Wordy9th

Played two games this weekend using an LoN list with Mannfred, Vlozd, Necro, VL, 30 Skeletons, 20x2 Zombies, 20GG, 3x fellbats and a CC with Unholy lodestone. 1st game: Stormcast with 4 fulminators, 6 longstrikes, 3x3 vindictors, Relictor, Incantor, Lord Arcanum on gryph charger and Vandus. Battleplan, apex predators. Opponent gives me the first turn, I put most things off board except my Vlozd who has the shard of night and move up. Opponent then double shoots the vlozd with raptors which survives on 2 wounds thanks to shard of night. Vlozd charges the fulminators and does zero damage before dying. Next turn Mannfred comes in the board and gets a charge off on the longstrikes. Survives unleash hell on 2 wounds (!) and kills one longstrike (!) he dies next turn but various shenanigans with the rest of my army make it a 20-23 loss. Game 2: Same list against the same list as above but with bastion instead, 2x5 vindictors and 2x5 libs. I set up virtually everything off the board except 30 skeletons, necro hiding behind a building, fellbats and 20 zombies. He gives me first turn and My Vlozd makes his 9 inch charge (+2 from the command trait) and manages to pile in on the longstrikes killing them all and also roasting 6(!) vindictors in his screen with his breath. Mannfred and his crew of graveguard, VL and 20 zombies come in on the other table edge, zombies make the charge and spike 7(!) mortal wounds on the vindictors and get a pile in on the fulminators preventing the charge making it basically a GG there. I'm not sure how the second battle would have gone if the long strikes were better screened, but the power of LoN being able to come in on the table edge while protecting my key peices was fairly strong, I feel without it my Vlozd / GG/ other key piece is going to just die. Home takes: Zombies in min units can still do fairly good damage, and their pile ins can cause serious mayhem. Vlozd charging from the table edge needing a 7 is great. Fellbats can be awesome. Running them 20 inches to screen off an entire avenue of attack is very powerful. Shooting armies make playing SBG an uphill battle, but LoN seems to have some tools to make it less depressing. I wish I felt more at ease playing Vyrkos but in this meta bar certain builds like the one at LVO which gives no easy target there's little place for pieces like a Vlozd or Mannfred unless they get to hide off board. And boy do I love those models!

Heartrender crossbow. 3+3+ -2 2 damage. d3 mortals on 6+ hit. SUMMONABLE keyword so they can be buffed in Gravelords. 140 points. /Dreaming over.

It'd be nice if these things fit into the broader narrative a bit from Broken Realms to the Age of the Beast. They don't seem to? What have these battle boxes got to do with the latest events? Cool crossbows though, it's a spicy decision especially since SB can now have ranged units. Though we'll see how viable that is.

Wolves are amazing absolutely, the reason I tend not to take them is model count and points. I have 20 of them and I love the paint jobs I've given them. I want skeletons as 30 (not 20, or I'd take something else) because with buffs they reach a certain defensive 'break point' level ie: I pick them if I want a chaff unit to be able to survive a turn with a hammer and potentially come back. They also add synergistic value for taking a necromancer which I love. Also, for objectives 85 points for ten models can go a long way when summoned in, or 20 models for 115 in the case of zombies. 135 for ten models usually isn't doing what I want them to do in my lists - but then again, that's a list issue for me not a unit one. On the face of it 20 wolves for 270 does sound like a great deal and I may have to try it at some point, but usually I don't have those extra points to spare, and its really nice to know that 30 models on one objective means that something is most definitely under your control at some point in the battle.

I've always had a group of 30 of them taking up the middle of the board and screening my big flying boys. With vanhels they've held Archaeon almost the entire game. I think one of the big upsides of soulblight is the amount of bodies to hold objectives and stay in place to allow your other things to move. it's a unit that comes back through two spells and essentially has a 4+ ward (if it doesn't die in one / gets shot). Opposite to you however I'm hugely boneboy biased so maybe I'm wrong, but you'll never catch me without 30 skeletons. Over my dead bony body. They seem thematically linked with the craven king so you can bet all their goodstuff is linked to him in some way. I'd prefer if they didn't become meta but it would be cool to shoot ghost crossbows at people in soulblight. Sure, the challenge is of course getting them in appropriately. If you hit them with the Vlozd and graveguard I think those are good options to take them out, all these stats do ignore the most important brain melting factor of trying to figure how to actually move your undead boys into posistion well enough and not just get charged with 20 +3 damage attacks. That's a lotta damage. Yeah the Longstrikes are what makes Legion of Night so tempting. Having all the key pieces off the board and a Vlozd that can come in on the table edge needing only a 7 to charge is probably my go to right now. Testing it this weekend though!

So, with the prevelance of Stormcast lists shooting up the meta with very strong results the last couple of months (most likely a combination of 6 longstrikes, fulminators and a relictor with some dragons here and there), what are SB players thinking about how to counter it? I've recently changed from Vyrkos to LoN to try it out this weekend against such a list, though if anyone has any experiance in how to approach the double shooting castle of doom with charging fulminators, I'd love to hear! Or indeed, share any thoughts you may have.

They’re not subpar. They live, wheras zombies, die.

Don't they have to be part of your starting army to count? Sure, it looks fine. Soulblight bodies with buffing heroes is a great thing. Try to not let all your zombies die in one go and get some buffed attacks off and you should be golden. Looking forward to hearing how it goes. As far as your first 1000 points goes everything in this list is useful and good so well done. Deathly invocation can be used by both heroes.

I've only just realised 12+ games later that Belladammas Curse of the blood moon ability is an aura and not a targetted spell. ******! No more casting it on the Vlozd and sending him off into the wide world while Belly-d stays back :(. Edit: On the bright side, folks better watch out for Belladamma's exploding hits now ^_~.

Wait, OBR got a bunch of weird bones? I didn't read the broken realms books so please enlighten me. Were they 'archer bones'?

Played a couple of games this weekend against an OBR player, the catapult did okay, but even when he was shooting my skeleton and graveguard who have a 5+ save, an all out defense mitigated the damage a fair bit. I think it's nice to have a pressure piece that your opponent is forced to play around, but it's so swingy, like a mobile ossified slot machine.

Nice work! What’s the blue colour you’ve gone with?

Yep, just lines over and over with a brighter colour. That's it.

I've been finding that I've been doing strange things lately to improve my painting. I've started painting my corpse cart, a model I was meant to just quickly bash out because, well, who cares about a corpse cart right. But I've found that these models are great opportunities to, ironically, put more time into than my big pieces. Those techniques, colour palletes and other painting styles that I'm not 100% comfortable with on say, my vengorian lord, I can try out and improve on with something like this Corpse Cart (there's a lot of skin and hilariously posed bodies). Here’s a work in progress example of me trying out textures on the corpse master(?)s cloak for the first time and attempting to make the corpses look alive, but the zombies dead. TLDR: Try new things on models you aren't too bothered about!

You can do a fairly good representation of this is you exaggerate your black lining so its even more visible. Just put black lines to seperate details and if you want a more cell-shaded / cartoony look, make them a little bit thicker :).

I would say it certainly does. A lot of people who are new to painting will often comment that they want their models to look 'gritty' or 'realistic' and view high contrast as too cartoony for their tastes. But I think a realization does come that high contrast is required no matter what look you go for. It's just about doing it well.

Because the end product is something tangible and lasting. I like to have the best of all worlds, I want a competative army, but I want it painted well. This is a tall order but one when I began to sink more time into ended up becoming a key source of enjoyment and satisfaction for me. I have a group of friends and family who enjoy looking at my work - and everyone loves validation! Also, my heart rate is never lower than it is painting - a great sign! More tangentially, understanding things like colour and art more has helped me appreciate a great many other things. Even more unexpectedly, as a history teacher this has allowed me to cover art colleagues when they're inevitably off sick, and enjoy it a ton trying to see what I can fit into their lessons with my rudimentary understanding of colour theory.

First and foremost, practice and brush control. The more hours you sink in the more your brush goes where you want it to go. Alot of the good techniques you see, for ease of example lets say 'Eavy Metal, require a steady hand to place those various layers of very fine highlights that doesn't come for free for those of us without an artistic background. This allowed me to actually put painting techniques to use in a way that didn't take a demotivatingly long time. Secondly, the plethora of videos out there that help you learn. Though you must apply them critically, thinking about what you're doing and why. Too often when I began did I copy a warhammer video paint scheme and just had no real understanding of why I was doing it. It just 'was' the next layer, or edge highlight with some weird GW named paint/ Thirdly understanding colours and colour theory. When I started again in April of 2021, I couldn't tell you why fenrisian grey was different from any blue, or how teal interacts with colours from the opposing colour wheel, or how blacks and whites desaturate colours for a less interesting model. This has probably been my biggest 'wow' moment when colour theory began to sink in, my conception of what made a model look good became about contrast and opaque colours relative to the space around it. I began to take control of my painting which made me move from essneitally 'colouring in' to becoming somewhat of an artist (this is not to say I'm particularly good, simply that I can 'create' schemes and colours organically'. And finally, having an army that allowed me to try different units of all sizes and stripes. Soulblight gravelords gave me the opportunity to try, flesh, bone, dirt, cloaks and everything in between without being tied to a colour scheme. This has reached a point where I feel spoiled, so painting most other armies (the worst offenders probably being space marines or even something like Nurgle!) which have the 'one scheme' would feel strangely limiting and boring. I've yet to try it though so perhaps I'll be proved wrong. Anyway, hope this helps!

I never thought about being able to use it in the combat phase even if your units aren't in combat, so if you go first your unit/s will have +2 attacks, and if they double, +3. Pretty neat. Even if you can't stack it on one unit it still has powerful applications spread across a couple units provided you're in range.

In addition, at the start of the combat phase, explain this straight faced to the opponent wholly within 2 feet of the player. More seriously, I'll probably not use this in casual play but probably go for it in competitive ^_^.

Thanks, I assumed the case was a toss up but wanted a second opinion to make sure. Indeed, though the choice is between them unfortunately I can't take both without reducing the skeleton block or doing other things that I think detracts from the list too much. The option to make 20 zombies (rather than 40) a potential power piece in combination with vanhels is a really nice, flexible idea that to be honest I didn't think much about. As for rolling it over multiple turns, I'm really not sure on this. The text says that the unit cannot 'benefit' from the ability more than once per turn. Surely if they have +1 attack from last combat phase, they are currently 'benefiting' from the ability in the current phase, and thus cannot benefit again?

Nurgle is really interesting to paint in that it looks great with some dirty rough and ready washes, but you can easily go full Golden Demon with the blending and skin tones. Good looking stuff! Dare I ask if it's the new Vanguard box? I'm sorely (no pun intended) tempted.

List discussion questions: I've been running a 'core' of these units. A lot is self explanatory, however I'm wondering how much I'm missing out by not having a Vamp Lord in the list. Even with Belladamma's buff the GG can struggle to put out the alpha damage on certain key targets without the +1 attack. (It's also nice to have it for Zombies in a pinch). I want to keep the 30 skeletons as a big old screen with a necromancer supporting it (and having more deathmages spells is always nice), and 2x 20 zombies for screening and backcapping objectives. If I swap out the Necromancer for the Vampire Lord it goes to a full 2000 points, but then I lack Vanhels for the skeletons which is a 30 model investment (though perhaps the corpse cart will make them resilient enough) and a VL is way easier to snipe because they can't pass off wounds like a Necro can. I've certainly had many a game where Miss Bathair eats a few mortal wounds from any random snipe and she's gone. TLDR: Is lacking a Vampire Lord a huge deal here? Edited for more nerdy stuff*

I think the question could be better phrased, it's pouting and reads a bit like youtuber clickbait. Also because when you ask the question 'why do you put up with this' the answer is fairly simple and uninteresting. Obviously because the positives outweigh the negatives at that moment in time for me, or the person currently engaging in the voluntary luxury hobby. I could be trite and end it there, but I'll approach the questions with some good faith. 1) I can afford it is the short answer. The long one is obviously based on numerous factors. I understand price increases because of inflation, covid, a plethora of third party releases and so on. I generally don't think the prices are that bad, particularly if you plan around the purchases, buy via third party stores and so on. Your milage may vary but yet again because of the question the answer is 'if you don't want to voluntarily engage in a trade with Games Workshop ltd then don't'. 2) I remember 40k 2nd / 3rd ed and WHFB, this is a fair sight better. If you're the FAQ / Broken Realms / Tome Celestial type of guy then you probably enjoy all this. Depth is nice when you're invested in the hobby. It poses challenges for new players but that's a different issue. 3 - 4) This is an issue sure, one that would deserve its own discussion. I'd dare say however that unless you play one of a few flagship factions you're likely to always have your turn after your book release watching everyone else power scale or receive attention beyond you to an extent. You are but one child of GW and everyone else must have their place in the sun. (Unless you're beasts of chaos) 5) Not exactly perfect, but I've never been stung by it personally. Add it to the positive / minus calculations. 6) It was fine. Interested in seeing how it will be going forward, there are some rules I'd ask GW to look at a bit better. Certain warscrolls feel whack and could use adjustment. 7) Control yourself, you're an adult. (It's pretty lame though).

I think he’s joking, mate