SBGL Battletome Update in December WD

[Sception]

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Quote

December’s issue of White Dwarf is on its way, with 144 pages packed full of hobby content. Turn that white snow red with an update to Battletome: Soulblight Gravelords, bringing new matched play, open play, and Path to Glory rules for everyone’s favourite bloodsuckers.

Nice to see 3e style Path to Glory rules for the gravelords.  I'm pretty hype for that.

Anyone have any guesses what the new matched play and open play rules might be?

[chosen_of_khaine]

Matched Play is almost certainly just Grand Strategies, Battle Tactics, and Core Battalions, sadly. Not sure what I'd even hope for though to be honest.

[Sception]

What, like new ones, available outside those in the core book / ghb?  Honestly, I'd be pretty stoked to see that.

The only thing I personally might dare to hope for would the return of a 'vampire lord on barded nightmare' unit, or even just option for the existing vampire lord unit, to be represented by 'blood knight champion with a fancy paint job'.  It would be far from the only 'unit champion with different paint job' hero in the game, and it remains a sad tragedy of the SBGL release that we finally gained a plastic blood knight kit only to lose access to the hero who fit best alongside them thematically.

Admittedly, though, actually expecting that would be setting myself up for disappointment, so I'm not exactly holding my breath.

[vlad3theimpaler]

8 hours ago, Sception said:

What, like new ones, available outside those in the core book / ghb?  Honestly, I'd be pretty stoked to see that.

Exactly that.  A couple armies already got those from previous white dwarf issues.  I believe that for the battalions, the ones that have come out so far have had the same possible abilities as the core ones, but different combinations of units to get them.

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

12 hours ago, Sception said:

What, like new ones, available outside those in the core book / ghb?  Honestly, I'd be pretty stoked to see that.

The only thing I personally might dare to hope for would the return of a 'vampire lord on barded nightmare' unit, or even just option for the existing vampire lord unit, to be represented by 'blood knight champion with a fancy paint job'.  It would be far from the only 'unit champion with different paint job' hero in the game, and it remains a sad tragedy of the SBGL release that we finally gained a plastic blood knight kit only to lose access to the hero who fit best alongside them thematically.

Admittedly, though, actually expecting that would be setting myself up for disappointment, so I'm not exactly holding my breath.

We are almost certainly not going to see new warscrolls or warscroll updates. They have been doing these updates for a while and the best we can hope for is something like mount traits or another unique enhancement.

[Sception]

I'm not suggesting it as a legit possibility, but dang if 'vampire bloodline powers' as a unique enhancement wouldn't do a lot to help make the vampire heroes in this vampire army stand out a bit.

[Gothmaug]

Lets just hope its upgrades, and not some sort of nerf. I mean our tome came out at the cusp of 3rd edition, I can't imagine theres that much to update. 

Bloodlines and/or mount traits would be nice, I feel every foot hero in our tome has the exact same stat line of 3, 3, -1 d3. Love to see a little variety. 

Or a new warscroll black knights! 

Soulblight got an Anvil of Apotheosis article a few months back , i was very surprised to see we were getting another white dwarf update. There's a lot of armies that need it way more than us.

 

 

[Lurynsar]

1 hour ago, Gothmaug said:

Lets just hope its upgrades, and not some sort of nerf. I mean our tome came out at the cusp of 3rd edition, I can't imagine theres that much to update. 

Bloodlines and/or mount traits would be nice, I feel every foot hero in our tome has the exact same stat line of 3, 3, -1 d3. Love to see a little variety. 

Or a new warscroll black knights! 

Soulblight got an Anvil of Apotheosis article a few months back , i was very surprised to see we were getting another white dwarf update. There's a lot of armies that need it way more than us.

 

 

That could be because Soulblight won’t be getting a Battletome for a long long time. As such they’ve given them the few things they need to be fully “3.0” as the profiles and points cost were clearly planned for the new edition. 

It also allows the narrative players to have the updated Path to Glory rules sooner than 2 or 3 years down the road. 

[Doko]

After see how useless were the last for  city of sigmar i havent hope for vampires.

With luck a bad mount trait for zombidragon

[El Syf]

I may be so set in what command traits and artefacts I choose that I forgot some even exist but on the warscroll builder I could swear there's a couple of new ones added.

Kastelai seem to have Bloodsaints shield which I honestly do not remember whatsoever from the battletome, unless it is that bad!

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

15 minutes ago, El Syf said:

I may be so set in what command traits and artefacts I choose that I forgot some even exist but on the warscroll builder I could swear there's a couple of new ones added.

Kastelai seem to have Bloodsaints shield which I honestly do not remember whatsoever from the battletome, unless it is that bad!

No, that's in the tome. It's a -1 to cast aura. I remember it because the name is cool and I was sad that nobody would ever take it over Fragment of the Keep/Grave-Sand Shard.

[El Syf]

Haha I'll be reading the battletome tonight then! As others have said Vampire Lord on nightmare and allowing their command ability to work on Bloodknights would be fantastic. Vampiric powers may be a bridge to far but we can dream right?

[Liquidsteel]

From the description in the WD pre-order on GW:

 

"The Tome Celestial: Soulblight Gravelords
New background and updated battletome rules for the Soulblight Gravelords. Crack open a human and celebrate with a glass of blood!
Provides 1 new Battle Trait for the Soulblight Gravelords, 1 new Legion of Blood Battle Trait, 2 Mount Traits for Zombie Dragons alongside 3 Soulblight Gravelords bespoke Core Battalions.
Additionally provides updated rules for Open Play and Path to Glory rules for Narrative Play. For Matched Play the Soulblight Gravelords gain access to 1 bespoke Grand Strategy and 3 Battle Tactics."

 

So this sounds very interesting! A full Battle Trait for the Allegiance plus an additional one for Legion of Blood, 2 mount Traits for Zombie Dragons and 3 Battalions, 3 Battle Tactics and a Grand Strategy. Exciting!

[Lich King]

Rules bloat

[Leshoyadut]

As someone who loves Neferata and the Legion of Blood aesthetic, I, for one, am happy to see the allegiance traits coming my way.

[Envyus]

On 12/6/2021 at 6:35 PM, Doko said:

After see how useless were the last for  city of sigmar i havent hope for vampires.

With luck a bad mount trait for zombidragon

While they did not get much, it was nothing but free good stuff. 

[JackStreicher]

On 12/6/2021 at 4:43 PM, Sception said:

I'm not suggesting it as a legit possibility, but dang if 'vampire bloodline powers' as a unique enhancement wouldn't do a lot to help make the vampire heroes in this vampire army stand out a bit.

What do you mean? Isn‘t „skeletons suffer no gut/wound modifier“ enough of a vampire power for you 🤣🤣😂

in all seriousness: please throw ordinary vampires a bone (or goblet of blood)

[Sception]

On 12/11/2021 at 12:57 PM, Liquidsteel said:

From the description in the WD pre-order on GW:

 

"The Tome Celestial: Soulblight Gravelords
New background and updated battletome rules for the Soulblight Gravelords. Crack open a human and celebrate with a glass of blood!
Provides 1 new Battle Trait for the Soulblight Gravelords, 1 new Legion of Blood Battle Trait, 2 Mount Traits for Zombie Dragons alongside 3 Soulblight Gravelords bespoke Core Battalions.
Additionally provides updated rules for Open Play and Path to Glory rules for Narrative Play. For Matched Play the Soulblight Gravelords gain access to 1 bespoke Grand Strategy and 3 Battle Tactics."

 

So this sounds very interesting! A full Battle Trait for the Allegiance plus an additional one for Legion of Blood, 2 mount Traits for Zombie Dragons and 3 Battalions, 3 Battle Tactics and a Grand Strategy. Exciting!

Very interesting!  Again, I would have dramatically preferred vampire traits instead of most of that, but idle wish listing aside, this sounds pretty compelling.  White Dwarf is not where I want to see this kind of update - if it's not going to be free errata then at least save it and put it in the next general's handbook - but I'm still quit excited to see how this turns out.  Interesting that they felt Legion of Blood needed something extra.  I don't exactly disagree with that assessment, but I would have put avengori and maybe legion of night in the same boat.

Any predictions / wishes for what we're getting now that we have the general shape of it?

 

Here's my own prediction/wish for the Legion of Blood trait: Black Knights gain a bodyguard rule for LoB heroes.  Why?  Well, for one there's need.  If there's one unit in the book that has been universally identified as a dud it's the Black Knights, and that especially hurts in LoB armies where getting to take the unit as battleline is supposed to be an advantage.  For another, there's precedent - Hexwraiths get the same rule in Olynder's nighthaunt subfaction.  Third, there's fluff - Legion of Blood black knights with a dedicated bodyguard rule would be a great way to represent the central characters in the Dominion of Bones novels.  If this does happen, then that would immediately catapult LoB's current vestigial battleline black knight option up to level of being a staple, even defining unit for the faction, and simultaneously dramatically improve Neferata's own tabletop presence.  She's not terrible as is, but IMO it would be nice if the First Vampire were a more intimidating and prominent tabletop presence in the Vampire Army.

 

Other than that, though... I really have no idea what a new battle trait for the entire faction might look like.  Is there some basic interaction with the 3e rules that's missing currently?

[Liquidsteel]

That would be incredible actually! 

I think the mount traits might be a bit boring tbh, the general trend seems to be some sort of empowered monstrous action, which I hope it isn't.

[Lich King]

We don’t need any new rules - our book is just fine . There are lots of older armies which could have used this Dwarf for an update. 

As for Legion of Blood, did they really need an update? The only thing I can see which makes it questionable is the points for black knights. If they simply cut them by 20 pts you’ll see more of them on the table. The legion is good, making more enemies flee and negating de buffs for Deathrattle seem solid. I think it gets overshadowed by the other Subfactions: namely Kastelai and Vyrkos.

[Sception]

6 minutes ago, Lich King said:

We don’t need any new rules - our book is just fine . There are lots of older armies which could have used this Dwarf for an update.

Those armies will be getting 3rd edition battletomes.  We will not.  For all intents and purposes, the current battle tome /is/ our 3rd edition battletome, in the same way that Legions of Nagash /was/ our 2nd edition battletome.

As such, the SBGL book really needed to be upated with the couple of minor missing elements that will apparently be standard with 3rd edition tomes - mainly 3e style path to glory rules, plus a couple faction specific grand strategies & battle tactics.  Everything else is gravy, but I'm not going to complain about gravy.  Especially because it's not coming at the expense of anything else.  A new Nighthaunt or FEC battletome is not being delayed by the Soulblight book getting tweaked for 3rd edition.

As for Nighthaunt and FEC, they /don't/ need these things - at least not for their current books.  They need /new books/, and those new books will have these things anyway.  It would be a waste of even the tiny bit of effort put into this update to bother with such an update for an old faction book that will be entirely overwritten by a new book sooner rather than later.

 

As for fixing black knights by making them cheaper... that could work in theory, but it's a boring change that, at best, just makes them dire wolves by another name.  Better to give them a purpose distinct from 'fast, weak, fragile, cheap summonable unit for screens and sacrificial charges' when the book has two units competing for space in that role to begin with.  If SBGL are getting an update to 3e anyway (as they should - though again imo it would be better placed as a free online errata, or in the GHB if it has to be in a paid product to justify the time), then might as well use that time to do something interesting with the one unit in the book universally agreed to be kind of pointless.

[Lich King]

Sure but I mean, path to glory and battle tactics are one thing - but I hate the idea of rules spread across different books. I guess that’s been par for the course for some time now so perhaps me wanting everything tidy in one tome for a long while is wishful thinking 🤷🏼‍♂️

[Jaskier]

The problem with Black Knights is they used to be mounted wights/Grave Guard, now they're just mounted skeletons. Give them a 4+ save and mortals in addition on 6s to-wound, then bump their points up a bit to compensate. They will then fill the middle ground between Dire Wolves and Blood Knights as they should. 

Edited December 12, 2021 by Jaskier

[Lich King]

2 minutes ago, Jaskier said:

The problem with Black Knights is they used to be mounted wights/Grave Guard, now they're just mounted skeletons. Give them a 4+ save and mortals in addition on 6s to-wound, then bump their points up a bit to compensate. They will then fill the middle ground between Dire Wolves and Blood Knights as they should. 

Don’t forget that they’re also summonable; which can be a big thing if points - adjusted.

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

On 12/11/2021 at 6:57 PM, Liquidsteel said:

Provides 1 new Battle Trait for the Soulblight Gravelords, 1 new Legion of Blood Battle Trait, 2 Mount Traits for Zombie Dragons alongside 3 Soulblight Gravelords bespoke Core Battalions.

Going to throw out some predictions for funsies:

Battle Trait: This is probably the hardest to guess. It could be a rework of an old battle trait, maybe? If so, I would hope it's Locus of Shyish working on warscroll spells (or even all spells). Otherwise, I am just going to take a wild guess and say that it's some kind of bonus/interaction when using the Forbidden Power Endless Spells that were clearly meant to be Legion of Nagash faction spells at some point. Most boring/realistic prediction: +1 to cast.

Legion of Blood trait: Let's hope it's Black Knight related! A bodyguard rule was already mentioned, and I think that would be the best one. Other than that, I could imagine run and charge or +1 attack. Honestly, Black Knights are so bad that you could straight up double their damage and they would still not be unbalanced. In Legions of Nagash, Legion of Blood had +1 attack on Blood Knights, so maybe that is coming back.

Mount Traits: Zombie Dragons don't have anything they specifically need. +1 rend on the maw? A better Pestilential Breath somehow? In the Cities update, Griffins got the ability to teleport out of combat instead of dying, so it could be something out of left field like that.

Core Battalions: Going to guess Deathmarch (Deathrattle only, gives Swift + something else maybe), Fellwing Flock (Bats and Vargheists one-drop, maybe Terrorgheist too) and... Red Banqueters? (Blood Knights and Coven Throne, optional Vampire Lords, grants Magnificent).