Soulblight Gravelords Discussion - 3rd edition.

[Overread]

A new tome arises from the graves and thus a new thread arises as well! 

 

 

Previous thread here:

 

[MotherGoose]

So when are we expecting an faq? Was hoping there'd be a day 1 faq to confirm a few bits.

[ArcLight]

If there's no immediately needed errata it usually takes a couple weeks for the FAQ I think?

[JackStreicher]

Had a 2 vs 2 game yesterday (1,5K each)

We played one turn and gave up as chaos and Slaanesh got the double turn after hammering us: 20 Blissbarb Archers melted 10 Doggos with an overkill. After the Screen melted against our expectations they hammered our center to dust, then the double turn.

We then decided to continue by not taking the double turn and count it as a win for them.

Arkhan used Cursed of years and dealt 22 MWs to the 10 chosen in the center, I followed up with a 9+ Spirit Gale and we cleared to center. Combats started on both flanks (Blood Knights failing a 5+ charge twice) killing most chaos Warriors and Glutos slaying the Grave Guard on the right. 
 

The Wolves Wiped the Marauders on the left. The Ossiarchs overkilled the center and Synessa fled to the Gate.

we called it a day. It was a fun game!

Compared to the Ossiarchs my SBGL dealt very little damage (both units of Grave Guards fought with at least one buff up)

Blissbarb Archers were insane. I never anticipated them nuking the screen of wolves that easily.

 

Edited April 15, 2023 by JackStreicher

[Overread]

Jack I know vampires are famed for walking on the ceiling and defying gravity, but darn it at least hold the phone the right way up when you're upside down playing

 

[RocketPropelledGrenade]

I think Soulblight will be returning to my painting table soon, but I need to decide which units to focus on. I have two lists I'm debating between that have a lot of overlap, but also some mutually exclusive models. The one that is closer to completion just needs me to finish 9 Deathrattle Skeletons, but if I drop the Deathrattle bois and my already-painted Blood Knights, I can fit in a second unit of Wolves, a Wight King on foot, and another 10 Grave Guard. None of those units are painted, although I've got a little bit of a start on the Grave Guard from a while back.

[MotherGoose]

4 hours ago, ArcLight said:

If there's no immediately needed errata it usually takes a couple weeks for the FAQ I think?

There's a couple of things that need sorting pretty quickly imo - namely corpse carts and nightguard being able to get d3 models added in vyrkos.

[JackStreicher]

11 hours ago, Overread said:

Jack I know vampires are famed for walking on the ceiling and defying gravity, but darn it at least hold the phone the right way up when you're upside down playing

 

It’s a new Strategy of User-Engagement (frantically rotating the phone) 🤣

 

@MotherGoose imo they could keep the summoning for the Kosargi, but it has to be removed for the cart.

Edited April 16, 2023 by JackStreicher

[TechnoVampire]

Is there any indication that the sons of velmorn will be sold as a separate unit anytime soon? I love the models and want to use Morlak as my wight king and the others as GG stand ins. 
 

… if not I’ll probably just buy the gnarlwood boxset and sell off the khorn ones. 

Edited April 16, 2023 by TechnoVampire

[Tizianolol]

Guys do you know if deadly invocation is about pick 1 of my heroes to try to heal 3 wounds or its all my heroes try to heal? It seens every hero but I dont think its clear:(

[JackStreicher]

2 hours ago, TechnoVampire said:

Is there any indication that the sons of velmorn will be sold as a separate unit anytime soon? I love the models and want to use Morlak as my wight king and the others as GG stand ins. 
 

… if not I’ll probably just buy the gnarlwood boxset and sell off the khorn ones. 

Have you had a look on ebay? Usually they're sold at fair prices

 

@Tizianolol Pick 3 units they can receive a heal if they're within the heroe's range. The way I read it, it does not scale on a per hero bases it's flat 3 units. However, every unit can only be affected once.

Edited April 16, 2023 by JackStreicher

[ArcLight]

14 hours ago, MotherGoose said:

There's a couple of things that need sorting pretty quickly imo - namely corpse carts and nightguard being able to get d3 models added in vyrkos.

That's fair, it just wouldn't surprise me if GW don't see it as needing an urgent fix as it's (from their perspective) obvious how it should be played. Maybe I'm just not giving them enough credit haha.

[RocketPropelledGrenade]

2 hours ago, Tizianolol said:

Guys do you know if deadly invocation is about pick 1 of my heroes to try to heal 3 wounds or its all my heroes try to heal? It seens every hero but I dont think its clear:(

The wording says to me you can pick any three units, as long as you the units are within 12" of a hero. Doesn't have to be the same hero, though, which I think is where the confusion lies.

As an example, let's say your units with casualties are two Skeleton units, a Grave Guard unit, and two Dire Wolves units. Both skeleton units are within range of a Necromancer, the Grave Guard are within range of a Wight King, and the Dire Wolves are way off away from heroes. You would have to select the Skeletons and the Grave Guard as your options (or some subset thereof, if for some reason you didn't want to heal all three), and it wouldn't matter that they are near different heroes. But the Dire Wolves would be entirely ineligible.

[JackStreicher]

I‘ll use this new Thread to fill (spam) it with images

Most of these were painted in the middle of 8th Edition of Warhammer. It’s all of my currently, fully painted and based SBGL models (most are dusty as well, how fitting xD)

[Spoiler]

Spoiler

[/Spoiler]

Edited April 16, 2023 by JackStreicher

[N.I.B.]

Hello fellow suckers. Is this the biggest AoS Death forum on the western hemisphere? I'm considering entering AoS and dusting off my trusted Vampire Counts, but I can't say the reviews for the new Soulblight battletome has me hyped. I'm more of a competitive player, and from what I gather the new tome is an overall nerf. Is it too early to destillate a competitive build?

[RocketPropelledGrenade]

14 minutes ago, N.I.B. said:

Hello fellow suckers. Is this the biggest AoS Death forum on the western hemisphere? I'm considering entering AoS and dusting off my trusted Vampire Counts, but I can't say the reviews for the new Soulblight battletome has me hyped. I'm more of a competitive player, and from what I gather the new tome is an overall nerf. Is it too early to destillate a competitive build?

It's definitely not a nerf. It might be a sidegrade, or require some rebuilding lists, but there's some real gas in it. There were just a lot of kneejerk reactions about changes to obvious strategies.

[TechnoVampire]

2 hours ago, N.I.B. said:

Hello fellow suckers. Is this the biggest AoS Death forum on the western hemisphere? I'm considering entering AoS and dusting off my trusted Vampire Counts, but I can't say the reviews for the new Soulblight battletome has me hyped. I'm more of a competitive player, and from what I gather the new tome is an overall nerf. Is it too early to destillate a competitive build?

I think it depends on your play style and what you like. It seems to have been a bit divisive initially. Quite a lot was changed and not all for the better, but the book is probably more coherent now (Maybe restrictively so). It’s still quite early to tell. Personally I’m coming to terms with certain changes and trying to find lists that allow me to still play the way I like to. There seems to be a pretty heavy focus on summonable units and attrition tactics, as opposed to offensive synergy and fielding multiple threats. If you like bringing back cheap chaff that also has some interesting utility then you may well enjoy it, however if you’re more into hard hitting melee armies then there’s better options out there (but there are still some options).     

Edited April 16, 2023 by TechnoVampire

[TechnoVampire]

6 hours ago, JackStreicher said:

Have you had a look on ebay? Usually they're sold at fair prices

 

Thanks, I’ve had a little look and feel like the prices are quite high, but I’ll keep an eye out 😊

[Causalis]

Looking at the book: Do we have any good hammers besides Grave Guard? I'm not too hot on Blood Knights. They are too expensive for my taste and at their point range they have to measure up against units like Fulminators, Scythe Kurnoth and the like and those will smash way more face. 

I know we never had true S-Tier hammer units but is there something here I'm not seeing? Like, the VLoZD and his giant undead DRAGON hitting on a 4+ is just extremely sad. Anything with a native -1 to hit will have a field day against him. 

Which makes me think we are once again focused more on a grind/attrition playstyle. Any pointers? Or is it literally just: Shove Skeletons/Zombies onto objectives, sit there and hope you can out-score your opponent?

 

Also: Any love for Mannfred? I've seen almost no Legion of Night builds and only Legion of Blood. That surprises me as movement is king in this game and counter-charging in the enemy's turn sounds really good. Sadly the LoN command traits seem pretty meh. 

[JackStreicher]

14 minutes ago, Causalis said:

Looking at the book: Do we have any good hammers besides Grave Guard? I'm not too hot on Blood Knights. They are too expensive for my taste and at their point range they have to measure up against units like Fulminators, Scythe Kurnoth and the like and those will smash way more face. 

I know we never had true S-Tier hammer units but is there something here I'm not seeing? Like, the VLoZD and his giant undead DRAGON hitting on a 4+ is just extremely sad. Anything with a native -1 to hit will have a field day against him. 

Which makes me think we are once again focused more on a grind/attrition playstyle. Any pointers? Or is it literally just: Shove Skeletons/Zombies onto objectives, sit there and hope you can out-score your opponent?

 

Also: Any love for Mannfred? I've seen almost no Legion of Night builds and only Legion of Blood. That surprises me as movement is king in this game and counter-charging in the enemy's turn sounds really good. Sadly the LoN command traits seem pretty meh. 

Alright.
A VLoZD in Legion of Blood  is great at dealing damage as the whole profile gets +1A while being in combat + Unrendable save + hitting 1-3 units on a 2+. <- Absolute Beast.
Apart from that: Yes and No, Grave Guards are the way to go and they are slow and fragile.
Blood Knights are a litte too expensive, but they can deal 3xD3 Mortal wounds per turn in addition to their solid -2 rend. (they're fine imo!)
The true damage is in Black Knights + Wight King on Steed. On the  charge the damage is immense. I am finding it hard not to include them in a list.

Mannfred is fine. He works really well with a sneaky playstyle: Redeploy-charge + strike first. His damage is okay. The Same goes for Neferata.

Apart from those, which are rather specific, there isn't a lot of damage in the book, sadly. We have chip damage here and there but that's it.


If our Terrorgheist and Zombiedragon would go down by a good chunk of points they could assist with our damage issue, the same goes for Radukar the Beast (he's a 210 points hero imo).

The chariots are a missed opportunity. If the riders would deal a significant amount of damage they could even be worth their points.

Nagash forget about that.

[RocketPropelledGrenade]

JackStreicher's post covered actual hammers pretty well, but it's also worth pointing out other sources of good attrition damage. For example, large blocks of skeletons seem like they will actually be able to grind stuff down with the rend they get for outnumbering + their insane recursion, and zombies are now a tarpit that punishes you for getting stuck in them--their offensive output is partially the result of them dying, which is weird but interesting to me. So we do have some big hammers, but it's also about just eroding enemy numbers with a thousand little teeny hammers that do more to the enemy than can be done to them in terms of value and points. It's not just bodies that way, they still kill things. Just slowly.

[N.I.B.]

Yeah any pointers to obviously good units now? I just opened a FEC box and considering whether to build a VLoZD or a Terrorgheist, Crypt Flayers or Crypt Horrors? I have loads of skellies, zombies, dire wolves, Varghulfs, Grave Guards, heroes. I just need a netlist to copy and field and start to learn the game.

[RocketPropelledGrenade]

2 minutes ago, N.I.B. said:

Yeah any pointers to obviously good units now? I just opened a FEC box and considering whether to build a VLoZD or a Terrorgheist, Crypt Flayers or Crypt Horrors? I have loads of skellies, zombies, dire wolves, Varghulfs, Grave Guards, heroes. I just need a netlist to copy and field and start to learn the game.

For SBGL specifically, the VLoZD is going to beat the Terrorgheist in most lists, and the only valid configuration of second kit you mention is Vargheists--the two kinds of Crypt Whatsits are FEC only.

 

If you want a quick list, I can share the one I'm currently running and some thoughts:

 

Subfaction: Legion of Blood

Grand Strategy: Empire of Corpses

 

Neferata

--Prison of Grief spell

VLoZD with Vampiric Sword*

--Doomed Minions command trait

--Cloak of Night and Screams artefact

--Flaming Weapon spell

Vampire Lord

--Soulpike spell

--Fueled by Ghurish Rage aspect of the champion**

Necromancer***

--Waste Away spell

 

10x Deathrattle Skeletons

10x Dire Wolves

5x Black Knights

5x Black Knights

 

5x Blood Knights

20x Grave Guard with Wight Blades and Crypt Shields****

 

*Both lance and sword are good options now. I like the sword visually, and it scales really well with Flaming Weapon, so it's my favored pick, but lance is very valid.

**This is specific to this season of the General's Handbook. Mentioning that since unsure of your experience level when you talk about learning.

***I'm not actually sure about this guy anymore, and might replace him with a reinforcement on the Deathrattle Skeletons--still testing. If I did, I would move Waste Away to Neferata because I think it's a strong contender for the best spell in either lore.

****A lot of people swear by the great weapons, but I think the shields have play, especially with the most recent warscroll changes. YMMV, and I know lots of other people are going to tell you the great weapons are the way to go.

 

Final Notes

This list can fit a number of different Core Battalions depending on how you want to run it. I personally don't care about my drop count much in SBGL and would run a Warlord Battalion to get either a second artefact (Amulet of Screams on the foot Vampire) or a spell lore enhancement for extra spell options such as Vile Transference, Fading Vigor, and maybe even Spirit Gale (some people have been talking it up, but I am skeptical).

In general tactical terms, the VLoZD, the Grave Guard, the Blood Knights, and Neferata are all hitters of various kinds, with the Blood Knights being the least attrition based--they have a good save, but their healing is limited and model restore even more so. The Black Knights are screens and disposable guided missiles, and the Deathrattle Skeletons/Dire Wolves mostly stand on objectives or zone out the enemy. If dropping the Necromancer for more Skeletons, they become a genuine attrition anvil in many matchups.

 

 

[JackStreicher]

@RocketPropelledGrenade
I like your list. I am very worried though that you get wiped off the board. Due to the small numbers of "tarpit" units and their lack of survivability.

10x Deathrattle Skeletons

10x Dire Wolves

5x Black Knights

5x Black Knights

In my experience (local Meta) everything deals such an absurd amount of damage that 30 Skellies would be needed to even stay around for a single turn. I would get wiped off the board at the end of round 2 if I played so few tarpits. And that's the hard part about the army in my opinion: One requires a lot of tarpit units, yet they take away points for actual damage units. I find it frustatringly hard to get Grave Guard anywhere close to juicy targets as well. Once they're deployed they won't be moving much anymore.

 

I'd have to go with at least a configuration like this:

20x Deathrattle Skeletons
20x Zombies (<- or another 20 Skellies)

10x Dire Wolves

5x Black Knights

5x Black Knights

2x20 GG (points are getting VERY tight now)

What is your experience in your local meta @RocketPropelledGrenade?

 

 

[N.I.B.]

Thank you. How do you make your army lists - battlescribe, pen&paper, something else? I'm mucking about in battlecribe, Grand Strategy: Empire of Corpses doesn't show as an option.

Edited April 17, 2023 by N.I.B.