swarmofseals

Crimson Court models come to mind.

Which Radukar to take is going to be an interesting question. Beast does a lot more, but Wolf is going to be awfully difficult to kill when supported by Nightguard and he fills one of those coveted "small hero" slots for battalions which is kinda huge for Soulblight.

DISCLAIMER: this is based entirely on my own opinion/speculation and not inside information in any way. I think that factors like army popularity are definitely a part of the picture but I'd bet that there are some very significant factors going on behind the scenes: Indomitus was a perfect storm. 40k is more popular, Space Marines are useful to a huge percentage of 40k players, there was a lot of excitement around the Necrons as well. A couple of months into the pandemic people were starting to look for hobbies and more willing to spend on this kind of thing. Perhaps more importantly the box dropped after a couple of months of lockdown likely hamstrung GW's production. Conclusion: Indomitus demand was likely inflated by both situational and intrinsic factors while supply was likely reduced by situational factors Meanwhile as others have noted Dominion does not have the same intrinsic advantages as Indomitus. The playerbase is smaller and neither of the factions carry the excitement of Indomitus factions. Furthermore, GW is used to the effect of lockdowns on production now and has had a lot of time to build up stock for the release. I wonder if GW reduced production of things like Cursed City in order to make sure there's plenty of Dominion supply. They also put in place the queue system which cut scalpers off at the knees and may have depressed sales a little by reducing impulse purchases (probably not a big factor). A situational factor that might impact sales is the recent lifting of lockdowns. People are spending aggressively on experiences now (eating out, vacations/travel), which is perhaps reducing demand for goods and hobbies. I'm not sure how much of a factor this is, but it's basically the opposite of what happened last Summer and likely works against Dominion. Conclusion: Dominion doesn't have the intrinsic or situational factors to increase demand and possibly has situational factors that reduce demand a bit. There are no factors that reduce supply. I also think that this edition is shaking up the rules more significantly than 2.0 did. Personally, I am very confident that AoS 3.0 will be a better game than 2.0 and I think it's likely that it will be better by a large margin. But it will take getting used to, and people are definitely resistant to change.

@Gery81 and @Ghoooouls just keep in mind that the ability only lets you pile in an extra 3", it doesn't allow you to be selected to pile in from >3". So you still need to be within 3" to fight, you just get to "go deeper" when you do fight. Note that this is different from the zombie pile in, which reads "this unit is eligible to fight in the combat phase if it is within 6" of an enemy unit..." thus allowing zombies to pile in from outside of 3. Sangine Blur lacks this key bit of text.

@Neil Arthur Hotep Roar prevents command abilities in the combat phase only, so it and the Horrorghast are serving two completely different roles. I also am a bit skeptical about trying to longball Grave Guard into something from the grave. You're only going to have two gravesites forward enough to matter on turn 1/2 most likely, not to mention that cogs only has a range of 6 and the GG will need to be wholly within 18" of that. So you're limited to wholly within 12" of maybe two gravesites, outside of 9 of the enemy and wholly within 24" of a hero that must be in your territory. That's very restrictive, so it should be very easy for the opponent to predict where the GG are coming in and screen off those angles, so you'll likely need to get a double turn to do real damage. So even if we assume you resolve cogs, you're looking at a 66% chance of getting stuck in and then a 33% chance of getting the double turn, so a "success" case of only ~22%. If you don't make the double turn then you're likely in trouble as the opponent will very easily charge your unsupported 420 point unit.

The Anointed on Frostheart with Arcane Tome tech is pretty excellent, especially for Hallowheart as he's a good target to take the damage from Arcane Channeling. Under the old rules that wouldn't be so, but now ward rolls appear to be optional: "up to 1 ward roll can be made for each wound or mortal wound." So you can use Witness to Destiny to have a greater degree of control over how much damage you take from the ability.

Keep in mind that these rules are for events at Warhammer World and/or major tournaments being held by GW. There are loads of FLGS and independent GTs that allow 3rd party models, bits, conversions etc. I think that if GW tried to ban non-gw paint then it would really undermine any efforts for their tournaments to be taken seriously.

I think the official rule is that the 3d printer parts have to not be generally commercially available. If you commission someone else to make the STL files for you and then use them for your personal use that's still OK, but if the parts or files can be bought by anyone on a website then that's a no-go.

Personally I'd go 40 zombies + Necromancer. 40 zombies cover more space and have slightly more effective wounds at a slightly cheaper cost. I like the Necromancer over VL on foot because its much harder to snipe and will carry a useful spell for the turns where you aren't using Vanhel's. And if you are using Radukar or Mannfred, double tapping a 2-3 attack zombie unit is better than turning a 2-3 attack Zombie unit into a 3-4 attack zombie unit especially given that it doesn't require an extra CP.

Just use a blank base and label it?

The ability that allows them to add a zombie on a 2+ when they kill a model.

Ahh good catch, they haven't updated the app. Still wondering if I am remembering incorrectly or not about Hand of Dust range extension.

Depending on the table Ghost Mist could be useful but I wouldn't count on it too much. The range is super short so you basically have to start your turn near the terrain feature, successfully cast the spell, and then end up still close enough to the terrain feature after you move to break line of sight from enemy shooters AND the enemy shooters have to be slow enough that they can't move and regain line of sight. In other news, Nagash is a PRIEST, and that now actually means something!

I vaguely remember the rules changing at some point stipulating that Hand of Dust can't have it's range extended but I can't seem to find it anywhere. Am I misremembering this? If not, does anyone remember where that errata can be found? I'm not seeing it on Nagash's current warscroll, which makes me think we can Hand of Dust through spellportal again.

I kinda disagree with you on the artefacts, and strongly disagree with you about the spells. Invigorating aura does not get doubled because only Lore of Vampires and Lore of Deathmages spells get doubled, and it belongs to neither lore. I'm also not a fan of Blades of Shyish or Soulpike. Soulpike is OK, but you can't stack it more than once on the same target and your opponent has complete control over whether it triggers. It's useless against any enemy unit that doesn't care about being in combat, and it's useless against units that you've already charged. So basically the only good targets for it are: enemy units within 18" during your hero phase that you don't plan to charge that turn but will definitely need to charge you during their next turn. That's a pretty limited criteria, and even then it's only doing 3-4 mw on average which isn't that much. Blades of Shyish is just very minor chip damage. Orb is OK but the range is so short and even then you really need to line up at least 3 enemy units in order for it to be a significant amount of damage. To me the special character lineup is completely irrelevant. I agree that Radukar and Belladamma are both awesome units, but you don't have to be Vyrkos to take them. Radukar barely benefits from being in Vyrkos at all as he isn't a caster. IMO Radukar is arguably better buffing Blood Knights in Kastelai. Belladamma is great in any bloodline. She is a little better in Vyrkos for sure, but it's hardly necessary to make her good. Annika and Kritza are both mediocre in terms of offensive efficiency but I do think they could see some play, particularly Kritza. But again, they barely benefit from being in Vyrkos at all. I totally agree that Pack Alpha is awesome. IMO it's a bigger reason to go Vyrkos than the rerolls to cast. There are also some flaws in your analysis that I can't discuss until the full rules are released but suffice to say it's not a big deal. Anyway, the TL;DR is that I completely agree that Vyrkos is awesome. What I disagree with is that it is vastly better than the other bloodlines (like Petrifex was with OBR) to the point where the other bloodlines aren't worth consideration. I think that there is a very real possibility that the other bloodlines can put up lists that are just as competitive if not more competitive (metagame depending) than Vyrkos. It's possible that Vyrkos is the best bloodline, but I think not by such a degree that the others should be ignored by competitive players.

I definitely think Kastelai wants Belladamma. Maybe not all builds, but she really isn't out of place (at least in a competitive sense). Her role is to mess with the opponent's movement, shut down ranged units/unleash hell, and perhaps to provide some buffs. She can actually keep up with BKs too due to her speed. I'm also not sure that Vyrkos wants a Necromancer any more or less than Kastelai does. Kastelai lists could easily end up running some Zombie blocks for objectives purposes, and there are several excellent Deathmages spells that work well for any subfaction.

This was my initial take when reading the tome, but the more time I have spent with it the more I think that the opposite is true. At first I thought the Vyrkos abilities are obviously better because both abilities are very strong in a vacuum, and most of the other faction abilities are either weaker or redundant. Kastelai looked good too because of battleline Blood Knights. This analysis broke down for me when I started to really dig into listbuilding. For one, the soulblight factions are not like the OBR factions in that there is no shared pool of command traits and artefacts, and no mandatory artefact or trait choice. When you look at the complete list of abilities and artefacts, each subfaction has something interesting to offer. Legion of Blood has very meh battle traits but it does have access to Soulbound Garments which are a great combo with Neferata. There are some other good artefact and command trait choices as well. Legion of Night has decent battle traits and access to the excellent Morbheg's Claw, multiple excellent command trait options, and some respectable secondary artefact choices. Kastelai Dynasty's battle traits are a bit of a question mark. The deep strike ability is good but less good than Legion of Night, and I really don't know how good Might of the Crimson Keep is. Battleline Blood Knights is fantastic though, and there are some good command trait and artefact choices... just nothing that stands out quite like Morbheg's Claw or Soulbound Garments. Vyrkos Dynasty's reroll ability is way worse than it seems. Overall the vampire spells suck. The only vampire spells that are really worthwhile are the Mortarch's spells, Vhordrai's spell, and Belladamma's spells. Of those only Belladamma can benefit from the rerolls, and with a built in +1 and access to tons of other bonuses she doesn't really need the rerolls all that much. The Sangsyron artefact is good, but only on the VLoZD and I'm not sure there is room for one of those in the top builds. I could be wrong on that though. Pack Alpha is one of the best command traits though. The only subfaction that I'm really not sold at all on is Avengorii, but I could be wrong on that. Overall I think that Legion of Blood Soulbound+Neferata combo is a little overrated (there are plenty of ways to get +1 save), but it's still powerful. I could see Night, Vyrkos and Kastelai all providing top tier builds.

Just a reminder to take rumors and leaks with a grain of salt!

@Neil Arthur Hotep zombies might even be taken in blocks of 60 now if reinforcement rules supercede the old max unit sizes. We'll see. And yeah, the reinforcement rules are one of the reasons why I wasn't quite so down on Skeleton Warriors as many. I still don't like them in large blocks, but at min size they will perform well against other small units. For example, even a 10 model unit with a profile of 2/3+/3+/-1/1 will struggle to get through 10 skeletons in melee, killing about 6 of them on average. You get 3 back when you hit back bringing you back up to 7. You might lose 1 or 2 more if you are unlucky to battleshock, but at this rate it will take the enemy several rounds of combat to grind down the skeletons and that's not accounting for any models that you manage to bring back. As the skeletons chip away they will quickly stabilize. Something like a unit of 5 Liberators is just never going to push 10 skeletons off an objective unless they get very lucky. I like 30 skeletons less because at that size if they run into an equal strength unit they will be in a position to lose a lot more models to battleshock, which will greatly accelerate the pace at which the unit falls apart.

Updated extensively!

While WarCom has been known to make errors in the past, I am confident that this is not an error.

I agree with @Neil Arthur Hotep. Kritza is particularly interesting for small games.

One thing that I'd like to explore is 5 vs 10 squads of Blood Knights, particularly in Kastelai. With 10 you're going to probably not get them all in combat very often but should hold effectiveness for longer despite casualties which could be a big deal with the Kastelai bonuses. Surviving a combat with 5-6 knights left and +1 damage is much better than 1-2 knights limping out with the bonus. EDIT: also 3 vs 6 squads of Vargheists. Any DoK player knows how valuable even limp noodle Khinerai were as a backline threat, forcing the opponent to camp their objectives. In some ways Vargheists do this even better as 3 Vargheists can easily wreck most chaff units and take a bit of effort to remove. A 6 squad is a real threat though, but it comes at a higher cost if you hold them back waiting for an opening. Tough call.

I'm searching for bits! Looking for any of the following: Blood Knight UNHELMETED heads (will also buy complete unbuilt kits) Dragon Prince right arms (lances, swords, musician, standard, pauldrons) Dragon Prince shields (don't need the arms, just the shields) Bretonnian shields of all sorts Candles -- will consider any random candles from whatever GW kit has them (empire? sisters of battle?) Happy to pay cash or trade from my extensive collection. Have loads of models and bits including hard to find stuff like Tomb Kings. I'm in the US but will even consider international purchases if the quantity is enough to justify postage.

gut punch! No in the US sadly =(