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Soulblight As a Replacement for LoN?


Sception

Could Soulblight absorb and replace LoN altogether? Would you be cool with it if it did?  

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  1. 1. Could Soulblight absorb and replace LoN altogether? Would you be cool with it if it did?

    • This could happen, and I'd love it
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    • This could happen, but I'd hate it
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    • This seems unlikely, but I'd love it
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    • This seems unlikely, and I'd hate it
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    • Minecraft Steve for Smash? Maybe 2020 isn't a *complete* dumpster fire after all.
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For quite a while now, basically since the release of the current Legions of Nagash battle tome, we've been expecting a stand alone Soulblight battle tome to be in the works.  For the most part, we've been expecting it to be an all or nearly all vampire army, similar to the current Soulblight faction but with maybe some new lesser vampire or human thrall infantry units to fill out the ranks of their battle line.

However, especially since the OBR release, there's been a sort of open question about what the future of LoN is in general.  Nagash and Arkhan have been re-written to work specifically with OBR, with no consideration for how they would still function in LoN.  Lore-wise, the Legion of Sacrament in particular simply no longer exists - Arkhans skeleton soldiers have been ground down to fill out the ranks of the Null Myriad, and the souls of his necromantic acolytes have been recycled into the Myriad's Mortisans.

Mannfred and Neferata would almost certainly get a similar treatment - rewritten to work with any new vampire factions without any regard to how they'd still function in their old legions.  Ghoul and Ghosts have their own factions.  Morghasts went with Arkhan and Nagash to the OBR.  Presumably other vampiric units - bats, vampire lords, vargheists, blood knights - would join the vampiric mortarchs in a soulblight book.

What then for regular old bog standard undeads?  With Nagash, the mortarchs, and all the vampiric, ghoulish, and ghostly units gone, the leftover bits in Legions of Nagash start to feel a bit orphaned.  What for the skeletons, black knights, grave guard, wight kings, zombies, necromancers, mortis engines, corpse carts,  & dire wolves?  There seems to me to be three likely possibilities going forward:

1) Squatted.  These units are moved to legends and no longer supported in any AoS faction going forward.  Instead they are mostly shifted over to the upcoming Old World game where they go back to being part of an oldhammer style undead army.  Sure this annoys a lot of players, but GW have proven more than willing to do that.

2) Effectively Squatted.  Same as 1, except that instead of being outright moved to legends in AoS, these units units are left as is in a Legions of Nagash book that simply gets more and more outdated without ever officially going away.  For a long time I though this was the most likely trajectory for non-ghosty, non-vampiric LoN units, but now I'm not so sure.

3) Refreshed: not long after an all-vampire-all-the-time Soulblight book is released, we either get a Legions of Nagash 2.0 that removes all the units that now have their primary homes elsewhere, but re-works the remaining units into a faction that still works without them, maybe adding some new stuff in the process.  Perhaps a new skeletal mortarch?  Or if not that, then after the Soulblight book, the remaining groups get their own spin off books as well, maybe one for deathrattle, one for deadwalkers + deathmages.  While this is, for many, the most desired outcome, I personally view it as the /least/ likely, especially with OBR fluff explicitly doing away with the Legion of Sacrament altogether, putting all corporeal undead in an extremely tenous position with there being no reason why they wouldn't just be ground up into OBR, especially once a stand alone Soulblight book provides Nef and Manny with alternative forces so that they no longer rely on zombies and skittles to fill out their armies.

-

So for a long time, I've been thinking 1 or 2 is the most likely fate for the legions, a fate eventually to be shared by all the big & diverse & difficult to support oldhammer factions as they slowly get phased out in favor of smaller and more focused AoS style factions.  But... that hasn't really been happening.  In other grand alliances we do see new focused AoS style factions, but we also see big diverse oldhammer holdovers.  Skaven, Beastmen, Seraphon, Ogre Tribes, Slaves to Darkness, the hodge podge of Cities of Sigmar...  to be sure some factions and kits here and there are still disappearing, but a lot of these older model lines, particularly ones with lots of popular plastic kits from the latter days of oldhammer fantasy, seem to be sticking around in these hodge podge books, and it would seem a bit odd to drop the bulk of the relatively popular oldhammer vamp count range when so many others seem to be sticking around....

and that's where a possible fourth option comes in.

4) leftover LoN stuff (deathrattle, deadwalkers, deathmages) doesn't get 'left behind' when the Vampires move into their new Soulblight book, rather it all gets taken along.  After all, these were all 'vampire count' units in warhammer fantasy, they could all be 'vampire count' units again.  It's established lore that warhammer/AoS vampires have inherent control over lesser undead, so why wouldn't those lesser undead be part of their soulblight armies?  Bringing along skeletons and zombies removes the need to introduce some other new battle line infantry option for a soulblight book, and vampire lords might be among the few servants of Nagash useful and powerful enough to be allowed to keep their skeletal servants rather than handing them over to be ground up into more ossiarchs.  If they keep the orphaned LoN units, a new Soulblight book would hardly need any new models at all, apart from hopefully, finally, some plastic blood knights, really no way to get around that, imo.  The contentious (if cool and cinematic) grave site rules could also be ditched in favor of bloodline based faction rules.

I'm not saying I love this option.  Necromancers sadly get shoved back into a subordinate role, and with skeletons and zombies to fill out their ranks that pretty much kills any chance of us getting some cool vampire-serving mortal units to reflect Nagash-worshiping societies of the living in Shyish, something I've long hoped to see.  And while I'm sure there would be options for all-vampire-all-the-time lists, they would likely remain as niche and non-functional as pure Soulblight armies are right now, since the designers wouldn't feel compelled to find a way to make such super-elite armies viable.  But it does seem to be a simple option that keeps a bunch of popular kits around that otherwise don't have a home, while simultaneously fleshing out a 'new' faction's model range without having to actually make any new models.

Death factions would then be:

  • OBR - the poster boys, even if they don't play well with the rest of the alliance, includes Nagash, Katakros, and Arkhan.  A pretty strong range considering they've only had a single big release wave.  I'd love to see them expanded on, maybe an infantry hero, maybe a ranged unit, maybe a warsphinx style monster, maybe a set of ossiarch fortress walls & gates like the ones that featured so heavily in the promotional material, but a very respectable range as is by new AoS faction standards, so good for now.
     
  • Nighthaunt - with Olynder.  All the ghosty stuff goes here.  In terms of model range and lore I think the Nighthaunt are actually in a pretty good spot.  Their /rules/ maybe need a bit of an update, in particular diversifying the abilities and battlefield roles of their several semi-elite ghostly melee infantry options.  I suppose they could do with their own bit of faction terrain as well. 
     
  • FEC - hopefully at some point expanded with their own mortarch, a new plastic varghulf, some actual courtesan models, and some extra units to 'flesh' their army out a bit more.  a spellcasting ghoul courtesan 'court wizard' type support hero?  semi elite ghoul infantry with some actual weapons & scrappy armor, not just teeth & claws?  Maybe let FEC share dire bats and wolves with Soulblight the way they currently share terrorgheists and Zombie Dragons?  Maybe  ghouls on wolves or bats type cavalry units?  Some sort of grand feast centerpiece thing?  Yes the range is embarassingly slim currently, especially since its almost entirely oldhammer holdovers, but while I don't think the current FEC range really stands up on its own, I certainly believe there's plenty of potential for expansion into a respectable faction.  Lore-wise, the addition of a flesh eater mortarch to help bring the courts under Nagash's control could allow them to have a much greater narrative presence within the Grand Alliance as a whole.
     
  • Soulblight - led jointly by Mannfred and Neferata, maybe Vordrai too if he gets a promotion & new model, but here Soulblight means 'a catch all faction for all the oldhammer vampire counts units that don't have a home in one of the other three factions', rather than the previously anticipated all-vampires-all-the-time stand alone AoS style mini faction.  So maybe instead of just being the 'Soulblight' battle tome, it might be called the 'Soulblight Aristocracy' battle tome, so as to introduce a faction keyword that could be applied to non-vampire units.  Surviving Deathrattle, Deadwalkers, Deathmages, and Soulblight units all end up here, though possibly not all make the cut.  I would not be surprised to see the ancient zombies kit dropped.  I'm not sure there's a place for Wight Kings when Vampire Lords are so mechanically similar.  This becomes Death's one 'old school hold over hodge podge' style book, replacing the narratively defunct Legions of Nagash altogether. 

    Subfactions are, obviously, bloodlines, with the three current big named vampires each getting one.  Neferata's maybe focusing on manipulative vampire royalty, sort of a combination of oldhammer Lahmians and the more leadery von carstein abilities; Mannfred's combining his necromantic abilities and low cunning, monstrous servants into a blend of necrarch and the creatures-of-the-night style von carstein abilities; and Vhordrai getting the blood dragon style 'twisted nobility' vampiric knightly order gimmick.  Maybe one or two others, or generic options for making up your own sort of like the FEC delusions system.

...

The more I think about it, the more likely this seems to me as the path going forward.  There are a few units that simply have to stay around - mortis engines because of coven thrones, black knights because of hex wraiths (though admittedly hex wraiths are themselves are strong contenders for a new model kit whenever Nighthaunts get updated) - that just don't have a home otherwise, apart from the legions, and the Legions simply do not seem like they're going to be carried further.  At the same time I just don't see them dropping classic style skeletons and necromancers from the game altogether, no matter how redundant the OBR lore makes them.  Keeping them around as the servants of the Vampire Counts, the way they were back in oldhammer fantasy, gives them a place to live that already worked for them in the past.  It's maybe not my preferred path for Grand Alliance: Death, but my preferred path has been pretty definitively cut off by the narrative developments over the last year or so, and of the remaining possibilities I can see going forward this one seems not entirely unpleasant to me.

Does this seem like a likely path forward to anyone else?  If the devs did opt to go this way, what would you think of it?  Would you rather see a pure soulblight' faction that leaves lesser undead behind altogether, and if so what future if any do you see for old school skeletons, wights, zombies, and necromancers in AoS?

Edited by Sception
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First off, thanks for the post. I really enjoyed reading that and it raises an interesting point.

When they announced the Old World game my immediate thought was that my skellies would be relegated to it. OBR are the new shiney elite skellies and if you want hordes then you'd need to play NH... or the hills have eyes rejects.

The more time goes on though the more I'm thinking along the same lines, i.e. soulblight becoming LoN 2. I'd be really happy with this move. I don't think this necessarily means there won't be any thralls though - different bloodlines could have different battleline. I'd also love (like a lot of people) to see new vamp models. 

To be honest though, I'd just be happy to still be able to field my skellies. I've reluctantly stopped buying any LoN models and focused on NH simply because I've no idea how they're gonna progress. 

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2 hours ago, Sception said:

Bringing along skeletons and zombies removes the need to introduce some other new battle line infantry option for a soulblight book

I personally think soulblight is coming and acknowledging GDubs craving for money, new shiny models are needed.

 LoN will break up and become legend or fight against tomb kings and Bretons in the old world.

so I hope and pray to Nagash, that the new book is „inclusive“, balanced for all and worthwhile. LoN and the whole „Undead theme“ hasn’t really changed since, well I guess not really ever.   And I Hope we don’t get the dwarves or elves treatment... naked barbarians or fish people 

please Nagash protect us, so we can do your bidding...

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In their defense, naked barbarians has always been a subtheme of warhammer dwarves, and the idoneth are  among the best looking warhammer armies ever, with one of the most compelling narrative concepts.

Honestly, my only complaint about the idoneth, apart from the lousy internal balance, is that they aren't a death faction, because with only a very slight change to their narrative & models they could have been, and imo they would have fit better in death than they ever have in order.

Edited by Sception
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Honestly a soulblight aristocracy book is a good chance to do an army that shows more of what it's like to serve nagash. Unlike the nighthaunt that do it as a punishment, legions which are puppets and obr that are built for the job, Vampires are (mostly) willing participants in his empire and are capable of operating independently and occasionally even backstabbing the rest of death or even nagash himself. They're also the only niche of death that actively needs living mortals to live.  This could be a death army that's a complete departure from anything undead (depending on your personal interpretation of vamparism anyways).

What I'd like to see is your battleline units be mortal servants, either thralls as a cheap horde option or willing soldiers as a mid tier choice. Make these the basic battleline since every vampire needs food and include the ability for vampire units to eat mortal models to heal or empower spells. Other mortal units could include knights as a weaker cavalry to blood knights, death priests, archers or gunners (as the vampires rule cities in shyish) or maybe a mortal captain or enforcer to buff mortals. 

Where this would get interesting is in the actual vampire stuff, naturally you'd have blood knights, vargheists, bats and lords but you can get into more in depth vampire options. Have vampire foot troops as the elite infantry option (3 man min to maybe 9 or 12 max) they'd be essentially a unit of vampire lords without the command abilities or the wizard keyword, maybe the unit champion gets a blood chalice. Maybe savage vampires half transformed due to starvation or a defect of their curse as foot monsters to compliment the vargheists flying monster role. A new "black coach" type unit that carries the coffins of ancient vampires either as a combat chariot or buff piece. To expand hero options you could have lords, sorcerers/warlocks, ancients (basically uber lords with better stats), and hero versions of the monster vampires or a hero vampire built around taming/controller their transformed kin. 

Faction terrain could be a crypt or blood wagon for a healing aura or some sort of buff with limited uses that can be refilled by sacrificing thralls or killing enemy heroes.

Generic army abilities include "feeding" basically making the heal on kills universal to all units with the vampire keyword, "blood rituals" which would involve sacrificing models with the thrall keyword for a buff or one of a list of possible buffs (maybe even including faction specific ones) and finally "benevolent overlords" as some form of bravery buffing or limited battleshock mitigation for thralls near friendly vampire units.

Basically the army would work on a basic theme of treating thralls as a resource as much as a unit to support and enhance the elite vampire units.

For sub factions it's obviously gotta be bloodlines and my two cent ideas for them are as follows:

Blood Dragons: makes blood knights battleline, gives extra attacks to vampires or maybe bonus for fighting heroes/monsters, Vordhai is the intended general with maybe a cp bonus for taking him as incentive

Night lords (because gw loves recycling names and manny is a bit sore about the family name): follows similar design to legion of nights scheming, using mortals as the bait instead of skeletons for slightly better mortal anvil with deepstriking vampire units. Mannfred is the intended general possibly making another hero gain a command trait as he is known to have imitations of past rivals around to stroke his ego.

Lahmians/Blood court: Gimmicked around beguiling enemies giving vampire units a -1 to hit aura and some way of sabotaging enemy cp/command abilities. Neferatta is the intended general and taking her makes vampire foot soldiers battleline.

Beastfangs: Some of the lore mentions a bloodline from ghur that idolizes the bloodstarved curses and transformations so this is a monster themed faction. Vargheists or other equivalent vampire monster become battleline, non-mounted heroes can become vargheists or a hero monster on death. Vampires are "starved" and reroll charges, upon killing an enemy unit become "frenzied" and gain +1 to wound instead.

Necromantic/necrarch: All non-monster vampire units become wizards and know a spell from the spell lore. Heroes give a +1 to cast aura or maybe heal when successfully dispelling/unbinding a spell.

Wraith admiralty: provided we don't get an actual wraith fleet book, these guys can take 1 in 4 nighthaunt and get some form of deepstrike or redeploy ability with bravery shenanigans as a theme

The True Inheritors:  one part filler if we don't get wraith fleet and one part hard wishlisting on my part. Basically a "true von Carsteins" sub faction built around buffing thrall units or encouraging working together rather than sacrificing them. Intended general would be Isabella von Carstein Mortarch of shadow whose gimmick would be the von Carstein ring and the ability to summon Vlad as a "shadow" (I'm picturing some daemon prince sized shadow monster) that functions like morathi's transformation when the ring fails or maybe summoned when the ring succeeds and both are stronger as long as both are close together. 

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Warhammer Weekly had the best idea, IMHO...

An Orruk-style book (i.e. two separate armies in one book)...

(1) A Neferata-led army of decadent vampires that would be the successor of Soulblight and Legion of Blood. Of course, as with Slaves to Darkness, a Start Collecting box with new Blood Knights would be a no brainer here.

(2) A Mannfred-led army of all the remaining LON detritus (i.e. zombies, basic skellies, wolves, bats, etc.), which would replace Legion of Night.

Of course Legion of the Sacrament lost its raison d'etre with the release of OBR.

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I have been thinking that LoN will get a rework for a while, as well. You can see the design intention of that book fairly well in the rules text for the Grand Host: "This is Nagash's Legion/new overall Death force [...]". It was at least partially supposed to serve the function of a Grand Alliance: Death with better rules, to make all the different Death stuff playable.

Of course, after the releases of Nighthaunt any ghosts have a way better, more thematic place to go. And with OBR, the new lore seems to have been deliberately set up in such a way that keeping skeletons around also does not make much sense anymore (they could have written OBR as a small force of limited numbers, which needs regular skeletons to bulk out the ranks, but they didn't). Now, if Vampires also go into a more specific army, what justification really is there for LoN to keep existing?

I would predict that if or when Soulblight gets a book, it will come with a range refresh or partial replacement. Or perhaps more accurately, a few old models will stay playable, but a lot will be removed, replaced or reimagined. While the mortarchs, vargeists and coven throne will almost certainly keep their current models, I really don't see much of a future for dire wolves, fell bats and bat swarms. Those kits look terrible, are largely finecast, don't fit the style of AoS and are largely not even played (with the exception of dire wolves). The various vampire lords might stick around, or they might not. The sculpts are still cool, even if they are finecast, but if GW wanted to give a new Soulblight force a new artistic direction, doing so through new heroes would probably be smart.

This leaves the question of what will happen with necromancers, skeletons and zombies. It might be wishful thinking on my part, but I think keeping skeletons around makes sense. Their kits still look good and are fully plastic. Between black knights, grave guard and warriors, there's already half of an army range there. They also have two support heroes in the wight king and necromancer, as well as a thematically fitting behemoth in the Mortis Engine. Not to mention there is apparently a Deathrattle mortarch in some book. As I see it, regular skeletons have a very slight chance to be spun out into their own army, even though this would make some of the decisions GW made with OBR kind of puzzling.

I think zombies are not as lucky, though. They have always been the odd one out in LoN. I have only ever heard people complain about how bad the zombie kit looks, virtually nobody runs them and the only other zombie-themed unit is the corpse cart. They might stick around if the necromancer sticks around, but they would be a good unit to get rid of pretty painlessly, as well.

The most likely scenario to me, though, is that Soulblight subsumes the Deathrattle portion of Legions. This would be fine, but kind of a shame, because I think with relatively little effort Deathrattle, Soulblight and OBR could have been armies with distinct, fitting playstyles and identities. OBR already has a niche as an elite, defensive army which can heal, but does not resurrect whole units. Vampires should probably be a semi-elite army that rewards aggression and heals by inflicting damage. And Deathrattle could be a horde army where things die easily, but can be brought back easily as well.

I'd be sad to see Deathrattle disappear completely. OBR do not fill the same aesthetic niche to me, and don't have as much of an appeal. If regular skeletons stick around in a Soulblight army, I'll be OK with it. I personally would hope for a more clean separation for the individual Death armies, though.

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I doubt dire wolves and bats will go away as units, though both are strong contenders to get new model kits, and dire wolves might go back to their older 'vampire wolf' concept instead of the current 'zombie wolf' gimmick if they do get a new kit.

Any new soulblight release, whether an all new all vampire faction or an old school mixed undead 'vamp counts' book as suggested here, would pretty much demand at the very least a new plastic vampire lord and new plastic blood knights.  I can't really imagine them releasing a new vampire book of any kind without them.

and a new book would probably get a scenery kit and endless spells.  The latter might replace bat swarms as we've seen with swarms in some other factions.  The scenery kit might be new, or they might just attach the mausoleum kit.

...

As for new models otherwise, yes GW wants us to buy new stuff, but making that new stuff costs money and they also want people to keep buying the stuff they already made.  Hence skaven, lizardmen, beastmen, ogres, fec, cities, and all the other faction books that were just books for existing ranges with only a couple new kits to go with them.  Especially when ranges are already popular and GW already spent the money to develop high end multipart plastic kits.

I just don't think it's likely that GW plans to drop skeleton warriors, grave guard, black knights, corpse carts, or mortis engines.  Necromancers, and Wight Kings, while I'm less sure of, also seem pretty safe.  Where 3lse will this stuff go, both narratively and mechanically, if not into a new vamp counts book?  It cant just stay in LoN, once nagash and all of the mortarchs have moved out there won't even be a LoN for them to be part of.  It could be squatted, but that's a lot of kits that GW is already making money on to abandon.

Keep them with the vampires, and that faction doesn't need anything else.  New vamp lord, new blood knights, new fell bats, new endless spells (including one that replaces bat swams), maybe new dire wolves, and maybe a new terrain piece is already a lot of new stuff to sell, and throwing in the old deathrattle & deathmage units fleshes out the faction 'for free'.  Don't put that stuff in, and they would, at the very least, also need to come up with some weaker vampire thrall infantry, and even with that it might be difficult to get a working and bakanced faction out of just the vampire stuff.

 

I'm not saying we'll definitely see LoN leftivers folded into Soulblight, but it does seem more and more likely to me.

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13 hours ago, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

Between black knights, grave guard and warriors, there's already half of an army range there.

My worst nightmare spoken out... the rich and divers undead faction stunted down to a handful of units and some heroes. 

And I do run zombies and they are great. Not competitive, but still fun.

 

I can see the need for sales revenues and the whole LoN line is kinda 20-30 years old, so the undead player needs some nudging and incentives to buy some new stuff.

I only hope and pray for something with different approaches, with interesting builds and not some boring „one of the three way to play this faction“ nonsense.

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Some great posts, folks - thanks!

To me, the LoN battletome felt like a taster session, an attempt to roll out a few ideas to see what could possibly click with Death players. But then, OBR came in and - incredibly - I was and I still am massively unexcited about the entire faction. Genuinely, I don't really know why. More importantly, though, the advent of OBR really put some spanners in the works as it concerns what the future of LoN is. 

Personally, I feel every Legion has the potential to fill in a dedicated battletome. FEC is a good example - the model range and the rule variety is not huge, but it does work. I don't personally like FEC (love the rules, I can't get myself to like th aestetichs, though).

Now, of all the Legions, my very biased opinion (I play chiefly Legion of Blood) is that something merging Solublight with Legion of Blood and Legion of Night will not only make a lot of sense (the relationship between Mannfred and Neferata is not quite linear but it does exists and can be easil developed much further. Arkhan? Boring. Vampires? Yes please) but it will provide a prime opportunity to revamp the vampiric range. Blood Knights, Vampire Lords of various denomination, bats (yes, bats. bigger and better bats, please), heck, even a new kit for a Zombie Dragon (what we have is great, but whatever revision is going to sell like crazy - dragons, folks, nothing is better than dragons) or the Vargheists (which look quite great already) would all lead to a win-win situation for GW and us.

Nighthaunt are Nighthaunt - period. The attempt to make them better via Legion of Grief never captured my favour - we need a new book for the ghost which actually works, in a way different and distinct from the Gravesites mechanics. I don't know what, but something else (extensive list of suggestions in the Nighthaunt thread here on TGA...)

What I would like to see in a potential, new Solublight battletome is:

- A salary increase on my side, because if they do revamp the range I'm going to buy everything twice.

- The development of the Bloodlines into more complex, flavourful allegiance abilities. All models allowed in every bloodline, but different bonuses for each. That would make a lot of sense lore-wise (Mannfred's retinue is a very different beast compared to Neferata's) and will open up more options, with hopefully more than one being competitive - something that we have seen happening with OBR, where the entire book received a lot of hate for quite some time.

- The option to choose a list build that ranges from hordes to elites. The models are there, we just need sensible rules.

- A sensible, simple and viable system of both allies and, for the love of the Great Necromancer, battalions. The ideas are there, they just suck, at the moment.

- Vhordrai to lead a dedicated Bloodline (because if the coolest of the whole bunch, and that's to say something)

- Revised warscrolls for the Mortarchs : lore-wise they are impossibly powerful, and yet on the table the die to a stiff breeze. Make them outrageous, and up their points accordingly. Teclis-level (ok, too much - something in between)

- Revised warscroll for the truly elite units in LoN, such as Morghasts or Vargheists. They should be terrifying on the table.

I never truly cared for DeathRattle units (but I know people that do!) and I do think that OBR was effectively meant to replace them. It might indeed be argued that, say, a unit of mortek guard looks very different from a unit of skeleton, but I would expect a 2020-revamped skeleton to look like a mortek guard.

Most importantly of all... let's hope we'll see this famed battletome some time soon - there are only so many poses in which I can arrange my Zombie Dragons...

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Very interesting topic, with a lot of good comments!


Imo the following kits will be squatted for the new Death Tome in Order to clean up the range:

Giant Bats, Zombies, (too generic)

Coven Throne (just a feeling, it seems neglected),

Mortis Engine (does not fit into any army anymore, yet it is strong copyright-wise),  

Dire Wolves (perhaps an AoS-y Remake),

Terrorgheist (exklusive to FeC), Vargheists (deleted, the kit belongs to FeC now),

Grave Guard (basically Black Knights on foot, they‘re the most likely to go, they also feel quite neglected)

Vampire Lord on foot and on Mount (the‘re douplicates of the ZD Lord, which is newer)
 

 

 

What I assume will be included:

Vampire Knights (Varanguard Style, so They can keep the price at 90€),

Some kind of Bat swarm,

Skeletons and Black Knights,

Wight King,

special Vampire Hero that can manipulate enemy actions,

A named hero,

Some kind of light Vamp Infantry (Heavy Infantry would be dismounted Blood Knights, GW rarely does the same sculpt on foot and on horseback nowadays)

An unexpected artillery piece

No new Vamplord (we already have the ZD Lord, GW seems to dislike variety nowadays)

A subfaction that can add Freeguild units (Mannfred)

A subfaction that can add NH Units (wraithfleety, making best use of the light vampire infantry)

A subfaction that can summon additional units to the board (New hero)

A subfaction that can mess with the enemies deployment (Nefarata)

 

 

 

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I hope that GW will do a "Vampire Counts" army for AoS. You didn´t have ghost or ghouls but you can use them as allies or in their own books, but you have powerfull necromancer and vampires lords with lots of undead minions, good health pools and true vampiric elite units.

And we need new models for them, mostly for the new vampirics units that we need (because we lose lots of units like morghast, spirits...). 

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On 10/1/2020 at 10:19 PM, Lucky Snake Eyes said:

Honestly a soulblight aristocracy book is a good chance to do an army that shows more of what it's like to serve nagash. Unlike the nighthaunt that do it as a punishment, legions which are puppets and obr that are built for the job, Vampires are (mostly) willing participants in his empire and are capable of operating independently and occasionally even backstabbing the rest of death or even nagash himself. They're also the only niche of death that actively needs living mortals to live.  This could be a death army that's a complete departure from anything undead (depending on your personal interpretation of vamparism anyways).

What I'd like to see is your battleline units be mortal servants, either thralls as a cheap horde option or willing soldiers as a mid tier choice. Make these the basic battleline since every vampire needs food and include the ability for vampire units to eat mortal models to heal or empower spells. Other mortal units could include knights as a weaker cavalry to blood knights, death priests, archers or gunners (as the vampires rule cities in shyish) or maybe a mortal captain or enforcer to buff mortals. 

Where this would get interesting is in the actual vampire stuff, naturally you'd have blood knights, vargheists, bats and lords but you can get into more in depth vampire options. Have vampire foot troops as the elite infantry option (3 man min to maybe 9 or 12 max) they'd be essentially a unit of vampire lords without the command abilities or the wizard keyword, maybe the unit champion gets a blood chalice. Maybe savage vampires half transformed due to starvation or a defect of their curse as foot monsters to compliment the vargheists flying monster role. A new "black coach" type unit that carries the coffins of ancient vampires either as a combat chariot or buff piece. To expand hero options you could have lords, sorcerers/warlocks, ancients (basically uber lords with better stats), and hero versions of the monster vampires or a hero vampire built around taming/controller their transformed kin. 

Faction terrain could be a crypt or blood wagon for a healing aura or some sort of buff with limited uses that can be refilled by sacrificing thralls or killing enemy heroes.

Generic army abilities include "feeding" basically making the heal on kills universal to all units with the vampire keyword, "blood rituals" which would involve sacrificing models with the thrall keyword for a buff or one of a list of possible buffs (maybe even including faction specific ones) and finally "benevolent overlords" as some form of bravery buffing or limited battleshock mitigation for thralls near friendly vampire units.

Basically the army would work on a basic theme of treating thralls as a resource as much as a unit to support and enhance the elite vampire units.

For sub factions it's obviously gotta be bloodlines and my two cent ideas for them are as follows:

Blood Dragons: makes blood knights battleline, gives extra attacks to vampires or maybe bonus for fighting heroes/monsters, Vordhai is the intended general with maybe a cp bonus for taking him as incentive

Night lords (because gw loves recycling names and manny is a bit sore about the family name): follows similar design to legion of nights scheming, using mortals as the bait instead of skeletons for slightly better mortal anvil with deepstriking vampire units. Mannfred is the intended general possibly making another hero gain a command trait as he is known to have imitations of past rivals around to stroke his ego.

Lahmians/Blood court: Gimmicked around beguiling enemies giving vampire units a -1 to hit aura and some way of sabotaging enemy cp/command abilities. Neferatta is the intended general and taking her makes vampire foot soldiers battleline.

Beastfangs: Some of the lore mentions a bloodline from ghur that idolizes the bloodstarved curses and transformations so this is a monster themed faction. Vargheists or other equivalent vampire monster become battleline, non-mounted heroes can become vargheists or a hero monster on death. Vampires are "starved" and reroll charges, upon killing an enemy unit become "frenzied" and gain +1 to wound instead.

Necromantic/necrarch: All non-monster vampire units become wizards and know a spell from the spell lore. Heroes give a +1 to cast aura or maybe heal when successfully dispelling/unbinding a spell.

Wraith admiralty: provided we don't get an actual wraith fleet book, these guys can take 1 in 4 nighthaunt and get some form of deepstrike or redeploy ability with bravery shenanigans as a theme

The True Inheritors:  one part filler if we don't get wraith fleet and one part hard wishlisting on my part. Basically a "true von Carsteins" sub faction built around buffing thrall units or encouraging working together rather than sacrificing them. Intended general would be Isabella von Carstein Mortarch of shadow whose gimmick would be the von Carstein ring and the ability to summon Vlad as a "shadow" (I'm picturing some daemon prince sized shadow monster) that functions like morathi's transformation when the ring fails or maybe summoned when the ring succeeds and both are stronger as long as both are close together. 

This would honestly be perfect. I have been craving a Vampire / Soulblight book for a while now. In an effort to stay competitive, at the start of COVID I started my conversion for a Vampire themed Khorne army, I'm super happy how they turned out and should hold me over until a proper Vampire / Soulblight book is realesed. 

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I like the diversity/dieversity that LoN provides so no I do not want it replaced, gives a nice smorgasbord of undead that calls back to the older style of big factions rather than AOS's inclination towards narrow in theme and range.
Get to run ghouls, skeletons, zombies, ghosts, and vampires together which makes for some real fun from a collection, painting, and conversion perspective as you have so many options.

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23 minutes ago, Indecisive said:

I like the diversity/dieversity that LoN provides so no I do not want it replaced, gives a nice smorgasbord of undead that calls back to the older style of big factions rather than AOS's inclination towards narrow in theme and range.
Get to run ghouls, skeletons, zombies, ghosts, and vampires together which makes for some real fun from a collection, painting, and conversion perspective as you have so many options.

I 100% agree - one of the reasons I was drawn to vampire Counts back in the day is that precise mix of different beings and creatures . I feel sometimes with Aos they give you so much while restricting you at the same time .

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  • 4 weeks later...

In my opinion there would be un update of the LoN that has become  a rewamp of the GA:D, cause there is anywai the need to call all at the war together. Even if we think about Broken Realms a step after the Necroquake, there is still too much about Nagash options

OBR has been a new faction,but it can't represent the Deathrttle, more like a Qatar army of the Tomb Kings.

In such a way, I think that more than being released a deathrattle book as I always hopd, there will be two different Battletome yet to publish: one related about the mix of Deathrrattle and Necronmancers, cause it would let a lot of units being avalaible at the same time and they ae quite  close to each other, maybe with one or two new Mortarchs (here i'd think about a Kemmler/Krell combination?)

About zombie side and new models, we have seen new options  about them since the releasing of the coprse cart.  I still like the old models (eventually i combine them with ghouls set heads), but it would be interesting to see them updated with the style of the the models of the Blood Bowl. Anyway some bigger sombie or golem corpse or so on it would be nice to add. 

About Soulblight...they are simple not enough.We have some beasts and the vampires, and not many of them at that. OK, they have been able to create a battletome from FEC , and they don't have many models, but still they have quite a lot of  variant in their assembly, so it was affordable. The Soulblight should have a restyling and addeded many more units. We can find that we have seen a new swam bats with the GRymwatch, and seeing the Lord of the rings options also the fell bats are not so difficult to see them redone.  The real trouble rre the units of the vampires themeselves, cause wehave seen them as heroes and as chavalry (even if I never liked them too much as models maybe cause too financial expensive) cause they need to have solid background about them and so:

1) they introduce the grades of vampirism 

2) they take elites and simply call suborrdinates alike

But in such a way they would not be characteristic enough, so technically the real problemabout new battletome is the SOulblight.Ok, you can think about giving them zombies and skeletons as subparts, but it doesn't have enough "premium" to be something else than a yet avalaible LoN (that should be anyway refreshed )

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Anyway thinking more about a possible future Battletome, I thought back to the Black LIbrary "Undying King", maybe an army of zombies and deathrattle is not so crazy as an idea. We have seen in that volume the raise of a new deathlord, a Mortarch, the VonDrak firl, it would be interesting to see a representation about it.

We would have

- deathrattle (Broken Kings)

-FEC (her ancient uncle)

- zombies (the sea around) with even a lot of options abou an undead fleet)

It could even have the characterization not to be alliable with the Legion of Blood eventually.

I think that if done in the right wway, it could be done in quite a interesting way

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6 hours ago, deynon said:

I think that if done in the right wway, it could be done in quite a interesting way

and here you casually state the heart and essence of fear and dread for LoN Deathrattle or Soulblight players worldwide...

if the tea leaf readings were correct, OBR was the first book to slowly obsolete the GA:D style LoN Book. 


what to do with the death range beyond OBR and FEC... especially the old staples of Necromancers, Vampires and Wightkings leading troops of zombies, skellis/guards or bloodknights? And yes, throwing in TK for the heartache.

if the GDubs way of maximum IP protection continues, the whole line would need to be redesigned, since the classic skelli and Vampire theme is kinda open sourced. Also with the soft removal of Nagash and Arkhan from LoN the whole fluff needs to be redone. 
with the „Undying King“ and „Dominion of Bones“ fluff I hope for two/three things

- Mortals of Shyish, mortals and necromancers and maybe constructs (deathwalker hordes)

- soulblight, from Bloodknights to Pirates (elite vampires)

- better books/fluff... maybe it‘s an audible thing, but „UnKi and DOB“ was slow boring and just not as exciting as old gotrek & Felix or Nagash or Vamp wars... even the Necromancer novel was more interesting

 

 

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45 minutes ago, Honk said:

and here you casually state the heart and essence of fear and dread for LoN Deathrattle or Soulblight players worldwide...

if the tea leaf readings were correct, OBR was the first book to slowly obsolete the GA:D style LoN Book. 


what to do with the death range beyond OBR and FEC... especially the old staples of Necromancers, Vampires and Wightkings leading troops of zombies, skellis/guards or bloodknights? And yes, throwing in TK for the heartache.

if the GDubs way of maximum IP protection continues, the whole line would need to be redesigned, since the classic skelli and Vampire theme is kinda open sourced. Also with the soft removal of Nagash and Arkhan from LoN the whole fluff needs to be redone. 
with the „Undying King“ and „Dominion of Bones“ fluff I hope for two/three things

- Mortals of Shyish, mortals and necromancers and maybe constructs (deathwalker hordes)

- soulblight, from Bloodknights to Pirates (elite vampires)

- better books/fluff... maybe it‘s an audible thing, but „UnKi and DOB“ was slow boring and just not as exciting as old gotrek & Felix or Nagash or Vamp wars... even the Necromancer novel was more interesting

 

 

I appreciated a lot Undying king, but I like a lot Reynolds writings. Dominion of Bones is a celebration of Neferata, and in some way recall the stories about the Von Carstein. It would be interesting to see a renew of the "Sylvania army" as a way to make the Soulbloght... Technically they should recall the old 6th edition Warhammer fantasy vampire counts book, the fun part. But such s way it would be quite similar to a City of Sigmar.

I don't think anyway that Skellues need an update as models, other then  to increase the weapon options. But they could only sell the upgrade set separate.

About zombies .. they changed their way since the corpse cart releasing, and we can see confirmed new style with the FEC endless spells and the BB undead teams. The old ones are still valid, but something new would be interesting, still they would need more options.

About the BG, Gotrek & Felix and vampire Wars are old friends, they are a different style. I still like them quite a lot, but said so it sounds more like nostalgia^^ here it's totally taste related, so can't be argued about any. Way

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Since we know that Broken Realms contains warscroll updates, what do you think are the chances of LoN getting some of those in the short term? I think if we don't get any Death-related news in the next preview, it's not out of the question. Especially since the clearest teaser we got about what will likely be the next Death faction/update (Johann running away from a scarecrow looking thing) does not look obviously vampire or skeleton related.

 

A lot about LoN could definitely be fixed by warscroll rewrites. A lot of the basic tricks the faction has are still pretty good. My personal wishlist would include skeletons getting a new mechanic so you don't have to roll 200 dice when they attack and Black Knights getting rend -1 on their lances.

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1 hour ago, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

Since we know that Broken Realms contains warscroll updates, what do you think are the chances of LoN getting some of those in the short term? I think if we don't get any Death-related news in the next preview, it's not out of the question. Especially since the clearest teaser we got about what will likely be the next Death faction/update (Johann running away from a scarecrow looking thing) does not look obviously vampire or skeleton related.

 

A lot about LoN could definitely be fixed by warscroll rewrites. A lot of the basic tricks the faction has are still pretty good. My personal wishlist would include skeletons getting a new mechanic so you don't have to roll 200 dice when they attack and Black Knights getting rend -1 on their lances.

In a round about way I'm hoping no Vampire units get updates, as that most likely means the Battletome will be a fair way off.

Death need something like how fear used to work in WFB couple that with bravery modifiers and suddenly it becomes more of a worry for the opponent.

Mind you with how Bravery and Battleshock are pretty much a non entity I won't hold my breath.

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I agree that if we do not see any major Vamp/LoN stuff in Broken Realms then it is a decent indicator that a new Battletome is around the corner. However giving Vampire Lords on Zombie Dragons a selection of Mount Traits would be super nice, just like that they did with Idoneth Deepkin in BR: Morathi. While I'd love to get some sweet updates in BR I also know that if we do, then a new Battletome is probably much further off. GW did say that BR is going to have an effect on every faction in AoS, so I expect something, and given the range of major to very minor updates found in BR: Morathi, who knows what's in store for LoN.

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