Elmir

Well... Black knights already had a few eyebrown raising decisions in the upgrade. Everything with the old shield rule, just had a flat +1 to their save. They seemed to completely forget about that with black knights. If they had that, the warscroll could find itself in the middle ground between those two, with a little points tweak. But as things stand right now, this warscroll would have to insanely cheap to even consider it.

Personally, I'm happy we will be seeing an AoS third edition coming up... Even if second edition didn't feel like it lasted very long due to lockdowns. That being said, I don't think AoS3 is going to help a lot to fix a lot of balance issue the game faces right now, as most of the NPE/balance issues right now are heavily tied to single warscrolls/allegiance abilities and not so much the general rules (except maybe excessive shooting). I'm also not a big fan of Psychic awakening style books bringing a couple of pages of rules for multiple factions... This type of rules diffusion killed everybody's interest in 40k locally, and they are bringing it to AoS now. It's just not nice to drag along multiple books to field a single army. The day GW decides to dump the battletome/expansion book as a rulessource and swaps to a way more flexible card system (to do targeted fixes to bad warscrolls/abilities, both in OP or UP sense), this game has a shot at being better balanced while still being practical.

I used an airbrush, but it works with rattlecans too. I used it on the punga miniatures team and started with a black primer with white over the top. I then hit it with an all over black wash and a quick white drybrush to pick out the edges. Applying contrast over that, pretty much made the models look like they were given proper highlights, even though they didn't. This doesn't work for all contrast paints though (it looks horrid with colours like apothecary white or aethermathic blue). Thinning the contrast depends on the power of the contrast paint. Some of them are very pigment dense, others less so. It's all about experimenting with that a bit. It works better for an overall muted colour palette, where you can get away with doing very few saturated colours to offset it. I did that with my blood bowl black orc team: You can also do a brown primer with white zenithal over it, if you want to avoid the black areas and get a warmer tone for the contrast paints.

Good lord. That warscroll sounds like it's hideous to face... It's not like you can't do anything about his charge mechanic, but for a lot of monsters, this guy can just smash a keypiece by just charging it. Bit swingy. If Nagash has been bumped to 975, surely this guy has to be very close to that amount.

The vengorian lord is also finished! Tried to make a smoother transition from beast to vampire through the paintjob compared to the box art.

And the Cursed City box is complete! Amazing models, just such a shame about how the release was handled...

With all of his jumping out of combat, you could call him Mannfrog, the mortarch of Fright....

Per point... There is literally no difference that 5+ save makes when zombies are 2/3 of the cost that skeletons are. In fact, rend only makes killing an equal amount of points of skellies more efficient compared to zombies.

This why I'm really curious to see what happens with both CP generation, what generals do and what generic CAs still remain. Insane bravery going away is something I'm a strong proponent of... It already makes the battleshock phase a nothing burger, even with limited amounts of CP. And now, they really seem to suggest you get more CP... If CP generation is somehow tied to your general still being alive (and that is a strong hunch I'm getting, as they seem to get inspiration from Ossiarch RDP), I could see Vyrkos getting kinda insane.

I don't want to charge even with zombies... I would much rather have them shamble out of 3" into combat due to their 6" move, giving me a lot more control over target selection instead of being forced to have to strike last before their abilities are "useful".

Then try to argue for the fact that getting a worse tanking unit in skeletons is somehow the smarter choice compared to just getting the tankier, faster and harder hitting Blood knights instead? If a tanky unit is what you are after... Skeletons lose out in damage and flexibilty/tricks compared to zombies for your battle line, and with the mega fast blood knights being one of the tankiest units in the game, they kind of also lose out against those too in that department. I just don't see a place for the humble skelly in this book.

no, you are giving zombies the handicap of needing a 140 vampire for their tanking and that is BOLLOCKS, either you compare their tanking (have fun doing that after a battleround where they add their damage to their numbers if they strike first btw, because they it would matter) So no, some people here are still having a hard time swallowing that bitter pill that the humble old skeleton... is just plain not that good anymore and is outshined by the way more versatile zombie.

I'm actually quite curious how the interaction will be between those models getting ressed vs how many will count for the inevitable battleshock that follows. The wording of the AoS3 battleshock will matter a lot on having to take those resurrected casualties into account or not for your final battleshock test.

In this one very particular situation... tanking stuff... And we have an army that has plain ol' better units to tank damage than these guys. The fact that zombies are just plain easier to manipulate to strike first with their pile-in shenanigans, gain ablative wounds when they do pull off the "insane" buff (which btw, isn't even at full potential when talking about Vyrkos builds) and all round scale better because of lower points per model, they are the better all rounders by a long shot.

Ironically, you seem to miss that those skeletons are also getting necro support in that comparison vs the vargheists. You also don't need zombies to be ridiculous all the time. The point is that you can GET them to be ridiculous while regular skeletons just plain can't. A unit who's ability requires it to get close to massacred before it's semi useful, is just plain not as good... not in an army that already doesn't lack tanky units in the form of blood knights who are, even without support, one of the tankiest units in the game.... and if you give them support, can become downright obnoxious while still being fast. Skeleton usefulness is VERY circumstantial while zombies have got a lot more going for them in general... Even if there are some fringe cases where the enemy can spend a ton of attack power to destroy a 230p unit. They are our new skinks... another unit that needs a bit of support to get there, but (like you said) can become insane when you do.

looks like it... Ignoring modifiers is good, but you'll still have to get more graveguard compared to normal skellies I think if you want to be very competitive. normal skellies were the absolute best choice compared to zombies in the previous book and it seems they took the nerfbat straight to the teeth because of that. But Legion of Blood would still be the army you'd take to make them work better. You'll also be able to try bravery debuffs. If AoS3 changes up the battleshock phase more (or hopefully removes insane bravery flat out), this could work better. With current insane bravery, the battleshock phase seems almost skippable.

The problem is that both those units fill a very different role (obviously) and skeletons have 1 major problem... They need to compare to that other battleline unit, the zombie... Who has: - a less restrictive regeneration mechanic (no need to strike last and can even take a unit above starting size) - has no 5+ save.... but are 2/3 the points cost of skellies, so that's a really moot point. - A lot better offensive output. - Seemingly better synergy with a lot of abilities found in the book. - the option to do MWs to make them able to take on even heavily armoured threats (and looking at the rumours for AoS3: that's going to be a lot more common than it is now). - That amazing 6" pile in, making charges a moot point and REALLY adding to board control options to avoid getting sucked into combat with them. So I think the real problem for skellies isn't the comparison to Grave guard (whose offensive output is some of the most insane in the game, especially considering the allegiance abilities this army has), but the comparison to the other basic battle line unit that outperforms it in pretty much every aspect... The only upside skellies have: - can take per 10 if you are just looking at fulfilling your battle line tax. It really sucks, but I'm afraid skellies are shelf sitters until the next book comes up.

That's only going to be an option for about 2 months though. That being said, I don't see any point in running any NH after that. The SGL books locks out any non-SGL summonable units from their army rules... Can't use invocation on them, can't use endless legion on them. The books are well and truly operating on their own now LoN is scrapped.

Must have not played NH for a while. At it's current 220p, I almost never leave home without it. That being siad, it's not like it makes NH a good faction.

After initially being annoyed that all the stuff that used to be good, is now bad and vice versa (and a few warscrolls that are just plain not worth taking), there's one thing I really appreciate: This seems to be the first book with subfactions that doesn't try to lock you in for your command trait and artifact. This book is a design win compared to others for that reason.

Deathtriders fly out! Finished the first 5 out of 20 hexwraith proxies that can be 3D printed from Fleshcraft Studios:

OOF, spanish skeleton warscroll leaked. Skellies are down to 1A per model, no unit size bonusses to that, but they gained an ability to come back on a 4+ when selected to fight. I won't miss having to roll 120 attacks twice, but this is very poor output now and they do get massively outshined by zombies now it seems, who can be tanky and killy.

Vampires only give +1A to summonable units now... no more hypercharged blood knights afaik, they are stuck at 3A.

For me, it's the exact opposite. I had a unit of 40 skellies and another unit of 20 that I felt like I should really expand to 40 to be useful. Well... That problem fixed itself!

Oh boy... This book is full of stealth nerfs all over the place. Like I imagined, vampire lord is now only M6 with fly, his save went up by 1point BUT: his command ability is now reduced from 15" to wholly within 12" and can only be used on summonable units instead of any units. And no points adjustments... Sad, but the humble foot vampire is really no longer worth it to field in a competitive setting.