TechnoVampire

Haha not at all, everyone’s approach is equally valid. There’s certain units I would just never include in an army because I can’t handle the aesthetics 🤓

Thanks yeah, I’m sure I will and I appreciate it as well, as it’s helpful to hear perspectives that challenge or differ from our own. The book is far from terrible, and like you say, I think with time I’ll find what works 😊

@RocketPropelledGrenade @MotherGoose I wish I could share you guys enthusiasm for the new book. I feel like I’ve expressed my gripes so won’t do so in detail again. There are so many subjective elements that it’s impossibly to please everyone, but I’m glad there seem to be many aspects that people are excited about. Hopefully I’ll come to share some of that enthusiasm with time. I wonder if maybe SBGL players are a bit too fair minded haha. I feel like a lot of other armies have some standout power combos/ mechanics and as long as they’re not game breaking that’s kind of ok. Broken auto picks obviously aren’t fun, but for me personally having a hard to deal with teleport ability, or a spell that allows you to provide a scary turn 1 threat isn’t overly problematic, and for me this book just feels a bit flat. The Mortarchs with locked in sub-faction abilities are a big miss for me, which is a real shame as I want access to lore of the deathmages (necro is an ok cheap option I’m aware, but his mobility is bad)… If I ran LOB I would definitely include neferata though.

Here’s what I’m thinking as a mixture of fast/ hard hitting/ summonable with some stackable buffs in Kastelai: Vhordrai: (470) 3 x 5 blood knight (690) 1 x 20 GG (280) Wight king - general - deep strike with GG (135) Vampire lord (130) Necro (90) 1 x 20 deathrattle skeleton (170) 1965 (or replace the necro and death rattle with another 20 GG or dire wolves) (legion of blood with VLOZD is also tempting)

Ethereal VLOZD with extra attacks hitting on 2’s feels too good to pass up for your list. Also GG with exploding 6’s hitting on 2’s will be scary in combat. LOB feels like the most obviously good sub faction initially.

That’s very similar to my old list, but with Mannfred for buffing and screening GG. It hit super hard but crumbled to shooting.

I like both these lists and I think they could be potent. If I could be bothered painting that many skeletons, this is the direction I would go in the new book. I think VLOZD in LOB looks very strong and stacking buffs on GG has the highest potential output achievable.

I just realised that invigorating aura has been removed from the book, I rarely used it before, but with a keener focus on summonable units and recursion will people be missing it? I always thought it looked pretty strong. Also thanks to all those that made suggestions for list building ideas that might more fit my play style. I have some old dire wolves painted, and 20 deathrattle skeletons (love the new models, wish GG had something similar), so I’ll see what I can cobble together.

Interesting. What sub faction will you be taking, and what role do you see Mannfred fulfilling? For me he was such a good support piece in the old book, and a deathmage caster. He was one of my favourite units. Now I’m struggling to see what role he fills or support he provides.

Thanks community for being there during this troubling time (kidding), but I do appreciate the advice or thoughts. I think playing a fairly off meta spam list like I do always runs a heavy risk of a new book or GHB completely throwing thing off, but considering that my list/ style is actually still fairly in tact, although clearly not the focus… I was going to say that I wish GW had decided to include at least one allegiance ability for vamps/ non-summonable units, opening things up a bit, but there is 6+ ward and effectively the hunger is an allegiance ability, just written on warsrcolls. I think GW has made a mistake by locking so many abilities to sub-factions, seriously limiting build options, but I also understand the need for focus… I’m just not sure that’s a very fun way of achieving it. I think I’ll probably be quite jealous of the new FEC book when it comes out, but I currently don’t have the time, energy or funds to pick up a whole new army. I’ll probably continue playing Kastelai for now and see how it goes. Someone’s gotta do it 🤘

Except for nighthaunt, FEC and by the looks of it new OBR 😜 but yeah, that army should exist somewhere in death, and it looks like SBGL is the place it will be for the foreseeable.

Thanks for correcting me. I’m glad you are happy with the new book. I genuinely hope most people feel the same way you do. I don’t want to spread negativity, I think I’m just coming to the realisation that despite loving vampires and dead stuff thematically and aesthetics, mechanically SBGL might not be the right faction for me. I think the new book will probably do better competitively. The summoning is much more consistent and if you love hordes of dead stuff coming back this is a great book. If you’re like me and you are more drawn to offensive play, and buffing the vampire side of things, then I think things are a little more tricky. It feels like the primary role of vampires in this book is as necromancer/ support characters and not fighters. Blood knights/ Varghiests/ Trueblades are a thing, but I’m not sure kastelai has much of a place in the book, as the more you lean into the sub faction allegiance ability’s the more you ignore the overall faction abilities which feels dissonant. Aigain, I don’t want to diminish anyone else’s hype for the new book at all. I’m just trying to figure out if/ how I can still enjoy it. It’s still early days and I may well just be overly disappointed initially and need time to figure it out a bit.

When considering the SBGL allegiance ability’s it becomes quite obvious that this is an army purely based on slowly bringing back summonable models and grinding down the opponent: bring back one summonable (chaff) unit that’s been destroyed at half strength once per battle round on a 4+ or a 3+. Bring summonable units out the grave instead of starting on the board. Return 3 or 4 models to a summonable unit up to 3 times per turn. Army wide 6+ ward. are these interesting or exciting?

These are my biggest complaints. I’m trying to find the positives and aspects of the book that excite me, but a lot of it feels like change for the sake of change, without much focus, or unique identity in the same way that other new books have. I’m not interested in overall power level, I just want to get excited about certain pairings, builds and combos, using rules that embody the themes of the army, but initially the options feel somewhat restricted. I have a a bit of niche perspective however, because I’m not interested in playing with hordes of chaff, preferring hard hitting, alpha style lists. I’m aware there’s probably a lot of stuff going on in the book that will come to light with play and through community discovery, but very little is wowing or overly exciting me initially. new hunger is good and I like -2 rend on blood knights. … maybe I’m just playing the wrong faction.

Would 2” reach allow blood knights to attack in 2 ranks?

That’s true. The +1 movement is a token gesture that will rarely impact games. Something combat orientated would have been much more valuable, and even the old +2 to run and charge was significantly better. they’ve given and taken away, but GW seems to now be averse to allowing SBGL units to hit hard. I missed what you meant by “WT”?

Ok yeah, the model thing completely went over my head, as I was just going off the old rules. That’s a subtle but significant improvement to the ability. Thanks for pointing that out. It’s cheered me up a bit 🤓 it also means you could charge into two separate units and if you kill just one model from each, you will gain multiple buffs in one round of combat.

It confuses me that they built this tech into legion of blood as opposed to Kastelai, when Kastelai is supposed to be the faction of martial excellence and the VLOZD is the epitome of the sub-faction. The Kastelai command traits and artefacts are underwhelming. The best command traits are one that gives you the previous allegiance ability allowing you to deep strike, or a copy of the old one giving re-roll charges. The best artefact (fragment of the keep) is a nerfed version of the previous one.

I really wish they’d decided to allow the Kastelia buffs to apply to mounts, allowing the dragons to become scary hammer units, but taking some degree of effort. It would have really appealed to people like me who love the death lore and aesthetic, but want to play a hard hitting army as opposed to grinding down your opponent with endless hordes. … although I suppose if I’m being objective blood knights hit harder now and dragons survive longer, allowing them to deal more damage over the course of the game, so effectively that is a damage improvement.

That’s right yeah, and if you use Vhordrai he can duplicate them once per turn to another unit in 24” so you should be able to build them up quickly.

Yeah you can, the +1 attacks replaced the +1 wounds buff. You can get all the buffs once each, so you can give blood knights +1 attack and +1 damage if you get both.

… maybe I’ll start playing OBR 😅

Does anyone know if we’re no longer getting mount traits, or have they just not been shown yet?

The new book seems to be pushing keywords and sub-faction specific abilities hard, which irks me as it limits build options significantly. I feel like GW also passed up an opportunity by not making death-rattle/ deadwalkers a sub faction, especially considering how much the book appears to encourage the use of summonable units (I’d have happily seen it replace avengorii… does anyone ever play it?) How are people feeling about the lore of the vampires spells? I want to be more excited about them than I am, but can’t help but feel that pinions was better than any of the new options. It was such a staple.

Haha ok perfect. Never considered these tactics, but a bit of movement cheese can go a long way. Thanks! 😆 ps I’ve run out of reactions for the day, but I’m enjoying many of the ideas and comments.