Editing Age of Sigmar/Tactics/Old/Death/Soulblight (section)

===Matched Play===
<s>Don't buy blood knights. They're an overpriced relic of single-model metal clampack days and are the single most overpriced thing in the universe. Instead, buy Aelf Dragon Blades and paint them red. Bam, you can get two boxes of these for barely over half the price of a single blood knight box and they look pretty much perfectly the part. Hell, get the Death Upgrade Pack with them: you'll have enough vampire-looking shields to equip both boxes, a cool banner, and it'll still cost you less than buying the actual blood knights... Even if you buy enough oval bases to fit everyone on top of this.  If you're good with converting models and have spare bits, you maybe also want a bigger alternative as Dragon Blades models are a bit smaller than Blood Knights models, you can buy a box of Chaos Knights and the Death Upgrade Pack (they come with oval bases).  Either option gives you 10 Blood Knights cheaper than GW's 5 Blood Knights.   That's how overpriced blood knights are.

Once you've done that, you got 2 units of 5 blood knights, leaving you at 520 points. From there, there are actually a lot of options:<br><br></s> All fine and dandy, but since the release of Cities of Sigmar. Dragon Blades got fucking squatted. So your only option to prox them with GeeDubs models are Chaos Knights.

-Get a Vampire lord on zombie dragon. That'll drop you at 960 points, meaning you will usually get a Triumph in 1000 points games. That's also a 1000 points army with 11 models in it, which is sort of hilarious.<br><br>
-Get a Coven throne and a Vampire lord. that'll leave you at 920 points, leaving you with the option of either putting a bat swarm, fell bats, or keep the points to summon something (probably skeletons). Since the old bats are both ugly as sin and expensive, you'll probably want to look at alternatives: options that won't get you thrown out of GW stores include slightly converted tyranid gargoyles for fell bats (Seriously, they're way cheaper and you can just not put the gun arms and bam, that's it. As a bonus, they come in big boxes, making it easy to supplement your army as you go bigger), and the sky slasher swarm from FW (one pack will give you three swarms for slightly more money than one pack of two bat swarms, shipping included) or the slightly-less-ugly, still-expensive LOTR metal bat swarms. Otherwise, a bunch of companies make decent-looking bats, although usually not for cheaper than the GW ones... Either way, I suggest the swarms, as they give your army some much-needed protection against shooting.<br><br>
-Get two vampire lords. That leaves you with 200 points for summoning things and decent wizardly prowess at this low points scale, which will help vary things, but will probably be weaker as you'll need to use a lot of your magic trying to get units in time, and you also don't have any big monster. On the other hand, since summoned units don't need to be chosen before the game, this essentially lets you list tailor on the spot if you have enough models for different units. Thankfully, the blood knights are so tanky this might actually work.<br><br>
-Cheapass option: Get three vampire lords and a unit of zombies or dire wolves. Keep the zombies/doggies for summoning (they're the only things you can summon that only cost 60 points). You don't have any monsters either, but you have a -ton- of magic at this low points scale, letting you cast arcane missile, mystic shield and Spirit Blight (the vampire lord unique spell) every turn.<br><br>
-If you don't mind having to use rules for out of print models, the vampire lord on abyssal terror is 220 points, which is actually absolutely perfect to reach the cap seamlessly. Example: 3 units of blood knights + vampire on abyssal terror = 1000 points. 2 units of blood knights + vampire on abyssal terror + coven throne = 1000 points as well.

From there, there's more room for expansion, since the biggest problem with building Soulblight is that your only battleline choice eats over half of your starting 1000 points, which is less of a problem in 2000 and more points games where it doesn't gnaw as much. Perhaps it is the time to bring some vargheists.

In addition, Soulblight is a pretty good army if you want to play a summon-heavy style in higher points games. Since battleline restrictions only apply during deployment, and Soulblight can bring a ton of wizards by spamming Vampire Lords (who even have ridiculous model variety thanks to the flurry of old vampire special characters still being in print), you can definitely keep a big gap in your army and fill it with zombies, skeletons, and otherwise fun stuff as the game goes.