Wordy9th

My Vampire Lord is 140 points and has a 3+ save. He has 5 wounds though so he just dies when someone looks at it. What gives?

'It's your hobby' is a phrase I hear a lot, but it's also a social hobby and when you engage in that aspect you have to accept that how your army is presented will affect your opponents experience for better or worse. So when you turn up with an unpainted army, it's the effect on your opponent's gaming experience that's under consideration. Naturally there's a lot of context to consider - is it a unit of mortek guard that's only primed and the guy facing you has been running on fumes from work recently? Or is it a tournament event and the latest netlist is in front of you with proxies and grey plastic galore? In the former case there's few people I'd hope who'd have much issue, in the latter case it's a real stinker. Personally I don't play with unpainted models because if I did I feel I'd lose a big motivating factor, and boy do we need those when it comes to how long these projects can take.

This might be a good opportunity to ask anyone with experience what the main things to look out for against Lumineth as Soulblight are.

Some people have had success with it, I think there are a few things to keep in mind with them. Without the charge their damage isn't super great. Their base size can preclude getting a lot of them in combat, and riders of ruin won't work against more targets than you think. My experiance with soulblight stuff overall is that things work great with buffs and pretty lackluster without. I really feel the difference when Zombies don't have +1 attack, or Graveguard don't have the +1 to wound. When you're giving those units Belladamma's buff, +1 attack, and +1 to hit and wound though, they slap. The same goes for Blood Knights. Speaking of buff pieces I love the Vampire Lord. It flies around with pinions putting +1 attack on whoever needs it, but ****** those 5 wounds don't last long. A super squishy piece.

Just a quick question: does the arcane tome allow me to cast two spells per hero phase or choose an extra spell to cast if I use it on a wizard (necromancer)?

First take without any context: That tail seems to be stupendously strong? Doesn’t it make any horde army defunct?

There’s great weapon options in the kit

Hopefully new grave guard with any possible cursed city expansions (lol)

https://cubicshenanigans.net/podcast-2/ It's pretty good! edit: Also just to note this is the same guy who said the Vlozd can't make use of the hunter's snare command trait.

That's a good analysis. Interestingly enough, I've been listening to the guy's podcast and he said that his lists always start with a Vampire Lord, Necromancer, Belladamma and 30 skeletons and he goes from there. From what I can gather from that (other than this suits me just fine with my excess of skeletons and most recently painted vampire lord), is we have a core anvil and a minimum of three buffing characters. Flexibly being able to buff any units on the field feels a strength Soulblight should always take advantage of. I'm not a hundred percent sold on the Vengorian lord but obviously Brendan knows better than me (and I'm biased against the model!). I'd probably swap it for a unit of blood knights and maybe an endless spell / 10 more skeletons or something. Anyway, it's nice to finally work with list building in the context of some hard stats, if I can be bold enough to say after analyzing the results of one tournament ^_^. I'm mostly happy that, evidently, lists can be competitive with units I enjoy.

My first thought was cool, it has a lot of what I wanted to bring anyway. My second thought was wait, but where's the damage? 20 buffed grave guard (there's a lot of buffs) I guess. Seems the blue/black deck vibe of Soulblight can do well! I definitely thought the meta of 3.0 would skew towards mobility and damage but this list seems to go against both principles. As you say, I'd be interested in knowing the step by step of the games played and how he got achieved his battle tactics consistently and so on.

Soulblight Gravelords won the Circle City Clash tournament with this list: Interestingly enough, no blood knights and a lot of skelly boys!

I'd agree. I was surprised they ruled otherwise.

Don't they do alright popping out of a graveyard with 20 wounds, while potentially doing decent damage if given the +1 attack command trait? I saw a unit of 40 do a fair job of tanking Kragnos in a MWG battlereport backed up by a -1 to hit corpse cart and vampire lord.

What a god awful rules section enhancements is! I can read this both ways. Isn't the "allegiance abilities" (where it talks about deathless minions / resurrecting units on a 5+) section separate from subfaction traits and artifacts? Also why is it specifically saying 'An' artifact and not 'any artifacts'? Edit: Also I saw it mentioned here that the Hunter's Snare artifact for Vyrkos would still allow Vlozds to count as 14 wounds, but a podcast I recently listened to said that it doesn't in light of the FAQ. What're we thinking?

There was a battle report recently I saw where he died to alarielles spear and mortal wounds from spells fairly unspectacularly over the course of a couple turns.

I've certainly seen more than one bat rep where the artifact rule hasn't been understood properly

Thanks as always for the in depth response. Just a couple more questions: 1) On enhancements, must my first command trait and artifact always be from the sub faction list? EG: if playing Vyrkos I must choose from artefacts such as Sangsyron first, before I can choose another hero to receive a 'default' one like the 5+ ward save? In which case, is the only way to gain a 'default' artifact by picking a battalion that grants an extra one? 2) Does Belladammas exploding 6s allow for double mortal wounds on rolls of 6 for zombies? Or do I have to choose one of them? 3) If Radukar takes a wound with his Kosargi bodyguard, what's the precise sequence? is it, Hit>Wound>Save>2+ pass to Nightguard who then>Save>Ward? I understand they can't both ward save but can they both save? Cheers!

Nice wight king on foot, who invited him to the party? For real though I really wish death rattle were a bit more stabby, I’m a skelly boy at heart.

Something to bear in mind with Radukar is if he charges near any monster at all his command ability becomes useless.

Absolutely true, Blood Knights right now are a better deal. I think Blood Knights are likely to see a points increase long term and dislike the idea of having a million of them, however 135 points rather than 190 does offer some flexibility and a much needed mobile damage option outside of Vargheists. Speaking of which that's probably a better comparison!

It's hard for me to build lists without a squad of blood knights, grave guard and vlozd as those seem to be our only hammers (with GG being the only consistent damage dealers outsideo of the charge). Anytime I don't include those Soulblight feels like a control deck at best. I'm intrigued by the prospect of the Vargskyr and Bloodborne being less expensive mini mobile hammers running around.

Is taking soulbound garments on your Vlozd less appetizing than the 5+ ward save artifact then?

What I've gleaned is that the books big winners are: Belladamma Volga, Mannfred and Blood Knights. Graveguard and Vlozd are solid too. The book has some wonderful creative options, though throwing all your eggs into the blood knight basket seems to be a particularly popular cookie cutter competitive choice so far.

Thanks a bunch! 🙂