Ghoooouls

Yeah I'm sure the old style bloodlines are almost a given tbh, maybe with different names. I just want a big, unique necrarch style guy again.

I want zacharias/melkior or a similar new character!

Yeah you wouldn't get the 4+ ignore from their guardian rule. They're taking wounds from their guardian ability, not the spell. The spell is affecting the hero, not the blade masters.

Good spot. I wonder whether it'll be a bit like the zombies and have a similar rule to the 'improvised weapons' profile for all the hand weapons like swords and maces, but I hope they are different.

Skeletons could be this unit, improving them and making them different role to zombies, then GG can be replaced by a different elite unit.

Or squat them.

I know it's been mentioned a lot, but I'd like to see expansion to the bloodlines. Vampire lords becoming beasts like they should be. Maybe a lord could have multiple different points costs depending on their level of power? And the higher they cost, the more bloodlines abilities they gain access to, on top of the usual command trait and artefact. For instance you could spend 140 points on a standard vamp lord who gets access to a single bloodlines ability, or 180 and they get access to more etc. I want to see vampire lords capable with magic again. Yeah it's cool at the moment we have the 9+ casting twice ability and lots of external buffs like corpse cart/mortis/sacrament. But just being a 1x caster with no option to increase this just seems silly when you have random demons that can cast x2 etc. Vampires always used to be awesome with magic and in combat. I hope we keep healing mechanics that we currently have in LoN - not so much gravesites but at least heroes and spells that can return/raise models and I think we undoubtedly will get this. Beguile style abilities a little bit like you said would be great. Chance to make units attack last or attack themselves as they have their mind controlled, debuffs to hit from clouds of bats and stuff. The possibilities are so much fun to think about.

It definitely needs clarification. Fleeing models counting as slain works fine for things such as the LoN command ability to bring a unit back from the dead, but the horrors rule should have clarification of slain and that fleeing models don't count or whatever.

What happened with the basti save?

Chill out I said I agree it's silly, but it still needs an FAQ. The rule says they are removed and count as slain - the horror rule says 'each time a model is slain' bla bla bla, so if a model counts as slain, the argument is that model counts as slain for the horrors rule. GW has always been rubbish at rules writing.

This makes no sense, for battleshock you roll a die, add the number of models that were slain this turn and THEN the models flee and are removed, counting as slain. You don't do a battleshock test and then do another and add the models that fled from the first battleshock test. There's literally no way a fleeing model would then count towards battleshock, because battleshock has already happened. Everyone I know also plays that fleeing models 'count as slain' and therefore trigger the horror ability of 'when a model is slain'. It definitely needs an FAQ as I agree the idea of it is silly.

That dire wolf looks amazing but it's SO SMALL in the artwork haha! Hopefully the models (if we get new ones) are bigger than knee-high dogs

I'm not sure this will happen (although a new abyssal terror would be amazing). In the lore abyssal terrors were an 'okay' mount, a step below dragons but above the horses etc. They took the form of whatever the vampire wanted it to look like (this is all from memory) - and the 'dread abyssal' mounts of the current mortarchs are much more powerful versions of the abyssal terrors. I think it would be strange for a half-decent mount to return as a big centrepiece, presumably more powerful than the dragons if it did return as a centrepiece. I hope we do get an awesome centrepiece but also I'm assuming we won't. We already have zombie dragons, the mortarchs (assuming at least manny and neffy move over), nagash (possibly), vhordrai etc. And yes a lot of them don't really fit the role of 'centrepiece', but still. I'm also hoping we get a new character a bit like the new sigvald for slaanesh, quite a low costing, powerful vampire lord would be amazing - like a soulblight arch regent.

Tolkien also had 'high elves' and 'wood elves' with treemen, goblins/orcs riding wolf-like creatures, daemon such as the balrog that seem very similar to the bloodthirsters, various dragons, a race of humans that are very heavily cavalry focussed, evil Lord dudes riding dragon type things (nazgul/fellbeasts), the army of the dead (bright green ghost army, sound familiar?), the humans that served sauron, riding mumakill (SO similar to the warhammer mammoths). The list goes on.

I'm confused, I thought you said he can improve it, unlike ethereal units? I thought I'd missed something and got excited that he could get a better save haha.

How does he improve his save?

Lol what.... Theres plenty of downsides to death and vampires are meant to be incredibly powerful, intelligent beings. They have existed in the old world as free thinking, intelligent beings after their own goals etc. So why not now? Why should some overgrown skeleton overule the entirety of the death faction forever? I say bring back vampire counts how they used to be. Incredibly powerful creatures of the night with grand schemes and want to rule over themselves, not be controlled by some 'god of death'. Even some of the characters we currently have (manny, neferata) existed in the old world with nagash and were not controlled by him. Skeletons, zombies and other undead minions controlled by magic fine, dont give them free will, but vampires?? Come on now. NAGASH WAS WEAK, WITNESS TRUE POWER.

Glad I'm not the only one, I'll be using my current skeleton models for sure. No interest in these cheesy sexy pose skellies at all.

I think the Wight King model has given us the view of what Soulblight will be. They said in the preview he is for soulblight, meaning skellies will likely be absorbed into the army too. If skellies go, I'd assume zombies will too. They also said we would see more soulblight in this preview, when showing the wight king. We then saw new skellies/zombies/bats/giant bat thing/vampire unit for warhammer quest, which leads me to believe these (or at least some of these) will be added as well. He also said the wight king will be added, as well as a few other new models, to the soulblight range. Meaning we arent getting a full new release but more likely a handful of new sculpts and a lot of LoN units lumped in, essentially my opinion is that gravelords will replace LoN.

The thing is, I wouldn't call mannfred 'hulking' or 'winged', but I guess it could be an illusion hes put up.

Vamp kneeling on the right is the rumour engine of the ghoul/vamp arm with the sword.

These look fantastic

Yea wouldnt love nagash to get whooped, I mean I'd love for vamps to come to power.

I'd love this.

Yea you're right, I was shown it as a leak but it was the warband lol