Age of Sigmar: Vanari Bladelord Preview
When it comes to mastering the martial art of great-sword swinging, the Vanari Bladelords have it down. And they have some additional tricks, too.
The Swordmasters of Hoeth are reborn with the release of the Vanari Bladelords. Today, we’re getting a closer look at this unit reborn and what they can do on the tabletop. Touted as great bodyguards for the spellcasters in your army they attack with speed and precision. This is one unit that has a lot of potential to really do a number on your foes. Why and how? Let’s check out those rule previews!
“Enter the Vanari Bladelords, supreme masters of the sword and dedicated guardians to their Scinari charges. Whether it’s ensuring the safety of the Lumineth’s sages (one of whom you may be familiar with from last year’s wave of Lumineth Realm-lords releases) or effortlessly chopping up even the most evasive foes, these unerring warriors are an essential force in the Realm-lords’ armies.”
So what makes them so special? Well for starters, all that hanging around mages and wizards has appeared to have rubbed off. There bond with them is so strong, they have enchanted banners that help protect them from magic:
That’s a basically a 50/50 shot to ignore a magical attack on the unit! That’s pretty good odds for something that is innate to the unit. Now that’s great and all but I’m sure what you really want to know is what those swords can do. Well check them out:
So the weapon has two profiles so you get to choose which “stance” the Bladelords are going to use. Perfect Strike is a gnarly -2 rend attack with a 2″ reach that Auto hits. That’s pretty nice against high armor targets and it has a 2+ to wound so it’s going to be pretty consistent. Flurry of Blows on the other hand hits and wounds on 3+ and has no rend with 1 damage. However, they get a number of attacks based on the number of models within 2″.
That’s going to net you a BUNCH of attacks per unit when you factor in that 2″ reach and their base sizes. If you’re swinging against anyone that’s using any sort of movement trays that ranks up a unit base-to-base with the smallest base, you’re looking at 3-5 attacks per model easily. Possibly more. It’s going to be perfect for chewing through hordes of models!
A buddy of mine who plays LRL also pointed out a couple more things. First up, every other Vanari unit with Sunmetal weapons also gets mortal wounds on 6s or 5+ with a particular power of Hysh. Will that also apply to these Sunmetal Greatblades? Again, combo that with the number of attacks they can generate and, well, you get the idea. The funny thing is that these mortal wounds are generated on the “to-hit” roll, so Perfect Strike wouldn’t generate them. Odd. So maybe they don’t get those extra mortal wounds.
Secondly, how many wounds are we looking at per model. With those bases and considering they come 5 to a box, I’m personally hoping for 2 per model. We’ll have to wait and see. But that will be a factor as well as the points cost. That also will be a big indicator on the usefulness of this unit in the long term.
The last thing that was brought up was something that I wrote about 2 years ago at this point. How will this unit interact with models that are garrisoned? Specifically Furry of Blades…
Let’s just pretend there is a unit of 10 models in a garrison and the Bladelords get 5 of their warriors in base-to-base with the garrison. How many attacks is that, exactly? Because by the way I’m reading this rule, that’s going to be…50 attacks on the unit inside. “Oh no one plays with garrisons, way to pull out a corner-case scenario and make a stink about it!” Except there is an army that kinda of relies on garrisons…
Yep. Have fun with that one! Just keep your boats away from Vanari Bladelords…
Well that’s it for this preview for the Vanari Bladelords. I really can’t wait to see this unit in action on the tabletop!
