Age of Sigmar: ‘Soulblight Gravelords’ Faction Focus – Feed The Hunger
The various vampires and undead of the Soulblight Gravelords are coming to sate their hunger in the latest Faction Focus from Games Workshop.
The Soulblight Gravelords are coming to Warhammer: Age of Sigmar in the new edition with the same driving hunger that they’ve always had. But how will the classical vampire-led armies of the undead fair in the new edition? We’re hoping to learn that in this rules overview from Games Workshop. But from my initial reading they seem pretty thirsty — for violence!
“In his eternal quest for dominance, Nagash has mustered undead servants to fill the ranks of his vast armies. The Soulblight Gravelords are among his most powerful allies, contributing terrible bloodthirst, midnight sorcery, and subtle influence to his endless campaign against the living. These accursed vampires command hordes of unliving thralls in service to the Great Necromancer.”
Soulblight Gravelords Battle Traits
Kicking things off the Soulblight are getting The Hunger. This ability is a great way for your vampires to stick around in the combats they should have long ago lost or retreated from. This is just a straight-up heal and you get a bigger heal if your vampires managed to destroy a unit this turn.
During deployment they have The Unquiet Dead as an ability that gives you some options for reserve tricks. Specifically for your Deathrattle and Deadwalker units. This goes hand-in-hand with The Rising Dead ability which allows you to deploy those units “in the grave” directly from a terrain feature. I’m not seeing an mention of grave markers this time around…
Deathly Invocation allows you to spread some heals around to up to 3 friendly Deathrattle or Deadwalker units. It’s nice because it’s a straight Heal (3) — no roll about it. Typically, that’s just going to bring back 3 models to their respective unit although there could be other shenanigans you can get up to. And finally we have Endless Legions. This ability basically lets you recycle destroyed non-Unique Deathrattle or Deadwalker units. They come back half as large but it only costs you 1 CP to do it…sounds like a good deal to me!
Soulblight Gravelords Battle Formations
We’ve got a preview of one of the Battle Formations for the Soulblight Gravelords with Deathmatch. This one is kind of a weird one. Deathrattle units that charged a unit with fewer models get to add 1 to their Rend. Really, this is encouraging you to to bring very large blocks of Deathrattle for this bonus (and the Endless Legions benefits).
“Other formations include convocations of spellcasters who draw on forbidden powers to enhance their Deathly Invocations. War parties composed primarily of vampire lords make great use of their spellcasting and combat prowess to bring ruin to their foes, while others prefer to utilise the unsubtle application of hundreds of Deadwalker Zombies in an effort to suffocate resistance.”
Soulblight Gravelords – Lore of Undeath
We also get a short look at one of the spells from the Lore of Undeath. Vile Transference is fishing for 6s but works better on larger units. It does 1 mortal damage to the target unit for each 6 and if you manage to kill any enemy models then the caster gets to heal (D3) as well. Not too shabby! I have a feeling this is going to be a popular choice next edition when all those Skaven show up…
Soulblight Gravelords Warscrolls
We’ve got a look at four more warscrolls for the Soulblight Gravelords as well. Radukar the Beast is leading off followed by Lauka Vai. It’s interesting to see both of these heroes with their updated rules. Take a closer look at them for sure if you were using them previously. Additionally, we also have my favorite unit from the Soulblight Gravelords with the Blood Knights and also Vargheists to round things out.
Below we also get the Spearhead warscroll for Deathrattle Skeletons which should give us a rough idea of what to expect from the full army.
Soulblight Gravelords Spearhead
The Spearhead has been dubbed Bloodcrave Hunt and it’s using many classic units.
This set is the old Vanguard: Soulblight Gravelords box. Unfortunately it appears that it’s not currently available on GWs website. So if you do managed to see this in the wild and you want to play this army, well, I think you know what to do.
It’s a pretty solid starter to be honest. It’s got plenty of room to grow from and you’ve got the basics for the army as part of the package. Nothing wrong with this one! For Spearhead games we also get a look at their rules:
And finally, as mentioned above, here’s the Warscroll for the Deathrattle Skeletons. They aren’t too impressive on their own — but you rarely see skeletal hordes of one.
That’s it for the Soulblight Gravelords previews. I think they are going to be one of those armies that will stick around with unit heals and recursion in the new edition. Be prepared to hit them hard or you’re likely to get bogged down. Even if you DO manage to break through they aren’t going to just fold either. The vampires have a way of really sucking the life out of their opponents.
How do you think the Soulblight Gravelords will perform in the new edition?
