Damosane Posted July 6, 2021 Share Posted July 6, 2021 Hi, so my lifelong dream army was a converted undead brettonian force but I never had the finances for a large aos army until recently. Luckily I have had a large amount of Brettonian bits and terribly painted models stored for atleast 15 years and now seems the time to get chopping and green stuffing and bring my dream to life..( unlife) my problem is I have no idea how to actually start list wise , I've no plans to play in tournaments but I'd enjoy a list capable of winning and have purchased some blood knights to start me off, could anyone recommend a list or some units to help me build a decent and thematic list? Sorry for the essay, any replies are greatly appreciated Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Neil Arthur Hotep Posted July 7, 2021 Share Posted July 7, 2021 You should definitely take a look over in the general discussion thread. People are posting solid lists over there all the time. I think if you want to build a Bretonnia-inspired army, you will probably want both the lowly peasants and their high lords to be represented. For peasants, both skeletons and zombies work. Skeletons are the tankier option of the two. You can run a block of 30 with a Necromancer to support it (skeletons heal by activating in combat, and the Necromancer has a spell that lets them activate twice, potentially giving you double healing) and it will be a decent anvil. Zombies, by contrast, are more there for their bodies than anything else. You can run them in 20s or 40s and they can be very annoying for your opponent: They get to pile in and attack from 6" away, so they don't need to charge, and they do most of their damage as mortal wounds so they are a threat even to high armour models. The downside is that they can't take a punch. They are good, but they just die. If you want to support them, a +1 attack buff literally doubles their damage output. For mounted knights, there are two obvious options in the book in Black Knights and Blood Knights. Black Knights are kinda not so good at the moment, but you can probably run a unit of 5 of them to represent questing knights and be fine. Blood Knights on the other hand are great! Run them in units of 5, with or without support. They will definitely do work and are probably the best unit in the Gravelords book. You can easily take up to 15 or so Blood Knights in a list without stretching yourself too thin. The subfaction you will probably want to run is Kastelai, because it supports Blood Knights the best, and Bretonnia is all about their knights after all. If you instead want a subfaction that leans more magical and wants to run lots of heroes, you can take a look at Vyrkos. One more thing: In AoS 3, units with the MONSTER keyword are pretty good, and you should probably try to put at least one in your list (unless you are playing purely to theme). The Vampire Lord on Zombie Dragon and Vengorian Lord are both good choices, but I have no idea how you would convert them to be more Bretonnian. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Greybeard86 Posted July 7, 2021 Share Posted July 7, 2021 Such a great idea, I am planning on doing this with part of my brets. Google Mousillon Bretonnia for some ideas. I'm not sure though about the gaming part. @Neil Arthur Hotep ideas looked good to me. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Liquidsteel Posted July 7, 2021 Share Posted July 7, 2021 (edited) Mousillon should be your aim I think. Maybe go for Kastelai as the theme, with The Red Duke (Prince Vhordrai or a VLoZD) leading his troops from his castle. You can stick some wings on the Vengorian Lord and have him as a deformed pegasus knight or something. Skeletons as Militia and Zombies as Peasants, with Blood Knights as your core. Edited July 7, 2021 by Liquidsteel 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Damosane Posted July 7, 2021 Author Share Posted July 7, 2021 2 hours ago, Neil Arthur Hotep said: You should definitely take a look over in the general discussion thread. People are posting solid lists over there all the time. I think if you want to build a Bretonnia-inspired army, you will probably want both the lowly peasants and their high lords to be represented. For peasants, both skeletons and zombies work. Skeletons are the tankier option of the two. You can run a block of 30 with a Necromancer to support it (skeletons heal by activating in combat, and the Necromancer has a spell that lets them activate twice, potentially giving you double healing) and it will be a decent anvil. Zombies, by contrast, are more there for their bodies than anything else. You can run them in 20s or 40s and they can be very annoying for your opponent: They get to pile in and attack from 6" away, so they don't need to charge, and they do most of their damage as mortal wounds so they are a threat even to high armour models. The downside is that they can't take a punch. They are good, but they just die. If you want to support them, a +1 attack buff literally doubles their damage output. For mounted knights, there are two obvious options in the book in Black Knights and Blood Knights. Black Knights are kinda not so good at the moment, but you can probably run a unit of 5 of them to represent questing knights and be fine. Blood Knights on the other hand are great! Run them in units of 5, with or without support. They will definitely do work and are probably the best unit in the Gravelords book. You can easily take up to 15 or so Blood Knights in a list without stretching yourself too thin. The subfaction you will probably want to run is Kastelai, because it supports Blood Knights the best, and Bretonnia is all about their knights after all. If you instead want a subfaction that leans more magical and wants to run lots of heroes, you can take a look at Vyrkos. One more thing: In AoS 3, units with the MONSTER keyword are pretty good, and you should probably try to put at least one in your list (unless you are playing purely to theme). The Vampire Lord on Zombie Dragon and Vengorian Lord are both good choices, but I have no idea how you would convert them to be more Bretonnian. Thanks, this is really detailed and I appreciate it! Il check out the general forum and hopefully find a list that checks enough of my conversion ideas, which is going to be awkward as I really want to convert both a corpse Cart and skeletons and I'm pretty sure having both zombies and skeletons is inefficient! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Damosane Posted July 7, 2021 Author Share Posted July 7, 2021 33 minutes ago, Liquidsteel said: Mousillon should be your aim I think. Maybe go for Kastelai as the theme, with The Red Duke (Prince Vhordrai or a VLoZD) leading his troops from his castle. You can stick some wings on the Vengorian Lord and have him as a deformed pegasus knight or something. Skeletons as Militia and Zombies as Peasants, with Blood Knights as your core. Yes Mousillon was the plan! I'm looking forwards to learning why everyone hates painting yellow 😢 i have to admit the Vengorian lord is the thing I'm finding hardest to figure out a decent conversion for ! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Neil Arthur Hotep Posted July 7, 2021 Share Posted July 7, 2021 1 hour ago, Damosane said: Thanks, this is really detailed and I appreciate it! Il check out the general forum and hopefully find a list that checks enough of my conversion ideas, which is going to be awkward as I really want to convert both a corpse Cart and skeletons and I'm pretty sure having both zombies and skeletons is inefficient! I would not even feel bad about including the Corpse Cart in a list without Zombies list if I liked the model. At 80 points, it does not even really matter. The Corpse Cart has two loadouts, both of which are good. Unholy Loadstone gives your zombies +1 to saves, which looks good at first, but does not have much of an impact. Save bonuses are worth more the higher your base save is, but Zombies literally have the lowest base save possible. +1 to cast is good, though, regardless of how many zombies you have in your list, so you can bring the cart just for that. Balefire Brazier might actually secretly be the better version of the cart. -1 to wound is strong, frequently stronger than +1 to saves, and -1 to casts is also good. Just push one of these guys to the front with your slow moving troops to be annoying to your opponent. If they destroy it, who even cares? It's only 80 points. 1 hour ago, Damosane said: Yes Mousillon was the plan! I'm looking forwards to learning why everyone hates painting yellow 😢 i have to admit the Vengorian lord is the thing I'm finding hardest to figure out a decent conversion for ! Painting yellow is not actually that bad, it's just very hard to do if you use the standard Citadel methode of starting dark and layering on brighter colours. Since yellow paint is so translucent it's much easier to establish all your contrast in white and brown and just put a coat or two of yellow over the top in the end. This video by Vince Venturella explains the process really well: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sception Posted July 8, 2021 Share Posted July 8, 2021 On 7/7/2021 at 6:04 AM, Damosane said: Yes Mousillon was the plan! I'm looking forwards to learning why everyone hates painting yellow 😢 i have to admit the Vengorian lord is the thing I'm finding hardest to figure out a decent conversion for ! Vampire Knight riding any of the smaller monsters would make a good vengo lord stand in. So start with a brettonian hero on a pegasus or especially hippogriff, and apply some conversion effort to vampifying the rider (head/weapon/shield swaps from blood knights & other vampire models) and zombifying the mount (dremel away chunks of the body, then sculpt in some open wounds & exposed flesh/bones/organs to fill the gaps you make). As long as its recognizeably monstrous and vampiric, and yet clearly smaller than a zombie dragon, you should be fine. If you want a cav army, Kastelai is the way to go. If you want more a bunch of pesants with a few knights leading them, then Vyrkos or even Legion of Blood could be suitable. Legion of Blood in particular supports taking some black knights, which you might want to do if you want some visual and mechanical distinction between basic knights errant & knights of the realm and more elite questing and grail knights. Granted the army would be weaker than pure blood knights, at least for now, but these sorts of theme armies tend to be long term labors of love, and the mechanical balance between black knights and blood knights could easily have reversed itself 3 or 4 years down the line. IMO it's best not to get hung up on competitive viability with this kind of project. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Schurge Posted July 13, 2021 Share Posted July 13, 2021 Mantic has a vampire lord on zombie Pegasus, put it on the correct sized base and I doubt anyone will care if the OP uses it as a "counts-as" zombie dragon. Of course, if the OP ever does decide he cares about tournaments its a no go. I don't have any experience with Mantic products so this isn't an endorsement. I plan on getting their giant for a "counts-as" vampire giant / Fort-Kicka though. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Red King Posted July 13, 2021 Share Posted July 13, 2021 I have an old isle of blood high elf prince of hippogryph gathering dust. If you stuck a vampire lord from the zombie dragon kit on there and put it on the right base (zombie up the hippogryph a little) and it's a pretty good basis for a vengori lord imo. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BaylorCorvette Posted July 13, 2021 Share Posted July 13, 2021 On 7/7/2021 at 4:30 AM, Liquidsteel said: Mousillon should be your aim I think. Maybe go for Kastelai as the theme, with The Red Duke (Prince Vhordrai or a VLoZD) leading his troops from his castle. You can stick some wings on the Vengorian Lord and have him as a deformed pegasus knight or something. Skeletons as Militia and Zombies as Peasants, with Blood Knights as your core. I wasn't a huge fan of the Vengorian Lord from GW and I'm running a Kastelai army so I won't to stick to the Knightly theme. So my take is a Vampire Lord with a big bat like creature as his pet. 2 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Neil Arthur Hotep Posted July 13, 2021 Share Posted July 13, 2021 13 hours ago, Schurge said: Mantic has a vampire lord on zombie Pegasus, put it on the correct sized base and I doubt anyone will care if the OP uses it as a "counts-as" zombie dragon. Of course, if the OP ever does decide he cares about tournaments its a no go. I don't have any experience with Mantic products so this isn't an endorsement. I plan on getting their giant for a "counts-as" vampire giant / Fort-Kicka though. Reikenor's horse would probably make a cool monster pegasus mount, as well, if you are trying to stick to GW models. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheGrimKnight Posted September 24, 2021 Share Posted September 24, 2021 I know this is an older post, but any update on the army? I've been working on a Mousillon army myself. I'm in love with how the realm of death have undead kingdoms with humans "living side by side" I'm using men at arms as fanatic thralls (Skeleton rules, when one men at arms dies they are brought back to continue to serve and protect their lord and families) I also saw where someone took and made mounted yoemen mixed with dire wolfs thats a cool idea. they have the same armor as the black knights. and its cool to have the youngest knights errent have to go to battle as the vanguard with their wolfs. those who survive move to the hire ranks, those who die continue to serve in other rolls. personally the real of death have so many cool ideas and stories to be explored. Hope your army works out! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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