Soulblight Gravelords Discussion - 3rd edition.

[El Syf]

Thoughts on the two? Extra health and marks and the rend on the charge not being exclusive to infantry Chaos knights win hands down?

[Paladin of Khorne]

I disagree; BK are faster, get more attacks, and get rend every turn, plus there’s the healing mechanic from the traits iirc. 

[Craze]

It is just very difficult to compare at this point, as we don't know points, synergies within the army, which hero can have which unit in his retinue etc. From a pure "warscroll vs warscroll" point of view Chaos Knights seem to be stronger but it makes absolutely no sense to compare them in this way as we do not have the bigger picture right now.

[TechnoVampire]

 

On 6/18/2024 at 5:29 PM, El Syf said:

Thoughts on the two? Extra health and marks and the rend on the charge not being exclusive to infantry Chaos knights win hands down?

With the info we currently have available (and ignoring points) I think CK with mark of khorn are hands down better. The healing on blood knights I find negligible most of the time, and I’d take an extra wound and an extra attack over 2” movement any day of the week. I think what remains to be seen is if there is any support for blood knights and other non-hero vamps in the battle formations or on warscrolls. I really hope there is, as otherwise vampires could turn out to be somewhat unappealing, which in a vampire focussed faction I’d find pretty sad. 

From the description in the FF article it sounds like we’re getting almost unchanged LOB, a Skelton focused, zombie focused and invocation focussed battle formations, which leaves me wondering where (if any) this support could come from other than Vhordai?

Thats a lot of expectation on one warscroll for less horde, more vampire focussed SBGL players and doesn’t fill me with a massive amount of hope. 

 

Edited June 20 by TechnoVampire

[El Syf]

I appreciate we don’t have the full picture but it’s nice to have discussion, there is so much we just don’t know but blood knights are in a odd place as they have no real viable character that can support them as gw got rid of the mounted vl it just comes off poorly. I’ve also never found riders of ruin/trampled to dust as it’s now split usable in games, terrain and positioning always making it impossible to do and finish outside 3 of enemy.

Also finding all the little niche rules (+1rend infantry, +1damage monsters etc) do anything but make the game simpler which was their intention with this edition or was it just making things clear?

Edited June 20 by El Syf

[Sception]

Yeah, blood knights pretty badly want their mounted vampire lord back.  Vengorian kind of sort of serves that role, in particular a -1 rend aura is great for a 3+ save unit, but it's not the same.  VLoZD is much more a hammer in their own right, and unless they're changing a lot they'll be more about what they can do on their own and not much about enhancing other units.

For narrative/casual games there will at least be the anvil of apotheosis stuff tacked onto the new path to glory.  If GW won't give me a cavalry vamp lord, at least I'll be able to make my own.

My fingers are crossed /hard/ for a new mounted vamp lord model & unit with soulblight's eventual battletome this edition.  If we get ~one~ new kit, that's what I want.  So far though the only thing we've seen hints of is maybe new grave guard - which, to be fair, are also kind of needed, but not nearly as badly as a cavalry vampire lord with rules supporting blood knights, if only to make blood dragon / kastellai style builds work in a post-bloodline-rules paradigm.

...

Otherwise, the difference between blood knights and chaos knights isn't quite as bad as I initially felt when the chaos knight was first previewed - chaos knights have +1 wound, but blood knights have +2 movement and can move over enemy infantry.  Chaos knights have rend 2 damage 2 on the charge regardless of target, but blood knights have rend 2 against infantry regardless of whether they charged or not, and potentially 2 or 3 extra mortal damage when charging (or retreating I guess, but mostly when charging) from trampled to dust, and +1 attacks from their horses.  Chaos knights have marks, but Blood Knights have self healing from the hunger.

All in all I think chaos knights are still looking more impressive, but then again StD is more of an elite melee faction, and chaos knights might need extra oomph to stand out and be worth taking in that context, where as blood knights maybe don't need to hit as hard in order to stand out from other units in the battletome, or to serve their purpose of tilting the scales on the grindy battles of attrition that the faction's hoards of cheap, recursive skeletons and zombies are built for.

The maneuverability in particular is important - positioning is a big deal in this game, and between +2 inches of movement and the ability to move over enemy infantry blood knights have a real edge there.

From a thematic angle, we're also seeing I think a slight change in the overall characterization of vampires.  Less the all-powerful supernatural powerhouses of oldhammer fantasy's hero hammer days and more of the more modern/svelt/quicksilver/int and dex over strength and con style vampires.  There are still big brutes left - Radukar in particular - but they seem to be more the exception than the rule for AoS vampires at this point.

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

All spearhead warscrolls:

 

[TechnoVampire]

Brief overview of all the factions having seen the complete set of rules:

https://spruesandbrews.com/2024/06/29/warhammer-age-of-sigmar-4th-edition-faction-focus-and-deep-dive/#soulblight-gravelords

Personally I’m not wowed by the sub factions, as they seem to encourage spamming units, and only having 1 vampire focussed sub faction in a vampire army is disappointing, particularly as I dislike horde lists and the playstyle. 

 

 

Edited June 29 by TechnoVampire

[TechnoVampire]

 

[Leshoyadut]

I think when comparing the Blood Knights to Chaos Knights, just warscroll to warscroll, it's also worth noting that BKs have a 6+ ward and CKs don't. This puts the BKs at 18 effective wounds, plus (in my experience, at least) 2-3 wounds of healing before they're dead. StD marks will make a difference here, but I think baseline warscrolls actually puts them at pretty similar survivability. *Edit* Though the healing is technically not a warscroll thing, and is actually a faction thing, so shouldn't be considered here the same way the Chaos marks aren't, I guess? Still, the ward helps.

As for damage, Blood Knights are, again just with the base warscroll, within less than 1.5 points against non-infantry at worst while a little ahead at best, and slightly higher against infantry in all cases (that one extra hoof adds the barest smidgen of damage).

With trampling putting them, on average, another ~1.7 damage ahead against infantry, they are definitely more of an anti-infantry force than CKs, which says to me that...they're just supposed to have a different role than CKs and even a baseline warscroll vs. warscroll comparison is limited at best. As @Sception pointed out, BKs also have more mobility with both the +2 inches of movement and the ability to move over enemy infantry. All in all, just very different units despite surface level similarities, imo, and this isn't even getting into any faction specific stuff outside of their warscrolls which makes any direct unit-to-unit comparisons difficult (and is part of why I have disliked comparing CKs and BKs even in the past).

Edited July 1 by Leshoyadut

[Sception]

On 6/29/2024 at 2:16 PM, TechnoVampire said:

Brief overview of all the factions having seen the complete set of rules:

https://spruesandbrews.com/2024/06/29/warhammer-age-of-sigmar-4th-edition-faction-focus-and-deep-dive/#soulblight-gravelords

Personally I’m not wowed by the sub factions, as they seem to encourage spamming units, and only having 1 vampire focussed sub faction in a vampire army is disappointing, particularly as I dislike horde lists and the playstyle.

For all the vampires are the leaders of the faction, it really isn't and never was a vampire faction.  Soulblight Gravelords are not the descendants of the short lived 'Soulblight' 1e general's handbook faction.  They are descended directly from the Legions of Nagash, who came from the 1e Grand Alliance: Death, who were in turn the Vampire Counts Compendium by another name, who were designed to reproduce the WHFB Vampire Counts faction's army list and play style in AoS.  The old warhammer Vampire Counts in turn were never a 'vampire army' as such, even they were a renamed and reflavored iteration of the old Warhammer Armies: Undead.

Through all the renamings and reflavorings of the faction, the core mechanical identity of Warhammer Armies: Undead has remained consistent.  They were always, from the beginning, and in every iteration, primarily intended to be a hoard army playing a game of attrition - big units of slow, fragile, weak chaff, using deployment shenanigans to offset their speed, recursion to offset their fragility, buffs & debuffs to offset their weakness, and a handfull of elite hammers who didn't rely on (and typically didn't even have access to) recursion and buffs to tip the scales.  Those elite hammers were generally limited (by list building categories, by lack of internal synergies, or just by costing too many points to make a functional army of just them) so that they couldn't just replace the hoards of lesser undead they existed to support.

Vampires are either the heroes providing the recursion and buffs or the elite hammers tipping the scales in the battles of attrition - sometimes both at the same time - but never the backbone of the army.  Or at least never intended to be.  If they could function on their own, if that were the optimal of running the army, then about 4/5 of the roster would be rendered redundant and the core identity of the faction as the inheritors of Warhammer Armies: Undead would fall apart.

 

A viable elite all vampires all the time faction isn't inconceivable, one could certainly be designed and could work in the game just fine, and the Kastelai Dynasty subfaction of SBGL in 3e tried to make this semi viable for those who wanted to run it, but even then it really wasn't meant to be optimal and when people did start trending towards that style of build we saw the points cost of blood knights shoot way up to tamp it back down.  As much as GW wants people to be /able/ to run all vampires if they really want to, it just isn't what Soulblight Gravelords or any of its predecessors has ever been designed for, in much the same way that Nighthaunt have access to some shooty units, but something would have to go wrong for it ever to became optimal - even really viable - to run them as a shooty army..

Soublight Gravelords aren't "the vampire" faction.  This is the "hoards of lesser undead serving at the vampires' feet" faction.  After all, the nobility cannot exist without a peasant class to rule over and define themselves against.

Edited July 1 by Sception

[TechnoVampire]

On 7/1/2024 at 3:45 PM, Sception said:

For all the vampires are the leaders of the faction, it really isn't and never was a vampire faction.  Soulblight Gravelords are not the descendants of the short lived 'Soulblight' 1e general's handbook faction.  They are descended directly from the Legions of Nagash, who came from the 1e Grand Alliance: Death, who were in turn the Vampire Counts Compendium by another name, who were designed to reproduce the WHFB Vampire Counts faction's army list and play style in AoS.  The old warhammer Vampire Counts in turn were never a 'vampire army' as such, even they were a renamed and reflavored iteration of the old Warhammer Armies: Undead.

Through all the renamings and reflavorings of the faction, the core mechanical identity of Warhammer Armies: Undead has remained consistent.  They were always, from the beginning, and in every iteration, primarily intended to be a hoard army playing a game of attrition - big units of slow, fragile, weak chaff, using deployment shenanigans to offset their speed, recursion to offset their fragility, buffs & debuffs to offset their weakness, and a handfull of elite hammers who didn't rely on (and typically didn't even have access to) recursion and buffs to tip the scales.  Those elite hammers were generally limited (by list building categories, by lack of internal synergies, or just by costing too many points to make a functional army of just them) so that they couldn't just replace the hoards of lesser undead they existed to support.

Vampires are either the heroes providing the recursion and buffs or the elite hammers tipping the scales in the battles of attrition - sometimes both at the same time - but never the backbone of the army.  Or at least never intended to be.  If they could function on their own, if that were the optimal of running the army, then about 4/5 of the roster would be rendered redundant and the core identity of the faction as the inheritors of Warhammer Armies: Undead would fall apart.

 

A viable elite all vampires all the time faction isn't inconceivable, one could certainly be designed and could work in the game just fine, and the Kastelai Dynasty subfaction of SBGL in 3e tried to make this semi viable for those who wanted to run it, but even then it really wasn't meant to be optimal and when people did start trending towards that style of build we saw the points cost of blood knights shoot way up to tamp it back down.  As much as GW wants people to be /able/ to run all vampires if they really want to, it just isn't what Soulblight Gravelords or any of its predecessors has ever been designed for, in much the same way that Nighthaunt have access to some shooty units, but something would have to go wrong for it ever to became optimal - even really viable - to run them as a shooty army..

Soublight Gravelords aren't "the vampire" faction.  This is the "hoards of lesser undead serving at the vampires' feet" faction.  After all, the nobility cannot exist without a peasant class to rule over and define themselves against.

I appreciate your knowledge of the history of vamps in the GW universe, however I think 3.0 did a great job of moving away from a purely horde faction, and allowing appreciators of vamps to build and play them in multiple ways. 

Not all the builds were super competitive, but GW did (in my opinion) a good job of providing rules, lore and models that had distinct look and playstyle. Horde builds were strong, but you could easily make a monster mash lists, hero hammer lists, cavalry lists and many more, with rules and lore that supported these. 

With the new rules in 4.0 I feel like we could have lost a lot of the flavour and richness that was created through the dynasties, as well as the numerous options for play styles and list writing. 

I get that vamps were traditionally masters of hordes of chaf, and they still can be, but 3.0 proved that that’s far from all they need to be, and that it’s not unreasonable to want or expect more from the faction. 

Edited July 2 by TechnoVampire

[TechnoVampire]

Ps most of the rules are now available via the video I posted above. Just use the subtitles with translation. 

[Sception]

I'm sorry, I do not understand the language, and am not going to copy the subtitles into google translate by hand.  I'll just have to wait until the pdfs are out next week to comment on the full index rules.  I have seen leaks of the zombie warscroll, which I don't hate.  They're trash mobs now, but that's kind of what they're supposed to be imo.  So long as they're cheap enough per model I'll be ok with them.

Otherwise, loss of flavor from the removal of dynasties is definitely a complaint I can agree with.  I get the impulse towards unified structure and formatting across the game, but the result is very much a D&D 4e-ification of Age of Sigmar.  More legible maybe, less prone to confusion or conflicts of interpretation, but a lot of flavor is lost in the process, and a lot of design flexibility lost in the insistence that every single bit of rules text fit into the same ability template.  Not every faction is served equally well by the same format of 3 spells, 3 prayers, 3 hero abilities, 3 artefacts, one card's worth of faction traits, and exactly 4 subfactions battle formations - each consisting of only a single short ability.  And I'm not sure there's any real gains in speed of play or game balance.

There is an excessive rigidity in form applied to these indexes which I hope the devs get tired of and move away from in battletome design sooner rather than later.

Edited July 2 by Sception

[TechnoVampire]

3 hours ago, Sception said:

I'm sorry, I do not understand the language, and am not going to copy the subtitles into google translate by hand.  I'll just have to wait until the pdfs are out next week to comment on the full index rules.  I have seen leaks of the zombie warscroll, which I don't hate.  They're trash mobs now, but that's kind of what they're supposed to be imo.  So long as they're cheap enough per model I'll be ok with them.

Otherwise, loss of flavor from the removal of dynasties is definitely a complaint I can agree with.  I get the impulse towards unified structure and formatting across the game, but the result is very much a D&D 4e-ification of Age of Sigmar.  More legible maybe, less prone to confusion or conflicts of interpretation, but a lot of flavor is lost in the process, and a lot of design flexibility lost in the insistence that every single bit of rules text fit into the same ability template.  Not every faction is served equally well by the same format of 3 spells, 3 prayers, 3 hero abilities, 3 artefacts, one card's worth of faction traits, and exactly 4 subfactions battle formations - each consisting of only a single short ability.  And I'm not sure there's any real gains in speed of play or game balance.

There is an excessive rigidity in form applied to these indexes which I hope the devs get tired of and move away from in battletome design sooner rather than later.

I think you’ve hit the nail on the head here. 

regardless of individual interpretations of faction rules, I think that standardising everything in the way that GW has decided to for the start of this edition comes at a cost.

For me it feels like too much. Balance and clarity are important in a game, but I don’t feel that those things should supersede flavour, individual expression (both for players and the way factions are expressed in the rules), creativity, or fun. 

I feel like being able to be flexible with the number and power of various spells/ sub factions/ abilities etc available is a strong way of expressing the identity of individual factions, so standardising everything the way they have quite drastically narrows that design space. 

Like you I hope with the individual battletome’s we see the return of some of the strong flavour I think GW actually did a good job of creating in the previous edition. 

Edited July 2 by TechnoVampire

[Leshoyadut]

I think the indexes are going to feel lackluster in flavor because they're not really supposed to be the full flavorful versions of each army. They clearly tried to provide some flavor for each army, but they're releasing rules for literally every army at the same time to get them all to the same functional baseline. While I do wish they had a bit more to them, I don't really expect more than what we have seen until we start getting battletomes. If those come out lacking flavor, though, I will fully agree that it's a problem for the edition.

[TechnoVampire]

The enhancements, battle formations and spell lores are the most disappointing aspects for me. Going through them there’s an incredible amount of repeat, with seemingly very little relevance to army themes or lores. Healing, teleporting and de-buffing, which used to be quite tied to specific faction are everywhere, and due to the number of times I’ve read once per battle strikes first/ last enhancements and impact hits on charge, I find myself now eye rolling reading them. 

2 out of the 3 spells in the SCE lore are debuffs, which thematically makes very little sense to me. It feels a bit like if MTG started giving every ability to every colour in abundance. Beyond the art style why would you favour or enjoy any one of them more than the others?

It’s understandable that things feel more minimal and generic for the index, but if this is new standard for AOS going forward I’ll be really put off. 

Edited July 3 by TechnoVampire

[TechnoVampire]

Translation from the Spanish video. 

It may not be entirely accurate. 

SBGL_Translations.pdf

[Sception]

Hrm.

Battle Traits: not in the video/write up, but we saw them in the faction focus.  I mostly like these, though I do wish the invocation targets didn't all need to be within range of the /same/ hero.

battle formations:  Only one that I really like, and that one might be a translation error.  I'm not going to try to defend these.

• Bacchanal - assuming it's not just limited to heroes, this one looks pretty good for the vampire lovers out there, +1 attack to blood knights and VLoZDs on the charge, and plus one to cast outside of combat?  Yeah, this looks pretty good to me, right up until we see the proper english rules and find out its limited to heroes, if that happens then I'll be sad.
• Legion of Shyish - the wholly within range limitation makes it hard for me to believe you'll have enough valid targets to make use of this.  Still probably a better ability for skeleton armies than the skeleton formation.
• zombie formatinon - not sure what I think of this.  probably ok, if not terribly exciting.
• deathrattle - needing to charge AND outnumber when skeletons are only unit size 10 to start is too many hoops.  If it said OR instead of AND then maybe there might be something to it.

Heroic Traits:  I'm not impressed with these either.

• bonus movement, but only a small and random amount amount, and only to one unit, and has to be within 3" of the hero, and might not even happen.  Bonus movement is good, so it's probably not awful, but I don't like it.
• bonus to control score, but wholly within which sucks and a random amount so not reliable.  Don't like it.
• re-roll charges.  presumably to just the hero?  you probably take this one, and put it on a VLoZD or Vengo.

Artefacts:  Maybe better than the traits, but not by much.

• orb: I don't like 1/game artefacts, and this doesn't look like the best of those.
• ethereal, but only vs. shooting.  You probably take this and put it on the aforementioned VLoZD or Vengo.
• reaction to damage nearby wizard casting a spell.  no mention of limitations, if this is usable every time a wizard casts a spell in range it's actually good.  If it's once per turn its meh.  If its once per battle it's garbage.

Spells:  Not awful, but not great.  Significantly better than the old vampire lore, but not as good as the old necromancer lore.

• Vile Transference: a bit of damage, a bit of healing.  I'd like it a lot better if it weren't the unlimited spell.
• prison: short range, strike last.  If till your next hero phase pretty good.  If its just for this turn kind of meh.
• -1 damage on targets weapons till end of turn.   A pretty significant debuff, though short duration.

Scrolls

• Nagash: not part of the video/this write up, but we've seen the obr scroll, and the only difference for gravelords should be faction keyword.  Brings a ton of healing, brings back an entire unit - including units like blood knights that endless legions doesn't work for.  Can spread out a bunch of healing / wards with his spell.  Reusable signature spell means he doesn't care too much about the lore being meh.  probably a huge points cost, which means he'll benefit from access to cheap chaff like zombies should be.
• Neferata: good attack profiles, shroud aura, scout moves, ethereal spell.  Assuming she's also still a double caster, she looks great.  Maybe not ~quite~ on Katakros/Ushoran tier as a mortarch, but close.  The only thing she's missing is some sort of interaction with the faction traits - maybe if she had increased range on invocation or something.  As is, still looks great imo.
• Mannfred: doesn't hit as hard as he maybe should, but still sounds alright, particularly supporting grave guard thanks to the attack boost.  I don't like that the rampage relies on a die roll.  presumably still a double caster?  Seems pretty good, but not Ushoran/Katakros tier, and a good bit behind rival Neferata.
• Vhordrai: melee profiles look great.  I guess this is where the castellai rules live now?  The wholly within 12" restriction on those rules sucks though.  Still maybe good, but feels bad, and forces you to bunch up your blood knights around Vhordrai awkwardly.  Remove the range limit, or increase it to 18" at least, and I really like this guy.

the problem with all of the above huge monster heroes is that the hero traits and artefacts only seem to have decent options for a VLoZD, so you're probably taking one of those already, and if you do then do you really have points for another huge monster hero?

• VLoZD: not mentioned/in write up?  Probably safe to assume its a worse vhordrai but with access to traits and artefacts, which, between reroll charge and ethereal v. shooting, could make it a better vhordrai.
• Lauka: seen her, she looks ok.  I like that she's built to both lead and fight monsters, that's on brand.  rend debuff aura is good.
• Vengo: don't like the unreliable rampage but otherwise a slightly worse lauka with access to artefacts & traits.  If you want to take one of the big monster named heroes then this is a halfway decent platform for the ok trait and artefact that will cost less than a VLoZD
• Bella Volga: if she's still wizard 2 probably pretty decent, if less good than she has been in the past.
• Radubeast: Solid Beatstick.
• Raduwolf: should have been kicked to legends.  As is, I don't really like wholly within auras that only work on the charge as it's unreliable to line them up, especially on an infantry model, but at least his spell is a reroll charge aura so that helps it work?  Makes him sort of a mini-manfred for supporting grave guard.  Probably good, but still should have been kicked to legends.
• Ivya: should have been kicked to legends, and the page doesn't bother trying to translate her rules, so no idea if they're good or not.
• Torgillius: should have been kicked to legends.  probably good though between doubling up on invocations and a solid and long ranged signature debuff spell.
• Gorslav: should have been made a generic hero.  also kind of sort of doubles up on invocation, but for zombie units only.  Probably ok.
• Halgrim: should have been kicked to legends, looks worse than a generic wight king.
• Annika: should have been kicked to legends, looks kind of bad imo
• Kritza: should have been kicked to legends, looks neat and techy but not exactly good.
• Cado: looks pretty good, though I don't like that the ring abilities can fail.
• Sekhar: looks pretty good, especially if she keeps wizard(2)
• Bloodseeker Palanquin: 1/game attack buff for vampire units maybe making them good support for blood knights?
• coven throne: wholly within 12" support auras for skeletons and zombies.  Maybe ok?
• Vampire Lord: looks terrible.  Big oof.  The worse vampire lords have ever been in AoS, specialized in a role (assassinating lone small wizards who for some reason have no allies nearby) that I don't think anyone wants or needs.  Would have been dramatically better if they were left as a +1 attack buff platform.  Their one trick doesn't even work a third of the time, in the rare case where an opportunity to use it even appears.  Otherwise a generic infantry hero wizard one with the ability to redeploy via deep strike is... Eh.  If I need someone to threaten to appear on abandoned enemy backfield objectives, I'll take some vargheists.  This guy should be an auto-include foundational unit of the faction, not a weird tech piece.  Bad design.
• Necromancer: looks ok.  I'm more willing to accept the random chance to fail on danse macabre since it used to be a spell which meant it wasn't reliable to begin with.  Spell lore isn't great though, and no signature spell mentioned in the write up, so I'm not sure about this guy.  If he has a halfway decent signature spell he's probably good.
• Wight King on foot - decent support hero for grave guard, handing them +1 attack Edit: +1 to hit while chain activating with them.
• Wight King on horse - less good support for black knights.  When will they give this guy rules as cool as his model?  Not this time around, apparently.  Not exactly bad though.

That's all the heroes, and I'm already burnt out.  Maybe I'll come back to the units eventually but...

Overall I'm not terribly impressed.  Not everything looks awful, but a lot of meh, and a lot of abilities that aren't even all that great but still have a chance to fail for some reason.  I was expecting an overall nerf after 3e, but this is maybe too much of one, and some of the choices are just baffling, most notably vampire lords.  There's enough that looks like it more or less works (blood knights, grave guard, zombies, etc) that there's probably still viable builds here, I don't think they'll be unplayable or bottom tier at all, but my excitement for the faction is lower now than it was after the faction focus.

While I'll be starting with Soulblight in 4e due to having more of them painted than anything else, I'll definitely be looking to switch over to one of the other undead factions (probably obr) sooner rather than later, and I'll be hoping that we see a better & more interesting take on the vamp counts when they eventually get their 4e battletome.  Hopefully the wait isn't to long... but also hopefully they aren't coming too soon either, as the devs will need time to see what's not working with the index if there's any hope for the battletome to fix things.

Edited July 6 by Sception

[Boar]

1 hour ago, Sception said:

Bacchanal - assuming it's not just limited to heroes, this one looks pretty good for the vampire lovers out there, +1 attack to blood knights and VLoZDs on the charge, and plus one to cast outside of combat?  Yeah, this looks pretty good to me, right up until we see the proper english rules and find out its limited to heroes, if that happens then I'll be sad.

According to Goonhammer article it's +1 to wounds on charge for Vampires, and author explicitly mentions Blood Knights. So 25% buff rather than 33%. So unless author made mistake - which could happen with massive material to cover for 4e - it should be nice boost for Blood Knights or Vargheists.

1 hour ago, Sception said:

Vampire Lord: looks terrible.  Big oof.  The worse vampire lords have ever been in AoS, specialized in a role (assassinating lone small wizards who for some reason have no allies nearby) that I don't think anyone wants or needs.

🥺... but I like it, it's so funny and fluffy, and actually fights better where many foot heroes got worse

1 hour ago, Sception said:

Wight King on foot - decent support hero for grave guard, handing them +1 attack while chain activating with them.

it's +1 to hit apparently

[TechnoVampire]

After looking over all the rules I’m not particularly excited for 4’th with SBGL as my main.

I was expecting an overall decrease in power, but not to the extent we’re seeing where nearly everything we have got objectively, significantly worse.

It’s also not just about the power, but I think we lost a lot of synergy, tech and overall fun in our rules with many things simplified to the point that they kinda just look boring.

😑

Edited July 4 by TechnoVampire

[RocketPropelledGrenade]

Eh, I'm still very excited. But I tend to be less down on new stuff than most.

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

Personally, I am looking at resurrecting my old Deathrattle list this edition. So some thoughts on that:

I see basically two factions worth considering: Bacchanal of Blood and Deathmarch. If the final list ends up bringing a bunch of vampires, I think +1 to cast/+1 attack are both good. Otherwise, Deathmarch is the obvious flavour choice.

I have heard the point that +1 rend on the charge if you outnumber is too restrictive. I certainly think +1 rend on the charge without any other hoops to jump through would have been fine. But I don't actually think the requirement to outnumber is a huge deal. In this edition, reinforcements are limited and most armies will likely run plenty of units with a size less than 10 (base size 5 or below, heroes, monsters...). I am willing to try running a bunch of reinforced units of Deathrattle and seeing if I can make it work.

Heroic traits, I would say the hero phase move looks the most attractive (would also be a throwback to the Legions of Nagash Deathrattle battalion, which had a similar ability). On slow moving units, even small movement boosts can be pretty nice. +d6 control would be my next choice for synergy, but I think since a Deathmarch list should aim to outnumber anyway, it might turn out to be overkill.

For Artifacts, nothing seems particularly synergistic, but punishing casts with mortal wounds is a nice control effect that I think is valuable.

Warscrolls:

First let's check out units with the DEATHRATTLE keyword.

Wight King - Free +1 to hit buff hero. Might be good, might not be worth adding an extra drop for.

Wight King on Steed - +1 to charge. Does not sound too good unless it can be stacked with enough other movement to help Black Knights get a first turn charge.

Watch Captain Halgrim - Minimum 4" movement on run rolls, which I think includes Redeploy. Sounds like there migth be some fun tech here, but hard to judge.

Black Knights - Good attack profile for once, plus crit(mortals) on the charge. These guys look really threatening, especially with +1 rend.

Grave Guard - Get Crit(mortal) and give out a 5+ ward to foot heroes. Pairing these guys with a Wight King or Necromancer seems like it would make them into real blenders.

Skeletons - Cheap chaff that auto-heals. Might not be worth reinforcing over damage dealers.

Other notable warscrolls:

Radukar the Beast - All around good combat hero with the potential to give +1 to wound to DEATHRATTLE

Mannfred - Similar to the beast with the ability to give out +1 attack instead. Together with Halgrim, it looks like he can make Deathrattle auto-redeploy 4" into combat.

Neferata - Pre-game move with 3 deathrattle units. Potentially seems quite strong for a Black Knight alpha strike

Torgilius - Double invocations seems really good when the majority of our army can benefit from it.

Necromancer - Vanhel's is still Vanhel's. Fight twice is always worth considering. EDIT: There is a combo here: Giving an opponent strike last with Prison of Grief negates the downside of Vanhel making you strike last on your second activation.

Mortis Engine - Extra invocation healing and some mortal wounds shooting. Might be good?

Coven Throne - 5+ ward aura for Deathrattle and some extra redeploy shennenigans. Is the Deathrattle playstyle somehow redeploy based, with so many effects that interact with that? I think the Throne might be good: a 5+ ward makes all the healing Deathrattle can get a lot more valuable.

 

Overall, it seems to me that a Deathrattle army has a few interesting pieces to build with. I think I will have to experiment at the table to see which options are actually good, but I think the skeleton horde has a bunch of fun tricks to play with this edition. Their serious staying healing and recursion combined with movement shennenigans and the potential to get extra rend makes for an interesting list that seems like it would want to hit hard early and then dig in and grind out the win later.

Edited July 5 by Neil Arthur Hotep

[TechnoVampire]

48 minutes ago, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

Personally, I am looking at resurrecting my old Deathrattle list this edition. So some thoughts on that:

I see basically two factions worth considering: Bacchanal of Blood and Deathmarch. If the final list ends up bringing a bunch of vampires, I think +1 to cast/+1 attack are both good. Otherwise, Deathmarch is the obvious flavour choice.

I have heard the point that +1 rend on the charge if you outnumber is too restrictive. I certainly think +1 rend on the charge without any other hoops to jump through would have been fine. But I don't actually think the requirement to outnumber is a huge deal. In this edition, reinforcements are limited and most armies will likely run plenty of units with a size less than 10 (base size 5 or below, heroes, monsters...). I am willing to try running a bunch of reinforced units of Deathrattle and seeing if I can make it work.

Heroic traits, I would say the hero phase move looks the most attractive (would also be a throwback to the Legions of Nagash Deathrattle battalion, which had a similar ability). On slow moving units, even small movement boosts can be pretty nice. +d6 control would be my next choice for synergy, but I think since a Deathmarch list should aim to outnumber anyway, it might turn out to be overkill.

For Artifacts, nothing seems particularly synergistic, but punishing casts with mortal wounds is a nice control effect that I think is valuable.

Warscrolls:

First let's check out units with the DEATHRATTLE keyword.

Wight King - Free +1 to hit buff hero. Might be good, might not be worth adding an extra drop for.

Wight King on Steed - +1 to charge. Does not sound too good unless it can be stacked with enough other movement to help Black Knights get a first turn charge.

Watch Captain Halgrim - Minimum 4" movement on run rolls, which I think includes Redeploy. Sounds like there migth be some fun tech here, but hard to judge.

Black Knights - Good attack profile for once, plus crit(mortals) on the charge. These guys look really threatening, especially with +1 rend.

Grave Guard - Get Crit(mortal) and give out a 5+ ward to foot heroes. Pairing these guys with a Wight King or Necromancer seems like it would make them into real blenders.

Skeletons - Cheap chaff that auto-heals. Might not be worth reinforcing over damage dealers.

Other notable warscrolls:

Radukar the Beast - All around good combat hero with the potential to give +1 to wound to DEATHRATTLE

Mannfred - Similar to the beast with the ability to give out +1 attack instead. Together with Halgrim, it looks like he can make Deathrattle auto-redeploy 4" into combat.

Neferata - Pre-game move with 3 deathrattle units. Potentially seems quite strong for a Black Knight alpha strike

Torgilius - Double invocations seems really good when the majority of our army can benefit from it.

Necromancer - Vanhel's is still Vanhel's. Fight twice is always worth considering. EDIT: There is a combo here: Giving an opponent strike last with Prison of Grief negates the downside of Vanhel making you strike last on your second activation.

Mortis Engine - Extra invocation healing and some mortal wounds shooting. Might be good?

Coven Throne - 5+ ward aura for Deathrattle and some extra redeploy shennenigans. Is the Deathrattle playstyle somehow redeploy based, with so many effects that interact with that? I think the Throne might be good: a 5+ ward makes all the healing Deathrattle can get a lot more valuable.

 

Overall, it seems to me that a Deathrattle army has a few interesting pieces to build with. I think I will have to experiment at the table to see which options are actually good, but I think the skeleton horde has a bunch of fun tricks to play with this edition. Their serious staying healing and recursion combined with movement shennenigans and the potential to get extra rend makes for an interesting list that seems like it would want to hit hard early and then dig in and grind out the win later.

[TechnoVampire]

Just a quick point that the vamp subfaction is +1 to wound on charge. The translation seems to be wrong. 
 

(I tried to reply to your comment above @Neil Arthur Hotepbut my phone went haywire 😅)

Edited July 5 by TechnoVampire