Liquidsteel

White Dwarf rules are out, summary below.

So the WD images are out and, they're not great. Allegiance Trait "Deadly Coordination": After a friendly SBGL Hero that is not a Monster has fought, pick a Summonable unit wholly within 12" that is within 3" of an enemy unit, that unit may fight immediately after. This is okay, it would have been excellent if not for the non Monster restriction. Best use case is probably Radukar the Beast fighting to trigger a unit of Grave Guard second or something. Legion of Blood Trait "Unparalleled Expertise": Your Vampire Lord heroes are either Martial or Arcane. Martial - VLoZD's add +1 attack to their Lance or Sword, foot Vamps add +2 attacks to their blades. Arcane - VLoZDs add +1 to their first Casting, Dispelling or Unbinding attempt each phase, foot Vamps add +2. This is pretty good, not to be sniffed at for sure. VLoZD Mount Traits: Locus of Death increase the amount of units you can use Invigorating Aura on by 1, absolute garbage. Foetid Breath you can reroll the damage of the Pestilential Breath attack, very good! Core Battalions: All are pretty ******. Radukar's Court is the full cursed city roster and gives you an extra enhancement but they're all unique so can't use it? Fellwing Flock is 2-3 Vargheists units and 2-3 Fell Bats units and gives you the Vanguard ability to auto run 6 or reroll a charge. Deathstench Drove gives you a free All out Attack or All out Defence and consists of 1-2 Corpse Carts, 2 units of Dire Wolves and 2 units of Zombies. Grand Strategy Vampiric Conqueror's: Control more Grave Sites at the end of the game than your opponent, control being the same way as capturing an objective. It's okay? Prized Sorcery/Hold the Line likely still way better choices. Battle Tactics: Callous Overlord pick a Summonable unit that is more than 3" from an enemy unit, complete it if that unit is destroyed this turn. Pretty good. Lust for Blood is completed if two or more friendly Vampire units use The Hunger/Mortarch of Blood to heal any wounds. The fact is says you must heal a wound and not just trigger the effect makes it worse, as you have to have wounds to heal to succeed. Unstoppable Armies you need to roll a 5+ to trigger Endless Legions, unclear if this benefits from the destroyed units improving the roll as it does not say unmodified, either way very unreliable and that's not what you want with a battle tactic. Overall I'm a but underwhelmed, the battalions in particular, though we have some good stuff here. Radukar buffing and fighting in tandem with some Grave Guard got better, and the reroll damage on the breath is great. Extra attack in Legion of Blood is nice but not really amazing.

So the fact Blood is getting pushed as well as the VLoZD, I really hope a Battalion allows us to fit more than one Commander level hero. For example, Mortarch plus 1-2 Commanders and you get the Warlord effect. I imagine hoping for a one drop battalion that can include 2-3 Commanders plus troops would be asking too much, but who knows. As a side note, I really dislike 1 drops and the interaction with deciding turn order.

That would be incredible actually! I think the mount traits might be a bit boring tbh, the general trend seems to be some sort of empowered monstrous action, which I hope it isn't.

From the description in the WD pre-order on GW: "The Tome Celestial: Soulblight Gravelords New background and updated battletome rules for the Soulblight Gravelords. Crack open a human and celebrate with a glass of blood! Provides 1 new Battle Trait for the Soulblight Gravelords, 1 new Legion of Blood Battle Trait, 2 Mount Traits for Zombie Dragons alongside 3 Soulblight Gravelords bespoke Core Battalions. Additionally provides updated rules for Open Play and Path to Glory rules for Narrative Play. For Matched Play the Soulblight Gravelords gain access to 1 bespoke Grand Strategy and 3 Battle Tactics." So this sounds very interesting! A full Battle Trait for the Allegiance plus an additional one for Legion of Blood, 2 mount Traits for Zombie Dragons and 3 Battalions, 3 Battle Tactics and a Grand Strategy. Exciting!

I guess the question is, do you NEED the skeletons? Especially if you are already covering your battleline. I really want to like them, but they feel kind of wasted in the current meta, especially with the options we have in general. 30 Skellies with a Necromancer in support is 380 points for 35 wounds with a 5+ save that rely on an unreliable spell caster and to be attacked in Melee to get the most use out of. For 390 points you could have 2 x 5 Blood Knights which is 30 wounds on a 3+ save that can actually do damage and have more speed and can act independently, or you take another 20 Grave Guard as you said and have some spare change. Ultimately the answer is always "it depends", but right now I can't justify skeletons in the list.

Nagash in particular would have to come down in points significantly, his Command Ability is just insane. I don't see him losing 4+ considering they're starting to dish that out aplenty. A "from the ground up" re-write could be exciting, but I just don't see it. Nagash is certainly way more killable than Archaon though. I believe the restriction is not present in the GHB. It's from the Core Rules matched play which is not in effect, so going over 1,000 doesn't change anything here.

If you subscribe it arrives earlier in the week, I cancelled mine earlier this year, but someone should be sharing pictures by Tuesday.

I think it will be out end of next week, its usually mid month.

I'm just fantasizing here but they could call it "Hunger" or something. Each (non unique) Vampire Hero can choose one Hunger. Could be something like a d6" pre-game move, a +2 bonus to charge when in range of a Wizard, +1 to wound vs monsters etc

There is no restriction, you could use all 9 in the same turn/phase/attack sequence if you wished.

Yeah for 100 I would consider them, you can cover a nice footprint spread out lengthways to either screen or cut off the board, and not being battleline is a good advantage to not give up an easy Broken Ranks.

Specifically no, however generally we can expect new Grand Strategies, Battle Tactics and Battalions.

I really like your list, it has a bit of everything. You absolutely do not need Blood Knights, though they are still potent outside of Kastelai. My suggestion is play with the list as is for a few games, then try the Blood Knight list with unpainted models and see how you feel. 2 x 20 zombies could replace the 30 skellies and achieve battleline along with the dogs, freeing up the Wight King again. That could then provide a third list maybe.

Yeah I dislike the fact that it's a dice roll, yes it's a dice game but other things can come down to that. I would prefer Endless Legion be guaranteed and just raise the points accordingly, for example.

I think they just need to change core rules so that heroes cannot be targeted by shooting in the same as in 40k. Stacking -1 to hit is no longer possible and most of the newer stuff does mortals on unmodified hit rolls anyway.

Nicely done! Which Artefact are you running in your list again? I, too, managed to win a local 12 player event at the weekend, my first 3-0 in fact. I tweaked the list that I had taken previously that was Nagash, Wight King, 4 x 5 Blood Knights and 1 x 20 Zombies, managing 4-1 and 3-2 at Mancunian Carnage and Justice Series GT respectively (James Tinsdale came 2nd with 5-0's at both events with it, I take no credit for the list). Dropped 1 unit of Blood Knights in favour of a second unit of Zombies and the real reason, Spell Portal. Fits my slightly more defensive playstyle with more bodies, more chances of regeneration and that extra threat range on Hand of Dust and various debuffs. Games were vs Stormcast on First Blood, Deepkin on Power Struggle and OBR Nagash on The Vice. Overall the sheer defensive resilience of the list is what catches people out, Blood Knights stick around forever.

I haven't actually faced them but it's certainly a tough match up for Nagash. Rend 3 really hurts him as you can only finest hour once and Roar stops AoD. If you can engineer a double, Vile Transference will wreck them and top you up, double cast is 70 dice. I think our highest DPS is Grave Guard. 20 buffed with exploding 6s and an extra attack can kill one but finest hour and AoD and either 6+ or 5+ ward will stop that, so need to target wisely and probably throw a monster in as well.

I think Belladamma might not be worth it, as her spell for exploding 6s is wasted on the zombies. Lycancurse is great for sure but you might find her points better spent on more zombies, or perhaps a unit of 20 Grave Guard? Cutting one of the heroes puts you at 1 drop which I think should be considered also.

Just to avoid all doubt, the save of "-" means it's technically a 7+. You would still get a 6+ save against no rend or vs -1 if you applied All out Defence (rare that you would, but still). The Brazier is still much better with its -1 to Wound aura of course, but just wanted to make sure that was clear.

Correct. Important to note that its not a retreat, its still a normal move. So you can still move away from the no retreat Tzeentch Horrors, for example.

@Tibus367 @Lich King Core Rules FAQ, bottom of the section on older command abilities (from pre 3.0 battletomes). "Some older command abilities say either that they cannot be used more than once per phase or that a unit cannot benefit from them more than once. These instructions can be ignored because the core rules no longer allow you to use the same command ability more than once in the same phase." So you now ignore the final sentence and the ability can be stacked across multiple turns.

I was considering some OBR models as I already have Nagash and Arkhan, turns out 2 boxes of Mortek will have me a 2k list!

A choice well made, yes-yes. I would say if you prefer the narrative side of things, you can lean in heavily to a Vyrkos character-spam list and take all the named characters, or just a few. Radukar the Beast, Belladamma, Kritza(!!) and Lady Annika are all available as single models; for Radukar the Wolf, Torgillius and Gorslav you'll need Cursed City or ebay. A Vampire Lord on Zombie Dragon is a great pick in Vyrkos and you can kit him out as you please. Mannfred can slot in anywhere also, as can Nagash, though he's very strong right now and probably not a choice for friendly games. Taking Kritza, you could always start off using Skaven as your Zombies for a laugh. Grave Guard excel in Vyrkos, where you can layer several buffs. Here's something that would be no slouch but still nice and thematic:

This is because Frigate's are Conditional Battleline in Barak Zilfin, meaning they lose the Behemoth Keyword and gain the Battleline Keyword. For the purposes of the Battle Regiment and indeed any other Battalion, they are thus considered to be Troops.