Age of Sigmar: Soulblight Gravelords Winners and Losers
A new battletome is arriving this weekend, and not all the changes are positive.
This Saturday, the hotly anticipated Soulblight Gravelords battletome will arrive in stores, along with the first wave of new releases for the vampires. The new battletome breathes fresh unlife into many forgotten units, but for a few of them, it just makes them rot faster. While everything in the book is subjective, and I’m sure a lot of great combos exist that will make my top picks bad and my bad picks broken, here are my thoughts on the top and bottom two units in the new Soulblight battletome.
Winner: Blood Knights
Surprising absolutely no one, the brand new Blood Knight kit was the hottest selling item for the weekend preorders, disappearing only a few moments after they went live. This has been one of the most highly anticipated kits in the range, and thankfully GW did not disappoint with their updated warscroll. Their armor save saw a flat increase, their charge damage became more consistent, and they gained a trample ability that will allow them to dish out even more damage to massed infantry. Combined with the awesome new abilities gained from the Kastelai bloodline, Blood Knights are going to change the battlefield, and it won’t surprise me at all to see every list in the next few months bring at least one unit specifically for them.
Loser: Black Knights
Honestly, I didn’t think the Black Knights could get much worse than they were in Legions of Nagash, and that’s coming from someone who used to swear by them in Warhammer Fantasy. Unfortunately, their new warscroll is a huge step down from what they used to be, which wasn’t really much to begin with. They’ve lost their improved save against Rend “-” attacks, their lances no longer gain any improvement on the charge, and their hit rolls went from a 3+ to a 4+. Now granted, the wound rolls for both their spears and their horses did improve, but it doesn’t make up for their no Rend 1 damage lances. On-foot Grave Guard are a much better investment, backed up by an on-foot Wight King, while the Black Knights have been relegated to quick objective grabbers and little else.
Winner: Belladama Volga
The Queen and sire of the Vyrkos bloodline, Belladame is an incredible support piece that can hold her own in combat. Because of the Vyrkos rules, she counts as your general in a Vyrkos army and can re-roll her magic rolls, and she has an innate ability that increases all of her magic rolls by 1. She has a pretty spectacular pair of custom spells, one that turns your enemy into wolves and one that gives all friendly units wholly within 12″ exploding 6s. Her command ability is solid too, allowing your wolves to fight and pile-in 6″, which can be pretty snazzy if you successfully create a unit of them in your enemy’s backline. If you plan to play Vyrkos, don’t leave Granny at home.
Loser: Cursed City Models
All the obvious about Cursed City issues aside, this is a really disappointing group of units. Sure they’re pretty minis and have some pretty great warscrolls, but the fact that you have to take them all as a single unit and spend 715 points for it makes them not quite worth it. They would be really awesome if they could be split up, especially the Vargskyr and Vyrkos, but all together, they leave a lot to be desired. Time will tell if they see much table time.
