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Soulblight Gravelords News, Rumours and Speculation


Neil Arthur Hotep

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Well spotted, it's not a terrible change, but an impactful one for sure.

I do like the changes to gravesites so far, I definitely had analysis paralysis with 4 gravesites, though at the same time Legion of Grief was my first 2k army so maybe I'd have fared better nowadays.

Changing it to this, and not a full unit for a CP, is definitely healthier for the game overall.

My hope is that by changing this rule, they can balance the power of the book elsewhere, namely harder hitting/more durable units!

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Anyone happen to randomly have 5 old Brettonian plastic knights in a bits box? Or one for that matter? Looking to add to my existing 25 converted Black Knights which are a new battle line choice in Legion of Blood Dynasty.

 

mmmmmmm 3 x 10 Black Knight units, backed up with 3 units of bloodknights, dogs and a flying Gribbly.
 

These guys have been on my painting back burner for literally a decade now. I am all about running a pure cav army, these blood knights and wolves are gonna me so fun. IF I can find 5 more, lol.

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Edited by warhammernerd
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49 minutes ago, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

Here's a small thing I noticed about the new Endless Legions that has not yet been discussed:

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The mechanic has been changed (clarified?) a bit. The resurrected unit you get from it is now a new unit. It's not 100% clear that this is different from how it worked before, but the old rule at least seems to imply that previously, it was the same unit that came back. The most significant effect his will have is that resurrected units don't keep their battlefield roles anymore for scoring purposes (resurrected zombies and skeletons will not be battleline). Another small thing is that they now lose "for the rest of the game" effects on resurrection.

Overall, a slight nerf, but a good change in so far as it makes the game behave more like people would intuitively expect: Once a unit is destroyed, it does not "remember" what happened to it before while being in the "removed from play" zone. The resurrected unit is just treated as fresh.

Also interesting: The new implementation of the rule suggests that Fell Bats will not be resurrectable through grave sites. Neither will Nighthaunt if we get them natively somehow. I wonder if the bats will keep their summonable keyword or take on a different role this time around.

EDIT:

Also worth noting: As currently written, nothing prevents you from resurrecting the same unit more than once, since the unit you get from this ability is a new one. So you could, for example, charge in 10 Black Knights turn 1, have them die, and resurrect 5 Black Knights turn 2,3,4 and 5.

Are you saying that if the destroyed unit was at it's Minimum size i.e. 5 Black knights...... then it will return at the minimum size rather than with 3?

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1 minute ago, CarkFish said:

Are you saying that if the destroyed unit was at it's Minimum size i.e. 5 Black knights...... then it will return at the minimum size rather than with 3?

No, not exactly. Think of it like this.

Turn 1 your unit of 10 Black Knights dies. We will call it unit A.

Turn 2 you get to resurrect something. You choose unit A. You get 5 Black Knights.

Turn 3 you get to resurrect something. Since resurrection does not "use up" a destroyed unit, you can just select unit A again and get 5 more Black Knights. Your previous replacement unit of 5 Black Knights need not even have been destroyed for you to do this.

If one of your replacement units of 5 Black Knights dies (let's call it unit B), you get the choice of choosing unit A or unit B for resurrection. But since unit A will always bring back more models, you should always choose that one.

You can think of it like this: The smallest size a resurrected unit can be is half the size of the original unit that you included during list building which got destroyed at some point. Because once they are destroyed, they remain a legal target for resurrection. Even if they have been previously resurrected and their replacement unit is still on the battlefield.

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13 minutes ago, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

No, not exactly. Think of it like this.

Turn 1 your unit of 10 Black Knights dies. We will call it unit A.

Turn 2 you get to resurrect something. You choose unit A. You get 5 Black Knights.

Turn 3 you get to resurrect something. Since resurrection does not "use up" a destroyed unit, you can just select unit A again and get 5 more Black Knights. Your previous replacement unit of 5 Black Knights need not even have been destroyed for you to do this.

If one of your replacement units of 5 Black Knights dies (let's call it unit B), you get the choice of choosing unit A or unit B for resurrection. But since unit A will always bring back more models, you should always choose that one.

You can think of it like this: The smallest size a resurrected unit can be is half the size of the original unit that you included during list building which got destroyed at some point. Because once they are destroyed, they remain a legal target for resurrection. Even if they have been previously resurrected and their replacement unit is still on the battlefield.

Yeah you’re right, that makes the ability much better.

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37 minutes ago, Liquidsteel said:

Well spotted, it's not a terrible change, but an impactful one for sure.

I do like the changes to gravesites so far, I definitely had analysis paralysis with 4 gravesites, though at the same time Legion of Grief was my first 2k army so maybe I'd have fared better nowadays.

Changing it to this, and not a full unit for a CP, is definitely healthier for the game overall.

My hope is that by changing this rule, they can balance the power of the book elsewhere, namely harder hitting/more durable units!

Personally, I like that the new ability just happens. It matches really well with the play style I was going for previously (Death March), where you try to get an impactful suicide charge early. That seems to be a good way to use the new ability: Charge something in quickly with the expectation that it will die, and have the threat of a free "deep strike" from your gravesites every turn. I think if you play aggressively, you can expect 2-3 free summons per game.

Although there are a few conditions on this ability, if you don't fulfill them you are generally in a strong position anyway. None of your units died? Great, seems like you are winning. The opponent is blocking your grave sites? They are probably out of position, then.

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It also makes hordes much more viable. 

You just run one max strength unit, have it die as soon as you can and then keep spawning half-strength versions of it for the rest of the game. 

Welcome to my 30-zombies-per-turn summoning party. 

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True, but before we get ahead of ourselves remember that it only triggers if and when an enemy unit is destroyed that turn. And, you're looking at max one summoned unit a turn. Which means for example, if you managed to smash 3 units on a turn whilst you are very likely to bring back one of yours at half strength, you first need to have lost a unit and secondly it only happens on the turn in which you destroyed their units. So, it wont be each turn. I suspect it will work out that you get 1 to 2 half strength units back a game. Which is still rad.

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Nah, it triggers every turn on a 5+ regardless. 

Killing enemy units only makes it easier to achieve. 

I bet there is a spell/trait/artefact that improves on it too. 

Turn 1 get your horde in their face, however you can. Hopefully it will die in their turn or even better in your combat turn 2. Then immediately bring it back at half strength. 

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1 minute ago, Aren73 said:

Nah, it triggers every turn on a 5+ regardless. 

This.

 

But guys remeber that those rules blurbs can be edited somewhat by Warcom team. Full rule could very well include restriction on returning any unit only once per game it's just not shown. So we have to wait to get full picture

 

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1 minute ago, Boar said:

But guys remeber that those rules blurbs can be edited somewhat by Warcom team. Full rule could very well include restriction on returning any unit only once per game it's just not shown. So we have to wait to get full picture

Do you have an example of this happening recently? I have not been paying super close attention to other allegiance ability previews, so I don't know how much they edit these things. I always thought they just pasted rules text from the books.

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Ok.... Max Unit of Skellies/Zombies + Soulscream Bridge = Possible fastest way to get our slow tarpit in close without other "deploy from another board edge" shenanigans again.  My bridge has always done pretty well, and it will be much more beneficial to get a tar pit like zombie or skellies in fast that some others.  Just because when they die, 30 recurring zombies or 20 recurring skellies can oppress an objective better than say, 5 black knights can. 

Noticing a grim downside for Endless in my opinion.  They resurrected units show up during OUR battleshock, so the opponent has a whole turn to deal to this new, but half strength unit (unless you double turn, but meh).  Depending on who you are fighting, giving them a whole turn to fight a half strength unit is more than enough time.  I guess it is just another case of forcing your opponent to waste resources fighting a unit they have already killed, rather than expecting this new unit to actually perform well on its own.

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Or again - this new unit doesn't have to necessarily fight. It can just sit on an objective. 

It finally dawned on me (for whatever reason, I must've not been thinking) that it's not just zombies and skeletons. It is also black knights and graveguard (presumably). Resurrecting those seems fun. 

Also I'm assuming you can change the loadout when you resurrect them, seeing as it's a replacement unit. So you yeet up a large block of great weapon grave guard and then spawn a unit of sword and board graveguard back on your objectives.

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22 minutes ago, Nightseer2012 said:

They resurrected units show up during OUR battleshock, so the opponent has a whole turn to deal to this new, but half strength unit (unless you double turn, but meh).

Very true! I think this shifts the "use" of Endless Legions. Currently we can pull a whole destroyed unit out of a grave for 1 CP. In numerous games I resurrected my 20 Grave Guard (that's what? 280p every time?) to crash them into my opponent's lines again. 

But now we only get half the unit back and it's at the end of our turn. Which shifts the ability - in my view at least - to a much more defensive option. I strongly assume that we will have 4 graves (the article only mentions 2 but the Warscroll cards have 4 graveside markers). It will be hard to deploy the recycled unit on a foreward grave. So instead we will likely set up our 20 Skelletons etc. on a grave more in our territoy. That way the new unit is somewhat safe from the enemy and can hold a home objective.

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43 minutes ago, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

Do you have an example of this happening recently? I have not been paying super close attention to other allegiance ability previews, so I don't know how much they edit these things. I always thought they just pasted rules text from the books.

I don't exactly remeber when just that sometimes there is more to the rules in question, as in pasting only fragment. Some endless spell from LRL had just part of the rules, same with some SoB ability.

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Oh so I just twigged, that the unit that is destroyed keeps coming back half strength, so 60 zombies becomes 30, and if that 30 dies you bring back the original unit as another 30.

In my head it would have gone 60-30-15-8.

This is better!

 

Also the fact that it's battleshock phase means you can use it to re-screen ahead of your opponents turn, or if you get the double, that unit can move and isn't restricted to a 9" charge.

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12 minutes ago, Liquidsteel said:

60 zombies becomes 30, and if that 30 dies you bring back the original unit as another 30.

Or even if that 30 doesn't die. You can pull out 30 new zombies every time that ability triggers, regardless of whether the replacement unit is still on the field.

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Probably worth throwing my usual comment in.  The WarCom website is notorious for giving us slightly incorrect rules.  We also don't know the exact interaction until we get the battletome in front of us, it may be there's an additional clarification text or examples that we've not seen yet.

It's always worth waiting for the FAQ for clarifications (give them a month rather than 2 weeks).  The term "replacement unit" is a new one for us.  The way I read it is that I replace a destroyed unit with a new half strength one - that means I cannot summon it a second time because it's been replaced (also being pedantic the destroyed unit has one model in because the rest are dead and it doesn't clarify to use the starting size 🤣).

I'm hoping to see abilities and artefacts that can boost the dice roll and possible summon bonus units.

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15 minutes ago, RuneBrush said:

The term "replacement unit" is a new one for us.

Yeah, I wonder if that text will receive a defined meaning in the Gravelords tome. Perhaps even in the next edition core rules. It would probably be a good idea to define general rules for resurrection mechanics.

4 minutes ago, Lich King said:


 

what base size do you reckon that is ?

Hard to tell. Judging by those paint pots nearby, maybe standard cavalry bases like before.

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