Aren73

Nope, not unless you're running the Nagash overfaction. They're not a Soulblight Gravelords unit, we need a unit from our own book to be able to deal with tough threats.

That does sound reasonable. In which case though, what will be our answer to tough, heavily armoured units? It's looking like it won't be Blood Knights, at least not in units of 5 when they seem to be most effective. Will the Terrorgheist become a must take, or a Vengorian Lord?

I think there is a subset of us who were expecting GW to make vampires absolute murder machines in this book. I don't think that's unreasonable - look at the glow up high elves got by becoming Lumineth. It seems however that vampires remain at "alright" damage but are cheap enough that you can field plenty of them. So for example, I wouldn't take 5 Blood Knights to do the work anymore, instead I'd probably have to take 10 for them to be the super scary hammer unit. Or even 15. Though...that large base and 1" range do pose a problem for larger units of them... I dunno, I'm excited to see what buffs they can get from what sources. Hopefully mounted vampire lords are still a thing (poor now nameless Manfred).

And funnily enough a Spellcaster vampire lord on zombie dragon works really well with Kastelai. If you can kill an enemy hero with a spell you can power up just in time for the charge.

No worries, you're excited for the reveals, I get it, I'm also super excited for the faction. All of us have a function to fill. Your enthusiasm I'm sure is helpful to drive your hobby creativity. My cynicism and critical outlook can be helpful when optimising lists. We're all batting for the same team here.

I am also of very much the same sentiment. Overall happy, though a bit worried about rend. If high rend was going to be anywhere in this book Blood Knights would have been somewhere near the top of that list for me. I don't want us to become one of those books that struggles for rend, so I wonder where it's going to come from.

Friend, I have no issue with you trying to lift the mood or being positive. But the way you do it is aggressive and demeaning to anyone who doesn't line up with your way of thinking. I'm happy that you have a positive outlook on the changes, just don't immediately start bashing people who aren't as ecstatic as you are.

On the weapon options and rend: It is nice that no matter how you build them you can't build them wrong. On the other hand, it would have been nice to see -2 rend, 2D on charge for lances and -1 rend normally on swords. It would have meant that the unit could be made to be effective against heavily armoured units.

Cool Strawman. Yup, they have -1 rend on the profile EXCEPT most of them have -2 rend on the charge. Which, incidentally, should have been on the Blood Knights.

This. When you want to pierce something you want a very small, sharp point and not a large flat blade. It's why having them at lower damage (2 not say 3 or something) but rend of -2 would have made a lot of sense. But hey, this is what we have now, no use being down about it, these are great anti light-armour units.

Jeeeez cool your engines. The unit got some minor and medium buffs to its warscroll. It is strictly better than its old iteration but its not groundbreaking. Against well armoured enemies they'll still struggle to put any wounds on them, if they're going up against a Leviadon or a Bastiladon then I don't think our "hammer" unit can crack it, unless you take lots. Akhelian Morrsarr Guard have it, it's not a high stretch to imagine that a vampire which should be much stronger than an elf could have just as good rend.

Or if you're lucky finish off a unit and grab the buff, then charge.

Warscroll itself received very minor buffs, aside from the special abilities. Riders of Ruin is quite fun, the hunger buff is...a buff, but will hardly be relevant I think. Native 3+ save is nice. Nightmares got +1 attack I guess.... Still my overall feelings about the warscroll are...meh. They don't feel like our super strong hammer unit.

What's your Warhammer Community refresh score today? Mine's gotta be somewhere around 30 Edit: 31

That last sentence could be part of the core book, or at the start of our rules in the battletome.

Lorge.

Or again - this new unit doesn't have to necessarily fight. It can just sit on an objective. It finally dawned on me (for whatever reason, I must've not been thinking) that it's not just zombies and skeletons. It is also black knights and graveguard (presumably). Resurrecting those seems fun. Also I'm assuming you can change the loadout when you resurrect them, seeing as it's a replacement unit. So you yeet up a large block of great weapon grave guard and then spawn a unit of sword and board graveguard back on your objectives.

Nah, it triggers every turn on a 5+ regardless. Killing enemy units only makes it easier to achieve. I bet there is a spell/trait/artefact that improves on it too. Turn 1 get your horde in their face, however you can. Hopefully it will die in their turn or even better in your combat turn 2. Then immediately bring it back at half strength.

It also makes hordes much more viable. You just run one max strength unit, have it die as soon as you can and then keep spawning half-strength versions of it for the rest of the game. Welcome to my 30-zombies-per-turn summoning party.

Would sound idyllic if I didn't have a job and a bunch of other responsibilities. I want to know the rules as soon as possible - so I can start planning lists and slowly grinding through the paint backlog . That's my best chance of putting things on the table inside of this year

Not even close, sure it takes a bit more time in movement phase, but you're doing a very similar thing with models within (after all you want to maximise the amount of models in the aura) and then you're also checking it every combat phase etc. Imagine the sheer chaos of a unit of 60 zombies where they all have a different variety of a mix of buffs. The separate rolling phases for attacks....No, thank you but no thank you, that sounds like a headache and a half. Model by model basis will always be slower than unit by unit basis.

Models within, if it was introduced for every aura, would really slow down the game. Just imagine 5 units within 4 auras where parts of each unit will benefit from different rules, checking individually model by model whether it is or isn't in range of a rule every time it's relevant. No, models within is not the solution for a general rule for auras. Units wholly within is a less accurate version of models within and has its problems but at least it doesn't slow the game down as much as models within would.

If all books are changed to "wholly within" then everyone is playing by the same rules and has the same disadvantage. It does add another layer of consideration to your play but that can make the game more rich - it punishes long conga lines for example and stops characters hanging out in the empty middle between units, rather forces them to stick to a unit to give it the buff, kind of like pretending it's part of the unit like back in WHFB.

How far in advance do you think the books are printed? 2 years? 3 years? Before 2nd ed.? I mean correct me if I'm wrong but I very much doubt the Lumineth books were printed pre December 2019. I've heard so many "if it makes GW money, they will ****** the fans" conspiracy theories by this point that I can't help thinking this sounds along those lines.

Just a tongue in cheek joke, don't worry. No I don't think it's becoming the norm. Not at all. The Lumineth scenario was unique. It was during the pandemic which messed with the order of releases, lined up with Broken Realms Teclis and it made a lot of Lumineth players unhappy - it won't be repeated any time soon. Even if it was pre-planned before they were aware of any production issues (and if we're talking China, they would have occurred over a year and a half ago) I doubt it will be a new release format.