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The Vargheists are very thematic. They can hit hard and can get around fast too. You may have a good job getting to objectives with them, but and issue holding them. Grabbing some wolves may be good for actually holding down those objectives. Both are good choices. The vargheists are more thematic and those bonuses could be juicy. But dire wolves can help you build up a new army if you shift focus from the Kastelai in the future.

Soulblight Gravelords Requires - Soulblight Gravelords Battletome The Soulblight Gravelords are one of the most versatile Death alliances. This army has a fairly large unit roster and a variety of sub-factions to choose from. The units in this army come from three categories, Soulblight, Deathrattle and Deadwalkers. The battleline units for this army can vary depending on the sub faction, but the basic units are deathrattle skeletons, dire wolves and deadwalker zombies. These basic battline troops are cheap and can be versatile. They also lend themselves to being your oversized units. A nice big, cheap block of undead can really bog down a foe. If you choose to have a Wight King as a general, then Grave Guard can also be added to this list. Which is a solid choice for players who want their infantry to be slightly more robust. Key abilities The abilities of a Soulblight Gravelords embody the Death GA. Reanimated Horrors allow you to break down your opponent’s bravery. While Deathly Invocation allows you to heal and revive injured units. Subfactions - Legions of Undead The sub factions for the Soulblight Gravelords are plentiful and can shift your play style. Each one has their own pros and cons. Here we will briefly go over each subfaction. The Legion of Blood focuses on combining soulblight vampires with death rattle skeletons. This is the legion of the Mortarch of Blood, Neferatta and compliments her style very well. The Favoured Retainers ability allows you to ignore negatives on attack and wound melee rolls for deathrattle units while in range of vampires (please note, this is all vampires, not just vampire heroes). Black Knights are added to your battleline roster, which works well with the Favoured Retainers ability. Legion of the Night focuses on using your core battleline units and ambushes. This is the legion of the Mortarch of Night, Manfred von Carstein. The core ability in this faction is Ageless Cunning, which allows you to place 1 unit in ambush for every unit you have on the battlefield. Which works well with the other ability, The Bait, allowing your deathrattle and deadwalker units to receive a bonus to their save rolls on the first battle round. The intention for these abilities is obvious, to set up your weak units on the battlefield and allow your elite units to appear behind enemy lines to flank. This is especially effective with vargheists being added to your battleline roster. These fast moving, flying units can be devastating and could potentially ruin your opponents' day. Vyrkos Dynasty uses core battleline units and soulblight vampire heroes. The thing that sets this one apart from the others is the number of cheap named characters. If you include those from the Cursed City game, you can access 8 unique heroes and 3 unique units with this keyword. Which is what sets them aside from the Legion of Blood. As they both buff weaker non-vampire units as long as vampires are nearby. In this case, the ability Strength of the Pack is the Wolf adds as bonus to wound rolls for deathrattle and deadwalker units. The intention here is to use a variety of cheaper vampire heroes to buff your units, and with the number of unique units on offer, this is very achievable. Kastelani Dynasty focuses purely on soulblight vampires, both heroes and units. The big thing here is that Blood Knights are a battleline for this faction, who can be set up in ambush thanks to the Shifting Keep ability. The Shifting Keep functions like Ageless Cunning, but it’s exclusively for Blood Knights here. Not only that but the Might of the Crimson Keep ability allows you to buff your vampire units as they kill in battle. Depending on what they kill they can get buffs in their wounds, charge rolls and even damage. This is a subfaction for those who like hard-hitting, fast moving, elite units. Avengori Dynasty is a monster faction, full of big beasties. Terrorgheist and zombie dragons get added to your batteline list. The faction specific rules further enhance the capabilities of monsters too. Nothing really stands out to take note of other than the Cursed Abomination ability, which grants an extra ability to one of your monsters. The Vengorian Lords and the unique hero Lauka Vai are made for the Avengorii, being monsters themselves they make wonderful leaders for those that don’t like the idea of a Vampire Lord on a Zombie Dragon. Ultimately this faction relies on how appealing the idea of big monsters is for you. I mean, who doesn’t like giant monsters? Putting things together like a true necromancer Outside of the core abilities and the subfactions, the Soulblight Gravelords have several other tricks they keep up their sleeves. Most notably the amount of units that apply buffs to friendly units. Corpse Carts are an excellent example of this. The Lodestone carts buff zombies and Soulblight Gravelord Wizards. While the Balefire variant debuffs enemy units and wizards. Depending on your army either can be a valuable asset to your army. Similarly Mortis Engines, Sanguine Thrones and Bloodseeker Palanquins are powerful focal points for an army that can lean into a variety of play styles. Mortis Engines are powerful AoE weapons that can buff your wizards. Bloodseeker Palanquins are deadly hero hunters that can pick apart notable heroes and buff nearby vampires as an extra trophy. These two also have access to the Wail of Doom ability which can potentially do D3 damage to every unit in range. The Coven Throne is a hero unit complete with a command ability, it provides a plethora of buffs and a powerful debuff spell, Shudder. Shudder, when cast, can essentially place an enemy unit out of commission for an entire turn. Any one of these centerpiece units can be a fine addition to any army. Oh and yes they can all fly, which is very useful for getting them in the correct position. There is also a common misconception that this army is slow, which is understandable because zombies are not quite known for their speed. But a Soulblight Gravelord army can be quite fast and manoeuvrable. Dire Wolves, for instance, are a core battle line that can effectively tie up enemy units at a low cost. Both Black Knights and Blood Knights are decent cavalry units for their costs. Vampirice units like vargheists and fell bats are not only quick, but can fly too. So never be afraid to throw in a quick unit or two to bog down your opponent or even surprise them with how quickly your shambling corpses can move. Magic The Soulblight Gravelords have an advantage over other factions in that they have two whole lores of magic to choose from, as well as a bonus spell for all their wizards. First up is Invigorating Aura, the spell every wizard in this army gets. This is a cornerstone spell for the army. It heals 3 wounds on a summonable unit wholly within 18” of the caster. The first spell lore is the lore of the vampires and can be cast by (you guessed it) vampires. The selling point of this spell lore is it’s damage, with only one of the six spells being support spells. The highlight spell for this lore is Soulspike. This spell has rarely done me wrong. It’s cast on a unit within 18”. If that unit charges then you roll a dice and deliver a mortal wound for every 4+. The better the charge roll, the more dice you get. This can lock down strong charging units out of fear from harm, or better yet break them down before combat. The second lore of magic is the lore of deathmages. Which can be cast by mortarchs and deathmages (aka necromancers). This spell lore is more about debuffing foes, with only one spell to cause actual damage. The highlight spells here are a trifecta; Overwhelming Dread, Fading Vigour and Decrepify. Overwhelming Dread reduces an enemy unit’****** roll results by 1, while Fading Vigour reduces an enemy unit’s attack characteristic by 1. While Decrepify can only be targeted on enemy heroes it reduces their to wound rolls and damage characteristics in melee by 1. Put them all together and you have an enemy hero, hitting less often and not as hard. Let’s apply these three to a decent melee hero, a Stormcast Knight-Questor. An often ignored unit that can cause trouble in melee combat. If applying all three spell this unit only has 3 attacks that require a 4+ to hit. If that hits then it now wounds on a 4+ too. Making this unit an average combatant. Although it doesn’t reduce the weapon damage (as it’s already 1) this unit deals 2 wounds on a wound roll of a 6, which gets bumped down to a 1 again. Mitigating the hero’s ability. A quick note about these spell lores, although it specifies that Mortarchs can cast the Lore of Deathmages it should be noted that both the Mortarchs in this army have the vampire keyword. So they have access to both the Lore of Vampires and Lore of Death Mages. (Lore section coming soon)

Nagash The most prominent unit in the Death Grand Alliance is the Great Necromancer himself, Nagash. Nagash is a powerful, but expensive unit. He costs (at the time of writing) 955 points. Despite the price he has several major advantages on the battlefield. One major difference between his current incarnation is his Warmaster trait. He now acts as a tie between the Death alliances and can be placed in any Death army as a general (in addition to the existing general in the army). Another advantage is that Nagash is one of the most powerful spellcasters in the game. He is as powerful as heroes, like Teclis and Karos Fateweaver. When at full wounds, Nagash can cast/ dispel 8 spells a turn with a +3 to the respective rolls. It’s very hard to not cast a spell with Nagash. He can cast “arcane missile”any number of times in a hero phase (even when other spellcasters have used it), which is good for damage spam. The most interesting thing about the big guy is that he knows all the spells in any Alliance he is fielded. In factions like Soulblight Gravelords, that means he knows two whole spell lores and bonus spells. This also gives him access to the Endless Spells of that faction and is in addition to her two unique spells. His unique spells “soul stealer” allows him to keep his wounds topped up (to make the most of his spells) and “hand of dust” allows you to instantly kill off a enemy character with a bit of luck (it’s saved my bacon a few times). On top of his casting abilities, Nagash is a powerful leader and combatant. Combat wise, he has access to both a 12” range attack and a plethora of close combat attacks. At full wounds, he has 16 attacks across his three melee attack sources (4 from Alkanash, 6 from Zefet-nebtar and 6 form his specters). Not to be snuffed at, especially from a wizard. As if that wasn’t enough, Nagash has abilities to keep his minions alive (or at least on the battlefield). Invocation of Nagash allows Nagash to heal 5 models or units with the summonable keyword for 3 wounds. Supreme Lord of the Undead allows you to re-roll units returning to a unit with a healing ability (more on that later) or increase the number of models returned by 1. Then there is Dead Magic Incarnate, which gives a Death unit, that is not Nagash, a +1 to their save. Each one of those abilities is powerful in its own right, but together Nagash can keep those units on the battlefield.

Death Grand Alliance The Death Grand Alliance isn’t really a thing anymore. As of AoS 3 a Grand alliance army isn’t viable. Despite this, I feel it’s still important to cover the basics, as most Death armies have certain features that link them together. Let’s cover the pros and cons of a Death army. Pros: Magic oriented armies Access to hordes Access to monsters Strong in Battleshock phase Access to regeneration Access to many named Hero Characters Cons: Hordes are limited in AoS 3 Hero characters can be expensive Basic battle line can be squishy in most armies Elite units are expensive Limited ranged units The key to a Death army is master one or two of your particular armies pros, while doing your best to mitigate the cons. I know that's obvious, but with glaring weaknesses like squishy battlines and limited ranged units, you better be ready to regenerate your hurt troops quickly or you will be overwhelmed. Later in the guide, we will go into far more detail about how you can really take advantage of these abilities.

Introduction When I began writing the Noobronomicon: A Beginner's Guide to Death, I was overwhelmed by the amount of support the project received. However, since the release of AoS 3, it has become increasingly difficult to bring the information in the original guide up to date. I simply couldn't let this project die, so I thought the best way would be to scrap it all and start a fresh. So here we are, with the Noobronomicon Volume 2. I intend to write this updated guide with the same level of love and care as I did the previous. If you are not familiar with this previous guide, I will quickly go over what it’s for and why I write these. This guide will cover beginner to intermediate play. We won’t be covering tournament play or min/maxing out lists. We will cover the basics of the Death Grand Alliance, the alliances within, and the sub-factions within that. Hopefully, within this guide, you will find everything you need to know in order to start your journey into playing a Death alliance in AoS. Hopefully, this will help newer players, as well as existing players looking to try out a Death army, find an army that fits you best. Glossary and abbreviations: Soulbight Gravelords - SG or SbGl - A variety of different undead creatures. Flesh Eater Courts - FEC - Cannibals and ghouls Ossiarch Bonereapers - OBR or OB - Bone constructs Nighthaunt - NH - Ghosts Soulblight - Vampires Deathrattle- Skeletons Deadwalkers - Zombies Grand Alliance - GA Note: This guide will be updated as I finish each section. And a complete guide will be added in as a google doc soon for those you find this to be an inadequate format to read in. Feedback is always appreciated.

Pop em as battle line in a legion of blood army with blood knights as support. Then you got yourself a nice little cavalry army.

I would recommend trimming the fat a bit with your units. Dropping your Hexwraith count down would be the easiest thing to do and impact you less than any of the others. Hexwraiths are great at getting up close and bog down your opponent’s high rend units. But they move so much faster than the rest of your army it will be difficult to maintain your buff bubbles.

Update: with the rules for AoS 3 available I’m working on some updates for older entries. A lot of info is now completely out of date so my goal is to bring it up to date before more stuff gets announced.

Soulblight Gravelords - Requires Soulblight Gravelord Battletome This army replaces both the Soulblight subfactions and Legions of Nagash of the AoS 1st and early second edition, while removing the Nighthaunt units from the mix. Much like the Legions of Nagash, there are several sub-factions rolled into one. I am going to outline some of the key features of the faction and then its sub-factions. The major rules are largely the same, just a little more refined. So let’s start with the old favourite grave markers. These remain the same as before, but have more universal benefits. You get 4 markers, 2 in your territory and 2 in your opponent’s. These markers provide a plethora or benefits to your summonable units. The most notable being that summonable units can be set up within range of these markers during your movement phase (12”). Additionally, you can summon additional units at these sites after slaying your opponent’s units completely. Next up is damage mitigation and regeneration. Deathless Minions does what Deathless Minions always has done. On 6+ you mitigate wounds and mortal wounds allocated to a unit while within range (wholly within 12”) of a hero or gravesite. Which allows for your undead units to be quite durable with a little luck. Not to mention with proper manoeuvring and set up you can cover a lot of your army with this effect. Deathly Invocation is a powerful tool in your arsenal. This allows you to recover wounds to a unit while wholly within 12” of a hero. Units affected recover D3 wounds to a summonable unit, and return lost models back from the dead. The number of units that can be affected depends on the hero. Mortarch can effect 4 units a turn, vampires effect 3 and Deathmages and Deathrattle heroes effect 2. A unit can only be affected by this ability once per turn. I often find this ability to be the lynchpin of many strategies, especially when combined with Deathless Minions. A few lucky rolls and you will cause your opponent to be pulling their hair out. Next up is the magic this faction has magic to a lot of spell casters, from lowly necromancers to Nagash himself. Which is helpful when they also have access to a plethora of other spellcasting tools. The first thing you will notice is that there are two spell lores to learn spell from, one for vampires and one for deathmages. One lore is for Nagash and Vampires, which based around dishing out more direct damage. The most prominent tool in this arsenal is when you activate the Locus of Shyish, which doubles the spell effect on a roll of a 9+. Which is handy, but not as handy as their handy extra spell Invigorating Aura, which is known by all Soulblight Wizards. This is a healing spell that works similarly to Deathly Invigoration. Giving you more control over your healing. Just remember, it’s one the other not both. So what about the sub factions? Well, they are each very flavourful and skew toward a particular kind of gameplay, while not alienating undead mechanics. The Legion of Blood is themed around Neratta, The Mortarch of Blood. Mechanically, this faction focused around deathrattle units being bolstered by vampires (not just vampire heroes), ignoring negative modifiers to hit and wound. Add in that Black Knights are a battleline for them and they can be a powerful cavalry army when combined with Bloodknights. Legion the Night is an ambush army allowing for more powerful units to be set up after turn one in ambush. While giving your skeletons and zombies a bonus of save rolls on your first turn. The idea is that you have your disposable units within easy reach and pull your opponent forward to drop your heavy hitters behind the opponent. This can be quite devastating when combined with the general’s trait Unbending Will allowing your Bait units to have an extra hit of defence along with Deathly Minions and Deathly Invocation. Ambushes with a Legion of Night army work really well with a Deathrattle army. Giving you a nice bonus for your units on the first turn, while saving your hard hitting units like black knights for later or even closing the gap by having Grave Guard appear behind the enemy line. Vyrkos Dynasty is one of the new dynasties. It’s another vampire leading skeletons and zombies army, but this one leans more towards zombies. Deathrattle gets the core bonus of adding 1 to their wound rolls while close to vampire heroes. But Deadwalker units get additional bonuses from command traits. So the army is slanted toward a zombie theme, specifically the dire wolves. Another pro of this faction is that you get a lot of named characters that have a rule that lets them act as general even when not the general, specifically Belladamma and Radukar the Beast. While also having other unique named characters to field alongside them. If you like your special characters, this is the one for you. Kastelai Dynasty are themed around the Blood Knights, and their named character Prince Vhordrai Blood Knights are a battle line unit here and can be set up in ambush. To top that off, vampires that defeat enemy units receive permanent upgrades to their stats ranging from their damage to their wounds. This is an elite army of fast moving designed to grow more powerful as it picks up steam. The catch is that to make the most of those elite units and not the summonable chaff units. I would suggest filling out your army with fell bats as they are quick, flying summonable units. Avengorii Dynasty if the powerhouse Soulblightt faction. Like their Flesh Eater cousins this sub faction allows for zombie dragons and terrorghiests. This faction goes well with the monsterous Vengorian Lords and their named character equivalent Lauka Vai. Both make excellent generals to lead these behemoths, providing healing or combat bonuses depending on who you chose. There is also the option of a vampire lord on a zombie dragon if you want to forgo the command abilities and buffs. The biggest flaw with this sub faction is that their artefacts are lacking. Each one is a once per battle item which is not my cup of tea. To balance this out they have access to Cursed Mutations that apply artefact like bonuses to one of your monsters.

An important question indeed. The Death Grand Alliance has some link with Death as a concept and to the death god Nagash. The Flesh Eater Courts are the odd one out. Ghouls aren’t entirely dead. They kind of tow the line. Living creatures that are warped by death magic and the will of their monarchs. Wizards, like in the Cities of Sigmar harness the powers of the Realm they are most connected to (usually the one they are born in). So wizards from these armies that cast death magic are usually from Shyish, the Realm of Death. They are very much alive and probably don’t worship Nagash. Necromancers, like in the Death Battletome SoulBlight Gravelords, are wizards that do worship Nagash. They can be alive or undead, there is no hard and fast rule for a Necromance. Hope this clears things up.

Update: the AoS 3rd edition stuff has been messing with my guide updates. I will put up the Soulblight Gravelords but it will be very bare bones. A finalised version will come out after the new edition drops.

Mega Gargant Mercenaries It is the Gatebreaker that graces the hordes of the undead. These are big old, stonking, stompy 35 wound monsters that can add to any Death army as a mercenary. The Gatebreaker, as the name suggests, specialises in damaging garrisons and terrain, which can be handy but situational. The real benefit for the Gatebreaker as a mercenary is the Grievous Halitosis rule which can potentially deal a nice bunch of mortal wounds (on a roll of a 6) after a combat phase. Combine this with a hearty 10 attacks from it’s signature weapon and a few more from standard mega gargant attacks and you can dish out a lot of damage. Mega Gargants also have terror, which causes your opponent to take a hit on their bravery. So if you are working on your bravery manipulation lists, you can really do a number on hordes. If you have the points to spare for these big expensive units, then you can really lend a hand for cheaper armies. Bogging down your opponent with skeletons and zombie hordes, while the Garagant does the heavy lifting.

Another update: Soulblights have thrown a wrench in the works for a lot of the stuff I was working on. I have to not only write up the new stuff but work on rewriting the existing stuff that is no long. The shorter stuff will go up first. Including the Mega-Gargant and the Soulblight Underworld group.

Underworld Units There are a growing number of Underworld units in the game. Each one has their pros and cons, but tends not to be a deal breaker for an army. Hopefully, I will be able to shed some light on which ones are worth taking, which are not, and which might fit in your list. Sepulcher Guard Army: Deathrattle (Legions of Nagash) Points: 80pts A single entity unit: The Sepulcher Guard This is a decent all around unit. It will not shift your game in any significant way. Stat wise, they are decent enough. They gain bonuses around Death heroes, but that’s nothing special for a Death unit. The major reason to keep these around is the Sepulchre Warden that can bring back D3 slain models per turn. This can make this unit surprisingly tanky. The Grymwatch Army: The Flesh Eaters Court Points: 120pts A two entity unit: Duke Crakmarrow and The Grymwatch The Grimwatch can be very helpful in certain lists. The stickler here is that they are classed as Hollowmourne, so they are useless in any other Flesh Eater army. If you are running a Hollowmourne army, then these are a good, cheap unit. They provide a nice extra point of damage toward monster units. Depending on the model, this can do 2 damage or 7, so they can pack a punch. When Duke Crakmarrow is within 3” he might return 1 slain model per turn. While if he is injured within 3” of the Grymwatch he can negate wounds and mortal wounds. The Briar Queen and the Thorns Points: 160pts Army: Nighthaunt A two entity unit: Briar Queen and the Thorns of the Briar Queen This is the most underwhelming of the Underworld units. The Thorns of the Briar are very underwhelming, however the Briar Queen herself is a solid hero. Wound wise, she is a kind of underwhelming. But with a 10” ranged attack and her Howling Vortex spell potentially slow enemy units to a crawl. This makes this Underworld box a nice support addition to a Nighthaunt army. Crimson Court Army: Soulblight Gravelords Points: 200 Two entity unit: Prince Duvalle and The Crimson Court A bit expensive with such a low model count. Prince Duvalle is an alternative vampire. Nothing too fancy. The Crimson Court are just vampires with less wounds. They lack any real synergy with each other. However they are powerhouses in combat. Each member has multiple attacks with and with a decent roll can do some damage. They can be buffed by anything that buffs Soulblight Vampires. If you have the points left over then there are worse point investments you can make.

You comment and thanks is greatly appreciated too. Honestly it’s been hard to do lately. I’m super behind schedule.

Turns out these changes are more than minor and I have uncovered things that kind of undo things I have already written. Happy Holidays all. Should be updated with changes in the new year.

Yeah I just didn’t like the Caucasian skin tone. I just cannot decide what other skin tone to use. An Asian or Pacific skin tone might work well.

Painted this model a while ago but I was never happy with it. I’m repaint her and think that a different skin tone might do the ticket. What do you all think? Should I do a full makeover? What skin tone should I use?

Did not expect people to jump on this and I love every comment

I appreciate the level of sheer spite that he holds.

Rock the army you like the most of tbh. You’re gonna be the one using them. If you are feeling the pull of the forest with Syvaneth then go for it and make Allariele proud.

That is very convincing. Gold is nice and I do appreciate a good moustache

We all have our favourite alliance/faction in AoS. I want to know why your favourite is better than everyone else’s. So what is your favourite and why is it the best.

You are doing Nagash’s work

Update: I have started making changes based on some of the updated rules. These are on going, but some minor edits have been added to the google doc.