Jump to content

Wordy9th

Members
  • Posts

    179
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Posts posted by Wordy9th

  1. '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.

    • Like 2
  2. 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.

    • Thanks 1
  3. 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.

  4. 6 hours ago, Kaizennus said:

    I had this list pointed out to me too and I find it very interesting since it's very close to the armies I've been trying to run (rather unsuccessfully). The main differences between this list and the ones I've ran is that he's gone for what looks like pure defensive/objective play and doesn't use any dedicated hammers except for some grave guard.

    Here's the list again:

    Brendan Melnick: Guys from Milwaukee

      Reveal hidden contents

    Allegiance: Soulblight Gravelords
    - Lineage: Vyrkos Dynasty
    - Grand Strategy: Prized Sorcery
    - Triumphs: Inspired

    Leaders
    Vampire Lord (140) in Warlord
    - General
    - Command Trait: Pack Alpha
    - Lore of the Vampires: Amethystine Pinions
    Vengorian Lord (280)
    - Artefact: Sangsyron
    - Universal Spell Lore: Flaming Weapon
    Necromancer (125) in Warlord
    - Artefact: Arcane Tome (Universal Artefact)
    - Lore of the Deathmages: Overwhelming Dread
    Belladamma Volga, First of the Vyrkos (200) in Warlord
    - Lore of the Vampires: Soulpike
    Mannfred von Carstein, Mortarch of Night (380) in Warlord
    - Lore of the Deathmages: Fading Vigour

    Battleline
    10 x Deathrattle Skeletons (85) in Warlord
    30 x Deathrattle Skeletons (255) in Hunters of the Heartlands
    - Reinforced x 2
    40 x Deadwalker Zombies (230) in Hunters of the Heartlands
    - Reinforced x 1

    Units
    20 x Grave Guard (280) in Hunters of the Heartlands
    - Great Wight Blades
    - Reinforced x 1

    Additional Enhancements
    Artefact

    Total: 1975 / 2000
    Reinforced Units: 4 / 4
    Allies: 0 / 400
    Wounds: 141
     

    I did a little digging and pulled up the tournament details of his run:

    image.png.426ae10c98b72a9e4edd36c6284c0780.png

    So he got 4 Major Wins and 1 Minor Win.

    He scored all 5 tactics in 3 of his games, and only got 2/3 in the final two.

    He completed his grand strategy (prized sorcery) in every game.

    The tournament placings of his opponents were:

    1. Nurgle -> 6th Place

    2. Seraphon -> 3rd Place

    3.  Sons of Behemot -> 2nd Place

    4. Nurgle -> 7th Place

    5. Sons of Behemot -> 5th Place

     

    I would love to see some more details about how the games went and which tactics he chose for his games and how he played. I'd also like to see which battleplans they used for each round.

    My guess is he played defensively since his army is quite immobile. His army does have some good buff synergies that can make his units pretty scary though: Under a Killing Moon (exploding 6's) + Vigour of Undeath (+1 to Hit/Wound) + Crimson Feast (+1 Attack) + Dance Macabre (Attack Twice).

    What do you guys think of the list? As others have said, it's cool to see a non-Nagash list win a tournament.

    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.

    • Like 1
  5. Soulblight Gravelords won the Circle City Clash tournament with this list:

    Spoiler

    Allegiance: Soulblight Gravelords
    - Lineage: Vyrkos Dynasty
    - Mortal Realm: Ghur
    - Grand Strategy: Prized Sorcery
    - Triumphs:
    Belladamma Volga, First of the Vyrkos (200)
    Necromancer (125)
    - Artefact: Arcane Tome (Universal Artefact)
    - Lore of the Deathmages: Overwhelming Dread
    Vampire Lord (140)
    - General
    - Command Trait: Pack Alpha
    - Lore of the Vampires: Amethystine Pinions
    Vengorian Lord (280)
    - Artefact: Sangsyron
    - Universal Spell Lore: Flaming Weapon
    Mannfred von Carstein, Mortarch of Night (380)
    30 x Deathrattle Skeletons (255)
    - Reinforced x 2
    40 x Deadwalker Zombies (230) in Hunters of the Heartlands
    - Reinforced x 1
    10 x Deathrattle Skeletons (85) in Hunters of the Heartlands
    20 x Grave Guard (280) in Hunters of the Heartlands
    - Wight Blades & Crypt Shields
    - Reinforced x 1

    Total: 1975 / 2000
    Reinforced Units: 4 / 4
    Allies: 0 / 400
    Wounds: 141


    Interestingly enough, no blood knights and a lot of skelly boys!

     

    • Like 3
    • LOVE IT! 1
  6. 1 hour ago, Craze said:

    I had a game yesterday against StD with my list mentioned a couple of pages ago. I now have one question: What role do you use Zombies for? To be honest for me they felt REALLY underwhelming: They have ZERO punch and also ZERO staying power, so I cannot even use them as reliable objective holders, they just felt really really underwhelming. :(

    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.

  7. 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?

     

     

  8. 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!

     

  9. 45 minutes ago, idn0971 said:

    Radukar also does a decent job of doing some damage as well as providing excellent buffs and coming with a pack of 10 direwolves. His mortal wounds can be very nice as they are some of the only mortal wounds that the army can generate outside of graveguard

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

  10. 26 minutes ago, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

    Maybe it's just me, but I don't find the Bloodborn that good. They are 3 wounds, 10" move, 3 rend -1 attacks at a  3+/3+ with effectively damage 2. That's exactly the same as Blood Knights. But at the same time, their save is much lower, they can't self-command, they are locked to VYRKOS and they don't get Riders of Ruin like Blood Knights do. If you could take 5 of them, they would actually be more expensive than Blood Knights, as far as points go. I guess they have their 5+ ward, but with their bad 6+ save that's all they will get most of the time.

    The Vargskyr is cool, though.

    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!

    • Like 1
  11. 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. 

     

     

    • Like 1
  12. 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.

    • Like 2
  13. I have a game coming up in august and haven't played AoS for some time.

     

    1) Can Graveguard with shields benefit from mystic shield?

    2) Can a hero with soulbound garments benefit from mystic shield?

    3) Does mannfred/radukar's bubble count as the units receiving a command ability? 

    4) Can I use the flaming weapon spell on a Vlozd's claw attacks?

    5) How does Radukar the wolf compare to a standard Vampire Lord?

    6) If I pass a wound to Kosargi, can they use their ward save?

    7) What's the main use of the 6 inch pile in? To move within 6 inches of an enemy and bypass the need to charge? I assume you can't simply charge and add the 6 inch pile in to the roll.

    Thanks!

     

     

     

×
×
  • Create New...