Aren73

Yeah...I talked about previously that in their lore, Avengorii are meant to be monster hunters. From their rules, they are chaff hunters that get hunted by monsters. I don't know, maybe this is intentional from GW to make them seem delusional? I do wish they were a bit better, for sure.

Could well be - make the game less about wiping away large units in a single blow and also reducing maximum unit size because you no longer need so many bodies (that's why zombies are 40 and not 60)

If that's true then 100% save modifiers will be capped at +/-1. Otherwise it would be so easy to have multiple 2+ save units. Same, can't wait, the Coven Throne is already amazing with the trait that lets it use a CA without paying. If we get more CP then a whole chunk of the army could be rolling with +1 Hit, wound and save. Makes Blood Knight, Coven Throne armies nuts.

This the one?

Yeah, I agree. My whole thing was just to show that zombies aren't always the best option. Sometimes they are, other times they're not, they are not better i every scenerio, not even in the greater majority of scenarios, I see it as a healthy 50:50 or 60:40 (though not sure which way the advantage is there...yet).

I find it funny how heated the skellies vs zombies thing got. If nothing else, it's showing that they are comparable in durability, each is better in different scenarios. If nothing else it's proof that skellies aren't terrible, they have their place - it's just not as a damage dealing unit. If you want to go with a zombie themed army you go for it, I'll be taking the unit choice that doesn't force me to build around it.

Because I want bodies on objectives and not 5-10 blood knights sitting there camping. I want my blood knight pushing up, onto enemy objectives, taking them and then being unkillable. But on home objectives, or mid objectives I want the skeletons. Zombies have a place, they're better at damage and they can really get going when you stack the buffs, but they need at least two layers of buffs before they're scary. Look, I'm with you that Zombies are cool, you can really do some fun stuff with them. But they're not the be all and end all, sometimes skellies are just better.

I gave them the vampire to double their damage output and their heals. Sure, we can take the vampire away, now the zombies with Necro are cheaper than skellies with necro by 25 points (woo?). Zombie damage and heals are halved...they still come out worse. People are blinded by the omg-MWs-on-6s-models-get-back-on-2s thing but the maths is generally in favour of skellies. And once again, this is just for tanking. Zombies have better damage, I am not and will not argue against that. EDIT: Also I literally did the maths for a whole range of scenarios and even put up the graphs. It's not just one oddball scenario that skellies tank better, it's a whole range.

In most situations. Dude...I even gave the zombies 115 more points. That's just one of many scenarios where Skellies are better at tanking than zombies. It's not all scenarios, definitely not, but in the majority of scenarios skellies tank better. And yes, zombies do much better damage. But I'm not taking skellies for damage, I have grave guard to do that for me. Grave guard are better at damage than zombies.

Magic is the same as -2 Rend. Against shooting skeletons come out on top - neither unit heals and skeletons have a better save. Against leadership Skeletons AGAIN do better because in almost every scenario you end up killing more zombies, meaning they suffer more from battleshock. If skeletons do attack first (why would you ever pick them to attack first??) then yes, they don't do nearly as well. In my previous post I showed that a max unit of skellies and Necromancer (380) survive better than a max unit of zombies and Necromancer and Vampire Lord (495), just how much "full support" are you going to sink into zombies before they become as amazing as you think they are? Unless you're up against tiny amounts of damage, skeletons will survive better. In fact, unless you kill the unit you are guaranteed 50% of the unit remains and that's without any support! 30 Skeletons are only 255 pts. Unless you kill them in one blow, at least 15 are guaranteed to remain. Rend - takes 55 wounds to kill them Rend -1 takes 43 wounds to kill them Rend -2 takes 37 wounds to kill them As an objective blocking unit they are nuts

Nope, I didn't miss it 30 Skeletons with a Necromancer (380) are cheaper than 40 Zombies with a Necromancer and a Vampire Lord (495). The skeletons still do better...

Ok I mathsed some crunches and crunched some maths. Comparison of a unit of 40 Zombies and 30 Skeletons, neither is supported, taking damage. Healing is taken into account 3 Damage profiles (no rend, 1 rend, 2 rend). 1st Graph shows the amount of models dead from each unit at the end of the combat phase, the 2nd graph shows the amount of models remaining after the end of the combat phase. I didn't count in battleshock because it can be ignored and it's a massive difference if you do or you don't so...yeah. I do realise that if you don't ignore battleshock then it changes things, I know. This shows to me that: 1. Skeletons are generally better than Zombies when neither is supported 2. Skeletons fare notably better against Rend - and Rend -1 3. Against Rend -2 the two units become quite similar 4. Zombies always do better against very small amounts of chip damage - because they can heal above starting size 5. Skeletons always do better against large amounts of damage - until they die and then they're not doing anything anymore

@Elmir See my previous comparison of zombies to skeletons: I'm not comparing damage here, or speed or anything else. I do think that overall Zombies are a better unit than Skeletons. But Skeletons do seem to be more durable. You can't rely too much on those MWs on 6s from zombies for their damage output - you're hardly going to get more than 20 in combat, which equates to just under 4 MW (and their other attacks basically do nothing). 4 Zombies coming back isn't all that much and they're not going to kill anything significant with those 4 MWs. Zombies do really ramp up with extra attacks and activations (+1 A from Vampire Lord and Vanhels from Necro gets them to a much nicer 16 MW). However they NEED that support. Skeletons on the other hand need no support to be decently durable. If your enemy can wipe out 30 skeletons in a single activation then what the hell, he'll probably kill all the zombies too, or all but 5 or something. And then as soon as the skeletons activate they get half their dead back. Zombies are a trap. They look really good with all their MWs on 6s and coming back after killing something. To really get that going; however, you need a block of 40 of them, a vampire lord and a Necromancer AND you need your opponent not to send something at them that just wipes the unit. A max unit of zombies with Necromancer and vampire lord support is 495 pts. For that much you can take 9 Vargheists. 9 Vargheists (not buffed) can kill 26 zombies on average. What do the remaining 14 do? 5 MW followed by another 5 MW - they've killed 2 Vargheists, maybe a 3rd one if you're lucky. The same 9 Vargheists going into Skeletons only kills 21 skeletons. The 9 skeletons activate, 11 get back up. 20 skeletons go into the Vargheists and don't do much - but, more of them survived. If you have a Necromancer to Vanhels them then the rest of them get back up too - effectively the Vargheists did nothing. Guys you are overestimating the Zombies, they need a lot of help to get them to be ridiculous. Skeletons are more survivable (see above) than zombies even if the zombies are supported a bit. Zombies win out when they go up against units that aren't doing much damage in the first place. Whereas Skeletons can take a hit that kills 20 of them and they can still come back from it easily. Once your block of zombies is reduced to 10 models they're practically out of the game unless you do A LOT of work to try and heal them.

Durability of Skeletons vs Grave Guard: First, all the things that are the same: They both are Deathrattle and Summonable so both benefit from pretty much all the same buffs. All of the healing, all of the summoning and all of the damage buffs. They both have banners that do exactly the same thing. They both have the same baseline save and wounds char. Grave Guard: Have 1 better save if they have shields. That's it for their durability. Skeletons: Reanimate losses suffered in that phase on a 4+ when they activate. Necromancer's Vanhel's can enhance this with a double activation so that's an indirect buff to their durability - but a potent one. Thoughts and comparison Skeletons are straight up more durable. They're way cheaper and the 4+ reanimate really discourages chip damage. The grave guard definitely are more killy (like so, so much more) so there is the argument that they are free to activate first and kill their opponent. But skeletons you can take 3 units of 30 and not hurt too much for it. Or use the points difference to add in a corpse cart for -1 to wound and a Necromancer. IMO skeletons come out on top.

How do we feel on the durability of a max unit of skeletons vs a max unit of zombies? Skeletons have the 5+ save and can reroll 1s on deathless minions roll. They automatically come back on a 4+ for every model slain in the phase when they're chosen to fight. Synergies: Vanhel's activates them twice, so you get to roll that 4+ twice. Very nice. That's...about it for abilities that increase their durability that also don't work on Zombies Zombies: no save, larger unit of 40, if they kill models you roll a 2+ to get a zombie added to the unit for every model killed. Synergies: Vanhel's double activation helps, Corpse Carts +1 to save, anything that makes zombies more killy (especially more attacks and the like) helps out their durability. My take: Skeletons are more survivable seemingly, the save and reroll 1s on deathless minions helps a ton. It's not too hard to get them a +1 save either. I think the 4+ Reanimation Protocols is pretty good, the Necromancer makes it possible for all of the casualties to get back up. They are good to just grab and have many units of them without worrying about buffs. Zombies by themselves are less survivable. However, I think you can get them to be more survivable if you stack buffs on them which isn't difficult to do but is expensive. To sum up, skeletons are baseline more survivable but if you make a Zombie horde deathstar unit then you can get that one unit to be more survivable and more of a damage threat too, but it takes at least a corpse cart and a Necromancer, ideally a Coven Throne too.

@Raptor_Jesues - Oh absolutely! This is just to explain a rules interaction.

The Stolen Vitality trait does not heal. Our healing abilities like Invigorating Aura "heal wounds allocated". Stolen Vitality doesn't do that. The Wounds Characteristic of a unit is entirely different from wounds allocated to a unit. Wounds allocated is like a counter, next to the model. You can only allocate as many wounds as the wounds characteristic but wounds allocated doesn't change the wounds characteristic and changing the wounds characteristic doesn't change the allocated wounds. A Blood Knight that has 2 wounds allocated at a wounds char. of 3, still has 2 wounds allocated at a wounds char of 4. A Blood Knight that has 3 wounds allocated at a wounds char. of 4, still has 3 wounds allocated at a wounds char of 3. Yes, Blood Knights can die when they lose Stolen Vitality.

I don't think so. Both rules give them "2 hits instead of 1" when you roll a 6. That's technically not an extra hit per 6, it just transforms a normal hit to two hits, twice. It's a bit like giving a unit the rule "this model's save roll is a 4+" twice. It doesn't do anything to have it repeated.

It certainly seems very positive to the point of going over the top. Kind of smacks me of some people who were doing cartwheels no matter what GW showed them and trying to make out like the Black Knight changes are good. To be clear, this review isn't that bad but still. The main issue with the book is its creativity, it does very few fun and lore-focused things. Yet that's mentioned as a passing note at the end and even put in a positive light like "I'm glad they didn't change much from LoN". This review feels less sincere and more like they had an agenda to push like "too many people are negative about the book, let's counteract that". Side note, it feels like people's mindset is now that 90% of a book is there to make the faction competitive and 10% is a veneer of flavour to make it fun. That's a bit miserable.

Don't you count wounds taken in AoS and not wounds remaining? So you have some blood knights, who have a characteristic of 4 wounds, one of them has taken 3 wounds. Then they revert to characteristic of 3 wounds. Now you have some blood knights, who have a characteristic of 3 wounds, one of them has taken 3 wounds. The one that has taken 3 wounds has no wounds left and dies.

Could somebody give me a quick rundown of what the Anvil of Death is? Could it mean more flavourful Vampire Lords?

Sad vampire lord noises...

Ah don't...don't get my hopes up. I would LOVE a second release wave at this point. I wouldn't even mind paying for the book twice. Especially if they give Vampire Lords more options. Did the LRL book mention the missing units in the lore? That could be a sign

I wonder how it compares to a Vengorian lord. The coach might actually out-damage them, perhaps. And may even be more durable. But Vengorians have more synergy. They are 60 points more though...

It's also on the Relic Bearer's. Which isn't much but it's an extra average 1.5 MWs more That's a shame...I love the model, it's the one thing I kept before selling my NH army (they just didn't vibe with me as much as LoN did). Still, on average we're looking at maybe 3MW from its attacks, d3 from its charge and another d3 from the final power (which yes, you may never get, it's a gamble but let me have this ). 3+2d3 isn't necessarily a bad MW output and the unit isn't all that expensive. But you're probably right...dammit I was hoping that would be my very-thematic-but-also-viable list. As for proxying it for a Coven throne, nah. I like to play more or less WYSIWYG. I want the model to represent its rules, it feels more immersive, it makes it more fun for me. I'm not a big fan of "use cool model and slap your chosen warscroll on it". I do however have a Coven Throne that I may well put to use.