MotherGoose

6d6 depravity points per round or 6d3 mortal wounds to your opponent per round or a mixture of both *just from that one battle trait* 😅

Yeah I'd love a rework to the spells, hadn't even crossed my mind for some reason! I'm confident we will get 6++ baked in without needing to be near graves/heroes - every death army has had it given without the need for auras now. With that in mind, I wonder if grave sites will stay/change? I also feel like our healing/ressurection may get a slight tweak now that so many armies essentially have better versions and....thats kinda our jam. New grave guard models would be incredible. Vampires being how they should be too - currently a goblin warlord is better in combat than a vampire lord which is just crazy. I'd love the legion of blood vampire abilities to become a warscroll thing (+2 to cast/dispel or +2 attacks) rather than be locked to a subfaction - hell i hope they expand on that even more and give vampires more choice.

With the rumours our new tome is coming alongside Bonereapers, what are your guys thoughts? Majority of 3.0 tomes have been great, but SBG are in a fairly unique spot with the amount of subfactions/different mechanics and abilities and access to different tables of artefacts and traits for each one. I must admit I'm a little worried they will water each one down and give us a single table of artefacts/traits. That said, maybe that won't be such a bad thing? Half of them are useless currently anyway.

I think the one I posted is from the female vampire in the crimson court.

Feet definitely were. The gloved hand with ornate blade i remember too but I'm sure that was solved a while back though I can't remember the exact mini - crimson court? A slaanesh release? Edit: was this the gloved hand one?

New priest.... or base of valkias spear is my guess.

What ones has whitefang hinted at?

Trueblades seem quite cool, not sure they'll be worth taking over GG but they could be fun in a kastelai army for full vampire lists.

So with everyone and their nan getting access to mortal wound saves, death is feeling less unique in that regard. Also soulblight is now the only death army still restricted when it comes to their mortal wound save (be near a hero or grave). Do we think this will change? Personally I hope so... graves could be such a cool mechanic, already playing a pivotal role with ressurections, but what I'd like to see is a buff to our ward saves for being near them. Or maybe a 'ressurection' mechanic like necrons in 40k - let's say if you're within 12 of a grave and a model dies, you roll a dice and on a 5+ the model returns. Just a thought after seeing FEC now getting 6+ ward without restrictions as before. What do we think, will we be next to just have the ward?

I can't remember where I saw it, but there was a mention of what goes into points for units, and allegiance abilities and ability access goes into points decisions too - also don't forget gutrippaz have 2" range so always fight in 2 ranks minimum (big nerf with the new ghb with the 0.5 inch attacking in 2 ranks thing, but still 2 inch range is/has been great). Before the new ghb dire wolves would find it extremely difficult to get more than 5 or 6 attacking without breaking cohesion, gutrippaz didn't care. Dire wolves do f all in the save stacking meta, gutrippaz don't care. The downside to gutrippaz for me is that they don't really fulfil a role that the army needs. You can build around them to be absolute glass cannons, but you already have boltboyz etc. For mortal wound output and heroes for hammers. I can't see them reducing their cost without removing/changing access to mortals on 5s and 2 mortals on 6s etc. Off topic a bit...

Yeah I was so hopeful for them to reduce his cost and remove/change hand of dust. Currently he's really just a gimmick for 1k points, it was just going to be a fun friendly battle nagash vs teclis. At least he still has to be within 3 (or pay extra for portal) and cast it, get through unbinds (a lot of auto unbind now), and then it's a 50% chance of a kill, so you can play around it a little. Especially if he doesn't bring portal.

Yea it's all personal experience I guess! And depends on lists, sometimes feels like you could reveal lists and be like ok you win let's do another lol. Again, I'm not saying LRL are too good or anything and theyre not stomping tournaments. They just have a fair few examples of what I personally feel results in NPE - mass Mortal shooting, impossible to catch movement, super tanky capability, auto casting at high value etc etc. It may not be OP a lot of the time, but it has resulted in NPE. Another example of mass mortals - I've used skarbrand before and in a single turn killed a keeper and shalaxi. I've also used him and killed the glottkin + a blob of rats (2v2) and it didn't feel good on my end either, felt like it took the fun from the game. My insenate rage bloodthirster sometimes does 0 damage, sometimes does like 20 and 10+ mortals to everything around him. It's again what I mentioned about units being 'swingy' it can lead to NPE on both teams. It just seems that there's such a huge amount of mortal output at the moment and I can't see it toning down, as in some cases it's needed with the sheer amount of save stacking capability.

My point is that you can't really interact with it, which leads to NPE. The khorne list you mentioned revolves around a slaughterpriest. He has to chant (yea with rerolls) but can easily die, chants can be unchanted (cant remember the technical term), attempts can happen x2 per round, the bloodthirster can barely do anything at range, so you have time and screens, it doesn't do mortals so you can save and fight back, or use shenanigans like fight last, opponent might make mistakes and have to pick a different unit to fight first, meaning you get to fight the target before getting hit, they may fail charges, you may get the drop on them etc. Not rolling for spells could be less NPE if it was their casting value, like 6, 7 or 8 but 10+ as the worst case is just a bit lame.

I don't like to bring npe or play against it, so have never brought 140 zombies so can't comment really. Plus the thought of building and painting that many makes me want to puke....might try it on tts one day.

Yea I get that - I'm really hoping it doesn't go the 40k way with huge amounts of rend. The armies I play and play against in my group have little access to rend, and 2 to 3 is rare (other than beasts of chaos now lol) so when we come across stacking it's just not fun. Maybe the issue lies with the amount of rend in the game? There's definitely too many mortals imo.

Standard teclis, wardens, sentinels and a few other support - I'm not hating or saying the army is op or anything, just an example of how save stacking can be silly. Pretty sure the garrisoned hero was the dude that can plant the banner, so it was +1 save command, +1 gem, +1 cover and +1 heroic action, which, imo, just shouldn't be able to happen. I'd like to see a cap at save stacking of +2 maybe? 29 shots with 5s doing mortals, ignoring line of sight at 30 inch range definitely is NPE, that's the main thing in LRL that's just silly imo. Yeah you can say 'on average' its like 7-9 mortals for 500 points, but thats 7-9 mortals to pretty much whatever you want, without your opponent being able to stop you in a lot of cases, *per turn*. There's not many units in the game that could take out a 150-200 point unit turn 1, and continue to take out 150-200 points every single turn. Melee mortals are nothing in comparison as you can easily play around them with screens and movement, they also have the pre requisite of needing a successful charge first. Every army has something to help against melee, even if it just a chaff screen. Not every army has something to stop extremely good mortal wound ranged. The huge swings are what ruin it. I've played nagash vs teclis and 30 sentinels before and nagash died turn 1. It was a mixture of horrendous luck on my part (misscast on first spell) and disgustingly good luck on my opponents part (teclis hit everything through portal and got so many 6s, archers hit a crazy amount of 5+s). As others have said, these type of abilities would probably be wayyyy less 'NPE' if they were on the wound roll instead. Luckily my opponent knows it and only brings 20 or less most battles. Tbh anything dishing out mortals at range is a bit of a weird one in my opinion, you can't really avoid it with the non existing terrain rules in AoS. Take boltboyz as another example - kruleboyz are in no way op, but the boltboyz can just downright make the game not fun with wild swings and lots of 5s and 6s alongside the sludgeraker. I also don't agree with wardens not being able to screen anything in the game. They're an extremely good unit and also have access to the once per game gem, -1 to hit formation, d3 mortals when they get charged, +1 to save command, 5++ from teclis, maybe a +1 from mystic shield and suddenly they're -1 to hit, immune to rend 3 and, if they have their spell on, dish out crazy damage - again the swings of loads of 5s. I've had a unit of 5 wardens kill a full health vengorian lord before even rolling wound rolls. This isn't just wardens - again just an example. Picking a different army (one that I play) - blood knights, built in 6++ pretty much, 3+ base save, lots of access in the army to debuffs like -1 to hit, wound or attacks, can receive cover, mystic shield etc. It all adds up extremely quickly. However, the main difference is that I have to cast those spells, and potentially get dispelled. Which brings me back to my original post - automatic abilities like auto casting on 10+ is just NPE. I don't care how much you spend on a unit, with abilities like that it'll always feel bad for the opponent. If your opponent can't get to teclis to kill him, your army will most likely always have all the best spells up every turn, with no risk of failure. And that leads to NPE for the opponent, and is something (along with 30 inch ignoring los archers) I hope they tweak in the new book. I don't want them to become bad, my brother plays LRL and I like them, but armies/units can be good and fun to use/play against without being frustrating for the opponent. Something else I've thought about, being an avid 40k player too, is the 'cap' they have in 40k - take necrons for example, can spend a stratagem (cp) to do mortal wounds on 6s to hit (or wound can't remember), but it caps at 3 and any other 6s are just successful hits.

But then it leads to more and more mortal wound abilities like we have now to have a way around save stacking, +1 save command is good enough imo without adding in heroic action +1, LRL gems +1, cover +1, mystic shield +1 and garrison etc. on top of it. Wouldn't be so bad if it was 40k where the 'rend' is off the chain and incredibly common. Units being able to easily ignore rend 3 makes people lean more into the mortal spam as well, because what's the point in anything else? One thing I agree with is heroes need to stick around more - but they went about it the wrong way, they just need a better los rule to make it harder to auto kill smaller heroes at distance. I'm not sure I agree with all hammers killing everything by turn 3, this is where msu and screens come in, but when your screen can suddenly be +3 save it gets a little silly. Even if it was a lot dead by turn 3, there's only 2 turns left in the battle, things have to kill and get killed otherwise it'd lead to boring stalemates if the majority of your army was still alive and kicking turn 3 and into 4. Granted I like the bonus to save command and the choice between that or +1 to hit, and mystic shield is way more beneficial now than ever, and generally am loving 3rd, however they clearly introduced these mechanics without a thought to the broken NPE combos it would introduce.

Oh yea I agree with a lot of what you've said but this one hits home. LRL heroes are unkillable for a round and near enough the whole battle, especially when garrisoned. A little 5 wound hero once tanked my prince vhordrai and some other stuff as he was sat in the waterfall scenery. I charged him, and he popped +1 to save command, used the gem thing LRL have for +1, was in scenery for +1 and -1 to hit, so a 100 point 5 wound hero suddenly was -1 to hit and immune to rend 3 and had a 5+ ward. I really hope they remove save stacking. The +1 command is fine if there is very minimal access to other buffs, with an army like LRL its way too good. It may be better if cover provided something different, such as reroll 1s or something.

Gotta be mortal wound spam for me. Shooting mortals at that. At least against melee I can screen and move around. The terrain in AoS has barely any impact. Shooting mortals on 5+ or better and its just downright boring and not fun. You may as well just say 'I pick this hero or lord and they're dead', feels like there's literally no point in rolling dice, which is the point of the game. Imo shooting mortals on 6s is already strong, shouldn't be able to ignore line of sight, should be short range and there should be no way *at all* to make it better than 6s. It literally just removes fun. In general I feel like NPE is usually around changing the core rules of the game. No rolls to hit, wound or save vs mortals. No line of sight archers, spending 2x commands to do a single ability, casting spells automatically with the worse being a 10 - at least a lord of change or even nagash still has to roll, which means they can misscast, not cast, cast on a lower value and be dispelled - it leads to the hope of interaction with the opponents abilities or even actual interaction and dispelling. Hoping they change teclis in the next book to have to roll. Sounds like I'm talking about LRL - it just so happens they have access to a lot of NPE, but boltboyz, dragons etc all can too.

Okay after some tweaking of lists, reading of rules and playing my first game with the ghosts (tts) they play way differently to sbg and I love it. They're *so fast* and manoeuvrable with retreat and charge. Olynder had put in work. The chagr ability they all get is tasty. I've only played one game but already feels like cheap screens and landing your charges is even more important with the ghosts. Ethereal is still sweet. Was thinking 4+ ethereal won't be as great now everyone has such easy access to save stacking, but it's nice being able to just not care about what rend is coming in. My chainrasps suffered. I think msu or bigger blobs is needed in the new ghb. Black coach is f***** awesome. Near enough always has 4+ ward and shooting 3d3 mortals and then d3 on charge is sick.

Yea tbh that describes it so well! They sound fun and different to my current armies, so would feel fun having different styles even though they're all death.

Ah yes I remember looking at the torments, that is cool. Shame about the terminexus... so it's better for characters/spirit hosts or using as a bomb to enemies. Seems a little pricey but would be fun to try, feel like lifeswarm is probably the better option. Yeah I've toyed with some lists and seems like 2x20 ghasts is my goto base and then sprinkle in some blades etc. Cheers!

Random one for you ghost boys... Thinking about collecting Nighthaunt. I already collect Soulblight, FEC, and Necrons in 40k... you can probably see a bit of a theme. I like 'undead style armies, love the new rules for Nighthaunt, seem super cool and thematic. My question is - how do they play in comparison to my other armies who have a lot of 'tankiness' in terms of models coming back to life, whole units coming back etc. Nighthaunt, from what I can see, only have the one hero (not including Olynder) who can regularly bring ghosts back - the little wizard dude, can't remember his name, and the mortalis terminexus endless which is quite pricey. Do you feel the hits when your elite ghosts die, such as Bladegheists? One of my favourite things about soulblight is how it never feels too bad losing some Grave Guard, as they will come back anyway (unless fully destroyed - which still may come back half strength). Do ghosts have anything similar to this that I've missed? I'm going to try some games on TTS and get a feel for them before I commit, but thought I'd come here too!