BaylorCorvette

My blood sucking brothers and sisters our time is here! https://www.warhammer-community.com/2021/05/09/sunday-preview-the-lords-of-undeath-return/

I've read a lot of Lexicanum stuff, which is mostly 40k & old world. However I am interested where the Lauka Vai information along with the Avengorii originate from because I definitely don't remember reading about this in the past. Also, do you have the link handy of the Avengorii. I cannot find it.

hmmmm and we have a Seraphon model from the underworlds warband with a Pokeball...

Violent caterpillars, butterflies and moths confirmed!

Same. Several times I've almost gone all in on Cities of Sigmar because of the 1 in 4 rule. I think it is REALLY cool. But I get drawn away by other projects. With the Broken Realms series I almost jumped in Cities but then I thought I'd wait until this week and sure enough with Gravelords coming sometime this month I'm once against pushing off Cities, if Gravelords were to have the 1 in 4 rule it would put the nail in the coffin (ha!) for me ever doing Cities of Sigmar. Also what if Vargheists feeding frenzy rule changed to allowing it to fight again if it killed a model. Either immediately, later in the combat phase or at the end of the combat phase. Would be a great blender against chaff. On top of that, their speed and fly would support them being pretty good shock troops.

I'd say more likely to get faction terrain than endless spells. But I'm not confident that we are going to get either.

I also like this with Knight of Shrouds head, not 100% what the sword is from, maybe Knight of Shrouds too?

I cannot get the image of that Vamp Lord riding a surf board out of my mind, lol. I do like the model though, more so without the bats on the hair.

I was in the same boat, in terms of wanting to play Vampires and take them to a tournament and not get completely stomped. As a result, start of 2020 I started a personal project of "Khorne Vampires", it is basically using Khorne Allegiance and mostly Slaves to Darkness warscrolls (with Khorne mark of course), but I kitbashed a good chunk of the models to be vampires or vampire themed. For instance, I made custom Vampire Chaos Knights, the horses are the old Chaos Knights and the riders are the Vampire Lord from the VLoZD kit, but with the Chaos Knights weapons. I have them on the current Blood Knight bases so I use them as Blood Knights in my Legion of Blood army and then magnetize them to larger bases for Chaos Knights. My hope is that Blood Knights base size goes up, which I assume they will. That way I can just go ahead an convert them permanently. Then I did custom Vampire on Karkadrak, and other things. Overall the list proved competitive, I finsihed 6th in a two day tournament several weeks ago. However, my hope is that Gravelords book will be pretty competitive, I don't need it to be S tier but low A tier would be very nice. We certainly have bodies for objectives in Skeletons and Zombies and a quick objective grabber in Dire Wolves. My concern is being too reliant on Spell casting for buffs, etc and not having strong enough Spell Casters in todays meta. The other concern I have is whether or not we will have a deep strike / outflanking source. Obviously we don't have shooting, which is fine (not a huge fan of shooting in AoS), however I am going to be disappointed if we do not have a way to deep strike / outflank / teleport. I think Blood Knights are going to provide a fast hard hitting Cavalry option. Would be AMAZING if they had a way to retreat and charge but I'd also settle for run and charge. As someone else mentioned, I suspect the competitive way to play Gravelords is going to be 1-2 large units of Skeletons and/or Zombies, with at least one maybe two units of Dire Wolves, 1 unit of Blood Knights and then proper Hero support. I am very interested to see what they do with Heroes. I've never been a fan of a Hero that is over ~600 pts, too much is tied up in that one unit. But what Gravelords is getting looks like we will have a lot of Hero options in the ~200-500 point range which I am super excited about. There's a lot of potential here. Lets hope we didn't get the "bin" writer for our book!

So what are thoughts on Warhammer releases? We do not know GWs release schedule exactly since they took the two week break. However it's pretty much certain Gravelords sometime this month since the end of the video on Monday said May 2021. I think in yesterdays 40k stream they said Admech later this month? So possibly Kragnos end of May or beginning / mid June?

Yes I was a little surprised by the poll results too. However when you think about it, nothing other than the Lauka Val is crazy extreme. I suppose the werewolf style is a little bit of a change but it is something I am not shocked to see in a Gravelords book. The other models, like Dire Wolves, Skeletons, Zombies, Fell Bats, etc are all what one would expect for a "new model upgrade" https://www.facebook.com/groups/447428583100905

I'm going to be gutted if this Sunday they don't announce preorder for May 15th. I realize there is a handful more weekends in May that it COULD be but I just want it to be ASAP..

We absolutely are getting new skeletons & zombies. Uggggh now I just want someone to leak warscroll and/or battletome info!!!!

I really would like to see the "unit leader" for Blood Knights be a Vampire Lord. So the rules would be something like this. "One model in this unit may be a Vampire Lord. A Vampire Lord has a wounds characteristic of X. The Vampire Lord may cast one spell and unbind one spell. The Vampire Lord knows Arcane Bolt, Mystic Shield (and maybe something else?). Command Abilities may be issued by a Vampire Lord. Deathless Minions may be used by a Vampire Lord" The idea being is it is kind of like OBR's Hekatos in the sense that they are kind of like mini Heroes for issuing some CA's and generating their Deathless Aura. However unlike OBR where pretty much all of their units have access to a Hekatos we would only see this on a Blood Knight unit leader. I still think the Black Knight unit leaders would just get like 1 extra melee attack and not be a pseudo hero.

I reaaaaally hope Blood Knights can be battleline some how. Maybe if a VLoZD is the General or in a specific Bloodline? I would love a super elite Gravelords army. Def looks better!

So after a good nights sleep, I am overall pretty happy with the releases we will be getting. While a little disappointed that we aren't getting SOME sort of foot Vampire unit, I'm not shocked either. I really like that it looks like you can go several ways with the theme of your Gravelords army. Want werewolf vampires? Got it. Want beastial vampires? Got it. Want regal / aristocratic vampires? Got it. Then of course you can kit bash stuff to make your own theme. The foundation is there for any Gravelords army - Skeletons, Zombies, Zombie Dogs, its just a matter of what direction do you want to take your army. Like many others, the Lauka Vai / Vengorian Lord model is a little strange. As two different models they are amazing but the way they are connected (at the shoulders) is just weird. I THINK what I am going to do is likely kitbash this (I love kitbashing in general, see below) to give it a head from either the Black Dragon, Zombie Dragon or possibly something else and then either have a Vampire rider or like Teclis, have a Vampire standing at the base or maybe floating by this beast. All I know is that this guy that I kitbashed for my Vampire themed Khorne army is going to find a place in my Gravelords army!

So I just started to think abut this, but it is very possibly that warscroll for the Terrorghiest and Zombie Dragon do not change because they are also in the FeC army. Although someone could just make the argument that FeC will indirectly receive a buff by Gravelords updating Terrorghiests and Zombie Dragons. But I'm going to be pissed if our Zombie Dragons do not get a slight buff. Also there better be mount traits in the Gravelords book.

There is nothing confirming actual Vampire Infantry. Just a hope that the bloodborn can be taken outside of the 600+ pt Cursed City circus.

I just rewatched to Twitch stream and the actual quote is "So that is now all of the Soulblight Gravelords miniatures." .... "if you've been looking forward to the full release of this army, you've now seen all of the miniatures, you can check out the rest on the previous previews."

Well fingers crossed that we didn't get the bin writer for our new Battletome. I don't want a broken faction but I also want us to be pretty competitive.

It isn't, I zoomed in and played with the contrast / color. He is holding a pitchfork

From the War-Comm article: " everything. The upcoming battletome details several vampiric bloodlines, each with their own history and culture. The ancient beings that lead them are some of the strongest beings in all the Mortal Realms." Alright, so pretty sure the sub factions are going to be Vyrkos Bloodline & Avengorii Dynasty, and then MAYBE Neferata and Mannfred have their own blood line / dynasty? Or maybe instead of Neferata and Mannfred it is Prince Vhordrai? Vyrkos Bloodline - the new Heroes and buffs dire wolves and possibly zombies. Avengorii Dynasty - New bat centaur beast lady / lord buffs Varghiests, Bats, etc. Prince Vhordrai Bloodline (Blood Dragons?) buffs Blood Knights. Neferata & Mannfred slots into any of them? Thoughts?

Good catch! it is interesting, because it appears to be on a base making it a new model. But I cannot 100% confirm it is on a base.

I am seriously hoping for some deep strike or out flanking options. Either Feel Bats being able to deep strike in or perhaps a carry over from Legion of Night where you can outflank with X number of units.

Maaaaan if Zombies do mortals on 6s I am going to take a huge blob lol.