Leshoyadut

Wow. I...genuinely don't know how I got that wrong, and kept thinking the wrong way for so long. 😅 Woops. Thanks for the correction!

Yeah, greatweapons are 4+/3+/-1/2 compared to shields being 3+/3+/-1/1. The better damage definitely helps, but the penalty to attack does hurt. It not only (obviously) reduces the confirmed wounds, but also reduces mortal wound chances, since those happen on the wound roll. *Edit* I completely misremembered, and apparently have been for some time. Greatweapons are 3+/4+, not 4+/3+. Thanks for the correction, @Gery81!

I don't have the most experience, myself, but I'll try to answer your questions as well as I can (hopefully someone will correct me if I get anything wrong). The short answer: Yes, the extra damage from greatweapons is generally much better than the damage reduction from shields. Long answer: Greatweapons do ~30% more damage against a 4+ save than shields do. Shields take ~25% less damage than greatweapons do. These numbers already kind of favor the greatweapons, but because offensive power is generally more valuable than defensive power (you can reduce your opponent's damage either by bettering your saves or just by killing more of their models, reducing the damage they can deal) and because we have access to more offensive buffs that stack than we do to defensive buffs that stack, the greatweapons tend to outshine the shields. That said, I'm probably the most pro-shield person here, and I do think shields have their place, but it's generally fairly rare that they're better than greatswords. Belladamma is usually most valuable for her Lycancurse spell, but also because she can cast it while still casting another spell on top of that. Lycancurse is great for tying down an enemy unit, either preventing a ranged attacker from shooting you or preventing them from using Redeploy when you get closer to them. Her other spell can be whatever seems most useful: Mystic Shield on a unit engaged in melee, Amaranthine Orb to do a bit of damage, Invigorating Aura if you really want to heal a couple Grave Guard or Zombies. Generally, Vhordrai's spells are super easy to prioritize. Do you need to move across the map fast? Use Amethystine Pinions. Do you want to do more damage this turn? Cast Quickblood. Arcane Bolt and Mystic Shield aren't particularly good to cast with him since he does so much with one of the other two spells, though you can use them if you really need to for some reason, I suppose. For the list you quoted, I think a Necromancer would be largely useless. Their list is clearly built around a combination of units that can move quickly, and units that can flank by coming out of the grave. In neither situation would the Necromancer be helpful, because it is slow and can't go in the grave. Necromancers can be great in other lists, though, and I often have one in mine. Don't apologize for asking questions. We all start somewhere, and asking questions is a great way to learn. You learning means we have one more great opponent to play against at the table, which means more fun for all of us. 😄

Oh my god, I'm somehow even more in love. I need them.

I think my favorite part of this new vampire lord is how androgynous they are. I think most people are interpreting them as feminine because of how overly masculine the male models tend to be, but there's really nothing particularly explicit one way or the other about this one. And I just think that's neat. Even outside of that, though, I rather like the model. The bone chest armor and the ridiculously huge collar on the cape are fantastic. New GG would certainly be welcome, as well. The old ones are still kinda cool, but definitely feel a bit lackluster compared to newer models.

I also use the WK general as a reason to bring a block of 30 GG. They're pricey, but they make a solid grinder unit since they're 30 wounds, do good damage on their own, absorb buffs well, and are summonable at 1 wound per model, making them easy to bring back with Deathly Invocation and Invigorating Aura. That way the WK isn't 135 points for just a battleshock aura.

I think putting Soul-Crushing Contempt on the Wight King works if you run it next to Blood Knights instead of Black Knights because, as vampires, Blood Knights activate the 1d3 fleeing part. Yes, you miss out on the extra -1 to battleshock, but you're still giving -2 and can often times kill enough models that battleshock still presents a real threat. Gives you two scenarios: 1) The battleshock penalty works, and you get at least 1d3+1 fleeing models, which equates to a decent amount of free "wounds" done to the unit. Great. 2) The battleshock penalty isn't enough. You still have 5 Blood Knights in melee now. Which. Isn't a bad thing. Obviously with Black Knights being battleline in LoB, it feels like there's that additional pressure to run them. Personally, I still don't think they're worth it because their warscroll is pretty mediocre and their points are way too high for what they bring. On the other hand, Blood Knights do enough damage on a charge (which they should get on most of your turns) to actually make the battleshock penalty a threat, and I don't think I can say that about Black Knights. With that in mind, you end up with just bringing 5 Blood Knights, and then paying 135 points for a -2 battleshock aura to help take advantage of the +1d3 fleeing units they can cause. Plus the WK will do a couple wounds occasionally, which is nice, too. This lines up with you saying that it's really more of a bonus than something to build around, but I think it's a bonus that will come up often enough to matter if you happen to keep it in mind while list building.

This part seems a lot more clearly favoring your interpretation. Intuitively, "use" would seem to mean issuing the command ability, but 6.1 does seem to show that both issuing and receiving are involved in the language of "using" the command ability. Appreciate the followup!

But directly under where you highlight has "use" being, well, used in the sense of issuing a command, not receiving one.

Woops. Disregard. Refreshed the previous page to check for new posts and didn't notice the new page of people already answering that. My bad. Personally, I'm still fine with that. If the skeletons die to the Necromancer passing shooting wounds, then the Necro just uses Deathly Invocation and Invigorating Aura to get d3+3 of them back. If they die to the Necromancer taking melee hits (which is awkward if it's positioned that badly, but it can and will happen sometimes despite our best efforts), then they're still getting the chance to come back with a fighting activation that turn. Actually feels like it works out really well, in my opinion.

Just played my second game with my current list (fourth overall in 3.0 with SG, so not a lot of experience), and I have managed to win both games pretty solidly. First game was against old Ironjawz, and this second game was against new Stormcast. My opponent made lists from models he likes, not necessarily especially competitive lists, so take my performance/commentary with a grain of salt (though he is competitive at the table, just less so during list building). But! Still pretty happy with myself, since they were very solid wins. Absolute stars of the show are the 30x1 GG w/shields and the 2x5 Blood Knights. The Blood Knights are incredibly durable and do enough damage in return to not be ignorable. The shields on the GG help a lot with negating rend and keeping them at a 4+ save with AAD/Mystic Shield, and with 30 of them, they're absolute blenders in return. Elsewhere in the list, the zombies are great sticking in the grave and threatening their backline with. Also ended up being helpful in the Stormcast game to help deal with an enemy unit that was teleported behind me. The skeletons are hilariously absorbent of damage. The Necromancer is obviously a great support caster. Neferata is also amazing support, and holds up reasonably well in combat with her d6 Hunger heal. And unfortunately, the Lifeswarm has been entirely useless so far; cast it too far back to be useful in one game and failed to cast it twice in the second game. Not the spell's fault, but it has made me a little sad, haha. As for the Wight King, I've debated just putting it on foot and giving the tome to the Necromancer, but I'm undecided on that right now. Haven't gone against any significant shooting to threaten it yet, so it hasn't really been punished for me and has been providing at least some value by keeping up with the Blood Knights. Having a Mystic Shield for them has been handy. All in all, I'm sure my list could be more competitive, but it's been doing well for me so far.

Even if it did modify the roll, that limit only applies to hit rolls and wound rolls. Save rolls have a similar, but different, cap in that they can be modified negatively as much as you have minuses for, but cap out in the positive direction at +1. All others are cumulative. Also, yes, it modifies the Bravery statistic and not the roll, which matters for a couple of spells, as well.

There is nothing about Bravery being capped in either direction in the core rules. So yes, it does stack as it states in the SG book.

This is where I've been on the battle tactic issue, myself. You can't have nothing but slow stuff, for sure, but having 1-2 objective holders is going to still be good as your opponent needs to score battle tactics for points, too. Of course, the issue then becomes that they are getting to engage on their terms instead of yours. I think a bit of screening will help tremendously, though, along with being able to Redeploy the GG when something approaches to give you the engage on the next turn (potentially sacrificing an objective for a turn). Keeping in theme with the MtG deck style analogies, I'm looking at this army as a midrange style (my preferred playstyle, so maybe a bit of bias). Having a versatile list that can reasonably cover being either the beatdown or the control, depending on what your opponent's army does best. So far I'm really feeling a blob of GG and a unit or two of Blood Knights fits that well, along with the obvious blob of skellies or zombies, depending on your preference. The GG are slow, for sure, but with Redeploy, you can (hopefully) get them out of easy charge range if your opponent is trying to engage on them, and then the move+charge on your turn isn't too bad after that. Or, if I need to be the beatdown, the Blood Knights are fast enough to get in there quick and do some real damage until my GG can get in a turn or so later. Trying to test this style in a game against a friend who plays Ironjawz. Sadly, real life scheduling has prevented us from finishing the game so far. Planning to do a full writeup when we do get back to it, but we'll see when that happens. So far, though, Deathrattle Skeletons are insanely durable with even just one Necromancer. They survived with one model left against a unit of pigs and two Megabosses on Maw-krushas because of the Danse. Managed to take off the right models to leave all three enemy units within 3", which was just beautiful. *Chef's kiss*

I didn't mention it in the rundown, but I did bring it up in my response to Neil Arthur Hotep. You're right, though, but the only "squad" that doesn't have a vampire running with them is the Necro+Skellies, and they don't desperately need it to hold a point. Plus, I'm not doing anything especially big with the bravery debuff (Wight King giving -2, mainly, but it has the Blood Knights for a vampire unit), so it's mostly just a small bonus to the list.

I think your math might be a bit off here, because the LoB allegiance ability requires a vampire unit to be nearby for the d3 additional fleeing models. However, including the Blood Knights in your list in the charge with the WK and Black Knights would give that. Even without that, though, it's still ~10 (4+1d3+1d6) models fleeing with the WK plus Black Knights plus Horroghast, which is solid. I've personally been looking at a LoB list that relies a little less on that, though it's still never truly unhappy about the minus bravery aura. General gameplan with this list is to have a couple squads of units. First is the Witch King with the Blood Knights. He's able to keep up with them and provide some spell support for them with Mystic Shield and Prismatic Palisade, while also getting a few bonus mortals on the charge and providing -2 bravery for anything they crash into. He also helps provide that ward save bubble, and is reasonably survivable with 7 wounds on a 3+ save and Look Out Sir! to give a little help vs. shooting. Worst case, if he starts getting low, then he can sit out of melee and still provide spells and ward. My major concern here is trying to fit 11 cavalry bases into melee, but since it's split 5-5-1, coherency at least isn't an issue. Second is the Vampire Lord with the Grave Guard. Not having the points for a Coven Throne with the other things means that I don't have as easy of access to +1 save for the GG, so I gave them shields and decided on a VL for the +1 attacks. They still deal respectable damage with the buff, and don't mind sitting out of the grave and getting shot for a turn quite as much as greatweapons would. The VL has two solid defensive spells here with both Ghost-mist and Mystic Shield, providing help versus either enemy shooting or a bonus against rend, and can just Arcane Bolt if somehow neither of those are relevant. The third squad is the Deathrattle Skeletons and Necromancer. I don't think I need to explain too much here about how well they synergize with each other to just sit on a point and never lose it. In 2.0, I even had a Skele+Necro team wear down multiple enemy units just because they got a few wounds in here and there while being literally incapable of staying down. Lastly, Neferata and Dire Wolves. They don't really go together as much as providing help where it's needed separately. Neferata is super speedy with Pinions and can easily get to wherever her aura and spells are most helpful. Plus she's a monster, which is otherwise entirely lacking in this list, and isn't too bad in melee (though still not amazing, by any means) should the opportunity arise to sneak in a few hits along with another unit. The Dire Wolves just provide a great screen and can help force either a Redeploy or an Unleash Hell before something more important gets in. At 20 wounds over 10 models with a 10" move, I feel like they fit that role very well. I've had some pretty nice success in TTS games with similar lists in 2.0. It seems competitive enough for my tastes while staying nicely thematic.