Soulblight Gravelords News, Rumours and Speculation

[JackStreicher]

6 minutes ago, FeralMulan said:

What's everyone's opinions on the relics so far BTW? Seeing a lot of "Once per Battle" stuff with mediocre effects:

 - Orb of Enchantment - is it worth it, now that it might fail?
 - Grave Sand Shard - 5+ FNP for a turn looks good, but once per battle again. Is it better than perma -1 wound but only against melee?
 - Avengorii is the poster child for this: Once per battle reroll wounds (of 1), once per battle MAYBE D6 mortals, once per battle MAYBE mortals on a charge. Oh and mutations, eat a 1 wound enemy for one healing, once per battle run and charge, and anti magic if next to them. Anyone seeing anything in these?

Incidentally, did anyone notice that out of the 3 "mutations" only the third one is a mutation? The first two are just "am hungry" and "am late".

Imo only the Kastelai once per battle artefact is good since it just happens. If oyu have to roll for an artefact and it has a chance to do nothing, then it is utter trash. Most of these once per game artefacts don't even pack that much of a punch but you can still waste the entire artefact.
The same issue goes for most spells btw: You have to roll high enough, then the opponent has to not unbind it. And then you have to roll a 3+/4+/5+ in order for the spell to deal insignificant damage. You have to overcome three barriers in order for the spell to work, it's super unlikely. I don't want to be overly harsh, yet: Who writes such nonsesne?

Edited May 14, 2021 by JackStreicher
spelling

[Ghoooouls]

5 minutes ago, FeralMulan said:

What's everyone's opinions on the relics so far BTW? Seeing a lot of "Once per Battle" stuff with mediocre effects:

 - Orb of Enchantment - is it worth it, now that it might fail?
 - Grave Sand Shard - 5+ FNP for a turn looks good, but once per battle again. Is it better than perma -1 wound but only against melee?
 - Avengorii is the poster child for this: Once per battle reroll wounds (of 1), once per battle MAYBE D6 mortals, once per battle MAYBE mortals on a charge. Oh and mutations, eat a 1 wound enemy for one healing, once per battle run and charge, and anti magic if next to them. Anyone seeing anything in these?

Incidentally, did anyone notice that out of the 3 "mutations" only the third one is a mutation? The first two are just "am hungry" and "am late".

Yea avengori with 3 items all 1 use only is a bit odd, im hopeful we have a table or tables of generic items that anyone can use otherwise avengori looks a bit poop on the artefact front.

Edited May 14, 2021 by Ghoooouls

[FeralMulan]

Just now, JackStreicher said:

Imo only the Kastelai once per battle artefact is good since it just happens. If oyu have to roll for an artefact and it has a chance to do nothing, then it is utter trash. Most of these once per game artefacts don't even pack that much of a punch but you can still waste the entire artefact.
The same issue goes for most spells btw: You have to roll high enough, then the opponent has to not unbind it. And then you have to roll a 3+/4+/5+ in order for the spell to deal insignificant damage. You have top overcome three barriers in order for the spell to work, it's super unlikely. I don't want to be overly harsh, yet: Who writes such nonsesne?

Problem is a lot of people are saying "DW, maybe that's the new standard in AoS 3!"

Maybe - but until EVERYONE gets a new Battletome to bring them up to line, Tzeentch, Seraphon and Lumineth will have even MORE overwhelming magic in that case.

I mean Christ. Look at Vile Transference. Look at how they massacred my boy. So sad.

[Aren73]

It feels like they wanted to make Avengorii unique by letting them have double the customisation that the other factions have. 

So they made the options half as strong to compensate...

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

A smaller post about the rest of our unconditional battleline, since I covered Skeletons above:

Zombies

Good: 6" pile in, mortals on hit, healing from kills, support from Corpse Cart

Bad: 1 attack, no save, slow

Zombies are intersting! It's easy to think that they might be our hammer battleline if Warriors are our anvil, but that's only somewhat true.

As hammers, zombies have too many problems. They are slow and they don't deal good damage (20 zombies deal 4 damage on average), but they deal their damage regardless of saves. So while they are bad at taking out other infantry blobs, they are good at taking out heroes and monsters on large bases. They will also be more likely to surround them with their 6" pile ins, so that's nice!

Offensively, zombies take only extra attack buffs well. Everything else is wasted. However, extra attacks double their damage output, so not bad.

Defensively, zombies are similarly best against big hits, weirdly, since they don't lose their non-existent saves because of rend/mortals. They easily fall against loads of small attacks, though.

Personally, I am more lukewarm about zombies than others. I think their healing is very weak, since they cannot expect to kill a lot of models through their attacks. 40 wounds worth of bodies are nice, and they are cheap at 230 points for 40, but for 255 I think 30 Skeletons will still be way tankier and tarpit-ier.

Zombies get support from the Corpse Cart in the form of +1 to saves. +1 to saves is a good buff, but one that gets stronger the higher your base save is. So going from '-' to 6+ is nice, but not as good as it might look.

I think a package deal of Zombies, a Necromancer and a Corpse Cart is a good back-field unit that can defend objectives and provide good magic support from the great Deathmages spell lore. I personally do not see it as worth it to try to get Zombies on the front lines, though. We have enough real hammers in the army, we don't have to mess around with these budget Spirit Hosts.

Dire Wolves

The doggos are fast anvils, which is a good niche to have.

They suffered a bit from the increase of their miniumum size, so you can no longer use them to fill all your battleline requirements for 210 points, but this has become less necessary anyway since you can basically make any unit worth taking in the book battleline in some way, anyway.

Offensively, the dogs are so-so. two attacks 4+/4+/-/1 naturally, which is bad. 4+/4+ means a quarter of your attacks hit. But they get +1 to hit and wound on the charge, which is good. This bumps their chances to hit up to just below 50% for head maths. Still not a lot, but will do some incidental damage to units with low armour saves.

What Dire Wolves are really for is to screen units and get in the way. With two wounds per model and a 5+ save they are not trivial to breeze through, and their big cavalry bases make it easy to block off your more valuable troops from enemy charges. They are also a good target for incidental resurrection from Endless Legions, because they are likely to die early and having a fairly fast unit with 10 wounds come back is valuable even late game for tarpitting and contesting objectives.

I would take a unit or two of min-size Dire Wolves in the average list. They seem like good utility pieces to have around. I personally like them as self-sufficient units, but some factions offer some support for them. Not 100% sure this is worth investing in, though.

[Erdemo86]

How would you guys think a kastelei list could work? There are so much Auto includes that I’m really confused.

[FeralMulan]

2 minutes ago, Aren73 said:

It feels like they wanted to make Avengorii unique by letting them have double the customisation that the other factions have. 

So they made the options half as strong to compensate...

Except that's not the case either, because A.) they only have half the Command Traits B.) only the generic Monsters can take the mutations, not your characters C.) the ability to take that just flat out replaces one of their battle traits, like what.

[JackStreicher]

yep, It feels like this was the alpha version of a new Battletome in which they hadn't connected the dots yet and it was basically just a mock-up of the rules .

It's basically a core idea for rules with nice art XD

 

[Erdemo86]

7 minutes ago, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

A smaller post about the rest of our unconditional battleline, since I covered Skeletons above:

Zombies

Good: 6" pile in, mortals on hit, healing from kills, support from Corpse Cart

Bad: 1 attack, no save, slow

Zombies are intersting! It's easy to think that they might be our hammer battleline if Warriors are our anvil, but that's only somewhat true.

As hammers, zombies have too many problems. They are slow and they don't deal good damage (20 zombies deal 4 damage on average), but they deal their damage regardless of saves. So while they are bad at taking out other infantry blobs, they are good at taking out heroes and monsters on large bases. They will also be more likely to surround them with their 6" pile ins, so that's nice!

Offensively, zombies take only extra attack buffs well. Everything else is wasted. However, extra attacks double their damage output, so not bad.

Defensively, zombies are similarly best against big hits, weirdly, since they don't lose their non-existent saves because of rend/mortals. They easily fall against loads of small attacks, though.

Personally, I am more lukewarm about zombies than others. I think their healing is very weak, since they cannot expect to kill a lot of models through their attacks. 40 wounds worth of bodies are nice, and they are cheap at 230 points for 40, but for 255 I think 30 Skeletons will still be way tankier and tarpit-ier.

Zombies get support from the Corpse Cart in the form of +1 to saves. +1 to saves is a good buff, but one that gets stronger the higher your base save is. So going from '-' to 6+ is nice, but not as good as it might look.

I think a package deal of Zombies, a Necromancer and a Corpse Cart is a good back-field unit that can defend objectives and provide good magic support from the great Deathmages spell lore. I personally do not see it as worth it to try to get Zombies on the front lines, though. We have enough real hammers in the army, we don't have to mess around with these budget Spirit Hosts.

Dire Wolves

The doggos are fast anvils, which is a good niche to have.

They suffered a bit from the increase of their miniumum size, so you can no longer use them to fill all your battleline requirements for 210 points, but this has become less necessary anyway since you can basically make any unit worth taking in the book battleline in some way, anyway.

Offensively, the dogs are so-so. two attacks 4+/4+/-/1 naturally, which is bad. 4+/4+ means a quarter of your attacks hit. But they get +1 to hit and wound on the charge, which is good. This bumps their chances to hit up to just below 50% for head maths. Still not a lot, but will do some incidental damage to units with low armour saves.

What Dire Wolves are really for is to screen units and get in the way. With two wounds per model and a 5+ save they are not trivial to breeze through, and their big cavalry bases make it easy to block off your more valuable troops from enemy charges. They are also a good target for incidental resurrection from Endless Legions, because they are likely to die early and having a fairly fast unit with 10 wounds come back is valuable even late game for tarpitting and contesting objectives.

I would take a unit or two of min-size Dire Wolves in the average list. They seem like good utility pieces to have around. I personally like them as self-sufficient units, but some factions offer some support for them. Not 100% sure this is worth investing in, though.

You’re only calculating 1 A Zombies friend but now think about 

+1 Attack from Radukar

+1 Attack from Vampire Lord

+1 Attack from Mannfred

+1 Attack from Battalion

Attack 2 times from Necromancer...

now you could have 20 Zombies Attacking with 100 Attacks, attacking 2 times!!!(over 30 Mortal wounds)

+ 1 to wound from Vyrkos,+1 to hit and Wound from Mannfred

 

i don’t say that you will always get all buffs in every round but if we talk about possibility’s...

Edited May 14, 2021 by Erdemo86

[JackStreicher]

Just now, Erdemo86 said:

You’re only calculating 1 A Zombies friend but now think about 

+1 Attack from Radukar

+1 Attack from Vampire Lord

+1 Attack from Mannfred

+1 Attack from Battalion

Attack 2 times from Necromancer...

Where are you getting those 3 CP from? ^^

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

2 minutes ago, Erdemo86 said:

You’re only calculating 1 A Zombies friend but now think about 

+1 Attack from Radukar

+1 Attack from Vampire Lord

+1 Attack from Mannfred

+1 Attack from Battalion

Attack 2 times from Necromancer...

In my opinion, that's guilding the lily. Just take a unit that does good damage without having to jump though so many hoops instead.

EDIT:

The battalion and a +1 attack buff together are solid, though. Or the Battalion plus Vanhel's, maybe. Everything else is massively overpaying just to get 4 extra mortal wounds out of your 20 guys.

Edited May 14, 2021 by Neil Arthur Hotep

[umpac]

9 minutes ago, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

As hammers, zombies have too many problems. They are slow and they don't deal good damage (20 zombies deal 4 damage on average), but they deal their damage regardless of saves. So while they are bad at taking out other infantry blobs, they are good at taking out heroes and monsters on large bases. They will also be more likely to surround them with their 6" pile ins, so that's nice!

Strongly disagree. Played right they deal massive damage (40 zombies can easily dish out 20-30 damage per activation if you just stack +attacks) and they are actually very fast with a guaranteed threat range of 16"(costs a CP though). They will easily chew through infantry blobs which is their best target as it grants them a ton of extra models. Probably the highest damage dealers in the book, except fully buffed 2-handed Grave guards.

The main weaknesses of zombies are that they are fragile if charged, relies HEAVILY on spells and support units that are also fairly fragile, and might struggle against non-infantry armies like Ogres, IDK or SoB since they rely on Newly Dead to stay alive. 

Edited May 14, 2021 by umpac

[Erdemo86]

9 minutes ago, JackStreicher said:

Where are you getting those 3 CP from? ^^

1 at the start, 1 from battalion, 1 for 50 points. General can use 1 cp for free every turn. so yeah have 4. and 2 every turn.(because general don’t need to use a cp) also don’t necessarily to use Mannfreds CA.

Edited May 14, 2021 by Erdemo86

[FeralMulan]

2 minutes ago, umpac said:

Strongly disagree. Played right they deal massive damage (40 zombies can easily dish out 20-30 damage per activation if you just stack +attacks) and they are actually very fast with a guaranteed threat range of 16"(costs a CP though). They will easily chew through infantry blobs which is their best target as it grants them a ton of extra models. Probably the highest damage dealers in the book, except fully buffed 2-handed Grave guards.

The main weaknesses of zombies are that they are fragile if charged, relies HEAVILY on support units that are also fairly fragile, and might struggle against non-infantry armies like Ogres, IDK or SoB since they rely on Newly Dead to stay alive. 

Can you explain how you get the threat range of 16"?

[Erdemo86]

6 minutes ago, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

In my opinion, that's guilding the lily. Just take a unit that does good damage without having to jump though so many hoops instead.

EDIT:

The battalion and a +1 attack buff together are solid, though. Or the Battalion plus Vanhel's, maybe. Everything else is massively overpaying just to get 4 extra mortal wounds out of your 20 guys.

I’m talking about possibility’s.

[Erdemo86]

3 minutes ago, FeralMulan said:

Can you explain how you get the threat range of 16"?

You move 4, 1cp to run 6, pile in 6! Zombies are the winner of the Battletome , in my opinion.

Edited May 14, 2021 by Erdemo86

[Aren73]

9 minutes ago, JackStreicher said:

yep, It feels like this was the alpha version of a new Battletome in which they hadn't connected the dots yet and it was basically just a mock-up of the rules .

It's basically a core idea for rules with nice art XD

 

Don't. Don't give me hope. It may feel like the alpha version (it sure does with all those mistakes) but it's not. It can't be. 
I can't deal with false hope right now

[FeralMulan]

Just now, Erdemo86 said:

I’m talking about possibility’s.

Yeah but the point is that it's a REALLY inefficient possibility. You need EVERYTHING to go right, 4 support heroes and 3 CP to get some pretty good damage.... provided they don't screen you out, Mannfred gets a kill, and you keep 40 zombies wholly within 12 of 3 different heroes.

It is a Fairy Tale, not a strategy.

[FeralMulan]

1 minute ago, Erdemo86 said:

You move 4, 1cp to run 6, pile in 6!

....I guess? But that only works if that 10" gets you within 6", unlike charging, which you can attempt at any time. Seems a waste of a CP except in very specific circumstances.

[Erdemo86]

4 minutes ago, FeralMulan said:

Yeah but the point is that it's a REALLY inefficient possibility. You need EVERYTHING to go right, 4 support heroes and 3 CP to get some pretty good damage.... provided they don't screen you out, Mannfred gets a kill, and you keep 40 zombies wholly within 12 of 3 different heroes.

It is a Fairy Tale, not a strategy.

You don’t need to stack all buffs at once. If you only get 2 out of this buffs they do a lot of damage. Lets say Necromancer and battalion +1 attacks. Maybe one Cp for Radukar or v Lord, and you have 20 Zombies attacking 60x2 attacks.

Edited May 14, 2021 by Erdemo86

[Aren73]

All this reminds me of when I was running LoN with Spirit Hosts spam, to fish for mortal wounds. 

It did seem easier to get the spirit hosts there though, they are ethereal and were an absolute meme to bring back/heal. 

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

13 minutes ago, umpac said:

Strongly disagree. Played right they deal massive damage (40 zombies can easily dish out 20-30 damage per activation if you just stack +attacks) and they are actually very fast with a guaranteed threat range of 16"(costs a CP though).

To that I say that it will be a challenge to get 40 zombies into melee range of anything with their 1" attacks, even given their 6" pile in. I did gloss over the battalion in my write up above (because I am partially still working under the assumption that it will just not matter in two months when AoS 3 comes out), but as long as that's around, it's good. I like Zombies a lot more when they are at 2 attacks.

I don't 100% agree on the 16" threat range. I think you are getting that from a 4" move, 6" run and 6" pile in. But if you only manage to just reach your enemy with your pile in, you won't deal damage because zombies have no reach. I think 12" or 13" is a more realistic number to work with.

I would be hesitant to invest any more into support for zombies, though. I think even giving them an extra attack in the cheapest way, with the Vampire Lord CA, is a bad use of your points and command points. Your milage may vary, though.

Edited May 14, 2021 by Neil Arthur Hotep

[FeralMulan]

2 minutes ago, Erdemo86 said:

You don’t need to stack all buffs at once. If you only get 2 out of this buffs they do a lot of damage. Lets say Necromancer and battalion +1 attacks.

Okay, that sounds more like it! No excess resources invested, double the output, hope you don't have too big a swingback for the second activation. The good thing is, with the HUGE 6" pile in, you can clear a screen and attack something meatier on the second activation with no issues.

[Smooth criminal]

Oh boy, another trashfire faction release in line with slaanesh power level. Let's try to approach this one.

The good:
Manny (best model in the book)/Lauka/Throne for being a do everything big guy with a linchpin command ability.
Blood knights for good rate on damage, kastelai makes them nasty.
Terrogheist/vengori for being very sturdy in avengori and doing damage. Vengori also good in kastelai (what isn't?).
Zombies/wolves for good rate on wounds, they are basically pink horrors of this faction who grab objectives and screen. Night legion can go full zombie horde with immunity to battleshock.
Vampire lords for being your go to small heroes. Necromancers aren't needed because non of the summonables do good base damage, +1 attack is now essentially same output as fight twice.

The bad:
Everything else.
Shoutout to entire skeleton subfaction which is essentially soft squatted.
Shoutout to Vrykos for being a wizard bloodline with 3 out of 4 name characters not being wizards.

All competitive attempts at gravelords will probably be along the lines of Manny/Lauka/Throne, 2x10 wolves, 2-3x40 zombies, 2-3xblood knights/vengori/terrogheist, some amount of small vampire lords. All subfactions except blood have their merits, kastelai so far seems like a frontrunner with a big turn of +1 damage to all vamps.
That's it, that's the faction for the next 6 years.

[Liquidsteel]

The rumour/half confirmation is that you get more CP in 3.0.

 

Also my understanding is that characters DO get the mutations in Avengorii. They are both Avengorian Vampires and Monsters, so fulfil the keyword criteria.