AoS3 - Soulblight Gravelord Discussion

[Kaizennus]

I had my first game using the leaked rules for the new season.

I ran this list since I wanted to play around with the new champions mechanic. Originally I had something even fluffier that used 6 champions, but decided to run a list that at least had some semblance of a normal army.

Spoiler

Allegiance: Soulblight Gravelords
- Lineage: Legion of the Night
- Grand Strategy: The Day Is Ours!
- Triumphs: N/A

Leaders
Wight King (90)*
- General
- Command Trait: Unbending Will
- Aspect of the Champion: Tunnel Master
- Artefact: Morbheg’s Claw

Necromancer (130)*
- Wizard
- Lore of the Deathmages: Overwhelming Dread
- Artefact:Arcane Tome

Vampire Lord (140)**
- Wizard
- Lore of the Vampires: Amaranthine Orb

Vampire Lord (140)
- Wizard
- Lore of the Vampires: Amaranthine Orb

Mannfred von Carstein, Mortarch of Night (400)*
- Wizard
- Lore of the Vampires: Fading Vigour
- Conditional General in Legion of the Night

Battleline
40 x Deadwalker Zombies (240)
- Reinforced x 1
- Battleline

30 x Deathrattle Skeletons (240)*
- Reinforced x 2
- Battleline

20 x Grave Guard (280)**
- Great Wight Blades
- Reinforced x 1
- Conditional Battleline with Wight King general

10 x Grave Guard (140)
- Great Wight Blades
- Conditional Battleline with Wight King general

Units
5 x Blood Knights (200)

Core Battalions
* Warlord
** Galletian Command

Total: 2000 / 2000
Reinforced Units: 4 / 4
Allies: 0 / 400
Wounds: 149
Drops: 10

Overall, I thought that new season rules are much better than last season's. Not just for SBG, but for the game in general.

As for Soulblight specifically, I felt there were some good and bad things for us in the new rules.

New Battle Tactics:

⬜ A Matter of Honor
 Pick 1 enemy GALLETIAN CHAMPION or SWORN BODYGUARD unit on the battlefield. You complete this battle tactic if that unit is destroyed during this turn by an attack made by a friendly GALLETIAN CHAMPION or SWORN BODYGUARD unit

- I think this is possible if you run Grave Guard as a bodyguard unit (thought that means taking the special battalion). Our heroes however, have little hope of pulling this off. Unfortunately, GG are slow and difficult to setup, so it might not be easy to get them the opportunity to pull this off.

⬜ Lead The Assault
 You complete this battle tactic if at least 2 of the objectives you control are in enemy territory and are each contested by any friendly GALLETIAN CHAMPIONS.

- This tactic is already very situational because not many battleplans have 2 objectives in enemy territories. In addition, controlling two "homebase" objectives and having two champions on them seems very difficult for us. The Wight King and Necromancer are slow, and generally want to be babysitting other slow moving units. The V.Lord can move kind of fast in some situations but again, they are so easy to kill that you don't really want to have them running off on their own and they aren't likely to solo claim an objective unless nothing is there.

⬜ United Offense
 Pick 1 objective controlled by your opponent. You complete this battle tactic if you control that objective and 2 or more friendly GALLETIAN CHAMPIONS are contesting that objective at the end of this turn.

- Definitely doable, and encourages you to have at least two champions. This is fine since there are a lot of lists that want to run V.Lord and Necromancer anyway. It takes some planning to get off though since the Necromancer (or WK) is so slow, and you need to have a good target for it. Probably good for those games where there's a center objective that can be flipped several times in a game.

⬜ Cunning Maneuver
 Pick 1 friendly GALLETIAN CHAMPION on the battlefield that is more than 3” from all enemy units. You complete this battle tactic if at the end of the turn that GALLETIAN CHAMPION is more than 3” from all enemy units and is contesting an objective you control that is wholly outside your territory.

- Basically a freebie, and a good option for a turn 1.

The new battle tactics aren't super great for us, a few situational ones and one freebie (which is nice). Unfortunately, when you combine this with the other returning tactics : Gaining Momentum, An Eye for an Eye, Desecrate their Lands, This One’s Mine! means that we might struggle to consistently score tactics. I think this will be another seasons where faction specific tactics will really help some armies reach that full score potential and I don't think we fall into that group.

No Retreat, No Surrender (Realm Command)

- Most of our stuff wants to pile-in, but this works for Blood Knights so it maybe has some play. Probably better for some of the more elite factions.
Grinding Teeth of Gallet (Realmsphere Magic)

- This one can be really punishing against us since we want to be camping objectives with lots of bodies, but on the flipside we are a relatively magic-heavy faction and pretty much always have a caster (whereas some armies need to actively decide if they want a wizard or not) so there are bound to be times when we can use this to punish some opponents as well.

Strike at the Opening (Heroic Action) / Lead by Example (Heroic Action)

- The first action isn't that great for us since none of our champions are particularly amazing fighters, but it does give us the opportunity to maybe get a hero phase attack in with Grave Guard. However, I think this might sound better than it really is. Do you really want to have your champions actively in melee? We are also super hungry for CP so giving up that one potential point a turn can hurt.

Desperate Action (Season Rule)

- Pretty cool, basically a straight up buff for everyone. Even if you don't use the combo action above, this might allow us to do something like get off a heroic recovery or something while still rolling for the CP.

The Key To Victory (Season Rule)

- Very nice rule for us since our little buff heroes were so vulnerable to shooting in the past. We also don't have any real shooting of our own so this is just a straight up buff for us.

Galletian Command: United in Purpose (Battalion)

- We already have this baked into our rules with the White Dwarf update and honestly ours is better since we can trigger it with our bigger named heroes. This might be useful for our opponent's though, and we might be on the receiving end of some pretty painful double-whammy's.

Thoughts For List Building

- I don't think it's worth it for us to play heavily into the champion builds and go hard for the new tactics or special rules. Our little heroes just aren't durable or combat worth enough to justify it. 

- The bodyguard battalion might be useful, or it might be better to aim for 1-drops so you can control that opening turn a bit more. Interested in trying this out a bit more, but it seems like GG are the only really worthy targets for this.

- This season's tactics look to be a little difficult for us. They still favor aggressive, hard-hitting gameplay and that isn't really our forte. 

- So, while it seems like a lot of the new stuff isn't particularly amazing, I think we actually end up in a better spot overall with the removal of bounty hunters and inherent 2 rank fighting. I think our "normal" lists from the original GHB season are stronger now. It's now much safer to bring support heroes without worrying as much about them getting sniped, and he removal of bounty hunters and elite units fighting in two ranks means our typical battleline stuff is viable once again.

For my next game I'm probably going back to my "normal" casual Vyrkos list since it actually had a lot of points nerfs and now maybe I can move a few pieces around to put another strong piece in there. That list runs a V.Lord and Necromancer which can attempt some of the tactic stuff and isn't as vulnerable now to shooting.

[Skreech Verminking]

So I bought myself the vengorian lord yesterday, and I really must say one thing.

I never liked halve of the model.

so I changed it.

basicallh this is how he now looks instead

I hope you guys will enjoy this.

it kinda reminds me of the old vampire lord on horror back in the old days

although I kinda needed some model that would take the place of champion instead of the bloodknight that fook it apart on him becoming the next big bad, and thankfullh the amazing skeleton king was an option for me, so now this shorty will be leading his bigger cousins.

He just didn’t trink enough peope who ate bananas 

Edited January 21, 2023 by Skreech Verminking

[RocketPropelledGrenade]

Been playing mostly S2D lately, but with the removal of Bounty Hunters and the addition of Gallet Champs (mostly the former), I am debating mixing in some Soulblight games. Unfortunately, my favorite lists aren't the ones that would benefit as much, and I am really sick of our existing Grave Guard models*--the only ones I have left to paint. So I'm not sure. As much as FEC and OBR deserve Spring battletomes more, I'm starting to come around to the idea that a spring SBGL tome might still be nice, if it does the right updates. There's a few things that have really been bugging me after how much Soulblight I played last year.

*Doing the Sons of Velmorn now, and the difference is like night and day in terms of quality and enjoyability to paint. I said before I would replace all my Grave Guard, finished and otherwise, for new ones in that style, and this just makes me feel vindicated.

[MotherGoose]

With the rumours our new tome is coming alongside Bonereapers, what are your guys thoughts?

Majority of 3.0 tomes have been great, but SBG are in a fairly unique spot with the amount of subfactions/different mechanics and abilities and access to different tables of artefacts and traits for each one. I must admit I'm a little worried they will water each one down and give us a single table of artefacts/traits. That said, maybe that won't be such a bad thing? Half of them are useless currently anyway.

[JackStreicher]

I would not mind a new tome.

FeC and SBGL would be nice!

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

8 hours ago, MotherGoose said:

With the rumours our new tome is coming alongside Bonereapers, what are your guys thoughts?

Majority of 3.0 tomes have been great, but SBG are in a fairly unique spot with the amount of subfactions/different mechanics and abilities and access to different tables of artefacts and traits for each one. I must admit I'm a little worried they will water each one down and give us a single table of artefacts/traits. That said, maybe that won't be such a bad thing? Half of them are useless currently anyway.

I could go for more simplified subfactions. All those artefacts and command traits don't add a lot for me, personally. Most of the time, there are only one or two good ones per subfaction. Most can't even compete with Arcane Tome. I'd rather have one set of six really good ones that any dynasty can use.

 Overall, I think our book held up remarkably well. It got power crept, for sure, but it has only really dropped out of contention for tournament play fairly recently. For the next book, I hope they put a little more care into the main iconic units (skeletons, black knights...) so that they all feel good to play. I am fairly confident the next book will be an improvement over the current one, though. Most 3rd edition books have been great.

[TechnoVampire]

8 hours ago, MotherGoose said:

With the rumours our new tome is coming alongside Bonereapers, what are your guys thoughts?

Majority of 3.0 tomes have been great, but SBG are in a fairly unique spot with the amount of subfactions/different mechanics and abilities and access to different tables of artefacts and traits for each one. I must admit I'm a little worried they will water each one down and give us a single table of artefacts/traits. That said, maybe that won't be such a bad thing? Half of them are useless currently anyway.

I also enjoy having multiple artefact and command trait choices, though it can be frustrating when there are a few good ones locked into specific sub factions. If they simplify them into one, then I hope the majority are unique and useful. Saying that Gitz got a whole host of unique ones for their sub factions. 

I’m really hoping the spell lores get a bit of a rework. There are currently too many similar spells with very meh mortal wound effects. I’d love to see a bit more utility and potentially some debuff spells in the lore of the vampires. 

like Neil above, I’d like to see death rattle get a bit of love, providing them with a decent sub faction or some viable hero suport. 

I’d love a vampire lord that feels worthy of the title. Particularly something mounted/ has mobility and maybe provides buffs to other vampires. 

mostly I think our book is in a good place, just being outclassed a little with some more recent tomes, so bringing it up to par with a few adjustments would be great, as opposed to a major rework. 
 

lastly I’d really love if we got new grave guard models (though I’m not holding out much hope anytime soon, based on all the other planned model releases). Based on the other recent skeleton releases I think they’d be incredible. 

Edited March 5, 2023 by TechnoVampire

[MotherGoose]

Yeah I'd love a rework to the spells, hadn't even crossed my mind for some reason!

I'm confident we will get 6++ baked in without needing to be near graves/heroes - every death army has had it given without the need for auras now. With that in mind, I wonder if grave sites will stay/change? I also feel like our healing/ressurection may get a slight tweak now that so many armies essentially have better versions and....thats kinda our jam.

New grave guard models would be incredible. Vampires being how they should be too - currently a goblin warlord is better in combat than a vampire lord which is just crazy. I'd love the legion of blood vampire abilities to become a warscroll thing (+2 to cast/dispel or +2 attacks) rather than be locked to a subfaction - hell i hope they expand on that even more and give vampires more choice.

[TechnoVampire]

Ah yeah, the 6+ Ward as standard seems like a no brainier now and I’ll be disappointed if that isn’t implemented. I’d also like to see summoning enhanced somewhat. I feel like the endless legions ability is pretty poor, and could do with a rework. 
 

Vamp lords have been a confusing unit for me since I started playing AOS. I’d happily see them go up in points a bit and gain a body and combat profile that matches the lore. If GW are worried about the army needing cheap hero options for buffing, then they could just make a few variations of necromancer… that’s another model I feel badly needs an update anyway. 

Edited March 6, 2023 by TechnoVampire

[JackStreicher]

11 hours ago, TechnoVampire said:

variations of necromancer

That. Other options:

- Grave Keepers

- Mortis Vermin Masters

- Wight Variants

- Different Tiers of Vampires (each with a female equivalent as well): Mortarch, Arch-Duke, Duke, Count, Lord, ordinary Vampire Soldiers (we had this back in Warhammer Fantasy and it was really flavorful, cool and just great to play with)

- Necromancer Variants: Death Lord, Mortis Lord, Necromancer, Corpsemaster, Summoner

sometimes the lack of creativity poured into new Battletomes is infuriating 🥲

Especially with the Vampire factions there’s an endless amount of cool things they could do? What do they do? An oversized half monster vampire? 🤦🏼‍♂️
It‘s the same with the Kosargi Nightguard: A whole unit of Zombie-Ogors would be really cool!

Concerning new units in general:

- Zombie Ogor Infantry

- Super Heavy Grave Guards (like Krell, former Chaos Worshippers)

- An undead Minster with a small Cannon Tower (edgy vampire style) on its back firing magic/bullets

- Unstable Vampire Bat swarm: These explode when they fly within 3“ of an enemy

- Zombie/Grave Guard Gunners

- Masonry + Flesh: Goyle-Fiends: (pretty much Gargoyles but with a twist)

- Vampire mob (Vyrkos and of other lineages), because: WHY NOT!?

- Nagashizzar Deathstones: Fires a black laser powered by death energy

- Grave Vermin: weaken enemies within 6“, same rules as nurglings concerning killing them

- Crypt Gore Fiends: Shadowy manifestation of Necromantic Energy melted with rotten bodyparts, armour and a hunger for blood/brain

- Endless Spells: Torrent of blood, Soulstorm, all of the Flesh Eater spells, the headless Horsemen, Wave of Terror (units run 2D6 away from it), Nadir-Shard: pulls enemies towards it

Some Drafts of the most powerful/interesting units (3pdfs, 1 Image). there are some Mistakes in it: All Abilities that refer to a specific Legion are not supposed to. 

Quote

vampire-lord.pdfvampire-noble.pdfancient-vampire .pdf

 

Edited March 6, 2023 by JackStreicher

[Honk]

Give me a 750-800 Naggi, 

as stated above, there were great vamp variants in the old world that were cool to field and easily compatible with their new fluff… an Blooddragon Archduke is a 280 melee blender on par with Sigvald or an IJ boss , while the Necrach variant has base stats, but 2 casts with +1

anybody say endless spells?!?

we still have a great variety of troops , especially for fluff and casual play, so I‘m fine with that. Don’t tryhard creativity GDubs 😅

[Sception]

I like the new hero as a model in and of itself, but even accepting that we were only going to be getting a pity hero this time around due to studio attention being monopolized by lizardmen, cities, and 10th ed 40k it is still a baffling choice when 'vampire mage', 'skeleton mage', 'vampire cavalry lord', 'zombie hero', 'Wight King that doesn't come packaged on a square base', and 'named foot hero for literally any of the other dynasties' are all still missing from the current range.

But whatever.  Maybe I'm just old so time has lost all meaning to me, but I'm still riding high from the previous soulblight model wave, so I'm not too worked up about a lack of exciting new model releases this time around.  Instead I'm more interested in the new army book.

On one level, I'm not really expecting anything more than a copy-paste job incorporating cado, the new hero, the warcry warband, and the white dwarf update.  After all, as of the last metawatch article soulblight did make it back up into the 'goldilocks zone' of 45% to 55% event win rates indicating that the faction overall is neither too strong nor too weak, and while we were trending below that for a while, the devs could attribute that to our faction just interacting poorly with the previous matched play season.  And they probably wouldn't be wrong in that.  Bounty hunters did hit us harder than most.  So if soublight doesn't strictly need much attention, and studio attention is mostly focused elsewhere, a copy-paste job seems likely.

Honestly, I wouldn't be too bothered by that.  I was pretty happy with the current book when it released, and while the 'new car smell' has worn off, I'm still rather content.  Most units are fairly distinct and at least interesting.  The subfactions are cool.  There are mutliple build options that play very differently.  They managed to reign in the over-the-top recursion from Legions of Nagash that led to a lot of feel-bads without massacring the tone and feel of the faction.  So yeah, if the new battletome releases and the only meaningful change for the faction is that I won't have to haul a random issue of white dwarf around with me when I play them, I'll be content with that.

...

But it's hard not to hope for more, and there's some grounds for that hope.

After all, there's a time delay on book production, so at the time this book must have been written, soulblight were in fact trending below the 45% win rate, giving the devs a reason to think they warranted some attention.  And some issues with the book have been apparent for a while, or even from the moment the book was released, including:

1) the vampire spell lore is absolutely terrible.  Extra embarrassing now that the faction is basically 'vampire counts' again.

2) wight kings are bad and, worse, boring.  The mounted king barely has a role thanks only to the lack of mounted vampire lords, the foot version is just a worse vamp lord. 

3) generic vamp lords themselves, while not terrible, are pretty bland and boring, mostly there for the command ability which means there's no reason to take more than one of them per army in 3rd edition.  This maybe wasn't a big problem in the Legions of Nagash days, but now that the faction is basically 'vampire counts' again it's a problem that the vampire counts themselves aren't particularly exciting.

4) the black knight warscroll is so weak that their points had to be dropped over and over again, only becoming playable when they got cheap enough to treat them as expendable fast chaff.  But now they're stepping on the toes of dire wolves and fell bats, and not even trying to live up to their narrative place as medium cavalry 'mounted wights'.

5) Vargheists - vampires who have been overwhelmed by their vampiric hunger - don't have the vampiric hunger rule.  Plus their deep strike is pretty redundant with the outflanking faction rule of the subfaction that's supposed to favor them.

6) Nagash's current warscroll is confusing and incredibly fragile for is over-900 point cost.

7) this last one's maybe just me, because I don't know how popular path to glory actually is, but the PtG rules for soulblight from the white dwarf are terrible.  In particular, removing summonable units from the roster entirely borks up the campaign system's unit restrictions and totally undermines half the point of a slow-grow campaign - ie, the extra motivation to get your units painted so that you can give them a cool name and write them down in your roster as a running tally of your growing army.  Yes it makes sense for summonables not to gain exp or casualties, but they should still be in the roster and count towards normal unit limits.

...

None of these are disasters exactly.  Again, if none of them are fixed I won't be too put out.  But the point is there were reasons to think the book needed some patching up at the time it was probably written, and if the writer was looking for problem areas to patch they could easily find a few.

I don't want to waste much time imagining particular solutions, that sort of wishlisting is setting myself up for disappointment.  But I am on pins and needles for warcom articles in the coming weeks that might indicate whether the new book will be just a copy & paste job, or something more.

[Leshoyadut]

The hero is kinda whatever. Beautiful model, but once more just feels like they planned wayyyyy more than they used for Cursed City, and that's all we're gonna get for a while. It's cool and I do like the wolf themed vampires, but I want something different if they are going to give us something. But ultimately, we don't really need more new models with the relatively recent refresh. They can only give so many new models at a time, and other armies need it more than we do, as much as I want some new Grave Guard.

Honestly, the thing for me is that there are so many warscrolls in the army that are close to being good (at least casually, if not competitively) and just need a touch-up. I'd love to see them do a little tweaking, like DoK got with their newest tome, and I really don't want any major overhauls because the army feels generally good despite not performing quite as well as I'd like.

Buuuut I don't really expect much. Like you say, I'd be surprised if the new tome did much more than incorporate the White Dwarf stuff. A man can dream, though. A man can dream.

[MotherGoose]

I'd expect a huge cut to the traits and artefacts, I'm going to guess a choice of 3 per subfaction with all of them being fairly good rather than 80% being rubbish.

A single special battle trait for each sub faction, keeping the 'battleline if' too.

Increase to rend on certain models and some little warcsroll buffs/changes like the hunger becoming the same as Cado's. Change to our healing and a hero will no doubt get the generic 'rally on 4s' like most seem to get now.

I also expect heroes to get access to 5+ wards, with all death units having 6+ with no need to be within an aura. (Maybe if they're in the aura they get +1?!)

In general it'll be more streamlined and some little buffs and changes. They've been doing really well with all the 3.0 tomes.

As for hopes rather than expectations, make mannfred a brilliant caster again. That was always his thing. Arkhan is no longer in the army so there's space for it without being too similar too. Give blood knights 2 inch range and maybe rend 2 on the charge, rend 1 all other times? Make vampires better in combat and an extra wound or two (sort of expecting this tbh).

[Honk]

4 hours ago, MotherGoose said:

They've been doing really well with all the 3.0 tomes.

Well, looking batreps and listening to the new Slaneesh tome, it:

imba or bust time again…

Not sure about KO, but them kinky people surely got the decadent package of goodies…

I liked the old Book, it was good and not a rolfstomp your friends like them pink diversity got 🫣🥶🤷🏿‍♀️.

[Sception]

5 hours ago, MotherGoose said:

As for hopes rather than expectations, make mannfred a brilliant caster again.

If I were writing the book, there'd be a significant re-think of the basic rules and roles of the subfactions, with some new lore here and there to justify the changes.

Legion of Night would become the Deathmage subfaction.  Say mannfred went out of his way to find and recruit survivors of the legion of sacrament.  give them a casting bonus for deathmage spells, re-roll 1s on endless legions as long as a LoN general is on the table, a trait to let a vampire wizard general cast as a deathmage, make mannfred know all the deathmage spells, fitting with his old world necromantic training and mastery.  bonuses mostly going to deathmages would encourage more necromancers and fewer vampire heroes in LoN armies, which fits with Mannfred distrusting others of his own kind, and his own bloodline in particular.  drop the battleline vargheists, mannfreds connection to them is old world fluff that doesn't really fit into aos all that well.

legion of blood would be the vampire lore specialists, with that lore of course getting reworked to be good.  less direct damage spells, the ones that remain being more threatening, and more personal buffs to the caster, or to other vampires.  then give legion of blood the current vykos traits but refluffed, bonus to vampire casting (the strongest blood magic), and vampires gain a buff aura to enhance nearby summonables (aura of command).  This makes legion of blood the archetypical undead legion, with a classic battleline of ranked lesser undead supported and enhanced by vampyric champions.  Drop the battleline black knights gimmick.  there's nothing especially legion of bloody about them and kastellai are already the cavalry subfaction.

vyrkos then picks up the outflanking gimmick that legion of night traded away to be deathmage specialists, which imo better fits a hunting wolf pack than their current rules.  If that needs any justification, say that with the final destruction of Ulfenkarn the bulk of Vyrkos forces hace temporarily abandoned civilized pretensions and returned to the wild hinterlands of shyish, skulking the forests as they did in the age of chaos.  Belladamma stays a strong caster, but is no longer stronger than the first vampire and basically inventer of vamyric blood magic who has had countless thousands of years longer to perfect the art.  Radubeast on the other hand becomes even more of a terrifying monster skulking the wild forests when he can appear from any table edge.

for avengory, i'd switch their battleline monsters to battleline vargheists, while also making vargheists stronger in general (trade deep strike for 3d6 charge, more rend, add hunger).  the subfaction is about becoming monsters, not animating their carcasses.  leave the all monster all the time gimmick to gristlegore FEC.

But that's just what I would do.

Edited March 25, 2023 by Sception

[JackStreicher]

4 hours ago, Sception said:

If I were writing the book, there'd be a significant re-think of the basic rules and roles of the subfactions, with some new lore here and there to justify the changes.

Legion of Night would become the Deathmage subfaction.  Say mannfred went out of his way to find and recruit survivors of the legion of sacrament.  give them a casting bonus for deathmage spells, re-roll 1s on endless legions as long as a LoN general is on the table, a trait to let a vampire wizard general cast as a deathmage, make mannfred know all the deathmage spells, fitting with his old world necromantic training and mastery.  bonuses mostly going to deathmages would encourage more necromancers and fewer vampire heroes in LoN armies, which fits with Mannfred distrusting others of his own kind, and his own bloodline in particular.  drop the battleline vargheists, mannfreds connection to them is old world fluff that doesn't really fit into aos all that well.

legion of blood would be the vampire lore specialists, with that lore of course getting reworked to be good.  less direct damage spells, the ones that remain being more threatening, and more personal buffs to the caster, or to other vampires.  then give legion of blood the current vykos traits but refluffed, bonus to vampire casting (the strongest blood magic), and vampires gain a buff aura to enhance nearby summonables (aura of command).  This makes legion of blood the archetypical undead legion, with a classic battleline of ranked lesser undead supported and enhanced by vampyric champions.  Drop the battleline black knights gimmick.  there's nothing especially legion of bloody about them and kastellai are already the cavalry subfaction.

vyrkos then picks up the outflanking gimmick that legion of night traded away to be deathmage specialists, which imo better fits a hunting wolf pack than their current rules.  If that needs any justification, say that with the final destruction of Ulfenkarn the bulk of Vyrkos forces hace temporarily abandoned civilized pretensions and returned to the wild hinterlands of shyish, skulking the forests as they did in the age of chaos.  Belladamma stays a strong caster, but is no longer stronger than the first vampire and basically inventer of vamyric blood magic who has had countless thousands of years longer to perfect the art.  Radubeast on the other hand becomes even more of a terrifying monster skulking the wild forests when he can appear from any table edge.

for avengory, i'd switch their battleline monsters to battleline vargheists, while also making vargheists stronger in general (trade deep strike for 3d6 charge, more rend, add hunger).  the subfaction is about becoming monsters, not animating their carcasses.  leave the all monster all the time gimmick to gristlegore FEC.

But that's just what I would do.

I‘d add a Deathrattle Kingdoms Subfaction, making those wights casters and scary.

 

 

Edited March 25, 2023 by JackStreicher

[Sception]

1 hour ago, JackStreicher said:

I‘d add a Deathrattle Kingdoms Subfaction, making those wights casters and scary.

I jave mixed feelings there.  on the one hand skeletons ate cool, so i certainly wouldn't complain if it happened.  on the other hand now that the faction is back to being vampire counts i feel like the focus should still be there, plus i wouldn't want to step on obr's toes as the bone faction.

[Honk]

3 hours ago, JackStreicher said:

d add a Deathrattle Kingdoms Subfaction, making those wights casters and scary.

No.1 yes, with bone Giants and constructs and abominations… and no magic beyond a Necromancer dude

but That would be back to LoNagash again (once More with feeling) , which i liked but don‘t think they‘ll do 

[TechnoVampire]

On 3/25/2023 at 7:19 AM, Leshoyadut said:

The hero is kinda whatever. Beautiful model, but once more just feels like they planned wayyyyy more than they used for Cursed City, and that's all we're gonna get for a while. It's cool and I do like the wolf themed vampires, but I want something different if they are going to give us something. But ultimately, we don't really need more new models with the relatively recent refresh. They can only give so many new models at a time, and other armies need it more than we do, as much as I want some new Grave Guard.

Honestly, the thing for me is that there are so many warscrolls in the army that are close to being good (at least casually, if not competitively) and just need a touch-up. I'd love to see them do a little tweaking, like DoK got with their newest tome, and I really don't want any major overhauls because the army feels generally good despite not performing quite as well as I'd like.

Buuuut I don't really expect much. Like you say, I'd be surprised if the new tome did much more than incorporate the White Dwarf stuff. A man can dream, though. A man can dream.

 

On 3/25/2023 at 8:25 AM, MotherGoose said:

I'd expect a huge cut to the traits and artefacts, I'm going to guess a choice of 3 per subfaction with all of them being fairly good rather than 80% being rubbish.

A single special battle trait for each sub faction, keeping the 'battleline if' too.

Increase to rend on certain models and some little warcsroll buffs/changes like the hunger becoming the same as Cado's. Change to our healing and a hero will no doubt get the generic 'rally on 4s' like most seem to get now.

I also expect heroes to get access to 5+ wards, with all death units having 6+ with no need to be within an aura. (Maybe if they're in the aura they get +1?!)

In general it'll be more streamlined and some little buffs and changes. They've been doing really well with all the 3.0 tomes.

As for hopes rather than expectations, make mannfred a brilliant caster again. That was always his thing. Arkhan is no longer in the army so there's space for it without being too similar too. Give blood knights 2 inch range and maybe rend 2 on the charge, rend 1 all other times? Make vampires better in combat and an extra wound or two (sort of expecting this tbh).

I strongly agree with these thoughts/ expectations. 

the book is currently in a reasonable place, but there are a lot of little things they could do to make it feel more current and relevant to the lore and meta. 

When it comes to GW I’ve learned not to expect too much, so I’m preparing myself for a copy paste job, but if that is the case I’ll actually be quite disappointed.  The 3.0 trend has mostly been encouraging so far (skaven aside), so I hope they at least implement changes similar to @MotherGoosesuggested, with anything additional as a pleasant surprise. 

If there are no changes other than incorporating the white dwarf updates and missing warscrolls the book is going to feel very dated and outmatched by the time 4’th edition roles around. Copy paste battletome’s feel incredibly lazy, and a wasted opportunity when it takes minimal effort to make small balanced improvements. Fingers crossed GW is starting to realise/ care about this.   

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

So, Soulblight preorder this sunday! We already have some hints about the upcoming rules from the warscroll cards promotional picture:

If you look closealy, there are only 3 Gravesite tokens on here. So Gravesites are still in the book, but we potentially get one fewer of them.

There are a few new abilites or spells on here as well: Waste Away, Premeditated Bloodshed, Master of Retaliation, Battle-Crazed and A Promising Concoction. Any guesses as to who these might belong to?

[TechnoVampire]

Well spotted. Battle crazed sounds like it could potentially be a Vhordrai ability… I hope so as it might suggest a new warscroll. 

[Sception]

5 hours ago, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

 

If you look closealy, there are only 3 Gravesite tokens on here. So Gravesites are still in the book, but we potentially get one fewer of them.

nah.  one column is obscured behind the box.  the gravesite tokens we see are r2c3, r3c1, and r3c2.  if the tokens are ordered left to right, top to bottom, as typical for english text, then in order you're looking at gravesite, ???, gravesite, gravesite.  the natural assumption then is that the unknown token in row2, column4 is another gravesite.

[Sception]

On 3/28/2023 at 10:57 AM, TechnoVampire said:

When it comes to GW I’ve learned not to expect too much, so I’m preparing myself for a copy paste job, but if that is the case I’ll actually be quite disappointed.  The 3.0 trend has mostly been encouraging so far (skaven aside), so I hope they at least implement changes similar to @MotherGoosesuggested, with anything additional as a pleasant surprise.

the 3e trend has mostly been positive, but that trend started with our existing book.  remember that, as the last 2e battletome, the existing SG book was designed for 3rd edition.  Apart from missing faction tactics & strategies and 3e style ptg rules, our book effectively already is a 3e book, so there's not really any reason to expect any significant change to the current rules to update them to the edition's design philosophy.

[JackStreicher]

1 hour ago, Sception said:

the 3e trend has mostly been positive, but that trend started with our existing book.  remember that, as the last 2e battletome, the existing SG book was designed for 3rd edition.  Apart from missing faction tactics & strategies and 3e style ptg rules, our book effectively already is a 3e book, so there's not really any reason to expect any significant change to the current rules to update them to the edition's design philosophy.

Don’t break my heart