TMS

Since I only play Soulblight I feel the changes have been very generous to me. A bunch of characters down in points, Blood Knights dropping significantly, and Vargheists less so but at the same time they're now battleline again. The Dire Wolves coming up a little bit is a bummer, they were great for filling out those last spare points where Fell Bats or Bat Swarms wouldn't fit, although I think they can still do that. All in all I'm content and feel like my army's gotten a revitalizing shot. Edit: Most of all I get the feeling that GW still considers Soulblight to actually be a thing, which is a happy thought! @Sception, Vampire Lords have actually been 140p this entire time, making the poor Wight King even less desirable in comparison...

10 Blood Knights will do you proud as long as you make sure to charge with them. I've never tried 15 myself but I think it's going to run into issues with that 1'' range, for sure. I also heartily recommend trying out 6 Vargheists in a unit some time. With any kind of buff on them they're savage. The next time I play 2000 points I'm going to go with 2x10 Blood Knights and 1x6 Vargheists as my battleline for the intimidation factor, if nothing else. 🧛‍♂️

Yeah, I think Vargheists as battleline will open things up a lot for the bloodlines that aren't Swift Death. Soulblight's playstyle around objectives requires speed and maneuverability that 10'' non-flying Blood Knights lack. They can still be a good punching unit but now you won't be forced to spend quite as much points on them to fill your battleline.

I'm stoked about the 40p drop on Blood Knights, although I fear a raise on the VLoZD. For more Soulblight things, the Bloodseeker Palanquin is in pretty desperate need of help and could use a good discount.

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2019/06/14/the-generals-handbook-2019-major-points-changesgw-homepage-post-2/ So, GW comes out with a tease confirming that our Blood Knights will indeed get cheaper - 200p for 5! These are certainly good news. I hope the Bloodseeker Palanquin follows suit and that the VLoZD doesn't go up...

That's a nice army, @Charlo! One of these days soon I'll get around to taking pictures of my own as well. The glowing green of your dragon does a really nice job of standing out, I've got to admit! I actually like the original bat swarms and fell bats for their old school charm... although I suppose since I grew up with them I could be partial. 🦇 I'm glad you found necromantic a good fit for you. I haven't been able to get myself away from swift death, the extra mobility always seem to play a deciding part in my games. You should try out an allied corpse cart some time. It's only 80 points and can hand out +1 to cast within 18''.

Yes of course, I forgot to clarify that the investment in time and money is the big difference between the imbalances of both games. Blood Bowl markets certain teams as good or bad while AoS does not make it clear that some armies practically can't beat some others. The former is intentional and good, the latter is closer to a rip-off. And that's before you even consider the difference in cost.

Intentional unbalancing can be fine. Blood Bowl is a good example where you've got teams that start out strong, late bloomers that can catch up after some time in league play and the designated underdogs. The game itself is very open about who these are and competitive tournaments come with rule packs that hand out bonuses depending on what tier one's team is in. It makes for a great game with plenty of different things to try out. Such imbalance suits that scale of game far better than it does AoS, though. 16 models vs ... well, an army.

I've been getting less and less exacting on those, frankly, pointless little details. I had an epiphany about three years ago where I was struggling to finish a unit in time for a match we had scheduled. I kept ****** up the tiniest little things and it just went back and forth. When my mates rang on the door I forced myself to put down the brush and not say anything about it and just put the stupid things on the table, even though I wasn't happy with them. Surprise surprise, no-one remarked on it at all and as I was sitting by the table at those magical 3 feet away from the miniatures I thought to myself "hey, they actually do look kinda nice". On that day I learned how things actually worked. And if there's any doubt, give it a black wash. Black hides all sins.

Yeah, the Archregent was the merc option that immediately stood out to me as well. I'm waiting to see what GHB19 has in store for us before I do much else but I think I'll also give this a shot if nothing else comes up!

Mist Form has been able to do something cool for me in pretty much every match I've had it in. It really is one of the main draws for Soulblight, in my opinion. I hope you get the Sun to do something, @Charlo! Speaking of lists, I'll be playing as well this weekend. I wanted to play 2000p in order to try out Vhordrai and a VLoZD together. Unfortunately my friends voted me down in favour of 1500p instead but since we're going with Vanguard+500p (meaning only 2 battleline) I noticed I could get away with this... VLoZD Vhordrai 2x5 Blood Knights 1400/1500p Presto! Just need to hope for good scenario rolls. 🙂

I currently only play Soulblight but voted for Legions of Nagash since they're in that book.

That mammoth is such an awesome project but I can't shake the feeling that there's something simian and gorilla-like over it. Perhaps it's a bit slim around the belly?

@Erdemo86, the brainchwraith also needs a wyldwood to summon dryads from. A treelord ancient can create new wyldwoods on a 4+ each turn, so that's possible.

I love it! ...but you know that the Strigoi picked up their stuff and left to start the FEC, right? 😉 Are you planning anything in particular to theme your Blood Knights around? For your style I wish that we still had Vargheists as battleline...

Well @Tropical Ghost General, you've certainly come to the right place to find a rarely mentioned faction. I think it's precisely because Legion of Blood is a naturally stronger choice with focus on the exact same models that this army is something of a rarity. Out of the bloodlines I feel Swift Death gives the strongest distinction from LoB, making everything faster and letting even your Blood Knights move as though they're flying. The army becomes really quite mobile with that, which plays well into the elite punchy style. The Mist Form command trait is also a unique feature and quite good, especially on a dragon. I think some more Blood Knights will do you good (and will be required if you're going for 2000p), with some bats or wolves (as allies) to fill remaining points. And speaking of odd and different... I'm using the original Blood Knights and that has made mine the ones who're unique. A bit ironic.

@Jetengine, here's my take on the different units. I've pretty much only used the Swift Death bloodline, so that's where I'll be talking from. Vampire Lord on Zombie Dragon - the absolute star. Always great and amazing, especially with the Mist Form command trait. 5/5, easily. Coven Throne - pretty good. Tough, mobile and decent punch against things with little armour, and an excellent command ability. It gets pretty funny if you go with the Blood Fury command trait and use Blood Feast and Tactical Insight on the Coven Throne, plus the Saccharine Goblet artefact... 3 bites and 6 stabs from the queen with +1 to hit and wound, re-rolling ones, and then the rest of the model. 🧛‍♀️ 4/5. Vampire Lord - good. A bit fragile and pricy but his command ability can make up for it. It's good that Soulblight doesn't care as much about the general as Legions of Nagash do, so we can get by with this guy for a general if you want to focus more elsewhere. 3/5. Bloodseeker Palanquin - never used it, but too expensive for what it does. I'm still building one though, just to have it. x/5. (x=something low) Blood Knights - decent. They hit hard enough on the charge but not reliably enough to really be worth their cost. D3 damage is such a swingy roll to make, I'd rather just have a flat 2. Units of 5 are limited in what they can take on while units of 10 are real hammers, although it becomes even more important to land that charge with them. 3/5. Vargheists - good. Slightly faster, significantly cheaper and more reliable in their damage compared to Blood Knights. If they were still an option for battleline then I think these would be the go-to. 4/5. Fell Bats - not too exciting. They're pretty expensive and fragile, although quite fast. 2/5. Bat Swarms - a tiny step up from Fell Bats. They have the same negatives but at least come with a helpful ability against shooting, giving them some kind of worth beyond just tagging objectives and being in the way. I think both Fell Bats and Bat Swarms are overshadowed by Dire Wolves brought in as allies, though. 3/5. I haven't used any of the unique characters yet so can't comment on them.

So, just looking to pass the time here... why do you think Soulblight as an army has got so little interest going on? Most other army threads on this forum are far bigger than this one and has a lot more buzzing. I'll venture a guess and say it's because of two things. One, the army is limited in number of choices. In total I wouldn't call it much worse than some other little factions but with only a single battleline option available it does force a certain shape to every list. The only ones sharing the same boat that I can recall are ones without even allegiance abilities, like the Phoenix Temple and Order Draconis. The Phoenix Temple thread is actually smaller than ours so I guess it could be worse... but we've already got our abilities, artefacts and stuff. It is a little sad, really. Two, and I think this is the big one... you can use the exact same models in a Legions of Nagash army and just be stronger. It does feel like a conscious handicap sometimes to go with Soulblight over LoN, especially when I consider that I already tend to use a unit or two of Dire Wolves as allies. Then again, the theme and feel of a proper Soulblight army is much stronger to me, and I've found it pretty hard to wean myself from having my Blood Knights fly. Thinking about the future of the army, I'm not convinced that Soulblight will continue as its own thing down the line. I think it'll be absorbed completely into Legions of Nagash (or Blood, specifically) but which will hopefully mean that the vampire theme and focus for the legion is strengthened. Compared to others who worry that their faction might disappear completely, we've atleast got a fallback with LoN. I am looking forward to this year's GHB, though. I hope for some points changes here and there to lighten us up a little bit.

@Sartxac, look in the battletome. It is wrong on GW's page, it shows the old version of the Coven Throne from the first Death Grand Alliance book.

Unfortunately, allied necromancers won't get to pick any of those awesome deathmage spells... not even the soulblight mortarchs get to do that even though they're deathlords, for some reason. Neferata's CA + ethereal VLoZD with transfix. There we go! Nice and cheap! But remember to only engage it on your own turn, or else transfix won't help you.

I return with a new issue you might've encountered and have hopefully solved somehow. How do we deal with... The Gristlegore Ghoul King on Terrorgheist from Flesh-Eater Courts? I think it is a hard counter to our way of fighting: it will fight before you, twice, and spew out mortal wounds and rending attacks. Nothing we have will stand up to it in a fair fight and killing it with dragon breaths and spells is pretty clunky and unreliable. The doppelganger cloak would be cool if it didn't get trashed on the opponent's turn (due to both it and the TG going 'at the start of the combat phase'), making the strategy awfully narrow. The only thing I see for pure Soulblight to do is to manage to throw multiple heavy hitters in at once, with one them being an ethereal VLoZD to tank as much damage as possible. Easier said than done though, since the TG is only 400 points and there's going to be the rest of the army getting in the way. Maybe ally in Arkhan the Black and go for broke with Curse of Years?

@Snowl, I'd go with the Gryph-Feather Charm on the Hag and the Glowy Howzit on the Troggboss, since he's really pretty squishy without it. Only 12 wounds with a 4+ armour save and no inherent modifiers to hit on him, he goes down really fast when anything substantial charges in. In previous games he's had the Howzit and that made him into a formidable roadblock, on top of his already deadly attacks. Giving him a double squeeze would also be potent though, no doubt about that.

@Snowl, the Hag didn't have the Gryph-feather Charm, which I agree would be a great pick. The Dankhold Troggboss instead had the Ghyrstrike for his club, which I don't entirely agree with. The 4+ extra save scares me much more, like I said, and the Charm on the Hag would as well. I think running the Troggherd battalion to get access to a second artefact could be a good idea. The Hag got on the bad end of my Vampire Lord on Zombie Dragon, fully buffed up. The breath attack took away 6 wounds before charging in, and with the Lord's own Dread Knight command ability (re-rolling all misses for himself and the dragon - such a good command trait for the model to have for itself) the remaining wounds went away rather fast. Some lucky rolling was involved, of course, but the lack of an extra save is really noticeable when you compare Stoneguts (or that 4+ artefact) to other Trogs. Two chances to remove incoming wounds really is that good. As you can see below, it wasn't the nicest of situations for the Hag. Image of the Hag about to have a bad time. *Is there anyway to get this site to not shrink images you upload?

I don't play Troggoths myself but have played against them a couple of times with my Soulblight (Legions of Nagash with only Blood Knights as battleline, so both armies are quite elite) at 1k and 2k. The trogs hit hard enough to scare me to not engage in more than one location at a time. Even if it would mean landing multiple big charges I would hold off, since I can only strike first in one place. Both Stoneguts and Fellwaters are dangerous in this regard, and the Dankholds and the Hag are as well but less so for their large points cost. Stoneguts and Fellwaters are both strong in groups of 6. It's a good size to be able to take a hit and still swing back with power. The Stoneguts are tough (6 of them took a charge from 10 Blood Knights and they held up) while I'd say the Fellwaters hit a bit harder, since they've got so many more attacks. The big Trogs are deadly too, but the low number of attacks make them more vulnerable to a few bad dice rolls. Both Dankholds and the Hag are also much less survivable than Stoneguts since they lack the second save, and it is very noticeable. The 4+ extra save Trog artefact is probably the one I fear the most as it turns the bearer into a huge roadblock, capable of stopping pretty much anything in place for atleast a turn. The biggest challenge I've seen for Troggoths is mobility. They must stay close enough to support each other and not spread out too much. In our games I had a big advantage in speed and could focus down on one part of the field while holding off elsewhere, coming back to strike when I was finished with the first target. I think Trogs should stay closer together so that when something gets stuck on a group of Stoneguts or Fellwaters there'll be reinforcements coming in immediately. The Hand of Gork spell is a great compliment but I don't know if Troggoths are able to cast that on their own, there's been a mushroom shaman in the Trog list everytime we've played.

I think a speedy update is much better than a slower one. They need to raise the base line before taking off again with new craziness.