Soulblight Gravelords News, Rumours and Speculation

[Boar]

2 minutes ago, Aren73 said:

And before anyone comes at me for saying GW author was lazy: it's their job, they get paid to do this, there are expectations that they do a good job.

So what was the time allocated to this? I ask because surely you wouldn't call someone lazy on a whim, right?

[Sception]

Having slept on it, my biggest complaint about these rules is the main allegiance rules.  The Legions of Nagash rules were tailored to the endles.... Legions... of Nagash.  They feel right for a hodge podge undead army focused on necromancers, necromancy, and the Great Necromancer in particular.  And, yeah, while the LoN rules were nowhere near overpowered in modern AoS, as demonstrated by the books low participation rate and win rate in tourneys even back before covid, they did admittedly lead to some feel bads.

These rules shouldn't have been toned down - again the faction's already on the weaker end from an objective sense.  No, these rules should have been /abandoned/.  Not weaker gravesites - no gravesites.  Not weaker endless legions - no endless legions.  Not weaker versions of the same spells - a new spell lore altogether.  Not weaker invocations - if invocations have to change then abandon them completely as well.

Not only would this get rid of the existing feelbad rules in one fell swoop, just rip that bandaid right off, it also would have created the necessary room to design entirely new main faction allegiance abilities to fit the dramatic rebrand of the faction.  IE - vampire traits  Abilities to make the vampires in your vampire army more powerful, more unique, more of a focus of the book's core identity and combat style.  A new vampyric spell lore that makes vampires more interesting and effective as casters.  Pehaps ditch the locus for an ability that allows vampires to feed on magic - empowering them when they cast or unbind spells and empowering they're magic abilities when they're surrounded by the bloodshed of melee.

...

Instead the allegiance rules are 'LoN but weaker,' sometimes much weaker.  Grave sites that don't heal, 1/turn half strength die roll dependent endless legions - yes it doesn't require a command ability or put positioning requirements on your general but its still much much weaker, invocations that can't stack from multiple heroes to heal the same unit, wholly within deathless minions.  The latter was expected, yes, but still undeniably weaker than the version of the ability that the previous already weak version of this faction had to work with.  A vampire lore, already the weaker lore, made much weaker yet.

So on top of the already disappointing decision not to rewrite the allegiance rules from the ground up to help bring the new faction branding to life, you also have the disappointment of the already weak faction getting across the board weaker faction rules.

Now, that second disappointment could have been made up for with better rules on the warscrolls themselves.  And, arguably, in some places they were.  Blood Knights, grave guard, mannfred, vhordrai, zombies, & coven thrones all seemed to get better.  You can have a debate over whether they got better enough to not be a net nerf from the changes to the allegiance abilities, but that's an honest debate to have.  Some of the new stuff looks ok.  Radubeast after you remember that he comes with a unit of dire wolves.  Volga looks ok.  Vyrkos also seems to have the best all round subfaction abilities.

But several things got worse, including units that didn't seem to deserve it.  Wight kings, black knights, dire wolves outside of radu/vulga lists, vampire lords, VLOZD, arguably the mortis engine (no longer debuffs enemy casting, no longer heals your units when you pop the reliquary, costs more, in exchange slightly longer range and bravery independent screams).

It's certainly not the across the board dramatic buffs that would more than compensate for the allegiance ability nerfs to raise the faction overall.  But these changes would have been fine had the allegiance rules either stayed the same.

...

Or, to circle back to the first point, if the LoN allegiance abilities had been abandoned out right, making a clean break and allowing an entire new set of allegiance abilities to be introduce without the baggage LoN carried that resulted in the current nerfs.

 

But oh, well.  To end on a more positive note, there are several units with improvements, and I am getting more excited about running a LoN style list with some zombies and a corpse cart and some outflanking business and trollfred.  I don't know or especially care if that's viable or if I ever win a game, it just sounds kind of fun.

Likewise Lauka plus a bunch of monsters sounds fun - if not something I'm prepared to buy into, not with the hobby and painting hassle that the GW TG/ZD represents, much as I do like that kit.

Likewise Vhordrai + some blood knights sounds like it can slap pretty hard.  I'm again not likely to buy into it, but if I had a bunch of converted blood knights sitting around already I'd be excited to try it.

Likewise Vyrkos lists with Volga and the Beast and some wolves.  And vyrkos in general seems to have some decent subfaction rules for just generic vamp count armies.

 

There's fun games to be had here.  Maybe even some winning games.  It's not all bad.  And we still haven't seen neferata or skeletons, both of which should hopefully end up in the 'better than now' pile.  Though I'm admittedly not super confident about skeletons with the max size decrease.  We'll see though.

[Aren73]

Just now, Boar said:

So what was the time allocated to this? I ask because surely you wouldn't call someone lazy on a whim, right?

No, you do make a good point, perhaps they were allocated inadequate time to complete the job that's fair enough. 

But that's still a failing of GW - just one of a different kind. In that case it's a management and timeline issue, there should have been adequate time allocated to this project. You think as a fan I wouldn't mind waiting an extra 6 months to make sure the book comes out great? 

But yes, you do make a valid point, saying lazy is inaccurate and perhaps it's not the fault of the author. Nonetheless I put primary responsibility on them, I find it most likely the case that they dropped the ball. I do appreciate though that as with many failings, there are a lot of factors at play. 

[GutrotSpume]

8 minutes ago, Aren73 said:

Just realising how lazy the writing is...the warscrolls have been just tweaked. We have some new allegiance abilities. We didn't even get faction terrain or endless spells....daaamn. 

The modeling team were working their asses off to make amazing models and then the rules team delivers this. 

And before anyone comes at me for saying GW author was lazy: it's their job, they get paid to do this, there are expectations that they do a good job. Here it feels like someone did the bare minimum. 

A perfect example of this laziness is the Wolf dynasty having an alliegance ability that makes them re-roll casting 🤷🏻‍♂️ Why don’t they have an alliegence ability that buffs Dire Wolves?!

[Sception]

20 minutes ago, Evil Bob said:

Is 40x Zombies and a Corpse Cart going to work with this wholly within 12”?  I haven’t wanted to use them since 6th edition but the urge has returned.

Deploy the zombies in a horseshoe and you can put a corpse cart & even a hero or two in the middle, keep 12" on everything.  You won't be buffing multiple units that way, but you can definitely keep one max unit in the aura.

That said, with max unit 40, low speed, next to nill save, and dramatically reduced healing, there's a lot of opponents who are going to have a pretty easy time sweeping those zombies off the table before they have a chance to do anything.

[Feii]

755 for all CC models and can be played only in the big group is such a lame decision that was most likely made before CC had its problems. 
 

 

instead of giving people a bad option to play their favouritr amazing sculpts just dont let them play with them at all. 

[Beliman]

5 minutes ago, Aren73 said:

Just realising how lazy the writing is...the warscrolls have been just tweaked. We have some new allegiance abilities. We didn't even get faction terrain or endless spells....daaamn. 

The modeling team were working their asses off to make amazing models and then the rules team delivers this. 

And before anyone comes at me for saying GW author was lazy: it's their job, they get paid to do this, there are expectations that they do a good job. Here it feels like someone did the bare minimum. 

You already made clear your point (making jokes about some warscrolls, saying that this is a lazy battletome and now moving to people that worked on it) and I think that everyone in this forum knows what you think. But I'm not sure what you want to accomplish.

Imho, I suggest to focus on the good abilities and units, maybe try to make some lists and see what sinergies can you use. It's healtier!! 😉

[Boar]

10 minutes ago, Aren73 said:

But that's still a failing of GW - just one of a different kind. In that case it's a management and timeline issue, there should have been adequate time allocated to this project. You think as a fan I wouldn't mind waiting an extra 6 months to make sure the book comes out great? 

Yeah blaming GW as a whole is different. And if you f.ex. think that scrolls are unimaginative that's your prerogative to criticise that.

But how "imaginative" shall we say should warcrolls for battleline be? I feel that people just want more rules, not taking into account f.ex. accessibility of game, just a thing to consider.

Edited May 13, 2021 by Boar

[CarkFish]

28 minutes ago, Frowny said:

Can someone PM me the leaks? or where I might find them?

Anyone looking should be able to find them on Hey Whoa's twitch page... the video is still up. Although you may have to skip to the final 1/4 of the video

[Aren73]

1 minute ago, Beliman said:

You already made clear your point (making jokes about some warscrolls, saying that this is a lazy battletome and now moving to people that worked on it) and I think that everyone in this forum knows what you think. But I'm not sure what you want to accomplish.

Imho, I suggest to focus on the good abilities and units, maybe try to make some lists and see what sinergies can you use. It's healtier!! 😉

Ah you're probably right, I have whined enough...
I'm getting it out of my system now so I can move on with enjoying the faction  
And tbf I did start a conversation about army building, it just all of a sudden struck me that on top of the disappointing rules we're also not getting terrain or endless spells. 

But you are right, it's all been said and frankly, despite my criticism I'm here for the long run (perhaps that's why I complained so much!). I am sticking with this faction, good rules or no, because they are just cool. 

I changed my order of a ltd. ed book and cards to a normal book and blood knights and I am excited to craft some fun lists to play. 

[Beliman]

14 minutes ago, GutrotSpume said:

A perfect example of this laziness is the Wolf dynasty having an alliegance ability that makes them re-roll casting 🤷🏻‍♂️ Why don’t they have an alliegence ability that buffs Dire Wolves?!

BUt they already buff dire wolves (+1 to wound) and have heroes with similar movement (8" and 10") to go with them.

My only issue is not the rerolls casting, is that Kritza and Annika are not wizzards... that's a bit strange (common, they are Vampire Heroes and Vampire Lords can throw some magic 😭).

Edited May 13, 2021 by Beliman

[GutrotSpume]

Just now, Beliman said:

BUt they already buff dire wolves (+1 to wound) and have heroes with similar movement (8" and 10") to go with them

Ahhh my apologises I read that as deadwalker zombies!

[Sception]

Oh, I'd definitely say it's not the fault of the author.  To have consistently good rules, you'd need a rhobust playtesting & QA team, and a dev cycle with multiple revisions.  Author makes rules - QA says these are strong or weak against current meta, feel good or bad to play with & against, go back to dev for adjustments, repeat 2 or 3 times.

I don't believe there are just two authors, but there two seem to be two different dev philosophies when writing the first draft of the book which are personified by the 'sin guy / bin guy' meme.  Sin guy lets their imagination run wild, writes wacky rules to represent the ideas of the book, the more a unit catches their fancy the more elaborate their implementation, resulting in extreme internal balance differences, often some really op stuff, but that wouldn't matter at all if they had that QA team and revision process, because first draft *should* be about wild ideas.  bin guy knows they *don't* have that QA team and revision process, so they try to reign in their ideas as much as possible, don't rock the boat, make minimal to no changes on war scrolls, etc etc.  They often end up overshooting in their conservatism, holding back more then necessary, reigning back so hard they make negative progress or nerf already bad options.  Again though, if they had that rhobust QA team and revision process their overly conservative instincts could be counterbalanced by feedback from others.

But all that would require a slower dev process for rules, which means slowing down the rate of new models.  Unacceptable to GW.  It also means spending more money on rules development - you'd have to hire those QA testers and pay for those revision rounds, and GW is a model company, not a game company, so that's likewise unacceptable.  In fact, much as it's a meme and I think they have more people working on AoS rules dev, it wouldn't be at all unbelieavable if they literally had only two rules writers and expected them to each come back with a new battletome or campaign expansion ruleset after every weekend.  It would also mean more eyes on the project while it's under development, which inevitably means more leaks, and more chances for third party companies to rush out their own version of a new unit GW is working on before their own version's gone to market.  Or for leaks of a pre-revision product to hit consumers setting false expectations of what the post revision version will look like.

Maybe for these reasons, maybe for others, GW doens't do the play testing and revision that consistently solid rules would require no matter who was writing them.  Instead they just release first draft rules and 'fix it in post' via errata or faq if anything is so problematic that it threatens the rest of the game.

So yeah, the author is not to blame for any of this.  Neither is the Lumineth author to blame for that mess.  Nor the sylvaneth & beast authors, etc etc.  They're probably not the ones making these decisions.

And as sub par as I think the overall balance of this book is - and as much as I wish the author had been more bold, particularly in ditching the LoN allegiance rules wholesale to make way for something more fitting the new faction branding (and less burdened by the history and baggage that led to the new version of the LoN rules being so dramatically watered down), there are still several interesting ideas in here.  More than enough to show that the author could have produced something perfectly fine if they had that QA team and revision process that any author would need.

[Boar]

17 minutes ago, Sception said:

These rules shouldn't have been toned down - again the faction's already on the weaker end from an objective sense.  No, these rules should have been /abandoned/.  Not weaker gravesites - no gravesites.  Not weaker endless legions - no endless legions.  Not weaker versions of the same spells - a new spell lore altogether.  Not weaker invocations - if invocations have to change then abandon them completely as well.

Not only would this get rid of the existing feelbad rules in one fell swoop, just rip that bandaid right off, it also would have created the necessary room to design entirely new main faction allegiance abilities to fit the dramatic rebrand of the faction.  IE - vampire traits  Abilities to make the vampires in your vampire army more powerful, more unique, more of a focus of the book's core identity and combat style. 

Interesting take. Have to agree

19 minutes ago, Sception said:

But several things got worse, including units that didn't seem to deserve it.  Wight kings, black knights, dire wolves outside of radu/vulga lists, vampire lords, VLOZD, arguably the mortis engine (no longer debuffs enemy casting, no longer heals your units when you pop the reliquary, costs more, in exchange slightly longer range and bravery independent screams).

Dire wolves got worse, how? I dont really know much about previous book, on first glance they look good to me.

 

5 minutes ago, GutrotSpume said:

Ahhh my apologises I read that as deadwalker zombies!

Heh, and wouldn't writing buffs for wolfs in wolf subfaction be actually lazy? Adding spell bonus you could say is actually creative in some way

[Archibald]

What justifies 975p for Nagash?🤪

The imgur page doesn't show his new warscroll...

[Raptor_Jesues]

one thing i must admit though: the blood palanquin is still pretty trash. Good thing the coven throne('s banger CA) exists (2+,2+ D3 and 2+ save bloodknights, lol)

Edited May 13, 2021 by Raptor_Jesues

[Aren73]

2 minutes ago, Sception said:

Oh, I'd definitely say it's not the fault of the author.  To have consistently good rules, you'd need a rhobust playtesting & QA team, and a dev cycle with multiple revisions.  Author makes rules - QA says these are strong or weak against current meta, feel good or bad to play with & against, go back to dev for adjustments, repeat 2 or 3 times.

I don't believe there are just two authors, but there two seem to be two different dev philosophies when writing the first draft of the book which are personified by the 'sin guy / bin guy' meme.  Sin guy lets their imagination run wild, writes wacky rules to represent the ideas of the book, the more a unit catches their fancy the more elaborate their implementation, resulting in extreme internal balance differences, often some really op stuff, but that wouldn't matter at all if they had that QA team and revision process, because first draft *should* be about wild ideas.  bin guy knows they *don't* have that QA team and revision process, so they try to reign in their ideas as much as possible, don't rock the boat, make minimal to no changes on war scrolls, etc etc.  They often end up overshooting in their conservatism, holding back more then necessary, reigning back so hard they make negative progress or nerf already bad options.  Again though, if they had that rhobust QA team and revision process their overly conservative instincts could be counterbalanced by feedback from others.

But all that would require a slower dev process for rules, which means slowing down the rate of new models.  Unacceptable to GW.  It also means spending more money on rules development - you'd have to hire those QA testers and pay for those revision rounds, and GW is a model company, not a game company, so that's likewise unacceptable.  In fact, much as it's a meme and I think they have more people working on AoS rules dev, it wouldn't be at all unbelieavable if they literally had only two rules writers and expected them to each come back with a new battletome or campaign expansion ruleset after every weekend.  It would also mean more eyes on the project while it's under development, which inevitably means more leaks, and more chances for third party companies to rush out their own version of a new unit GW is working on before their own version's gone to market.  Or for leaks of a pre-revision product to hit consumers setting false expectations of what the post revision version will look like.

Maybe for these reasons, maybe for others, GW doens't do the play testing and revision that consistently solid rules would require no matter who was writing them.  Instead they just release first draft rules and 'fix it in post' via errata or faq if anything is so problematic that it threatens the rest of the game.

So yeah, the author is not to blame for any of this.  Neither is the Lumineth author to blame for that mess.  Nor the sylvaneth & beast authors, etc etc.  They're probably not the ones making these decisions.

And as sub par as I think the overall balance of this book is - and as much as I wish the author had been more bold, particularly in ditching the LoN allegiance rules wholesale to make way for something more fitting the new faction branding (and less burdened by the history and baggage that led to the new version of the LoN rules being so dramatically watered down), there are still several interesting ideas in here.  More than enough to show that the author could have produced something perfectly fine if they had that QA team and revision process that any author would need.

I am onboard with a large amount of this, in general I agree. And please don't get me wrong I don't want to crucify one dude. I am just of the opinion that a chunk of the responsibility is nonetheless on the author(s), I don't want to just wave my hand and say "they did the best job they could have done". 

BUT 

As others have said, I really have added enough negativity to this thread, I've criticised enough. 

So, on a more positive note: 

The battalion with Vargheists and Fell Bats is fun and usable! The bats are a cheap, objective grabbing tax and the Vargheists for sure benefit from the buff! It's nice to see

[Liquidsteel]

Definitely in agreement with @Sception that they have wasted an opportunity for a re-write overhaul.

This book is, by and large, a copy/paste with minor tweaks and does sting a bit when you compare it to the LRL release, but then if you look at DoK (great book) and Slaanesh (poor book) both were very similar - minor tweaks here and there but one came out with good power levels and the other poor power levels.

We got the typical facelift, and that's it.

 

With that said, there is a lot to unpick from this book still. There will be nice and varied lists and still need to find out what works where.

We are still going to be pressured by shooting, and I'm disappointed that was no way to block heroes from being targetted, but fingers crossed that's coming in 3.0.

[Liquidsteel]

6 minutes ago, Archibald said:

What justifies 975p for Nagash?🤪

The imgur page doesn't show his new warscroll...

Nothing, he's the same warscroll. He goes back to knowing all spells and can join any list as a General in addition.

There might be something for him but that price is just, wow.

[Tizianolol]

Thehonestwargamer on twitch said blood knight cant use their movement and after charge. I hope they FAQ because without it they are usless!!

[Beliman]

The 6" pile in for zombies seems to be awesome!. That will make a lot easy to attack with 20 zombies to fish that 6 to hit.

[Boar]

2 minutes ago, Tizianolol said:

Thehonestwargamer on twitch said blood knight cant use their movement and after charge. I hope they FAQ because without it they are usless!!

How on earth are they useless? They have at least decent damage and are tanky.

[Aren73]

3 minutes ago, Beliman said:

The 6" pile in for zombies seems to be awesome!. That will make a lot easy to attack with 20 zombies to fish that 6 to hit.

I definitely like this take on zombies. In WHFB I never took them, I just saw nothing interesting there. Now they are a different kind of threat other than just being a tarpit. 

[Sception]

23 minutes ago, Boar said:

Interesting take. Have to agree

Dire wolves got worse, how? I dont really know much about previous book, on first glance they look good to me.

Mostly by increasing their minimum unit size to 10, which nearly doubles their minimum unit cost, severely hampering their current primary use as cheap battleline fillers & throw away harassment units.  Their combat stats aren't particularly anything to write home about, especially as they'll tend to outrun the 'wholly within' auras of our slow infantry heroes and corpse carts.  Within Vyrkos lists based on Volga, Radubeast, or both they have access to some buffs from some heroes that can keep up with them that might make them pretty decent fast brawlers, hence why I say they're only nerfed outside of those lists.

It's worth noting that cheap battleline fillers are less necessary with the prevalence of conditional battleline options in the book, and we have fell bats as a non-battleline sacrificial harassment unit, so the old uses of dire wolves are less critical.  But min size 10 is still a downgrade, imo.

22 minutes ago, Archibald said:

What justifies 975p for Nagash?🤪

The imgur page doesn't show his new warscroll...

It's copy-paste from OBR.  So there are only two possible justifications for this points increase:

1. the writer was snake-bit from early 2e nagash dominance and reflexively hiked his points a bunch just like they reflexively nerfed the healing and unit recursion rules that also defined those lists.

2. this is a pre-emptive points increase based not on changes in this book, but changes coming with 3rd edition AoS.  In particular the presently unconfirmed rumors that we're returning to old school arcane bolt (d3 mortals every time) and mystic shield (+1 armor saves instead of re-roll 1s).  If these rumors prove to be true, Nagash's ability to spam both becomes significantly more powerful, possibly enough to justify this points increase.

Edited May 13, 2021 by Sception

[Boar]

1 minute ago, Sception said:

Mostly by increasing their minimum unit size to 10, which nearly doubles their minimum unit cost, severely hampering their current primary use as cheap battleline fillers

I see, I didn't considered that, thanks.

Tough if someone would want different uses for them (ie. in larger units) their high effective wounds per points and them being summonable ie. healable could make them as usefull anvil/ tough chaff/board control tool. And they even got tiny bit cheaper from what I see.