Aren73

My current thoughts are that Lauka Val has "an aspect of noble knighthood" whereas Vendorian Lords "revel in self-loathing". So Lauka is like, "Yeah, let's make myself stronger to take on the mightiest beasts and stuff" and the rest of the Vendorians are just there like ".... The Big Sad TM"

I wasn't being serious This is it. This is Soulblight Gravelords, I don't want to get my hopes up for anything more. We've seen all there is to see and the models are lovely, if not everyone's cup of tea.

Ah perfect! Nice catch, that's right, we have 3 more named vampire characters for them to reveal!

I do like that we got to participate in Radukar's story. I like him a lot more as a character now that we have, than if we hadn't. Otherwise he'd be just another effectively Strigoi to me, which I usually don't really care about.

I doubt it, I think Lumineth were a special case due to: First Wave and book starting in a boxed set Right in the middle of the pandemic Second wave coincided with the Broken Realms expansion I think it was just GW being creative with their release schedule when a few things had to be put on hold. I don't think we'll see a repeat.

I'll be leaning heavily on a bat aesthetic based on what we've seen. Fell bats, Vengorian Lord, Vargheists and maybe a Terrorgheist depending on rules. Plus Blood Knights, Skeles and whatever else points allow for. Bat-Nightmare theme here we go. If the Vengorian Lord is strong then I'll take the generic one, if Lauka is too good not to take I may go for her instead.

I actually love the Vengorian Lord. It looks like nightmare fuel, properly surreal. Which is what I like in my vampires. For me it's a big win and basically the one thing carrying today's reveal for me.

If we consider the Underworlds expansion and the Cursed City box, are there more named vampires in AoS than any other faction's named characters?

Feels like we are in the exact same boat then. I like what I see...was just hoping for a lil' more...maybe not so many named characters. Still remain hopeful...after all, the lack of Endless Spells is...suspicious.

As well as the Vyrkos bloodline. Prophecy time: GW has put the old bloodlines more in the background and we get to play around with new, AoS bloodlines.

And despite my disparaging previous comment I am excited for all the lovely conversions coming! Plus...the Vangorian Lord is amazing.

Of course they would XD I guess based on how great GW releases have been recently I set my expectations higher than Gloomspite Gitz, who got: 6 resculpts too, 7 new units (1 named char, 6 new units) and that's counting the Dank trolls and the Gobbapalooza as 1 each , Endless spells and Faction terrain. I'm not complaining, just mentioning that it was below my expectations which were informed by the above. May have been completely unwarranted but I don't think they were utterly unreasonable. Then again they didn't show any faction terrain or endless spells...so are we not getting those or is there more to reveal?

Vangorian lord is really cool, freaky to the max. Damn I'm glad that there is a non-named version. The rest...eh. This release looks to be 6 resculpts and 5 named characters, plus a dual kit new hero type. I remain hopeful that the rules are kick-ass, strong but fluffy.

So so many named characters....

I admire your courage, while also wincing at the weight of your possible let-down.

Almost for certain - it would be incredibly disappointing if they were relegated to FEC. I doubt they won't be in the book. One of the preview hype posters mentions vampires so we may not get the full reveal...but we'll get *something* for sure

1 hour to go! Hoping for an amazing Soublight reveal, bracing slightly against disappointment.

That's fair enough, though to me that's not really an "army" per se. It feels more like a Vampire Lord's hunting party, including his hounds. My philosophy of what makes an army goes something like: A strong backbone that the army can fall back on (an "anvil" unit) Light skirmisher units to run around and be fast and not mind if they happen to die A powerful right hand unit that is used to do the heavy lifting Support units that bring out the best in the other units Of course there are many different ways of doing things, this just makes sense for me. Even if I wanted to run a full cavalry army (which sounds dope tbh) I would still mix Black Knights in with Blood Knights, I feel I need bodies to be the backbone of the force and wolves don't really do it for me.

I love the idea of playing quite an elite Vampire army. I'm not a big fan of massive hordes of undead, instead I very much like the theme of vampire knights with their elite wight troops and freakish vampiric monsters. OBR was the first real non-horde undead faction but I just can't jive with their theme and aesthetic. GW's take on vampires on the other hand is amazing, love it to bits. My ideal army would go something like this: Vampire Lord (mounted or on abysmal terror or zombie dragon) - a scary blender machine Wight King to lead the charge of wights Block of 30 skeles to plonk on objectives Block of 20 Grave Guard to push stuff off of objectives Unit of Black Knights Unit of Blood Knights Another unit of Blood Knights or Black Knights depending on points allowances Some vampiric monstrosity

The day has arrived! Expectations? Speculation? Bets? For me I think we'll see: Direwolves (basically confirmed) Lauka Val 1 or 2 new units we haven't seen before I'm hopeful that we'll see some of the rules but I doubt it Hopefully we'll get a release date too, that'd be awesome.

Nice summary! Agree with a lot of things on there. It seems a lot of what we are getting are re-sculpts. Skeletons, Zombies, Fell bats, Vampire Lord, Blood Knights, Direwolves (rumored, speculated and all but confirmed), Mounted Wight King. I wonder how much space that leaves for new things, I'm a tad worried that not a lot. Don't get me wrong, it's ace that we're getting new gorgeous models for well loved units. However compared to how inventive and awesome recent releases have been for new armies (looking at you OBR and Lumineth) it would be a shame if we didn't get a decent chunk of new vampire related kits. I suppose there is the argument that we seem to be getting quite a few named characters...which is great and all. Though, not sure about you guys but I'm not a big fan of playing named characters, I prefer to take the generic characters and make them my own. I really hope that GW isn't going down the route of "You wanted vampires? Here you go, here are 5-7 new named characters, enjoy!".

On that note I hope we'll see a return of vampiric powers, in general being able to customise our generic vampire lords as much as possible. The fact that Idoneth have received mount traits makes me hopeful. But yes, you should be able to make a very powerful blender lord, or an equally powerful spellcaster, something other than just "Vampire Lords are reasonably strong in combat and can also cast a spell". I do miss the days of 8th where you could make a freakishly strong vampire lord. I would happily pay more points to be able to make vampire lords truly scary at either combat or magic. Fingers crossed for a mounted Vampire Lord to go alongside that gorgeous new plastic footslogging one.

I agree on no spooks - but I'm hoping they'll make an exception for the coach. It traditionally has a reviving vampire in it and all. Plus it's an iconic Vampire Counts unit, almost as iconic as blood knights.

Incredibly excited too. I hope they'll reveal more vampiric units and I really, really hope we get to have the Black Coach in the book just as in Vampire Counts. Worst case scenario right now for me would be GW stripping LoN of all ghosts, mainly just redoing sculpts for units, adding very few new units in and the only new vampires we're getting would be named characters, that's it. It's difficult not to have high expectations having been waiting for a successor to Vampire Counts since the start of AoS. LoN tickled that itch a little bit but it felt a lot more like "Undead - the army" as opposed to "Vampire Counts".

In terms of fixing things, I think GW will only really mess around with points values and not much else. It seems to be their policy to almost never change anything aside from the points. Which is a bit arrogant IMO - it's as if they think the units they came up with are perfect and only require small points tweaks because they're "almost ideal". I for one would love to see more leadership altering things, so that our banshees and harridans become more effective. But Glaivewraiths seem somewhat of a poor concept.