Soulblight Gravelords News, Rumours and Speculation

[Raptor_Jesues]

imma say big centerpiece (the dragon on the rear?), horsey hero vampire (maybe a named one as well) and wolves. Probably something else from cursed city, that would not hurt

[Aturox]

2 hours ago, BaylorCorvette said:

 

As for what else I think is in the Gravelords line up that we haven't seen, I think Dire Wolves are a safe bet, possibly a new Necromancer model. I don't think there will be any other Cavalry (except for possibly a Hero, would love a Vampire Lord / Blood Knight Hero on Horse). I am hoping for a infantry Vampire unit similar to the Vykos Blood-born. Also a larger more elite unit open too, be it a giant golem type of creature or Vargskyr type. Oh also a center piece model, possible a Vampire Lord (or named Vampire) on Abyssal Terror or something?

I don't think for another couple of weeks. Last one came at around two weeks ago I think.

 

Looking better and better for Gravelords on Monday! 

The humans could be the viewers, but what if its Shyish humans 😁 could fill in some ranged units 🤔

[BaylorCorvette]

9 minutes ago, Aturox said:

The humans could be the viewers, but what if its Shyish humans 😁 could fill in some ranged units 🤔

I've said multiple times that I love what GW has been doing with the 1 in 4 units can be from X. How cool would it be if 1 in 4 units can be Freeguild Guard units and gain the appropriate keywords along with something like "Thrall." Narratively this would represent mortals under the control/influence of Vampires. Game play it opens up options to more things if you want them, including ranged units like Freegild Handgunners  or Grossbowmen. I just have this image in my mind of all these mortals in Shyish that are under the influence of a strong Vampire Lord and are fighting along side. But also from the Black Library novels we know that mortals in Shysh do fight for Nagash, so it would be cool to see that represented in some way.

[Sception]

At this point I wouldn't count on anything we haven't seen, or even everything we have seen.  GW is apparently going through some extremely difficult production pipeline problems, likely a confluence of covid, brexit, and boat in the canal issues, though it's hard to say what exactly is going on because right now they're just lying to the public about it.  This seems to be hitting Warhammer Quest: Cursed City the hardest.  GW has seemingly cancelled future production runs of Cursed City itself as well as expansions to it, and now they're trying to pretend that Cursed City was always meant to be a limited run release - which was obviously not the case - and that no expansions to it were ever intended - despite the rule books in Cursed City saying to watch out for future expansions.

This is potentially a big problem for the Gravelords due to how closely integrated Cursed City apparently was to the new Gravelord faction.  Kritza and Annika for instance were both clearly originally intended as expansions to Cursed City, but now Cursed City isn't getting any expansions.  Will these models then be cancelled outright?  Except we know that Kritza at least, and probably both of them, was also intended to be part of the Soulblight Gravelords release.  He was shown along with other AoS gravelord stuff in the big faction reveal, so presumably he was meant to be in the battletome.  Annika probably was too.  Maybe several of the Cursed City box set guys as well - Gorslav, Radukar, Vargskyr, Blood Borne, etc.

Were a bunch of Cursed City heroes and units also going to have printed warscrolls in the Battle Tome, only for their model runs to be prematurely cancelled along with the entire Cursed City range?  We know GW doesn't like to have rules in their faction books for units that they haven't released yet, not since (and I may have details wrong, this was a while ago and I wasn't paying super close attention) the tyranid codex way back when that introduced Tervigons without models ready to go, resulting in 3rd parties selling their own and GW losing a lawsuit to shut them down since they didn't have their own version on the market for the 3rd party sites to be stealing sales from.

While their have been some notable recent exceptions over in 40k, for the most part GW is so averse to releasing faction books with rules for as yet unreleased models that they ended up printing two entirely separate lumineth battletomes in under a year despite the fact that they must have known the second wave was already in the near future when the first book shipped.

So that leads us to a possible scenario where GW plans Cursed City as a new big season of Warhammer Quest - like Blackstone Fortress before it - with significant expansions planned, all with close integration to the new Soulblight Gravelords faction.  Units and characters in Cursed City are intended as part of the Gravelords faction as well, and get their own battlescrolls in the gravelords faction book.  Except, right as they're gearing up for release they get hammered by a series of powerful blows to their supply lines and it becomes clear they have to cut production way way back.  Entire games have to go, and Warhammer Quest cursed city gets the axe.  No more expansions for it.  Even stuff they've already previewed has to be axed entirely, and the already released stuff in the Cursed City core box is now completely out of print with no intent to go back to it for the foreseeable future.

And since they refuse to print a battletome with rules for a bunch of heroes and units that they no longer intend to sell, the entire first print run of the battletome has to be scrapped, hastilly rewritten to remove not only all the cursed city units but also all but the most oblique reference to Ulfenkarn even existing.  The entire faction gets delayed as a result, and when it does release it does so with far fewer new kits than previously expected.

...

I'm not saying this is definitely what's happening.  But something screwy is going on with Cursed City, and the obvious lie that it was never intended for continuous support and never intended to have any expansions at all is a pretty bad sign for the gravelords considering how integrated the new faction seemed to be with the Cursed City line.

Edited April 27, 2021 by Sception

[Sception]

12 minutes ago, BaylorCorvette said:

I've said multiple times that I love what GW has been doing with the 1 in 4 units can be from X.

Personally I hate the 1 in 4 business.  The game already has rules for allies.  This is needless complexity for its own sake.

[Aturox]

9 minutes ago, Sception said:

At this point I wouldn't count on anything we haven't seen, or even everything we have seen.  GW is apparently going through some extremely difficult production pipeline problems, likely a confluence of covid, brexit, and boat in the canal issues, though it's hard to say what exactly is going on because right now they're just lying to the public about it.  This seems to be hitting Warhammer Quest: Cursed City the hardest.  GW has seemingly cancelled future production runs of Cursed City itself as well as expansions to it, and now they're trying to pretend that Cursed City was always meant to be a limited run release - which was obviously not the case - and that no expansions to it were ever intended - despite the rule books in Cursed City saying to watch out for future expansions.

This is potentially a big problem for the Gravelords due to how closely integrated Cursed City apparently was to the new Gravelord faction.  Kritza and Annika for instance were both clearly originally intended as expansions to Cursed City, but now Cursed City isn't getting any expansions.  Will these models then be cancelled outright?  Except we know that Kritza at least, and probably both of them, was also intended to be part of the Soulblight Gravelords release.  He was shown along with other AoS gravelord stuff in the big faction reveal, so presumably he was meant to be in the battletome.  Annika probably was too.  Maybe several of the Cursed City box set guys as well - Gorslav, Radukar, Vargskyr, Blood Borne, etc.

Were a bunch of Cursed City heroes and units also going to have printed warscrolls in the Battle Tome, only for their model runs to be prematurely cancelled along with the entire Cursed City range?  We know GW doesn't like to have rules in their faction books for units that they haven't released yet, not since (and I may have details wrong, this was a while ago and I wasn't paying super close attention) the tyranid codex way back when that introduced Tervigons without models ready to go, resulting in 3rd parties selling their own and GW losing a lawsuit to shut them down since they didn't have their own version on the market for the 3rd party sites to be stealing sales from.

While their have been some notable recent exceptions over in 40k, for the most part GW is so averse to releasing faction books with rules for as yet unreleased models that they ended up printing two entirely separate lumineth battletomes in under a year despite the fact that they must have known the second wave was already in the near future when the first book shipped.

So that leads us to a possible scenario where GW plans Cursed City as a new big season of Warhammer Quest - like Blackstone Fortress before it - with significant expansions planned, all with close integration to the new Soulblight Gravelords faction.  Units and characters in Cursed City are intended as part of the Gravelords faction as well, and get their own battlescrolls in the gravelords faction book.  Except, right as they're gearing up for release they get hammered by a series of powerful blows to their supply lines and it becomes clear they have to cut production way way back.  Entire games have to go, and Warhammer Quest cursed city gets the axe.  No more expansions for it.  Even stuff they've already previewed has to be axed entirely, and the already released stuff in the Cursed City core box is now completely out of print with no intent to go back to it for the foreseeable future.

And since they refuse to print a battletome with rules for a bunch of heroes and units that they no longer intend to sell, the entire first print run of the battletome has to be scrapped, hastilly rewritten to remove not only all the cursed city units but also all but the most oblique reference to Ulfenkarn even existing.  The entire faction gets delayed as a result, and when it does release it does so with far fewer new kits than previously expected.

...

I'm not saying this is definitely what's happening.  But something screwy is going on with Cursed City, and the obvious lie that it was never intended for continuous support and never intended to have any expansions at all is a pretty bad sign for the gravelords considering how integrated the new faction seemed to be with the Cursed City line.

They could release the units on their own if this is an issue 🤔 And future releases wont be in there anyway i guess..

Lets hope for the best not the worst 🥳

[Nightseer2012]

11 minutes ago, Sception said:

Personally I hate the 1 in 4 business.  The game already has rules for allies.  This is needless complexity for its own sake.

I actually prefer the 1/4 to the allies rules in a lot of cases.  At least the 1/4 gets some synergy in your armies.  Honestly I don't like a lot of allies that GW pre-allow for us anyway.  I may have a chip on my shoulder about allies rules already.  Who gets who as allies, and it not having any consistency with who is allies with who in the lore, etc etc.  Just let the Grand Alliances ally or something.  It isn't like anyone is using Grand Alliance Allegiances anyway.  I would love to play GA Death, it would actually encourage me to buy more models, but unless 3.0 gives them a facelift, weird faction alliances (or lack thereof), is what we get.

I would love 1/4 CoS as thralls.  Duarding, Aelf, or Human thralls in a Soulblight army sounds super thematic.

[Sception]

1 minute ago, Aturox said:

They could release the units on their own if this is an issue 🤔 And future releases wont be in there anyway i guess..

Lets hope for the best not the worst 🥳

If they could release the units at all, they wouldn't have cancelled the cursed city expansions in the first place.  The problem ~seems~ to be production pipeline issues.  They literally cannot get as many models produced and distributed as they had previously planned, so they have to cancel several releases outright, and cursed city got the axe - which is bad news for gravelords who were likely sharing a significant portion of their new range with cursed city.  Hard to say for sure if that's what's going on because GW isn't being honest about it.  But it doesn't look like models were cancelled because cursed city died, it looks like the opposite.  Cursed city died because they had to cancel the models.

If that's what's going on, then we'll still get blood knights, fell bats, probably new skeletons & zombies.  But the faction might end up delayed to make time to reprint the battletome without cursed city stuff.  And we might never get Kritza or Annika, might never get AoS rules for gravekeepers or Vargskyrs or Blood-born or ogre zombies outside of the slapdash warscrolls that came in Cursed City.  If they're actually looking for potential releases they can drop without causing a fuss, we might also not see the new dire wolves people have been speculating about, or indeed anything we haven't already seen.

[pixieproxy]

7 minutes ago, Sception said:

If they could release the units at all, they wouldn't have cancelled the cursed city expansions in the first place.  The problem ~seems~ to be production pipeline issues.  They literally cannot get as many models produced and distributed as they had previously planned, so they have to cancel several releases outright, and cursed city got the axe - which is bad news for gravelords who were likely sharing a significant portion of their new range with cursed city.  Hard to say for sure if that's what's going on because GW isn't being honest about it.  But it doesn't look like models were cancelled because cursed city died, it looks like the opposite.  Cursed city died because they had to cancel the models.

If that's what's going on, then we'll still get blood knights, fell bats, probably new skeletons & zombies.  But the faction might end up delayed to make time to reprint the battletome without cursed city stuff.  And we might never get Kritza or Annika, might never get AoS rules for gravekeepers or Vargskyrs or Blood-born or ogre zombies outside of the slapdash warscrolls that came in Cursed City.  If they're actually looking for potential releases they can drop without causing a fuss, we might also not see the new dire wolves people have been speculating about, or indeed anything we haven't already seen.

If that were the case they would have removed the articles for Kritza and Annika for a start, which they also still have referenced in new Soulblight Articles, which while they have links to Ulfenkarn, were not necessarily Cursed City expansion releases. Says that nowhere in those articles either.

Also, all the models IN Cursed City are push-fit, if we are getting those models, especially of bloodborn or Vargskyr, they'd likely be multi-part releases never intended for the side game(s) at all. Not to mention that Cursed City was meant to release WAY before we'd even have known of the Soulblight tome (which the only reason we knew about so early in Jan was because of a leak, CC was supposed to be released in November according to some stuff in it). I think you're doomsaying a bit here mate.

[warhammernerd]

Alright alright calm down people 

[Aturox]

14 minutes ago, Sception said:

If they could release the units at all, they wouldn't have cancelled the cursed city expansions in the first place.  The problem ~seems~ to be production pipeline issues.  They literally cannot get as many models produced and distributed as they had previously planned, so they have to cancel several releases outright, and cursed city got the axe - which is bad news for gravelords who were likely sharing a significant portion of their new range with cursed city.  Hard to say for sure if that's what's going on because GW isn't being honest about it.  But it doesn't look like models were cancelled because cursed city died, it looks like the opposite.  Cursed city died because they had to cancel the models.

If that's what's going on, then we'll still get blood knights, fell bats, probably new skeletons & zombies.  But the faction might end up delayed to make time to reprint the battletome without cursed city stuff.  And we might never get Kritza or Annika, might never get AoS rules for gravekeepers or Vargskyrs or Blood-born or ogre zombies outside of the slapdash warscrolls that came in Cursed City.  If they're actually looking for potential releases they can drop without causing a fuss, we might also not see the new dire wolves people have been speculating about, or indeed anything we haven't already seen.

Wasnt it about the printed stuff that had issues? Then i maybe got it wrong... Thats why i didnt see it as a problem😉

I am completly fine with the stuff that already got revealed.. and there is still stuff coming in addition to that. And if the  rumour of the flesheaters getting included is true there is still some more variety. But i guess we have to wait till next week

Edited April 27, 2021 by Aturox

[warhammernerd]

2 minutes ago, pixieproxy said:

I think you're doomsaying a bit here mate.

This. 
It’s getting a little bit David Ike in here.

[warhammernerd]

Just now, Aturox said:

And if the  rumour of the flesheaters getting included is true there is still some more variety.

This is baseless wish listing. Unless I’ve been living under a rock, there has been absolutely nothing evidencing this even being a possibility.

[Lich King]

I agree - I don’t think they’re canceling all of these models and scrapping pages of books. Plastic, after all, is the lifeblood of GW- they will release just models separately without any side game book expansion if necessary. Also - Cursed city does not dictate Soulblight. Soulblight Gravelords will have everything encompassed in it. Otherwise they would make an official statement and say “Annika or Kritza” will no longer be available due to a scheduling conflict.

[warhammernerd]

I’ve also not seen anything anywhere confining that Cursed City will never have any expansions going forwards. Nothing. 
The insinuation that GW would as some sort of drastic measure burn, melt, scrap or landfill tons of models and whole ranges because of delays in shopping or production, are also, sorry to say a bit mental. 
Hold tight people, we will get our shiny new toys. In time. Perhaps with a bit of delay, perhaps two books in quick succession, but they will come. 
 

 

Edited April 27, 2021 by warhammernerd

[warhammernerd]

2 minutes ago, Lich King said:

Also - Cursed city does not dictate Soulblight.

Exactly. 
It’s it’s own thing. If anything it’s a gateway to other game’s, i.e. AoS. They wouldn’t scrap AoS stuff because a boxed game had stock issues.

[Feii]

1 hour ago, Sception said:

If they could release the units at all, they wouldn't have cancelled the cursed city expansions in the first place.  The problem ~seems~ to be production pipeline issues.  They literally cannot get as many models produced and distributed as they had previously planned, so they have to cancel several releases outright, and cursed city got the axe - which is bad news for gravelords who were likely sharing a significant portion of their new range with cursed city.  Hard to say for sure if that's what's going on because GW isn't being honest about it.  But it doesn't look like models were cancelled because cursed city died, it looks like the opposite.  Cursed city died because they had to cancel the models.

If that's what's going on, then we'll still get blood knights, fell bats, probably new skeletons & zombies.  But the faction might end up delayed to make time to reprint the battletome without cursed city stuff.  And we might never get Kritza or Annika, might never get AoS rules for gravekeepers or Vargskyrs or Blood-born or ogre zombies outside of the slapdash warscrolls that came in Cursed City.  If they're actually looking for potential releases they can drop without causing a fuss, we might also not see the new dire wolves people have been speculating about, or indeed anything we haven't already seen.

BS. 


There isn't even a release date stapled onto soulblight they have all time in the world to postpone the faction until they can produce more. How did you even get to the production issues? They have just opened a new factory/location and my honest guess is that the printing in china made everything harder and maybe the CC product didnt even qualify as a UK product anymore.

[Sception]

2 hours ago, pixieproxy said:

If that were the case they would have removed the articles for Kritza and Annika for a start, which they also still have referenced in new Soulblight Articles, which while they have links to Ulfenkarn, were not necessarily Cursed City expansion releases. Says that nowhere in those articles either.

Also, all the models IN Cursed City are push-fit, if we are getting those models, especially of bloodborn or Vargskyr, they'd likely be multi-part releases never intended for the side game(s) at all. Not to mention that Cursed City was meant to release WAY before we'd even have known of the Soulblight tome (which the only reason we knew about so early in Jan was because of a leak, CC was supposed to be released in November according to some stuff in it). I think you're doomsaying a bit here mate.

Would they have removed the articles?  The cursed city website is still up, even though cursed city has been 100% closed off and discontinued.  They also haven't taken down or edited warcom articles about cursed city to my knowledge.

Much of the Nighthaunt line is push fit, and several push fit models from previous Warhammer Quest boxes got independent releases for Aos/40k.  I don't think cursed city stuff being push fit is any indication that it wasn't at some point also intended for AoS.

Silver Tower was released well before Tzeentch Arcanites, but was still pretty closely tied to them.  In 40k we're still waiting for the separate Traitor Guard faction release that many feel the Blackstone Fortress game was setting the stage for.   If Cursed City had been intended for an earlier release, that wouldn't in any way contradict the idea that it was setting the stage for Gravelords, or that once planned and now cancelled Cursed City units and expansions wouldn't also have been intended as gravelord releases or been included within the gravelord battletome.  Gravelords might also have been intended for earlier release.  Such might explain how the circumstances arose for the original leak.  Even if they weren't intended for release last year or earlier this year, many people were sure they were slated for April (after all, there was a vampire book release from Black Library this month, and as we all know new AoS factions always come together the novel), and now we know that's not happening.

As for whether this is all baseless doomsaying, I mean, yeah.  That's absolutely what this is.  But we've got a week to kill anyway, and doom saying fills the time as well as anything else.

 

Edited April 27, 2021 by Sception

[Sception]

4 minutes ago, Feii said:

There isn't even a release date stapled onto soulblight they have all time in the world to postpone the faction until they can produce more. How did you even get to the production issues? They have just opened a new factory/location and my honest guess is that the printing in china made everything harder and maybe the CC product didnt even qualify as a UK product anymore.

They DO have all the time to delay, and I'm speculating that just that may be happening, and that part of that delay may be re-printing the battletome to remove cursed city stuff from it that now either isn't getting released (expansions) or isn't getting rereleased (the core box itself).

But regardless, Cursed City was intended for ongoing publication and support in the form of expansions that were previously expected to be integrated into the Soulblight Gravelords line, and now GW is saying the gravelords box is dead, was never intended for ongoing support even though it absolutely was, and there were never intended to be expansions to it, even though there absolutely were.

Something funky is going on, something that killed Cursed City entirely, and given how closely tied cursed city and soulblight gravelords looks it seems rather likely to me that whatever killed cursed city is likely to have negative spillover consequeces into the AoS faction's release as well.

[Lich King]

31 minutes ago, Sception said:

They DO have all the time to delay, and I'm speculating that just that may be happening, and that part of that delay may be re-printing the battletome to remove cursed city stuff from it that now either isn't getting released (expansions) or isn't getting rereleased (the core box itself).

But regardless, Cursed City was intended for ongoing publication and support in the form of expansions that were previously expected to be integrated into the Soulblight Gravelords line, and now GW is saying the gravelords box is dead, was never intended for ongoing support even though it absolutely was, and there were never intended to be expansions to it, even though there absolutely were.

Something funky is going on, something that killed Cursed City entirely, and given how closely tied cursed city and soulblight gravelords looks it seems rather likely to me that whatever killed cursed city is likely to have negative spillover consequeces into the AoS faction's release as well.

If it was a problem with releasing actual models, not just Cursed City box, wouldn’t it spill over into other games? Wouldn’t the new releases for 40k etc be canceled as well. I frankly don’t see that as an option - at worst it will delay the releases which has been the case for months now. They will always initially be a models company.

[Sception]

19 minutes ago, Lich King said:

If it was a problem with releasing actual models, not just Cursed City box, wouldn’t it spill over into other games? Wouldn’t the new releases for 40k etc be canceled as well.

Hasn't it, though?  We're in the middle of a several week new release hiatus, and even before that new orders were taking longer and longer to arrive.  I only just got my underworlds vampire warband preorder.

Whatever the issue is, it may affect the number of new models they're able to produce at a time while still giving them some leeway in deciding what does and doesn't take the hit, forcing priority decisions.  In that event, cursed city and its supplements may have been axed specifically so that they don't have to delay or cancel 40k models.  Or at least don't have to delay them more than they already have.

[Honk]

2 hours ago, Aturox said:

And if the  rumour of the flesheaters getting included is true there is still some more variety.

While the last year has been stressful and the current situation is dire, integrating FEC into SB... no way, step into the wrong direction.

if the problems are as big as stated, I would rather wait another three month for a good and well done release, instead of something with a couple of torn out pages and screwed up rules.
 

And the hick up with the products is one thing, but after the sacred molds have been carved and anointed... plastics has to flow

[Evil Bob]

31 minutes ago, Honk said:

While the last year has been stressful and the current situation is dire, integrating FEC into SB... no way, step into the wrong direction.

I would not pay it any mind Honk.  Someone read some fluff, made the mental connection and suddenly got excited.  Considering GW didn’t even release the LoN until they FAQ’ed GA Death right out of the game.  FEC is still useable albeit sometimes a challenge depending on the meta.  I’d expect a new Nighthaunt book first.

Maybe the pandemic made everyone crazy.  Hyperbole has been pretty intense ever since the OBR release even when the PE doomsday scenario at LVO never materialized.  Part of me would really like it if certain 40K players stayed in that game.  It’s okay to visit but much of the game (and part of the community) has been toxic after 5th edition.

[Feii]

I just dont understand how you end up with - they are printing out new codices over there in china because after they have made molds and printed some models some technical difficulties made them abandon everything and just say F it. 

[Feii]

Can I post a nagash meme here?