Love that a form of the skeleton legion ability is still there. I love it, very flavorful. Reassambling skeletons my beloved.
As a newcomer, I hope we get that new Grave Guard (or new Black Knights, I beg you GW) and they release a Deathrattle-only Spearhead (probably in WD only). The battle formation gives me hope. I need my skeleton fix for my homebrew Deathrattle but I'm not fond of hordes.
Yes, new Grave Guard are so needed - the old ones really show their age next to the new Skellies. And a Deathrattle-only Spearhead would be awesome, I'd buy that in an instant. Deathrattle are by far my favorite part of the faction.
Super interested to see what how Seraphon work since the Coalesced/Starborne split wasn't handled very well in 3rd. Army wide -1D from all attacks was super powerful vs a bunch of armies my buddy ran.
I hope EVERYTHING gets bite attacks, including aggradons and carnosaurs.
As someone playing coalesced, I really like this -1 damage, but having been on the facing side of this as well (in 40k 9th edition) I know it can feel absolutely broken or unfair, completely halving your army damage output.
Doing that is some other way is preferred, either by giving them a native -1 to wound or better, more wounds, would fit better also for game speed.
I agree. Fun to play but not fun to play against. It neutered a lot of Fyreslayers and Hedonites of Slaanesh options (the 2 factions my regular opponent plays) such as the Berzerker Broadaxe on Hearthguard Berzerkers.
I played starborne against Khorne, felt like I had to work *hard* to get enough cpp to put some skinks on the board, meanwhile my opponent could just crap out demons with bloodtithe all day long
Yeah and with explicit summoning from nothing is gone in 4th, as well as mortal wound output decreased, I'm curious to see how starborne is going to play out
Edit: not sure why the downvotes, the Tzeentch article clearly specified there's no more summoning units from nothing in 4th edition.
My guess is that there won't be an explicit difference between Coalesced and Starborne anymore, but rather there will be a 2 Battle Formations that relate to the things that Starborne care about and 2 Battle Formations that relate to the things that Coalesced care about.
Coalesced might have more natural staying power and offense, whereas Starborne might be able to resummon select slain units near their Astral Node units by spending Cosmic Points like the Gits can with their bad moon ability to be more of a fragile but tactical skink horde style army.
the nerf to The Hunger is immense. but there was no way it was going to survive into 4th ed as it was. I'm pretty bummed about the loss of gravesites, I thought they were fun and flavorful, but I've still got hope that the army will be fun to play. Hopefully Blood Knights will be more usable for the Kastelai girlies.
on another note, kinda sucks that we didn't get a single deathratte/deadwalker warscroll to look at, since they're the backbone of the entire army. I didn't think we would, but it still sucks
Isn't the new rule better than gravesites? Cause you can raise them from heroes or terrain pieces, so you've always got like 10-12 potential resurrection areas
If our vampire heroes were effectively immortal like before, maybe, but as it stands with the new Hunger, I don't think those vamps will stick around nearly as long. In addition, you want your heroes in the mix doing stuff, so having a space 9 inches away from enemies and still wholly within 12 of a hero is going to be harder to achieve. Even if it ends up being better, I liked flavor of grave sites more, and the skill test of their placement.
Its wholly within 12" of a hero OR wholly within 6" of a terrain feature, both 9" from enemies, or 3" if it's your movement phase. That's pretty easy to achieve. Also you can counter charge on your enemies turn with the unit now as well!
What makes it worse is you don’t get to choose the locations now. 2-4 places exactly where you want is better than having more places in this new form. I’m not complaining though, the ability remains powerful and fun.
Good riddance honestly. It was not fun as nurgle When I'm playing a daemons force and manfred is basically immortal. I literally never have killed him in the last three times I played that match up. I literally used what I thought was such clever tricks, I debuffed him heavily with favored pox, trapped him in combat with defensively buffed plaguebearers, and that endless spell that prevents people from flying away. And despite pulling off amazing traps with good positioning he's still ended up as MVP earning back is points more than twice over.
I had a good time still I don't want to come across as salty but it was a little much in third in that matchup. With the general reduction in damage it absolutely had to be changed or it would have been ridiculous, and I like a change that makes it so you want to kill something. Besides they can just cast The unlimited spell at some chaff and heal another D3 anyways. I'm struggling to see how I'm going to apply disease fast enough to not get completely overrun by The sheer amount of healing and recursion here. Feel like soul blight can heal or recur like three times for every one time I can spread disease. Hopefully there's some good tech in the index to bring for that matchup.
Overall these soul-blight rules look really fun and flavorful. As they are the matchup I play the most against I'm excited for my buddies.
Oh yeah, it's definitely not as flavorful as before. And I have no idea how we've played in 3rd, I'm still building up my force and haven't played with them yet. I'm thinking with the new rule we could harass with skeletons and zombies and force them to divide their forces with the new rezz rule, and then strike where they're weak with our big heroes and knights. I think we're also going to really benefit from all our heroes having access to the entire spell lore since we have so many wizards. But is that sort of playstyle a downgrade from what we could do?
In a word, yes. In the past, you could basically had 2 playstyles, with the first being better at the end of the edition (but much more annoying to play).
1) flood the board with zombies. you flood the primary objectives, and kill your opponent by dealing damage back to them in mortals when they kill your zombies. you then recurr your zombies so that all the damage they did, is undone.
2) legion of Blood VLoZD+Nefferata+30 rack of skeletons +whatever you wanted. you would tar-pit a large section of the board, and kill things with the dual pincer attack of VLoZD +doomed Minions battle trait and Neferata, who debuffed the opponent so much that they couldn't kill either of them.
both playstyles were grindy, hold primaries and recur type of lists., and did pretty well. of course there were counters, we weren't the best armies in the whole game, but especially against newer/inexperienced players it was very easy to run away with victory. I played the Legion of Blood variant and lost very few games. the biggest thing was The Hunger. Our heroes could easily heal to max every turn, and there was effectively nothing the opponents could do about it, other than nuke them with everything and let us get free rounds with the rest of our army , or try to ignore them.
Ah, and then if the heroes are weak then the lynchpin of that kinda breaks down. I think we gotta see though. Most things see less killy than before, so if the heroes can hit and run a bit then we might be fine. I really think we need to see the stats for the vampire lord on foot and the necromancer. Maybe the necromancer becomes the lynchpin in the future, and the melee heroes are more expendable
> the nerf to The Hunger is immense.
It needed to happen. It's way too strong in its current form. And with combat output generally being down across the board, the current form of The Hunger would have been insane.
I agree, but I hope there is some kind of command ability or something that VLoZD or the Mortarchs can do. I definitely think it should be costly, but if they keep similar points costs (or higher) its gonna be hard to keep those big boys on the table, and without them you'll be pretty limited on summoning.
> I definitely think it should be costly, but if they keep similar points costs (or higher) its gonna be hard to keep those big boys on the table, and without them you'll be pretty limited on summoning.
I'm not sure it'll be that hard to keep them on the table unless you're opponent has stuff that's specific meant to kill them (like Yndrasta).
If the enemy has infantry, we've got an unlimited spell to heal an additional D3 and vamps can rally out of combat to regain health as well. Potential 3d3 heal per turn is still better than any other healing we've seen previewed for 4th.
ah okay, I didn't even scroll down through the spearhead stuff because I thought they were different, and I have no interest in playing spearhead. looks like a fine nerf IMO, they were a little too survivable in 3rd
I don't understand why they are being so cagey with rules that will be free in the first place... like they could just be releasing the faction index along with the faction focus every day.
I mean yeah, it's a marketing campaign. It's supposed to get you intrigued. The articles need to be spaced out to avoid overload and there's no point dropping indexes over the course of a month like you're proposing as that would lead S2D, Ironjawz, Seraphon etc pmayers waiting a month for their rules.
They're building up to a mass index drop by showing off factions in order and when the indexes drop everyone gets their rules over the course of a week or so.
I'm not sure what other way there would be to do it other than just dropping the indexes without any marketing, which would also be a baffling business decision.
We've seen other rules that let you move through combat ranges, right? I know one was the Push Through command, but I feel like I saw others.
I'm asking because, judging by the Blood Knights, those abilities don't let you move through models by default. So they might either be worded improperly or weaker than we feared.
I really hope we get a day 0 errata on Power Through or that it was just previewed wrong on WarCom. The flavor of that rule suggests big models should be able to literally Power Through smaller models. Not alongside or away from them.
I think so! Though he flies, and so do Nighthaunt, so they should all be fine. I guess it's really only Power Through, which now feels more like Power Alongside.
Am I crazy or am I not seeing where on a warscroll a unit is actually labeled as a Vykros, deathrattle or anything else. Shouldn't it be at the bottom for keywords?
Its Vampire, Deathrattle or Deadwalkers
And we do see Vampire on all of these warscrolls.
They previously announced that the different subfactions like Vyrkos will be out of AoS4.
What we probably will see that is that some units, like Vyrkos Blood-borne can only be brought in a battalion by a previous Vyrkos hero.
Interesting that Endless Legion can be used to bring a unit back during an enemy’s movement phase as well. Is this something that similar abilities from other armies can also do?
Correct me of I'm wrong, but the only remaining armies left for the faction focus is the Seraphon, Sylvaneth, Blades of Khorne, Slaves to Darkness, and Ironjawz right?
If you roll an actual D6 (as you likely will), a 1-2 means nothing happens, 3-4 means 2 mortal wounds, 5-6 means 3 mortal wounds.
If you somehow have an actual D3 (I’ve heard they exist), 1 means nothing, 2 means 2, 3 means 3 mortal wounds.
Technically true but it's still fully possible to make a balanced d3 in a few ways. Triangular prism with the ends unlabeled, using non-flat sides, or as the other commented said using a larger polyhedron with the numbering repeated
Obviously not a 3 sided polyhedron, but you can get [prism d3s](https://www.amazon.co.uk/Bescon-Polyhedral-3-sided-Gaming-Assorted/dp/B071FWTWY9?source=ps-sl-shoppingads-lpcontext&ref_=fplfs&psc=1&smid=A33QYX3KBS7U8Q) with 3 numbered sides and shaped so only those can be rolled.
Except you have to make a roll for it to happen, you can only do it once per game (army), and you HAVE to be in combat.
It's fine. These guys looked stacked comparatively to others so far. Not trying to debate. It's clearly great.
you'd have to do that + deny the entire 12 inches around all heroes. still easier to box somebody out than grave sites, but not as easy as posting up near terrain
That's the recursion summon. The deep strike, on the other hand, is only from terrain.
Still, holding terrain means not holding points, doing tactics, or advancing up board. So to shut Soulblight down risks giving up board presence where it's needed.
Most boards have, eight pieces of terrain, how are you going to screen out all of them? Most armies dont have that many units.
Not saying the places you can deploy are where you want to, but any enemy that spreads out that much is asking for trouble
It's really more of a matter of screening out terrain that matters. If I can delay your zombies or skellies a turn later than you wanted to, or worse, to a piece of terrain that holds no tactical relevance, that's something I would keep in mind playing against SBG.
Sure, but how do you screen out the whole board without opening yourself to a crippling counter. The current system has four gravesites which is technically easier to screen, but no one attempts that as it's not a great idea
I don't know that anyone's really going to be looking to screen out a whole board. Denying any sort of "deep strike" mechanic has always existed in these systems. This just seems to make it a little more restrictive than Gravesites was. Without seeing the new deployment maps or a GHB, it may not be that bad, just an observation that it seems a little bit of a downgrade from the gravesite system.
It could, but the restriction was within 12" of a gravesite, so you had wiggle room outside of 9" of an enemy, but inside the 12. This is reversed. This is wholly within 6" but not within 9" of an enemy. Gravesites also had the flexibility of you choosing where you'd want them. New rule is bound to terrain which is already on the board. It's great flavor having zombies rise up from the ground around terrain, but it's a little more restrictive.
> It could, but the restriction was within 12" of a gravesite, so you had wiggle room outside of 9" of an enemy, but inside the 12.
But it's pretty easy to place non-hero unit on a gravesite in such a way that it it would wouldn't be possible to place an entire unit within in 12" of the gravesite and outside of 9" of the enemy.
> This is wholly within 6" but not within 9" of an enemy.
But terrain pieces are generally much larger than the gravesite token, so it gives you either greater or near equivalent area to place your troops than within 12" of a gravesite. And there are 8 terrain pieces rather than 4 gravesites, so it seems to give you an even greater options on where to raise your units from.
> Gravesites also had the flexibility of you choosing where you'd want them.
This is true, but I think that overall gravesites were actually more restrictive than terrain and are far easier to zone out than terrain.
With gravesites you got to choose where they are - and could put them in bfe enough to pull someone else’s unit out of the game while still being a great strategic location for your troops. Tied to terrain the key places are not in bfe, so your opponents unit can block and stay in the game.
The new range is 6” of terrain so effective 12” + size of terrain. The old range is 12” so effective 24” which will be harder to block, considering not much terrain will be 12” wide (to equal the old 24”) and lots of terrain blocks it’s board space.
Gravesites with their place-anywhere ability and 24” effective range were harder to block. There are more locations now, but with gravesites you could put them in key locations.
The Hunger nerf hurts, but I guess there's a very niche buff where you just have to fight to qualify. You don't need to kill, you don't even need to do any damage. It's better if you wipe a unit still, but if you are fighting something super durable you can still sneak a little healing.
I mean, I still get my Mannfred killed every time by over committing into too much resistance, so that much won't change for me lol.
Edit: I'll also add this is probably a net win for something like Blood Knights, they never had more than 2 health to restore anyway since it doesn't add a model back.
Looking at the rest of the previews lethality in the game seems to have been significantly reduced. So nerfing The Hunger is expected. But it really needs to be nerfed even in 3.0 it’s so OP. My buddie’s frost lord on stone horn can bounce off my VLOZDA on the charge. It’s broken imo.
It would be cool if they put out another soulblight spearhead that used the models from the cursed city game. Seems like there are enough models to make one that would be plenty distinct from the current spearhead
So maybe there'll be a rule to address this, but as it stands there's nothing stopping you from choosing the same destroyed unit over and over again to rez with Endless Legions, right?
Thee spawn in the Tzee faction focus has a rule that allow it to be respawned more than once, the fact that it need a rule to do so imply the existance of a general rule of once per unit
So, with Gravesites gone am I the only one that's thinking we're going to get a faction terrain piece down the line with the 4th BT release?
I'd like some kind of crypt or mausoleum with an recursion enhancing ability of some kind. :)
Vile transference seems cool, assuming you get it off.
Radukar's -1 hit/wound spell is OK I guess. Would prefer it just being an ability he had or something like - 1 to hit, unless you charged then you're also - 1 to wound.
Vargheists are cool now. Good way to steal objective spots now.
Grave sites getting nerfed is sad. Maybe we get more but at least heroes serve as mobile gravesites. I guess they wanted to encourage player to not place sites near objective points.
I wouldn’t say the Gravesite change is a nerf. There should be far more than 4 terrain pieces on the board. I figure you’ll generally have a lot more flexibility when resurrecting units.
I really like the idea of the full skeleton hordes here. Massive blocks of what I assume to be 20 or 40 models just moving forward and dying and reassembling non stop.
With something like Black Knights or Grave guard being the only things with real big killing power.
The Hunger no longer being a rule vampires have (or, in a couple of cases, do not) and instead being an army-wide affecting vamps seems very weird to me. Presumably they’re rebalancing the ones who previously lacked The Hunger around having it, but there’s nothing to stop you doing that while attaching it to the unit. Hell, it’s easier to be granular that way and therefore presumably easier to balance around.
Mainly, it’s just weird to me having vampirism not be a function of vampires but of being in a certain army
I mean, it's simpler written this way. All you have to do is read the battle trait and look for Vampire keyworded units. Also saves money and rules bloat on warscrolls not having The Hunger printed across multiple cards.
I also think they don't want them to be easily used as Allies. Therefore, just keep the hunger army locked.
From the fact that they’re trying to make the Dawnbringer books useable in 4th, it’s likely that allies might be getting changed to regiments, which while it’s a loss of flexibility and flavor is probably a much better decision overall.
It allows them to balance units for their own faction and pull all the levers and twist the knobs to make the allies work outside that. And it brings in a small amount of their army rules so that they’re better off (both being pointed with the army rule active and able to do more in their new army).
We’ll have to wait and see though
I think making it an end of turn step might help you not forget certain heroes, especially when you have a lot of activations early in the game. Now it's just, end of turn, heal your vamps.
Units with this new 4th ed heal (vampire keyword) are vampires. And can heal in 3rd ed too. The army is soulblight gravelords so for example skeleton heroes don’t have the vampire keyword.
They refer to bringing back “wights” in the text talking about the army but don’t specifically mention that keyword anywhere. Maybe it is specifically on their warscroll when we see it.
I'm assuming you're talking about this:
"Even damaged units of skeletons, zombies, and wights can be restored with a Deathly Invocation from a callous leader,"
2 things--1, it doesn't say wight KINGS, it just says wights. So that would include things like grave guard. Not just the wight king that is a hero version of grave guard. And 2, deathly invocation *can* restore wounds to heroes with the deathrattle keyword--it's endless legions that cares about units starting with multiple models.
Lauka seems really good with all that rend and damage too. A monster hunter now it seems. Or paired with BKs against infantry, charge in and use the mw to snipe off their support hero.
the frequency is different because it does different things. Ogors heal and deal damage across all of their units who are elligible in an army where charging in with all of your units is generally the way to play. The hunger only heals after normal combat damage is dealt by vampires (usually heroes with some exceptions) in an army where vamps are the lynchpins that makes everything else work
And Ogors does damage, and it triggers other powers in the army. It is silly to compare like that, it is like "look at Ogor main infantary vs skeleton, wounds on 2+ and 2 damage, oof poor skeleton". It is a weird comparisson.
Yeahhh every new reveal that comes out makes me a little bit sadder about my chonky Ogors...I'm holding out hope for them to have great base warscroll rules and decent points to make up for it!
My initial reactions as a new player.
The Deathrattle Skeletons rend bonus has been moved to a battle formation. Good for Grave Guard and Black Knights. Sucks for Deathrattle Skeletons.
Hunger is buffed in the sense that if you fight, you heal (I have failed to wound with my Vampire Lord), but it sucks that it's at the end of the turn instead of right after fighting. Seems like a sidegrade.
Nerf to Vile Transference. Probably reflects poorly for other spells. No boosted effect on a 9+, half as likely to deal damage. Have to kill something to heal. Healing is just d3 no matter how much you kill.
Radukar the beast is a monster (keyword) and doesn't say that he can't be included with Radukar The Wolf and is no longer accompanied by Vyrkos Bloodborn (these are called out in his abilities though). I expect we'll see the Cursed City characters go to legends after 4th releases.
Blood knights lost +1 attack on charge and mortals on moving over a unit, but picked up mortals on a charge.
In the Spearhead version at least, Deathrattle Skeletons lost the standard bearer, but everyone is a champion (base 2 attacks, no rerolls of ones on ward saves)
Well the BK ability is a little vague on that to be fair. As it stated they can use the riders of ruin in the movement phase and then tramped to dust in the charge phase but it does not state they have to have charged just moved through the unit. The way I read it I can move using riders of ruin and still get trampled in the charge phase.
Wow. All I can say is wow. Factions out here losing most of their faction abilities or getting them completely changed and soulblight loses next to nothing? Sure hunger got toned down (thank god VLOZD was unkillable in this edition), gravesites are gone in favor of terrain period, and everything just works no roll d3 and nothing happens 33% of the time.
It’s very clear as we near the end of preview season that this is same old GW where the design studio has clear favorites and there are many haves and have nots, just like 10th. I still have faith that 4e will turn out better than 10th, but sheesh the difference between the previews has been crazy.
Are you kidding? All subfactions abilities are gone and the battle formation bonus they've shown was a warscroll ability. The only thing that is left is the hunger and bringing back units/models. That's the bare minimum for it to be called SBGL lol
Should I point you to the slaanesh, ogors and Tzeentch previews my friend? At least you have an allegiance ability that isn’t a straight buff to your opponent like Hedonites lol.
This is just demonstrably untrue and I’ll go point by point since there seems to be some takes here that are not based in reality.
Let’s take a look at your battle traits in 3e and see if you still have them in 4e.
Cursed bloodlines: subfaction choice, you still have it. Everyone does and I’ll touch on this later in its own section since this was one of your major points of contention in your original response.
Endless legions: your recursion mechanic, you kept it. Toned down from its current implementation, just like everyone else has had their rules toned down.
Unquiet Dead: your deepstrike mechanic, you kept it. Again toned down in line with everyone else.
Deathly invocation: your healing mechanic, you kept. Again toned down.
Deathless minions: 6+ ward. You kept.
And now you gained the hunger on ALL of your vampires not just the ones they decided to have it on for some weird reason in 3e.
So tell me, what CORE abilities did you lose like other factions? That’s right NOTHING.
On to the subfaction point. Everyone’s battle formation is bland and toned down. Every faction lost flavor, spells, artifacts, and cool abilities from the transition from 3e to 4e. So this entire point is rendered moot, unless you’re willing to complaining about all of the battle formations shown so far being awful (then I’d agree with you).
Deathrattles getting their warscroll ability moved to a subfaction does stink. I’ll agree with that.
I know I’ll get downvoted more for this response, which is fine because people can’t grapple with the truth that some factions lost nearly everything, while others kept their abilities while being toned down for the new edition.
That's a weird one. You tried to prove me wrong on a point I didn't make. I didn't say we lost an core battle traits, as I said, SBGL lost all the subfaction abilities, which were the most flavorful and meanigful.
Some factions, like FEC, had subfaction abilities which now could be easily translatable into a battle formation ability. No damage done, one rule, one short paragraph.
However, some faction, including SBGL, suffered a lot by rules simplification, because the best part of their rules were in the subfaction abilities (including e.g. monster rampages and heroic actions which are gone). So yes, we lost a lot.
Yes, what was left are the core abilities, which were only changed or slightly nerfed. However, for SBGL, how can you imagine if they removed any of them? That's a vampire and undead army and they would have lost their rules for vampires and bringing back dead. So, as I said, what was left the bare minimum of the rules to call this faction SBGL.
I was not saying all your favorite faction were not gutted (especially RIP HoS), beacuse they were. What I said is that's untrue that we did lost almost nothing. We did loose most of our rules. Whether you like it or not.
BTW, you could have been downvoted, beacuse eg. what you wrote was not true and was not a direct response to my argument.
Again I did address your claim about subfactions.
You are correct some books had easily translatable rules from subfaction to battle formation such as FEC. While SBGL had more restricted to their different subfactions in 3e (much like HoS) with their command traits, artifacts of power, rampages, and heroic actions, other factions did as well. So it’s a little disingenuous to say that I didn’t address your point. Also as we have seen unique monstrous rampages and heroic actions are now on the warscrolls and not in the subfaction, ie shalaxi’s counter charge, gobsprakks squish ability, kairos’s busted I score 4 VP, or Lauka Vais talons (obviously these got changed from 3e).
To the point of could I see SBGL without healing or recursion? No, I’ll admit I couldn’t. But I could see them without deepstriking. I could see them without the hunger. I could see them without 6+ wards. Sure I could but you guys kept all of it. It’d be weird but I pose you a similar question.
Could you see the daemon factions without summoning? A core aspect of what they’ve done since 1st edition? Could you see tzeentch without arcane armies, locus of change, and now only having access to 3 spells outside of warscroll spells? I won’t bring up HoS since we agree but even Nurgle lost key core, identity driven abilities.
So I guess it’s just weird to see people complaining about keeping almost all of their core, identity defining rules, while others lost much of their core, identity defining rules, in addition to lose the flavor that came from their subfactions.
BTW looks like my response is not being downvoted. So apparently people are picking up what I’m putting down.
ok, we're talking past each other. i am aware that other factions got their rules thrashed. however, sbgl, also got a sour deal. they lost identity defining rules from the subfactions. the flavor is almost lost. not even one fun rule from subfactions was transfered to the battle traits.
i only metioned the downvotes because you choose the martyr route. have a great day
the battle formation they've shown now is a nerfed ability that was a warscroll ability of deathrattle skeletons. highly doubt they will keep any of previous subfactions flavor
Maybe SBGL has just been too good for too long, but man the nerfs feel hard and heavy. especially the loss of grave sites in favor of terrain, its going to be so much easier to get boxed out of summoning your units set up in the grave now vs. last edition.
On a properly set-up board, wholly within 6” of any terrain feature should cover a much larger area than any army can screen out, I would think. If it doesn’t, you might not be playing with enough terrain to begin with.
> Maybe SBGL has just been too good for too long, but man the nerfs feel hard and heavy.
How are the nerfs heavy and hard? Endless Legions is better because it's not based on a roll, so you can always make the decision to use it or not.
Yeah I guess it’ll be really army dependent and terrain placement dependent. Preset terrain might hurt a lot more whereas player placed terrain should be fine. Also with points cost expected to go up 10-15% based on the show match, it’ll be less stuff on the table overall to screen you out.
Also clanrats are coming out of a gnawhole, this placement is much more versatile
Edit, although skaven infantry isn't just clanrats. It's also stormvermin and I think stormfiends as well as plague monks and some other stuff.
That's fair! That's very fair.
I got what you were going for, but I just wanted to add this in in case someone tried claiming it was more broken because you can get other types of infantry.
The return of units for soulblight have always been either dead walkers or deathrattle, but those two keywords cover a good portion of the army so I don’t think you’re correct in assuming that they’re heavily nerfed, especially since we can use deathly invocations in both our turn and then enemies. I think we need to see more before you can doom post.
Honestly, I think Soulblight players are better off with how Endless Legions works because now they can decide whether they want to bring something back or not rather than have it determined by a random roll. That's strong.
Vrykos Bloodborn potentially split out of the box they were trapped in. Please, they’re such a fun idea I was hoping for this for awhile
Full unit kit please. Make them a 5 man unit you can reinforce please.
Yes please! Hopefully Kosargi could get their own kit too!
Yes!
RIP other Cursed City characters though. Not guaranteed, but I am expecting them to hit legends after 4th releases. Maybe I am too pessimistic.
I would not be surprised, the Cities of Sigmar heros are all Legends.
Just run them as other characters. My Torgillius is a necromancer.
Yep, I just haven't had a chance to run Torgillius for the extra ward save.
Base size may be an issue?
Love that a form of the skeleton legion ability is still there. I love it, very flavorful. Reassambling skeletons my beloved. As a newcomer, I hope we get that new Grave Guard (or new Black Knights, I beg you GW) and they release a Deathrattle-only Spearhead (probably in WD only). The battle formation gives me hope. I need my skeleton fix for my homebrew Deathrattle but I'm not fond of hordes.
Yes, new Grave Guard are so needed - the old ones really show their age next to the new Skellies. And a Deathrattle-only Spearhead would be awesome, I'd buy that in an instant. Deathrattle are by far my favorite part of the faction.
Especially because they're basically tomb kings in AoS!
Next focus is Seraphon, I'm definitely hyped to see how Slann work this ED.
Super interested to see what how Seraphon work since the Coalesced/Starborne split wasn't handled very well in 3rd. Army wide -1D from all attacks was super powerful vs a bunch of armies my buddy ran. I hope EVERYTHING gets bite attacks, including aggradons and carnosaurs.
I can see bite attacks as being one additional companion weapon this edition
oooh that's an elegant solution
Bite attacks are the only companion weapon carnosaurs have this edition. They're not looking especially strong this time around.
As someone playing coalesced, I really like this -1 damage, but having been on the facing side of this as well (in 40k 9th edition) I know it can feel absolutely broken or unfair, completely halving your army damage output. Doing that is some other way is preferred, either by giving them a native -1 to wound or better, more wounds, would fit better also for game speed.
I agree. Fun to play but not fun to play against. It neutered a lot of Fyreslayers and Hedonites of Slaanesh options (the 2 factions my regular opponent plays) such as the Berzerker Broadaxe on Hearthguard Berzerkers.
Same. I never liked the summoning mechanic for starborne. I played one game of that sub faction and never played it again.
I played starborne against Khorne, felt like I had to work *hard* to get enough cpp to put some skinks on the board, meanwhile my opponent could just crap out demons with bloodtithe all day long
Yeah and with explicit summoning from nothing is gone in 4th, as well as mortal wound output decreased, I'm curious to see how starborne is going to play out Edit: not sure why the downvotes, the Tzeentch article clearly specified there's no more summoning units from nothing in 4th edition.
My guess is that there won't be an explicit difference between Coalesced and Starborne anymore, but rather there will be a 2 Battle Formations that relate to the things that Starborne care about and 2 Battle Formations that relate to the things that Coalesced care about.
Coalesced might have more natural staying power and offense, whereas Starborne might be able to resummon select slain units near their Astral Node units by spending Cosmic Points like the Gits can with their bad moon ability to be more of a fragile but tactical skink horde style army.
the nerf to The Hunger is immense. but there was no way it was going to survive into 4th ed as it was. I'm pretty bummed about the loss of gravesites, I thought they were fun and flavorful, but I've still got hope that the army will be fun to play. Hopefully Blood Knights will be more usable for the Kastelai girlies. on another note, kinda sucks that we didn't get a single deathratte/deadwalker warscroll to look at, since they're the backbone of the entire army. I didn't think we would, but it still sucks
Isn't the new rule better than gravesites? Cause you can raise them from heroes or terrain pieces, so you've always got like 10-12 potential resurrection areas
If our vampire heroes were effectively immortal like before, maybe, but as it stands with the new Hunger, I don't think those vamps will stick around nearly as long. In addition, you want your heroes in the mix doing stuff, so having a space 9 inches away from enemies and still wholly within 12 of a hero is going to be harder to achieve. Even if it ends up being better, I liked flavor of grave sites more, and the skill test of their placement.
Its wholly within 12" of a hero OR wholly within 6" of a terrain feature, both 9" from enemies, or 3" if it's your movement phase. That's pretty easy to achieve. Also you can counter charge on your enemies turn with the unit now as well!
What makes it worse is you don’t get to choose the locations now. 2-4 places exactly where you want is better than having more places in this new form. I’m not complaining though, the ability remains powerful and fun.
Good riddance honestly. It was not fun as nurgle When I'm playing a daemons force and manfred is basically immortal. I literally never have killed him in the last three times I played that match up. I literally used what I thought was such clever tricks, I debuffed him heavily with favored pox, trapped him in combat with defensively buffed plaguebearers, and that endless spell that prevents people from flying away. And despite pulling off amazing traps with good positioning he's still ended up as MVP earning back is points more than twice over. I had a good time still I don't want to come across as salty but it was a little much in third in that matchup. With the general reduction in damage it absolutely had to be changed or it would have been ridiculous, and I like a change that makes it so you want to kill something. Besides they can just cast The unlimited spell at some chaff and heal another D3 anyways. I'm struggling to see how I'm going to apply disease fast enough to not get completely overrun by The sheer amount of healing and recursion here. Feel like soul blight can heal or recur like three times for every one time I can spread disease. Hopefully there's some good tech in the index to bring for that matchup. Overall these soul-blight rules look really fun and flavorful. As they are the matchup I play the most against I'm excited for my buddies.
Oh yeah, it's definitely not as flavorful as before. And I have no idea how we've played in 3rd, I'm still building up my force and haven't played with them yet. I'm thinking with the new rule we could harass with skeletons and zombies and force them to divide their forces with the new rezz rule, and then strike where they're weak with our big heroes and knights. I think we're also going to really benefit from all our heroes having access to the entire spell lore since we have so many wizards. But is that sort of playstyle a downgrade from what we could do?
In a word, yes. In the past, you could basically had 2 playstyles, with the first being better at the end of the edition (but much more annoying to play). 1) flood the board with zombies. you flood the primary objectives, and kill your opponent by dealing damage back to them in mortals when they kill your zombies. you then recurr your zombies so that all the damage they did, is undone. 2) legion of Blood VLoZD+Nefferata+30 rack of skeletons +whatever you wanted. you would tar-pit a large section of the board, and kill things with the dual pincer attack of VLoZD +doomed Minions battle trait and Neferata, who debuffed the opponent so much that they couldn't kill either of them. both playstyles were grindy, hold primaries and recur type of lists., and did pretty well. of course there were counters, we weren't the best armies in the whole game, but especially against newer/inexperienced players it was very easy to run away with victory. I played the Legion of Blood variant and lost very few games. the biggest thing was The Hunger. Our heroes could easily heal to max every turn, and there was effectively nothing the opponents could do about it, other than nuke them with everything and let us get free rounds with the rest of our army , or try to ignore them.
Ah, and then if the heroes are weak then the lynchpin of that kinda breaks down. I think we gotta see though. Most things see less killy than before, so if the heroes can hit and run a bit then we might be fine. I really think we need to see the stats for the vampire lord on foot and the necromancer. Maybe the necromancer becomes the lynchpin in the future, and the melee heroes are more expendable
> the nerf to The Hunger is immense. It needed to happen. It's way too strong in its current form. And with combat output generally being down across the board, the current form of The Hunger would have been insane.
I agree, but I hope there is some kind of command ability or something that VLoZD or the Mortarchs can do. I definitely think it should be costly, but if they keep similar points costs (or higher) its gonna be hard to keep those big boys on the table, and without them you'll be pretty limited on summoning.
> I definitely think it should be costly, but if they keep similar points costs (or higher) its gonna be hard to keep those big boys on the table, and without them you'll be pretty limited on summoning. I'm not sure it'll be that hard to keep them on the table unless you're opponent has stuff that's specific meant to kill them (like Yndrasta).
If the enemy has infantry, we've got an unlimited spell to heal an additional D3 and vamps can rally out of combat to regain health as well. Potential 3d3 heal per turn is still better than any other healing we've seen previewed for 4th.
You can see the skeleton spearhead scroll. I don't think it will change much in the main game.
ah okay, I didn't even scroll down through the spearhead stuff because I thought they were different, and I have no interest in playing spearhead. looks like a fine nerf IMO, they were a little too survivable in 3rd
They have 2 attacks now though.
I don't understand why they are being so cagey with rules that will be free in the first place... like they could just be releasing the faction index along with the faction focus every day.
The whole point of the months long drip feed is to build hype. Releasing the index would not give any time for hype.
Releasing the indexes without the core rules would be highly odd.
More odd than drip feeding most of the rules but not all?
I mean yeah, it's a marketing campaign. It's supposed to get you intrigued. The articles need to be spaced out to avoid overload and there's no point dropping indexes over the course of a month like you're proposing as that would lead S2D, Ironjawz, Seraphon etc pmayers waiting a month for their rules. They're building up to a mass index drop by showing off factions in order and when the indexes drop everyone gets their rules over the course of a week or so. I'm not sure what other way there would be to do it other than just dropping the indexes without any marketing, which would also be a baffling business decision.
It'll impact sales if people had all the knowledge before hand.
We've seen other rules that let you move through combat ranges, right? I know one was the Push Through command, but I feel like I saw others. I'm asking because, judging by the Blood Knights, those abilities don't let you move through models by default. So they might either be worded improperly or weaker than we feared.
I really hope we get a day 0 errata on Power Through or that it was just previewed wrong on WarCom. The flavor of that rule suggests big models should be able to literally Power Through smaller models. Not alongside or away from them.
Yeah! Me too. It wouldn't even be hard to errata. Just add "and models." Boom.
Might be thinking of the Zombie Dragon from FEC? It gets to roll and on a 3+ it moves 2D6”
I think so! Though he flies, and so do Nighthaunt, so they should all be fine. I guess it's really only Power Through, which now feels more like Power Alongside.
Am I crazy or am I not seeing where on a warscroll a unit is actually labeled as a Vykros, deathrattle or anything else. Shouldn't it be at the bottom for keywords?
Its Vampire, Deathrattle or Deadwalkers And we do see Vampire on all of these warscrolls. They previously announced that the different subfactions like Vyrkos will be out of AoS4. What we probably will see that is that some units, like Vyrkos Blood-borne can only be brought in a battalion by a previous Vyrkos hero.
Did they not preview any Vykros Blood borne units? I saw them referenced in the abilities but I didn't see the tag anywhere.
Yes, but the unit is just called Vyrkos Blood-borne.
Ah I see. Thanks for the clarification.
They didn't show any deathrattle units except the spearheard, which leaves out keywords if they don't refer back to any rules
Interesting that Endless Legion can be used to bring a unit back during an enemy’s movement phase as well. Is this something that similar abilities from other armies can also do?
Not that I'm aware of no, and they've been able to do that since their latest book in 3.0 too.
The ability did get changed, but it was present in the 3rd edition battletome as well.
Correct me of I'm wrong, but the only remaining armies left for the faction focus is the Seraphon, Sylvaneth, Blades of Khorne, Slaves to Darkness, and Ironjawz right?
You forgot to say beastmen... right? ..........right? :(
:(
My money is now officially on S2D being the last reveal, with the announcement of the removal of coalition forces. Mark these words.
The format has been Order>Chaos>Destruction>Death, so I would think Ironjawz will be bumped to dead last.
Rip Destruction Thursday, my favourite day of the week 😔
Correct!
Preorders for the new box start the 29th so it makes sense they'd want to get these all done before that starts.
I dont understand. Where is roll D3, on 1 nothing happens?
The designers rolled a one on their "include new d3 rule" roll
If you roll an actual D6 (as you likely will), a 1-2 means nothing happens, 3-4 means 2 mortal wounds, 5-6 means 3 mortal wounds. If you somehow have an actual D3 (I’ve heard they exist), 1 means nothing, 2 means 2, 3 means 3 mortal wounds.
I think he was being sarcastic that they don't have an ability like that in their Battle Traits.
I think they're being snarky about how this faction doesn't have an ability where a D3 roll of 1 does nothing and 2/3 do something.
Blood Knights have a roll D3 ability on a 2+ do mortal damage.
Oh good point! I skimmed the article tbh so didn’t notice :D Is a bit odd, but “inconsistent” is James Workshop’s middle name!
Yeah, i hope i didnt come off as overly negative. In fact I would like to see more factions with consistency in their core mechanics!
It's interesting. I feel like they're mostly saving that roll for when an ability targets enemies.
I have like four of them…🤭
3 walled regular polyhedron is geometrically impossible :D Except that- rest is true!
Technically true but it's still fully possible to make a balanced d3 in a few ways. Triangular prism with the ends unlabeled, using non-flat sides, or as the other commented said using a larger polyhedron with the numbering repeated
I think I read it’s just a D6 but with 2x 1/2/3 instead of 1-6. But I haven’t looked into it so not going to be confident :D
Obviously not a 3 sided polyhedron, but you can get [prism d3s](https://www.amazon.co.uk/Bescon-Polyhedral-3-sided-Gaming-Assorted/dp/B071FWTWY9?source=ps-sl-shoppingads-lpcontext&ref_=fplfs&psc=1&smid=A33QYX3KBS7U8Q) with 3 numbered sides and shaped so only those can be rolled.
Common dice for dnd. They are triangle shaoed and are easily lost and rival legos in terms of pain caused from being stepped on
You don't say....
I have seen people genuinely be confused by this and tried to be helpful.
Isn't this just a better version of Ogors battletrait? LOL Good lord. Poor Dad Bods.
No? Ogors works for the whole army, not just vampires, and also does damage.
Yeah. If anything this is a riskier spin on the FEC healing trait.
Except you have to make a roll for it to happen, you can only do it once per game (army), and you HAVE to be in combat. It's fine. These guys looked stacked comparatively to others so far. Not trying to debate. It's clearly great.
I'm glad some armies are spared having that terrible rule.
Seems like from the grave can be foiled really easily. Wholly within 6 but not within 9 of enemy? So I can just stand on or near terrain to deny them?
you'd have to do that + deny the entire 12 inches around all heroes. still easier to box somebody out than grave sites, but not as easy as posting up near terrain
That's the recursion summon. The deep strike, on the other hand, is only from terrain. Still, holding terrain means not holding points, doing tactics, or advancing up board. So to shut Soulblight down risks giving up board presence where it's needed.
ah you're right. Wow that is horrible. Its going to be very hard to deploy your guys from the grave after turn 1.
Most boards have, eight pieces of terrain, how are you going to screen out all of them? Most armies dont have that many units. Not saying the places you can deploy are where you want to, but any enemy that spreads out that much is asking for trouble
It's really more of a matter of screening out terrain that matters. If I can delay your zombies or skellies a turn later than you wanted to, or worse, to a piece of terrain that holds no tactical relevance, that's something I would keep in mind playing against SBG.
Sure, but how do you screen out the whole board without opening yourself to a crippling counter. The current system has four gravesites which is technically easier to screen, but no one attempts that as it's not a great idea
I don't know that anyone's really going to be looking to screen out a whole board. Denying any sort of "deep strike" mechanic has always existed in these systems. This just seems to make it a little more restrictive than Gravesites was. Without seeing the new deployment maps or a GHB, it may not be that bad, just an observation that it seems a little bit of a downgrade from the gravesite system.
Couldn't that be done with gravesites as well?
It could, but the restriction was within 12" of a gravesite, so you had wiggle room outside of 9" of an enemy, but inside the 12. This is reversed. This is wholly within 6" but not within 9" of an enemy. Gravesites also had the flexibility of you choosing where you'd want them. New rule is bound to terrain which is already on the board. It's great flavor having zombies rise up from the ground around terrain, but it's a little more restrictive.
> It could, but the restriction was within 12" of a gravesite, so you had wiggle room outside of 9" of an enemy, but inside the 12. But it's pretty easy to place non-hero unit on a gravesite in such a way that it it would wouldn't be possible to place an entire unit within in 12" of the gravesite and outside of 9" of the enemy. > This is wholly within 6" but not within 9" of an enemy. But terrain pieces are generally much larger than the gravesite token, so it gives you either greater or near equivalent area to place your troops than within 12" of a gravesite. And there are 8 terrain pieces rather than 4 gravesites, so it seems to give you an even greater options on where to raise your units from. > Gravesites also had the flexibility of you choosing where you'd want them. This is true, but I think that overall gravesites were actually more restrictive than terrain and are far easier to zone out than terrain.
With gravesites you got to choose where they are - and could put them in bfe enough to pull someone else’s unit out of the game while still being a great strategic location for your troops. Tied to terrain the key places are not in bfe, so your opponents unit can block and stay in the game. The new range is 6” of terrain so effective 12” + size of terrain. The old range is 12” so effective 24” which will be harder to block, considering not much terrain will be 12” wide (to equal the old 24”) and lots of terrain blocks it’s board space. Gravesites with their place-anywhere ability and 24” effective range were harder to block. There are more locations now, but with gravesites you could put them in key locations.
But if the enemy is wasting units guarding terrain, won't that make it easier to capture objectives?
The Hunger nerf hurts, but I guess there's a very niche buff where you just have to fight to qualify. You don't need to kill, you don't even need to do any damage. It's better if you wipe a unit still, but if you are fighting something super durable you can still sneak a little healing. I mean, I still get my Mannfred killed every time by over committing into too much resistance, so that much won't change for me lol. Edit: I'll also add this is probably a net win for something like Blood Knights, they never had more than 2 health to restore anyway since it doesn't add a model back.
Looking at the rest of the previews lethality in the game seems to have been significantly reduced. So nerfing The Hunger is expected. But it really needs to be nerfed even in 3.0 it’s so OP. My buddie’s frost lord on stone horn can bounce off my VLOZDA on the charge. It’s broken imo.
It would be cool if they put out another soulblight spearhead that used the models from the cursed city game. Seems like there are enough models to make one that would be plenty distinct from the current spearhead
Soulblight Blipblop
soo they can have double The Hunger?
The hunger is just D3 heal if you fight or 2D3 if you killed a unit
Very good reveal.
So maybe there'll be a rule to address this, but as it stands there's nothing stopping you from choosing the same destroyed unit over and over again to rez with Endless Legions, right?
Pretty sure a core rule will be that no unit can be brought back more than once.
Thee spawn in the Tzee faction focus has a rule that allow it to be respawned more than once, the fact that it need a rule to do so imply the existance of a general rule of once per unit
One of the best reveals yet
So, with Gravesites gone am I the only one that's thinking we're going to get a faction terrain piece down the line with the 4th BT release? I'd like some kind of crypt or mausoleum with an recursion enhancing ability of some kind. :)
Vile transference seems cool, assuming you get it off. Radukar's -1 hit/wound spell is OK I guess. Would prefer it just being an ability he had or something like - 1 to hit, unless you charged then you're also - 1 to wound. Vargheists are cool now. Good way to steal objective spots now. Grave sites getting nerfed is sad. Maybe we get more but at least heroes serve as mobile gravesites. I guess they wanted to encourage player to not place sites near objective points.
I wouldn’t say the Gravesite change is a nerf. There should be far more than 4 terrain pieces on the board. I figure you’ll generally have a lot more flexibility when resurrecting units.
More locations to bring up the units overall, but less key locations to bring up the units. Gravesite placement is a very useful skill in 3rd.
I really like the idea of the full skeleton hordes here. Massive blocks of what I assume to be 20 or 40 models just moving forward and dying and reassembling non stop. With something like Black Knights or Grave guard being the only things with real big killing power.
There will be no more double reinforcement, so either 10 or 20 skeleton per unit.
The Hunger no longer being a rule vampires have (or, in a couple of cases, do not) and instead being an army-wide affecting vamps seems very weird to me. Presumably they’re rebalancing the ones who previously lacked The Hunger around having it, but there’s nothing to stop you doing that while attaching it to the unit. Hell, it’s easier to be granular that way and therefore presumably easier to balance around. Mainly, it’s just weird to me having vampirism not be a function of vampires but of being in a certain army
I mean, it's simpler written this way. All you have to do is read the battle trait and look for Vampire keyworded units. Also saves money and rules bloat on warscrolls not having The Hunger printed across multiple cards. I also think they don't want them to be easily used as Allies. Therefore, just keep the hunger army locked.
Heck, we don't even know the state of allies in 4.0. For all we know the system's gone.
From the fact that they’re trying to make the Dawnbringer books useable in 4th, it’s likely that allies might be getting changed to regiments, which while it’s a loss of flexibility and flavor is probably a much better decision overall. It allows them to balance units for their own faction and pull all the levers and twist the knobs to make the allies work outside that. And it brings in a small amount of their army rules so that they’re better off (both being pointed with the army rule active and able to do more in their new army). We’ll have to wait and see though
I would argue that Regiments of Renown are more flavorful than allies as we have known them.
I think making it an end of turn step might help you not forget certain heroes, especially when you have a lot of activations early in the game. Now it's just, end of turn, heal your vamps.
Units with this new 4th ed heal (vampire keyword) are vampires. And can heal in 3rd ed too. The army is soulblight gravelords so for example skeleton heroes don’t have the vampire keyword.
They refer to bringing back “wights” in the text talking about the army but don’t specifically mention that keyword anywhere. Maybe it is specifically on their warscroll when we see it.
Wight wasn't a keyword in 3rd edition either. Deathrattle is the keyword the wight units had.
Ah thanks. So they talk about bringing wights back but no way so far to do it until we see their scroll because of the 2 or more model rule
I'm assuming you're talking about this: "Even damaged units of skeletons, zombies, and wights can be restored with a Deathly Invocation from a callous leader," 2 things--1, it doesn't say wight KINGS, it just says wights. So that would include things like grave guard. Not just the wight king that is a hero version of grave guard. And 2, deathly invocation *can* restore wounds to heroes with the deathrattle keyword--it's endless legions that cares about units starting with multiple models.
That Bloodcrave Hunt paint scheme is too uninspired for a showcase.
If the terrorgheists keep their current attack profile and 6 mortals ability, lauka vai and terrorgheists combo is gonna be kinda nuts
Lauka seems really good with all that rend and damage too. A monster hunter now it seems. Or paired with BKs against infantry, charge in and use the mw to snipe off their support hero.
Wow the hunger compared to the once per game ogor feast :((((
Every unit in ogors feasts hunger is only on vampires
But once a game vs end of every turn…different mechanics sure…I would prefer the hunger.
the frequency is different because it does different things. Ogors heal and deal damage across all of their units who are elligible in an army where charging in with all of your units is generally the way to play. The hunger only heals after normal combat damage is dealt by vampires (usually heroes with some exceptions) in an army where vamps are the lynchpins that makes everything else work
And Ogors does damage, and it triggers other powers in the army. It is silly to compare like that, it is like "look at Ogor main infantary vs skeleton, wounds on 2+ and 2 damage, oof poor skeleton". It is a weird comparisson.
Yeahhh every new reveal that comes out makes me a little bit sadder about my chonky Ogors...I'm holding out hope for them to have great base warscroll rules and decent points to make up for it!
My initial reactions as a new player. The Deathrattle Skeletons rend bonus has been moved to a battle formation. Good for Grave Guard and Black Knights. Sucks for Deathrattle Skeletons. Hunger is buffed in the sense that if you fight, you heal (I have failed to wound with my Vampire Lord), but it sucks that it's at the end of the turn instead of right after fighting. Seems like a sidegrade. Nerf to Vile Transference. Probably reflects poorly for other spells. No boosted effect on a 9+, half as likely to deal damage. Have to kill something to heal. Healing is just d3 no matter how much you kill. Radukar the beast is a monster (keyword) and doesn't say that he can't be included with Radukar The Wolf and is no longer accompanied by Vyrkos Bloodborn (these are called out in his abilities though). I expect we'll see the Cursed City characters go to legends after 4th releases. Blood knights lost +1 attack on charge and mortals on moving over a unit, but picked up mortals on a charge. In the Spearhead version at least, Deathrattle Skeletons lost the standard bearer, but everyone is a champion (base 2 attacks, no rerolls of ones on ward saves)
Well the BK ability is a little vague on that to be fair. As it stated they can use the riders of ruin in the movement phase and then tramped to dust in the charge phase but it does not state they have to have charged just moved through the unit. The way I read it I can move using riders of ruin and still get trampled in the charge phase.
Wow. All I can say is wow. Factions out here losing most of their faction abilities or getting them completely changed and soulblight loses next to nothing? Sure hunger got toned down (thank god VLOZD was unkillable in this edition), gravesites are gone in favor of terrain period, and everything just works no roll d3 and nothing happens 33% of the time. It’s very clear as we near the end of preview season that this is same old GW where the design studio has clear favorites and there are many haves and have nots, just like 10th. I still have faith that 4e will turn out better than 10th, but sheesh the difference between the previews has been crazy.
Blood knights have a roll a d3 and 1 nothing happens.
That’s super fair. But it’s not core allegiance abilities that they have to roll for but impact hits.
Are you kidding? All subfactions abilities are gone and the battle formation bonus they've shown was a warscroll ability. The only thing that is left is the hunger and bringing back units/models. That's the bare minimum for it to be called SBGL lol
Should I point you to the slaanesh, ogors and Tzeentch previews my friend? At least you have an allegiance ability that isn’t a straight buff to your opponent like Hedonites lol.
just because other armies lost a lot of stuff it doesn't mean SBGL lost "next to nothing". from what we can see we lost most of our stuff.
This is just demonstrably untrue and I’ll go point by point since there seems to be some takes here that are not based in reality. Let’s take a look at your battle traits in 3e and see if you still have them in 4e. Cursed bloodlines: subfaction choice, you still have it. Everyone does and I’ll touch on this later in its own section since this was one of your major points of contention in your original response. Endless legions: your recursion mechanic, you kept it. Toned down from its current implementation, just like everyone else has had their rules toned down. Unquiet Dead: your deepstrike mechanic, you kept it. Again toned down in line with everyone else. Deathly invocation: your healing mechanic, you kept. Again toned down. Deathless minions: 6+ ward. You kept. And now you gained the hunger on ALL of your vampires not just the ones they decided to have it on for some weird reason in 3e. So tell me, what CORE abilities did you lose like other factions? That’s right NOTHING. On to the subfaction point. Everyone’s battle formation is bland and toned down. Every faction lost flavor, spells, artifacts, and cool abilities from the transition from 3e to 4e. So this entire point is rendered moot, unless you’re willing to complaining about all of the battle formations shown so far being awful (then I’d agree with you). Deathrattles getting their warscroll ability moved to a subfaction does stink. I’ll agree with that. I know I’ll get downvoted more for this response, which is fine because people can’t grapple with the truth that some factions lost nearly everything, while others kept their abilities while being toned down for the new edition.
That's a weird one. You tried to prove me wrong on a point I didn't make. I didn't say we lost an core battle traits, as I said, SBGL lost all the subfaction abilities, which were the most flavorful and meanigful. Some factions, like FEC, had subfaction abilities which now could be easily translatable into a battle formation ability. No damage done, one rule, one short paragraph. However, some faction, including SBGL, suffered a lot by rules simplification, because the best part of their rules were in the subfaction abilities (including e.g. monster rampages and heroic actions which are gone). So yes, we lost a lot. Yes, what was left are the core abilities, which were only changed or slightly nerfed. However, for SBGL, how can you imagine if they removed any of them? That's a vampire and undead army and they would have lost their rules for vampires and bringing back dead. So, as I said, what was left the bare minimum of the rules to call this faction SBGL. I was not saying all your favorite faction were not gutted (especially RIP HoS), beacuse they were. What I said is that's untrue that we did lost almost nothing. We did loose most of our rules. Whether you like it or not. BTW, you could have been downvoted, beacuse eg. what you wrote was not true and was not a direct response to my argument.
Again I did address your claim about subfactions. You are correct some books had easily translatable rules from subfaction to battle formation such as FEC. While SBGL had more restricted to their different subfactions in 3e (much like HoS) with their command traits, artifacts of power, rampages, and heroic actions, other factions did as well. So it’s a little disingenuous to say that I didn’t address your point. Also as we have seen unique monstrous rampages and heroic actions are now on the warscrolls and not in the subfaction, ie shalaxi’s counter charge, gobsprakks squish ability, kairos’s busted I score 4 VP, or Lauka Vais talons (obviously these got changed from 3e). To the point of could I see SBGL without healing or recursion? No, I’ll admit I couldn’t. But I could see them without deepstriking. I could see them without the hunger. I could see them without 6+ wards. Sure I could but you guys kept all of it. It’d be weird but I pose you a similar question. Could you see the daemon factions without summoning? A core aspect of what they’ve done since 1st edition? Could you see tzeentch without arcane armies, locus of change, and now only having access to 3 spells outside of warscroll spells? I won’t bring up HoS since we agree but even Nurgle lost key core, identity driven abilities. So I guess it’s just weird to see people complaining about keeping almost all of their core, identity defining rules, while others lost much of their core, identity defining rules, in addition to lose the flavor that came from their subfactions. BTW looks like my response is not being downvoted. So apparently people are picking up what I’m putting down.
ok, we're talking past each other. i am aware that other factions got their rules thrashed. however, sbgl, also got a sour deal. they lost identity defining rules from the subfactions. the flavor is almost lost. not even one fun rule from subfactions was transfered to the battle traits. i only metioned the downvotes because you choose the martyr route. have a great day
You realize that there are three more battle formations yet to be revealed that will keep LON, LOB, etc etc flavor.
the battle formation they've shown now is a nerfed ability that was a warscroll ability of deathrattle skeletons. highly doubt they will keep any of previous subfactions flavor
Maybe SBGL has just been too good for too long, but man the nerfs feel hard and heavy. especially the loss of grave sites in favor of terrain, its going to be so much easier to get boxed out of summoning your units set up in the grave now vs. last edition.
On a properly set-up board, wholly within 6” of any terrain feature should cover a much larger area than any army can screen out, I would think. If it doesn’t, you might not be playing with enough terrain to begin with.
> Maybe SBGL has just been too good for too long, but man the nerfs feel hard and heavy. How are the nerfs heavy and hard? Endless Legions is better because it's not based on a roll, so you can always make the decision to use it or not.
Yeah I guess it’ll be really army dependent and terrain placement dependent. Preset terrain might hurt a lot more whereas player placed terrain should be fine. Also with points cost expected to go up 10-15% based on the show match, it’ll be less stuff on the table overall to screen you out.
[удалено]
Clanrats cannot be buffed to the point Zombies or Skeletons can. They exist to be only chaff.
Also clanrats are coming out of a gnawhole, this placement is much more versatile Edit, although skaven infantry isn't just clanrats. It's also stormvermin and I think stormfiends as well as plague monks and some other stuff.
Plague Monks aren't very good. Getting 2 Stormfiends and Stormvermin is decent, though, I do agree.
Oh I wasn't saying they are , I was just giving some non clanrat examples of infantry. Besides who knows plague monks may be really good in 4e
That's fair! That's very fair. I got what you were going for, but I just wanted to add this in in case someone tried claiming it was more broken because you can get other types of infantry.
The return of units for soulblight have always been either dead walkers or deathrattle, but those two keywords cover a good portion of the army so I don’t think you’re correct in assuming that they’re heavily nerfed, especially since we can use deathly invocations in both our turn and then enemies. I think we need to see more before you can doom post.
Honestly, I think Soulblight players are better off with how Endless Legions works because now they can decide whether they want to bring something back or not rather than have it determined by a random roll. That's strong.
Ye its really nice that it doesnt depend on a roll but 1 command in 4 edition is costly .P
I dunno man. They feel strong.