Soulblight Gravelords News, Rumours and Speculation

[BaylorCorvette]

4 minutes ago, Liquidsteel said:

Battleline Terrorgheists/Zombie Dragons is fine on it's own, but I reeeeally hope it's not the main gimmick for Avengorii.

I'm coming over from FEC, I didn't play battleline dragons there either.

Unless they really boost the units it could be a bit of a miss.

Agreed. The larger problem is IF Avengorii doesn't get some other good / unique stuff then they will just be overshadowed by Monster Mash in FeC being able to more reliably spike damage.

[warhammernerd]

WOOP! BOOM

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2021/05/12/5-reasons-to-pledge-your-allegiance-to-mannfred-von-carstein/

[warhammernerd]

Love this. Finally, Manfred is decent.

[Doko]

Legion of nigth seem so much more fun and better than kastellai.

Deep strike every unit and not only a cavalry that is useless because they are fast allready,have msu skeletons or zombies saved out only to do the enemy have units doing nothing in their objetives to avoid our deek strike is great.

Also the +1 save in first turn is great for slow melle units as zombies and skelletons.

Finnally a fun and good dinasty after the letdown of kastellai yesterday.

As city of sigmar player i can say gonna be so much fun have tempest eye and living city together in one same dinasty lol

Also manfred if we want gonna can be inmortal in melle and used as screen as morathi 

[lare2]

Has there been any indication yet of a preference for the Wight Kings?

[Ghoooouls]

5 minutes ago, warhammernerd said:

Love this. Finally, Manfred is decent.

Just trolly and a lame rule in my opinion. Kinda disappointed but I'll still try him, just gonna be NPE for certain armies.

[Elmir]

22 hours ago, Raptor_Jesues said:

false, the rule also specify it is a NORMAL move

normal move just means it's made in the movement phase... It's specifically mentioned in the core rules. 

A normal move initiated within 3" of the enemy is a retreat... This rule just allows them to retreat through enemy models and do damage to them while doing so. 

[Gotz]

Just now, lare2 said:

Has there been any indication yet of a preference for the Wight Kings?

I don't think we're going to get a Wight King "bloodline", looks like they're going to be support heroes like necromancers

[warhammernerd]

It’s rad. LoN were easily the worst and least used of the sub factions previously. Pure win and absolutely plays in the lore, Manfred being a sneaky mo-fo and impossible to pin, ambushing units and Vargheists for battle line. Finally. That’s two and two so far Kastellai are really solid and now this. I’m loving all this ambushing action. Best week for Warhammer ever.

[Aren73]

Nah the teleport is pretty good. It means he can't ever die in combat unless you gamble. 

I think it suits him and means you are free to charge him in to buff his magic while not worrying for him. 

Or you can use him as an amazing charge blocker. Pop him in front of your valuable units, forcing enemies to charge him instead. Then teleport him away and counter-charge in your turn. 

It is a very useful rule. 

[El Syf]

Have to say compared to Vhordrai's boys legion of night doesn't do it for me.  Will be good to see what the other Bloodlines offer (and the Nagash holdover faction).

So long as I can get the dice, warscroll cards and book on release I can wait a while for the rest to see how I actually want to build the army. 

I overeacted with the Blood Knights yesterday, pretty happy right now unless they royally shaft Vhordrai on his warscroll.

[warhammernerd]

2 minutes ago, Ghoooouls said:

Just trolly and a lame rule in my opinion. Kinda disappointed but I'll still try him, just gonna be NPE for certain armies.

He is almost certainly still squishy as hell. He falls over to one decent round of shooting and if charged previously he was toast. He is supposed to be the epitome of sneakiness, cunning and underhand tactics. This is wicked and goes a long way to making his actually useable. I only played with previously for lols.

[Ghoooouls]

Just now, Aren73 said:

Nah the teleport is pretty good. It means he can't ever die in combat unless you gamble. 

I think it suits him and means you are free to charge him in to buff his magic while not worrying for him. 

Or you can use him as an amazing charge blocker. Pop him in front of your valuable units, forcing enemies to charge him instead. Then teleport him away and counter-charge in your turn. 

It is a very useful rule. 

This is why I say it's lame and trolly, he is immune to combat now. What some armies will have to ignore him entirely.

[lare2]

1 minute ago, Gotz said:

I don't think we're going to get a Wight King "bloodline", looks like they're going to be support heroes like necromancers

Cool - thanks. Aye, I get the impression Deathrattle are very much going to fall into the support role. Just hoping it's feasible to run a heavy Deathrattle force. 

[Ghoooouls]

Just now, warhammernerd said:

He is almost certainly still squishy as hell. He falls over to one decent round of shooting and if charged previously he was toast. He is supposed to be the epitome of sneakiness, cunning and underhand tactics. This is wicked and goes a long way to making his actually useable. I only played with previously for lols.

Now imagine you're an ironjaws player lol.

He has always been one of my favourite lords in warhammer since the fantasy days, was just hoping for some cool rules to make him useful, not troll rules.

Either way I'm still gonna use him lol.

[warhammernerd]

1 minute ago, Aren73 said:

Nah the teleport is pretty good. It means he can't ever die in combat unless you gamble. 

I think it suits him and means you are free to charge him in to buff his magic while not worrying for him. 

Or you can use him as an amazing charge blocker. Pop him in front of your valuable units, forcing enemies to charge him instead. Then teleport him away and counter-charge in your turn. 

It is a very useful rule. 

Hear hear. It’s super fun and allows so much more strategic play. Your opponent is gonna have a really hard time working out how to deal with him, as they should. He isn’t (until we see otherwise) especially killy, but that’s fine and it isn’t really his style anyways. 

[Sception]

Eh, there's a type of player that loves monster mash.  I don't begrudge the option being in the book, and the Avengorii aren't the /worst/ host for it, even if it wouldn't have been my first choice for them given that literally the first thing we ever learned about them was their connection to and reverence for vargheists specifically.  But yeah, with 5 subfactions I don't begrudge one of them being given over to gristlegore style monster spam, and if they're going to do that I'm not sure which of the others would have fit better.

I just don't think 'everybody gets a unique battleline' is a great concept because not every faction is going to be uniquely associated with a different unit, certainly not in a way that they would use them as the core of their forces.  making a unit battleline implies that the faction runs armies *primarily* comprised of that unit, like instead of zombie hordes and skeletal phalanxes.  And the only place where the implementation seems to fit so far, imo, is with the Kastelai.

The core of mannfreds forces are the skeletal and zombie battleline that he 'baits' enemies into charging.  He then has various units, including varghiests, that swoop in from the flanks.  Outflanking vargheists fits that great.  Battleline varghiests implies that he runs them instead of those skeletons and zombies, which is a neat build for the book to allow, much as with monster mash, flying circus is a fun build concept that I'm glad is supported somewhere in the book.  It just isn't something I specifically think of as associated with mannfred.  But with 'the bait' and the outflanking rules there, at least Legion of the Night can still run the sort of army I mentally associate with them, if you just ignore the battleline vargheists.

Neferata's always focused more on the rich, important, beautiful people.  She doesn't have time or attention for the filthy masses, beast riding are otherwise.  I think her faction rules would have been best served by ensuring she had the strongest and best vampire heroes, even at the cost of letting the actual units, battleline included, fall a bit behind other subfactions.  At the same time, again, I'm not bitter or upset at the way things went.  Much as with Avengorii monster mash, or Legion of the Knight flying circus, while a skeletal cavalry army isn't necessarily what I think of when I think Neferata, it *is* a build that I'm happy to see supported within the book.

...

Kastelai... yeah, that's the blood knight faction in my head, it's the blood knight faction on paper, getting blood knights as battleline is an important part of making that work... they're right on the money in terms of rules and fluff aligning, at least in terms of how I myself see them.

...

Anyway, this is minor griping.  Making units battleline seems to be the most minor part of these subfaction rules.  Yes, Kastelai make blood knights battleline, but the bigger things are that they let them outflank and buff them and other vampire units when they kill things.  Yes, Mannfred makes vargheists battleline, but the bigger things are the buff to early survivability for his hordes and especially letting anything at all outflank and letting your general deep strike.  I'm sure Avengorii does other interesting things beyond monster mash, and I'm looking forward to what Neferata's additional rules are, even if they are mostly a repeat of Legion of Blood.  Legion of blood is already good, after all.  Much like Legion of knight is already cool and fun, so I'm happy to see how much of the current subfaction carried forward there.

All in all, I'm still very hype.

[Aturox]

1 minute ago, lare2 said:

Cool - thanks. Aye, I get the impression Deathrattle are very much going to fall into the support role. Just hoping it's feasible to run a heavy Deathrattle force. 

Wait for neferatas legion it might be more skeleton focused this time:

When they do sally forth from their stronghold in Nulahmia, the Deathrattle legions march in lockstep, in a menacing display of Neferata’s ironclad will. Add the fact that the Legion of Blood can take Black Knights as battleline units, and you have a reliable core of skeletal warriors around which to build your army.

[warhammernerd]

1 minute ago, Ghoooouls said:

This is why I say it's lame and trolly, he is immune to combat now. What some armies will have to ignore him entirely.

I can see that. But, in all fairness it’s not the first or worst case of this. And for my money, I’d rather play against a hard to pin Manfred than a wind up Archaeon any day of the week. I think he will still die, it’s just this time you will have a say when this is. Previously you had no option but to keep him way at the back, picking on puny units only when it was totally safe. This way he will actually be in the action. 

[Aren73]

4 minutes ago, Ghoooouls said:

Now imagine you're an ironjaws player lol.

He has always been one of my favourite lords in warhammer since the fantasy days, was just hoping for some cool rules to make him useful, not troll rules.

Either way I'm still gonna use him lol.

I used to be all for fair matchups and non-broken rules like you. Then I got a bastiladon heavy army in the knee. 

Now, I just want payback.

Edited May 12, 2021 by Aren73

[Sception]

3 minutes ago, Ghoooouls said:

This is why I say it's lame and trolly, he is immune to combat now. What some armies will have to ignore him entirely.

He's immune to normal combat.  A number of melee armies have out of sequence attack phases, though.  Nighthaunts that roll big on the charge, armies that have 'fight at the start of the combat phase' rules, which they can trigger before you get to teleport away on their turn, etc.

Still very trolly, though.  I could see it being obnoxious.

But that's also part of why I love it.  It's just so in character.

[JackStreicher]

7 minutes ago, Ghoooouls said:

trolly

This single word sums up Mannfred’s personality 🤣

[lare2]

3 minutes ago, Aturox said:

neferatas legion

I'd be cool with that. When I used to run Mortarchs, she was always my first choice. 

[warhammernerd]

We have languished in the dark for way too long. Being a faction whose only real winning hand for a long while was spamming Grimghasts with Nagash, literally every other build was pants apart from a couple of outliers such as deathmarch with VLoZD and suicide charging black knights. The list had feel bad written all over it with returning complete units just feeling plain abusive. Now it seems they have toned down the feel bads and FINALLY amped up at least one of two Mortarchs, who is after all supposed to be one of THE arch villains in the game and lore and who played a big part in blowing up the old world. I beseech thee, please bring forth a small degree of Troll play with Manfred who is the ultimate knobhead skeletor type bad guy. It’s win.

[Sception]

Geeze, bait the enemy into charging mannfred, teleport away in their combat phase, and the next turn you're still free to move and easily charge.  The more I think about it, the more I really, really like this rule on mannfred.

Urge to paint... rising......