Age of Sigmar/Tactics/Old/Death/Soulblight

Army Features

Hey there little Timmy. Do you want to play an army of fuckin scary bloodthirsty vampire knights that will probably skewer every unit they happen to roll over? Well then, look no further, you came in the right place!

PROS:

• They are probably one of the most elite armies in the game.
• VAMPIRE KNIGHTS WITH LANCES
• Said vampire knights come back to life if they die and regenerate, becoming quite hard to deal with.
• They hurt like hell. Can put down an impressing amount of wounds on pretty much anything that does not have a rerollable 2+ armor.
• Really suits aggressive players.

CONS:

• They can be very expensive but there are ways around it discussed in this page.
• Lack of mortal wounds and rend better than 2. Allies can mitigate these problems.
• Their big scary monster could be bigger and scarier but that is what we got.

Army Rules

Battle Traits:

• Deathless Thralls: Same thing as death grand alliance, it allows you to ignore wounds on a 6+ if the wounded unit is within 6" of a SOULBLIGHT HERO.
• The Bloodlines: Now this is some sweet fluffy stuff. The old bloodlines are back and with a vendetta, a juicy bloodraining vendetta. You can select one of those for all your army and that is it, free buff for every model with the SOULBLIGHT keyword, and it still applies even if the general is slain! You may notice that some look fairly better than others:
  • Dragon Warriors: The old Blood Dragons bloodline, this allows your units to reroll 1's to hit on the turn they charge. Pretty nice since the general aggressive style of the army.
  • Lords of the Night: These are the Von Carsteins. The bloodline allows your units to benefit from deathless thralls even if they are not within a SOULBLIGHT HERO. It is an ok buff if you don't have many characters.
  • Swift Death: The old Lamia bloodline. OH BOY, this is nice. Gives your guys a +2" on movement plus the ability to move as if they can fly. I don't have to tell you how scary flying blood knights are.
  • Necromantic: The old Nechrarcs. Allows you to add 1 to casting and unbinding rolls for WIZARDS and give a -1 bravery to enemy units within 6" of one of your units. Combined with the Ruby Vial you can get a -2 bravery which is not bad at all.

Command Traits:

• Curse of the Revenant: Add 1 to the wound characteristic of your general. Pretty straightforward and not too bad but there probably is better stuff.
• Dread Knight:The general reroll 1's to hit against an enemy HERO in the combat phase. This would have been cool if it affected the mount too.
• Transfix:Now we're talking. One enemy HERO per phase within 3" have to subtract 1 from his hit rolls that target the general. A nice duelist tool.
• Mist Form: This is good. If the general retreats from a fight, he can do it as he could fly and then he can charge. Really awesome if you get in a sticky situation or if you want to charge a unit behind the enemy lines.
• Killing Blow: Good old extra mortal wound on a 6+ roll to wound. Could be nice along with the Saccharine Goblet for having mortal wounds on a 5+.
• Blood Fury: Add 1 to the attacks of every melee weapon of the general, which translates to add one attack to the only weapon of the general. Boriiiing.
  • It can be argued that all the weapons of the coven throne get +1 attack but it is pretty unclear.

Soulblight Artifacts:

• The Slaking Blade:Choose a melee weapon. When it has dealt at least 6 wounds the model heals D3 wounds and the weapon get a permanent +1 damage. Cool and simple.
• The Scabbing Plate:If the general deal at least a wound in the combat phase he heals a wound. Since our heroes are quite slashy, that should not be too hard to do.
• Crimson Wing:It is an angry bat. You choose an enemy unit within 30" and roll a dice. On a 3+ the bat tears out the eyes of a model, dealing one mortal wound to the unit. It could be nice to snipe squishy lords or mages.
• Sigil of the Sanguine Throne:Now this is a nice piece of awesome. It allows a VAMPIRE unit within 12" of the bearer to reroll a failed charge. Blood Knights and vargheists thanks but also does the vampire lord on zombie dragon.
• The Saccharine Goblet:I really want to like this one but having it affect only the vampire attacks is annoying. It gives a flat +1 to hitting and wounding but if you dont deal any wound (yeah, that is pretty unlikely unless you charge durthu or something like that) the bearer gets D3 mortal wounds. It still is pretty good on a smashy vampire lord.
• Ruby Vial:Once per battle you can use this to give ALL enemy units a -1 to bravery for one turn. Use it wisely.

Warscrolls

The common keywords of these warscrolls are: DEATH and SOULBLIGHT. Apart from Bat Swarms and Fel Bats all the units also have the VAMPIRE keyword.

Heroes

• Vampire Lord: Unfortunately, your Vampire Lord isn't the unit-shredding dragon-outdamaging monster he used to be. At least he's still crazily awesome at support. While most armies must choose between fighter and caster, your Vampire Lord does both. He's got a great melee profile, can cast a spell a turn and has a powerful Command Ability. And since he can heal wounds by killing stuff, you want him in the thick of it. Can also have wings or a nightmare to increase his movement, with the wings letting you fly while the nightmare grants you another melee weapon. Since the command ability grants an additional attack with each weapon of the affected unit, it's best to use this on models with few strong attacks or better yet on models with more than one weapon profile. If you want to be a real jerk, use the Lord's buff on a Necrosphinx, which turns into an absolute rape machine thanks to this. Using his command ability on a big unit of skeletons is also a great tactic to just drown the enemy with attacks. If you play carefully enough, 30 skeletons would be getting 4 attacks each (1 attack base, +2 attacks with a unit of 30, +1 from buff) with +1 to hit if they are near a lord. To top it off, he has one of the best debuff spells in the game: at 6+, it subtracts 1 from the Attacks of EACH weapon of a unit, to a minimum of 1. Yes, against basic troops with one attack is useless, but against those elite units with 2 attacks (stormcast, chaos warriors, hammerers, phoenix guard, saurus guard... come on, every army has at least one)? Well, all of a sudden, that crucial unit is half as powerful. Use this spell wisely and you can beat almost anything even with half-decomposed zombies! He can also get a blood chalice that give him back D6 wound once per game, increasing quite a lot the dude (un)life spawn. All in all a quite nice little hero that can be a pretty scary backline assassin, ready to debuff a enemy monster and then jump some squishy unit.

• Vampire Lord on Zombie Dragon: Finally, finally the Zombie Dragon actually out-damages the Vampire riding it. It has a bunch of devastating attacks and what might be the meanest breath attack in the game, as it hits units of 6 or more models automatically and then Wounds on 2+. The Vampire, on the other hand, provides a bunch of healing to the Dragon and yet another powerful melee profile. Like all Vampires, he's a Wizard, but with a very gimmicky unique spell that will never see use. Trust me, it is far more worth it to give him Mystic Shield for that sweet 2+ save. His Command Ability is providing rerolls To Hit to a friendly Death unit. Couple this with the once per game chalice of blood that gives you D6 wounds back and this guy will have your opponents wishing they had one. He has the same healing ability as the normal vampire lord which boosts this further. Use him as an absolute beast to shred through large number units or stick him into an enemy monster, but make sure to be attacking first, using the output at full wounds will almost likely guarantee the death or serious crippling of the enemy. Too bad that relics such as the goblet do not work on the dragon's attacks but then again, with the saccharine goblet you have a lance wounding and hitting on a 2+ while dealing 3 wounds for each attack wich is still quite nice. I dont need to tell you how awesome is to give this guy mist form: charge a unit with the deathlance and do a shit ton of damage, then in the next turn bail the shit out of that fight and charge again.

• Coven Throne: For when you really want to cherry-tap some shmucks. This thing pours out TWENTY-FIVE attacks in melee, but only one of them is actually powerful and can potentially make new generic Vampire Lords, but don't bet on it. They also allow you to reroll a single dice roll per game (Either your own or your opponents. That's right, you can force your opponent to reroll a critical save in a pinch). Don't you dare forget that, it might help. It's also a wizard with a meh unique spell (wich is potentially strong but has a short range and a bravery test save or die) and its Command Ability lets you auto-win ties on the Initiative roll, which is potentially powerful but it comes up pretty rarely. It's also ridiculously fast with a 14" flying movement.
  • It can be argued that it is a single model with no rider or mount. In such case many traits and artifacts start looking pretty good. For exemple, you coult take killing blow and the saccharine goblet, triggering mortal wounds on 5+ to wound (and 5+ to hit for the ghosts) on its shit ton of attacks.

• Vampire Lord on Abyssal Terror: (out of print) See regular vampire lord, except with access to a bloodshield for that sweet 3+ save, and a flying mount that's going to hit horribly hard in melee. His unique spell and command ability are different: the command ability isn't that great, forcing enemies to take battleshock on two dice and discard the lowest, but the spell is absolutely ungodly, letting you double the movement of a friendly Death unit during the next movement phase. This is wasted on infantry: use it on an already fast unit (like cavalry, monsters or the vampire itself) and you're easily going to move something 20" or more. The best part? It has a paltsy casting value of 5, meaning it will go off most of the time.
  • NOT SOULBLIGHT ANYMORE look elsewhere.

Troops

• Blood Knights: They are the reason you play soulblight. They are Vampires on undead horses. Now these guys will be winning you best cavalry ever awards. They do a lot of damage, ridiculous amounts of it on the charge, 3 attacks with 3's and 3's, -1 rend and D3 damage a piece and they can regenerate lost wounds, as well as bring 1 slain model back every hero phase with the banner. These guys win the award for scariest cavalry unit, being able to get a lot from bloodlines abilities (rerolling 1's to hit on a charge or moving +2" and FUCKIN FLYING are the first ones that come to mind). They also hugely benefit from having a vampire lord (vanilla or on zombie dragon) casting his nice sweet juicy spell on them. They are not immortal by any means but sure can tarpit a no rend unit quite hard. While the vargheists can do more damage out of the charge (and the same amount on a charge but in a more reliable way), the bloodkinghts are quite hard to kill. A mix of the two sound like a pretty nice idea.
  • The models are horribly overpriced but there are ways around it until GW puts out a new kit for this bad boys.

• Fell Bats: These are odd. They have surprising staying power with 3 wounds each, but their damage output can generously be described as lacking. However, once an enemy model in their vicinity dies, they double their attacks for the rest of the game, granting 6 attacks to each bat.

• Bat Swarms: They're swarms. Lot of attacks, awful Hit and Wound rolls. Their flavor heals all wounds if it inflicts a wound. But that's not why you take them. You take them because all enemy units within 12" of them take a -1 penalty To Hit in the shooting phase, which is fucking massive considering they have a 12" flying movement.

• Vargheists: Like most 4-Wound models, Vargheists have to endure the obligatory comparison with Ogres. And they don't come up short, as they have a 12" Flying movement and -1 Rend on their weapons over Ogres. Unfortunately, unlike basically all Vampires, they can't heal lost wounds and with a 5+ save these guys can go down quickly if put in too deep. A nice tactic for them is to have them hunt artillery or wizards as they can do this easily without being quickly gunned down and torn apart by other combat units (looking at you stormcast) while blood knights and VLoZD take care of meanest enemies. They also look fuckin amazing, wich is a great plus.

Army Building

So you want to play pure Soulblight? You're in for a treat. You've got one of the most elite armies in the game, with some of the most ridiculously hard to kill models in the game that will come back from the dead to crush your opponents' dreams. The problem, of course, is that a lot of the army is stupidly overpriced old-ass ugly resin recasts of metal models (blood knights, fell bats and bat swarms), forcing people who don't want to sell a kidney and/or gouge their own eyes out to look at alternatives.

Matched Play

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. 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:

-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.

-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.

-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.

-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.

-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.

Free Play

Do whatever. Your army is ridiculously superelite with lords that can support every other Death faction like it's no one's business.

External links

Rules are here

https://www.games-workshop.com/resources/PDF/AoS_Warscrolls/aos-warscroll-vampire-lord-en.pdf

https://www.games-workshop.com/resources/PDF/AoS_Warscrolls/aos-warscroll-vampire-lord-zombiedragon-en.pdf

https://www.games-workshop.com/resources/PDF/AoS_Warscrolls/aos-warscroll-coven-throne-en.pdf

https://www.games-workshop.com/resources/PDF/AoS_Warscrolls/aos-warscroll-blood-knights-en.pdf

https://www.games-workshop.com/resources/PDF/AoS_Warscrolls/aos-warscroll-fell-bats-en.pdf

https://www.games-workshop.com/resources/PDF/AoS_Warscrolls/aos-warscroll-bat-swarm-en.pdf

https://www.games-workshop.com/resources/PDF/AoS_Warscrolls/aos-warscroll-vargheists-en.pdf