- and all Nighthaunt ( as those have their own tome).  As a result you’d have more access to different model types within the LON without repetitive boxes found in other armies. 
  As for Soulblight I’ll be honest - although vampires are my favorite, they are simply too powerful as an army. 
I don’t think it’s necessary for them to be an entire force. Simply they can be what they’ve always been - select heroes and elite units leading the legions. 

[Sception]

7 hours ago, KK9T said:

You make good points, and you obviously know more about the lore than I do. I just figured Mannfred is a vampire so he would lead Soulblight. I stand corrected.

Oh, you're not wrong.  Mannfred and neferata are both vampires, and they will both almost certainly end up together in an eventual soulblight battletome.  And who knows, it might not even be bad.  The Ossiarchs book included both Katakros and Arkhan, and Nagash for that matter, while still maintaining a distinct tone and character.  But the Ossiarch book did that by focusing strictly on Katakros as the representative face of the faction.  Arkhan's just kind of there.  IMO soulblight could work with both Mannfred and Neferata if it followed the same mold, focusing strictly on Neferata with Mannfred just sort of also there.  But if they try and split the thematic focus of a soulblight book equally between them, then imo neither will end up getting the attention they deserve, and the overall faction will end up lacking cohesion.

 

As for FEC not being diverse enough to work as a stand alone army... I agree with that notion.  However, in terms of theme and character I do think there's enough there to work with.  Expand them out a bit, add in bats and wolves, intruduce maybe one or two more units, a plastic varghulf, maybe a dedicated caster 'court wizard' type character, a couple named heroes including the Carrion King as a faction head poster child, and it could work fine, imo.  The narrative meat is there, it just needs the model range.

 

For soulblight, the problem I have with vampires as heroes in an army of skeletons and zombies is the same problem I've always had with that concept.  Vampires entire narrative hook is that they need to feed on the living to survive.  Vampire heroes who spend all their time leading armies of bloodless walking bone piles don't make much narrative sense, imo.  I think there's narrative room for a mortal faction in grand alliance death, human - maybe some other races, maybe halflings? - societies of shyish worshipping Nagash and rules by vampire aristocracy who both defend them from the marauding forces of chaos and, as favored servants of nagash, are able to negotiate favorable tithing terms with neighboring Ossiarch empires.  So vampire heroes, yeah, elite vampire knights sure, just like now, but with the more common troops filled out by mortal levies defending their homes and their undead lords and ladies, plus maybe some fanatics/berserker types hoping to earn a place among that nobility through valor in battle.  Could have an interesting inversion of the normal undead rules in that instead of your heroes healing your units you could have them feeding on your units to heal themselves.  Give their outfits and heraldtry a slightly Egyptian, slightly deathlordy character, center the lore and flavor on Neferata, maybe add some sneaky rules to represent networks of vampyric spies and infiltrators.

Conceptually and narratively I think that could really work quite well.  I don't exactly expect it to look exactly like that when a soulblight book does happen, though.  Non-undead death units might be a too far-out-there as a concept for GW,  But imo it certainly /could/ work.

Edited April 29, 2020 by Sception

[Bayul]

The difficulty to predict anything is that DEATH is a conceptual mess in Age of Sigmar. The hole concept of Legions fell apart with OBR (and Nighthaunt before that actually), while them still having a "Mortach of the Necropolis" without being called the Legion of the Necropolis. On the other hand last year Legion of Grief emerged as new half-assed Legion, but Lady Olynder, the "Mortach of Grief" doesn't make sense to be part of this army.  LoG could easily be absorbed into a new Nighthaunt battletome or even a General's Handbook or White Dwarf Issue to be frank.

I have a radical position and think Age of Sigmar should scrap the idea of "Soulblight" being an army altogether, but rather a curse in the lore and therefore just a keyword for allies. GW could create fresh vampire-esque standalone armies like vampire pirates lead by a "Mortch of the Abyss" without caring for Legions. Implement Mannfred and Neferata in one of them like GW did with Arkhan and Nagash and there's no need for a Legion of Nagash book anymore.

Or KILL MANNFRED AND NEFERATA in a novel and phase out old vampire units left from the days of yore. Problem solved!

[TheWilddog]

I disagree with the idea that Death has too  many subfactions.  I think the direction is to go the other way and expand more into the subfactions. I have always contended that the narrative problem with Death was that it was too Nagash focused. There is no narrative tension, we need some other Death figures that can challenge him for control within the narrative, then you break off factions from there.  I think FEC is the classic example here. Bring back the Carrion King and have him lead a "grand crusade" against Nagash, then flesh out the FEC with a few good units.  Keep a group of  factions under Nagash, OBR, Nighthaunt and probable a general death faction similar to LoN and then break off the rest, with Vampires being the other faction to jump ship and rebel. Then, also moving forward any new death releases don't have to be tied to Nagash and you can open up some more design space.

[Shroud Of Night]

I honestly would even like to see the even the Nighthaunt get some more agency away from Nagash. Lady Olynder and Kudross are cool as heck but in the narrative the only screen time they get are as thralls to Nagash. They need to step into their own a bit and get their own motivations.

[BoneHeart]

Personally, I am not buying anything else until at least there are some 'legit' rumours about what is going to happen with our army. I have been burned by the transition from WHFB to AOS once (bye ghoul part of my army) and I'm not getting burned again, or atleast I am trying to reduce the damage by not buying all kinds of stuff. I would gladly see the army to continue as it is now with some mortal followers and cool vampire characters or units. Hell vampires can easily infiltrate cities and enemy territories and can raise an army of dead right behind enemy lines.

I also hope we are not getting vampire coast as that would be just a milkng of a cash cow thanks to total war 2 and it would differ from our current theme meaning a 'soft' squat. They can always bring back Luthor Harkon and make him a more important character in the death armies (or a new mortarch even) but personally having a compulsory pirate themed army would be too much.

Edited May 3, 2020 by BoneHeart

[AHexInScarletRed]

3 hours ago, BoneHeart said:

Personally, I am not buying anything else until at least there are some 'legit' rumours about what is going to happen with our army. I have been burned by the transition from WHFB to AOS once (bye ghoul part of my army) and I'm not getting burned again, or atleast I am trying to reduce the damage by not buying all kinds of stuff. I would gladly see the army to continue as it is now with some mortal followers and cool vampire characters or units. Hell vampires can easily infiltrate cities and enemy territories and can raise an army of dead right behind enemy lines.

I also hope we are not getting vampire coast as that would be just a milkng of a cash cow thanks to total war 2 and it would differ from our current theme meaning a 'soft' squat. They can always bring back Luthor Harkon and make him a more important character in the death armies (or a new mortarch even) but personally having a compulsory pirate themed army would be too much.

I feel you and I'm doing the same. What I'd currently miss for variation purposes is another Dragon and a Coven Throne, but since it's completely unpredictable what will happen - Soulblight tome, Soulblight scrapped and kept for The Old World, a last LoN tome similar to CoS for the older models - I'm waiting. I also sincerely hope we do not get Vampire Coast, as I dislike the concept and want my Vamps of old. 

Since I simultaneously don't want to start another AoS army as there's a chance that Soulblight does happen, I managed to get my friends into 40k, so I'm painting Harlequins meanwhile 😜

[lare2]

6 hours ago, BoneHeart said:

Personally, I am not buying anything else until at least there are some 'legit' rumours about what is going to happen with our army.

Agreed. Just focusing on getting my NH up and running. No matter what the future holds for NH, their models will at least be safe for the foreseeable... I don't feel like I could comfortably say the same thing for LoN.