Neil Arthur Hotep

So, with the new GHB rules, is the bravery bomb finally viable? There is a lot of incentive to bring a bunch of big units now, after all, and the Horrorghast got cheaper as well, I think. The full set up is probably Legion of Blood with an Arcane Vampire Lord on foot. Power out that Horrorghast with your +2 to cast, get the Vampire Lord in close for the d3 extra models fleeing from Battle battleshock, and hit the opponent with 2+ Deadwalker or Deathrattle units for -2 bravery. This shuts off Inspiring Presence and results in 2d3 extra models fleeing if any flee. I kinda feel that if bravery bombs are not good in this meta, they will never be good. Which is very likely just how things are. It seems like this set uo could really hurt big Skaven or Gitz blobs, but would also put a dent into Ogors or Nurgle Blightkings if you can get it to stick. But on the other hand, a lot of battleshock immunity is not from Inspiring Presence (not as much as it used to be, but still) and the Death mirror is always a concern (particularly OBR). I suppose if you are alreay in Legion of Blood, adding a Horrorghast is just 40 extra points, so it's not too big of an investment. Might be worth the gamble for an occasionak blowout?

But then you compare that to old Legions of Nagash resurrecting 40 Skeletons for a command point and suddenly it doesn't seem so bad.

My tninking was that you could possibly reduce the size of the Mortek squads to 10 and add 3 Immortis to screen them. Slap the mortek in the conquerors battalion and the setup still captures well. But the problem is that, outside of Gallet, 10 Mortek + 3 Immortis is probably worse than just 20 Mortek, while other armies can just run their previous staple units and have them improve under the new rules. So overall I think it feels like losing ground. I am more and more convinced that going more in the direction of Bounty Hunter heavy, GV light set ups will be the meta build for OBR.

Just my perspective on the armies I personally own: Nurgle seems to be in a very good position to make use of both Conquerors and Bounty Hunters. Probably a top tier army. Cities have a deep bench and can steal the best stuff from their allies. I would be surprised if they don't have at least one or two viable lists.I am not sure which of their units will truly excell, though. Phoenix Guard? Shadow Warriors? Freeguild Crossbows? I think their biggest problem is that their 25mm base size troops improve less than the larger based troops of other factions. Soulblight gravelords are in a similar position to Cities re: 25mm infantry. But Zombies and Direwolves seem pretty good as Conquerors and Vargheists are an option, as well. Blood Knights should be good Bounty Hunters. Black Knights and Fell Bats are good cheap non-GV chaff to protect your Conquerers. It looks like Gravelords have the tools to succeed, but I don't think they will be top tier. Pour one out for Skeleton Warriors, though, who arw probably nonviable for the time being. I just started getting into OBR, but I am worried that their bread-and-butter unit Mortek Guard will have a hard time surviving in a meta with Bounty Hunters. Maybe they will be best off going Bounty Hunter heavy themself by spamming Morghasts and Deathriders instead? OBR were struggling before, and I don't exactly see them getting a lot better under the new rule set.

Cities is doing fine and will probably always be at least OK because of how large our pool of warscrolls is. Especially considering we still get the good coalition rules where other armies' units benefit from our allegiance abilities. There will probably always be a Cities build that is at least decent, but of course it doesn't really help you that running a bunch of Stormcast and Sylvaneth in Living Cities is good if your army is Freeguild and Ironweld Arsenal troops in Tempest's Eye. Cities has a few genuinely good native units. Phoenix Guard and Annointed on Frostheart, Battlemage and Hurricanum with Battlemage, Irondrakes with their support suite of Dispossessed heroes, Freeguild Crossbowmen and maybe Shadow Warriors are stand outs. Plus a whole lot more units are workable if you don't need to be strictly optimal. It's hard to say how good Cities will be competitively right at this moment. The best list was probably Stormdrake Guard/Fulminators in Living City, but that Strike and Melt Away was just changed to stop that strategy. Plus, with the new GHB, we are moving away from a rule set that favours monsters to one that favours certain kinds of infantry. I think Cities might be able to thrive a little more in that environment, but it's to early to really know.

I find this list very interesting. I have suspected for a while that buff wagon spam might be good, particularly Hurricanum spam, simply because of the amount of mortal wound damage it generates. I seriously believe the main reason we don't see this type of build often is that nobody wants to paint four Hurricanums.

Thanks for your input @Evil Bob and @Sception. I am certainly still in the process of fully wrapping my head around OBR and your perspectives are really helpful. I certainly can't deny that I mainly chose Immortis over Stalkers for aesthetic reasons. But also partially because I really think Stalkers are a pretty flawed unit. I know their damage also output is good, but their low move characteristic and inability to play the capture game well (low body count and not that tanky) kind of makes me struggle to come up with a situation where I would want them. Particularly with how tight points are in OBR. For Immortis, taking the new GHB stuff into account, maybe the play is to run them alongside Mortek and not make them battleline. That way, they can at least protect Mortek from Bounty Hunters and maybe even bodyguard for a nearby hero unit. Personally, I think Immortis are most interesting for their natural bulk, not necessarily their bodyguard ability.

Kinda makes you wonder why they waited so long. Maybe this is just how far ahead books are written at GW, that this was actually the first opportunity to react to community feedback.

I hope the other two Death armies also get their ward made unconditional. It functionally already is, anyway, but it would lighten the mental load.

I built my Stalker kit as Immortis Guard and am wondering if they migh have merit now that they can be battleline. A natural 3+ save and 12 wounds per unit is pretgy tanky, and they can benefit from Reinforce Battleshields. In the capture battalion, a unit of 3 capturing as 9 seems pretty decent and could be a pretty hard wall to break through.

Probably for AoS proper, but rumour has it that there is a Lumineth Underworlds warband in the works which will represent the Tyrionic side.

That's actually super nice. I was just thinking recently about how if OBR got their tome today, Stalkers would definitely be battleline, and now they actually are! Definitely brings me closer to owning a legal 2000 point army with just the battleforce box and a few extra models, as well.

I kinda think they will still get something this edition. They set up the return of Grungni in Broken Realms and are teasing Chaos Dwarves with the Hobgrots and Horns of Hashut. I would be surprised if the whole edition passes and nothing dwarf-related happens.

Take the following with a grain of salt, because I am not a tournament player and have not been closely watching the tournament-winning Gravelords lists for a while. Plus, with the new battle pack, some things will have changed in terms of which units are good or bad. Here is what I see as the big strength of Gravelords: You can basically play a horde army in addition to whatever other game plan you might have. Zombies are dirt cheap. You can run 2 blocks of 40 and that's not even a quarter of your list. And they are really good, too! Their offense is good, you will likely get a free half-unit refund at so.e point during the game and they absorb extra attack buffs well. Skeletons up until the latest GHB were pretty solid, too. 30 with a necromancer are a very sticky tarpit at a reasonable price. The new Bounty Hunters battalion might be too much for them, though, since they need to live a combat phase to regenerate and they probably can't deal with double-damage units. Direwolves are a good fast battleline option, but they are also a fairly high model count and high wounds unit for their point cost, paticularly in a where blocks of 20 infantry are rare. You can lean into them, as well. Min size is fine, buta block of 30 is pretty ridiculous to chew through. They can also potentially charge your opponent's deployment zone with a specific build in Vyrkos. Grave Guard are the last hordy unit, and most Gravelords lists want at least one unit of them even if they don't help with battleline. You can comfortably do 20s or even 10s of them, since they buff extremely well. Take all these options together and you might find yourself with 100 models before you get into your actual game plan. And there are several Gravelords game plans that are at least semi-competitive. Vyrkos small heroes with an infantry/casting focus or the Direwolf gimmick mentioned above, Kastelai Blood Knights, Legion of Night null deploy... Legion of Blood and Nagas lists seem workable, too. Or just goodstuff (Belladamma, Manfred, big Radukar, Vampire Lord/VLoZD paired with whatever troops you think are cool) in any of the above dynasties.

Going for a lore accurate approach, I see.

For my money, Direwolves and Zombies seem good in the capturing battalion. Skeletons are probably nonviable for the time being, and Grave Guard should probably avoid being battleline if they can. Also worth noting, even though hordes were bad last season, Gravelords was one of the few armies that actually made them work competitively.

I'd rather see high damage in be the niche of OBR or FEC. I think the positional playstyle of Gravelords fits them well, being the "normal guys" of Death. That's not to say that I would be against a few big scary monsters that can dish it out.

That was already pure speculation at the time. Although I would not be surprised if Gravelords get a mid-edition tome this time, rather than waiting until the end again. After DoK got updated for no reason, everything seems possible.

At this point, I am skeptical OBR will benefit from the new meta. Mortek are the only way for this faction to get access to Galletian Veterans, and they really don't do well with Bounty Hunters in play. Reinforced Mortek will have a harder time grinding down opponents and MSU Mortek are unattractive due to their high points. The possibility of putting Mortek into Bounty Hunters has been brought up, but is that really a good choice for a slow unit that can't pick its engagements? Maybe a shift to fast stuff like Deathriders and Morghasts will be good, but that will make it hard to score on the points that require Galletian Veteran. Definitely a challenge. On the plus side, the point drops make it easier to take endless spells, which have apparently be buffed as well. The option to get an un-unbindable cast of those from that one heroic action might be a cool thing to lean into.

The new points are out: Skeletons 80 (-5) Zombies 120 (+5) Torgillius 100 (-15) Deintalos and the Exiled Dead 270 (+50) No other changes. Overall, minor adjustments. Which seems fair, Gravelords are in a good place. Torgillius seems kinda attractive now if you want access to the Deathmages lore for cheap. Deintalos looks like a misprint, that underworlds warband was already probably not worth it before and is definitely not worth it now.

Seems like you're right! I can't find any reference to the rule anymore in any of the faqs or the core rules. So I guess summoned stuff can be battleline again. Honestly, it makes more sense that way anyway.

I'm pretty sure summoned units can never be GV, since only Battleline units can be GV and summoned units don't have battleline roles.

In my opinion, slapping cheap skirmishers into Bounty Hunters is the way to go. Dedicated hammer units don't need the damage boost against Veterans, but by giving it to a bunch of cheap, fast stuff you could potentially have 5+ hammers in your list when it comes to fighting Veteran units. I'm not a fan of gilding the lily by giving a hard-hittig unit like Grave Guard even more punch. They already have the ability to kill everything in the game with a buff or two and their problem is always getting into the target to do so. Just turn all your mobile chaff into hammers instead, tnat seems like it would be worth going high drops for.

I think the biggest change for OBR comes not from point changes, but from the fact that you can't avoid Mortek Guard becoming Galletian Veterans, which I think strongly reduces their tankiness and ability to grind out engagements due to the +1 damage Bounty Hunters get against them. Even a 3+ rerolling save should not be enough to mitigate that.

For sure! I was just talking in terms of getting to fight with extra models in combat. Blood Knights already had no problems destroying infantry before and will have even less problems doing it now.