Death1942

Not bad, I think one set of warriors is all you want to take so I would consider dropping one 20 block for 40 marauders and save 100 points. I would strongly consider trying to get a nurgle warshrine in as the buffs it offers are pretty great.

Got it in a whatsapp group, nothing special as it just shows the same info in that above screenshot but also has a bit more shown which is Ironjaws and Seraphon units getting removed.

I hope for a drop for vampire lords, maybe even a drop for some of our named characters. Vargheists could probably drop 20 or so points and be a lot better, blood knights as discussed should be dropped considerably. I suspect they will remove bats and other really old kits (if you look at the rest of the leak they are removing models from other armies in this FAQ)

Hobby question: I am considering diving into Skaven but was always daunted by the prospect of painting fur and a million clan rats. Anyone had an experience with the contrast paints? Does it speed up the process immensely and are the results good?

Fair points, I have found that blood knights (despite the points drop) are just not up to scratch in the current game. At most they heal 1 wound per turn, they gain a bonus against non rend which is a non factor these days and their damage isn't consistent enough unless you get off a charge and wipe out units every turn. They are set up to be your big hammer unit but in reality they are only good for crushing screens and smaller units on the flanks. In all of my games (in a fairly competitive scene) my opponents are able to either focus them down and wipe them out quickly, or they are able to throw way more screens than I can clear at them to stop their devastating charges. I agree with you in that maximizing the +1 attack is good but competitively speaking with the options we are given, spamming spells (Necromancers, vampire lords) for the 9+ double cast and spamming summonable to throw bodies at your opponent is our most potent weapons. +15 attacks on your blood knights lances (and +15 horse attacks) coupled with +4 attacks on the VloZD (I think, can't remember how many weapons atm) and a few more attacks on a foot vampire are certainly nothing to sneeze at but compare that to +1 save for your entire army and other similar faction abilities and it just doesn't stack up. I really really want a decent rework as legion of blood are my favorite legion but until Nef drops down a chunk in points and blood knights either get a warscroll rework or a bigger drop in points I just don't see a traditional list working.

If you don't want to look towards China then your options can be varied. Mantic make blood knights for their undead faction, I don't think the models are that great though. The better option would be to grab humanoid cavalry from another faction and get some vampire heads to swap on. There are a few sites out there that make vampire heads so give that a go. If you went down the chaos knight route (they do look great) you would probably need to file off a lot of the chaos iconography and most likely go all head swaps and no helmeted options.

I was testing lists for ages trying to get anything to work competitively but I have been forced into a decent list but isn't overly blood themed. Basically you drop blood knights and take black knights (because they are way better based on their points and being summonable). You take a bunch of spirit hosts (9-12) as your big block to dish out mortal wounds and take out the problem units like Nagash. You take direwolves as a flanking objective grabber, chainrasps for the ethereal objective holding (everyone is taking rend these days) and you have your standard big block of skellies usually in the middle to seize that objective. You can probably chop and change the battleline a bit but ethereal is too good of a rule to ignore and you absolutely need to spam summonable to do well. Finally with your heroes you are looking to spread the points out, lots of necromancers and probably a vampire lord or two are key. I am going to keep one of the VloZD, one vampire lord and 2 necromancers and that should be enough I feel to get by. It sucks that you can't take lots of units that are benefiting from the blood rules but we are honestly stuck like the rest of the legions armies in that to be truely competitive you need to maximise our biggest benefit which is the summonable rule. If you have 3-4 big units that are roughly 150+ points and can bring them back for 1cp and do that 2+ times per game you are basically running 2300+ points which tips the scales a bit more in our favour. Blood is still great on your heroes because adding an extra attack to all of the vampire lords weapons is still really potent.

The problem with splitting out the legion is there is almost not enough kits to do proper new books justice and I don't actually think GW wants to bloat the range even further. Do they really want to end up with 10-20 kits for 7? 8? Death armies. I really don't think that is sustainable at all. That leaves them with the problem of either continuing the legion book style (similar to cities) and consolidating or cutting kits but also making the rules a lot weaker, or they try and split it out into more books but I struggle to see how that can happen without a lot of kit bloat. Rules wise we definitely need a refresh, especially on battalions. I would prefer to see us get touched after Seraphon, KO and Tzeentch as they need the update far more than we do.

All the people I know who are speed painting them are going contrast for the bone and then smashing out the shields and weapons with a quick basecoat of whatever colour you want (people are usually doing blue on the shields, bronze or gold for the metal) and then one quick edge highlight. All of the effort is in the edge highlighting and you can easily smash out blocks of 10 quickly. The more intricate models (like Nagash) they have some special techniques for the black but I can't exactly remember the steps right now.

I think the underrated part of this list is how balanced it is for missions. You have 3 solid blocks of objective holding infantry, you also have 3 heroes if you get a scenario that requires them to hold objectives. I personally hate the harvester model so running 3 would be a bit much for me. Only downside I can see to this list is how slow it can be. I would be tempted by a unit of cavalry for the really spread out missions.

With the VloZD have you tried the dark mastery (I think that is the name) trait instead? -1 to hit + and amulet should on paper keep him alive a lot longer. The blood knights are pretty poor for their points. Best case scenario you sit them on terrain and they charge out and wipe out units. In reality terrain can be sparse (depends on your local area really) and a good opponent won't let you get those charges off easily. Would love to see them given some buffs such as flat 2 damage and 3 on the charge, maybe even add some reach or consider adjusting their healing mechanic again. Someone put me on a new blood list to try and it is basically spamming summonable units (none of which get blood trait benefits) because that is basically the strongest thing death can do. Blood is purely there for the heroes to give them a slight buff. Shame that is how it feels like the legion is going for now.

I faced off against a bonereaper Nagash on the weekend and it is very very good (although the rest of the list is quite lackluster). I think not having the ability to heal themselves in LoN makes them probably not worth the price hike but being able to spam arcane bolts I think is worth 800 points for Nagash. I think death is slowly hitting a point where we need either a decent FAQ mini overhaul or a new book, we are falling behind a lot of other books right now and running out of tools.

So it seems like Nagash outside of bone reapers can't heal himself (nice cash grab GW). Does that tip him into the too expensive category for you? I like the spam arcane bolts and he isn't too bad offensively if you keep using the command ability.

I am definitely not in it for casual play. Going to the worlds biggest AOS tournament in January and want to field a decent death army so trying to refine it and get a list going. I suspect I might have to bite the bullet and drop legion of blood, not enough staying power and not really enough hitting power. Might just run my blood knights as black knights instead.

Got utterly crushed on the weekend (0-3) and thinking my army might not have the legs in the current meta. I faced Nagash with the new bone reapers with the 2+ save and bodyguard play, teleporting tree lord sylvaneth and Alariel and finally new ogres, specifically the shooty clan. My army was Vhordrai, VLOZD (general, -1 to hit in combat, ethereal amulet), 40 sword skellies, a necromancer with overwhelming dread, 2x 5 dogs and 2x5 blood knights. Not sure if my tactics were poor (probably) but I was finding that my general would die the same turn (or just before) my skellies so I couldn't bring them back. Vhordrai was priority number 1 for my enemy so I was finding he was dead by turn 2 most games. I found the blood knights to just not hit hard enough for their points but I did have a good enough amount of units to cap objectives. Seems like this legion cannot dish out the mortal wounds to take out something like a Nagash or high defence army. How do other people tend to run their dragons? Do you always make sure your general is someone in the backlines who isn't going to die easily? Do you hold back your dragons waiting for the first engagements and then dive them in? How do you deal with someone who is going to shoot the ****** out of you before your slow force can move forward?

I really don't see an issue with modelling them as spears and telling your opponent they are swords for gameplay. I wouldn't do this if you wanted 2 units with different weapons though, that isn't really fair. One unit or multiple units all armed with the same weapon? Go nuts.

Treat the text after that first sentence as blank. Why would a wizard ever be within 3" of the enemy general when it is killed? Unless this thing is fast or beefy I don't think you are ever going to trigger that second bit, still a half decent rule.

I think there is definitely a limit on that kind of work in AoS. We just got Bonereapers who in my opinion are the more AoS version of skeletons. Do we really need to rework skeletons to make them more AoS style and drive away players who like the current style? I think the better option is to keep the old army (update a few kits of course) and then release a new faction instead for your rework. The Cities of Sigmar book has shown their new approach to lines and I think it is correct, ditch some of the more outlandish and outside the box models, update a few kits (maybe) but keep the core style in tact. Will Cities and Legions survive AoS 3.0 in a few years? Who knows.

Does $320 seem fair for that kit? Feels like with the Ogres it is a bit light on models total but I haven't purchased a box set from GW for about 3 years so out of the loop. The dice are a definite pass for me but I will be grabbing the book and warscrolls before deciding on whether to buy into the army fully.

I completely disagree with the skeleton horde, iconic units do tend to stick around even if they aren't easy to block copyright on. I too would love to see Soulblight get some love (or at least decent rules) but it will be difficult to say how they can do that without a few new kits. I also think a big thing people aren't considering is SKU creep. We just saw the Cities of Sigmar obliterate quite a few kits, possibly to make room for new ones and it brought the overwhelming range down to a much more manageable grouping. If a new player walked into a GW store today and saw the wall of death boxes would they really know where to start? Contrast that to say the Bonereapers or Nighthaunt (newer factions) and it would be fairly easy to break down the army into an easy to bite off chunk. I think if we do get an update to the legions book we will certainly see a few kits drop off but I also hope it opens up newer kits in the future.

Considering how ****** that rule is for Necrons I wouldn't wish it on any other army.

I really hope there is a shooting variant of those 4 armed guys. A death army with a bit of shooting would be really fun to play. My wish list is a bone giant, archers (either mounted or on foot) and a construct monster (similar to the tomb king scorpion).

This is exactly why I am now budgeting to buy these guys. Elite death is my jam for sure and I think if the 4 armed dudes have a decent enough warscroll for the points we may see a few in some legion armies. For sure the catapult is the obvious inclusion for most death armies depending on points, adding a shooting attack can really open some interesting strategic decisions.

Fair to pick that apart but as an old dwarf player I don't want to play an entire army of slayers and the KO aren't really my thing either. My point was along the line of the classic dwarf army hasn't really been touched for years (I think maybe the last kits were early 8th ed?) and their rules are pretty lackluster. I do hope the new cities book will do something for the army but I am not holding my breath.

I have some friends who are involved with some of the external game balancing and they all say the same thing. A few people at GW who are in charge of the balance and general direction of the game have their own favourite armies and will push them harder than any of the others and also typically make them more powerful than the rest. I think the fact that dwarves went years without a book in old fantasy and have gotten absolutely nothing outside of KO and Fireslayers should be a pretty good indication that no one on the design team really cares for them.