AoS3 - Soulblight Gravelord Discussion

[Obeisance]

17 minutes ago, Kaizennus said:

I posted a summary a a few posts above.

Oh, so it was the Skeleboi heavy list. Cool.

[Obeisance]

So it's an interesting list. I expected to see either vlozd version, but no?

I did expect to see Manfred, though. He seems really good.

I also thought Skelebois were kind of garbage, but I guess enough buffing can polish a ******, huh.

Maybe I shouldn't have purchased six Zombie boxes and no Skeletons. Lol.

 

 

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

2 hours ago, Obeisance said:

I also thought Skelebois were kind of garbage, but I guess enough buffing can polish a ******, huh.

I have said this before, but I still pretty firmly believe that skeletons are actually quite good.

At their worst, they are 10 wounds on a 5+ save for 85 points. That's good chaff, and already something that other armies wish they had access to. Their SUMMONABLE keyword is another big boon, giving them free incidental healing, deep striking ability and a chance to return at half-strength for free. I think that's a solid base for a basic battleline unit.

But at their best, they have a chance to turn into an incredibly hard to overcome trapit unit. If you bring enough of them, a lot of enemies will struggle to one-shot them in melee, which means that they will have a good chance to get their incredibly strong 4+ resurrection ability off. Even though their damage is bad, they will often just grind down enemy units by keeping the numbers advantage after a certain tipping point. The utility of having a unit that you actually want to activate second in combat is not to be underestimated, as well.

I still maintain that skeletons are the best anvil for objective holding in Gravelords, because they have a combination of staying power and bodies that nothing else in the tome brings to the table. Of course they have lots of avenues for counterplay (shooting, out-of-phase damage and battleshock are all concerns), but they are an 85 point trash unit after all. I think that's only fair to expect.

 

[Liquidsteel]

Yep I've almost got 30 ready to go and will include them in my next list, which I'm currently building Nagash for.

Gonna take lifeswarm as well and go all in on keeping them alive.

[Wordy9th]

6 hours ago, Kaizennus said:

I had this list pointed out to me too and I find it very interesting since it's very close to the armies I've been trying to run (rather unsuccessfully). The main differences between this list and the ones I've ran is that he's gone for what looks like pure defensive/objective play and doesn't use any dedicated hammers except for some grave guard.

Here's the list again:

Brendan Melnick: Guys from Milwaukee

  Reveal hidden contents

Allegiance: Soulblight Gravelords
- Lineage: Vyrkos Dynasty
- Grand Strategy: Prized Sorcery
- Triumphs: Inspired

Leaders
Vampire Lord (140) in Warlord
- General
- Command Trait: Pack Alpha
- Lore of the Vampires: Amethystine Pinions
Vengorian Lord (280)
- Artefact: Sangsyron
- Universal Spell Lore: Flaming Weapon
Necromancer (125) in Warlord
- Artefact: Arcane Tome (Universal Artefact)
- Lore of the Deathmages: Overwhelming Dread
Belladamma Volga, First of the Vyrkos (200) in Warlord
- Lore of the Vampires: Soulpike
Mannfred von Carstein, Mortarch of Night (380) in Warlord
- Lore of the Deathmages: Fading Vigour

Battleline
10 x Deathrattle Skeletons (85) in Warlord
30 x Deathrattle Skeletons (255) in Hunters of the Heartlands
- Reinforced x 2
40 x Deadwalker Zombies (230) in Hunters of the Heartlands
- Reinforced x 1

Units
20 x Grave Guard (280) in Hunters of the Heartlands
- Great Wight Blades
- Reinforced x 1

Additional Enhancements
Artefact

Total: 1975 / 2000
Reinforced Units: 4 / 4
Allies: 0 / 400
Wounds: 141
 

I did a little digging and pulled up the tournament details of his run:

So he got 4 Major Wins and 1 Minor Win.

He scored all 5 tactics in 3 of his games, and only got 2/3 in the final two.

He completed his grand strategy (prized sorcery) in every game.

The tournament placings of his opponents were:

1. Nurgle -> 6th Place

2. Seraphon -> 3rd Place

3.  Sons of Behemot -> 2nd Place

4. Nurgle -> 7th Place

5. Sons of Behemot -> 5th Place

 

I would love to see some more details about how the games went and which tactics he chose for his games and how he played. I'd also like to see which battleplans they used for each round.

My guess is he played defensively since his army is quite immobile. His army does have some good buff synergies that can make his units pretty scary though: Under a Killing Moon (exploding 6's) + Vigour of Undeath (+1 to Hit/Wound) + Crimson Feast (+1 Attack) + Dance Macabre (Attack Twice).

What do you guys think of the list? As others have said, it's cool to see a non-Nagash list win a tournament.

My first thought was cool, it has a lot of what I wanted to bring anyway.

My second thought was wait, but where's the damage? 20 buffed grave guard (there's a lot of buffs) I guess. Seems the blue/black deck vibe of Soulblight can do well!

I definitely thought the meta of 3.0 would skew towards mobility and damage but this list seems to go against both principles. As you say, I'd be interested in knowing the step by step of the games played and how he got achieved his battle tactics consistently and so on.

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

Just now, Wordy9th said:

My first thought was cool, it has a lot of what I wanted to bring anyway.

My second thought was wait, but where's the damage? 20 buffed grave guard (there's a lot of buffs) I guess. Seems the blue/black deck vibe of Soulblight can do well!

I definitely thought the meta of 3.0 would skew towards mobility and damage but this list seems to go against both principles. As you say, I'd be interested in knowing the step by step of the games played and how he got achieved his battle tactics consistently and so on.

I agree that this list looks low damage at first glance. I think we can count Mannfred and the Vengorian Lord as damage dealers, and the Grave Guard as a proper hammer. Zombies can also be a hammer in this list, it can pull off giving them +1 attack and possibly Vanhel's, which makes their damage significant (especially against hero monsters). So maybe like 2.5 threats?

But on the other hand, the list seems to be built to bring down the opponent's damage to a low level as well, between the Vengorian Lord aura, Overwhelming Dread and Fading Vigor spells and shield Grave Guard. That the list is high drops at 8 seems to suggest a reactive play style overall, so maybe the list really plays by slowly grinding down the opponent. The choice of Pack Alpha as a command trait gaining another extra command point from Warlord are also evidence for this.

For battle tactics, it looks like this list can fairly reliably accomplish Conquer, Ferocious Advance, Aggressive Expansion and Savage Spearhead and should situationally be able to accomplish the ones where you have to kill a monster/general/battleline. Seems pretty good for tactics, actually. The list also has a real upside with Prized Sorcery as its grand strategy, since all heroes are wizards and there are 5 of them. Also very strong magic at 8 casts, 4 of which reroll.

[Wordy9th]

That's a good analysis. Interestingly enough, I've been listening to the guy's podcast and he said that his lists always start with a Vampire Lord, Necromancer, Belladamma and 30 skeletons and he goes from there. 

From what I can gather from that (other than this suits me just fine with my excess of skeletons and most recently painted vampire lord), is we have a core anvil and a minimum of three buffing characters. Flexibly being able to buff any units on the field feels a strength Soulblight should always take advantage of.

I'm not a hundred percent sold on the Vengorian lord but obviously Brendan knows better than me (and I'm biased against the model!). I'd probably swap it for a unit of blood knights and maybe an endless spell / 10 more skeletons or something. 

Anyway, it's nice to finally work with list building in the  context of some hard stats, if I can be bold enough to say after analyzing the results of one tournament ^_^. I'm mostly happy that, evidently, lists can be competitive with units I enjoy.

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

3 minutes ago, Wordy9th said:

That's a good analysis. Interestingly enough, I've been listening to the guy's podcast and he said that his lists always start with a Vampire Lord, Necromancer, Belladamma and 30 skeletons and he goes from there. 

Same, honestly, apart from the Vampire Lord. I was actually surprised that guy was in there over a unit of Direwolves for Belladamma.

Could you link the podcast, by the way? I would be interested in this player's perspective on Gravelords.

[Wordy9th]

https://cubicshenanigans.net/podcast-2/

 

It's pretty good!

edit: Also just to note this is the same guy who said the Vlozd can't make use of the hunter's snare command trait.

Edited July 22, 2021 by Wordy9th

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

19 minutes ago, Wordy9th said:

https://cubicshenanigans.net/podcast-2/

 

It's pretty good!

edit: Also just to note this is the same guy who said the Vlozd can't make use of the hunter's snare command trait.

Interesting! I look foreward to hearing the reasoning behind that.

[Liquidsteel]

Damage wise, I've found both Mannfred and the Vengorian to be quite poor. Maybe not poor exactly, but certainly Mediocre. Very swingy.

Even having both in Mannfred's Aura, you aren't always getting that much damage through, primarily because of save stacking.

Having most of the damage on rend -1 really means rend 0 in this edition. 

I think both definitely play very well as support pieces as long as you have enough other stuff on the board, which this kind of list definitely does. Mannfred's shenanigans can put him in a position to threaten the opponent at every turn, for example positioning him to teleport in the opponents turn and threaten a support piece or important unit on the next.

Aside from the horde style, I have heard very good things about lists with 20-25 Blood Knights plus a VLoZD in Kastelai, it plays similar to the old Eel Spam of IDK, apparently. You can fit Mannfred plus 2 x 3 fell bats in to that and then you're mashing 2/2/-1/3 damage blood knights units in to things.

[Sorrow]

People, a question!

Do you think that there might be a second wave of Soulblight models in the future?

 

[Nasrod]

41 minutes ago, Sorrow said:

People, a question!

Do you think that there might be a second wave of Soulblight models in the future?

 

Nope. Just got a massive release/overhaul. Nighthaunt, FEC, and Ossiarch are all in great need of attention for different reasons. 

A warband or a new Necromancer/Corpse Cart may come down the line in a battle box, but I wouldn't count on a "wave 2" for at least 2 or more years.

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

1 hour ago, Sorrow said:

People, a question!

Do you think that there might be a second wave of Soulblight models in the future?

 

 If it's only "might", then yes. But that's a very weak commitment. I definitely would not bet money on it either way.

Given what happened recent!y with Lumineth and Slaansh, I would say a second wave is not impossible. It could include endless spells, faction terrain and some units that don't have a multi-part kit yet (Bloodborn, Nightguard) or were expected to be in the recent update, but are absent (rat and bat swarms). Besides completely new stuff, of course.

However, realistically Gravelords are in a good spot with a large, modern plastic range and it would make more sense to update other stuff before them. Even in GA: Death, both OBR and FEC have a better claim for attention than SBGL.

[Wordy9th]

Hopefully new grave guard with any possible cursed city expansions (lol)

[Liquidsteel]

In the future is very vague. In 3 years with a new tome, maybe some new heroes plus new sculpts for existing units at the same time as a FEC update?

 

Possibly. 

[GrungnisBeard]

Playing my first game of AoS 3.0 this weekend and taking my Soulblight for their first go. We are playing a 1000 points and I am definitely taking Prince Vhordrai and two units of 5 Blood Knights. I have 155 points remaining and having a hard time deciding what to take. I'm thinking either Skeletons or Zombies for late game objective shenanigans, dire wolves or vargheist for more mobility and killing power, or Grave Guard for a little of both. Any suggestions?

 

[Warbossironteef]

The tournament winning list has me reworking some of my lists. I think 20 graveguard fit really well in most lists. 280 is sort of the sweet spot for a unit that can hit hard when buffed but not so expensive you lose the game when they get shot off or miss a charge. I dont iown skellies so Im thinking up a similar list but with more zombies and some more mobility. 

Mannfred von Carstein, Mortarch of Night (380)
Belladamma Volga, First of the Vyrkos (200)
Necromancer (125)
Gorslav the Gravekeeper (75)
UNITS
5 x Blood Knights (195)
20 x Grave Guard (280)
- Wight Blades & Crypt Shields
40 x Deadwalker Zombies (230)
40 x Deadwalker Zombies (230)
40 x Deadwalker Zombies (230)
ENDLESS SPELLS & INVOCATIONS
Chronomantic Cogs (45)
TOTAL: 1990/2000 WOUNDS

Edited July 22, 2021 by Warbossironteef

[Obeisance]

I had my second game of AOS3 last night.

Admittedly, I wasn't playing Soulblight. I was running 9 Stormfiends into Tzeentch with Archaeon.. and I did basically no damage to him through his layers of buffs. Even though disrupting some of his buffs, I barely did any damage.

I don't see a lot of rend in the Soulblight book. And no shooting. A lot of mortal wounds from spells/6s on melee attacks (which would be rerolled by him).

The hell does Soulblight DO against a monster like that? Tarpit?

edit: 

I'm playing in an 18 player tournament tomorrow. Some friends and I are driving 2.5 hours there/back on a road trip. Here's the field if you're interested. Go into Battle Rounds, click the eye next to a player to view lists. There's 1-2 Soulblight.

https://downunderpairings.com/Tournament.php?TournamentID=1468

Edited July 22, 2021 by Obeisance

[DJMoose]

36 minutes ago, Obeisance said:

I had my second game of AOS3 last night.

Admittedly, I wasn't playing Soulblight. I was running 9 Stormfiends into Tzeentch with Archaeon.. and I did basically no damage to him through his layers of buffs. Even though disrupting some of his buffs, I barely did any damage.

I don't see a lot of rend in the Soulblight book. And no shooting. A lot of mortal wounds from spells/6s on melee attacks (which would be rerolled by him).

The hell does Soulblight DO against a monster like that? Tarpit?

I would be curious to see what the rest of his list was. Because depending on what else he had I would ignore Archaeon and keep him occupied with trash troops while the rest of your army wins the game through objective points. If it was Archaeon and just mobs of horrors...well...the speed bump game instead of the killing game would probably be your best move.

[Obeisance]

He's playing- check the link for Tom Foo. I believe he's Host Arcanum or something. 

I don't really have the units to speedbump in the list I'm bringing. It's very all my eggs in one basket. I don't usually play Deathstars and I don't think they're for me.

But yeah, Skeleton speedbump is probably the way to go. I can see why you'd take Hunters in the Heartland, so people can't roar and turn off the autopass battleshock strat.

I'm still in assembly phase with SB, sadly.

 

 

Edited July 22, 2021 by Obeisance

[Warbossironteef]

1 hour ago, Obeisance said:

He's playing- check the link for Tom Foo. I believe he's Host Arcanum or something. 

I don't really have the units to speedbump in the list I'm bringing. It's very all my eggs in one basket. I don't usually play Deathstars and I don't think they're for me.

But yeah, Skeleton speedbump is probably the way to go. I can see why you'd take Hunters in the Heartland, so people can't roar and turn off the autopass battleshock strat.

I'm still in assembly phase with SB, sadly.

 

 

Roar doesnt last until battleshock phase. At least i dont think so.

[Liquidsteel]

Correct it's just combat phase. 

[LuminethMage]

7 hours ago, Obeisance said:

I had my second game of AOS3 last night.

Admittedly, I wasn't playing Soulblight. I was running 9 Stormfiends into Tzeentch with Archaeon.. and I did basically no damage to him through his layers of buffs. Even though disrupting some of his buffs, I barely did any damage.

I don't see a lot of rend in the Soulblight book. And no shooting. A lot of mortal wounds from spells/6s on melee attacks (which would be rerolled by him).

The hell does Soulblight DO against a monster like that? Tarpit?

edit: 

I'm playing in an 18 player tournament tomorrow. Some friends and I are driving 2.5 hours there/back on a road trip. Here's the field if you're interested. Go into Battle Rounds, click the eye next to a player to view lists. There's 1-2 Soulblight.

https://downunderpairings.com/Tournament.php?TournamentID=1468

Well good luck there! You can get it all, the whole menu: 3 Archaon lists, a Gotrek & Morathi list, Nagash of course, a Lumineth list with 30 Sentinels and Gotrek and so on. I mean you also bring a heavy-hitter, but I wonder how long people will enjoy that kind of hero hammer. 

I hope you have a good time though! 👍

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

7 hours ago, Obeisance said:

But yeah, Skeleton speedbump is probably the way to go. I can see why you'd take Hunters in the Heartland, so people can't roar and turn off the autopass battleshock strat.

I make this mistake all the time, too, still: Roar only stops command abilities in the combat phase, not the battleshock phase. It just really feels like it should be stopping Inspiring Presence, but it actually does not.

As for Archaon: I guess we could bring our own god model Nagash and try to Hand of Dust him. Or instakill him with Neferata's dagger. Other than that, I think he just seems too tanky to be taken down in a single attack. Maybe Grave Guard can do it if you really pile all the buffs into them? Good luck catching Archaon with their 4" move, though.