AoS3 - Soulblight Gravelord Discussion

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

2 hours ago, Obeisance said:

There was a Soulblight Nagash list on Tsports this weekend. 

He took Kastelli in a list that seems weird for it. Think it was for Fragment of the Keep? I don't think I see any general traits that fit, though Nagash probably was it.

This was the dude's list:

I guess I get the idea:

Play Nagash for his god model abilities, play Mannfred because he's probably the most "unfair" hero in Soulblight, add a Vengorian Lord to help keep Nagash alive, spend the rest on cheap bodies.

Fragment of the Keep makes sense if you are focussed on making Nagash as tanky as possible. There really isn't any command trait or artefact in any other allegiance that can give Nagash a defense boost. There are really no subfactions in Gravelords that benefit Nagash directly, so it's not that big of a deal if you waste the Kastelai allegiance abilities.

 

[Honk]

2 hours ago, Obeisance said:

There was a Soulblight Nagash list on Tsports this weekend. 

https://tabletop.to/mancunian-carnage-resurrection 
there are some more SBGL lists and their placing… makes for an interesting read

second place looks kinda like your list hero wise, but takes knights and 2x10 skellis. Makes sense, because 20 zombies are a trap in my opinion.

too cp hungry, not enough MWs to be relevant (~3) and not sturdy enough to block something (BKs charge does ~18dmg and trample them to dust next round)…

[Liquidsteel]

Yeah I was intrigued by it being Kastelai. I watched some of the stream but he was only on for round 1 and got bodied by Sons of Behemat. I'd love to know the full round scores if anyone spots them.

I played a version of this list the other week, but with a unit of Blood Knights and 2 x 10 Skellies over 3 x 20 Zombies. Not enough games to get a feel for it yet. 

I think I get the concept behind Zombies. They have more wounds and you can use Mannfred to give them +1 attack, hit and wound. Plus their pile in tricks, and by being aggressive you can have Endless Legion start working for you. 

My conundrum with Nagash is do I want Spell Portal and/or Lifeswarm. Both add so much value to him, Spellportal forces opponent to think whether they can move an important model within 21" and Lifeswarm helps keep him topped up alongside heroic recovery and soul stealer etc.

You could downgrade to 1 x 20 Zombies and 2 x 10 Skeletons to fit an endless spell in.

I think this list could also be Legion of Night. Mannfred becomes a General and you have the option of Unholy Impetus to provide an additional +1 attack. Could switch Vengo for Necromancer or Wight King on Steed and run Morbhegs Claw with slightly more bodies even, can fit Portal in this way. Levitate to make Zombies fly.

 

Allegiance: Soulblight Gravelords
- Lineage: Legion of Night
- Mortal Realm: Shyish
- Grand Strategy: Prized Sorcery
- Triumphs: Bloodthirsty

Leaders
Nagash, Supreme Lord of the Undead (970)
Mannfred von Carstein, Mortarch of Night (380)*
- Lore of the Vampires: Amethystine Pinions
Necromancer (125)*
- General
- Command Trait: Master of Magic
- Artefact: Morbheg's Claw
- Universal Spell Lore: Levitate

Battleline
40 x Deadwalker Zombies (230)*
- Reinforced x 1
10 x Deathrattle Skeletons (85)*
10 x Dire Wolves (135)*

Endless Spells & Invocations
Umbral Spellportal (70)

Core Battalions
*Battle Regiment

Total: 1995 / 2000
Reinforced Units: 1 / 4
Allies: 0 / 400
Wounds: 103
Drops: 2
 

[Obeisance]

Yeah, I was like- these Nagash lists don't have a huge amount of damage output.

There isn't really any amazing nukes in his lores aside from maybe double-casting Harvest on a 9.

I actually like the idea of running min Skeletons over Zombies. Less ****** to paint.

...

I'm at this weird place where I'm bouncing around with my list for a team event.

OBR with Nagash: Either a Kavalos or Mortek core.

Vs

Any kind of Soulblight. Vyrkos dudespam or Nagash monster mash.

I think the OBR is better for teams, but I hate playing it. So much I can't do.

It's kind of why I post so much.. I'm constantly looking for a silver bullet answer of what I want to take. I played there games last week and didn't enjoy OBR except teleporting Nagash.

Edited August 16, 2021 by Obeisance

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

57 minutes ago, Obeisance said:

It's kind of why I post so much.. I'm constantly looking for a silver bullet answer of what I want to take. I played there games last week and didn't enjoy OBR except teleporting Nagash

For what it's worth, I think just painting up a Nagash is worth considering. He definitely seems to be good in competitive play right now, and it's hard to beat him when it comes to points-per-dollar. Having the option to get half an army ready by painting one model is pretty nice. I actually found him relatively easy to paint, as well.

Edited August 16, 2021 by Neil Arthur Hotep

[Obeisance]

Yeah, I'm gonna paint up Nagash for one of my armies.

Luckily my team are meta chasers so I can just borrow whatever I need.

I'm gonna play some games with SB Nagash and see how I feel,

...

One of the biggest issues I think we're going to have is that it's a 6 player per team event (event is October 30) and we've got 9 teams already) and we can't replicate grand strategies or warscrolls across the team. One player gets Prized Sorcery, one player gets Gotrek.

I think my team has DOK, BCR, Kharadron, Seraphon, Tzeentch Archaeon and myself with either OBR or SB. Everyone wants Prized Sorcery or Beast Master. At least in OBR I can take Pillar of Faith as Nagash is a Priest there.

Edited August 16, 2021 by Obeisance

[Obeisance]

2 hours ago, Honk said:

https://tabletop.to/mancunian-carnage-resurrection 
there are some more SBGL lists and their placing… makes for an interesting read

second place looks kinda like your list hero wise, but takes knights and 2x10 skellis. Makes sense, because 20 zombies are a trap in my opinion.

too cp hungry, not enough MWs to be relevant (~3) and not sturdy enough to block something (BKs charge does ~18dmg and trample them to dust next round)…

Thanks for posting that link, I actually like the idea of running Blood Knights and Skeletons over Zombies.

[BaylorCorvette]

Just did a 3 game one day tournament this past weekend and went 2-1 with the below Kastelai list. The loss came in game 3 on Power in Numbers. My biggest concern going into the tournament was getting BCR or SoB on this mission and as luck would have it I got paired against BCR. Long story short they pushed hard as BCR does, BCR won the priority roll for turn 2 and pretty much burned all of the objectives making it impossible to win. The nail in the coffin was a Frostlord on Stonehorn needing an 10" or 11" charge to Prince V and of course he rolls a 12! Really not a fan of being able to burn more than one objective in a turn. Anyways, the list did really well. Prince V has consistently performed mediocre for me, but it is OK because I use him more as a distraction anyways so that I can position my Blood Knights and Vengorian Lord with Rousing Commander. The amount of damage that BKs with Rousing Commander have on the charge is crazy, especially paired with Belladamma where if her spell goes off then 6s To Hit count as two hits. I have another 1 day tournament in the second weekend of September and then a two day tournament last weekend in September. I think I might run this list. Overall I like how it performed. I have considered dropping Belladamma and a unit of Wolves for Raddakar the Beast, however her ability to cast two spells at +1 and having two solid warscroll spells make it hard to justify. Especially this past weekend where just punched above her 200 point weight class. The list is a two drop double Battle Regiment.

 

Allegiance: Soulblight Gravelords
- Lineage: Kastelai Dynasty
- Grand Strategy: Hold the Line
- Triumphs: Bloodthirsty

Leaders
Vengorian Lord (280) in Battle Regiment
- General
- Command Trait: Rousing Commander
- Artefact: Fragment of the Keep
- Lore of the Vampires: Amethystine Pinions
Prince Vhordrai (455) in Battle Regiment
- Lore of the Vampires: Amethystine Pinions
Belladamma Volga, First of the Vyrkos (200) in Battle Regiment
- Lore of the Vampires: Amaranthine Orb

Battleline
5 x Blood Knights (195) in Battle Regiment
5 x Blood Knights (195) in Battle Regiment
10 x Dire Wolves (135) in Battle Regiment
10 x Dire Wolves (135) in Battle Regiment
20 x Deadwalker Zombies (115) in Battle Regiment

Units
20 x Grave Guard (280) in Battle Regiment
- Great Wight Blades
- Reinforced x 1

Core Battalions
Battle Regiment
Battle Regiment

Total: 1990 / 2000
Reinforced Units: 1 / 4
Allies: 0 / 400
Wounds: 143

[Liquidsteel]

Really like this list, I've got plans to run something similar once I get 5-10 more Blood Knights painted. Haven't had a chance to try Vhordrai in 3.0 myself yet. Could you see yourself trying to get an extra unit of Blood Knights in there perhaps? 

I've got to decide on my list for the upcoming two day event we have here. As mentioned previously its my first 2 dayer and I'm aiming first and foremost to have fun, so I'm taking a Nagash and friends hero hammer list.

I've opted to include the Umbral Spellportal, because setting up some nice drama with Hand of Dust sounds great.

The choice is down to Nagash, Mannfred and Vengorian Lord in either Night or Kastelai, or Nagash, VLoZD and Belladamma in Vyrkos. Then 3 units of chaff.

 

[BaylorCorvette]

1 hour ago, Liquidsteel said:

Really like this list, I've got plans to run something similar once I get 5-10 more Blood Knights painted. Haven't had a chance to try Vhordrai in 3.0 myself yet. Could you see yourself trying to get an extra unit of Blood Knights in there perhaps? 

 

Well my original list that I ran at a 1 day tournament in July was the same but instead of 20 Grave Guard I had another unit of 5 Blood Knights and a unit of 10 Skeletons. Overall I think dropping from 3 units to 2 units of BKs and removing the skeletons in favor of 20 Grave Guard with great weapons is better. It allowed me to have some mortal wound output along with decent damage even without spiking 6s. 

Having a Vengorian Lord with Fragment of the Keep escorting Blood Knights is fantastic though. The reduce rend by 1 and then -1 To Wound from Fragment of the Keep can really help minimize damage for your opponent. The game against BCR, my opponent had a unit of 4 Mournfang buffed like crazy and charged a unit of BKs that had the Vengorian Lord right behind them. I took like 3 MWs from the charge and another 3-4 wounds in combat. In return the BKs + Vengorian Lord did like 15 wounds, without Rousing Commander.

Edited August 16, 2021 by BaylorCorvette

[Belmail]

Went to a 100 man GT event this weekend, my first tournament outing with gravelords. Managed to pull a 4-1 score only losing to some varanguard in round 2.

 

Edited August 16, 2021 by Belmail

[Obeisance]

I literally was just looking at your list in that tournament, @Belmail

Congrats on being the top Soulblight player. (16/100)

It's crazy that FEC won that- super interesting list.

Edited August 16, 2021 by Obeisance

[Belmail]

48 minutes ago, Obeisance said:

I literally was just looking at your list in that tournament, @Belmail

Congrats on being the top Soulblight player. (16/100)

It's crazy that FEC won that- super interesting list.

Thanks man! Yeah it was rough considering I had only played this list out like 2-3 times max before the tourney and I had some rocky games where I won 2 by only 1 point each. Made a few mistakes here and there but I think my head was in the right place most of the time at least, when the dice weren't failing me lol. 

 

And yeah I was surprised to see FEC do that good tbh since they haven't really been a meta king in a while but hey if it works it works, the mega seems really good in that list.

Edited August 16, 2021 by Belmail

[Obeisance]

I love that Soulblight is doing well with a lot of really diverse builds. I should just put OBR out of my head and play some games with the book already.

@Belmail how did you go scoring primary/secondaries with the list? Your list is basically chaff and anvils with a single hammer?

I see you played into Archaeon once and won- I assume you just played the mission and fed him dudes?

[Belmail]

23 minutes ago, Obeisance said:

I love that Soulblight is doing well with a lot of really diverse builds. I should just put OBR out of my head and play some games with the book already.

@Belmail how did you go scoring primary/secondaries with the list? Your list is basically chaff and anvils with a single hammer?

I see you played into Archaeon once and won- I assume you just played the mission and fed him dudes?

You are correct, archaon was glutted with many a dudes. I basically just put manny up front with all my dudes, my opponent had super low drops like 1/2 so he took first, buffed up archaon and the varanguard and threw them in, i jumped manny out who proceeded to kill everything on the table except for archaon, the 3 varanguard and 1 shrine. My opponent did make what was probably a game losing mistake by pulling archaon back turn 4 to push mannfred away from one of his objectives but all that really did was give me my objective back and let me reposition manny with a teleport. I took easy battle tacticss early like ferocious advance in almost all of my games because zombies and my heroes dont care about charging. I think I went ferocious advance, conquer(took my objective back, with bodies) broken ranks, monstrous takeover, and then savage spearhead. This is kind of how a lot of my games went battle tactics-wise, kind of playing around with how late i can wait to do something like savage spearhead with potential revives or holding a 10 man skeleton unit back to combo with another unit. For the most part the only game I struggle hard with objectives or battle tactics but that game I really went for an early game, potentially game winning, but whiffed and cost me mannfred turn 1.

 

Also, fun fact, I lost every single priority roll day 1 and won every single priority roll in day 2 lol.

Edited August 17, 2021 by Belmail

[Obeisance]

Do you get much use out of Ageless Cunning/The Bait?

You're in LoN for Unbending Will and Morbeg's Claw?

Any reason you not running Vyrkos?

 

[Belmail]

8 hours ago, Obeisance said:

Do you get much use out of Ageless Cunning/The Bait?

You're in LoN for Unbending Will and Morbeg's Claw?

Any reason you not running Vyrkos?

 

I get the most use out of Ageless Cunning as a mind game tool in deployment. Everyone is familiar with gravesite deepstrikes but not a lot of people(in my opinion) played LoN in the old book. So I basically use it to either force my opponents to deploy stuff to try to block off back field deployments or if they don't care, just drop a skeleton unit or something in their backline for some easy backup for Savage Spearhead and generally a lot of mission have an objective you can get a few bodies on. 

 

The bait is basically useless on the zombies as there usually isn't a lot of -rend stuff hitting them turn one but it does do good work on skeletons up in the front line, they can be a 4+ save, potentially ignoring rend 1 if I really care to keep them alive. It makes them surprisingly tanky as a first turn chaff unit for their price point, especially considering then if the skeletons don't die some/all can come back. Overall I would rate the bait as a like 6/10 situational ability that sometimes matters and sometimes is useless. 

 

I do play LoN for mostly Unbending Will and Morbeg's Claw yes, and I like Manny cause nobody else liked Manny back in Legions of Nagash days. Unbending Will IMO is one of the strongest CT's in the book, especially on something like a necro which is surprisingly hard to remove from the table. It can essentially "generate" 1-2 free CPs every player turn depending on combats and positioning while freeing up my morale CA for other units with less support. Morbeg's Claw is just there for reliability, +2 to cast in 12" is nice and easy to set up for deployment and I usually get 2/3 uses out of it before I have to bail and run away with that necro. It just helps make those vanhels/pinions/mystic shields go off and hopefully not get unbound by all the slann/ect hanging around in the meta.

 

I tried some Vykros on TTS when the book first dropped, it seemed okay, but the buffs for +1 to wound seem really meh overall and rerolling casts really only matters for Bella who is +1 natively already.

[Tizianolol]

Guys at moment if I give flaming weapons on my VLoZD can I give +1 damage to an attack of my mount? Still no FAQ right? I gave a tts tourmament this saturday!

[Belmail]

9 minutes ago, Tizianolol said:

Guys at moment if I give flaming weapons on my VLoZD can I give +1 damage to an attack of my mount? Still no FAQ right? I gave a tts tourmament this saturday!

I think the consensus is like 90% yes you can and 10% we don't actually know for sure. I would say go ahead since the mounts are technically melee weapons on the warscroll.

[pnkdth]

"If successfully cast, pick 1 of the caster’s melee weapons."

Is the dragon the caster? No. It does not target the unit or model itself. The warscroll also specifies who has what equipment and separate rider from mount. What's the case saying you can?

Edit : and I just found out why "This model is a Wizard" making the entire thing "the caster."

Edited August 17, 2021 by pnkdth

[Liquidsteel]

Artefacts and Command Traits have a specific rule in the core rules that say they don't apply to the mount. 

Spells don't have this restriction. 

As far as I'm aware, spells and abilities do, and always have, applied to both caster and mount.

[Ar-Pharazôn]

Recently became a SBGL player and have worked towards getting 1000pts. Plan on playing them soon against my friend who does Mawtribes. This is the list I've made. Thoughts?

 

Allegiance: Soulblight Gravelords
 - Lineage: Vyrkos Dynasty
 - Mortal Realm: Shyish
 - Grand Strategy: Prized Sorcery
 - Triumphs: 
LEADERS
Vampire Lord (140)*
- General
- Command Trait: Pack Alpha 
- Lore of the Vampires: Spirit Gale
Necromancer (125)*
- Artefact: Arcane Tome 
- Lore of the Deathmages: Fading Vigour
Wight King on Skeletal Steed (130)*

UNITS
5 x Black Knights (120)*
10 x Deathrattle Skeletons (85)*
10 x Deathrattle Skeletons (85)*
20 x Grave Guard (280)*
- Great Wight Blades

CORE BATTALIONS
*Battle Regiment
 

[swarmofseals]

@Ar-Pharazôn how competitive are you trying to be? And does your friend tend to play BCR focused mawtribes or regular Ogors or a mix?

[Ar-Pharazôn]

2 hours ago, swarmofseals said:

@Ar-Pharazôn how competitive are you trying to be? And does your friend tend to play BCR focused mawtribes or regular Ogors or a mix?

He plays more Gutbusters. In terms of competitive-ness I'm more or less just trying to make a list out of the models I currently own. 

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

5 hours ago, Ar-Pharazôn said:

He plays more Gutbusters. In terms of competitive-ness I'm more or less just trying to make a list out of the models I currently own. 

I would say your list looks pretty good in that case. I suppose you could think about going Legion of Blood instead of Vyrkos since you have mainly Deathrattle, but that's not necessarily better. It's just another option if you want to switch things up.