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Soulblight Gravelords News, Rumours and Speculation


Neil Arthur Hotep

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4 hours ago, DocKeule said:

I would love to see a named necromancer (did anyone say Kemmler?)
 

They have already billed them as "coming soon" and since LoN came out it the first edition I would expect a maintenance book before the new edition drops.  Also I dont't think they would have teased them if the release was planned for the fall or even later.
 

By GW standards "this year" is soon.  😛

again, tho, I'd love to be wrong here, so fingers crossed, I guess.

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6 hours ago, Tankman said:

Do we think there will be faction terrain and endless spells?

 

I'm betting actual pieces for gravesites.

We think there will be, but it's too soon to say if they'll be new.  There are inconsistent rumors that FEC might be included in SGL, the way pestilens was included in skaven or BCR in Ogres.  If that happens, then 'our' endless spells might just be an update of theirs.  As for our terrain, we might get a new terrain piece, or we might just get faction specific rules for the existing mausoleum kit, the way the sylvaneth terrain is just a favtion specific version of the current generic forest kit.

As for gravesites, i love them in the current book, but I don't hold out a lot of hope that they'll be staying around, at least not eith their current ruleset.

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1 minute ago, Doko said:

Vampires novel come in may and so it is 100% for sure as happened with lumineths that soulbligth gonna come together the novel.

Soulbligths come in may for sure

Just like the New nighthaunt book landed with their new novel this week?

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Just like LRL didn't get another book in the same edition?  We also saw a vapire novel this week, and yet the gravelords still aren't here.

they'll release when they release.  The only firm statement in terms of release window we've had is 'this year'.  Maybe that's in April.  Maybe it's in December.

Edited by Sception
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47 minutes ago, BrotherTalarian said:

I don’t play underworlds, but to someone that does, have cards had similar rules to the models? Or are they all brand new and made specific for the game?

I played a bit and the rules are always kinda unique to the warbands. To my knowledge no others bands have hunger markers, the inspired mechanism is a day 1 thing on the other handside.

Make vampirism great again,
give blooddragons 3+ armor 6+ ward, carsteins 4+\5+ and lhamia 6+\3+

Give them nice abilities, like fight first/make unit fight last

something cool and thematic 

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51 minutes ago, Honk said:

I played a bit and the rules are always kinda unique to the warbands. To my knowledge no others bands have hunger markers, the inspired mechanism is a day 1 thing on the other handside.

Make vampirism great again,
give blooddragons 3+ armor 6+ ward, carsteins 4+\5+ and lhamia 6+\3+

Give them nice abilities, like fight first/make unit fight last

something cool and thematic 

Based on the warbands mechanic and how GW has incorporated aetherquartz and aethergold into units in AoS, I could see Gravelord Vampires getting something like blood tokens that could be consumed to do a number of things, like buffing attacks, getting re-rolls, healing, etc. Alternatively instead of starting with these tokens they could acquire them each time they destroy a unit.

1 hour ago, Sception said:

We think there will be, but it's too soon to say if they'll be new.  There are inconsistent rumors that FEC might be included in SGL, the way pestilens was included in skaven or BCR in Ogres.  If that happens, then 'our' endless spells might just be an update of theirs.  As for our terrain, we might get a new terrain piece, or we might just get faction specific rules for the existing mausoleum kit, the way the sylvaneth terrain is just a favtion specific version of the current generic forest kit.

As for gravesites, i love them in the current book, but I don't hold out a lot of hope that they'll be staying around, at least not eith their current ruleset.

While I doubt FeC get incorporated into SGL, IF they did, could you imagine how powerful the Chalice of Ushoran would be if it brought back Skeletons and/or Zombies as well and could heal something like a VLoZD. That could be one answer for getting rid of gravesites but still keeping a regeneration mechanic. 

 

Whatever the case, GW has some real potential with Gravelords, I just hope they don't blow it!

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The general consensus on release appears to be soon... or later. Nothing for the summer. Suppose that's when people are predicting AoS 3.0. If 3.0 does come this year, I really hope Soulblight are released later in the year. LoN battletome came just before 2.0 and we definitely felt the creep over the edition. 

Edited by lare2
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1 hour ago, BaylorCorvette said:

Alternatively instead of starting with these tokens they could acquire them each time they destroy a unit.

Yes, blood tokens for extra funky skillz sounds great... similar to the OBR points, but only for the vamps. And if you don’t have any, your vamp gets extra edgy...

but the line between bonkers broken and hamstrung is thin and GDubs does not have a record of well balanced rules.

Not keen on insignificance, but not keen on Soulblight Cheeselords, either.

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10 minutes ago, Honk said:

Yes, blood tokens for extra funky skillz sounds great... similar to the OBR points, but only for the vamps. And if you don’t have any, your vamp gets extra edgy...

but the line between bonkers broken and hamstrung is thin and GDubs does not have a record of well balanced rules.

Not keen on insignificance, but not keen on Soulblight Cheeselords, either.

Its also pretty tedious and uninteresting in my opinion if every new faction has aethergold, or aetherquartz, or warpstone like abilities all of a sudden. One time borrowed power is not unique.

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Could be interesting though if vampires started with X blood and could spend that blood on generic abilities like increasing their movement/summoning more models back and could generate more by slaying X amount of wounds or something like that. And if you have 0 you take a big hit in someway. 

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1 hour ago, BaylorCorvette said:

While I doubt FeC get incorporated into SGL, IF they did, could you imagine how powerful the Chalice of Ushoran would be if it brought back Skeletons and/or Zombies as well and could heal something like a VLoZD. That could be one answer for getting rid of gravesites but still keeping a regeneration mechanic. 

To be clear, I also don't believe that FEC will be rolled into SGL, and I don't especially want it to happen, though I'm not strongly opposed, either.  I would rather see FEC expanded with a wider range of their own units, especially ones that more clearly incorporate the compelling fluff of their delusions.  Twisted ghouls but carrying themselves in dignified postures, scraps of scavenged armor suggesting noble knights, tattered bloody rags to suggest proud flags & banners, various specialty courtier heroes suggesting the members of a royal court of advisers, etc.

However, we've seen two FEC battletomes now without any appreciable expansion of their model line, not even bespoke models for their courtier heroes, which causes all sorts of terrible broblems with AoS's batch unit points system.  I would rather see the ghouls rolled back into SGL than see another battletome pretending to make a full faction out of the same 3 kits.  If that were to happen, then courtiers could just be unit champs/upgrades, crypt flayers could just be "Abhorrant Dynasty Vargheists", etc.  Neater.  Cleaner.  And FEC would get a sort of reverse expansion in that they could start running necromancers as court wizards, dire wolves as hunting hounds, etc etc.  That Cursed City Vargskyr looks like it would fit right in with a FEC army.  And you wouldn't have the awkwardness of units like unridden Terrorgheists and Zombie dragons existing in two separate factions with potentially two subtly different warscrolls.

Again though, I don't actually think it's going to happen.  Just that it *could* happen, and if it did then from a purely aesthetic standpoint the FEC endless spells look like they'd fit just fine alongside the new Gravelord range.  I doubt the names & rules of the individual spells would stay the same if that happened, though.

 

If FEC don't get rolled in, then I would expect to get our own new endless spells.  Even then, though, we might instead see a repackaging of some of the Malign Sorcery or Forbidden Power endless spells, since their current boxes will probably be retired for 3rd edition.

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34 minutes ago, Honk said:

Yes, blood tokens for extra funky skillz sounds great... similar to the OBR points, but only for the vamps. And if you don’t have any, your vamp gets extra edgy...

but the line between bonkers broken and hamstrung is thin and GDubs does not have a record of well balanced rules.

Not keen on insignificance, but not keen on Soulblight Cheeselords, either.

Aelves have cheeselords, why not us?! 😈

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Some sort of blood mechanic would be cool.  The dev article on the underworlds warband sounded like an interesting implementation, albeit one specific to the mechanics of that particular game.  The main thing I want is for there to be a reason to field more than one vampire hero in the same army.  Maybe different kinds of vampire hero unit, like this one's a 'vampire lord', that ones a 'vampire mage', the other one's a 'vampire assassin' etc.  Or maybe bloodline abilities that work like the mount abilities in other factions, maybe a subfaction specific list of special rules that you can tack onto your vampire lords for free, in addition to artefacts and the 1/army command ability.  They'd have to be pretty significant abilities to incentivize multiple vampire lord units, though, considering the relatively high price of the heroes and the overlap in the base warscroll abilities.

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1 hour ago, Btimmy said:

Its also pretty tedious

Yes, fielding 4 vamps and doing extended bookkeeping for bloodtokens... a nightmare 🥴

but as stated above by various people the triggerword dynasties were mentioned, the old bloodlines were and are a distinct vampire thing. the normal LoN vampire Lord is as boring as it gets in comparison.

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Man, I really hope dynasties and customization comes back.

I want vampires to be terrifying. I want them to be specialized. Have additional crazy spells. I want them to mulch through units and be hard to kill. 

I want Bloodknights to be terrifying. 

Have skeletons and zombies hit on 6s, I don’t care. As long as people think “oh shoot, he brought 6 vampires, this will be a tough game” 
 

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If people had to choose three command abilities from the above (surprising how many still exist!?), what would they be and how might the rules look now? 

I'd be all about summoning bats and wolves. Would be pretty simple, yet quite powerful. Vampire heroes can summon 5, 10 wolves or 3, 6 bats by spending X blood tokens. Units appear within 9" of hero, each can only be used once. 

I actually think if zombies, bats and wolves were summonable, and perhaps even the same if not worse that they were currently that would be rad. So, a bit like FEC, they costs for them are baked into the hero's albeit cheaper than they are now. Which would leave us more points to spend on Vamps and skelebobs etc. The army should feel pretty relentless and as if its coming up from the ground from all sides. 

Edited by warhammernerd
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Well Red fury kind of became Blood Feast and plus 1 attack is always good!

Strength of Steel was mad for 15 points for +1 strength on the charge and could be implemented as a extra -1 rend on the charge or just -1 rend until start of next hero phase.

I'm torn whether things like this should be a radius based thing or you have to pick a specific unit.  Although to have these as abilities for the vampires only would also be cool and fluffy.

Edited by El Syf
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1 hour ago, warhammernerd said:

If people had to choose three command abilities from the above (surprising how many still exist!?), what would they be and how might the rules look now? 

...

RED FURY

but the way it was when death first came out, if you kill one guy you get to attack again :D

Edited by Raptor_Jesues
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I’m not sure if this is controversial opinion but I rather preferred the approach taken in the 7th edition VC book, where rather than an all-out ‘X bloodline have these stats and can choose from these powers’, you had a wider set of powers that any vamp could take with notes to the effect that ‘Necrarchs often take this’ or ‘this power is popular among prominent members of the Von Carstein dynasty’. It felt less essentialist and more permissive of variation within the bloodlines, which seemed appropriate for beings as long-lived and inevitably individual as vamps. You could have Necrachs who were more along the spell-casting spectrum or ones who were pretty bestial. It wasn’t perfect in its implementation but the principle of working to broad archetypes was a good one.

259732676_Screenshot2021-04-07at10_59_34.png.e692db9205d634c548626084a6e379f9.png

That was part of the 7th ed. turn to free up the bloodlines to be more than just linear descent (though that was there) but also historical cultural constructs. The Lahmian Sisterhood weren’t just everyone descended from Neferata specifically but in fact her cabal of agents. The Order of the Blood Dragon were Harkon’s knightly order rather than absolutely everyone descended from Abhorash. In both cases it could be that 90% of the organisation was made up of vamps with the same lineage and 90% of vamps with a particular lineage might wind up working for Neferata or joining a particular group of blood knights, but it opened the background up and allowed for more creative freedom and interesting character concepts. Lets you have characters like Mundvard the Cruel: a magically potent descendant of W’Soran but a shadowy and manipulative crime lord instead of a reclusive necromancer, and also enmeshed in the power politics of the Von Carstein dynasty.

That breaking of 6th ed’s essentialising (maybe even flanderising?) approach and emphasising that the VC weren’t reducible to five clearcut factions but a host of lineages, traditions, philosophies, political groups was something I really liked, much more than “this blood type = armour, swords, no magic, this specific philosophy and history and character and allegiance”. Feels particularly pertinent for AoS, where emphasis seems to have been placed on the sheer variety of vampiric groups across Shyish and elsewhere. Get three vampires in a room and you’ll have five opinions, and probably some feuds. To my mind bloodlines should not be as particular as e.g. chaos marks or skaven clan allegiance.

Rules-wise I'm not quite sure how exactly that approach would or even could mesh with how AoS approaches factions. A list of powers, fine, I can see that working. Maybe an AA/artefacts/command traits system closer to StD's Ravagers/Cabalists/Idolators/etc style where instead of specific in-universe factions you have rules for broad tendencies. But then the previews seem to be highlighting the Vyrgos/Vyrkos dynasty in particular so who knows...

Edited by sandlemad
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