Leshoyadut

This is very true, and you can look at the subfaction breakdown on Woehammer to see it (though it is admittedly a couple weeks old). Cities has both the highest winrate and the 6th lowest winrate, Seraphon has the 4th highest and the 10th lowest. They've done a good job of balancing factions overall, but there are still huuuuuuuge swings in winrate between subfactions. It goes from about 4% of the factions (1 out of 24) being in the red zone, and only just barely so, to about 40% in the red zone (28 out of 70), ranging from 39% to 65% winrates. The faction breakdown they give tells a very simplistic story that seems much nicer than it really is. Hopefully they start getting better about subfaction balance within a faction in 4th edition. I know as a Soulblight player continuing to catch strays because Night still sits at a 60% winrate, I'd really appreciate that.

I agree with that assessment. I think she'll actually fit very well into the "second small wizard" slot for Legion of Blood. In some lists I theorycraft, I have ~150-200 points left that I want to fill with another wizard, but a Vampire Lord feels like a bit of a waste when I don't have anything that'd really care about the +1 attacks buff after my first Vampire Lord's buff. Currently, I just slap a Necromancer and an endless spell in, but I think Sekhar would fit in quite well. She doesn't really want to be in melee for long with no Hunger, but is relatively resistant to shooting and can be in melee if she needs to be, which means that she can accompany a block of zombies or skeletons pretty well. Also, two casts for 160 points is nowhere else to be seen in our army, and I think that's valuable on its own. I don't think she's an every list kind of character, but surprisingly I think they did a good job of giving us a foot hero vampire that somehow finds a niche not yet covered by the numerous other foot hero vampires we've gotten. Also, as for why she doesn't have The Hunger, I saw someone give a lore-based hypothesis on the Facebook group that made sense to me: she's spent a lot of time in Ushoran's court and is above drinking from the filthy ghouls there, so she's learned to subdue her thirst for blood (at least as much as any Soulblight vampire can).

That one was probably the next AoS book I was planning to read. I liked the Annandale books about Neferata, and the one book about the Avengorii, plus a couple non-Soulblight books, so I'm excited to get to this one. He sounds like a cool character, so I'm excited to read his book.

Once again, I absolutely love the model. And once again, I am slightly annoyed by us getting yet one more foot vampire model. Still a truly wonderful model and I'm probably picking her up, though.

Oooo. I've been looking to do some Soulbound stuff with my tabletop group, and this would likely do quite nicely. Also looking forward to the eventual Champions of Chaos book, too, since one of my players is really into Skaven.

I would agree with that if LoN wasn't both more played and had a higher winrate than Vyrkos did before the nerfs. Vyrkos was absolutely a problem, and zombies needed nerfing along with their support pieces in the subfaction. But we didn't need more stuff like how hard Spirit Gale got hit (needed something, but 3 targets is rough), or the additional points changes to units like Neferata and the VLOZD, let alone Vengorian Lords getting side-swiped for some reason. Saying it was just for the sins of LoN was an oversimplification, maybe, but the army needed deadwalker and LoN nerfs, not army-wide hits, at least as far as I was seeing.

Well, Soulblight seems to be in a pretty healthy place winrate-wise now at a nice, fat middle 51%. Oh, wait, what's that? You want to look at subfactions? Ahhh...yeah...cool. That's a 17 percentage point difference between Legion of Night and Legion of Blood. Vyrkos doesn't have enough results to show up, but it's probably somewhere in between there. So our 51% winrate isn't at all because the army is actually balanced, it's because the Good Subfaction is so powerful that it balances out against all of the rest combined. Honestly, as much as I prefer to be at least somewhat competitive when I play and try to keep an eye on the meta as part of that, I feel like I just need to stop looking at winrates solely because it's making me increasingly annoyed with GW's balancing. Some of the early nerfs were definitely needed (zombie MWs, Neferata's repositioning ability, Endless Legions, the first round or two of points changes), but it feels bad being punished across the entire army for the sins of Legion of Night.

A movement-oriented priest buff, say, themed around some kind of bird, maybe? Like a crow?

SBGL can also have Zombie Dragons and Terrorgheists as battleline.

I'm finding myself surprisingly excited to play this when it comes out. I'm generally pretty bad at RTSes despite enjoying the idea of them, but with the slower pace and more limited controls, this may actually fit me quite well. Looking forward to sending out the endless legion of ghost friends.

I don't think you need Halgrim at all. I tend to play skeleton/grave guard heavy lists and don't really have problems with their mobility. Popping out of a grave site will get them plenty close enough to the objective that they can threaten it or take it, and running with a single unit of skeletons is fine. Dire wolves move plenty fast enough on their own, as well, so they shouldn't need the extra movement. The 100 points you save by not taking Halgrim can be better spent on other things, like an endless spell or two or put toward Torgillius or something. As for buffs when you pop them out of the grave? Well...you don't buff them that turn, at least not with hero phase stuff. A unit of 20 or 30 skeletons will be able to survive fine without spell buffs, and you don't really need them to do a ton of damage (not that they really do much even with buffs) the turn they pop up. The skeletons are there to stay for a while, you'll have time to put buffs on them later.

I am almost certainly looking to play Nighthaunt, as well, though I'm very curious what the Chaos faction will be. I don't know that we've seen even any hints to what it is?

I actually really like the one per Vampire or Deathmages hero idea. Ties it to our two types of wizard, both of which should be capable of raising the dead, both keeping it thematic and limiting its max potential. Gets away from the problem of every summonable getting semi+50% wounds (not entirely accurate, but close enough for this discussion) just by virtue of being in the army. Adds a little bookkeeping, but I think it's worth it. But anyways, here's my very-much-joking list that I just thought of as a goof. And then the actual list that I'm going to be trying against a friend on Tuesday. I know Blood Knights are not in vogue right now for us, but I think they still have legs, and I want to try the Vengorian Lord to see if it would be a reasonable alternative to a VLOZD. It is, of course, not as powerful, but it's also 180 less points, which means more other things. Andtorian Acolytes because I want to try Merciless Blizzard instead of Hoarfrost; I found Hoarfrost was leading to a ton of overkill with the GG, so I think getting some extra primal dice and blasting something other than their target might work better. If the Blood Knights don't work out, I'm honestly not sure what to replace them with. More Grave Guard? I could fit in another 10, and dropping the Maelstrom would allow another reinforcement on the skeletons on top. Could just upgrade the Vengo to a VLOZD and have another 50 points. But that also ends up in the awkward position of skeletons being 110 (10 more than I'd have by also taking out the Maelstrom), so I guess I just take a second endless spell? Dunno. Things to play with. Regardless, very much an experimental list to see what might feel okay right now by throwing things at the wall and seeing what sticks. Don't have a particularly cohesive idea for it, but I think things generally work alright in it and nothing really sticks out as not synergizing with the rest. Just sad about not having a VLOZD since it's such an iconic centerpiece for the army that it's weird not seeing it there.

I think possibly changing Hunger to be 4 wounds max would still make it really good while significantly reducing the amount they need to alpha the ethereal VLOZD to eventually bring it down. As for Endless Legions, I think it needs to end up as our turn only, and probably be at least more than 6" from enemies for placing the units. If it ends up being not good enough anymore, it could get changed to a 2+ or something to make it a little more consistent; if it's still too good, just push it to more than 9", and then just only on a 4+ if that's not enough. The combination would let a lot of things go down, though. But I'm not a game designer, by any means. These are my initial ideas, and there may be a better/more elegant solution to the problem. I also don't work at GW, so my thoughts probably mean very little for what's actually going to happen to the army, but it feels nice to speculate a little.

You can find the full article of data (though one that's more up-to-date than the image in my previous post) here. The likely reason there's no Kharadrons in the subfactions list is because Woehammer does a cutoff at 20 results for the subfaction in the given time period; if the subfaction doesn't have that many, then it doesn't make the list at all, regardless of its winrate. They have a 53% winrate as a whole faction, as you can see in the faction winrate chart. Given they have 75 total results as a whole faction, I imagine there were one or two subfactions that were close but not quite. But since there's 6 subfactions, it's pretty reasonable that none quite hit the mark.

For the subfactions that were over 60% winrate (Vyrkos and LoN), everything will be entirely fine. They'll probably drop, possibly into the fat middle, but they'll definitely still be quite powerful despite losing some units in their lists. The other subfactions will struggle a bit more, especially Kastelai and Avengorii which were already not exactly our top picks and didn't even make the 20 results benchmark for Woehammer's subfactions winrate chart. Given LoB was clearly better than the two of them, and it was already at 52%, they're probably kind of hurting at this point (though LoB is probably still okay). I was just thinking about this last night as I've struggled to make lists that I like the last few days. I really enjoyed the unit of Grave Guard + cheap horde chaff + a few heroes, and that's much more difficult to pull off to the degree I'd expect from a horde army like SB. I'd almost rather that Endless Legions or my heroes were a bit weaker so things could be cheaper and I could embrace the fantasy a bit easier. Endless Legions in particular is a very problematic ability for our army, I think: either it's actually good like it is now and everything has to cost a ton to make up for it, or it's not good enough as it has been in the past and fails to embrace the fantasy of the endlessly returning army of the dead. The higher costs associated with the former means that we just can't bring a lot of bodies like we'd expect to, even though we end up with a lot of bodies by the end of the battle. Seems like an especially hard balance to strike, and I think they overshot its power in this current book, and then certain subfactions can take better advantage of that than others (leading to internal balance problems on top of external balance problems). There probably is a balanced point for it, though we haven't really seen it happen in combination with the rest of the army also feeling good at the same time.

Realistically, this is true for all units, and is why I'm not that unhappy about the deadwalker changes. Zombies and dire wolves are exceptionally good in the LoN and Vyrkos lists that have been using lots of them. It stinks for the other subfactions that want to still use them, but I don't mind it too much, since they're still good units.. I just didn't want the other subfactions hit by the changes as much as they are here, since they're all fat middle or lower. LoB could have probably used a small tweak down (high play rate at 53% winrate says they're probably still slightly too strong), but I don't think we needed the full combo of Neferata, VLOZD, skeletons, Wight King and Grave Guard all getting increases on top of the Spirit Gale change.

I'm trying not to doom too hard about this, but it definitely hurts seeing my list go up 90 points when it wasn't terribly overpowered in my experience. Also since, according to Woehammer's most recent meta update (August 27th), the only overperforming subfactions for us were Legion of Night and Vyrkos. LoB was next at a fat middle 53%; maybe a bit high considering its play rate, but it didn't need a lot of changes. So I think the nerfs to Manny, Bella and deadwalkers (and deadwalkers-adjacent things, like Gorslav) were good, but the other points increases feel kinda bad since I didn't use any of those and I'm still going up noticeably. And this is on top of the Spirit Gale nerf, which is sad since I just liked that spell a lot in terms of its feel. I do get it probably needed some kind of nerf due to how it could be abused, but that hitting on top of my list costing an extra 90 points feels pretty bad.

I will also say that I fit into what I think most people would consider a "casual" player: I get maybe one or two games in a month, sometimes going a month or two without a game, and watch a game on YouTube here and there (mostly Season of War when they play an army I'm interested in). I've never played in a tournament, but think it'd be neat someday, maybe. Learning the implications of the double turn definitely took a little mental effort on my end, but in the end it wasn't that hard and I enjoy the game a lot as a result of meeting it on its terms rather than my expectations going in. I've also introduced a couple people to the game, and neither of them ended up hating the double turn even when I did it to them. I just made sure to warn them that it was a possibility before we started, because it is a major part of the game, so it was just part of my general explanation of how the game worked.

Personally, I love the double turn. It provides an interesting strategic element to the battle as far as aggression and list building go. List building is obvious: if I don't want to get double turned, I need to lower my drops so I can control the double turn; if I can't lower my drops without severe restrictions on my list, then I need to think about that, too, by having things like screening units and the like. In the actual game, I need to think about how far I'm pushing forward, and whether I'm overextending in the event of a double-turn, or if it's worth the risk depending on my position relative to my opponent. There's also the question of whether I should even take the double turn if it's available to me, whether I'll be able to do enough with it to be worth giving my opponent the chance for one later. This ends up being far more interesting, I think, than not having the possibility of it. Mortal wound spam is too high, for sure, though. I appreciate why they started leaning into them more, but they've definitely crossed the line of it feeling bad.

I think the non-skeletons options you have are mixing some combination (2 or more) of: 1) Rally. 2) Gravesite regen. 3) Emerald Lifeswarm. 4) Mortis Engine. Technically part of gravesite regen, but I'm counting it separately here. Or you can "just" take Nagash, the 900 point sad bone man, for a single battle tactic. Doesn't seem...particularly worth it, but if you were running him already, it does make the tactic pretty easy.

A quick note before anything else: those shields are supposed to be greatweapons, I just forgot to change it in the WarCom list builder when I was making that. And boy, did they slap hard when I played against StD a couple nights ago. With Hoarfrost for 2+ to hit and the VL buff, they did 16 wounds to Be'lakor with only nine of them still alive at that point. I'm with you on loving shield GG, though, and it's something I've tried to make work a few times, especially with our previous book. One list I tried out had two units of 30 shield GG because I loved them. Anyways. I think you make some good points about Palisade, but I still want to actually try it against something with some shooting before giving up on it entirely. The triumph would probably be better more consistently, though, and is something I had considered but didn't note in my post. This list doesn't feel like one where I will often need the auto-pass battle shock and can't spend a CP on it, though it's definitely not a bad thing to have by any means. So...yeah, Inspired is likely the correct choice, but the Palisade is something I want to test for a bit. As for the Arcane Tome, I was actually thinking of getting rid of it after my StD game because my VL consistently had 2 spellcasts from going second in the round, which gave me four spells a round already, and because Amulet of Screams would have been great against all the spellcasting my opponent did. Given how spell-heavy this season is likely to be, it's probably going to be worth more than a Mystic Shield or Arcane Bolt might be, anyways. The Battle Regiment I've found is actually quite useful. While I'm not very concerned about the order of the first battle round, letting me control the tempo of the game going forward a bit better is very nice. Won't let me beat one-drops or two-drops, but it does give me the chance to beat a lot of lists on drops still. Which lets me both prevent my opponent from getting a double turn and gives me the opportunity to get one if I see a good chance to, say, get some big swings in with the VLOZD/GG or a big charge off with the BKs. It's not so important that it's worth trying to fit the whole list into a single BR, like you say, but I think it's still more valuable than a single command point once per game. Also, since I'm here, I guess some notes on my game the other night real fast: GG slap. VLOZD slaps. Neferata is incredible. Black Knights with a Wight King on steed are great; even losing all 10 of my BKs to a buffed Chaos Knight charge before the BKs even got to go, getting five back that could charge for ~5 MWs on average was solid. VL buff is incredible. Zombies were great screens: painful to kill, but fast to go away and leave space for my GG or other units. I don't think any of this was surprising, but still good to see in practice rather than just on paper.

A more serious list I think I'm liking right now. It has three main threats: the GG, the VLOZD, and the Black Knights + Wight King charging. The zombies act as solid, painful screens that the GG can also hit over the top of with their 2" reach. Neferata and the Vampire Lord on foot are great buff pieces, and Neferata is a bit of a threat, herself (though not as much as the VLOZD). The Prismatic Palisade was added because I saw two main options for the screens: 1) two zombies + palisade, 2) two dire wolves. I kinda liked the idea of the palisade more than the speed of the wolves, so that's what I went with here. While I'm open to tweaking the whole army as I get experience with it, I think this is the part that I'm most open to futzing with. Dire Wolves are great at controlling the board with their speed in a way that zombies just can't, but I really like the anti-hammer nature of zombies and the palisade actually seems like a decent anti-shooting spell now. Both seem like good options, and I think it probably comes down to what's more appropriate for the meta you're going into, or how palisade actually turns out in practice. Part of this is probably just me really wanting to try palisade, haha. I think it's also worth mentioning the new Look Out, Sir! rule preventing shooting from more than 12" away and how that can help the Vampire Lord a lot. Keep it next to the GG or some zombies, and it's significantly safer than it was. Not safe, but much safer, and the palisade can cover a lot of the range that it's in danger in. Otherwise, I think everything is just kinda good stuff in the army. Black Knights + WKoS do some surprising mortal wounds and move pretty fast, the zombies are great screens and work nicely against hammers even with their new 3" restriction, GG are great hammers themselves, VLOZD is good, Neferata's good, VL on foot is good. Decent grind, decent damage, decent board coverage. I'll see how it goes.

I think doing aspects of Nagash is especially fitting for him, given that’s how he’so often portrayed in the fiction. I like that idea a lot! In particular, it reminds me of a Death book I read recently where Arkhan is talking to Neferata and explains how each of the mortarchs mirrors a piece of Nagash himself. Also, a quick special shoutout to the Palanquin and Throne: I really just want them to be good. Both of them. They look so great and are the epitome of the decadent vampire archetype I love. Please, Mr. Workshop, help me out. Make me want to buy them for the game.

The points changes got me feeling some kinda way... Allegiance: Soulblight Gravelords - Subfaction: Avengorii - Grand Strategy: Lust for Domination - Triumphs: Leaders Vampire Lord (140)* - Lore of Primal Frost: Hoarfrost - Aspect of the Champion: Tunnel Master Vengorian Lord (270)* - General - Command Trait: Monstrous Might - Artefact: Ghorvar's Collar - Lore of the Vampires: Spirit Gale Vengorian Lord (270)** - Universal Spell Lore: Flaming Weapon Battleline 20 x Deadwalker Zombies (120)* 20 x Deadwalker Zombies (120)** Zombie Dragon (260)* Zombie Dragon (260)** Zombie Dragon (260)* Zombie Dragon (260)** Endless Spells & Invocations Prismatic Palisade (40) Core Battalions *Battle Regiment **Battle Regiment Total: 2000 / 2000 Reinforced Units: 0 / 4 Allies: 0 / 400 Wounds: 121 Drops: 2 Now, this is almost certainly not good, but my heart wants it to be a thing. I think it's actually not overly fragile, since both Vengos are each full-healing a Zombie Dragon every turn (if the dragons managed to destroy something; I'll get to that below), and also giving a dragon The Hunger with the spell. The total wound count isn't bad, either. Prismatic Palisade seemed like an okay option to help deal with shooting, though it may be better to change the zombies to wolves to just get on them faster. The Vengos also worsen rend by 1 and the general's CT gives -1 to wound against your monsters. On the offense side, Hoarfrost actually goes on the zombies, shockingly (not that shockingly), since it'll add more damage for them than it does for a dragon. Which does bring me to the damage of the dragons: It's, uh. Not great. It's definitely not unbuffed zombies bad, but even they actually start keeping pace (and surpass the unbuffed dragons) against higher saves with a Hoarfrost on their to hit. The dragon damage also includes their breaths, so their melee damage alone is even sadder. Terrorgheists technically do more damage than Zombie Dragons, but it's so spiky and unreliable that I still prefer the dragons. All that said, while I think it's not particularly competitive and it certainly lacks damage, it actually seems like it could be fun in a more casual game. Points changes didn't make it good, but they did make it playable, I think. You can certainly bring a whole lot of monsters as Avengorii now.