Many thanks to Games Workshop for providing us with an advanced preview copy of the new Soulblight Gravelords Battletome for us to review.
Please note: The Battletome doesn’t come with printed points, we were not sent any as part of the preview, and this obviously limits our ability to assess everything in its full context.
Rising once more from their, err, brand new tombs, the Soulblight Gravelords are here to shamble across the mortal realms and do generally spooky things. Or if it were up to what this Battletome wants them to be doing: riding around on horses and punching things quite hard. It’s yet another evolution rather than revolution Battletome, but this time around we are dealing with more than just a reprint of the faction pack. There’s been an attempt here to make a few different builds work, and even the Armies of Renown are pulling their weight.
Changes from the Faction Pack
The main thing here is the introduction of Cursed Sepulchres and how they interact with your battle traits. Cursed Sepulchres are the new Soulblight terrain piece so you get to place one for free at the deploy faction terrain step, and then a new deployment phase ability in the battle traits lets you place two more: one of which is allowed to be placed essentially anywhere (barring the usual terrain deployment restrictions) and the other has to be outside of enemy territory. That’s quite flexible, though slapping one down in your opponent’s deployment feels like you’re asking for it to get immediately destroyed.
With this new terrain there are significant changes to the Rising Dead and Endless Legions abilities – these now both Require Cursed Sepulchres and don’t interact with other terrain at all. This represents a pretty significant reduction in the power of these abilities – where you can bring units onto the board is much more telegraphed and your opponent can permanently remove the Sepulchres from the battlefield. The Rising Dead at least bakes in some workaround for your Sepulchres getting blown up, and you can instead elect to bring units on table edges. It’s a bit of a mea culpa that the mechanic combined with destroyable terrain isn’t totally fit for purpose, but it’s there and provides a bit more flexibility.
Otherwise, there are changes to enhancements. Lash of the Sire clarifies that it can’t be used to move into combat and both the amulet of screams and orb of enchantment have been removed, replaced by two new artefacts. The Terminus Clock activates in your hero phase and on a 3+ creates an 18” aura of -1 to cast for enemy wizards until the start of your next turn. The effect is great, if it goes off, but the book struggles for a unit that wants to be holding this. Still, extremely funny to combine with Nagash. The Amulet of Graves is what you might end up having to take out of necessity, being a once per game ability that lets you summon up to two Cursed Sepulchres (always to a maximum of three). If you’re going down the summonable route, this feels pretty vital. Vampires can safely ignore it.
Warscroll Changes
Loads of cut Warscrolls here, as new kits change the landscape of the army and most of the Cursed City stuff is just gone. Vyrkos Blood-born, Gorslav the Gravekeeper, Torgillius the Chamberlain, Watch Captain Halgrim, Vargskyr, Cado Ezechiar*, Terrorgheists, Zombie Dragons*, Vampire Lords on Zombie Dragons and the Bloodseeker Palanquin* are all gone.
One of these things is not like the other, one of these things is not quite the same and the loss of the Vampire Lord on Zombie Dragon is big and hurts. It’s an iconic unit for the army across its various iterations in AoS and there is, quite frankly, nothing in the book now that replaces it. If you were wondering if the Vhordrai kit comes with an option for a generic rider, it does not. The ‘biggest’ non-unique unit for Soulblight is now the Coven Throne. It’s a shame, and rough for anyone (like me!) with multiple VLoZDs in our collection.
* Never fear, people who enjoyed these terrible units barely anyone ever took; they basically still exist.
Other than that, there’s quite a few tweaks for Warscrolls going on in this Battletome, so let’s list ‘em out.
Prince Vhordrai gets a brand new model and a whole +2 health. With your big centerpiece models every point of health is precious so this is welcome. Other than that, there’s just been an improvement to Vhordrai’s rampage, which now doesn’t require the unit to charge and lets it make a pile-in move before doing mortal damage equal to the roll on a 4+.
Lauka Vai was fairly popular before but cops a nerf to her +d3 companion weapon attacks spell, which can no longer target unique monsters. With the VLoZD and Terrorgheist gone, this is actually a pretty major reduction in the number of eligible targets for Lauka Vai to be buffing.
Vengorian Lords get a change to Festering Feast, their monster healing ability. Previously this required a non-hero monster wholly within 12” to fully destroy a unit and then heal 6. It has had a widegrade and is now a once per turn (army) ability that requires the Vengo Bus to deal damage in combat, this triggers a d3 heal to every monster (hero or not) wholly within 12”. It’s tough to know how to feel about this with the changes in the rest of the book, Vengos are fine in a fight and getting to clip lots of monsters is good, but the heal is piddly and it’s taking place in the context of a book that’s removing a good deal of the monsters you would want to be healing.
Radukar the Wolf/Beast & Belladamma Volga no longer buff Vyrkos Blood-born, because Vyrkos Blood-born don’t exist anymore.
Kritza is another decent and sometimes seen unique vampire that cops a mild nerf – his ability to Scurrying Retreat out of combat now requires a 3+ roll. Gotta say, not a fan of reductions of power level via the medium of just making the model less likely to do the thing it’s there to do.
Vampire Lords have had a change to the timing of Sanguine Blur, which now happens in the hero phase. This lets you get off the teleport before attempting spells, so you can get tricksy with casting, and also lets you set up for deathly invocation. A nice quality of life change.
Coven Thrones are the reason you don’t need to set your Bloodseeker Palanquins on fire, as they have just absorbed the ability to hand out +1 attack to three vampire units once per game. This leaves the unit frankly kind of unfocused and I am not convinced you are going to see any more of this thing than you did before.
Wight Kings gain a brand new ability – King of Shambling Bones is once per turn (army) and gives a deathrattle unit in combat range crit (2 hits). Most Deathrattle units already have crit (mortal), so you’re forced to choose which to apply, making this an odd ability really. With Barrow Guard and Barrow Knights the point where this is potentially worth using over the mortal damage is against targets with a 5+ or worse save, corner case stuff. The uncomplicated use case of this ability is your basic Skelly and you really are polishing a turd there. There are lots of buffs you can stack on Skeletons to juice them up but their baseline is so low and the support investment is so high it feels a bit pointless. If you want skeletons that can go out and do real fighting, take one of the units of skeletons that can go out and do real fighting.
Wight Lord on Skeletal Steeds are technically a new unit but are actually where the old Wight King on Skeletal Steed warscroll lives, the Wight King on Skeletal Steed actually being a new unit. Yes this is more confusing than it needed to be.
Barrow Guard are Grave Guard with a new name, no changes to that Warscroll.
Necromancers now have to spend a CP to use Vanhel’s Danse Macabre. You know what sucks? Spending a CP for the opportunity to then roll a 3+.
What’s New?
Blades of the Hollow King are perhaps different to what you might be expecting, rather than doing a Blacktalons style separate hero with mandatory unit, Cado is just a part of this unit of 3 heroes. With 6 wounds and a 4+ save this gives you 18 wounds across the unit, pretty meaty. The melee output here is a bit weedy – Cado has a pretty standard vampire hero profile, Sissendra has 8 attacks with crit (mortal) but it’s all damage 1 and Aurelias has lots of rend but only 2 attacks. The spell for the unit is still Retribution or Salvation, so a choice of d3 mortals nuke or a buff to skellies/zombies that makes them -1 to be wounded. Access to that spell requires the unit to have Cado still alive. If Aurelias is alive in the unit you get to choose between making the unit +1 power level or giving a 1 dice re-roll on casting attempts. It only lasts for your turn and by default the unit is wizard (1) so this is nice to have rather than terribly exciting. Re-rolls are quite rare these days, so that’s handy for getting manifestations out. Finally, if Cado is alive you get a combat phase ability to choose between a 5+ ward for the unit of crit (mortal) on Cado’s weapon only. That weapon has crit (auto-wound) already, and is rend 2, so you lose out on some efficiency by taking the mortals and quite frankly a 5+ ward on 18 wounds is such a gimme.
Overall, a very funky unit. Sissendra doesn’t really bring much to the party so gets to be your designated ablative wounds, and it means you can take 11 damage before losing any abilities, which is quite nice. On the other hand, this is all kind of unfocused and jack-of-all-trades. Points will be everything here.
Vampire Lord on Nightmare Steeds are honestly the sexiest thing in the new battletome. 7 wounds and a 3+ save isn’t the chunkiest hero ever designed but it’ll stand up to chip and poke damage. What makes this so exciting is that the melee profile is real for a hero like this and both abilities it brings are excellent. In melee you’re packing 5 attacks with rend 2, damage 2 and +1 damage on the charge so when it goes in you can make a real mess with quality damage 3 attacks. Beyond that you get to hand out +1 rend to a unit of blood knights in the combat phase (No dice roll! No CP spend!) and get a juicy charge ability. As a reaction to using a charge keyword ability, this unit can re-roll the charge and pick a unit of blood knights wholly within 12” that isn’t in combat and hasn’t charged and they get to make a charge move with a re-roll. This ability doesn’t have a dice roll or CP cost either and explicitly works out of your charge phase, so getting a counter-charge off with a vampire lord on nightmare steed could be particularly brutal, pulling in a full unit of knights with it. Love this Warscroll; can’t comment enough on how refreshing it is to have a hero come along that just works.
Revenant Draconith surprise, it’s the zombie dragon. I’m not sure why but I’d got it into my head that these would be cool wizard monster things but it’s a zombie dragon. It does get the same +2 health as Vhordrai, which is welcome as it still packs a pitiful 5+ save. There’s also a totally redesigned rampage, which is once per turn (army) and activates at the end of the turn if your Draconith is in combat, doing d3 mortal damage on a 2+, healing for the same amount and then removing the model from the board and putting it into reserve. It’s cool to be able to pull this out of danger to then reappear somewhere else on a later turn, and it does give your opponent something to think about if they just tag it with some crap. The issue is that as a get out of dodge ability your 5+ save monster is still going to get blasted into oblivion by any serious heavy hitter that comes to kill it.
Wight King on Skeletal Steed is a case of old name, new Warscroll. You get one more wound and attack than the Lord version and two quite interesting abilities. First, if you score any crits (which also do mortals) then the target unit is cursed for the rest of the battle and permanently reduces their save by 1. You can pop this debuff onto multiple enemy units but it wont stack on the same unit, which is fair enough. Secondly you get a hero phase ability to pick an objective or terrain feature within (not wholly!) enemy territory and for the rest of the turn your Deathrattle units get +1 to hit if they’re wholly within 6” of it. Wholly on your unit makes things a bit tight, but Deathrattle hit on a 4+ by default so getting access to flexible to-hit bonuses that don’t rely on CP is a huge boon. Overally, we like this Warscroll a decent amount and would probably take it over the Wight Lord variant.
Barrow Knights are here to ruin the format of ‘what’s changed’ vs ‘what’s new’ in that they are a new warscroll that mostly have the same basic statline of black knights but have completely new abilities. Crit (mortal) is now just baked into their weapons rather than being something that appears on the charge and on top of that they get the 5+ ward that Barrow Guard hand out to infantry heroes, but for Deathrattle cavalry heroes. Finally, at the end of any turn they just get to return 1 slain model back into the unit. Black Knights were already pretty darn good and these are a flat upgrade.
Hand of Nagash has some pretty weak melee (it crit mortals, at least) and a movement phase ability that can trigger on your turns after the turn it is cast, this lets you do the standard teleport more than 9” away from enemy units but it can then move d3” on a 2+. That’s fine but the reason you want it in combat is that on a 4+ in the combat phase you can make an enemy unit control 1 (so long as it is within 3” of the hand) and the target also can’t use move abilities. The latter bit means your opponent can’t just retreat out of the anti-control. As control abilities go this is really strong and potentially worth chasing. The issue is that beyond being gated behind a spell cast and then getting into combat it also requires a 4+ and the Hand of Nagash has to survive – once it’s destroyed or banished then the target unit isn’t within 3” of it anymore. Its banishment value of 8 is nice, but as a model that needs to be in combat it’s defensive statline of 10 health and a 5+ save is decidedly not nice. This pretty dramatically reduces its use to something that has to be picking on weaker units (and then why not just kill them, rather than reduce their control) or tagged into a multi-combat and you pray your opponent allocates elsewhere. I’m really not sure about this one, the effect is so strong but there’s also so many points of failure for this manifestation.
Unholy Reliquary is a really weird manifestation, it can’t move but it can pick a hero within 12” and either heal d3 or give them +1 attack on their melee weapons for the rest of the turn, after which you banish the manifestation. It’s very odd to have a model that pops up, hands out +1 attack and then immediately disappears. Why is this a model? Either way, +1 attack to Vhordrai’s bloodlance or to both of Nagash’s melee weapons is pretty decent.
Sanguine Swarm is a multi-part manifestation where each part has 10 attacks that hit and wound on a 5 with 1 damage and crit mortal. Also, it heals for each crit you do. Healing a 6 health, 6+ save unit is not exactly setting the world on fire, and neither is doing 1 or 2 mortals in melee. Utility here is really tied to getting to summon two bases of stuff with an 18” range to get in the way.
Cursed Sepulchres do have rules beyond what they do in your battle traits, and let your wizards cast Soulblight Gravelords manifestations through them. That’s neat, though I’m far from convinced the Soublight manifestations are what you will be taking all of the time, and doesn’t really offset the huge howling negatives to these things.
Armies of Renown
Barrow Legion
The first of the two Armies of Renown in this book focuses entirely around taking Deathrattle units. Your only restriction is that keyword, and no Regiments of Renown are allowed in the army. This means you’re locking yourself out of wizard access since you can’t take Necromancers or Vampires. In exchange you get a pretty strong set of rules and an interesting new way to play the army.
For Battle Traits we have The Royal Crypt which asks you to deploy all three your faction terrain pieces in your territory and within half an inch of each other, creating one big Cursed Sepulchre with 24 wounds. As long as it’s on the battlefield, Grave Sentinels gives you Anti-Charge (+1 Rend) while wholly within 9” of it and gives all enemy units on the battlefield a blanket -1 to saves once you hit round three from All To Dust. Meanwhile, Endless Legions of Bone gives you the standard revive a unit battle trait modified to work with your big Sepulcher and lastly Gifts to the Petty Kingdoms gives you the ability to give two of your heroes an Artefact during deployment.
Now you may be saying to yourself, “What good is that? It’s an Army of Renown so it only has one Artefact to choose from,” and dear reader I’m pleased to tell you that there is a full suite of three Heroic Traits and a whopping five Artefacts to pick from. For the first time ever, an Army of Renown feels like a proper trade for different rules instead of just a throwaway set of rules.
First up for Heroic Traits we have Relentless Tyrant which gives the unit the ability to give another unit +2”, really nice to missile up your Barrow Knights on your go turn and make sure your slower moving skeletons can get into position. Next is Lord of Arcane Aegis which gives you a 4+ unmodifiable save against a unit keyword you select at the beginning of the game. Lastly there’s Spirit Eater which lets you Heal (D6) at the end of any turn in which you killed a model. Of these I think you’ll be focusing on Relentless Tyrant since most of your units are slow to get around and extra movement is always helpful.
On the Artefact side of things we have Ring of Stricken Souls which gives you a 5+ Ward, very useful and annoying when combined with Relentless Tyrant. Next we have the Grave Sand Pendent which lets the hero ignore death if it would be destroyed on a 3+ and it instead Heals (1), nice to have but somewhat inconsistent. Crown of Cold Command is one you’ll likely see in most games, letting you heal something up to 3 wounds or if it’s at full health, add a slain model up to three wounds back to the unit. This is great for Barrow Knights since it combos with their own recursion, keeping them in the game for that much longer. Amulet of Nightmares and the Crypt Dagger are both once per game effects, with the former giving you the ability to give something Strikes-Last and the latter letting you inflict D6 mortals to a Hero in combat with you.
Overall there’s a lot to like here and this Army of Renown really lets its units shine bright outside the context of the standard army. Here’s hoping the next one is just as interesting.
Knights of the Crimson Keep
Spoiler: It’s sick as hell. Knights of the Crimson Keep is focused around running Blood Knights and Revenant Draconiths (or really just one). As for restrictions , you can’t take faction terrain or Regiments of Renown and can only take Prince Vhordrai (who must be your General if you take him [you will]), Vampire Lords on Nightmare Steeds, Blood Knights, and Revenant Draconiths. This is a pretty narrow set of units, less than the Vampire keyword would get you, with not a single infantry unit to be seen but what you get in return is pretty neat.
For Battle Traits you have The Crimson Keep and From a Quarter Unseen which lets you reserve units up to the amount that will start on the table and bring them in from round two onwards within 9” of a table edge. This gives you the ability to put your big elite blocks of models wherever you need them as the game progresses. Carve a Bloody Path is an ability you can use in the charge phase for a CP which lets you charge even if you’re in combat and even if you charged already. This can be great for busting through screens or just refreshing your Blood Knight’s charge bonuses. As a nice treat if you come in From a Quarter Unseen in the third or subsequent battle rounds you can also use Carve a Bloody Path for free. Lastly, Blood Rampage gives you a replacement Rampage for your monsters, allowing you to move 2D6” and then slay a model you’re in combat with if you roll higher than their wounds characteristics. Its not much better than the Rampages already on your Monster’s Warscrolls, but it can be useful if you bring a second Draconith since its rampage is once per turn per army.
Sadly you only get one Heroic Trait and one Artefact but you also get a Spell Lore of three spells. For your Heroic Trait you get Immortal Dedication which gives you D3 tokens at the start of combat that lets you reroll a die for: a hit, a wound, or a save. This is a super flexible ability and will likely always be helpful. For the Artefact of Power you get the Chalice of the Blood Dragon which heals you at the end of any turn 3d3 wounds once per game. This is very simple but a good thing to keep your vampire lords going.
On the Spell Lore side of things, all three spells go off on a 7, which isn’t ideal for consistency. First we have Siphon Strength which does D3 mortals to a target and the caster gets +1 to hit. This is your unlimited spell and it’s a nifty way to boost yourself while doing some damage. Awakened Fury increases the damage of Companion melee weapons for a target, this really makes the Draconith very scary but really just makes Vhordrai that much scarier. Last up is Deathly Gale which gives you +1 dice to charge rolls, great for getting your Blood Knights where they need to be. Your Manifestation is the Unholy Reliquary but also just take a different full lore because nothing stops you from doing it.
This is a great way to play a more elite Soulblight list with an interesting and flavorful ruleset. You’re missing any kind of chaff or screens unfortunately which is a major shortcoming of an elite force like this. That said, I’m excited to see this on the table.
Regiments of Renown
The Beast of Castle Sternieste
This one’s super straight forward, you get a Revenant Draconith that can heal in your hero phase. That combined with its ability to go back in reserves can make it really annoying to remove. That said it has a 5+ save which means it can just die if you fail the roll to go back into reserves. Could be neat for a force looking to add some pressure around the board.
Blades of the Hollow King
Another real simple one, you get the Blades of the Hollow King for any of your death armies with the added bonus of getting The Hunger as well for them. They’re a bit of an oddball unit but you get a consistent caster with 18 wounds that’s no slouch in melee either. Could be good for getting manifestations off more easily.
Final Thoughts
Two steps forward and one step back. I was hot on this tome on the first read, and I still think it’s the most effort the design team have put into an AoS4 book so far. That being said, I’ve cooled on it as I’ve spent more time with the battletome. The changes to the core army rules feel a bit cludged, and some of the unit tweaks seem downright mean – did the necromancer really need to spend CP on their main ability? Cursed Sepulchres feel rough. Faction terrain and endless spells for everyone seems like the permanent direction of travel for this edition so moaning about adding cost to an army feels like trying to command the tides, but Cursed Sepulchres are kind of a double whammy of paying for the book to make your army a bit worse from index and also having to pay for the new terrain into the bargain.
The Vampire Lord on Zombie Dragon being gone was a huge shock to me, and it does hurt the army. If you want a big, punchy monster hero you have to take a named character now, and that’s just a bit sad. Vampires started their Warhammer unlife being immensely customisable back in fantasy battle and I’d always hoped a bit of that would return, especially with the faction shifting its focus towards them in the rebrand from Legions of Nagash to Soulblight Gravelords. Instead we’ve gone the opposite way, and the army feels lesser for it.
That being said, I dig a lot of what’s new here. Wight kings are cool, Barrow Knights are a great upgrade and I’m slobbering over the Vampire Lord on Nightmare Steed. Plus, both Armies of Renown being thoughtful and playable is a colossal step in the right direction for battletome design in this edition (now if I could start saying the same for regiments of renown…). Without having the points it’s basically impossible to predict the competitive viability of this tome. The Vampire build was already decent and has gotten better, plus it has two different sets of rules you can actually use, which is cool. New skeletons are also an improvement (or didn’t get directly worse), and basically everything else stayed as it was. It’s a book that is derailing my Stormcast plans by making me want to drag a pile of Blood Knights out of the cupboard, so maybe that’s the best compliment I can pay it.
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