Continuing along with our coverage of this month’s Battlescroll, this article (as you probably guessed and likely the reason you clicked on it) covers all of the Death factions, what they now have, or lost, and how they’re looking into the fresh new meta. 

Flesh-eater Courts

Key Changes

• A new ability, Address Loyal Subjects, to generate more Noble Deeds points.
• Grand Justice Goremayne generates a Noble Deeds point when he succeeds in his Delusion of Justice Served roll.
• Chunky points drops for almost everything in the faction.

Honestly, there are too many points changes here to list everything. Every single non-hero unit got a points reduction of 10-20 points (or 30 for 2-model Crypt Flayer units, for some reason), and two thirds of the heroes got a drop too. Hero drops range from 10 to 40 points. Standout changes are 20 points off of unmounted Terrorgheist or Zombie Dragon variants, and 40 off of the hero versions. You can now fit a truly troubling amount of these into a list, although it still doesn’t necessarily make it good – although the Prized Beast Honour Guard ability might make it worth a try. Elsewhere there’s 30 points off of Ushoran, 40 from Nagash, and a bunch off of several Abhorrents and Courtiers. Gormayne also gets the Flesh-eater Noble note, meaning he can join bigger heroes’ regiments.

Some good changes there which might be enough to get a few more ghouls into the average list. Ultimately, some of the current problem with FEC is that nothing is as good as just taking Ushoran, another small hero or two, and as many Morbheg Knights and Ghouls as you can shake a stick at. These changes don’t feel like they do much to change that, unless you’re a real monster enthusiast.

The new ability does potentially do something to help the army though – Address Loyal Subjects is a new battle trait which lets a hero roll a dice for each other friendly hero wholly within 12”, and then gain a Noble Deeds point for each 5+. This is a nice addition, and could be good for getting Ushoran’s crucial 6 points buff up earlier, although we doubt it’s going to be game-changing. The same is true for Goremayne getting a Noble Deeds point on a successful 3+ roll for his ability. It’s nice to have but it’s not revolutionary, but we might see him taken a bit more with this combined with his points reduction.

Nighthaunt

Key Changes

• Significant change to Discorporate.
• Kurdoss, Knight of Shrouds, and Black Coach go down.
• Lots of other stuff goes up.
• Spirit Torment and Tomb Banshee gain Cursed Soul to join regiments.

Quite a lot of points rises for the ghosties! All of the the most commonly seen units have gone up a bit – Bladegheists and Hexwraiths by 20 points, Dreadblades, Harridans, and Grimghasts by 10. It’s similar news for the popular heroes, with Reikenor and the Lord Executioner each copping a 20 point bump, and Awlrach, Olynder, the KoS on Steed, and the Guardian of Souls going up 10. Not surprising given lists that we’ve been seeing, these changes probably aren’t enough to inspire significant change but probably lead to most lists losing a unit which seems fair. Kurdoss becomes a bit more tempting at 190 points, although he’s not quite fighty enough or survivable enough to justify his existence when his ability is so short range and fails a third of the time.

Discorporate is the big change here. Instead of being an attack reaction, it’s now chosen in either Hero Phase. Your one command point buys a chosen unit Ward (5+) for the entire turn, rather than just a single phase, but the tradeoff is that your opponent knows about it up front. The ability is still triggered by the unit itself, so you can still use it multiple times in a single turn if you want to.

Ossiarch Bonereapers

Key Changes

• Zandtos becomes a Legion Subcommander.
• Katakros and Nagash go up. 
• Deathriders and Teratic Cohort go up.
• Boneshaper, Soulreaper, Harvester, and Stalkers all cheaper.

Zandtos is the named-guy version of the Liege-Kavalos who was already a Legion Subcommander so if you were dying to take him but keep your army to a small number of regiments then now you can; he can’t use the new honour guard ability since he’s cavalry so that’s about all this change does for you. What this army actually needed was for literally any of the foot-heroes to become a Legion Subcommander to make use of that new Honour Guard ability to create a build where Mortek Guard actually have a place. But that didn’t happen.

Katakros and Nagash both increase 20 points which is probably fine? Neither of these seemed particularly egregious so it feels a little odd, though apparently all god-level models just cost a nice round number now so, fine, I guess. Those two foot heroes you just about never saw? They got a little cheaper but I’m not sure it means you’ll see them, still. Gothizzar Harvesters have gotten both slightly better and also cheaper, which is sorely needed, with their ability changed work off of any slain models from enemy units within combat range instead of each model needing to be in combat range. Stalkers, the much less popular four-armed heavy infantry, have gotten ever-so-slightly cheaper but not enough to be worth considering over Immortis Guard. Deathriders have taken a very unsurprising points increase so if you were running 30 of these guys your list now costs 120 points more than it did yesterday. A significant increase like that means a unit of 10 is still very good and worth slapping down on the table, maybe even two reinforced units, but skewing any harder into Deathriders means you’re giving up a lot to do it. 

Overall these changes are fine and even good for the army as a whole, glad to see Deathrider spam probably going by the wayside and would like to see if the Harvester change is enough to make them useful now.  

Soulblight Gravelords

Key Changes

• Many, many, points drops. 
• The invention of Deathrattle Overseers.
• Seriously, a lot of points drops.

I’m not going to talk about every single points drop here, please go check them out for yourself, but the most impactful ones to me (someone that does not play this army but plays against it very often) is seeing Vengorian Lords, including Lauka, dropping a whole 50 points each and many non-heroes dropping 20 points. Some of the better units like Blood Knights stayed at their current cost but all of the other drops looks to open up a few other builds for the army that should be a lot of fun to play with; especially when you’re taking a Field Sergeant for an extra 2” on a large chunk of infantry; things like Grave Guard moving quicker across the table turn them into much more of a threat! Corpse Carts come down to just 70 points each, one of the cheapest units in the game. Zombie Dragons at 250 points will enjoy Prized Beast as well, to be hitting on 3+ with all of their attacks and never losing any when near-death. 

Wight Kings on foot and mounted are now Deathrattle Overseers.

More Updates

This isn’t all of it! There’s further updates for just about every faction which we’re splitting up down the nearly-gone Grand Alliance matrix. Check out the rest of our coverage here.

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