Soulblight Gravelords News, Rumours and Speculation

[Erdemo86]

12 minutes ago, Tizianolol said:

I watched many review and some people says blood knights can charge after their movement ability, others says they cant. If they couldnt charge why GW doesnt Simply say " when they  retreat they deals d3 MW on 2+" ? 

I think the intention of Gw was that they can charge, but some people read between the lines, you know... in our playing community(20+ people btw) all agreed that they can charge. Because a normal move is a normal move in our opinion, not a retreat. And in other languages it’s clear stated that it’s not a retreat.

Edited May 15, 2021 by Erdemo86

[warhammernerd]

6 minutes ago, Erdemo86 said:

I think the intention of Gw was that they can charge, but some people read between the lines, you know...

I’d put my pinky on them being able to charge. People saying one thing or the other is indicative of the lack of clarity and therefore for an immediate FAQ, and the imminent arrival of AoS 3.0 which may well change in he wording of some core rules.

TLDR, don’t sweat it. I’m sure it will work as we imagine.

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

1 hour ago, Aren73 said:

How do we feel on the durability of a max unit of skeletons vs a max unit of zombies? 

 

1 hour ago, Aren73 said:

Durability of Skeletons vs Grave Guard:

Something you neglect in your posts is the compounding effect of saves. The higher a save, the more you get out of it. Moving a save from 4+ to 3+ is a lot more impactful than moving it from 6+ to 5+.

Assuming no rend, think about how many extra wounds an opponent needs to put through to pin a wound on you for any given save. For a 6+ save, one in 6 hits will be prevented. So your opponent needs 1.16 times the hits to take off one wound compared to save '-'. But if you are on a 4+ save, for example, you need double the amount of hits to go through. So the effective wound gain accelerates the higher your save gets.

Here's how that looks over the spectrum of saves (sorry about the formating, I am on mobile)

• Save > Effective wounds
• '-' > x1
• 6+ > x1.16
• 5+ > x1.5
• 4+ > x2
• 3+ > x3
• 2+ > x6
• 2+ rerolling > x36

This is why pushing a VLoZD or Vengorian Lord to +2 is so strong. At that point, you may well be able to heal all the damage they take every turn from The Hunger alone. Especially if you give them reroll saves, which is easy because they can cast Mystic Shield on themselves.

With that out of the way, where does that leave us re: Zombies, Skeletons and Grave Guard?

It means a few things: We should value +1 to saves higher on high base saves. Same for the Vengorian Lord's rend reduction (which is slightly worse than a save increase overall). This also goes for healing: Every wound healed on a 4+ save is worth twice as much as a wound healed on save '-'.

40 zombies on save '-' have 40 effective wounds. At 6+, it's like 47.

30 skeletons on a 5+ save have 45 effective wounds and heal way easier than zombies. At 4+ that's 60.

30 Grave Guard on save 4+ have 60 effective wounds. At 3+ it's 90.

That is why I personally like the new Skeletons over Zombies. For a unit that just sits on an objective, I think they do what I want better.  They are hard to grind down with their mid-level save and strong regeneration. Sure, dedicated hammers will smash them. But Zombies will even get smashed by or ground down by other trash units. They just die with their '-' save. Skeletons might deal no damage now, but as someone who played big skeleton blobs before, they already didn't deal any damage before, you just rolled more dice for it.

Zombies seem kinda good with support, but at least I personally don't want to support my trash units if I could be supporting actually good units instead. Zombies are cheap, but they are no longer cheap if you attach a Necromancer and Vampire Lord to them.

I think it's actually probably the best to grab 40 zombies, 30 skeletons and 10 dire wolves for battleline in a lot ot lists. Those units all have distinct, valuable functions.

[Erdemo86]

3 minutes ago, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

 

Something you neglect in your posts is the compounding effect of saves. The higher a save, the more you get out of it. Moving a save from 4+ to 3+ is a lot more impactful than moving it from 6+ to 5+.

Assuming no rend, think about how many extra wounds an opponent needs to put through to pin a wound on you for any given save. For a 6+ save, one in 6 hits will be prevented. So your opponent needs 1.16 times the hits to take off one wound compared to save '-'. But if you are on a 4+ save, for example, you need double the amount of hits to go through. So the effective wound gain accelerates the higher your save gets.

Here's how that looks over the spectrum of saves (sorry about the formating, I am on mobile)

• Save > Effective wounds
• '-' > x1
• 6+ > x1.16
• 5+ > x1.5
• 4+ > x2
• 3+ > x3
• 2+ > x6
• 2+ rerolling > x36

This is why pushing a VLoZD or Vengorian Lord to +2 is so strong. At that point, you may well be able to heal all the damage they take every turn from The Hunger alone. Especially if you give them reroll saves, which is easy because they can cast Mystic Shield on themselves.

With that out of the way, where does that leave us re: Zombies, Skeletons and Grave Guard?

It means a few things: We should value +1 to saves higher on high base saves. Same for the Vengorian Lord's rend reduction (which is slightly worse than a save increase overall). This also goes for healing: Every wound healed on a 4+ save is worth twice as much as a wound healed on save '-'.

40 zombies on save '-' have 40 effective wounds. At 6+, it's like 47.

30 skeletons on a 5+ save have 45 effective wounds and heal way easier than zombies. At 4+ that's 60.

30 Grave Guard on save 4+ have 60 effective wounds. At 3+ it's 90.

That is why I personally like the new Skeletons over Zombies. For a unit that just sits on an objective, I think they do what I want better.  They are hard to grind down with their mid-level save and strong regeneration. Sure, dedicated hammers will smash them. But Zombies will even get smashed by or ground down by other trash units. They just die with their '-' save. Skeletons might deal no damage now, but as someone who played big skeleton blobs before, they already didn't deal any damage before, you just rolled more dice for it.

Zombies seem kinda good with support, but at least I personally don't want to support my trash units if I could be supporting actually good units instead. Zombies are cheap, but they are no longer cheap if you attach a Necromancer and Vampire Lord to them.

I think it's actually probably the best to grab 40 zombies, 30 skeletons and 10 dire wolves for battleline in a lot ot lists. Those units all have distinct, valuable functions.

Nice rundown, thanx. I think in a Kastelei list where you already have spent a lot of points into your punch, skelllies+corpse will fit best. It will be a resilent unit That you could even teleport on an objective.

[Raptor_Jesues]

6 minutes ago, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

 

...

I think it's actually probably the best to grab 40 zombies, 30 skeletons and 10 dire wolves for battleline in a lot ot lists. Those units all have distinct, valuable functions.

nah, ill just take 20 bloodknights as my battleline

[Erdemo86]

Just now, Raptor_Jesues said:

nah, ill just take 20 bloodknights as my battleline

I will take 2x 10 Bloodknights and 30 skellies

[Lich King]

If you take a Named Character - they still get the bloodline’s keyword and therefore Battle Traits right? They just don’t have access to Command trait and artefacts. I see for example Legion of Night for Mannfred but if he goes in the Kastellai Bloodline he gets access to Kastellai keyword in addition to those two battle traits ?

Edited May 15, 2021 by Lich King

[Erdemo86]

6 minutes ago, Lich King said:

If you take a Named Character - they still get the bloodline’s keyword and therefore Battle Traits right? They just don’t have access to Command trait and artefacts. I see for example Legion of Night for Mannfred but if he goes in the Kastellai Bloodline he gets access to Kastellai keyword in addition to those two battle traits ?

No he don’t gets the kastelei keyword.

Sorry No pictures allowed..

 

Edited May 15, 2021 by Erdemo86

[idn0971]

2 minutes ago, Lich King said:

If you take a Named Character - they still get the bloodline’s keyword and therefore Battle Traits right? They just don’t have access to Command trait and artefacts. I see for example Legion of Night for Mannfred but if he goes in the Kastellai Bloodline he gets access to Kastellai keyword in addition to those two battle traits ?

If a named character has a bloodline keyword then they cannot get a different bloodline keyword. They can still be taken they just don't get any of the benefits of the bloodline. So in your example Mannfred had the legion of night keyword already so he would not get the kastelai keyword or the effects of the kastelai battle traits. In addition named characters can never take a command traits or artifact regardless of if they are in their own subfaction.

[Lich King]

Yes but what about an Avengorii bloodline - can say Mannfred or Vhordrai count as the necessary Battleline for that faction? Being Vampire Monster , and the other having Zombie Dragon Keyword? I’m guessing no then since they get nothing of other bloodlines ?

[Sorrow]

QUESTION!

Will Kritza and Lady Annika be part of new Soulblight Vampires battletome?

They were not released for Cursed City or I can not find them on GW page.

[Liquidsteel]

5 minutes ago, Sorrow said:

QUESTION!

Will Kritza and Lady Annika be part of new Soulblight Vampires battletome?

They were not released for Cursed City or I can not find them on GW page.

Yes they're in it.

They are not released yet, Vyrkos will be up hopefully next week or week after if there's a delay.

[Sorrow]

1 minute ago, Liquidsteel said:

Yes they're in it.

They are not released yet, Vyrkos will be up hopefully next week or week after if there's a delay.

They are in Cursed City or Soulblight battletome?

[Liquidsteel]

Just now, Sorrow said:

They are in Cursed City or Soulblight battletome?

Battletome.

[Erdemo86]

What do you guys think about allies in soulblight? Maybe Lady Olynder? 2 spells, Mw output, 4+ save ignore rent. Also her spell is very Good.

 

question: if you ally in a archregent, can you summon Crypt Flayers? If yes he will be an auto include.. wizard 2 spells, free flayers or Horrors, 2 Banns. Can cast his spell on his summoned unit or himself and a mystic shield,240 points, ok attack profile.

Edited May 15, 2021 by Erdemo86

[FeralMulan]

21 minutes ago, Lich King said:

Yes but what about an Avengorii bloodline - can say Mannfred or Vhordrai count as the necessary Battleline for that faction? Being Vampire Monster , and the other having Zombie Dragon Keyword? I’m guessing no then since they get nothing of other bloodlines ?

Leaders cannot be Battleline. Only the actual units Terrogheist and Zombie Dragon become battleline, not the VLoZD.

[Doko]

4 hours ago, CarkFish said:

So I've just been looking at the new skeleton warscroll ... Am I missing something ? ... Because this looks like garbage to me

https://www.games-workshop.com/resources/PDF/AoS_Warscrolls/Eng_Deathrattle_Skeletons.pdf

1" range spears .... And only Res models killed in THAT phase? ..... Hmmm ... Thoughts?

 

Edit ... FFS even bloody goblins get 2" range spears ... ****** this army! ... I'm going home! 🤣😜

 

Yes they are useless and garbagge.

If enemy kill all the unit then they are only a unit with 0 damage and 10w with save5 or if you attack before rival,or shooting,magic etc

Too much conditions for only a 4++

In a game the 90% of the time they gonna be useless and even as objetive grabbers dogs or zombies are better

[Doko]

1 hour ago, Verminlord said:

In regards to grave guard: I can't imagine ever taking great blades over sword n board. At 4in movement and a 5+ save without shields, 1" range on both weapons, these guys are prime charge/shoot bait. They need all the survivability they can get. And their main value will be those MW making up for the army's lack of rend anyways.

Its 100% the oposite for any min\maxing dude, nobody gonna get the shield as never.

Shield 16% better survivality

2 hand 100% more damage

 

The diference is as.........no chance of getting shields

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

1 hour ago, Raptor_Jesues said:

nah, ill just take 20 bloodknights as my battleline

I mean, you could if you want to be an absolute chad.

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

35 minutes ago, Doko said:

Its 100% the oposite for any min\maxing dude, nobody gonna get the shield as never.

Shield 16% better survivality

2 hand 100% more damage

 

The diference is as.........no chance of getting shields

No, I agree with @Verminlord.

+ 1 to saves is huge. It's not a 16% defense increase, a move from 5+ to 4+ is more like a 50% defense increase (depending how you look at it, see my post on saves a few posts above). And you can get to 3+ potentially, or at least 4+ ignore rend -1 if save bonus stacking goes away.

Great Blades do higher damage, but it will frequently be overkill. If you plan on buffing the Grave Guard anyway, you will over buff them and waste damage with Great Blades. You can easily get the sword and shield grave guard to a point where they kill one model with a 4+ save for each grave guard in combat. How much more killing power do you need?

While deep striking from Gravesites has become a lot easier, I would still play Grave Guard with the assumption that they will have to absorb a charge before counter punching due to their low move and no charge bonuses. I think minimizing losses on them so that our limited healing can keep them topped up and so that we avoid extra losses to battleshock will be key.

I am currently toying with the idea of shield grave guard plus a Vengorian Lord in Vyrkos. The Vengorian Lord can be ignoring up to rend 2 with the Chamon realm artefact or rerolling 1s to save with Shyish. He's mobile enough join quickly join up with a deep striking Grave Guard block. In Vyrkos, shield Grave Guard still hit hard enough to take out most anything, and since the Vengorian Lord is OK in combat, too, together their damage should be enough in most situations and the whole group should be very hard to shift between their high saves, rend reduction and the Vengorian healing (d3 invocation, 3 invigorating aura, possible d6 from the command ability).

Edited May 15, 2021 by Neil Arthur Hotep

[Nightseer2012]

So far it feels like in a vanilla army... one squad of 30 skeletons unsupported babysitting a home objective.  Than other battlelines are... Dire Wolves?  You want them moving forward to harass and steal other objectives while your heroes do literally ALL the work, lol.  My three leanings of lists are either...

-Legion of Blood for the Neferata + VLoZD w/Soulbound Garments= unrendable 2+ armor save monster

-Avengorii Lauka + Vengorian Lord w/Perfect Plate = Hard to rend/wound Buffed Monster Mash

-Vyrkos Belladama wolf spam (wondering if Deathsteanch Drove is worth writing a list for until it dissapears in AoS 3.0)

[Elmir]

2 hours ago, Aren73 said:

@Elmir See my previous comparison of zombies to skeletons: 
 

I'm not comparing damage here, or speed or anything else. I do think that overall Zombies are a better unit than Skeletons. But Skeletons do seem to be more durable. You can't rely too much on those MWs on 6s from zombies for their damage output - you're hardly going to get more than 20 in combat, which equates to just under 4 MW (and their other attacks basically do nothing). 4 Zombies coming back isn't all that much and they're not going to kill anything significant with those 4 MWs. 

Zombies do really ramp up with extra attacks and activations (+1 A from Vampire Lord and Vanhels from Necro gets them to a much nicer 16 MW). However they NEED that support. 

Skeletons on the other hand need no support to be decently durable. If your enemy can wipe out 30 skeletons in a single activation then what the hell, he'll probably kill all the zombies too, or all but 5 or something. And then as soon as the skeletons activate they get half their dead back. 

Zombies are a trap. They look really good with all their MWs on 6s and coming back after killing something. To really get that going; however, you need a block of 40 of them, a vampire lord and a Necromancer AND you need your opponent not to send something at them that just wipes the unit. 

A max unit of zombies with Necromancer and vampire lord support is 495 pts. For that much you can take 9 Vargheists. 
9 Vargheists (not buffed) can kill 26 zombies on average. What do the remaining 14 do? 5 MW followed by another 5 MW - they've killed 2 Vargheists, maybe a 3rd one if you're lucky. 

The same 9 Vargheists going into Skeletons only kills 21 skeletons. The 9 skeletons activate, 11 get back up. 20 skeletons go into the Vargheists and don't do much - but, more of them survived. If you have a Necromancer to Vanhels them then the rest of them get back up too - effectively the Vargheists did nothing. 

Guys you are overestimating the Zombies, they need a lot of help to get them to be ridiculous. 
Skeletons are more survivable (see above) than zombies even if the zombies are supported a bit. Zombies win out when they go up against units that aren't doing much damage in the first place. Whereas Skeletons can take a hit that kills 20 of them and they can still come back from it easily. Once your block of zombies is reduced to 10 models they're practically out of the game unless you do A LOT of work to try and heal them. 

Ironically, you seem to miss that those skeletons are also getting necro support in that comparison vs the vargheists. 

You also don't need zombies to be ridiculous all the time. The point is that you can GET them to be ridiculous while regular skeletons just plain can't. A unit who's ability requires it to get close to massacred before it's semi useful, is just plain not as good... not in an army that already doesn't lack tanky units in the form of blood knights who are, even without support, one of the tankiest units in the game.... and if you give them support, can become downright obnoxious while still being fast. 

Skeleton usefulness is VERY circumstantial while zombies have got a lot more going for them in general... Even if there are some fringe cases where the enemy can spend a ton of attack power to destroy a 230p unit. They are our new skinks... another unit that needs a bit of support to get there, but (like you said) can become insane when you do. 

[JackStreicher]

1 hour ago, Raptor_Jesues said:

nah, ill just take 20 bloodknights as my battleline

Why not 35 though!?

just kidding

[Doko]

 

If we take grave guard as example and as example 12 wounds done to us

Shields die 6

2 hands die 8

So shields are as 25% better

Damage output

Shields  3,3 mw and 8,8 damage

2 hands 3,3 mw and 16,6damage

So 2 hands do around 66% extra damage

 

As you said if the extra damage gonna be lost due to overkill of course shields are better. But then we can bring multiple msu 2 hands units and the damage wont be overkill.

Edited May 15, 2021 by Doko

[Nightseer2012]

15 minutes ago, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

Deep Striking from Gravesites has become a lot easier, I would still play Grave Guard with the assumption that they will have to absorb a charge before counter punching due to their low move and no charge bonuses. I think minimizing losses on them so that our limited healing can keep them topped up and so that we avoid extra losses to battleshock will be key.

I am currently toying with the idea of shield grave guard plus a Vengorian Lord in Vyrkos. The Vengorian Lord can be ignoring up to rend 2 with the Chamon realm artefact or rerolling 1s to save with Shyish. He's mobile enough join quickly join up with a deep striking Grave Guard block. In Vyrkos, shield Grave Guard still hit hard enough to take out most anything, and since the Vengorian Lord is OK in combat, too, together their damage should be enough in most situations and the whole group should be very hard to shift between their high saves, rend reduction and the Vengorian healing (d3 invocation, 3 invigorating aura, possible d6 from the command ability).

What about a Vrykos Vengorian Lord w/ Driven by Deathsteanch?  Deep strike the Gravegaurd, move up to support with Vengorian general w/ DbDs, both the Grave Guard and the Vengorian Lord get a reroll on charges?