 Hello everybody if it's Wednesday, it's Warhammer and that must mean it's time for another episode of Warhammer weekly Joining me as always is my one and only co-host Tom. What's up, brother? How you doing? Oh friends? Also joining us this week. We're happy to have him back on the show with the Lord of Death himself the hobby bear a Man who needs very little introduction, but I'll do it anyways Brendan. What's up, brother? You know if not much just Here to hang out and and talk about a soul blade, right? That's a That was the show topic. I think you know it did did a lot of research It's been to you know, just a couple of minutes or something on on this army Just a little bit just a little bit the first time I ever played you was many years ago at Nashcon and you had Nagash and 120 skeletons back when you could still cheat with coherency and all of that It was against my proto like version one iron jaws And you beat me and it was a wonderful game. It was so much fun. I Really like to think And I think this is the point where Tom and I really get along that those coherency rules were changed both times specifically in Respects to the the nonsense that I would engage in Yeah, like I I was the same way like I publicized it on the the Grand Alliance forums or TGA forums What I was doing with the the nergal shenanigans as well. So yeah, it was it was glorious and I Don't feel bad about it at all. Oh Me neither. Oh, it was yes It was truly wonderful to have one skeleton sitting on a grave site fighting the other 35 on the other side of the board It's great at any rate All three of us were at holy havoc week this last weekend We'll probably talk about that a little bit during hobby time But first up, of course, we have some news and Tom we have a very exciting rumor engine to start off the news So, I mean, I'm so excited So let's wrap higher. Yeah, let's just talk about this scaven rumor engine, right? Like, I mean, that's what this is. Yeah That's a little scaven hand on a little scaven sewer pipe I'm excited for it. So So I'm so scared are getting another underworld's warband. Great. You have an ash and warband. Yeah. Yeah, probably probably Because it would just make sense that like the the existing scaven we have are like I Don't know like a claw lord basically and some guys Just some dudes just some rats some unnamed unimportant rats And it really feels like having a Eschen warband is a real missed trick we haven't had yet. So yes, this is just an Eschen underworld's warband Which it'll be a bunch of ninja rats and it'll be sweet. Yeah, look at this point, man I'll take any scaven scopes I can get I'm fine with it so There we go Brendan any thoughts any any do you disagree in any way that that's what this is? No, I have no dissenting opinions, but I am very public about my hatred of scaven. So it's I Don't feel warmly about it. I Don't know how you could hate scaven. That's just so How can you we were riding around it like a 37% win rate right now? You know, it's it's we're the fair we're the most fair army in age of Sigmar right now Okay, it's it's not it's not about the army performance. I just hate them so much So much So much And it's it's really just lore based at this point like that's like like that's the that's the hill I'm gonna die on this is the thing that I've been asked before You know if you were if you were James workshop, what would you know? What would you do and you know like I have the power to add or improve anything and my choice would be Kill the scaven line. It's over. It's done legends all of it Move on. Wow. I mean, it's it's lore appropriate Bold words. I can tell that you're in a gosh-stand with your Your hatred of my people who have time after time after time ruined your plans and defeated you So, I mean, you know, these things are unrelated totally totally an independence ideas All right, what else we got the news Well, we have a city's white dwarf article that's coming I'm kind of excited about that We're getting cities mount traits. That's what they said in the no They said we're getting griffin traits and dragon traits. Yeah, sure Those are the two things that matter. Yeah, which are that's the mount traits. Those are the mounts. Yeah Yeah, I mean like I understand Would you like Tom what what big monsters in? You know, I can't think of any other big monsters in cities other than griffins and Dragons, there are zero other mounts Brendan. You're exactly right That's that we know that is the end of the list of my oh wait. No, hold on wait shut up Tom Shut up shut your mouth. Don't you talk? Oh, no, there's not exactly Luminar curriculum and the steam tank. You're right. We should have had like a mechanic There you go, that's we named steam tanks like you like you give them big names like like ogres Yep. Yeah, and that's all of the potential mounts. There are no other Yes, or a phoenix, you know, there are phoenixes in that army and you know, I played him this weekend And I would love mount traits. I I don't remember seeing those Really Really no, no, I don't How many rounds You were fighting a wizard mind you that's how how many rounds to you sir He's got a point. I'm excited with Brendan on this one. You could even kill a wizard and ten Brutes Let's be very clear and ten Brutes Who who chose to not titanic duel my sorcerer Lord on manticore? Rounds of combat. It wasn't Vince wasn't me. I wasn't there. Yeah Call me Come on man Phoenix traits. That's all I'm asking for you don't know that we I don't know that they'll probably have Phoenix traits in there Too but anyways, it's gonna be that and then grand strats and battle tactics that should be thrown immediately into the fire So there you go It would truly be the best thing in the world if they gave us a mechanical upgrades table or something for like lumen arcs Her economy and steam tanks that really is the article that I want like man Can you imagine? Lumen arc and her economy mount traits. It'd be the coolest, right? Like really awesome Yeah, like it's a neat idea you could give them like special prayer upgrades or special like magical reliquaries or Magitech or whatever there's so many options. They should completely do that They won't because they we always take the the the road the boring road But one the road most travel road most travel. Thank you. Yes, exactly Exactly, but we can we can hope until the hour comes out. I will maintain hope We will likely see something acid or Breath weapon base for the dragon. Sure. We have something sharp talons for the Griffin You know all the normal Yeah, so boring So boring I think what we can all agree on is that as long as the fina fina sigh Phoenix's Whatever don't get any traits. We're all we're all better for it. That's fine Or you can give them traits and then you move them all up by 30 points. I'd be fine with that too That's okay. You shut your mouth All right, what else we got in the news We have So in interesting like obviously this is tangential a OS, but we had the 40k Like update where they're like, hey, we're fixing everything by the way. We're doing everything quarterly So that was interesting Big changes to big points lots of rules changes all that kind of stuff so quarterly can we talk about this? Okay, that seems Quick way too fast Way too fast. I don't understand the need to like evaluate and respond to the meta But like are these patch notes? Like is that what we've moved into is like MMO patch notes. I Do not want here's what I'll say I do not want quarterly updates from a OS any updates that we get should be pushed into the app Let's start there. Okay, so as long as they put them in the app, I'm better, but We should not have quarterly updates for a OS. That's too fast We don't like Here's a quick story One of the people we played at the tournament. They were running a goblin army Okay Yep, and they were running all squigs super nice Yeah, super nice. Yeah, it was a really fun game. It was like a night haunt and got and gets gets combination. Yeah, and So he put his squig army on the table and I was like, oh cool You run in you run in maus of jorke, you know I made the joke we always make of calling them maus of jorke and he was like, I don't understand what you mean And I said, I'm just I'm just being funny. Are you I assume you're using the jaws of morgue sub-faction and he was like I don't know what you're talking about Because he went and bought the book For and that was it. That's where he stopped. He didn't know there was other things that contained rules for his army and they're not in the app Right and so he and I was like, oh buddy, you need to look into that. It's gonna really change your world Like it's gonna be a big difference for you um so, you know the the The point being is that like these kinds of rules updates that get pushed out so much You know, you don't people don't always aren't always aware of them, especially like low information people Aren't really aware of them. So I'd rather we stick to the existing FAQ schedule. We've publicized that a lot Everybody talks about it. It's become kind of a known quantity and then we And we put real updates into that we do what the FAQ was supposed to have done originally Which was they said it would contain balance updates. So do that. Just just do that thing At the bare minimum like it should all be in the app Yes, and it should all work are a thing like because I was like, oh, yeah Let me just pull up the app and then I like scrolled through everything in the app and I'm like, I got nothing man It's not in here. You have to go by the white dwarf Yeah, I just know it should be in the broken realms book that it cut, you know that it is but But that's the thing is like you have to know that it's in that book and you have to go looking for it Right, right, right exactly, you know, I I really just believe six months is the correct pace For like the players of the game and that these kinds of updates should just be Put out as free FAQs every six months generic game balance stuff points adjustments and and war scroll fixes like do the fixes we all need to be done and And there you go and that's fine, right Yeah, because I I think when you get to the quarterly update revision of it the only the only people at meaningfully um You know impacts are people who keep like one Like one or two armies like not even like full collections, right one or two armies And the ability to be successful in that environment is maniacs like me who Don't have armies they have Grand alliance collections and they go okay points change and I just go All right. Well, I guess we'll just put this unit on the shelf and uh Oh, this you know this other unit that I have far too many of to begin with is now good and mass So we'll just take that off the shelf and I'm good to go, right, right, right Yes, like exactly we No, I completely understand because you know, I'm in the same boat with several armies, right? It's it's Whatever they would decide to make whatever it gets better or worse is irrelevant to me like who cares I've got it, you know for a lot of these armies I have it all Because I've I've a serious huge fan of the army and so I just kept painting it You know like my slinash army is a great example even with the new stuff. I've got tons of that crap Too much to my own chagrin even though I ran out of steam painting as much as I wanted to because it just became depressing to me um But you know like you can you can vary that stuff and it's fine But but for a lot of people that's not the case exactly what you said, right? And Now in 40k they probably need it every three months. It's a different game. It's a much more complicated complicated game There's a lot but it was you know way more off kilter than a os so maybe quarterly is right for them Like I'm not judging their their use of that in 40k. I'm saying For a os. Let's just stick to the six months and actually uh Make the meaningful changes because we've we've had too many winter FAQs Where you know the december january FAQ passes and we all just kind of look at it and collectively shrug and go Right, right. Why? Right. Nothing is different now. Yeah, exactly and and the trick is it's never going to really get updated through books being released Because the book releases have to be planned, you know two years in advance Right is when they start working on 18 months and two years in advance So they're not going to be they're not really aware of the meta. They're going to create. They don't have a futures league Right like magic does Right, you know where they have internal people playing literally the available sets in their current state Two years three years out from where it is right now, right? That'd be a fun job when that isn't that a crazy job? To not live in the present but to live in the future, right? You know and that's never going to be the case for us. So that's fine So instead like because you're not going to have that because we can't rely on the books to do it fine This document is the way right and and there you go So yeah, I think that's straight. That's that's that's my take on it. I think if you go faster, you're just gonna People are gonna fall off That's that's what comes out to like people will not be able to keep up with that pace of change so um Yeah, there you go And that kind of hits, you know the FAQ bit of it hits something else that I feel deeply passionate about in this is the um Is the not permitting books at events until an FAQ is out. Yeah, I am not a fan of that at all Right, like I agree that we should probably turn around FAQs on the books a little bit quicker Then the month to six weeks that we're dealing with But that's something that needs to be resolved at the individual tournament organizer level Like if you can't handle the couple of complex rules interactions or you're not able to You know decide what you know rules as intended is and Like I just think that's a bad solution. I still remember you. What was that? Was that holy? Havoc like 2019 maybe or I think or Whenever the ogre book came out. I don't remember when the ogre book came out, but whatever Yeah, 2019. Yep. You were there that came out the day of holy havoc that saturday You had gotten it at like midnight from a store the night before and brought it to the tournament and played the army Like it weren't that book released on the day of the tournament and you know what it was fun It was fun. It was it was such a it was such a blast. Yeah, so Uh at any rate, uh, probably a whole different show Uh, but let's keep moving We got one more Hi, Tom new, uh war scrolls from red harvest Yes, so let's uh, let's look at those bad boys Um All right So we've got these war scrolls here. I I believe we heard that the spider people are 100 points And the dark oath uh people are 110 points Okay, so let's keep that in mind Okay Why hello So the yeah, and the dark oath are actually interesting. So six inch move five up save six bravery You get a slaughter born and two proven the key is the slaughter born has three attacks at two damage and the proven have Two attacks at two damage. Everyone else has two attacks on force. Four is no rend one damage So you get a little god speaker dude who can roll and Maybe get you a command point only for this unit who cares The important part is they have death blow where uh, if the unmodified hit roll for an attack is a six They inflict a mortal wound Given that the unit of uh, 10 People so it's 10 dudes Right makes uh, 21 attacks because of the champion That's pretty good every six being a world for 110 for 110 points And then they have the oath of conquest if you gain control of an objective previously controlled by your opponent While this unit is contesting it this unit fulfills its oath and from that point on in the game has a five plus award So then they're five up five up quite survival um Now scroll. Yeah, it's it's a good scroll Now it's not battle line and doesn't have a way to be Battle line unless something really weird happens by the way because that would be nuts Sure. I I actually agree like it would be bad Yes, the dark oath saboteurs as we're going to call them from now on. I agree with rob um So the dark oath saboteurs, um It is hilarious that they don't have the proper interaction because they lack the cultist keyword to interact with the dark oath chieftain and war queen Yeah, like their own dark oath bosses can't buff them Which is and they can't be marked as well. They cannot be marked. Correct They're they're unmanageable. They you know, they they're the employees who just cannot You know, they cannot be managed. They're good at what they do. They do their own thing But my god, good luck telling them what to do. Yes Yeah, but there's a good unit like I can see this potentially having a use depending on what your your battle line makeup Like 20 of these guys for 220 points pretty scary unit Um could do the damage could pull somebody off an objective and then actually becomes Uh somewhat tough. It's it's it's an interesting unit at 110 points and really beautiful sculpts all the way down. So um cool Uh, so I like that, uh, and then we have the spider people who are awful. Um, the spider people are 100 points They are cultists. So How about that? That's yeah, that that fixes everything we did it So Oh, uh soren says I have it backwards that the tarantulose is 110 and the dark oath is 100 That is less believable. But how that's what why even better? Why my attention? So the tarantulose are cultists, which is an advantage because they're you know cultists And which has a lot of Interactions in the army as far as marking and leaders go and paying attention to the dark oath war queen and chief didn't ironically um But You get 13 models one is a brood master who gets one additional attack And you get three spider swarms that regenerate every round basically you get d3 spider swarms back So you have a regenerative three models in the unit You know, but they don't have anything special in how they attack. They're just they're on a six up save They're spiders not poison. Yeah, and when they move they can pass across terrain, which I okay Like cool weird, you know, you'll also pass it across terrain flying things with me. Yeah moving I mean it is just a move not a normal move, which is nice. So you can't run You know, so it is possible for them to to walk over a relatively big piece of terrain just to give some defense to this ability uh, but Yes, these guys are not good Yeah Other dudes at 100 now 200 points for 20 dudes Who can do mortal wounds and gain a five up ward? Way more into uh, you were using some some uh, some Some uh slaves to darkness over the weekend there was uh, I could have seen those guys Being like a replacement for what you're you're You know for one of your units in that team these were yeah, yeah If I had the points maybe um, you know, but I I needed the battle line and the other stuff So I I think I'd still rather have a unit of 20 marauders than Than these than a unit of 20 of these guys Um, just for the reliability in in what I'm asking of the marauders I mean, it's the charge. It's the charge ability. Right. That's the trick. Yep Yep, they got that that charge ability got your world art free in the final match It sure did it did Jacob sim says you guys really don't like 39 models regenerating sheer weight of dice Not really because they're all bad attacks with no rend and that's just not worth that much and they're gonna die in bucket loads Like if anything Two of your reinforcement points on it, right, right, and that's just like sus. I suppose Um, and you only get d3 dudes back in that big unit still It's not like by going to 30 you would get 3d3 back It's just if you have oh, no, sorry. It would be 3d3 I thought it's because it is for each broodmaster. I apologize, which you could get three broodmasters. I'm sorry So yeah, I mean you get 3d3 dudes back, but Then another d3 from life's form Or sure if you really want to throw good money after bad. Sure. I guess Um, I mean the problem is they're just going to explode if anything at all touches them You know 330 points. I can find better stuff in slaves to darkness. That's the challenge It's not that they might like there are some armies where this might be a good investment But in slaves to darkness, you've just got so many options that that are in this space Right, that's the challenge So, um, yeah, uh, I although I do agree with w soran. That's a nice pick That's a great pick. I hadn't thought about that Soran said the only thing I think is good for this is cabalists where you're eating a d3 models for your spell casting And uh, you get back your free d3 spiders. So that's cool That's if that is a fun interaction. I hadn't considered that The problem is the existing ones like the iron golems and the untamed beasts and stuff are just so Bargain basement cheap right now Right, you're getting those guys for like 75 80 85 points. Like it's just it's nothing Right So at any rate, yeah, that's those guys. Um, cool cool stuff. Glad to see that they're they're fun Uh, I imagine we'll see uh I imagine we'll see some uh Some of the dark oath people may be trod out in some armies. So that could be cool Uh, and the tarantulas, I guess, uh, if you're doing a cabalist thing It's more fun than than trying to get your snake regeneration back because that's how you that's how you were traditionally doing You were using the the snake boys sacrifice in the little snakes and uh, then getting back snakes Okay So Uh, that's the news. All right gentlemen Sorry, I got to grab my time stamp here. All right Let's talk about pick of the week Uh Brent, what would you like to share with everybody? Oh, um So last time I was on it was just before, uh, you know the United States election and I recommended people register to vote And if I remember correctly chat hated that Um, so I've so I've learned my lesson Uh, my recommendation is to engage with your local public governments. Um, be the change in the world you'd like to see Um, you know by and large, uh, at least at the local level you can make a lot of change By just participating You know going to school board meetings going to you know public forums, you know knowing who you know, you're electing as Sheriffs and judges and things like that and that that can drive at least in your community the place that you are most likely to be affected by um, you know, ideally the things that you'd like to see so um Yeah, that's my pick of the week I like it. It's a good one engaging with your local government is good because those are the people who's actually have of Whose policies usually have a pretty direct impact on your life So plus I've watched lots of episodes of parks and rec and you got to balance out some of the crazy people who go to those meetings So, you know, there you go Uh, tom, what's your pick of the week? What would you like to share with everybody? two one Uh, one is a content creator. Obviously He's no stranger to the show. Uh, two plus tough Doug put out a video last week on why you should play stormcast's turnals Funny story. There's a lot of reasons why should play stormcast turnals I got to watch a bunch of them this weekend. And so I encourage you to go check out Doug's video And uh, and and uh, I see kind of walks through the the beauty of of stormcast and all the Ease of getting into it and and all that. So it's a great video um, and the other one I want to promote is uh, I actually finally pulled the trigger on warhammer plus And uh, there's some fun, uh, like I enjoyed Under the lore masters or lore keepers or whatever series They have a fun treatment of both negation teclis Um, and so the teclis one is the one I enjoyed because like there's there from a content producer standpoint like Folks have done more exhaustive treatments Like I think about like chucks deep dive into teclis in his history and everything But one thing that I loved about it is they were showing the continuity between teclis of the old world And like who we have now with the lumenath The teclis of the lumenath leadership. Oh and also the idk like Dismissal and just showing kind of his arc and and and I appreciated that And I hadn't previously seen that and so it was something that I really enjoyed Nice. All right, cool Uh, my pick is going to be the anti elf pick I am going to select for my pick of the week honest war gamer rob Who put up a wonderful video today about why sentinels are terrible And even though they were part of the team army that I just played with Watching them work was truly disgusting The first the first two places had sentinels heavy sentinels Yes sentinels are awful and should be changed there we go and rob has a little 20 minute video about why sentinels are dumb And I agree with his I enjoyed rolling dice all weekend. Sure sure I think the game against brendan where you just like piled all of them behind a house like completely behind a building That they are getting a bonus from and they couldn't be seen or interacted with and they were just like killing one of their characters every round Is probably not a super positive experience sitting on the other side of the table No, the the worst would have been the prior game game four When there was a mountain that was an objective that they were hiding behind And they could not be seen or interact with at all back there And they were all under a mountain literally I hit them under a mountain and shot over the mountain At the other side that they were trying to hold the same objective. Yeah, yeah It was uh, oh and I was getting plus one to wound Because the mountain gave that so that was great Yep Yep So so fix them maybe take away that whole Shooting without line of sight thing. I don't care that you've got a bird It's lots of people have birds Uh, just make it once again. Just make it once again. Just just get rid of it. How about we just get rid of it That would be great. Let's just just get rid of it. It doesn't need to be there Push them into saven and push them over a cliff I just said you just want to look at the orchards go with the rats into the ocean I see. Yeah Okay. All right. All right Uh Okay Let's talk about some hobby time gentlemen Uh, all right hobby time Uh What have you been working on brother? Brendan, what's on your desk? A lot of things. Um, I've had a lot of hobby add not been really able to focus too much on anything Um, I've been trying to do some cruel boys painting That was ideally what I was going to be bringing with me to have it but Work largely got in the way. Um, so that didn't happen and I've been painting my Vulture here tonight and Going for something a little bit different since all my stuff. I'm trying to do in uh in an ice steam the same basing You saw what the slaves the darkness, but like trying to take it up like just a little bit Um, so like a like a snow vulture of sorts trying to what I'm going to be trying for Getting the depth of color on the wings has been Something Um, but you know, you got to push yourself right like it's it's one of those it's one of those things where the the The boss the swamp boss. I painted him kind of like a light icy blue like the The whatever the monster thing is um And I went you know What if I took this one level higher than I feel comfortable with That's where you learn that's in the learning zone Yeah, so one level above where you're comfortable with that's the learning zone. That's where you want to be that's where you learn Nothing wrong with that. Yeah, I'm excited for it I am too. I I think it'll be okay um It tonight was the first night where like I I actually have sat down and started to like work on Um, you know the next the next layer of white to to try and get it where it needs to go Um, so yeah, so that's that's where I'm at. Um, I want a bunch of slanesh stuff at the last A couple of tournaments. I've got a bellicor that I need to work on So I'm all over the place like I don't know I look there's nothing wrong with having a full hobby desk. I suppose you know the saddest thing that I like I um Obviously at holy havoc, there's a raffle All three of us attended holy havoc this past weekend tournament in april bill illinois was absolutely fantastic wonderful wonderful tournament And uh, where the and steve has announced he's sticking with the team's format Uh, or yes, which we're all excited about for holy wars as well. So in the spring february 12th and 13th Uh, we're not technically doing an event slide this week, but i'll talk about it real quickly Anyways february 12th and 13th, which i'm to understand is super bowl weekend. That's what i've been told I don't I don't know that that's a thing and the weekend before valentine's day. It's not on valentine's day. So I mean how much that's not a thing. There's no valentine's day eve um It's fine like whatever Uh, but at any rate, it's going to be a team game as well very excited about it And uh, so I hope to see everybody there. It's going to be 72 person event again, which I I know we can pack the Pack the the the the house again or socially distance pack the house again as it were um but uh You know, we we were all there over the weekend and we were all uh Obviously playing through all these great games and it made me Think very much about a lot of hobby because the standard of hobby was so high there And so when I got home, I was like it's time to paint again. Let's get this done. So my Thing that I'm working on right now is something completely unrelated to aos. It's this guy right here This is the emperors champion from uh 40k But he was painted Uh very quickly For a purpose for a video that's coming out Uh, and it's going to be super fun. I'm very excited about it This may be part of a challenge video with somebody else and uh, what I want to make sure Is that uh, when that video happens That I win the challenge. So you all need to make sure when that video comes out that you vote for me That's what I'm saying here not You'll you'll see when it happens But let's let's vote. Let's vote for me. Don't let this other person win. Don't let him win. All right Uh, it was a great tournament though Tom What's your hobby time? What are you working on? Yeah, so I assembled a model today that I never thought I would touch Ever You're you're the hammer swarm thing. Yeah, that's right. That's gold plastic folks. Um, and uh, you know Got a dremel out and start working on some of these hammers and uh, I have a Conversion project that I'm working out that I'm actually quite excited about so Um, uh, I'm gonna rip this model apart. It's gonna be great I I'm Excited about your conversion. We'll see what actually becomes of it. I think it's going to be impossible, but I'm excited to see you try Uh, one step above where comfortable is learning. So I suppose you'll definitely be in that zone there Um, all right So, uh, yeah, and I've got a lot of stuff to hobby back there is is a little lumeneth I have to paint a lumeneth now. I have to paint one of these elves. He's right there. There he is He's next up All right. Well gentlemen With that aside Shall we Turn to the main event for tonight Shall we turn to what we're going to discuss? Which is the soul being alive The soul blight grave lords in 3.0. There they are Uh, I had to use this piece of art with lukevi Because I think lukevi is like super cool I know a lot of people don't necessarily love the vengurion lord model. I think it's cool as Uh, well, I'm sorry. They're wrong That's that's right. That's right now When this army came out and we did a review show I would say I was middling to positive Like that's kind of where I was sure And we had kind of a range, but I think people were some people felt a little more negative And then there were those who were standing it from the beginning Sure, and then you were one of those Yes, yes, I was And I took copious notes on everybody who who disparaged the quality of this book Everyone should have been receiving letters as of late if you have not, please let me know and we will send you Uh, your letter telling you you were wrong. That's right. That's right Uh, by the way as we get into soul blight if you love the idea of The spoopy models of soul blight do hit that like button. Don't forget to hit like don't forget to subscribe all that fun stuff Hit buttons. It's fun So Brendan before we get into this, why do you like the soul blight grave lords? You're the lord of death Give me the pitch. Why why should people love this army? so So I I am also on a podcast independence of this, uh, the cubic shenanigans podcast We're a warhammer podcast oriented at, um Actual education when you know In and around the game. So when we do battle tome reviews, it's not just the Exclusive nature of going through it and reading the war scrolls and being like numbers good low points also good Numbers bad points too high like that's not that's not what we're trying to do You know a lot of what i'm going to you know, we go through in that is explaining um critically How things interact, you know, what the overall army construction looks like Um, how you approach different missions and different list building and the things that you're going to struggle with by by doing it um So one of the most common questions i'm asked is You know, hey, I'm new to this. I like I really want to learn to play this game Uh, and in some cases I've been playing for a while and I want to play this game competitively You know what what army should I look at? uh Work work lands is still my number one if you are looking to play like looking to learn the fundamentals of the game from a competitive perspective and and understand all phases of it Work work fans is still your start um I think so like grave lords this new book has moved into a very strong second place The only thing that I think keeps it out of first place Is is the lack of shooting in the book. That's not a that's not a phase of the game You're going to necessarily learn from your side of the table to end up learning it from the other side in In prevention status. It has an extraordinarily wide range of models It has a lot of very unique ways to play the army even with just the small change of Whatever your lineage is so the lineages here are the sub factions um that grant you different rules and command ability or command traits and artifacts um so if you are oriented towards playing the death stuff and you're looking to Play competitively, but you're looking at a place of where to start, you know, kind of doing that learning This is the book to do it in because as you would branch out to the other death armies They are some like larger skew version of what it is that you're going to be able to play out of the soul blight book Nice nice. I like all that Uh, I think you know, and I think it aligns with by the way My favorite part about doing the soul blight grave lords revisited in a os 3.0 is that I get to use the chiller font Which is something I almost never get to use. I love that the chiller font Like what a what a hilarious font uh at any rate Uh, I need a good site people in the comments Give me a good site that isn't awful where I can download good fonts because I'm trying to find the john carpenter font Which has a name, but it's the carpenter font from halloween. I really like it But all font sites are unbelievably sketchy So I need a place where I can find the john carpenter font. This is a weird thing But anyways, there you go okay I think my I think my summary match is more or less exactly what you said, right? It's an extremely varied force that plays well in 3.0. It's got a good list of strong monster heroes Good capabilities good utility solid battle line with some regenerative capabilities allowing you to have good trading potential Like a lot of aos 3.0 plays into the trading game You take a point you're willing to sacrifice to let give them the point back And then so you then you hit their unit what you want to be losing is something less valuable And I think this army trades extremely well uh, it has uh strong support hero pieces with excellent utility And strong hammers that can bait a strike and shift enemy units when necessary What do you think about my summary there does that sound right? I I mean I didn't object when you sent me the email so I I mean by by and large that's that's very correct. Um The one of the cool things is is you can build really different lists the The only sub faction I think that really doesn't hold its water right now is avingori Where you know you get terra geisse and zombie dragon battle lines and you're incentivized to bring the big stuff That doesn't mean you can't make it good. Um I think that you are going to have to be a better player to see the same level of success out of it Um, there's a lot of very cool heroes that do very cool things, which is one of the things that You know people end up really looking for you can play an elite's army. You can play a horde army You can deal more to wounds. You have friends. You have multiple damage steps Uh, you can just drown them in a thousand cuts You can swarm with so many bodies that your opponent's not going to be able to get through it It's really It's really whatever you want this to be outside of I want to shoot a million things at range Sorry This grand alliance isn't for you like not even this book The like you like you are in the wrong place orders where you want to go. They're over there. They have all of the guns Yeah, yep, I think that's exactly right Tom, what do you think about like your perception of soul blight? I remember the first time Like you hadn't played 3.0 yet and you came down to visit me Yeah, you were like I want to see what soul blights about so I built a little 120 zombie list, uh It's very casually super cash Uh double necro 120 zombie vampire lord with launch at the soul seeker Beledama list and uh And proceeded to mull your ko with my zombie horde And uh, it almost made you quit aos. I believe was that what the outcome of that? So what do you think of this army? Zombies are pretty good. Sure Um just in general, uh, I mean what I would say is that uh, I think that it has a lot of very interesting pieces in it Um, I think that the opening up of uh, some of those key Uh units from cursed city really made a difference Um, I'm thinking about like the grave digger guy. Yeah gorsola for a keeper. Yep. He's pretty good um I I mean vampire lords on zombie dragons have always been clutch and they still are Like that hasn't really changed. Um I think that it has lots of really interesting tools for those that want to play elite I think that you can go blood knights and be fine if you want to play horde. I think you can do zombies and be just great Yeah, yep So like it just there's a nice range of play In that army that you just don't always See elsewhere. Sure. There's some nice tech pieces with belladonna and like the her spell Um, you know, there's just you know, again some neat stuff. Yeah, the like and curse. Yes. Yeah pretty great uh What are the weaknesses? Oh lord of death Speak to us of the weaknesses of this like if you're somebody rolling up against a soul black grave lords player And obviously it's going to vary by list. Well, what do you see is the general weaknesses besides just like her? Her it doesn't shoot, right? Of course, but but like, you know, there's a deeper story than that obviously Um, if you're playing not blood knights, the army is terribly slow, right? You know, there is the the slight exception in zombies you auto six the run and you have the six inch pylon fine um, but basically everything that doesn't have a mount of some variety Incredibly slow, uh, you need to be a very patient player and understand where your setups are going to be Not just the next turn, but the turn beyond that and you need to be moving towards towards those opportunities Uh, a lot of your In your non negash non vangorian lord non vampire lord on zombie dragonless um, a lot of what's invested in there is five to eight wound heroes who just die to You know to some of these things that some of your opponents are taking to try and reach out and touch somebody so you have to present, um a enough Poor opportunities for your opponent where they have to be concerned with other items other pieces on the table that they that they need to deal with um They they have various constructions where Um, they can be quite powerful, but I think in terms of just overall output But if you shift too hard In one direction you can get caught out in in some of your your bad matchups where for instance, you know like zombies are quite good Uh, zombies individually don't do enough damage in in many instances to to pull down some of the bigger stuff um You know that's an instance where you probably want to be using some grave guard or some blood knights But if you are moving into something that Has a lot of models and the ability to to return fire Some of those units aren't necessarily the right thing and you're going to wish you had some zombies uh It it's about balance and having a plan in this book Nice, I like it uh, yeah, and I think that Having played against this army a fair amount somebody in my normal group runs this army pretty often It's it's one of their armies in their rotation. They go between this lumineff and cities That's like they they switch every week, but it's I've seen enough still blight ravelord's armies And they're also somebody who likes inventory like as a as a player Uh, they you know when they run lumineff It's a lot of like wardens and sentinels and everything on foot right like just tons of that of that kind of stuff When they run cities, they'll they'll pull, you know, big blocks of cities inventory when they run this They like big blocks of zombies big blocks of skeletons dire wolves things like that, right? They love a flood the zone strategy And it's interesting how this plays like because if you do make a misstep into it It's funny how it can punish you right like this army is one of those things that's like they have good Individual tools that when applied correctly can really make a big difference on the outcome of the battle Has been my perception of the thing like if you misstep they often have the ability to capitalize on it Um, so I think that's it but but you know, it's not always prima facie obvious when you read the The book or the scrolls, right? It kind of happens in game Um, and I think that a lot of people, you know, obviously they have two spell lures One of them is just pretty bad and one of them is pretty good um But fortunately a lot of the real magic as it were is just on the war scrolls like most of the the Spellcasty vampires who have spell cast spells to cast Have pretty good spells. Uh, you know, we already mentioned Bella Dama's spell. She's got great magic um You know, so like there's There's options there On the scroll itself. So Okay, cool Uh, right on let's talk about let's do a little buy the numbers. Shall we? courtesy of our friend aos shorts who keeps this running tabulated list So this is a very uh popular army by the by At 6.9 of the meta, which I believe puts it in the third place overall Of meta representation. So oryx have moved up to number one Suns have fallen to number two and soul blight at number three Uh, so very popular army And you know, it's put up some good numbers 34 plus wins eight five wins Uh, but that breaks down to eight five wins and 20 uh, 22 four wins. So it's you know, it's up there It's a very well performing army Um, obviously the only armies that beat it in the five wins category are the sons of bammat and the disciples of zinch Over the course of aos three. So pretty strong in that regard. Beautiful. Yeah. Yeah Um And you know like the they they put up a relatively nice percentage When it comes to this stuff like they're they're in the top ish area Um, I don't have their win percentage. I looked for whether or not rob had like honest wargamer rob stats Had it I couldn't find his most recent data set from it But my memory of them is that they're you know, they're in the 50s They're not crazy. They're not weak. They're they're somewhere in the that 50s area. So pretty good overall, uh, so so honestly, uh, I mean It's showing strong results. I guess I don't know what else to say, right? I mean the numbers say yep it's doing pretty good, but not busted crazy, I suppose Yeah, and and one of the things that can really penalize you super hard in running this is if you misjudge What the expected breakdown at the event you're going to be going to is if If you are expecting to go in with a lot of combat armies and lulls everybody's got guns That army's probably not going to fare super great. Um Because but there are sole blight lists that you can build that deal with you know Range stuff, you know that you go, okay I'm expecting to see an average dispersion of of ranged armies at this event This is what this is what I'm going to take You know if you feel that you're going to go into an event with a lot of combat stuff And you play hard into it You're going to meet them at the middle of the table and And you're going to steamroll whatever you want as long as you know You understand where to set up the the trades and be patient. Yeah Yep, absolutely All right, uh cool, so I just wanted to talk a little about sub factions and see if you agree with my take here I in my mind The sub factions that are in this book Two of them are kind of One of them is just kind of disappointing one of them is there to be the fun option And then the other three have some kind of potential So what I'm saying there is legion of blood is disappointing nefarada's force I just find disappointing and not really having any real reason to play it. Maybe I'm wrong I'd love to be told I'm wrong if somebody's got a great legion of bloodless. I'd love to see it Uh avingori is there for funsies, right? It's like yay. You want to run all your big stompy crazy monsters Cool. Here's a fun way to do that. No problem. I don't mind stuff like that being in the book I like big stompy monsters. I like when they put that kind of stuff in books. It's good I don't think it's hyper competitive, but whatever that doesn't make it bad. That just makes it a fun option, right? And then I think that cast a lie vircos and legion of night all have some kind of potential What do you think about that read? Yeah cast a lie and vircos have been running away with it in terms of just the overall net results in terms of people Who are getting to that four win five win section um I I was a believer In the legion of night at the beginning of it. I haven't been able to master list myself, but I want to say I saw a five and o Legion of night lists a couple of weeks ago and I I wish I had grabbed it, you know as we were scrolling through twitter and the like sure That's that's the legion in my mind that if you're expecting to see shooting is the legion that you're taking That's the one that has the ability to close the distance with the rest of the army and make like thoroughly unpleasant Well, yeah, you can just it's it's ability to really keep a lot of stuff Off that you need to keep off the table to ambush to have sort of you know to keep things away from shooting Uh to to make sure they can't hit the right pieces I think is uh is what stands out there right in that kind of shooting meta Yeah Okay, and then I just listed here cast a lie vircos legion of night I listed some of the fun command traits and artifacts that I think are Uh, at least could be it could have some interesting play Uh, so with cast a lie, you know rousing commander craving for a massacre artifacts grave sand shard fragment of the keep in the red casket And vircos pack alpha kin of the wolf hunter snare and spore trackers I wasn't I I didn't believe in spore trackers until I played a game with it And had all of those stupid things like moving three extra inches and I was like oh actually this is quite impactful like it was it was Shocking how much of a difference it made Uh, and then they get they get the saying syrian artifact, which is your plus d3 attacks And then legion of night Uh above suspicion swift form an unholy impetus imp. I think I spelled that wrong I'm imp it. Yeah, I am a pest. I spelled that wrong And then vile of pure blood in the shard of night and more bigs claw Which is really hard to use properly. I think but it's a cool idea Um, yeah, that's my list. I think all these could find a home in some kind of list What do you think about that? Yeah, um In vircos, I'm a big fan of pack alpha, you know, we're gonna talk about some of the Some of the lists that you know, I've been I've been dealing around with um Particularly some of the cheese on the vampire lord on foot um The hunter snare is great the Throwing it on a vangorian lord or a vampire lord on zombie dragon to You know kind of go toe to toe with some of what the um Sons of bayamot are able to score with The cast lie ones to me are A little straightforward in terms of you get to do your extra rules for free early, right? Which which you want to be doing it's how you power up. It's how you get that how you get that list going um Legion of night Above suspicion is great. Um And I believe it's unholy impetus. Um, where you reroll the charges Here's my book um Yeah, like it's The thing that that can be kind of lame in some of these sub factions is some of the artifacts Don't don't do very much for me Um, you know, that's gonna be a lot of amulets of destiny or arcane tomes floating around in a lot of lists Because yeah, I mean there's to me. It's funny because vircos. I really like All four of these command traits Like I could see a list I built that had all of them Okay, depending on what my my unit composition was But the only artifact they have is saying seriate in my mind like I think the other ones are just basically all hot garbage Yeah And it's like well, I guess that I'm gonna find uses for one of the the universals if I if I'm doing it, right? whereas the Legion of night does have some interesting artifacts as does I think cast a lie like I think I could see the grave sandshard the fragment of the keep in the red casket All having some kind of use. They're all interesting artifacts to get in the same way The fragment of the keep is really good um And and it plays a part in the list. I just blatantly stole from the just play guys um Where handing out a minus one to wound aura within six inches Combined with some of the defensive bonuses that that list is gonna see Yep, it's good. Uh It is good It's so good. It's crazy good Fire slayers have been riding on that for a couple years now The minus one to wound aura right It's effective the like the The least buffable profile in age of sigmar forcing someone to be minus one in that I'll take that I Especially when you consider And we'll we'll talk about the list a little bit later Some of the debuffs you're gonna be handing out as well Making making life extra difficult for for your opponents. Mm-hmm. Yeah Absolutely Uh, all right. So speaking of lists, let's let's dive into it, right? I mean, let's just get right into it Let's get into some lists. Let's look at this and play And talk about what we think about like like so, uh, brennan said over three sample lists all very original all completely of his creation ignore the part of it that says Uh, directly stolen from other people in certain lists. That's fine. We don't need to worry about that I think I actually cut that out by the way What I snipped your your lists But at any rate here we go. That's too bad Maybe maybe not. I remember what I did. All right, let's start with the legion of night list with the list name of I will make this legion of night list work So take us through this bad way So so this is this is the list that I've you know, because it won because it's night, right the um I I was finding that as as the game state has been, you know, been changing from the start of 3.0 to to modern state Um, you know, there has been a presence of of more shooting lists than originated things that, um Uh, kind of came to their own in order to answer the questions that uh, sons of bayonet were asking right so My kind of the natural sole blightless really really we're not cutting it for me in those matchups and I asked myself the question Okay, what's the hard direction i'm going to move towards in order to uh compensate for this And that was going legion of night with a necromancer general with above suspicion So when he set up, you know off table in ambush instead of coming on from the table edge He can be set up anywhere more than nine inches from enemy models I basically use that for him to come up through a gravesite and support some of the other units Um, you have a vangorian lord with the shard of night, which ignores the run characteristics of missile weapons when making save rolls Which particularly on the vangorian lord is going to be useful Uh, you have manfred I hate that I take him so often, but he's just so good. He really is He's so yeah Two units of three fell bats and I'm sure some folks are going to go Why? Uh, it's points. I took them because of points, uh and deployment purposes a unit of 10 skeletons Three units of three var guys a unit of 20 grave guard and a unit of 40 zombies split up between two battle regiments so My first battle regiment effectively what I do is I deploy my three units on the table that I am obligated to In order to meet the nonsense. I'm going to engage in very shortly Um, because what you can do with soul blight is you can place a unit In the grave for that are summonable for every unit that's on the table So I have three units on the table so I can place three units in the grave Um, I only have two units that can go on the grave the grave guard and the zombies and they almost always do You can place three units off table, uh with ageless cunning for every unit that you have on the table So off the table typically goes manfred the vangorian lord and uh the necromancer sure Then the var guys totally independent of all of that can be placed in the sky right so over the course of two drops I'm starting the game with 10 skeletons and two units of three bats on the table and I'm looking at my opponent going Okay, you know you you beat me you are this one drop super crazy shooting list Congratulations You get to go first if you'd like and they go no, I really don't want to go first you go Okay, that's fine. I'm going to drop my entire army nine inches away from you And I'm just going to see how many charges I can make and hopefully I connect with a few of them Um, because that's going to ruin your day in a very meaningful way so, um It I haven't been able I haven't been able to get it working in the in the way that I'd like Um, it helps when you roll nines, uh, sure It doesn't help when you don't um so Being 1975 I I find it that you're hit or miss on the the getting the triumph Um, obviously you take blood thirsty here to get another charge reroll if you can and the uh You're just going to be at some point in this phase, you know spending a dice reroll on on trying to make the charge um One of the things I'd I'd like to try and experiment with in it is is finding ways to make the charging a little bit more reliable But so far this has been um, my most effective answer to shooting in ages sigmar It struggles with things that have a lot of armor um That's the trade you make here. Um, you you do have a lot of rend one, which is great um but Past that you really don't have Really don't have a ton right right Uh, I so uh two headed calf says you should call this one the legion of nines, uh, which I like I'm definitely up voting that comment that is solid Uh, yeah, I mean the fill bets are interesting because not only are the two units of them enabling you to have the other three units You need buried in the grave, right? but They're also like fill bats. We've pointed out a really interesting because their big move and their tiny bases and their ability to absorb a A um To absorb an unleash hell Right like oh no shoot the bats It's like, okay Yeah, I mean That's the other beautiful part of it. Right is if they choose to go first and they move up and I go Thank you sure now my bats now my bats are really going to make your life miserable right Well, I mean, it's the same reason why I like in night haunt. I run like the 65 point Stupid glaive wraiths that nobody runs or even miramorn is all of them do that exact same job Which is here eat eat a unleash hell Right, right and then let the rest of them come in Well, and it's just also like good chef, right? Like let's not kid ourselves There are a lot of armies that have no easy cheap chef and these these little these little dooders are uh You know like 14 inch move Models that can get around where you kind of need to be and put them in Uh Put them in the way of stuff you need to put them in the way of which is valuable on its own Okay I do love by the way they gave the bats retreat in charge. It's adorable. I forgot they had their role until I just looked them up real quick Uh, like I thought they would survive Yeah, they're fun. They they end up doing some kind of surprising things Used correctly. You can screen off different areas of the board um They're just annoying right like It takes time to get through them for You know some of those smaller units that you're that you try to keep contained from scoring objectives Now, obviously some stuff is just gonna walk into it and go I don't know why you are here. I don't know why you were here to begin with But I'm here now and you are not right sure So I've got a question for you in the anti shooting thing. So so Partisan germ just said so skeleton and zombie hordes can't regen their way through a rain of shooting Do you want to talk about the idea of of uh Of like bodying your way through like because I don't think the shooting problem is they kill your units the shooting problem is They kill your utility pieces you need to make your your units actually punch above their weight but But I mean like There the reality is you can out body the shooting where they're not going to bring down your units I would I would think what do you think about that? a a smart player is going to Focus fire as it comes across the table and remove one whole unit at a time Or you leave it on such a small number that the regeneration is very limited Because you have to remember that you're only getting back 1d3 models for The the hero recovery right and you have to cast to get another three So you're getting between four and six One of those includes rolling for heroes right um now With your high value returns things like grave guard um You know you you like that, but when you're getting stuff back for Skeletons, you'd kind of almost prefer the unit to be dead so that you can roll against that five up in the in the Battle shock phase To maybe hopefully get them a little bit closer um I have been experimenting with A you know a negash and like a hundred dudes lists, you know go back to the go back to the And And that's kind of a maybe What what I found though is if I don't have the ability to hide the heroes In a kind of immediate and meaningful way They end up getting hid for me in my dead pile Sure, like it's going to be raptors or bow snakes or the aforementioned Broken sentinels or something like that like there are there's this sort of cadre of long range potentially mortal wound triggering Shooters that are out there that are hunters in the meta right now that are challenging right especially for your utility heroes It's not that they're unbeatable It's just that they're annoying to utility heroes and being able to do things like take them off board And then set them up like having above suspicion on the necromancer It's great because then he can just pop up wherever you need him to to be applying the the support that he needs to do Right And it prevents him from getting shot which is good And he has a very much somebody that people want to shoot and like Yes, he has a decent wound pass to other units But that won't save him against You know somebody really focusing fire on him which by the way people will often do because they know how powerful the necromancer the Because they know how powerful the necromancer is right. He's a great enabler to the overall army He ends up being like, you know public enemy number one With your shooting attacks often A little too often. Yeah. Yes It's like, yeah, okay. I'll accidentally kill some zombies too. All right You know like great Uh, okay cool um The We're gonna talk about grave guard a little more in the next list But I want to just get your opinion real quick on skelly tons. Okay We all know zombies are good. This is not a question Zombies have just like one of the best war scrolls for battle line in the game points to to sort of efficacy ratio Give me your take on skeletons. Can skeletons work because there's a lot of there's a lot of skeleton stands out there people like the bones Yeah Yeah skeletons work um The the thing that I think a lot of people were struggling with in the understanding of How how skeletons work is they were looking at them the way the war scroll used to work Where you were throwing 120 dice at you know, like threes and twos or whatever it was You know re-rolling everything under the sun And just going all right you you have a two up. That's fine. You have to make 106 saves and your opponent goes What and then the unit dies because No one can roll that well. Right. Um, their role is totally different They are not going to be drowning opponents in dice. Their role is to be a very effective tar pit um, the ability to Regenerate models when they pile in and fight and to be able to do that twice with the necromancer spell I went I sat there and went toe to toe with an archion for Three combat phases with a 30 man unit of skeletons Where you know, you're getting 75 percent back of what he kills, you know 50 percent then 50 percent of 50 percent Right. Um, and then keeping a point in your pocket to to anti battle shock um you know If you orient towards the new role that they have I found them to be very effective 10s are Probably the best screen that you have in the book unless you have some points for some dire wolves in which case do that Um, you know because then they're also a fast screen with some more wounds, but they do cost more points um Just just a really good unit, but you have to know where their limits are You can't you can't ask them to do everything because that's not what they do anymore Well, and they also only have one inch reach even with spears It's never made a difference to me Because they're just not attacking unit anymore, right? They're not an offensive unit, right? Yeah Like you'll get whatever damage you get out of it and that's fine and that's cool and that's great But that's gravy because what you're hoping to do is you're hoping to lock down A piece of your opponent's army in a part of the board where they don't want to be They want to you want to keep them behind schedule and what I mean by that is They're expecting to have that unit get through something somewhere to be somewhere else at a certain point in the game Right if you can keep them there longer than they'd like your opponent starts to freak out And if your opponent doesn't have a level headed ability to Plan through something that's not working the way that they'd like it to You're already going to be winning Yep. Yep. I like that. No, it's a good read. And that's what I said I think that all of the sort of The sort of three core I don't know battle line as it were when I went in my head when I'm thinking here is is skeleton zombies dire wolves, right? all three to me have uh Have some interesting different play Uh, I really like like dire wolves have a very interesting Uh mobility to them ability to get around zombies actually have an interesting hitting power and I do think skeletons can actually stick They need a little bit of support. I agree. They get like because you want to have the necromancer. They're using Uh van hells on them because that really allows them to regenerate an egregiously larger amount of models into their unit, right? but You know, sure. Can the zombies regenerate? Yeah, sort of depending on what they're killing And that's the problem, right? They have to actually kill stuff to regenerate models. The skeletons just do it. They just stand back up Right, which is a nice advantage Yeah, it has to occur in the combat phase So if you have the ability to remove models outside of that, uh, that's that's where they start to fall down And that's where their interaction with shooting starts to become a bit of a problem Because part of what you're paying for in that unit is their ability to just be there just to be physically present and And to score points and to be annoying and to throw dice at your opponent and to make them go Yeah, you killed two of these guys, but like More of your unit should be dead. You go, but it's not right Right. Yep. No, I agree All right, uh Okay Next list I did keep it. Okay stolen from just play Uh, is the name of this list. This is our castelai dynasty Uh, take us through this bad boy right here Uh, this is this is an interesting one Yeah, so I I'm not the original author on this. Um, this is a list that I I saw on twitter They went 50 with it and I went huh Took enough bases out went down to my basement Set up a game played it out and I went Huh So I'm I'm sure there are um the uh I'm sure the just play guys know how to play this list better than I do like just Just just absolutely Uh, better than I do because what I what I saw with it is this is one that requires some forethought and some planning And some practice on how it is that you're going to get through it. Um, the the strong advantage to this list is you have 20 blood knights Um, for those of you who don't know are pretty good Turns out base 3 up save. Yeah, you know base 3 up save pretty good attacks extra good on the charge have the ability to retreat quote unquote retreat Do some damage and then charge back in uh against certain size models or you can charge into You know some big stuff and do some damage And and that ends up being pretty good The thing that ends up being interesting with them is you obviously have uh, the white king here who has All of the stuff because there's one other big unit of note that, you know, we'll talk about sure Fragment of the keep as we touched on is minus one to wound Within six inches. So you're already handing out debuffs to your opponents that are in in a specific area I've heard that from Phoenix debuff is pretty good It it's it's pretty all right um, the Uh, the rousing commander allows you to once per battle Trigger the might of the crimson keep you get bloodied strength and stolen vitality Uh, so those are the two more difficult ones to achieve So what that means is you add one to the damage characteristic and you add one to the wounds characteristic of that unit for that turn So if your opponent is sending damage back at you Your blood knights count as four wound models a piece instead of three which can you know save you a couple of models and The um The bloody strength of the plus one damage you want to use this on a turn Obviously when you're getting all of your charges off now it doesn't affect the mounts um, but On the lances that's pretty all right They're they're very reliable because the other thing that you're going to be pairing this with is negash Right, so negash is himself. He's here. Yeah So negash's command ability here Where you are able to reroll hit rolls of one save rolls of one and become immune to battle shock That one's not so important here But the hit and the save rolls of one are very important when your whole profile is basically threes across the board, right? um You know the the unit that you're going to all out attack on is going to be you know twos by threes the unit that you have mystic shield on it's probably negash Is going to be twos rerolling ones on his save the unit that you all out defense is going to be twos rerolling ones um You know the the ability to have negash, you know be one of these Turbo powered characters who you know can finest our mystic shield and all out defense and feel pretty good about Getting the mystic shield off in almost every single matchup. You're dealing with almost almost um He's still a relatively strong caster. Yes Yeah, very much so the Having that minus one to wound coming back at you Being able to hand out minus one to hit from overwhelming dread Potentially stacking it to minus two making your opponent very unlikely to engage in any plus one antics Being able to potentially split The minus one to multiple units forcing them to make decisions on what they do or don't want to do Um handing out minuses to attack all very good Now you can turbo stack the arcane bolt Which is the thing that I think is the most common bit that people talk about in terms of the the damaging aspect but you have You have this ability to to go into You know 12 spells some are more useful than others um And and pick out exactly what your opponent doesn't want to see being able to hand out multiple Having movements of your opponent's move characteristic to keep a critical and key piece pinned in place Um with nothing other than just I rolled goodly um You know with bonuses I rolled good Yeah, like that's that's pretty good. Um You know you can you can debuff heroes even more with decrepify Obviously hand of dust like there's There's so much that you can do But you have to be a proactive and smart player about where you're going to be and when you're going to be with all of this Being a one drop allows you to do a lot of the matchup dictating. Um the zombies My interpretation of it so far has been they they kind of end up being a free piece. Um You can either set them up as a screen You can set them up to block an area or you can set them up, you know behind your line to just protect an objective Move back and forth keep your opponent away from doing any sort of like wild storm cast shenanigans Um, this is a list that I've been trying to spend a little bit more time with um To to gauge and learn because I I really enjoyed the creativity that that went into This army to to solve a problem from kind of an off-angle perspective I Obviously it went 5-0 it went 5-0 in the hands of a very capable player it went 5-0 in in the uk meta like it's It is something to be reckoned with I don't know that I fully understand it at the same level that that those guys do But that's that's been my read on it so far It's interesting because it's a potential five hammer list Right, you know like especially in the in the turn where you are using rousing commander, right? Where if you land the right charges stuff like that um, it's it's interesting that Uh And and you know, I've always talked about my deep love of four hammer lists Because four hammer lists often ask questions that the opponent can't answer Uh, like when you have four different hammers, it's people can generally they can't handle that many things come hitting them that hard And this is interesting because it absolutely can have five Uh, you know even five blood knights can especially in the um You know the current meta of smaller units and things like that They can't all out defense save stack everything You know like there's gonna be one thing they can stop you on and that you'll probably bounce off of But that's the point when you've got four or five hammers They just can't protect everything and I think your point about You know controlling some of the movement even if that's minimal The fact that you've gotten a gosh, even if he just like sort of half juices up with a bunch of uh Arcane bolts and then uses the other half of his spells for you know various sundry utility and control He can still get in there and do what he needs to do I mean we're talking about a pretty powerful piece here still that's like decent enough in combat unleashing four or five d3 mortal wounds if that's what we're talking about and us, you know like a stomp and You know the potential then if you roll into your next turn if he's that close he can handle dust people Right, so there's there's just deep options there to make sure that the things you need to remove are are good And and good and dead I should say You know and blood knights right you you got you got to do it at the right time though like you can't Um, you can't just throw like one unit at him be like, okay, you know it was close enough like If something needs to be made dead You get like you've got to throw the weight of making sure it's dead or understanding that it's going to um That that you're going to be there for a minute And then you need to start making the exchanges elsewhere on the board to circle back to to that. Yep. Yeah It's interesting because the you know the blood knights aren't super hammers obviously when they're just running around standard That's you know, certainly not the case but On the right oftentimes, especially if you you sort of you've got the re-roll ones up to hit and you've got um And and you've got rousing commander firing off boy can they they will punch way above their weight in that round And that's the key right you just need to make sure it's almost like I don't I hate to make this illusion. I don't want anybody to to sort of balk at this But you know like old idk a lot of their units weren't that great, but then they would go Off in turn three, right? They would just have this insane turn three of of stacked power and they would often win the game So like one really good round where you hammer the opponent can make a big difference. I'm not saying this is the same thing as uh old eel dot You know exe. I'm just saying that like there's uh That one powerful round of hammers hitting in the right places can make a big difference right So yes, Dan Uh, cool. All right anything else tom. What do you think about this list? I like you don't like about this list by the way before you go tom. You want to know what it really is. I love What's that? Uh, it's the fact that you don't have to pay any models. That's right That's right. You got 20 easy zombies You knock those out in afternoon because who cares those are just those are just simple dead guys and then from there It's 22 models easy. Just sailing home, right? Like great models that you want to spend some time on Wonderful. Well, I look at this and I'm like, well, I haven't a gosh in 20 zombies Now I just have to get the rarefied blood knights somewhere here in the united states and then I don't know where to go man. They're all over the place now all over the place now That's you know, you just got it like ebay. I'm pretty sure many stomp had a bunch of blood knights in recently So, you know, it's they're around Um, but yes, did you just have the hardest piece? All right tried and true Uh, so let's talk about vircos Uh, take us through and I believe is this Is this pretty much the list you ran at uh at nash con or close to it? So this is the list I went 50 with at circle city Uh went through two sons of bayonet players, uh in the process Um, this was one of my lists at nash con the legion of night list was the other one Gotcha I ended up spending the legion of night list early because I I saw The writing on the wall. There wasn't shooting lists that were coming up. Um, so I chose to spend it in what I thought was probably looking to be my best matchup. It was not um so That got steamrolled, but that's what it is. So This vircos list is one of those ones where I I sit there and say I'm gonna be a ton of drops. That's fine. Yep. Um, yes, because this is nine drops, right? So just It's fine. You're you're probably making me go first That's fine. If you're choosing to go first That's even better in many instances Typically what will end up happening is I will deploy Just all the way across I'll toss probably my zombies in the grave Um, so what we have here is we have a vampire lord on foot with pack alpha What this is is once per turn your general can use a command ability without a command point being spent His command ability has a dumb loophole that it clears at the start of your next hero phase So you can stack it It's dumb Dumb but legal Yeah When you have things that are piling and fighting twice with potentially plus three attacks It's super dumb Don't worry. We can get him more attacks. We'll talk about that in just a second Um, you have belladama So, oh, sorry. So I'm the vampire lord. You take the uh, the extra movement spell And that is largely just so that he can get to the right place to use different command abilities ideally for free And They're that that model is not going to be engaging. That's not what they're there for their job is to not fight Their job is to stand behind as many You know very inexpensive bodies as humanly possible um, you have belladama I take her with soul pike. The soul pike isn't the important part It's her buff that turns sixes into two hits That's the important bit and occasionally turning things into wolves Uh, having the plus one casting while also having the reroll within virkos Hands up being pretty good. Uh, so keep track now. We've got three castings so far Uh, we've got the vengorian lord who takes flaming weapons For plus one damage on a sword and then the artifact that's plus d3 attacks Uh, when you charge so it Beefy beefy thing is good Vengorian lords hand out a reduce your rend by by one bubble Yep, and that ends up being pretty key because it takes the bite out of a lot of stuff that's going to be headed your way um The vengorian lord has one cast so up to four. All right Next up you have the necromancer Who has the incredible pion and fight twice command ability on summonable units? We have a couple of those that, you know, we'll be dealing with and then the arcane tome with overwhelming dread Overwhelming dread is the minus one to hit spell. So we're up to six Then you've got manford who is a two caster And manford is there to be annoying and to like be best friends With the vengorian lord right because the two of them when they go to fight the thing that they want to fight Very few things are going to be able to stand up to to that combination Um, manford is also there as bait if you choose to charge him, then I just go cool. Thank you. He's coming over here Uh, so we've got eight casting attempts So we are able to throw a lot of dice at even some of the more capable casting armies I'm not going to get everything off, but that's okay Uh, manford's command ability to hand out the plus one to hit plus one to wound aura Pretty good And then handing out in the combat phase potentially a plus one attack aura for units as well assuming that manford kills something with his sword, which Happens when I don't need it to and does it when I do so take that as you will Um a So this comes along with a unit of 40 zombies, which usually go off table to make my opponent scared and sad um, a unit of 10 skeletons to Be a screen or just kind of shore up a weak side A unit of 20 grave guard. These are my can openers and like they'll Grave guard annihilate everything that they touch in this list Um, and then you've got a unit of 30 zombie 30 skeletons You run that with warlord for the extra artifact. That's how you're able to take sank sarin and The arcane tome the arcane tome is more important than sank sarin, but That also ends up being pretty alright And then hunters and that goes to the zombies the skeletons The 30 brick of skeletons and the grave guard sure So This is something where I'm going to slowly and patiently move you Into the into the place where I'd like you This is an army that you need to be able to play out all five battle rounds to to win a lot of your games You need to have a direction from the very start and understand where it's all headed You need to understand that there's going to be a time and place to change direction on some of this You have to be patient and willing to understand that Manfred and the vengorian lord one of them in some instances may die. It's probably the vengorian lord And But if your opponent is spending resources in that direction You are already winning You are already winning that game Because what they need to be focusing on is the heroes that are standing behind the wall of guys That are slowly just moving Towards the middle towards those objectives if you've chosen to ignore one of my grave sites then the Um, you know, then the zombies are going to come out from that direction And now I've closed the door on one of the sides, right? It's it is a very slow and suffocating play style. Um, but That's the way I really like to play my armies where possible Um, so this is an army that I have ended up getting a lot of practice with I've you know I have five anode with it. I've gotten best death in other places with it. Um, you know, this is It's just just an army that I think is Really good. Yeah, I really like this list I like it because it goes right to what I was talking about at the beginning, right? Like it has a lot of different tools That can be deployed in lots of different ways Right. This is this is the exact kind of list that I like. Yeah, I mean this is very much of your road, tom Right, like there's a lot of different options. It plays a very careful strategic game It's winning often through like It's like It's very much about the positional game It's about playing the objectives and then somebody makes a misstep and like I said, you're able to capitalize on it, right? But it's got some really good tools in it that I love whether you're talking about the multi-stack Attack grave guards manfred is just a really funny thing because depending on I wonder if you ran into this situation at all Did you run into a situation at all at nash con because it was pretty good like nash con? It's a pretty great terrain. It's pretty big pieces. Thanks to our our good friend in the chat crazy horse and manfred's interesting because he can When you're when you're trying to block off lanes of movement He can just sort of go land and be somewhere And like you can set him up as this weird piece of chaff and your your opponent's choice is like Okay, well, I can't go over the terrain because there's a lot of like impassable terrain in nash con right if you're playing with good terrain And their choice is like well, I can move up and I guess charge manfred And nothing happens, right? You just kind of can cap their movement He can almost act like a like a like the fox like a movement debuff, right because you're just like peace out Right like they they charge you and then you just leave and you've now In the same way people limit movement with foxes Right because they get way up close knowing that the fox is actually going to be in any kind of melee threat Manfred can actually pull the same trick He can like land and block off used terrain to stop people to be in the way to stop up their movement And then when they actually charge him, he's just like, okay. Bye. And then he just teleports away. Hey, goodbye Yeah Yes, but you know it ends up being less effective one of the other things that I'll do Uh with manfred is I will Charge him in my turn I will go. Okay. Cool. I'm gonna teleport him. My opponent goes. Well, you charged him. Why would you do that? I was like well, because I want him over here And then I pile him in three inches to move his bubble up three inches because he successfully completed a charge Yeah, um, it's it's very dumb the you have to be willing to see all the different It's it's very dumb. It's it's not fair. It's very dumb Uh He teleports away. He still got the momentum the teleportation does it rob him of the momentum So he just continued he was moving forward then he flipped away when he blips somewhere else. He's like he just coasts still It's like it's like with the delorean and back to the future shifts You know that car is still moving at 88 miles an hour. It doesn't pop out stopped in in 1955 Manfred's just a delorean. That's all it is Okay, yeah, so uh, but it isn't it is an army that you've got to be willing to see all of the different angles of approach, um the If you're not willing to be patient if you're not willing to invest the time in how to play the different missions Uh, you are going to not be successful. This this is a list that Uh, kind of got away from me a little bit early and the more the more time I put into it The more successful I became playing it Because it it combines aside from blood knights basically every good unit in the game I have created a mini dispersed negash um, you know through through my casting endeavors like To a to a certain uh, to a certain level of this, you know, like it is a it's a very It's a very discount negash In in the casting offense that you're going to get you get more combat offense So You have less flexibility in some of your choices, but that's what you get for not running the big man himself I've I've really enjoyed this list. I've really enjoyed the way that it plays on the table I've really enjoyed the way that it looks I've really enjoyed the that it challenges me to to win some of these games in the way that I have to You know it It goes toe to toe with a lot of the real big scary stuff and You know Like I hate pulling the cards like but I have the credentials to prove it Um, so yep No, absolutely And it's got a couple like both of its monsters are relatively tough again good battle tactic Capability there to complete based on those, right? They're not only tough But they can also do damage so you can achieve that kill something with a monster bonuses, right? Like there's there's all these little points around the edge That you can make Up and like those those things add up over the course of a game, right? They can you get an extra battle point here you an extra battle point there Or victory points, right? Um, you know, those things are are adding up, right? So Yeah, I I really like this list You know, we haven't praised belladama. I think enough I've I've I've run Uh spg a few times because we I have a very this isn't one of like my actual armies But it's not one of my 20 actual armies, but I do have uh an old collection of death stuff from like the 90s and so sometimes I get it out when I want a fun game and I play soulblade And I've used belladama a bunch times She shows up all the time I truly love this model like her capabilities are everything I want a 200 point hero She's so good in what she can do her utility her survivability Uh, the the what she brings to the army. I just think she's absolutely wonderful Uh, so I mean I I cannot praise this this model enough like she just She just works so well for me or has worked so well for me. I think she's fantastic in what she brings Uh, okay cool beans tom any final thoughts on uh On this No, I mean like I think what these lists all shows there are a lot of different play styles There are a lot of different ways to approach this. It's a very diverse book And I think that there's a lot of different there's a lot of play in it It just makes me sad that knight haunt is in the state that it's in Look at it all the tools here like it's so funny. You know, we looked at the uh I got the one in the case two tom. I I understand Like the the just playlist and you're like five hammers and I was like What I wouldn't give for one hammer Uh Yeah, yeah, sure. I mean it's the challenge and you know, as we mentioned earlier The your your main challenge is gonna with this is gonna largely be reliant on You know, how much shooting is around some of the characters can be a bit uh squishy. Let's call it right To that kind of shooting. So you have you have to be aware of that kind of stuff, you know, that's that's the real challenge of it so Uh, but but you know I I think it's a list with a lot of angles Uh, and I'm sure knight haunt will get a new book soon. They have to be the ones do for a book in death, right? I mean it has to be Either that or we'll get a new obr book and then soul soul white grave lords too And knight haunt will just forget they existed Uh, you're don't do that. You're gonna make me cry Uh, tom, you're the one who decided to play the army whose leader is the mortar of sadness and grief So, uh, I'm just saying That's not That's just not a Fair dinkum Yeah, like when I when everybody when sonesh came out, I was like, well, this new book is so crap It's completely appropriate all these upper points. I was like, this is this is some sadism if I've ever seen it And I've got to be a masochist to play it. So it's perfect. It's very on brand and you know, knight haunt could be the same way. There you go Uh, all right Let's talk about some other, uh, let's just do some open discussion here. There's some items. I want to discuss Uh, just in our our sort of general discussion Okay First item of discussion. Actually, I'm going to leave it off the list It's it's our I'm going to start to complete the off list one guy that didn't show up in any year lists And I think he's worth mentioning. Let's talk about chat a car the beast. What do you think about chat a car? Uh, did you just not have him in a list because you couldn't find a place for him? Does he oh, does he never make the cut for you? What what's your take on him there? So I'm I'm not a very aggressive player. Um, I I would much more categorize my play style as patient oriented um By the way, hit like for the dog sitting in the chair. Look at this. Yeah, look at how cute this dog is You've got to hit like now, right? If the the dog will be sad if you don't hit like there you go. All right, go ahead um the I I think he fits best with a bunch of blood knights going fast being aggressive um Since that's not my normal orientation towards things I've just not found a place that that fits in the way that I I like to play the list Um, I've been trying to toy around with some castle. I radic are the beasts armies. Sure. Um You know, I I think that has some some ability the The ability to be plus one attack on units that are already quite good on the charge They have got tom, uh, you know, I think you'll agree with me Making things that are already good at what they're doing better Is is usually the direction you want to go from from a competitive perspective reduce variation Right make make things more reliable It's funny because so there was the raffle at holy havoc, right? And I didn't win anything in it Everybody like it's a raffle. That's what happens sometimes. I bought some tickets in way. I think no big deal But I had my eye on two things one was the little storm cast hero They they had the cool limited edition like individual storm cast killer dude the hunter guy There's a couple of them up there and I was like, oh neat. I can turn him into a rat I was real excited about maybe I was going to take this little tiny box So there are still like bellicors and stuff up there to pick like no I just want this little tiny dude because I don't I don't have him, right? And he'd be fun to turn into a rat hero But the other one was there was a chatter car up there and I was like, oh, I just want to paint that guy He seems super cool. Like it's just such a such a nice model. So those those are going to be my picks But anyways, uh, say love me Uh, okay, let's talk hammers Velazda blood knights grave guard Who is the true what are you what are you putting your vote into? Brendan if you had to pick just one and only one of these I think they can all act as hammers What is your one pick? What's your top hammer? um The unit that has been most reliable for me the unit that has kind of done the most heavy lifting I mean, I've I've zeroed mega gargants with grave guard Full full to zero with grave guard. Now, obviously they have buffs involved, right? You know, you're getting plus one to wound Um, you know, you're getting plus one to hit in many instances. You've usually got plus one attack But graveyard are just so good and the ability to get um A a weird Like 10 man of them later in the game through battle shock recovery somewhere where your opponent doesn't want them Is is great investment because that's one of the things that I think people are Are ignoring when they're considering the points value of these different units Is there is a high likelihood in the post fac of this book where you're able to make that role in every battle shock phase Where you can discount everything that you are buying By You know some percentage because you are likely to get it back at some points to to play the game later somewhere else Yep. Yep. I like that. I like that uh Okay, cool. It's interesting because We're in this meta that doesn't seem to favor uh you know What I want to say like I don't want to say what it's well Horns was a little bit more simplistic than I was going but sure. Let's just say hordes, right? Like slow moving infantry blocks Thank you. Yeah, that's thank you tom. That's exactly what I was going to say. Yeah, that's you're now you got it, right? That was the fine point. I was trying to make yes, right? Um And yet I do think that Graveguard can be really interesting And by the way, it's not like these things are actually mutually exclusive, right? You of course could have Of alasda and graveguard like it's not like as though you take one and you lock out the other, right? Um, and they are very interesting in how they're different um But I think graveguard are one of those few exceptions that because of the nature of the buffs they had that because the nature of that You can protect them because the fact that you can Restore them get a whole unit back if they're obliterate. We'll get half a unit back I guess is what I would say if they're obliterated right later in the game It does make them An interesting pick in a meta that almost doesn't want units like that to work Right I think they're one of the few exceptions I think there are some units that are still out there that can work in those kind of numbers And I think they're one of them Because of that interesting form of almost like I don't necessarily want to call it resiliency, but it's that same concept That they have, right? It's just it's not traditional resiliency Like they have a high save or a big word or something like that. It's it's this sort of weird orthogonal um Resiliency right in that They can We're sticking to units back. They can be off table. They can pop back up in a half strength unit later, etc So yeah, okay. Yeah, two two by 20s are fierce. I don't see any reason to really ever go up to 30 Um, you know in in the event that you make them, you know, you you baby You trigger the battle line if categorization on them. You've already invested in a white king It's already an inefficient choice going up to 30. I don't everything does does enough for you Two by 20s are quite good 20 standalone also very good Yep Now this one we already discussed a little which was battle line skeleton zombies dire wolves uses of each We talked about that they all have their own value. We didn't talk about dire wolves too much Throughout this. I mean, I kind of made a point about it But what's your what's your current take on on on dire wolves? Where are you are you finding use for them? Or where you are so good. Okay. They're so good. Um Like the Their battle line you can bring them up to 30 which is a 60 wound unit Um Two wounds a piece five up save got your death save after it. You've got the ability to regen You've got the ability to bring them back um If somehow your opponent has made your way has made their way through that absolute brick of nonsense that takes up a Shockingly huge piece of board real estate, right? Um You have the ability then to bring them back and i'm skipping ahead here on curse city If you happen to be taking course love, uh, you can spend a command point and bring 15 of them back Immediately without having to roll the dice, you know in your hero phase done Yep, done. I'm a fan of board's love done Yeah Dire wolves are great Uh dire wolves are extra great, you know when you're using belladama to turn a unit into a guy in the unit into wolves Making them force to either one retreat or two pile in in weird directions. Sure. Um They're they're fast. They're a very good screen. They take up good board space. Um, it's Like their battle line, right, you know, that's that's the other part of it. Um I don't know. They're just they're just good. Yeah, I I agree with all this Right. I I haven't played them because The points just haven't fit into some of the lists that I'm looking to do like You you would be perfectly well understood for wanting to play via coast and and jumping up on a points into Uh into wolf based things that'd be totally fine. You know, you can take wolves as screens for your blood nightless That's totally fine. You know, you can take a unit of wolves and just let them be weird Like just For belladama too, right? Sure. Yeah Which is also good because you know, good You know old granny goodness over there. She's uh, even better and tougher when she's got it some nice wolves that she can pass wounds off to And then those can be restored in some way. So not bad. She makes a really interesting ally too Oh for for other death armies. Yeah For other death obviously like night haunts to really the only one because they get they get soul play, right? They still do Yes um Just thinking about the standpoint Just because like she can like hers. This obviously applies to soul play but applies, you know, even as an ally like the like and curse Shuts off units Well, it shuts off shooting units, right? Yeah, and so like you don't need a chaff unit to come in if you turn You know a d3 sentinels into wolves, right? Yep It's it's good Good pick is good. Tom like that. No, I agree. Yep. All right Uh, what units simply aren't worth it. In other words, it's a big book. There's only never picking There's only one unit that you have no reason to take under any circumstance. Okay. Wow. That's it. That's a that's a tight list All right. I'm ready Black Knights, that's it Like you can justify the taking of white kings Uh to transition grave guard to battle line Uh, you know, we have we have a list where they are present there You know where the the white king is an inexpensive general that allows you to trigger the The rest of the castles stuff Um You know as as you move through your heroes Um, you know, you can find arguments for all of the rest of them either turning something into battle line a specific spell Some particular integration with other things When you look at the units themselves outside of obviously like the underworld stuff and and those things that aren't like real Um units with the rare exception, right, you know, like where you have uh rip a snarl fangs Which suddenly are good everywhere um the the Only unit in that book That I have not written a list with Because they're just terrible Is black knights. They serve no purpose. They are caught between dire wolves and blood knights in terms of role Um, they're they don't have the points to justify that different role I Heck people were sitting there going fell bats are dumb fell bats are useless fell bats are garbage I can more readily find a role for fell bats than I can for black knights. Sure All right. Now I want to challenge you on this a little Are we truly saying that you've written lists that have either the blood seeker palanquin or the coven thrown in them? Yes. Yes. Okay. Absolutely Um, and I believe it's the blood seeker palanquin that has a plus one save command ability that was particularly very good at the end of um 2.0 the The coven thrown uh has Maybe I've got him flipped But one of them has a plus one attack aura for vampire things So I've been trying to shove all the vampires into cast lie lists very early um It's not been as effective as I'd like um But the var guys share the right keywords to be able to benefit from some of these things um You know that there's some stuff that's less effective than others, right? Um, but Black knights are the only ones that on on the surface as I look at and go through I go. There's There are other units that exist at better points that do better things All right. Okay. All right. I like it. I like it. And yeah, it's it was switched. But yes, I knew what you meant. Okay so Let's talk about cursed city and and I actually want to kind of move from I want to make this a little bigger topic This army has a lot of named heroes, right? And a lot of the named stuff comes in through like cursed city gave us a lot because I still believe that like Chris and and yonka or whatever her name is. What's her name? Anika? Whatever the Yeah pointy hair lady Yeah Lady Anika I still think they were somehow supposed to be related to cursed city I don't know that they're necessarily expansion, but I think they were supposed to be more tightly related And then just cursed city went and then that all died Uh, truly one of the great tragedies of our time um It's like firefly. Yeah, sure. It's right up there um the With cursed city And all these named heroes Okay First question. Do you find it annoying that they put everybody all these named heroes into virkos that it became the hammers of sigmar of Yeah, the soul playbook Sure. Yeah, it's very annoying because I the example I was going to give was um Hammers of sigmar like this is exactly what it feels like right, uh I wish they spread them out more, you know lock of eye You know being a named character into Aven gory is neat Um, you know, you have your named character for legion of night. You have your name character for legion of blood cool You have your named character for castelai I think this might be the first book where all of your sub factions have a named character that sits within them but Games workshop went hard in the paint of like we are doing virkos and we are going to be doing virkos for a long time So you got to get used to it, but also the thing that might be tied to being virkos Might not be a thing. So yeah, kind of kind of blew out there. Oops Yeah, because clearly there had to be a long-term rollout plan for virkos, right where it was going to be all intertwined with this evolving set of cursed city expansions that we're going to roll out over the next two years and then oops So, yeah Yeah, exactly all the way down. Yeah Yeah But when you when you look at the lore and what it's tied to, you know, maybe Like if you were looking at splitting them up again, you know, you could put lady anika in legion of blood as, you know, one of One of nepharata's spies and agents, you know that infiltrate different courts You could put the rat prince into legion of night As You know creature of the night, right? He he disappears and pops back up again. He's very evasive Um, maybe that's how you spread them out into some different factions. Um And I don't think that that would necessarily be, uh You know a total stretch of the imagination You want to tie them all into virkos? You want to tie them all into, you know, the specific like raticar bloodline? fine Whatever None of them are so good that i'm i'm dying to get them into into other lists They are largely inexpensive heroes that, you know, maybe you take to fill, um, battalion slots Yep Chris is interesting to me because i've been a stan of this little weirdo for a long time. Okay, maybe it's my innate love of rats Maybe that's why you don't mean, you know, I how do you feel about crits? Is it too close to scaven? Is the rat influence too strong? Is he going in the ocean? It's really pushing it. Uh, if someone told me he had to go with him, I'd go okay if this is the cost of All rat related things All all rat related things into the ocean But chris is interesting because he's still a bonus general right in virkos But he can also die and come back And so he's kind of just this funny piece that if somebody kills him It pushes your heroic action to get a command point to a two-up for the entire game for like no reason I I really wish the f aq didn't correct the uh exponential critz's You know crits attack, um, if for nothing else, I wanted to see, you know, 16 of them on the table Like You know man, go ahead roll roll those dice go nuts like become You know become everything that you wish to be in in an exploding nonsense machine. I It's it's one of those dumb ones that I I just wanted to see it once sure sure. I understand But more broadly what's like we've already talked about gore slav the grave keeper and like obviously gore slav is worth it Okay, I don't think 75 points for this dude. He's he's redunk for what he accomplishes. Okay He's doing some work for 75 that he shovels well Okay, uh But who else from curse city is worth it? What other units have you looked at and thought this could have a home? Um on paper bloodborne. I have not spent any time to to put them in lists and try them Um, you know the the difficulty of trying to spend a reinforcement point to bring them to six to have very very fighty guys Um is interesting but not compelling enough for me to spend Too much time on it um I think all of the heroes are just kind of generically okay um You know the the kind of like pseudo necromancer guy is Fine candle guy. Um, yeah the like the chumpy version of radicar is The problem is he's so overshadowed by us. He revealed his final form like we all know the final form is better than the We've played video games. We know how this works Yeah, he looks cooler. He does cooler things. Uh, the guard captain is Is fine like the the problem I end up having is all of it like I just end up shrugging my shoulders and going It's okay. The vargas gear is fine And I don't know that all of them are like if they came down in points that I'd be sitting there going like Oh, well, you gotta you gotta take this guy, right? They just they just do some stuff um Gorslav is the is the only one That you look at and you go I am gonna get some mileage out of this character And if my opponent commits 200 points of their army to killing this guy I am successful and ahead of schedule Right, right, right, right Yeah, the the veer coast the bloodborne are interesting because right now they're clearly too many points for what they are Like they're an interesting unit. They're fast 10 inch move Um, they have a five up after save on their own. I mean, they look at a six up a save. So whatever But they're only three wounds, but they've got a decent enough profile like they're three attacks each three Threes, you know neg one d three damage. It's not a terrible profile on these little dudes And yeah, it's fine. Yeah, it's fine, right? Like I could see use for them if they were those those are one of the few that like You know They are also vampires So there is like some synergy and some of the other vampire related non-sensory going on in the army as we've mentioned previously And I think they would be interesting if they were dropped in points Like I understand why they're in threes and why they're like they are three is an annoying number because then when you do Reinforce them. They go to six and get weird coherency rules and stuff like blah, blah, blah, blah, whatever but They they're the kind of thing that like maybe if they were a little cheaper like a hundred points for three Maybe or something I could see it 95 points for three something like that Like I could I could see their interesting value as this Maybe you know, you're not wasting any reinforcement points on them Maybe if they're that cheap they become an interesting sort of skirting unit to go around the outside and and just kind of like You know a unit of three of them having nine attacks on threes threes neg one d3 damage. It's not bad It's not bad They can do a little work to clean up some of the stuff on the edge to be a little Little tiny flanking force to handle some of the stuff to threaten things in the back to threaten heroes things like that Like I could see a use for them Um as almost like a little distraction piece if they were cheap enough at 125, they're just too much that's the problem And and the other thing them being keyword locked to uh to gaining fearcoast's benefits, right? Um, you know one of one of the things that I think they'd be kind of all right at is coming off the side of a board edge in in night Yeah Yeah, I don't understand why that those are keyword locked like I guess I understand some of the named heroes but them being fearcoast is just I don't know. It's a weird choice. It's a weird choice. Okay Cool Anything else we missed on soul blight anything else we didn't cover? I mean, I think we've I think we've hit a lot of the main points. I wanted to touch on which were There's a lot of units that can have a lot of play the army can can can function a lot of different ways Yes, there are some headwinds against it with the shooting matter like with with I don't even know Like shooting matter or whatever but like with the shooting that's present right and uh And that's true But they're still holding a good win rate overall I think they're somebody said earlier that from memory, they're like a 52 to 55 percent. That's great It's a fantastic win rate. That's where we'd like armies to be in the game Basically, right you want to like in a perfect world. We shrink our fat middle to 45 to 55 percent. That would be wonderful Um, you know, they're very popular. It's a great unit. It's a great range with beautiful models interesting different play styles like Yeah, I don't you know, it's it's a triumph. I think it's one of the best books They've put out I I really like it's up there with the slaves to darkness book for me Which I've always held up as a paragraph I've been enjoying quite a bit of yeah, I think they're both like paragons of good design That is that isn't to say they're perfect. I didn't say perfect design. I said good design, right? There are still units I have challenges with there are still you know things that um Are in those books that rub me the wrong way or where I feel like they they made a mistake Or that you know, something could have been designed better But when I look at either of those books, I see compelling sub factions Uh, I see multiple different ways to play the army You know lots of different valid units depending on your army construction Interesting utility going on right like and and both these books feel very similar like Soul light and slaves to darkness are like spiritual twins to me in in the way that they can can function so They both feel like kind of the the What do I want to say like the golden mean of how we should be designing books books should feel like this book That's what I'll say Yeah, no no disagreements. I I agree with that. Um, yeah the The other the other one that kind of ends up fitting into this category in my minds Was the first pass at war clans the second pass at war clans here. I think was great um, you know though Bring it full circle Those two of the books for me that I recommend to people who who want to get started Learning to play the game competitively that I point them in the direction of right now um Stormcast is probably going to get added to that list posts some points adjustments and FAQs Where there's not a single clear and obvious way Right now to be playing some of these units The fact that you can look at a book and say I have a ton of choices and I can figure out what works best for me Is is really where you want? You want the player base to be you want it to allow players to shine as who they are playing what they think is cool And you know for me to sit here and say there's only one unit that I think is just garbage um You know tells you that as a player that Aside from really incredibly strange combinations of things You don't have to feel like an idiot for taking you know, whatever unit you think is cool. Right, right, right. It's it's it's really nice um okay, uh Prussian warfare said where does sold light land on the army design chart thingy So the power versus quality of design chart that I have the quadrants They would absolutely be in the sweet spot Prussian like exactly where we would want a book to be they like right where sort of slaves is up there Like up in the good design area and just slightly forward. That's exactly what they this book would sit like almost over top of it um and and you know I think that uh There's exactly what you said you you almost don't like you have your different units You're gonna like in this there's gonna be things that appeal to you And there's gonna be a list that can make that viable interesting, you know competitive in some way That's just that's an incredible thing to say Right, um other than those poor people who love black knights, which I do agree with that They are like, I don't know if I agree that everything else is playable Um, I I might add a couple more things to that list But but it'd be we'd be quibbling around the edges at most Right, like I I agree with your core point Which is that so vastly much of this is playable Which is not what we usually get so yeah, tom any final thoughts ever No, I mean I think that captures that right, yeah Uh new grave guard sculpt win. It is funny to look at the new really nice big skeletons Uh And then to look at your teeny tiny little baby grave guard who just like show up and are like Kill everything. You're like, oh, you're the little baby skeletons Why are you so dangerous? They're like little chuckies They have a napoleonic complex is what it is. They're You know, they're they're looking to make up for the difference in height with uh, you know with the difference in output Absolutely, absolutely All right. Well, there we go folks. Thank you so much for watching. We really appreciate it. Don't forget to hit like Uh, don't forget that the dog very much wants you to hit like there She has see she's looking at you right now asking you to hit the like button. Isn't that right? She agrees trust me Uh, don't forget to subscribe if you haven't already Brendan, thank you brother. It was great seeing you this last weekend. It's wonderful to have you on the show Thank you for coming back on and sharing this the soul bright soul blight grave lord It's a very hard book to say Love with us really appreciate it Yeah, happy to be here guys. Thank you for having me. Absolutely for all of you out there Thank you so much for watching. We really appreciate it as