Kaizennus

Most of the 2.0 books had an artefact and command trait "tax" where your first artefact and your general's CA were requirements for subfactions. Soulblight does not have this restriction. You can take whatever CA or artefacts that you like. You don't need to take one from a subfaction if you don't want.

Hey everyone, it's been awhile since I've posted anything here and though I'd throw in my own two cents and share how my own games have been going. For transparency purposes I've only played 24 games as SBG this season, so while I'm not a seasoned tournament player I am a regular club player. I've played a decent variety of armies, but not many of the really "big bads" like Tzeentch-Arachaon or Morathi Bow-Snakes. Armies I've played against include: Lumineth, Cities of Sigmar (a couple different kinds), Sons of Behemoth, Nurgle, Skaven, Seraphon (some Kroak lists, some dino heavy carnosaur lists), Ogre gutbusters, Ogre Beastclaws, Soulblight (but for this game I played FEC), and maybe one or two others I can't remember. I've mostly been running variations of two types of lists. I've made little tweaks here and there but here are two examples of the type of lists I'm running: Vyrkos Dynsasty Legion of Night These lists have done very well against most of the armies I've played against, which as you can see, are largely melee focused armies with little magic and not a lot of aggressive shooting. When these lists get to "play the way they want" they are very powerful. Lots of synergistic buffs like Vanhel's, Crimson Feast, Killing Moon, Radukar's CA, and of course Mannfred's Vigour CA. These buffs can be passed around pretty easily so you can shift your threats around quite well. One turn your grave guard can be a crazy blender capable of destroying anything, the next your zombies are pumping out 40 attacks instead. These armies have enough bodies that they can reliably "hold two" and usually pressure one more. You have a good number of heroes and some fast units so completing battle tactics is pretty easy. Generally speaking, when this army goes off, it goes off hard, and it can do so very reliably against these melee type armies. On the other hand, armies with strong targeted mortal wounds (via spells or ranged attacks) and strong anti-magic absolutely deconstruct and destroy these lists. I actually have a 0% win rate against Lumineth with these lists and they are one of the armies I play against the most. Seraphon with thunder lizards and Kroak also did a decent job of shutting down these lists, though to a lesser extent. Strong ranged attacks with mortal wounds just tear through these list's support heroes with ease, and can reliably take down 1-2 a turn. Your larger heroes also aren't very safe from dedicated Sentinel barrages and similar type attacks. Strong unbinding armies, like Lumineth as well, also shut off a lot of your buffs. One of the reasons why I shifted towards the LoN build was because the potential +3 to casting was much more valuable for getting casts off than the re-rolling from Vyrkos. Control spells such as Total Eclipse, Shackles, and any spell that reduces movement or pile-in can also grind this army to a stop. Understandably, without your magic or support heroes this kind of list falls apart pretty quickly. I haven't played against them personally, but I would assume that these lists would also crumble against DoK and Tzeentch lists as well, possibly the new SCE and Kruelboyz too. Of course, no list is perfect and needs its weaknesses. As I said before, if these lists get to play to their strengths they are very strong. Moving forward however, I'm not sure what to do. I'm not really enjoying the swingy power level of these lists. Some lists I play against can't seem to do anything against it and I run them over, some lists with strong shooting do the same back to me, and there are really only a few lists that seem to play on a fairly even level. I'd like to play something that does work better against shooting, especially as I'm starting to see more and more shooting armies enter our local meta. I've been following the tournament results pretty closely and while it's nice that SBG have been doing really well, I'm not particularly liking the style of lists I see winning or 4-1'ing events. I don't really want to take 80-120 zombies or 30 blood knights. I specifically took up SBG to play an army that uses a variety of units and use support heroes. So I'm at a bit of a crossroads. I'll be continuing to tech my lists in a way that can hold up in a shooting meta, and would love to see any advice on the matter, if not I might take a short break from SBG to try out some different stuff. These lists are tons of fun to play though, especially if you have lots of melee armies in your meta, and I would encourage this kind of play style if you think it looks fun too.

First off, I apologize to the mods if this is in the wrong place. I looked around and I can't seem to find another subforum that this would fit into. A few months ago I sent a message to the mod team requesting an "Asian" section to international communities subforum but never got a response. I am part of a small, but very active group of AoS players in Seoul, South Korea. We would like to reach out an invitation to other players who might be lurking about and unaware that there are weekly games of English AoS available. Now some people might think this is just "shooting into the wind" but surprisingly it was actually here on these forums that I originally found the group (one of the other players noticed I mentioned Korea in a post and then PM'd me). It's my hope that there may still be a few others out there that we can find and meet up with! Where Do We Play? We play at a wargaming club called Old Dice. It is located near Yeongdeungpo station. It's a very active club and interestingly, Age of Sigmar seems to be one of, if not the most popular game there. They have eight tables available that we can book in advance. Each table has a terrain mat and there's a huge selection of terrain pieces to choose from and use in your games. Cost of entry is insanely low, 5,000 won to play, and that includes a free drink. When Do We Play? We try to play every weekend. I'm personally able to make it almost every weekend, and I'm usually able to find someone to play with every single week. We meet at 11:00 on either Saturday or Sunday and these days we typically get two full games in (2k points). How Big Is Our Group? We currently have three foreigners in our group and so far there are seven Korean players comfortable playing in English that set up games with us every other week or so. The Korean AoS community is surprisingly active, the open Kakao group has over 140 members and is very busy all day long, every day of the week. Most weekends it is usual to see at least 3 tables at the club playing AoS. How To Get In Contact If you're in the area and want to play with us, or perhaps live here and have thought about joining the hobby but haven't committed yet, you can message me through these forums or reply in this thread. Afterwards I can invite you to one of the Kakao groups to set up some games. Again, apologies to the 99% of the players who don't play in Korea for taking up some space on the general discussion board but we would love to expand our group! Pictures!

I imagine it has to do with the Brexit stuff. I don't follow the UK stuff too closely but everytime it pops up it seems to be about disruptions caused by all the trade issues going on.

Ah, I thought that the article with the 40k previews was next week's pre-orders. I live in a time zone that is about a day ahead of the UK and sometimes get the timings messed up. I guess the previews will instead be coming up in the next few hours instead?

Doesn’t look like any stormcast was announced for upcoming pre-orders. So, at best, there will be some announced next Sunday as pre-order for the following week. I definitely feel bad for SCE players, your release has been moving at a glacial speed.

After doing quite well with Vyrkos over the last few months I've switched to playing around with LoN and in particular, a bit of a spell casting castle list. In these lists I've been taking a V.Lord with Morbheg's Claw and a Necromancer with the Tome and corpse cart with the +1 to cast buff. Having a +3 to cast on your LoN wizards, sometimes including Mannfred if he's hanging around as a support bubble, is pretty nice. Of course, points get tight in these kinds of lists so I've also been trying out forgoing skeletons in favor of Zombies (because of the corpse cart). Not sure if it's better than my Vyrkos lists, but they've been fun to play.

AoS 3.0 Game #13 August 28th, 2021 @ Old Dice Wargaming Club Flesh Eater Courts (Feast Day) vs. Cities of Sigmar (Hallowheart) We had a four player group for this week’s game day at the club, and our fourth happened to be another Soulblight player. So in order to avoid mirror matches I chose to bring my dusty old FEC army. I haven’t played FEC since SBG released, which was slightly before the release of third edition. Going through the book with 3rd edition in mind made me think there were actually quite a lot of fun things to maybe do with this army despite its poor reputation in the new edition. I was also excited to bring a low model count list after months of playing 120+ model armies and specifically built my list around bringing two big boys to the table. I went against the grain a little and ran a Ghoul King on Zombie Dragon as well as a Ghoul King on Terrorgheist, instead of the double Terrors that are normally used. I also opted for a list that used as few ghouls as I could manage so that I could easily pack everything into a single travel bag and not have to worry about pushing too many models around. Deployment My opponent had a double battle regiment with a total of 3 drops, which gave me the advantage on how to set up my units. After some consideration I decided I would engage in a big monster mash by placing my dragons opposite my opponent’s. I spread my flayers out on the right side with dreams of rushing up the flank to get into the juicy ranged units there. I also had quite a few summons to bring in and hoped that I'd find space near his end of the table. Top of Turn 1: Cities of Sigmar My opponent surprised me by actually taking the initiative this game and surprised me even more by moving aggressively up the board. He had a few tricks up his sleeve though, as he strategically placed a few endless spells ahead of his troops to minimize my ability to charge (since you can’t finish a movement within an endless spell). Several scary looking monsters placed themselves on top of the hill in the middle of the board, easily within charging range thanks to the pre-game move from the battalion (though he unfortunately rolled quite low on those bonus moves). Fortunately for me, his ranged units were still out of range and couldn’t get any shots off this turn. His monsters charged in and right off the bat he pulled a pretty epic play. His Kharibdyss got within range of my throne, passed the Smash to Rubble roll toppling my terrain piece and then I rolled a 1, killing my Archregent before ever getting a chance to do anything. This put me in a pretty rough position because that meant I lost a full unit of summonable Knights, and therefore a decent chunk of my tough units. In the combat phase I was able to swing twice with my GKoTG and take out his Kharibdyss (and thank goodness because remembering how to spell that monstrosities name for a whole battle report would be a pain) and get some revenge for my fallen Archregent. Cities scored a solid 7 points this turn with a completed battletactic and holding several objectives. FEC - 1 vs CoS - 7 Bottom of Turn 1: FEC The board state at the end of the first turn. I took the easy to accomplish Monstrous Takeover battle tactic and picked out my targets for this turn. I threw my two big guys into his Stormcast heroes and swung my flayers around the house terrain piece on the right side of the board. My GKoTG and GKoZD made short work of the stormcast thanks to feeding frenzy and my flayers starting working through his ranged units. The flayers' bravery focused ranged attack really works well against units such as the dark elves who have low bravery. I also got both of my summons off, bringing in a unit of horrors and a varghulf at the back of the board, hoping to break into the units he had positioned there and maybe steal the back objective. I scored 5 points this turn, plus the monster point gained previously. FEC - 6 vs CoS - 7 Top of Turn 2: FEC So, I won the deciding roll off here and got the double turn. I think this was the first time I’ve ever gotten the 1 to 2 double, but I almost always go first in my games so I rarely have the opportunity. My opponent was in a tough spot and grabbing the first turn would have allowed him to re-position his troops and get some very important shooting off. My big hero monsters charged into his hydra and dragon and were able to easily wipe them out. Meanwhile, my flayers had an equally strong turn and ate through most of his shooting units. My varghulf and horrors also got into his backline, and while they mostly whiffed on their attacks they still locked up his units and left my opponent with few options. The end of the turn looked like this, and while I didn’t score a crazy amount of points my opponent decided to call the game since he didn’t have the units left to contend with the things I had on the board. FEC - 12 vs CoS - 7 Post-Game So.. this game is a pretty good example of what FEC are capable of doing and one of the reasons why I shifted away from them and into Soulblight. When FEC goes off, it goes off big and can easily table certain armies in a single turn. On the other hand, had the dice rolls gone a different way my opponent might have been able to shoot off my dragons and the game would have been over just as fast. For me it was a nice change of pace to play with fewer models, less magic, and a simple aggressive game plan. We also got to experience that awesome moment on the first turn where my Archregent got killed in the wreckage!

Yea I feel the vampire lord command ability is, at best, a RAW vs RAI debate. But I’m not sure when you’d even want to abuse it. in friendly games I don’t think you want to be “that guy” abusing the writing of rules. In a tournament the TO could possibly overrrule it and if not.. well you’ll also probably end up as “that guy”. But kind of an interesting interaction on its own I suppose.

I think all our battleline units are good and serve different roles, so which one to use depends on what you want to do with your list. Dire Wolves are the most self-sufficient of the three. You just place them on the board and they do their stuff without the need for buffs from heroes or spells. They don't do a whole lot except take up space and die, but they do that pretty well. You get 20 wounds with a 5+ save so they are more durable than a MSU of Zombies or Skeleons, but only have 10 bodies and is the most expensive option. They are also fast and spread wide, so they are good screens. Skeletons only really shine in larger unit sizes. MSU groups of 10 are basically just a cheap minimum battleline unit, but groups of 20, and especially 30 are quite durable. They shine well with buffs too, particularly Vanhel's so they are a great choice if you're running a necromancer. Zombies are our best option for bodies on the board. Don't underestimate the advantage 20 bodies can be, especially in 3rd edition. Even just MSU of 20 zombies can slow down a lot of units, and if you take them in groups of 40 or 60 they can lock down almost anything for quite awhile. Like skeletons, they take buffs really well. +1 Attacks can sometimes lead to mortal wounds jackpots and deal a lot of damage. There's also plenty on shenanigans with the 6" pile in that makes them surprisingly mobile and good at catching enemy units. The 6" pile in also makes the a great screen for your counter charge as you can use the pile in to wrap around the enemy unit and open up a space for something like your Grave Guard to charge into on the next turn. What's also nice is that you can comfortably run all three if you want, and still have a competitive list. I've seen lots of successful lists running something like 30x skeletons, 40 zombies, and 10 Dire Wolves. You can also go all in on just one option too and field like 120 zombies or something like that.

AoS 3.0 Game #11 August 17th, 2021 @ Old Dice Wargaming Club Soulblight Gravelords (Vyrkos) vs. Sons of Behemat Battleplan: Tectonic Interference(1500) Soulblight Gravelords Army List Deployment Top of Round 1: Soulblight I had a one drop deployment list for this small 1500 point game and I decided to go first. On my turn I just moved onto all the objectives and chose Aggressive Expansion as my battle tactic. I had zombies and skeletons on the left flank facing off against his Mancrushers and Mannfred, Bella, and 30 x Grave Guard on the other side pairing off against his Mega Gargants. SBG 6 - 0 SOB Bottom of Round 1: Sons of Behemat The giants charges into my units as best they could, but had trouble fitting in around the terrain pieces. Mannfred blocked out the right objective and my skeletons and zombies held the left flank with overwhelming numbers, even against the mancrushers. He decided to charge Belladamma, which was a little surprising for me, and she was killed off this turn. That meant that I didn't have to run away Mannfred and he did a decent job of denting his first Mega. SBG 6 - 4 SOB Top of Round 2: Soulblight I won the important roll off preventing the double turn, which meant that my 30 Grave Guard were in clear charging distance of his wounded Mega. 16 Grave Guard with 3 attacks each and within Mannfred's +1/+1 bubble made quick work of the first Mega, once again pumping out some insane damage. My units on the left hand side were taking a beating but hadn't crumpled yet, holding back the smaller giants for at least another turn. I took Slay the Warlord this turn, which I completed, though I only scored 4 points total since the giants were all now within objective range. SBG 10 - 4 SOB Bottom of Round 2: Sons of Behemat My grave guard took a pounding with a combination of fall damage and a follow up shooting phase. He charged into my weakened group of GG and tried to take them out, but unfortunately was not able to clear out enough models to prevent me from swinging back pretty hard on the following combat activation and severely wounding his second Mega who took the full brunt of damage from around 18 GG, Mannfred, and a number of offensive spells from Mannfred and the Vampire Lord. I did lose quite a few grave guard in the process though. My left flank had fallen at this point but I was lucky enough to bring back half a unit of zombies, ready to charge back in. SBG 10 - 6 SOB Top of Round 3: Sons of Behemat In the combat phase he came close to wiping out my grave guard, but around 6 survived and combined with Mannfred they were able to take down his second Mega. With only two mancrushers left my opponent decided to concede the game. Post Game My opponent is still quite new to AoS and is still working on completing his first 2k point army and this was really mostly just a learning match. My opponent had a friend (one of my opponents from an earlier game) help him out with rules and English translation. I think he had fun and learned a lot and I look forward to playing him again in the future, especially with a full 2k point army. This was my first time playing SoB and was a pretty gentle introduction. They are probably a very scary matchup in a full points game against an experienced opponent, but at least now I feel like I have a little bit of understanding on what to expect.

AoS 3.0 Game #10 August 15th, 2021 @ Old Dice Wargaming Club Soulblight Gravelords (Vyrkos) vs. Seraphon (Thunderlizards) Battleplan: Tooth and Nail (2000pts) Soulblight Gravelords Army List Deployment It looks like we made a mistake in deployment, we should be 9" away from each other's territory, so we're both a bit closer than we should be to each other, though I don't think it made much of an impact on the game since we both deployed with this misunderstanding. Top of Turn 1: Soulblight I out dropped my opponent this game and decided to take the first turn. My opponent didn't have much in the form of spellcasting so I was able to get a full range of buffs out on my units this hero phase. This battleplan doesn't allow reserve units, so I didn't have anything in the gravesites. It's hard to see in the picture but I did cast spectral grasp on the the Wyldwood near the center of the board (half movement for anything that starts within 3"). I summoned Radukar's wolves as an extra wall of chaff and otherwise cautiously moved up the left side of the board. I decided not to push far into the right side and instead used those units to complete my ferocious advance battle tactic. I didn't try for any charges and ended my turn with 4 points. SBG 4 - 0 SER Bottom of Turn 1: Seraphon In my turn I had moved Mannfred up front to screen out his Carnosaur and other big units, but I greatly underestimated the amount of damage his shooting could get off on a single turn. Mannfred was shot down with wounds to spare in the first shooting phase of the game. My direwolves were taken out in the combat phase, but left his own units open for a counter charge next turn. With 4 points scored, we were both tied at this point. SBG 4 - 5 SER Top of Turn 2: Soulblight Avoiding the double turn here was pretty big, especially with Mannfred no longer screening the Carnosaur and my dire wolf screen eliminated. Once again I went unchallenged in the hero phase and Belladamma was able to summon a wolf via Lycancurse, allowing me to thin out his Kroxigors. I charged in Radukar, tying up his Bastiladon. I also moved forward on the right side, realizing that I would also need to tie up his other ranged dinosaurs to prevent myself from losing other heroes. My fell bats went deep, hoping to tie up his unit of Salamander Hunting Pack. I managed to take out another Kroxigor with my zombies and eliminate his small unit of skinks with my skeletons, allowing them to pile in a second time with Vanhel's Dance and tie up his other Bastiladons. With three objectives and a completed Savage Spearhead tactic, I scored 5 points this turn. SBG 9 - 5 SER Bottom of Turn 2: Seraphon My opponent's shooting was much less effective this turn as his units were all tied up in combat and he couldn't focus fire down any single unit. He got his Oldblood on Carnosaur into my Grave Guard by charging through the forest. All but three of my Grave Guard survived, but they fled in the battleshock phase, removing the unit from play. On the other side of the board his dinos finally wiped out my skeletons. At this point I had lost Mannfred, 20x Grave Guard, 10 Dire Wolves, and 30x Skeletons.. but I did make a very fortunate Endless Legions roll at the end of the turn, bringing back 10 Grave Guard. Perhaps even more importantly I won the turn roll off again. My opponent scored 4 points this turn, keeping us close on the scorecard. As a side note, my opponent was mixing the battle pack battle tactics, I think because he didn't own the GHB. I decided not to argue the point since we were playing for fun here. The battle tactic he chose was "repel". SBG 9 - 9 SER Top of Turn 3: Soulblight I took my new unit of Grave Guard and made the guaranteed charge (deployed 9" away, 4" movement, and 6" musician charge). In the hero phase I had given them Under the Killing Moon (exploding 6's on hits) and in the combat phase I used the Vampire Lord to give them +1 attacks. All 10 GG made it into attacking range, and the 30 attacks rolled well, with a number of exploding hits. 3 mortals and 25 wound rolls at -1 rend / 2 damage went through, a potential of over 50 damage. The Oldblood did not survive. On the otherside of the board I retreated my zombies back towards my own primary objective. In the battleshock phase I won another endless legions roll and brought back 15 skeletons to reinforce my corner objective. What had once looked like an unwinnable position now looked quite good, though there were still a lot of scary dinosaurs on the board. I managed to scrape 4 points this turn despite only having a single objective under my control. SBG 13 - 9 SER Bottom of Turn 3: Seraphon My opponent took Broken Ranks this turn and targeted my fresh group of skeletons who took the brunt of the shooting damage and leaving only 4-5 models left by the start of combat. He also charged in his dino on the left side of the board and engaged Radukar who had finally dispatched the bastiladon he was fighting for several turns. He succeeded in removing my remaining skeletons in the combat phase, but I was able to bring back some Dire Wolves and steal his own primary objective and stopping him from scoring more than 3 points this turn. SBG 13 - 12 SER Top of Turn 4: Seraphon My opponent crushed my remaining unit of zombies on my back objective and did a decent amount of damage to my grave guard as well. At the end of the battleshock phase I was able to revive the zombies that had just been killed and this time brought them in at the back of the board where he was holding an objective with just a bastiladon. He did score a strong 5 points this turn however, and I was running out of units to bring back. SBG 13 - 17 SER Bottom of Turn 4: Soulblight Radukar put in a lot of work this game, just grinding through everything put in his way. When fed by low wound count models that trigger his vampiric healing and healed with the heroic actions he is very hard to put down. I moved my zombies forward but didn't charge, looking to take advantage of the pile in shenanigans to basically give me a double activation. Unfortunately, I lost too many zombies and therefore control of the objective, but I did take down his dino on the left, giving me broken ranks and a monster kill point for a total of 4 this turn. SBG 17 - 17 SER Top of Turn 5: Seraphon My opponent chose "seize the middle" as his tactic, which shouldn't normally be allowed because that is part of the core rules pack and not GHB but I decided not to challenge it since it was near the end of the game anyway. There wasn't a lot of combat this turn other than him taking out my my Necromancer at the back corner and he moved some of his units into the middle to score his tactic and a total of 3 points. SBG 17 - 20 SER Bottom of Turn 5: Soulblight I decided to take the same battle tactic he had and moved most of units into the middle of the board but didn't charge, giving me a total of 5 points this turn from controlling two objectives and scoring a battle tactic. SBG 22 - 20 SER Final Score SBG 25 - 23 SER Post Game Overall a very tight game! From a unit point of view I was losing the entire game, but being able to reliably complete battle tactics and control objectives at important moments allowed me to just barely get a victory here. The endless legions ability to bring back half units definitely saved me this game and I was lucky to win so many rolls. Games like this really feel like "Soulblight" to me, constantly bringing back units, swarming the board, and trying to be sneaky by popping up everywhere. I lost Mannfred in the first turn again.. it seems to be happening more often than not these days, but there's not a whole lot I can do against focused fire ranged lists like these, though I now have a better idea of what their turn one damage can look like and I should be able to prepare better in the future. Mixing the battle tactics was a little unfortunate, and afterwards it was explained how you need to choose a single battle pack. In his next game they were able to play with the proper rules.

Thanks! Theres one “official” GW supplier called Orctown that does a pretty good job of keeping stuff in stock, and always has the new stuff. There’s a very active AoS Korean community, when I go to the club on weekends there’s anywhere from 2-4 tables of AoS games and the Kakao group chat is big and very active. There are only a handful of foreigners but there are plenty of English speaking Koreans to play with. There’s a huge foreigner 40k community that has something like 80 members and has multi-tiered leagues and regular tournaments (outside of covid). I think there are a few tabletop clubs here in Seoul but I’m not sure about elsewhere in the country.

AoS 3.0 Game #12 August 17th, 2021 @ Old Dice Wargaming Club Soulblight Gravelords (Vyrkos) vs. Ogor Mawtribes Battleplan: Savage Gains (2000pts) Soulblight Gravelords Army List I got to play a new opponent today who was rocking another Ogor Mawtribes list, which seems to be a particularly popular faction here in Korea (in fact, it seems like the Korean players favor big monster lists/armies in general). We rolled Savage Gains as the battleplan for the game and I chose the role of attacker. With ten drops I was definitely the loser in deployment but he selected me to go first anyway. Here's the board all set up at the start of the game: I had a group of 20 Zombies and 20 Grave Guard set up in reserves and he had a little ogor hero with some pigs set up in his reserve as well. Top of Turn 1: Soulblight Not much to say about this turn as I just ran my units up the board to grab the objectives, brought in all my reserves, and summoned in my wolves from Radukar's CA. My opponent had a single spell caster but he wasn't able to stop my lengthy list of spells which buffed up all my units. I don't usually place the GG in reserve, but I wanted to screen them with the Zombies and still make it onto the objective, however this has one major drawback: I can't cast any buffs on them in the first hero phase (namely the Killing Moon by Bella) so I'll have to consider that next time I play. I took Ferocious Advance as my battle tactic (2pts) and had 3 objectives (2+2+1) for a total of 7 points this turn. SBG 7 - 0 OGR Bottom of Turn 1: Ogors I denied what little spell casting he had and then watched as he charged into my units. I was a little worried after losing Mannfred the last time I play Ogors, but was fairly confident that he could survive one big charger. I took a decent amount of impact damage across the table but the real damage came in the combat phase. My zombies got wiped out, as I sort of expected, but I wasn't expecting him to be able to pile in so many attackers into my Grave Guard. This was my fault as I got kind of greedy in pulling my dead zombies from the right side (planning to charge in next turn) but his three ogors with a bunch of buffs from charging completely destroyed my whole unit of Zombies and Grave Guard! I was pretty worried that this might be the end of the game right here and now, especially if I got double turned. Mannfred ran away to the back of my deployment where he could still buff the skeletons. The skeletons did a fair bit of damage on their own, buffed with Vanhel's and the Crimson Feast (+1 Attacks). My fell bats died valiantly holding up his other big guy on the left side who looked like he was trying to swing into my back objective. Fortunately, I was able to hold onto the right side objective thanks to my skeletons slaying a model so my opponent only got 3 points in total after failing his attempt to Conquer (who selected the objective on the right side. SBG 7 - 3 OGR Top of Turn 2: Soulblight Winning the roll-off via tie breaker was huge for me. A double turn at this point would have been game over for sure. My dire wolves had been ignored last turn which meant they had a straight path into his juicy primary objective worth 4 points. Radukar charged into his foot ogors and my zombies moved within pile-in range of them as well. I knew that my skeletons would not survive a hefty impact charge from his big guy so I threw Mannfred into the fray and hoped he could survive a turn of combat. Overall I didn't do a ton of actual damage in combat, but I didn't lose much either. This also meant that I had most of the objectives and his units were mostly tied up in combat as well. I got my Conquer battle tactic (2pts) and had 3 objectives (4+2+1) for a total of 9 points this round. SBG 16 - 3 OGR Bottom of Round 2: Ogors My opponent took Bring It Down! as his battle tactic, selecting Mannfred as he was my only monster. At the start of this turn Mannfred had exactly 1 wound left, though he healed up a couple during the Heroic Action phase. His plan was to kill Mannfred by using his D6 Mortal Wounds ability that can target units with high armor. Luckily for me he rolled a 3 and I saved 1 and ignored another, allowing him to run away. I teleported Mannfred into my opponents zone, far from any shooting or charging units and setting him up for my next turn's battle tactic. With Vanhel's Dance and the +1 attacks the skeletons slowly started to chip away at the big dude, though the lack of rend meant that even after 70+ attacks I was only getting through 2-3 wounds. Radukar held up extraordinarily well against the foot ogors, I think his -1 to hit ability really cut down on their damage. He was able to snag my primary objective while still holding the one on the left so he scored 6 points this turn after failing his battle tactic for a second time. SBG 16 - 9 OGR Top of Turn 3: Ogors Ogors got the double turn here, which they probably needed at this stage since I was starting to pull away on victory points. Unfortunately for him this was when I started rolling well on my Endless Legions rolls and at the end of last turn I had brought back half a unit of Grave Guard that had a clear line towards his big guy engaged with my skeletons. The grave guard and zombies at the bottom of the board are dead models that I hadn't cleared from the table yet due to lack of space. Belladamma got rolled in combat this turn and my skeletons and his big guy both managed to do very little to each other. Radukar continued to work on the foot ogors and otherwise not much happened. He scored his battle tactic (2pts) and had two objectives (2+4) for a total of 8 points bringing him back into the game. SBG 16 - 17 OGR Bottom of Round 3: Soulblight I won another Endless Legions roll letting me bring back some zombies at the bottom of the board and work towards reclaiming my primary objective. My grave guard were able to move forward 4" and then get a guaranteed 6" charge with their musician while a much healed Mannfred charged into the small group of mounted ogors on his primary objective. 10 Grave Guard with +1 attacks and a +1/+1 aura from Mannfred put out a ridiculous amount of wounds and finally destroyed his general. I think a lot of people new to playing against Soulblight greatly underestimate their strength, though there wasn't much he could do anyway. Mannfred also cleared out the raiders he was fighting with and I scored my tactic (2pts) and held 3 objectives (4+2+1) and killed a monster (1pt) for a total of 9. I also managed to bring back another group of zombies at my primary objective down at the bottom of the board with Endless Legions. SBG 26 - 17 OGR Top of Round 4: Soulblight I won the roll off here which more or less sealed the fate of the game. I reconsolidated my forces and the only combat was Mannfred wiping out my opponent's reserve guy. I scored another 9 points this turn and my opponent decided to concede. SBG 35 - 17 OGR Final Score Post Game This was a pretty strong game for me and was the first time I've really had an overwhelming victory against someone with Soulblight. My opponent hasn't played many games of 3.0 yet so he wasn't as familiar with the battle tactics which are such a huge part of the game now. I've been running this style of list for quite a while now too, around 6 games I think, and this is my third time using the Radukar variation. I really like this list and I think swapping out the Vengorian and 10x skeletons for Radukar and bats (and then splitting the zombies into 2 units of 20) has been really effective. If I were to tune this list further I think my next stop would be to maybe replace the zombies... but I'm not sure yet. I hope my opponent didn't feel too bad about the loss and I did speak to him afterwards. I think Soulblight can feel a little bad to play against when you get a bunch of endless legions rolls and just bring back half your army. He seems up for another game (potentially against his Gits army!) so I think he enjoyed it as well!

AoS 3.0 Game #6 July 31st, 2021 @ Old Dice Wargaming Club Soulblight Gravelords (Vyrkos) vs. Ogor Mawtribes (Blood Gullet) Battleplan: Tectonic Interference (2000pts) Soulblight Gravelords Army List Deployment Top of Round 1: Soulblight Gravelords The ogor army outdropped me and decided to give me the first turn. My first turn was fairly un-eventful as I pretty much just cast my spells and moved slightly forwards, just enough to get onto the objectives. My spell casting went un-interrupted as the Vyrkos re-rolling ability and Belladamma’s +1 to casting gave me a strong magic advantage this game. I took ferocious advance as my opening battle tactic which I completed by running the Necromancer, Vampire Lord, and small group of skeletons. I also deployed my reserve zombies on the right side objective. SBG 5 - 0 OGR Bottom of Round 1: Ogor Mawtribes Ogors had a pretty powerful magic phase this turn as I failed my dispel roll for Voracious Maw and he rolled quite well, taking a total of 7 wounds off my Vengorian Lord. I took a little bit of damage in the shooting phase but nothing too devastating. In the charge phase I got a bit lucky as his unit of Man-eaters failed their charge roll and his hero (proxied as the Orruk in the picture) whiffed on his attacks. Unfortunately I made a (possibly game ending) error right in the first combat phase. I had a complete brainfart and activated my skeletons first… even though the hero they were in combat with had already attacked. This meant that on the next activation he got to wipe out all of my grave guard. My large block of zombies also took a big hit on the right side of the board as they tried to hold the objective there. Fortunately I was able to kill the hero who had made his lone charge, while also somehow managing to keep my battle line unit alive to deny his battle tactic. SBG 5 - 2 OGR Top of Round 2: Ogor Mawtribes The ogors were able to push me off all the objectives this turn in a pretty powerful move forward. I took a little bit of damage in the shooting and hero phase, but nothing quite as bad as before. Fortunately, while I did lose all of the objectives, I was able to hold him off his battle tactic as my Vengorian Lord managed to hold on with a single wound thanks to some timely ward saves. Mannfred did a ton of damage to the ogor unit who attacked him and my Necromancer valiantly killed an ogor himself (praise be to swingy D3 damage?). Despite doing quite well in combat, this turn put me in a pretty tough place in regards to objective control. SBG 5 - 6 OGR Bottom of Round 2: Soulblight Gravelords This was a fairly uneventful turn for me, but relatively successful. At the end of last turn I succeeded in bringing back half my grave guard unit, which was pretty important for keeping me in the game. The alpha objective unfortunately landed on the far right side of the board, putting it out of my reach for the moment. I consolidated my forces on the left side and took the objective, completing my battle tactic (bring it down) in the process. This put me back into a slight lead and with a fairly strong force grouped together. SBG 8 - 6 OGR Top of Round 3: Ogor Mawtribes My opponent chose Slay the Warlord as his battle tactic. In retrospect, there was a mistake here. At the time, I was under the belief that any “general” counted towards the tactic (so in this case, Belladamma counting because she’s a bonus general in Vyrkos) but I have since learned that that is not the case. In any case, he was able to charge into my exposed Belladamma and take her out without too much problem. He also charged his Firebelly into my Vengorian, which would end pretty badly for him. The alpha objective landed someone on the right side again, so he was able to score 2 points for the tactic, and 3 points on objectives. SBG 8 - 11 OGR Bottom of Round 3: Soulblight Gravelords My record keeping starts to fail me here as I started to forget to label my pictures, and in fact I don’t think I took any for this round. The big clash on the left side of the board continued and I made another huge blunder. I had meant to flee Mannfred from combat but totally forgot. Instead of asking to re-do it I decided to suffer a round of fighting, thinking he could manage (spoiler alert: he didn’t). Losing Mannfred was a huge blow, especially to my mobility and this was probably what cost me the game. However, I was able to push up the center of the board with my Vengorian (who had since healed up most of his wounds after being one away from death) and a revived unit of zombies. This allowed me to take the center objective again and I was able to score at least 2 points. I barely failed my attempt at killing his own warlord this round, so I failed my battle tactic. SBG 10 - 11 OGR Top of Round 4: Soulblight Gravelords I was hoping for a dominant combat phase here so that I could push into his vulnerable heroes in round 4. Unfortunately, without the buffs from Belladamma, the Vampire Lord, and Mannfred my basic units just weren’t strong enough to break through the last unit of ogors. I lost all my zombies, but did manage to put quite a few wounds into the last unit. However, being stuck in combat was a big problem. My vengorian moved onto the right side objective (which once again became the alpha) but I couldn’t do enough damage to kill the leadbelchers and win over the objective. I did claim my battle tactic by running some revived skeletons and my necromancer into his territory and still had two objectives claimed. If the alpha objective had fallen into my territory I would have been able to maintain a stronger lead. SBG 14 - 11 OGR Bottom of Round 4: Ogor Mawtribes The ogors and skeletons continued to duke it out on the left side of the map while the leadbelchers continued to try and take out my Vengorian Lord who was just barely hanging on for dear life. My opponent also claimed Savage Spearhead this turn and scored the bonus point for having the alpha objective which tied up the game. SBG 14 - 14 OGR Top of Round 5: Ogor Mawtribes The alpha objective landed in the middle this turn, which meant that things could potentially get interesting since we were so close on points. My opponent took Monstrous Takeover as a throw away battle tactic since they couldn’t complete any of the others. The leadbelchers finally finished off my Vengorian Lord. Once again, with the alpha under his control he was able to score three points this turn. SBG 14 - 17 OGR Bottom of Round 5: Soulblight Gravelords So the ending of this game was a little weird. My opponent assumed that I had essentially won the game and starting tidying up, assuming that I could just grab the middle objective with my necromancer and skeletons. As a result, I kind of just haphazardly moved my models over without bothering to measure out carefully. After doing so, I realized that technically I was within pile-in range of one of his ogors and reminded my opponent since he hadn’t noticed. He was able to pile in and thus stop me from getting the objective and battle tactic. If I had spent the time carefully measuring out the models with the 3” gauge or if I hadn’t said anything, I would have finished this round with 5 points, bringing me up to 19 total (and then adding in 3+ for both of us because of grand strategies). Of course, we’re just playing for fun so it doesn’t matter too much. Officially speaking this game was a loss for me, but I do feel like I should have tied if I had played it out properly, oh well! SBG 18 - 22 OGR Final Scores Soulblight Ogors Post Game Overall this was a really fun and close game, coming down to the very end and being decided by only a few points regardless of which ending you want to consider. I was a bit nervous about running this list, which is actually the 5-0 tournament list run by Brendan Melnick in the US. To me, the list didn’t look very strong, and while similar to the style I wanted to play it didn’t include very many heavy hitters like dragons or blood knights. I’m glad I tried it out though because it turned out to be a strong list, even with me piloting it very badly (losing Mannfred and my Grave Guard to mistakes). I learned a lot by playing this list and seeing how powerful it is to have a focused list with big blobs of units and focusing on battle tactics and objective control. It seems that the current battle pack really encourages a “hold 2 and then complete tactics” style of play which this list does really well. It was also fun playing against my first Korean opponent and playing my first game against the ogors who I think are a really fun matchup for my Soulblight.

My experience so far has been that MSU (minimum sized units) are not really that effective in Soulblight. For example, 10 grave guard are very vulnerable to any kind of shooting, spell mortals, or impact charges. Furthermore, GG in general crumble very fast so if you don’t get to attack first you’re going to lose a lot of them before they get a chance to fight. The same is true for zombies. In groups of 20 they don’t do a whole lot, they aren’t even much of a tarpit at that number. At the very least, my suggestion would be to group up your units. This also makes them much better targets for endless legions. Based on what you have Id say 40 zombies, 20 zombies, and 10 Dire wolves would be a decent battleline core. 20GG are almost a staple so that’s good too More broadly speaking I think it might help to narrow the focus of your list a bit. Usually lists that bring lots of deathrattle and dead walkers try to support them with heroes like vampire lord and necromancer. Alternatively you could play more aggressive with blood knights and dragons, but you’ll want things to go support them as well (such as a vengorian lord). I think there’s a good enough foundation there though.

With 6” pile in and 25mm bases I’ve been able to get 40 zombies into combat pretty regularly. 40 also allows for a much strong Endless Legions. 20 isn’t that bad though, if you need more units for battleline or something.

Those are all very good points too. I will definitely be playing around with them a bit more because I think they have some good potential and they're just awesome models in general. The terrain rules are kind of a personal pet peeve, or perhaps an area of disappointment for me. I understand that they avoid terrain "layouts" probably because you could never know what people have access to in their homes. I'm a bit spoiled because we play in a wargaming club that has an abundance of terrain pieces to choose from. I still think they should re-do the setting up rules though. I don't really like the system of one player setting up the battlefield wholly and I think it kind of lends itself to some awkward situations. For example, this weekend when I played a Beastclaw Raiders army I got to set up the terrain as the defender. I told my opponent he could help out because I specifically didn't want to zone out his big guys or something like that. He was actually surprised and said that usually the opponent sets it up that way specifically. Typically when myself, or the guys I play with more regularly, set up terrain we do it together and make it fair and aesthetic. I think a possible alternative could be something like... defender gets to set up 5 pieces of terrain: 2 in their zone, 2 in neutral, and one in opponents, and the attacker sets up 3: 1 in each zone.. or something like that. Kind of make it an extra deployment strategy kind of thing. Alternatively I'd actually love to see the community adopt "maps" of some sort that are used throughout different tournaments (but maybe distinguish by relative size or type such as big/small and wall/hill/building). But anyway, I'm way off topic now for the Soulblight topic!

I spent this weekend playing Brendan Melnick's SBG list from the Circle City Clash in a few games. At first I wasn't sure how the list would/could perform but it has a lot of similarities to the lists I've been building except his list forgoes using an extra hammer unit like VLoZD or Blood Knights. Surprisingly (or perhaps unsurprisingly since he performed so well at the tournament) the list worked really well. It's a very balanced and synergistic list that is quite versatile in its ability to throw big buffs around quite freely. It sort of leaves your opponent guessing sometimes, where will you throw your buffs? Evenly? Or will you stack everything on a single unit? This list also does a good job of collecting battle tactics, is decently strong in the magic phase, and has plenty of CP to use and throw around. I was especially surprised by how good a 30 block of skeletons can be when buffed, they have the potential to be really scary and take forever to kill. I'll likely be running this list again this weekend but I've been thinking about how I would tune this list, and here is one I've been working on. The biggest weakness I found with the original list was the MSU of Deathrattle Skeletons. 10 Skeletons are not enough to really do anything except maybe hold a back objective, but I feel like 3rd edition encourages you to be a lot more aggressive due to the battle tactics. The small group of skeletons is also a liability because it gives your opponent a juicy target for Broken Ranks. In order to take out that group of skeletons we have to do one of two things: a) replace them with dire wolves or zombies (we are at the reinforcement cap with our other units) or b) make the grave guard battleline with a Wight King. For this version I’ve opted for the second option. I’ve taken out Belladamma, the Vengorian Lord, and the extra group of skeletons and have replaced them with a VLoZD and a Mounted Wight King. Since we’ve lost out our best caster and a vampire caster I thought it would be better to switch the dynasty to LoN, that way we preserve Mannfred as a second general and get access to Morbheg’s Claw, which will make our Vampire Lord and Necromancer better casters. Now, this build loses out on a few things, so let’s list them here: - We lose Belladamma’s 2 casts and her +1 double dispells - We lose Belladamma’s Under a Killing Moon spell buff which is super strong on the Grave Guard - We lose out on the Vengorian Lord’s anti-rend aura - The Vampire Lord no longer has the free command ability trait so his +1 attack ability is going to cost us CP now - We lose out on the +1 to wound buff for the Skeletons/GG/Zombies And here is what we gain: -The VLoZD is a strong and fast hammer unit that can act independently. It’s going to be a prime target for opponent’s spells and missile attacks, but that allows your other units to be safer for a turn or two. Ideally the VLoZD is going to take out something decent and is your best option for claiming Broken Ranks yourself. -We get Morbheg’s Claw (I placed it on the Wight King because I want the extra spell on the Necromancer and the Wight King shouldn’t be moving around too much) which makes the Necro and V.Lord much better casters. -We get access to Unbending Will (no battleshock wholly within 12”) which I think is a fair trade off for Pack Alpha. I found that I was using a CP almost every turn anyway to avoid battleshock. -The Wight King’s CA is IMO better than the Vengorian’s anyway, and could be quite decent on a large group of skeletons attacking twice within Morbheg’s I’m not sure exactly how I would split up this army/deploy it. It would definitely be tempting to play this as a death ball/castle type army since you have a lot of bubbles and buffs that can be shared, but again, I think 3rd edition discourages that. One split could be: Skeletons/Necro/WightK/Vlord on one side GG/Mannfred on another Zombies in a gravesite and VLoZD on its own (and possibly in the LoN reserve too) Perhaps a better split though would be to throw the Vlord into the group of GG. His +1 attack would be great for them, though he does lose out on the +2 casting from Morbheg’s (though he doesn’t have great spell choices anyway so maybe it doesn’t matter much). I do worry that this version messes too much with the buff synergy and I'm unsure how big a loss the Vengorian Lord is. Maybe I'm missing some obvious issues too, so I'm curious to see what people have to say.

First off, awesome write up and thanks for all the effort in working out the math. All I can really add is from my experience with 3rd edition so far (as SBG). Personally I've found BK to be really lackluster in actual gameplay due to two things: 1) they are super vulnerable to mortals (ex: Lumineth shooting or offensive magic) 2) with the smaller board space and the suggested 8 pieces of terrain you basically never get all 5 BK into combat. The second part is IMO the biggest issue because the MW thing depends on who you play against. But I've found the board is really cramped for cavalry units like BK. If they had a 2" reach it would be a different story, but on average I'm only getting 3 BK into combat. Against armies with high MW I'm also usually losing 1-2 models on average before they even get into combat so again, you're usually only attacking with 2-3 models (in my experience). Being able to retreat from combat for free is really their biggest advantage in my experience. Even the trample mechanic, while cute, doesn't seem to happen very often because it can be played around and again, the smaller board makes it hard to finish outside of 3" sometimes. I'm definitely interested in seeing them work, and I think the idea that 2 BK might outperform a VLoZD is actually pretty intriguing and something I'd be interested in trying out.

There aren’t any limitations for putting any units or characters in any sub faction. the only thing is that named characters are stuck with their home sub faction keyword and sometimes lose out on allegiance abilities (example: mannfred can’t re roll casts in a Vyrkos army).

Interestingly, I too have some games this weekend against Ogors (one against the Beastclaw guys and the other I "think" is a gutbuster style army). I've never played them before so I've researching and trying to theorycraft a list up too. My thoughts on facing Beastclaw: Originally I was thinking of a heavy Grave Guard style list with lots of support buffs. From my understanding, the ogors can't do much to stop you from getting spells or CA off so you'll be free to buff up your GG with Vanhel's, Killing Moon, Feast, etc. Grave Guard hit hard and the ogors are going to want to get into melee so you don't have to worry too much about moving around. There are however, two problems I see with this list. First, it seems that the Beastclaw get some buffs when facing large units (larger than 10 models, and larger than 20 models), so you'll be feeding into that. Secondly, their big models count as 10, which makes grabbing objective pretty tough. If you try to swarm objectives with zombies and GG you will take lots of casualties so my fear would be that by the later turns, even if you kill a good chunk of their army you won't be able to contest too many objectives and they might be able to sit on a couple and beat you out on points. You're also going to need to deal with some nasty battleshock on the charge rounds if they take out lots of models. An alternative to this list would be to go Kastelai I think. Prince V. is definitely going to hit hard enough lay the beatdown on some of their units, and this is one matchup where I could actually see him surviving quite a while due to lack of strong shooting and magic. I'm not sure how well blood knights will do. Perhaps buffed they might be able to take on their big beasties, at least if it's a 2 on 1 situation. The biggest problem here is you are going to suffer hard on controlling objectives. You won't be able to contest anything on the map with a single unit, and even two units. That means you basically need to take out a significant portion of their army to stand a chance in points. I'm not sure, but maybe a more control styled horde army could work too. Put a bunch of bodies on the board supported by heroes who can pretty much free cast all game. Perhaps add in something like shackles and actually use lots of MSU to just screen your objectives. Make those giant monsters waste turn after turn just crashing into units of zombies and skeletons while you hold off objectives as long as possible. Have Mannfred running around threatening enemy objectives and possibly screening some of your own.

Just anecdotal but I’ve had the exact opposite experience. Been running vengorian in my last 4 games or so. Every game except one he died in the first turn to concentrated fire. The damage was dealt via mortals by magic or sentinels. In general I feel the vengorian doesn’t do well against concentrated mortal wound damage. it’s my favorite model in the army but I’m finding it harder to justify in my lists, though I’m only really playing shooting/magic armies so my experiences might not be typical.

I posted a summary a a few posts above.

I had this list pointed out to me too and I find it very interesting since it's very close to the armies I've been trying to run (rather unsuccessfully). The main differences between this list and the ones I've ran is that he's gone for what looks like pure defensive/objective play and doesn't use any dedicated hammers except for some grave guard. Here's the list again: Brendan Melnick: Guys from Milwaukee I did a little digging and pulled up the tournament details of his run: So he got 4 Major Wins and 1 Minor Win. He scored all 5 tactics in 3 of his games, and only got 2/3 in the final two. He completed his grand strategy (prized sorcery) in every game. The tournament placings of his opponents were: 1. Nurgle -> 6th Place 2. Seraphon -> 3rd Place 3. Sons of Behemot -> 2nd Place 4. Nurgle -> 7th Place 5. Sons of Behemot -> 5th Place I would love to see some more details about how the games went and which tactics he chose for his games and how he played. I'd also like to see which battleplans they used for each round. My guess is he played defensively since his army is quite immobile. His army does have some good buff synergies that can make his units pretty scary though: Under a Killing Moon (exploding 6's) + Vigour of Undeath (+1 to Hit/Wound) + Crimson Feast (+1 Attack) + Dance Macabre (Attack Twice). What do you guys think of the list? As others have said, it's cool to see a non-Nagash list win a tournament.