Hello everybody, if it's Wednesday, it's Warhammer and that must mean it's time for another episode of Warhammer Weekly joining me As always is my co-host Tyler. What's up, buddy? How you doing? Figure there's only one appropriate way to start this. Hello friends. There you go Tyler, how do you feel about celebrating being on the show now for almost six years? It's really been a journey. We've went on together has it has man. Yeah I mean, I've known you for a very long time. Yeah, and yeah I'm just happy to be here as always. Yeah I remember when you first came in to the magic card shop when I was running that and I was like 16 You know, you would come in we'd play magic together. It was it was great. It was great I'm happy. We've been able to do this for so many years together Yeah, it's it's really good So just another normal week where you're on the show like you have been every week for six years Also joining us our very special guest. He's here to talk about the soul blight grave lords I'm just I'm just glad you're done with that stick.  Oh Great. That's my one swear. No more. No more Look, that was an early one that might be a record. I have been planning that stick for like a week Okay, since I agreed I didn't know anything about it, but appreciate it. No, I had to spring it on you That was what was gonna make it good John it's good to have you back on the show, buddy We are going to be talking about grave lords tonight I see how much you're flexing John by having a mix of 40k stuff over your right shoulder and Cursed city over your left. So really just on point I could including my third box of these these are like finding a unicorn in the wild, baby At this point how you Like I hope you like the regular vampire Lord scroll because with that without three of that box You can just take an army of them. We need to lose the leader keyword. So there you go Right. Yeah, I mean other than the fact that the vampire Lord is now in a 40 mil around and those are all on 32 Yeah, it was a bad day when I realized that yeah, well, you know, you just put them on 40s Everybody from cursed city. I rebased them all into different bases that I wanted for the actual army So who cares I like took most the stock bases throughout the go out the window. All right But we're gonna talk about soul like grave lords long later. I will tell everyone right now tuck in folks Oh my goodness is this going to be a big show and that's not just because Tyler on Tyler's on who is known We have So much so let's start with the news Tyler.  Thank you for the invites. I get to be the unlucky soul To replace Tom which jokes aside, I actually think is is a tall order in all in all honesty Wish him well and hope he gets back soon There are many other folks who'd be much better qualified to be in the seeds than myself But I'll definitely do my best. My money was personally on Hey, whoa, or Doug. Sure You were you were my second choice, so don't worry. It's fine. Oh, excellent. I knew it wasn't the first All right, we've known each other for 20 years I can take that exactly exactly All right, so what do we have as our first news item? Oh, it's the river engine, right? That's that's where we begin Indeed. Yeah, I have little infallible sleep at it It's part of this long series that they've been doing here and lead up to Saturday. Yep. Let me say this Nothing about this rumor engine is interesting. It's a big weird skull over like clearly over something that's been tied together Yesterday was like a mace. There's a bunch of these are up to nine What's important about this article is the thing we already knew that they're releasing like it's some kind of big mystery Because if you read the text of the article Okay Each day the the silver mirror that the Lord Veritat is peering in is releasing a single letter it was the letter T and then H and then oh and What does that spell? What could it be? Could it be? Fondia this main region of Ger right here on the map They already released where we know all of the action is taking place where they've Literally set all of the recent short stories and where excelsis is like Not a real tough nut to crack there Yeah, just like okay guys. Yes, cuz we're up to like T H O and D I today like oh boy I Thought I was gonna be thong in there for a moment and then they crushed my hopes They were they were gonna go for the the tie-in the Cisco tie-in We were all hoping that's what it was absolutely, but No sadly So yes, that's what the rumor engine is. It's obviously all the new beast stuff and and that relates to another news item, which is Dominion Confirmed as the name of the big box set which we are going to get to see this Saturday During a live reveal show. So Tyler. I hope you know that you also signed up to do weekend shows when they do So gentlemen, I will ask both of you John I'm gonna start with you since you're taking a drink and it's funny to ask you a question right away What are you hoping to see in this new box set in Dominion What am I hoping to see I want some ninja orcs so bad. Okay, so bad. I want sneaky orcs. I want The you know you we need this the sneaky What is it? But cunning is that what it is yeah cunning but brutal cunning but brutal. That's what that's what I want to see That's what the game is missing. We all need ninja orcs in our lives. So that's what I'm hoping to see And what we will see is a unit called hobgoblins not that the race is hobgoblins Heard it here first heard it here first folks. There you go Tyler I'll go to you and and at the same time I'm gonna bring up that image right there Because during our animation preview we got what we believe is a little preview of our new not goblin not ork Gobble work. Oh, yeah. Yeah, so I brought up that image. That was that was just just a little Sneaky sneak right on in there right on into the animation trailer. This this guy was summarily killed by a stormcast, which is appropriate Tyler, what are you hoping to see? Yeah, well first off grimdark live, you know, they were the first to call the box name They've pretty much been spot-on with all of their little yeah early early leaks. So Yeah Love to we got the Drake keyword. I think with Pragnos. That was this week. Yes, maybe we'll see some new Dragon, you know some strong cast on many dragons like next evolution of Drake off. Yes That's what I want to see. I don't see I want them to have wings I want I want like little dragon cavalry like little dragons But I want storm cast on them Look, I can't be the only person who read dragon lance when I was young and You know read the story of all of the night's writing dragons with dragon lances since the name of the whole setting, right and Thought to myself. Well, that's pretty much the coolest thing that would that is or will ever be in my entire life so I guess this is the high point right now when I'm like ten years old and Let's just finally make that happen. How do we not have dragon rider cab not just heroes I want cap there were armies of them in Dragon Lance. It wasn't just like one dude. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah Yeah, they have seemed to have struggled over the years with Really bad-ass looking dragons plastic dragons like we got that Star Drake some folks liked it It was a little janky and parts of it just to some but yeah, yeah, let me sweet I think that's my thing before no for me. I am I am honestly most excited. I legit, I'm not sure I care about the work side of this My honest answer is I really am he very keen to see what them stormcasts look like because rat cast needs to be a thing The redeemed skaven the the rat cast skigs storm cast are coming and Vince's first thoughts The day that we saw those initial storm cast in one of our little groups That was his very first comment was wonder how these would look if I stick some rat heads on Answer awesome Easy one. That was an easy one slam dunk right there So so so we need Sarah Angel riding a shiven dragon with a rat head is your ideal universe I think that you've literally just described some so a form of nirvana if they were to make that model We would all by seeing it. We would ascend to a higher plane of being We would become one with the universe and everything a consciousness made only of light and energy That all could instantly communicate with each other There would be the end of the human race through perfection, so so so careful with that zanity. Yes, exactly. Absolutely yes All right, so You mentioned Tyler Hmm in there, Mr. Cragnos Yes. Oh boy. Oh boy. Yeah, we got we got big special K as well So I brought the scroll up on the screen Yeah, I've got a pull up myself right now. Okay, so Cragnos the end of empires 18 wounds to up save starts a 10 inch move on foot scales down to seven He has a nice wound chart and he has the 50% wound chart the good wound chart like a turtle or something like a turtle and He can in fact do Up to 36 mortal wounds to a monster. He charges that is true There is a 2.7 8% chance of that occurring, but it is possible But it's good for marketing. It was great for that little snippet great for marketing I will say he does have more than a 30% chance to do 14 or higher mortal wounds on the charge Which is actually not too shabby that means one in three times He charges a 14 wounds being the key where most monster heroes live, right? Right, right say like your Velazda. We're about to talk about later today So although that guy would probably live because it is six ups But if you don't have any mortal wound protection, you have about a 35 to 8 depending percent chance of just getting splattered. So It's not bad. So John, what'd you think of this guy, man? What do you think of Kragnos? Are you excited to see this guy across the table from your your your boner boys?  So I Mean, it's a legit problem with him, but he's scary if you like smashing into stuff and making things go boom He's gonna be fun. I like to play him against him. I don't think I play with him, but I think he seems cool. Yeah, sure Yep, Tyler, what's your take on him? Yeah, so Paul Conti by the way Paul I'm counting these toward my count on number of guest appearances Oh, absolutely. Yeah, these all count. Yeah. Yeah, he's gonna have to do some work. I Yeah, I think Paul said his average damage is about 20 Against a four up save. Yeah, so that's yeah, that's something that's great. It's like 20.8 20.8 or something like that. Yeah, sounds about right. Yeah. Yeah, so that seems pretty good I mean he has some clear limitations. He's From one point of view, he's a faster go track That's probably been a common line that folks have pointed out this week.  He's not that fast like medium speed, right? He's not slow. He's not fast. He's he's medium speed Yeah, and the big thing as you know, John just alluded to yeah, no mortal wounds save. Yep So yeah range mortal wounds are gonna be a problem for him Snake bows long strikes sure ganks sentinels. Yeah, but they're a problem for everything in the game So what's new also true? Yeah Yeah, I think I think he's interesting. There was a really good article by Peter Atkinson Plastic rake on his blog where he did a nice initial breakdown on his thoughts He generally thought from a competitive standpoint. He's got some real challenges You know, he's kind of pointing out there was not a lot of synergy going on with this guy Sure, that seems to be sort of part of the narrative part of yeah, it's very deliberate So yeah, I personally find him pretty intriguing. What do you guys think his points is gonna be? That was gonna be the game. Yes. He has a completely modular piece He basically doesn't synergize at all with almost anything. He's meant to just be out there and alone You can drop him into any destruction army as mentioned his average damage in melee is about 20 so quite high By the sort of calculations of this game. That's quite a high amount of damage You know, obviously with some very good friend on his dread mace, which is nice, but he is eminently chaffable Yeah, just before we guess points one thing I want to say is this is exactly one of the pieces that's this is this guy is such a piece that's so hard to point okay because a Competitive player can just control this guy and basically make him do nothing Right if you feel like if you built your army as such and you understand what this guy is You can just keep him busy all game sort of chaff him up with the appropriate stuff Monsters he can only he only has like a two up for a d6 mortal wounds, right?   Yeah, absolutely and so The the reality is that like the in the again in super competitive play He's gonna be very easily controlled and hard to utilize because he can't fly he can't get around chap He's you know all that but if you're not a competitive player who isn't like it doesn't know how to really target prioritize and Chaff efficiently and things like that or or you happen to be in an army that really doesn't have those tools Sure, right which there are a few of Um Like he's gonna run slip shot over the army and somebody's gonna be like I don't understand this game Right stupid this guy just runs in and kills my entire army and there's nothing I can do about it, right? Like that's by the way, that's how I hear everybody on Facebook. So So how do you point this thing? Right All right. Yeah, let's guess Yeah with that set We will do prices right rules we will track when we know in a day or two John You get to guess first All right, I'm gonna say they're gonna want to move this so they're gonna point him moderately aggressively I'm gonna go 540 540, okay, 540 aggressive number. I like it Tyler Yeah, that's really interesting. I'd say we should actually put someone putting them in line You know for this, but you'd probably make me paint a skank or something sure so So, let's see Yeah, the guesses have been all over the map on this worst roll I think your point is well taken that he is pretty difficult to figure out from a competitive standpoint Initially prior to seeing this worst roll. I saw 640 to 700 Seeing the worst scroll traditionally, I would think that's Like initially I thought that was probably still going to be the case. Maybe ending somewhere around 680 I'm hedging here with an explanation part of the issue is you know, comparative comparisons have some inherent challenges and limitations With that said and you know, there's always the bud after that after that statement Marathi is 600 points. Yeah, sure. She is So and I mean, I mean we have some other examples, but she obviously stands out for the mean that was going around this week You know, the best I can do is three wounds. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah so From that standpoint with Marathi like I can't see over 600, but I'll go with my original guess like 680 680 All right I'm gonna slice the middle a little bit because my which is not generally the best way to win in prices, right? But that's okay. $1. Yeah, $1. No, I'm gonna go for 640. That's my guess Yeah, no, that's that's just what I feel like this would be pointed at a little higher than what it probably should be But they'll start higher and they could always wheeling back and stuff like that. So Yeah, there you go. Okay. Yeah, I think yeah 680 700 is way too high. 640 is too high I think John's 540 is probably like the correct number Yes. Yeah See a little bit more, but that seems about right for a completely non synergistic modular beat stick that moves at medium speed around the board without right I think that the The argument for pointing him higher Which you're looking through the lens of GW's design team is the fact that he can go into any destruction army What if you put this guy in a army of 200 grots? Sure that has the that has the board control that has the bodies But he can simply just run him up and be the kill stick. So I'm not saying he is the kill stick I'm saying that they're worried in that kind of army. We need to be safer rather than just he was only usable in army X Right. Yeah, you know No, you're right. They tend to up price versatility. Yeah, right. Yeah, I agree He's got some synergy with Gordrack Gordrack's man ability. No, that is true. There it is There's one so so enjoy it. I mean that sounds like a fun army to me Like if I can get him and Gordrack and a mega and a mega gargant in there I I mean what sounds like we're in a great place to me so far I've seen no issue All right Very good. So continuing on this is all that this is the price sheet just in case people had questions because At the same time, we also got announced four new battalion boxes in the battalion boxes Gave away that there might be two sets of rules coming in Cragnos that we were unaware of everybody was like, oh Beasts of Chaos and Skaven you get nothing in this release. What does that mean? Maybe now they get something because there is the butcher's herd Which I have I have all these what exactly is in these and just a second on the next slide But that is the beast of chaos one You've got draka spike grove, of course, which is like draka and some spike revenants like that You don't even need to you could read the name and figure out exactly Probably just ten of them. Yeah, correct. Yeah, you have the exquisite pursuit Which is the slinnish one? which is full of things you probably don't need and That's fine and And and Rada chax doom coven Which is the Skaven one so that tells me we're getting some beasts and some Skaven rules Next bet here we go gentlemen Or the rules coming in Cragnos For Skaven and beasts just battalions and hence worthless in a month and a half So nothing All right, or is there actual rules in there? Did they actually think ahead and go you know what we can't give these two armies who desperately need some love? Just battalions that we're gonna invalidate in like five minutes. Let's do something real for them So John you're up first Battalion only or real rules your choice.  Okay. Yeah, very good Tyler That's something. It's the obvious, but that's what it feels like. Yeah, a hundred percent the OBR treatment. Okay Yeah, just battalions. Okay, I am going to take the upside And say There's gonna be some real rules in here. We're gonna get some kind of rules updates for both of them I don't know what that is. I maybe it's not scrolls. Maybe it is. I don't know, but I think there's gonna be something They're gonna put something in there hopeless often. That's what you're at. Oh, yeah, like it's gave it. I've got to believe man Okay So Well, we'll see we'll see exactly what what happens Also, just a fun So there's the prices for all the other special things like craggy's 160 The book is 40 croak is 115 I hope his war scroll is good and he costs 600 points. That would be correct So good not great 600 points call it a day the war song governance 55 the two Witch hunters are 50 and then also catching up with that malusai iron scale release just happy to see Yeah, they had released that you could get the Lord of pain separate, but you couldn't get the iron What was the what was the price on that one like 35? Yeah, reasonable single hero price. So pretty yeah, yeah, that's not too bad on the worst song revenant Like a bigger dude, so okay So I've got another one. So we saw the black library are releasing short stories this week. Oh, that was Okay, you want to you want to pick it up? Yeah, so by the way, I have the contents of the boxes up on the screen now So like for Beastman, it's Bray shaman six bullgores and a cygore kit What all of the beast boxes tells me is they have a surplus of shamans and cygores Because those two show up in every box Like they just start with those two sprues and go what else can we fit in here, right? Yeah, I mean I mentioned this okay John with it with the production issues that they Reportedly have It's obvious that we got to figure out what can we keep putting out? That doesn't require us to produce new models to make it and this is true of the last battalion boxes It's true of this battalion boxes, which is fine. I'd rather they move stuff and give us a good deal on it But it's pretty apparent absolutely that was just them like going into the factory taking the cygores out of the box Like opening up the box pulling out the spru put it in the new box, right? Like somebody had to pack those for a day and they if that was it Yeah Okay, so that's just the contorted epitome three fiends and five seekers Give me those fiends man. Give me those beans. I fiends are like, okay at best And by the way, they're much worse than 3.0 So, huh, huh good times, okay? Because um 3.0 if all rumors be further correct, which by the way since every rumor has been panning out so far I'm just gonna start taking these things as victim. Sure. Uh The cap on negatives to hit and wound Oh, I see what you're saying. Sure. Yeah, they rely on like stacking those things to survive. Yeah Yeah Have I have I miss it has there been a rumor out there for a tax that you cannot I've only heard a tax Or I've only heard hits are not tax. I've only heard hits wounds and saves saves. Yeah, I don't know I think that's what the list labs it said.  Yeah, sure. Absolutely And then the scaven is the bombardier Three storm fiends and the warp lightning cannon, which is fine I can also obviously build the plague claw if you should want to make a choice in your life Now let's talk about this image because I knew where you were going Tyler so a short story you can buy as ebooks five books The Oracle about Marathi the Archmage about Teclis the dark master About Bellicor and the god of earthquakes about Cragnos and also The Everqueen wait what hold on but wait, there's more. Yes and So all of a sudden Everybody has started like the rumor has now gone around Were there supposed to be five broken realms books and they like pulled it back Always getting a short stick and they were like cancel one of them fold a laurel and the evergreen stuff into book four Okay, let's trace this back so we know when would they have had to make that decision Okay They would have had to make that decision to cancel the book and fold everything in Realistically at the latest probably April or may of last year Like right after the pandemic started Okay Just he has a bleed time because they would have to get the new book fold everything together That would require reformatting everything like all new layout work all new art all new writing like you can't just shove two books together There's a lot of graphic design work there, right then it would have required Play testing and all of that for all of that content getting pushed into the cycle Right because they have to play test everything there and then it would have required them Then shipping out the order because they stamp these things like six seven months in advance of when they're supposed to watch, right? So My answer is no. No, this is never going to be a book. They just they had five ideas for stories And like a laurel is the big major player who doesn't have her own book in this series, right? Yeah She she shows up in like every book talking Yeah, it seems more likely than yeah, but not that's the case. Although. I mean we Have a lot of releases. I mean relatively speaking, you know, we've got some niche models. We've got croak Uh, we've got those two cities of sigmar the what's Dad and daughter combo, you know That it seemed like there's quite a few releases with this of course crygnos with this final book So the worst on remnant as well, you know, I don't know maybe as as mentioning it Yeah, maybe it's not too surprising that you would have this many in the final crescendo for broken realms, but Kind of thinking about on that front like is there enough that we're getting where you could have seen that divvied up In over two books I guess is the question sure And it might feel a little light on the front, but I you know, you can see it Yeah John what do you think? I mean looking back from the the amount of time that they would have had to make this call So early on in the pandemic to make massive decisions as an organization of where you stop and where you go This feels like a pretty minor one to want to put your eggs in the effort basket to condense Right is my answer. It It just seems like they would they would make larger whole scale changes and adapt them As they needed to to fit which they just did last month finally halting new releases instead of the Backlog that they've gone through I don't think that this seems like so much work to have so little impact on an annual calendar, you know Yeah, and it feels like at the same time what they could like there could have been a point Very early on that this was five books You know what I mean like in the early planning stages before any of the books are really getting written Or stuff like that, right? Yeah, they could have been thinking like, okay Let's do broken realms as five books These are going to be the major characters. So they would have had lots of planning sessions where they would have sketched all this out I think that was a general guess in the community that I was going to be because we have like roughly 25 some factions, you know, and then that first book we saw it had five factions featured. Yeah, so five by five In the pipe. Yeah, exactly. Yeah Uh, so they I think that like I'm sure that at some point in early Pre-development or you know somewhere in that early point when you know, you're you have people sort of initially working on stuff Like sketching out what are going to be the story beats. What's going to be the general arc? What armies are we going to put in each book? There'd be so much pre-planning to all of these right in the department. Yeah Uh, that they could have had an idea for a five book arc and then as it developed They condensed it to four books, but we're still like, you know The allarial is still a huge player We're just going to kind of push her more throughout like you can see the white board where they start moving post-it notes around Right of like, okay. We're going to put this stuff over here. This stuff over here Allarial still showing up in every book. So yeah, we'll give her, you know, like Let's still get a story out for her because she's a major player Right and a major player leading into 3.0 And that feels like the real story to me right That's more believable to me then like they caught an all called an audible at the last minute And there's like a whole allarial book somewhere That, you know, I'm sitting on someone's hard drive that they just shelved and extracted content out of and shoved it into Krakto's Right. Yeah, that's lame So reminds me one one thing you guys didn't mention I think in your show where you were talking I think it was last week. We were covering all the battle tones On some of that, you know, it seems like we may have a 3.0 So when a battle tone that would be basically like a war cleanse version Yeah, you know, you'd have the karnathi release finally And maybe a karnath model itself Or avatar of karnath and that would be the head of the karnathi side, you know, this on that side And then of course, yeah, the big wall version where the two combine together Uh, if that happens my only requirement for the karnathi army is every one of them must have hooves Or a sadder body or something like that. Whatever's going to drive Scott the most insane Yeah As long as nothing is a normal looking wood elf as long as you can't ever confuse one of them for a wood elf Then I'm happy Poor kid like again, they don't have to be I'm not asking for them to be like crazy off the off the base You know, they can look like they can look like wood elves completely same outfit same stuff But then hooves or same outfit sent our body or same outfit furry sadder legs, whatever Something horns big horns. I don't care. Good nuts.  I will take that too. That would be great. It's like a little curly cube Absolutely All right, uh, yeah, great stuff There's the the Thaunia picture and that's it. So there we go, uh, did we cover all the news? I think we did We've got the new series of tournaments. Oh, that's right. Yes. I forgot about that How could I I forgot about dray? I'm sorry. So, uh, yeah Three tournaments the u.s. Open happening across apparently the southern united states Yeah 300 player attorneys the top two from each one then go and play into a Uh, showdown.  Yes, which to me sounds the most intriguing I like how you named two cities in the state and it's one of the biggest states I was just reading So the I mean my response to all of this was cool That's it. You're not intrigued. No. Yeah. No, not even a little why not. You're not what would you be doing this? Like Well, uh, the fact that games workshop is getting involved in tournaments, man. Sure Here's what I'll be interested in What mats are they using and who made them? What terrain are they using? Okay, and is it crap? All right uh, and Uh, yeah, that's probably good. And then obviously they'll use aos 3 So it'll be whatever the new aos 3 like primaries and secondaries are because clearly they're going to drop To adopt some kind of 40k primary secondary thing like right. Yeah Well, yeah, of course, we saw the image that Steve wren put out Steve wren. He's involved Like Steve is a hero He is an absolute hero. He is the man The first time I ever went over to the uk to go to war hammer world Steve wren met me brought an army for me to play with met me at war hammer world We played a couple games that day. It was fantastic Steve made me feel so at home when I was like half the world away I am eternally grateful to him and there's no better man that could be in charge of this. I saw him making up some terrain tables I hope that's how they look Uh, get rid of the wild woods He had too many wild woods, but I understand that's what's like. That's what's just there at war hammer world There's like five million wild woods on all the tables So fine. I get it. But like, you know, chuck those in the bin and replace them with real terrain And we got a winner. Steve had the right idea He was he was on point Yeah Yeah, hopefully we'll get a new 3.0 terrain sets and we'll be a little more functional than uh, I mean, I love How the Dominion of sigmar sets look and some of it's not too bad. It's like scatter train But of course, yeah, we all know the issues with those big Rectangular pieces and those steps in particular. Yeah Hear me out. Hear me out. I'm ready. Yep Rebox The mausoleum. I'm just saying I'm just saying This is totally crazy idea. No one's ever thought of this But it's good. It's classic aos aos 3.0 box You're on it, man. I got it. I got it. I got it. I got it. I got it. I got it. Okay Here we go. We're gonna rebox the mausoleum, but Also in the box is the creeping vines Oh thing, you know what I'm talking about because you get the skulls of the creeping vines So you get the mausoleum and the creeping vines and it's like The and it gets renamed like the the gurish field of bones Man this money just prints itself Done done Done we nailed it Uh, okay. Yeah, I mean my honest answers. Look if people are excited for this. I'm not trying to yuck anybody's yum I I'm sure that they're gonna fill up. I'm sure they'll have 100 people and I wish everybody who plays in all the best I think it'll be a cool tournament 128 spots for the aos Which makes more sense mathematically your number um the uh for round bearings The the thing about it is though I prefer to go to tournaments of the to's that I know that are my friends That are people I know there's like so many good tournaments run by people who I really enjoy in the community who are like all-star heroes And to's that put amazing and immense effort into it and I only can go to a limited number of tournaments a year because you know Like I we have lives and stuff And I would rather support one of my friends. That's just the bottom line. I'm not trying to take like some kind of moral stand I'm just saying I would rather Go to their tournament than the companies. So Yeah, fair enough. Yeah, uh, we didn't mention the dates if anyone's interested in the dates. So yeah, the one in orlando uh 14th 15th of august in norland's second and third of october and austin 20th and 21st of november Okay, so there you go. Very nice Well, I'm sure they'll be interesting. I'm sure that I'll I'll hey more tournaments are good more results. Hopefully that that feeds up more data So there you go All right, uh Yeah, and then I think that's that's all right. That's what we got Yeah, I think that's it. Cool Uh, yeah, that's good only other piece of news is there's this strange countdown happening on my twitter every day I have no idea what it is. I've lost control of my phone. It's not me posting it I don't know who it is. I guess it must be some kind of ghostly spirit something from the beyond Uh, and but uh, my guess Would be that if you wanted to know what it was all about You should be watching this channel on friday the 28th two days from now and Probably some stuff will be revealed So there you go We'll see Okay So gentlemen, let's turn to some uh pick of the week Uh, all right. So pick Oh the week john What would you like to share with everybody my dude pick of the week? So we're talking about soul like grave lords today So I want to I want to highlight a couple of a wonderful Artists out there that have new videos on youtube highlighting a lot of this fun dead stuff So if you haven't checked out their youtube channels, please check out Travarian, please check out richard gray And please and please check out our wonderful friend marco frazoni aka Not just me. That's right Uh, yes, uh, all of them have been putting out some awesome undead themed content Uh, you know richard gray's videos are Are Ridiculous in what they're doing He is one of the best painters in the world and he's just like, okay I'm gonna sit down for an hour and show you everything that I do to paint the incredible way that I paint and exactly how I do it and Part of me is Legitimately sad that the culture we live in the world we live in is not one that that video doesn't have a million views Like you you're learning from truly a master, right? This is leonardo Or something like that saying hey, I'm sculpting this little this little thing called david you want to come on in here I'm gonna be chipping some marble and I'll show you exactly how I get it done And people are like no that feels like it would take too long Right So at any rate, yes, I fully support all of those Uh, wonderful wonderful picks. Uh, I will link all of their most recent videos For that, uh, tyler, what do you want to share with everybody? We're we're safe from instantly for sure You can use space or something. Okay. Okay. No, I wasn't sure. Yeah, it's just curious. Nice. Oh, and we also You've got that slide then on the events. Maybe we can can sort that in if not the worst I don't but that's okay All right, we'll get a little more organized see I was the one organized you were you I'm not used to this level of organization From our co-host. Yeah. Yeah Tyler like after me this week, by the way, like send me links in advance.  It's a prep for wednesday. Yeah Try and live too hard here clearly. Okay, so Uh, I'm gonna self restraints and max of three And like john, they're gonna be thematic All right, here we go. I'm ready knife to the heart knife to the heart's podcast relatively new podcast on the scene Some good guys jesse, justin and nick Uh, I know jesse is from wisconsin. I I guess they're all in wisconsin They did a episode just recently with brendan on brendan melec self-proclaimed lord of death although apparently he had to give up that title to Jump gano if memory serves On sold light and then they covered that tournament. I think it was called hammerfall that they the guys jesse And justin nick that they organized. So yeah, it was really good discussion hearing all their thoughts About so so check that out really good pot in general. I think they're up like seven or eight episodes and then Good friend andy long a guy who's been doing all the well-designed amazing Gaming aids mainly cards for the community in recent years. He did the nash con schemes events. Yeah, we have Yep, so andy put together some gaming cards for sold lights So we can include a link to that just yeah, real nice spell cards. They're gorgeous Absolutely. Yeah battle traits Command traits artifacts, etc. Yep all right there so and then finally Feeding his ego a little too much because it's another one featuring brendan So probably we shouldn't have mentioned it, but pants mafia sold light Versus seraphon battle report on youtube one of the first youtube battle reps that I could find in recent days I'm showing showcasing the book. Yeah, it's really good little battle reports lots of sorris guard brendan had a few bricks. I think he had a big unit of grave guards and skellies Not sure if any zombies Manfred and lazda running around and showing off some of the synergies you can do. He's a legion of night Nice, so yeah, those grave guard pretty disgusting. Oh, yeah, they're they're good Super good All right, what's that awesome very good. I'll keep mine short and simple I don't have 50 million. I followed my own rules three Yes, and I and I got the exception in advance. This is true Uh, my shout out is very simple. It is for our good friend buddy friend of the show and all around awesome dude Aos coach who hit over 10k subscribers this this week on his channel absolute legend Continuing to bring out awesome content. He most recently put up his army showcase for his sons of badmuth They finished his big sons army He's been getting a lot of play in on those several tournaments as awesome has been obviously still You know, they've been they've been alive and well in the tournament scene for a while We're all jelly But uh, but check out that video and if you haven't already subscribed to coach go give him a watch He's making really fantastic content and uh, yeah, yeah, hit that up He just said two really in depth episodes on lumineath that were quite good Yes, indeed Yeah, they they didn't need to be they could have just been like Are lumineath bad? Yes Should you play get should you play them? No two episodes done got it Easy It's fine. Yeah, that's fine lumineath been enjoying all this elven bias that you've been displaying You're supposed to be this isn't a new thing. I have legitimately hated high elves. Oh, I know fifth edition so like I'm good. My pedigree is strong No in terms of some of your assessments, uh, that's that's a side topic. We can we can talk about that another time Yeah, your assessment on some of these things. That's that's okay. Yeah, I'll be wrong from time to time We can all be wrong from time to time. That's right. I'm not about this but we can be okay uh, so uh Let's then turn to some hobby time Now a thing you need to know about my new interim co-host is that my new interim co-host does not paint Uh, despite my repeated pressures to get him to do so So in that way, he's actually exactly the same as tom Nothing's changed.  What are you doing this week? Yeah, 100 so got uh test gaming against soul blight Let's see. It was yeah a good friend dan he ran A unit of 10 blood nights Which turns out it's not probably not a good idea to ambush 10 blood nights too many too many nights too many You can't put anything with on 75 is not unit 10. It's just too much It's too much. Yeah. Yeah, he was thinking after the fact about maybe A coven throne, you know where you can get it to up save to the head to the wound on a big unit of 10 Have it on the board Yeah, maybe but yeah generally two by five or or whatever. Yeah, that's you came on one by 10 So other than that, yeah, that was a great list. Uh, let's see. He had lasda 10 blood nights two by three bar guys two by 10 skellies two by 20 zombies Uh, did he have he had another hero, which I'm forgetting Yeah, it was a good list though. He basically had like five hammers And then 40 zombies and 20 skellies So I was playing iron jaws I was like, all right for for science I'm going to give him first turn see how that goes Uh battle for the past so he You're gonna, you know got the two middle objectives bubble wrap to his objective And put all of this hammers right my face. Sure because you can yeah, you can deep strike the bar guys. Yeah The blood nights. Yeah. Oh, it was two zombie dragons. That's one of those two blocks Yeah, so there was all my face So I basically spent the game trying to work through all that junk while he just hung out with zombies and skellies and scoring and Yeah, so didn't go all that well, but uh, it seems like you fell for the classic alpha bunker alpha block strategy right there Yeah, classic blunder Yeah, yeah, so glad they definitely don't mind going first No, well, especially on that build right when they have so much drop strike potential. Yes Yeah, absolutely. How are they making though? How are they making the charges? I don't think he needed to he was just like either they got them or it didn't matter They still like his goal was just to hold you in because he was just trying to pin him there for a couple turns while his zombies scored the points Oh, because it was in battle for the pass So he had been like moving up into the middle all zombies and skellies are back here while the rest of his army's up here in front of Tyler So it's just like, okay. He fails to charge you care. Tyler's still got to go deal with this, right? So the var guys could pop in front of them because legion of night otherwise has to go board edge That's where I was confused in my college. Yeah Yeah, you bring a couple in from the edge you drop the var guys in the middle call it a good one, right? There you go Yeah, yeah and castle I ambushing those those nights Yeah But uh, yeah, you know fell the few key roles like you know fell in the teleport spell But he did really nice job of you know, that many bodies zoning out space So kind of zoned out from the hand of gorg having any meaningful play And uh, yeah, didn't quite get the You know never want to blame it on a priority role, but definitely that game Needed a role one of those roles to at least have a shot at it to get through all of the all of that in my face But yeah, it was good good learning game. Nice. And then Yeah, that was uh, that's about it. Nice. John. What did you paint buddy? What did you paint? Are we gonna see something from a future video here?    Yeah, exactly. Um, I did pick up my second corpse cart I tracked one down So I've started to to build that and rebase those because apparently they still don't come on round bases even from gw I don't know how that's still a thing At a stream last week. I painted up our good little Wispy beard man. Yes all the name that I know him as Um in a couple hours and he is obviously going to be used as a necromancer And so like grave lords and then for a video this week It's a video on all the different paint brushes You need and their purposes. So this is a great video for you tyler I'm sure you'll learn a lot and use utilize it immediately So this fun eel that I thanks thanks. Thanks john. Yeah It's beautiful.  What is that from by the way? What's that that little Cobra mode miniatures is the name of the company. I just frickin love their stuff. So they They're amazing artists that it's all 3d printed stuff. Nice So their their files are just crazy and fun and whimsical and I have a lot of characters So I love painting their stuff. So print it that out at home well For myself, it's been a very very very very very very very busy week For reasons that people will see in two days and But in addition to that I painted an entire fec army over the weekend. So I did another army in 24 hours Bringing me up to 19 armies of one away From the map from the big 2o. I'm very excited Soon my armies will be able to drink legally So smash fat is now ready to smash that I recorded just an absolute metric ton of footage for it Now I've got to spend a long time editing all that together into something that resembles a video So that'll be real fun But that whole army is good and it's over there behind me Ended up doing about 77 models something to that nature so it's like 60 ghouls nine crypt flares three cryptors three vargulfs a ghoul king and a Abhorrent arch region. So nice. There you go. So and I got even got a game in them with it I literally like paused the clock In the middle of painting them To have somebody come over and I played a game with them So I played against sylvaneth And the the person was like, well, I want to try a laurel out and I was like, okay Well, we'll see if smash back and smash that and uh, it turns out yes Shocker Lord The the lack of hammers in his army came to bite him Because when you can't finish off fec units in a like vargulf heavy army Yeah, who where every vargulf is rolling six dice to restore models every round just you know So every unit like no matter what unit I had it was just always back to full just always back She had the she had the chalice too. No No, okay. I never use that. That's how I need it. Yeah. Well one. I hate it. I hate it.  So I just I don't use it I mean like I'm not doubting how good it is. Of course. It's super good But like it's the same reason I don't run the ghoul king on terror guys, right? Like I Was in a bad game Right. What was in his list other than the queen a laurel six cythers, uh, 20 dryads two by five spite revbies Two derthus Okay, and That might I might I might be pretty close like that's probably about right. Yeah somewhere around there. That sounds like my about right So, yeah, no but no battalions No, yeah, no battalions the he oh and he had the little make you go fast with plus three to charge Spell and the spell that's why it's warm. Yeah, that's why it's warm high So he like through the six sites into me round one Yep, and you're doing winter winter leaf or Shredwood winter leaf. Yep. Exactly. So sixes were doubles. He killed my unit of 40 ghouls down to two Uh, and it didn't matter they were immune to battle shock and then well over the next round. They were back at 30 And the six site boys were no longer alive So here we go I've heard though that you tested out a different way to do the woods We did we yeah, we played with the alternate rules where he just turned terrain into woods and you know what it made the game fun Yeah, I was curious I was curious when he thought about it Yeah, he loved it because it was so much easier It was he was just like, okay Because he still had to pick a terrain within range of like his normal cast which wasn't that hard But he just kind of you know like set up and knew where things were going to be When he started he was like, okay, that terrain's in range. I cast the spell. Yes, it goes off Okay, that thing's woods now. I was like, okay Cool. Yeah, 100 and it was just like he didn't have to bring a bunch of extra stuff over It took zero seconds to change the board, right? And then he teleported his dudes forward onto that terrain and I was like, yeah, okay, cool Yeah, yeah pretty easy. It was so much easier and it just Please change it gw. Please.  Please. Okay We're not going to beat that horse again. All right, gentlemen. Are we ready? Are we ready? Absolutely. How long are we in? 56 minutes. We're doing well. 56 minutes. All right four minutes under for the We're doing good, John. All right. All right We're doing good We're doing real good. We got uh 44 minutes left by what this show's length is supposed to be Right I appreciate the reassurance. It was an hour. I just want to conically All right Soulblight grave lords. Okay. So before we get into the the meat of the thing Uh, let's um, let me go ahead and close that up. There we go. Okay Before we get into the uh, the meat of the thing I just wanted to get your initial 40 000 foot impressions.    Um, I like the flexibility. I like the theoretical options I hate that it's Legion of Nagash 2.0. That's my 40 000 foot view Mm-hmm Tyler Oh, I'm wanting to ask the why question. I left it left unpack that Well ask him the was okay. Why sure why why yeah, why why on uh, what did you want instead? I wanted it to feel like zombies Controlling the hordes that the zombies were powerful undead lords that the zombies vampires here. You're saying zombies Yeah, yeah. Oh, oh, that's uh, that's a Freudian slip. I'm sorry. Yeah, um I'm talking I'm talking about the only good thing in the book. Um, yeah, no, the the vampires just don't feel like Like they're controlling mindless minions. The vampires don't feel like they are utterly powerful undead lords they just It's just an army. It's just a thing Um, that still focuses on mass rules in the core legions abilities and it bumps me out So, yeah, I wanted to feel like the van it felt like a vampire army. He doesn't feel like a vampire army at all Sure, I get that Tyler John that was one of my try hard moments. I said a message to fence being like I can't stand how these vampire lords are not more impressive in combat Should we maybe do some comparisons with old vampire counts battle tomes?  You know, this is all we're going to be a four hour show and you're wanting to Go through books Yeah, I'm generally yes, not a death player Always looking at books, you know, first and foremost from The the fat middle lens You know is that is this book In the goldilocks zone generally from both the design standpoint and broadly a competitive standpoint I mean, there's a few other variables. There's like viable variety and different play styles And just kind of the interesting level interestingness of the book And on that front, I think it's a close to home run. Like I really really like this book Uh, it's not perfect. It's got Some flaws and a number of areas that you can certainly point out But you know, I feel like I'd have to really get extremely nitpicky to Uh, you know to not like this book personally at least but it's one that I could see where opinions are going to be You know variants I can see some folks really really disliking it and a lot of people really loving it But uh, yeah, I'm a huge fan of this book in general or I can get into why Yeah, which I which I know we're going to get into Yeah, so to me this is a this is was a really interesting book because it was it was it's challenging, right? On one hand, I really do feel like they nailed the power level pretty correctly Okay, like let's separate the design completely out of this for a moment When I think about the power of what this book can do the sort of Challenge that it presents to your opponent and that kind of stuff and how it would play against the field and the armies They're out there. I really like where it sets and what it is Okay It feels like it's so decidedly fat middle, right? Uh, and and that's where I want to see more more books at I I'm really like I want to see books that look like this power level Not like lrl. Do k sarapan sense, right? I just I don't enjoy those books at all They're they're they're because the power's so skewed off to the side, right? Yeah That they just become Fun fun Now design wise. I think that there's a lot of good stuff here I think that there are also some real opportunities for improvement But I think this does it like In the paradigm of design To me it strikes in the middle but slightly on the upside if that makes sense, right? Like There which we'll get into so let me actually hit my first slide here. Oops. Sorry with my army overview Okay, so in my estimation, it's a dynamic army with powerful heroes, but limited phase presence And that's a real challenge here, right? The strengths are like the sub factions do allow for some interesting play options You have powerful but often faction locked heroes and by faction locked I just mean like they already have the name stapled on them, right? And so that means that they think you could put them in the other armies But they're not going to inherit those two abilities or whatever that happens to be going on Um There's some healing Some certainly not as much as there used to be and I think that's a source of a lot of pain Especially for longtime players who were used to being able to like really restore Massive amounts of units all at once, right? Yeah It does do board control pretty well Uh, I think it has a good range of valuable units and internal balance with some notable exceptions Which we will definitely talk about Um, it does have some solid melee options Like I think it gives a good game in melee in lots of different ways There is some synergistic options there and it does have some good ambush and deep strike options Which is important in something like shooting and stuff like that, right? Yeah, absolutely now weaknesses and there are some for sure There is no shooting. There's minimal anti shooting Right other than uh, you know, basically the deep strike options You know, you're sort of like some in certain factions or some units can sort of null deploy Which can keep you away from shooting for a little while There's one very strong anti shooting tech in the in the army very strong But that's that's it and it really skews you into a certain build. But yes overall, you're right. Yep um, I would call it average spell casting which I think has definitely Um pushed some people like that's really been a head scratcher for some people Like the the legacy of the vampire accounts is one where at least one of their bloodlines was necrarchs Right, so there was a spell castie vampire Uh bloodline and that's just really not Present in the same way like we'll talk about what the spell casting looks like there is some ways to get bonuses there's some ways to have some okay spell casters, but like It's average at best, but they nerfed all of the spells in the bloodline spells. So yep So it doesn't really matter. Yeah, I'm phone.  It's the best I can describe it Okay, and that mixed bag in my estimation my math says it comes out to average at best Yeah, right They didn't know if they wanted the vampires to be good at at melee or at spell casting So they just said well, we'll just give them neither. That's what they did Sure with some with some exceptions, but yes, yeah There there is there is one or two notable exceptions to that combat question. That's for sure Yeah, that one The and then there's some keyword bingo in here And I don't have it listed in the weaknesses, but it's something that I would just call an awareness of I talk about it way later in the presentation kind in the summary, but I'll mention it here now That there is a a decent amount of like Holy within bubble manipulation, which I'm not a fan of first for some of your buffs And so you've got to be like it's not overwhelming, but it's also not Not there, right? Like it's there Okay So you do have to you know, you're going to need to be aware of kind of aura range and stuff like that pretty Effectively when you're running this force, there's not a huge number of modular pieces. Yeah It's not it's not a new player friendly army Which is kind of of a bummer and I'm perfectly happy with that But it's kind of a bummer for the kind of release that this is for gw That the the hype on the blood knights and the coolness factor of awesome looking vampires And it's going to be some feel bad when you have to Do all the hyper measuring and if you are in holy within or not holy within I'm fine with that That being a factor of the army, but it's just it's really tough. It's everywhere. It's it's everywhere. Yeah So like I said, there are challenges They're here, but I do feel that like if you told if you had to say, you know Gun to my head does this come down on the good side of design overall or the bad side of design? I would still put it on the good That's what I'll say and I'll I do have the updated slide at the end of this for our our design power Quadrant map. So don't worry. We will get there One thing I want to say about the vampires is I think an interesting choice they made here Is there was a point in magic the gathering some years back where vampires had been They had been the color blacks iconic Okay, so it was like that all vampires that existed were like big ba Cards, you know, they had to be like big bad dudes. They were like angels They were the opposite of angels right where angels were the the iconic of white magic cards, right? And Then they made a choice to say actually let's move vampires down to Blacks whatever they call the other side of that term. There's a term for like the the stock monster of the thing. Okay And so you could have one one vampires Right and you could have you can still have like five five and six six and big giant vampires But you have little baby vampires too and that feels almost like the same thing they did they did here Right where there's really this range like yeah, some vampires are just kind of tougher people And some of them are just and some of them are like really really really amazing, right? Just they all they all but every vampire lord has four attacks threes and threes negative one d3 damage though. That's true I mean it's I mean other than other than the lance on on the the big boys, but um, yeah, I I would love that I would love that the The blood-borne unit in the cursed city was the example of Yep Wimpy pack Scary to come across if they got their claws into you vampires. Yep. Um But they didn't do that really either which is too bad, but Super miss we should mention it up top like super miss Not not taking that unit of the little vampires out of her city and expanding them into a vampire infantry unit That either was in this book was just the craziest miss. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah Yeah, they don't even need to change the scroll that they already made for them That that's in the book that is completely unplayable because you're putting it in all the cursed city stuff, but um It's not it's not overpowered. It's not right weak It's it's interesting and they feel different and they feel scary But in some ways very fragile like that's cool Let us play this game. Let us allow us to have our toys, right? Yeah, if those were just separated out Well, like we'll talk about the whole dumb radicals court thing But if those were separated out and had a reasonable unit size where you could run them in x to y and they put out that box Alone or something like that or you know that with maybe like the varg skewer, you know, whatever whatever whatever Like such a win that would have been such a crazy win and such a cool new addition to the to the the um To the game and they would have slotted really cool into veer coast like a whatever Yeah Look, I hope for the future they do that because honestly my honest answer is there's no reason they couldn't right, yeah, like Just fix it in the future. I guess it's my ask Right, right, uh, so we'll we'll see there we go. Okay Let's start with general allegiance abilities shall we gentlemen because uh, obviously this is where it all begins So allegiance abilities All run through this and then we'll we'll talk through the the stuff So grave sites pretty much the same as little changes But two in your territory two anywhere you're able to set up your summonable units in reserve and emerge from the grave site They also provide the six up feel no pain in addition to the heroes, which is nice Uh, the locus of shah-ish One thing on grave sites. They changed it from Holy with nine so now holy within 12. Yeah, so previously you could zone out a grave site by just sticking a model On the grave site. Yeah, you can't do that anymore. Nope. Good point. Yeah, that's an excellent catch Yeah, it's a little little subtle thing that yeah, we'll impact gameplay very good. Yeah, yep Uh, the locus of shah-ish spells double tap on a nine plus unmodified cast from the two spell lures and only The spell lures very important to remember your other spells do not double tap Uh deathless minions six up feel no pain holy within 12 inches of a hero or a grave site There the rest of the legions really are on the next slide, but let's just stop here for a minute This is all pretty much the stock standard stuff carried over. There was that small chain. There's two small changes we mentioned um Yeah, I don't I don't have any problem with any of this I mean, I think we're all fine with these right like these were all same to positive, right? No, no big deal on just these three. Yeah. Yeah, I think I think the grave sites is great. It's an elegant change In for the better. It's a small change. It allows more flexibility. I think it's great the locus is Stupid because one of the best spells that you actually could ever cast it doesn't work for so that's just lazy design But it we're already seeing that this army is is in its allegiance abilities is at its core Focused on hordes. Yes. Yep. It is like it is it is the focus on the hordes which will come into play Um later on so yes. Yep Uh, yeah, absolutely. So like this is going to be a running theme that I think john you just you just started to pull the thread That is I think something that is is going to be like there's a clear way they want you to to To play here, right? Yeah. Yep. And then like boy, could they not have been more more like shouting it from the rooftops a lot Okay The locus jack is on an unmodified thing. They don't use those exact words. They they says like It has to be it's unmodified. That's what it is. Like it's it is But they they say it in a roundabout silly way, okay Now uh onto the stuff that I think is going to uh That I think is going to be perhaps Have some more discussion Uh reanimated horrors neg one bravery to units within six inches of dead walkers or death rattle units Neg two bravery if within six inches of two units death units are not affected Is this just a weird like this is a weird choice to me It's a weird choice to anybody else. Is it weird to anyone else that the vampire lord on zombie dragon does not cause a penalty to What a unit of ten skeletons does Yeah, it came up Saturday night where I had asked Dan are you are you sure that's just dead walkers and death rattle? It's like one check that again. That's gotta be your whole army, right? But nope No, yeah, just just a little guys. Yeah. Yeah, it seems like this. Yeah, it would be perfectly fine For this to be just a soul blood grave lords role Periods right. I like of all the rules in the allegiance ability. This is the one I read and I was like, but why then? Yeah, yeah, they're the only reason for doing this was to simplify the game and simplify the scrolls and just take it off On all the banner bearers or whomever it was that gave it but And so I see their reason behind it, but it's Still lame. Yeah, exactly. Why don't just give them the night hot thing of Yo, death units are scary. Yo I mean, that's I think what the actual rule is printed in the night hot book. So just death units are scary. Yo Negative one negative one Yeah, like I just don't understand why we needed to tie it to the two Keyworded horde units and then also have a trigger where it sort of doubles up just like I I I triple hate this rule Okay One, I don't like who it's tied to two I don't like that it pointlessly stacks once for no reason and three the whole death units are not affected thing Just so I can be completely forgotten in the mirror match like wonderful Right. Okay. All right Yeah, it runs a little against the legacy of empire counts as well. I mean that was always the fear Oriented army right and it was a huge a huge part of yeah what that that army was oriented around And yeah, it it takes away the ability to do some interesting anti bravery, you know Bringing in some those death oriented endless spells to stack on so I don't know It feels like you could have done some interesting things if that had just been army wide Yep Okay, endless legions. So this is now Replacing the old your general spends a command point and makes a unit pop back into existence, which look It wasn't it was a bad rule Like I'm sorry to break this everybody who loves that rule, but that was a bad rule Okay I'll say I'll I'll I'll disagree that it's a bad rule I'll say that it was bad in the army that had grim gas reapers I don't I'm not even talking about power It was bad in design as much as it was anything else Because it was clearly worth way more than one command point and what it did is like hyper incentivize your enemy to snipe your general Because it became this total Like swingy ability that if somebody could just Zap your general off the board. You lost that whole allegiance ability and it was gone If they couldn't you you would just you could just lord over them with this ability to return your units back into place, right? It had this completely Inverse anti bell curve way it performed right And so that like I just I didn't like the design of it in any way shape or form and always thought it was just It was just bad design Uh And I I stand behind that and we'll we'll argue that to the grave uh, so The this is the new version of it which Whether or not I like I'd like this better. I don't know whether we've gotten to the right place yet, but I do like this better At the end of your battle shock you roll a die on a five plus plus one for each enemy unit destroyed that turn You may return one destroyed unit of dead walkers or death rather units at half strength set up Holy within 12 inches of a gravesite nine inches from enemies. So There you go I will say in my game that I got in I did I did get to do this and it was useful So yeah, I just I just you know like two units had died I rolled the three up half my zombie unit came back that I had used his chaff and That was cool And then I had them to sit on a point for the rest of the game So because I got to use them as like early chaff to just get in the way and get destroyed And then they became chair sitters later. So I like cost anything it just happens Yeah, a hundred percent. That's my favorite part as well. Yeah. Yeah, I'm a big fan of this It reminds me a lot. I mean just like it's uh, it's another summoning time mechanic You know a lot of games against corn for example over the years where it'll come down to like round four Round five and they summon in 10 bloodletters It reminds of that kind of dynamic and then those bloodletters are the thing that wins you the game A lot of games I've lost because someone will summon You know 10 bodies near the end of the game of a close game and that's a deciding factor Yeah, but that but that's strategy and in Taking care of your blood tide points in a way to give you an advantage when you need it and it just happens. This is Roll the dice most at best. It's a 50 50 You you can't rely on this as a part of your strategy for a game. You just can't right because you can't it's just Yeah, it's tough. I I just um Yeah, I I don't this I don't think this is a bad rule in theory I think that just some some execution to it is just not quite there to where um, there's too much chance involved with Allowing me to pilot my army in a way where I can I know that I can utilize a thing when I need to do it And it feels good that I I use my resources appropriately right How often can you set up that? When I need this on turn four is pivotal. I can kill three units Well, if I killed three units, I probably went in the game anyway, but you know, it's like It's just I don't know. Yep No, I get it. I think both of those things are true right because like spike hates a random roll Right because you can't like john your point is exactly correct You cannot bank on this thing as a strat Right. It moved from a strategy to bonus nachos Right Yeah, it's a completely different like regardless of the design quality, which by the way I think like the design quality of how it works and its cost. It's fine Right, it's fine and that it costs you nothing and it has this variable chance to work or whatever If we were taking it in a vacuum and just saying how was this rule designed? I'd say yeah, it's fine Yeah, but when we talk about the actual strategy of your army, the reality is you can't build around this anymore Like you used to be able to know that reliably You know, you could have the ability to bring units back All right Now it's going to stick around. It's going to keep happening You can't get like your general snipe down lose this ability Right. Yeah Which is good, but you don't but you could just as easily spend three rounds in the game three turns in the In the or sorry. Yeah three rounds in the game Uh rolling ones when you needed uh two Right. Yeah, and and like get nothing back All right, and yeah And and how this rule reads to you is going to be very very very based on your psychographic profile and how you like to use your rules Right, if you're somebody that really enjoys sort of randomness in the play of your game Then you're fine with this like this is a fun rule for you because if you treat it as bonus nachos You're not banking on it. It's just hey neat. Half a unit came back. That's cool Right If you're a spike type where you want where you where you value reliability above all else Right, because that's how like spike wins by removing randomness from the game Right Then this rule is anathema to you and it's garbage Right So I think it's going to be a it's a very divisive rule in that way Yeah, I think yeah, yeah, I think that's a great point though in general. Yeah, what isn't quite viewing it through that lens Yeah, the uh bonus nachos versus predictability to its planning. Uh, yeah, that's kind of shows that in a new light to me Yep Uh and again, it does focus on a lot of you know saying I mean not it focuses on a lot of saying hey You've got to bring back these summonable dead walkers or death rattle Units, right? So again focus into the horde focus into the horde focus into the horde, right? Yeah, right? uh, okay, uh deathly invocations Which is uh heal a number of summonable units only within 12 inches of your your soul white soul blight grave lords hero The number of units affected is based on the type of hero, you know 4 3 2 Uh and no unit can be targeted more than once per round that last sentence Is the sentence that everybody read and was like what? What? Yeah, so you so you kept the army I mean at the allegiance abilities level and really at the power level the army Really focused on hordes and then you nerfed it And at the best they were a sea level army before and so not getting further in there I'm not saying that this means the army is bad But I'm saying when you reading the book for the first time if you've played this legion the gosh before you're like What did you do to my mediocre army? Right now I think they certainly compensated in other ways because it's going to sound like What I'm saying is that oh these things aren't very good. I this army definitely changed its paradigm Right because I think before the most sort of the way that you thought about this army was as largely an attrition grind force Right where you would like I can keep I can keep recurring my units right nope and I can Just eventually wear you down like I will at last you push you off. I'll hold the points I'll lose things but then I'll keep coming back and keep coming back either through recursion of the unit Individually like restoring models or recursion of the whole unit off of the The command abilities right and what they looked at and said nope We're gonna that's not how this plays anymore, right? Now it plays much more and probably like a forward echelon anvil or sorry forward echelon anvil or Forward echelon hammer type of style right where you've got a point of the spear you push in and then your other units Surround right that's that really feels like the optimal kind of play now And we can talk about how that breaks out in a couple of like detailed Things right So um And I'll say this too about the deathly invocations. I think there's a there's an easy Middle solution here and it's about something we'll talk about shortly and that's the spell that all The mages can use that heals a flat three or three models All they needed to do was keep it you could only use that spell in one model Every wizard in this old white grave lords army can cast that spell for free once a turn Oh, I see what you're saying instead of making it a cast just make it like literally they they can do it In addition to their normal spells. Yep. If they're a one caster, they can get two cast two spells around That's an interesting solution. So they could do that and their spell and their spell They still couldn't target the same unit more than once but correct always do that right And and and you still got to succeed your casting role There's still other things involved in it, but suddenly you feel like oh, we're not We've got this one backup thing that's really cool for us from a spell casting ability Yes, we're not amazing spell casting army, but we've had this cool trick and it makes it feel cool That's all they needed. I was like read that spell 20 times thinking that I was missing where it said that and it just It didn't so I know that your your that's a super good call It's I want to reinstate I want to restate that when we get to the this spell itself because I it's a great call John that's a great call that I'm I'm on board for that thousand percent. Okay All right, let's talk about sub factions Okay All right time stamped Good sub factions The legion of blood, okay Units that fail battle shock within three inches of a vampire add d3 models to the units flee And you ignore negative modifiers to hit and wound rolls for deathrattle units Holy within 12 inches of a hero or 18 inches of the general vampire hero or general Uh By the way, I only wrote down the command traits or artifacts that I thought were even worth mentioning So if you do not see like yes, there are six Okay in this Uh, and uh, there is no they no some of these at just list one Okay The command traits for this that matter to me are the re-roll charge rolls Holy within 12 of the general which just barely made it onto this list Because you have so much like there is capabilities where you know, re-rolling charges for free is generally a pretty good thing It's okay. Not sure. It's worth a command trait, but it's not bad Neg one to be hit in melee and six to wound deals mortal wounds equal to the damage Those are the three There's a tasty one of the Sanguine blur for the units that sort of pile and move holy within 12 of the general can move an extra three inches when they pile in I don't like it. It doesn't give them the extra it doesn't let them pile in from outside of Three inches It's just they can do an extra three inches It's not a good six inch violent thinking of six inch activation dire wolves or zombies that are now Piling in nine inches Sure, I guess I mean like like if you can do six inches you can 2.9 people.   I'm I'm retreat. I'm using the six inch cheat pile in to run in charge and retreat in charge. That's all it is Right, right. So like, you know, okay. It feels like gilding the lily would be my answer So which one do you guys like the most of the commence? I mean old reliable neg one to be hit in melee ain't too shabby, right? Like that's Yeah Pretty good John I don't I don't know Legion of Blood's not good. So sure whatever It's just uh, it's just not The six to one is kind of interesting. You got some keeper some keeper of secret action going correct That's what maybe this I've seen what this can do on the keeper of secrets when you put this on a high damage attack And we are dealing with a model In this army that can have a very high damage Personal attack in the Velazda Right. And so being able to convert his lance immediately into mortal wounds It's pretty good. Like I've watched it just like it has saved my bacon on keepers many times Yeah, when it just gets added into the mix and becomes a spiky thing that you can do Like it can just spike off and be like, oh, I roll two sixes.  Ha ha But that's that's difference of a solid point on a war scroll and a taking a legion that otherwise is just so meh For this I don't know I I am Let me yeah, I mean, we'll get to what it does well in a second because I have a whole slide for that I do want to discuss this. All right artifacts plus one to save rolls. I do think that's a great artifact I'm just gonna say that straight out like oh, yeah Legion of Blood has a freaking great artifact in plus actually Legion of Blood has two Really really great artifacts. I think the other four I think are basically trash, but The plus one to save rolls in the soulbound garments and the oobliette arcana I think is so good Like I really really really think the soul the the oobliette arcana is so good All right So the way the oobliette arcana works is once per enemy hero phase when an enemy wizard successfully casts a spell within 18 Inches of the bearer and that spell is not unbound Okay, even if a friendly wizard attempted to unbind the spell so you get to roll at it first Before resolving the effects that spell you can roll a die on a five plus that spell is unbound I love this rule so much Because how many times have you been staring someone down where they're just like oh 11? 12 Yeah, right they roll a high number just just they might not even have a bonus I'm just literally they're like I here is a backbreaker spell Whoops 11 Right and Uh, and you are like well, I guess unbinding isn't going to happen now right like you because even if you're a significant unbinder You if you got like plus two to unbind You're still unlikely to nail that right you're needing like the 10 But on this it's just a 33 chance every time. I don't care what you rolled you could roll a 52 to cast Right. Yeah on a five up It's out of here the kemei buta mozan. He's like no no no just smacks that down So I really really dig this Uh This article. Yeah, that's solid. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, the spell down era. That's uh quite common nowadays Exactly. It doesn't care about their bonuses outside of like techless single spelling something Which by the way, you force techless into single spelling So he doesn't have to deal with that because his single spell things as a keynote cannot be unbounded anyway Yeah, if you force him into that instead of quad casting that's a huge one. That's a huge win Yeah, 100. Yeah. Yeah, it could be in a time in the game where they Cannot take the chance. You have hitting that 33 chance. Yeah. No, that's that's a good call out Yeah, I think you do still get to roll first Like it's great. You're like, let me roll. Did I get it? Nope. Okay. This is the time. I'll use the five up on it, right? Yeah Yeah, 18 inches not too bad of a range either Yeah, that's fine. It reminds me of the um online sorcery artifact that we said I can remember the name of I just think we had something like this back in the day Well, there was a couple that used to protect the person the spell mirror in in malign sorcery It was like my all-time favorite pick It was the one that could just refer to stop spells on a crazy number, but it broke on a one That's my my hot pick what I love about this one is it's so much better A lot of times units will have this kind of spell ignore right like oh if they're affected by a spell on a five up They're not affected or whatever right the problem with that is then the person can just not cast on that unit Right, yeah, right They can't get around this because you can move into position where you're within 18 inches of the caster Who you know is casting now? It doesn't matter who they target. You've got the shot Right. Yeah, yeah, so yeah, I mean, I think this is a super interesting uh artifact I think legion of blood stands out as having two of the most interesting artifacts in the book Well, one thing I want to mention real quick that this book does right Is it doesn't tie you into your first command trait in artifact is stuck within the than the sub legions that you pick Yeah So I really appreciated that I was used to recent books from like oh, I guess I just have to take this every time So flexibility is fun base design principle They went for the we didn't mention this but they went for the slaves to darkness city's a sigmar model Which I am way more of a fan of way more than the uh storm cast chamber model Right of you know Dot dot dot dot whatever. Yeah, I agree. Yeah, right. So what does it do? Well, my estimation on legion of blood and I'm keen for your two feedbacks. Let me get this out Tile and then hit me up. Okay Good for classic vampire style builds of a vlasda and skeletons with necromancer support, right? Like that's this wants skeletons because the death rattle No penalty hidden wounds when I say skeletons. I don't just mean like regular skeletons I mean everything death rattle. I'm just using skeletons there In a Generic fashion Great build for grave guard with great blades as they can't suffer any penalties to hit or wound on their three up four up two damage mega chop chops And uh good hammer and anvil style legion right where you're sort of like Taking hits with your skellies and then hitting back with harder things. So Yeah, 100% Yeah, yeah, definitely a really nice combo. Yeah, I've lost a nephew running around as a power pair Uh, you know give the blasta and that power lord has let me dragon the plus one save So now to up save Nephi, you know if the rooms are true mystic shield potentially get that off She could be on a two up save that's going to go to a plus one save on on the mystic shield She's of course got what that spell that allows her to Pick a friendly unit and ignore negative modifiers. Yeah, you can benefit from positive modifiers Yeah, so I thought I thought that'd be a nice little power pair that you could do Uh another artifact that's kind of interesting to me is that orb of enchantment Once for battle at the start of the combat phase you take one of me hero within three inches of the bearer And roll a dice on a three out that hero cannot be picked to fight In that phase. So in a game Over 2020 we saw a ton of arkeons running arounds and corn zinch, especially Nurgle as well That's the only thing you wouldn't see it And you know the ability to shut down arkeon for even just a single phase could be quite Quite big in a game. Uh shadow queen Sure, I would love it if it wasn't so like here's my problem A once for battle fine. I understand why it has to be two Enemy hero within three inches. Uh just don't like anybody out within anybody worth their salt is not going to pilot arkeon Into within three inches of that hero Okay, yeah If it was like once a game you can choose a hero within 12 And then roll the die I'd be like okay because generally once a game and still a random chance for it to happen Strike one strike two strike three. You're out of here right away. Okay But the fact that it's also such short range. I just I think it's a total like it's a miss You're going to go game after game after game With it just doing nothing. It's this that is the here's the key. Here's how you tell tyler. You ready? If anything ever has orb In the name it's back The brass orb out of skaven once a game you can throw it like orbs Orbs are not good magic Anybody who's whoever's sticking magic into orbs is not It's the water balloon of or hammer Relocation or different thing but same same principle Yeah, it it reminds me uh Goading arrogance a little bit. I mean, yeah, like if this were six inches like goading arrogance is that would be awesome Of course, goading arrogance is always up as long as you're alive you know and A repeatable longer range thing is better than a once a game brand Three up in three inches. Yes but it's I don't know I'd want to experience it I could I could see potentially some value in where I'm just spending a lot of time on this we can move on but You know where it's the the potential threat of it In terms of pick a spot on the board have something that's uh 12 14 60 well 12 and 14 inch move Maybe a vingorian lord 12 inch was a vingorian lord 10 inch maybe a 12 inch move And yeah, it's something with a decent move that it could have a decent threads But uh, yeah, it's it's certainly got some limitations to it. I stand behind my two artifact picks It's probably fair All right, anything else you want to say about the legion of blood Well, so john you said you're not a you think you think this was pretty bad john Yeah, I think it's pretty bad. It's bad because skeletons are bad. It's bad because Graveguard a four inch move It's bad because vampire lord on zombie dragon is not worth his points and he was nerf But yeah, that's that's just my thoughts All right I am gonna stand all three of the things you just talked about later on in this show. Oh, I I look forward to it Yeah, skelly. Skelly. Skelly's on the radio. I'm about skeleton. I'm living on skeleton life. Let me just tell you Skellies are awesome in a world that the book doesn't also include zombies Well, yeah, that's that that'll be a that'll be a fun discussion because I'm not sure I disagree with that point either Okay Legion of night Uh Is this okay new question completely unrelated to the rules Manfred is the best now, right? We all agree with that like he's turned it around He's awesome. His pr campaign has worked His new scroll which we'll get to in a little while Is great like Manfred. He's the comeback kid Okay, like, you know It's we love to see him fall But we love to see him build themselves back up too, you know So, um Yeah, Legion of night, uh, manfred's legion. So plus one to say for dead walkers and death rattle in the first battle round Why did they nerf this? Why? Okay, why why do they nerf that? It's terrible Uh, what what did it used to be? I don't remember it used to be plus one to say for dead walkers and death rattle While they are in your half of the battlefield. Uh, okay. So now it's for the first battle round. Got it. Okay. Yeah Um, well, I mean because you can set the army up and reserve and come in from the edge of the battlefield So now you can just always have it in the first round. I guess even if you're not on your side So that's fine.  Sure. Yes. That's that negative save is now a six up. Awesome. Yeah Uh, and then yes, you can set up half your army and reserve and come on from within six inches of the edge of the battlefield As we discussed the legion of night's classic tactic, right? Yeah Uh, an important thing to note here is that uh, if you like search for bonus to charge In this book you are going to get a 404 error that file has not found right. Yeah, so um, you know like If you're wanting to uh, if you're wanting to get a bonus to charge Then it's going to be it's going to be our old friend the cogs. That's right. Uh, which Uh, I would say might be a hard cast But I actually I I actually think your ally is your way to go there On the old grip or uh, or particular artifacts, which you may have referenced on the slide the grimhaler Sure. Yeah, call in the grimhaler. Yes, exactly. It's time to call in the grim And uh, I need you to power out a spell for me grimmy It's pretty easy to get plus two on belladonna with rerolling cast though. That's not that's not bad. It is. That's sure. Um, but okay, so But then you got to be envier ghost, but anyways, we'll we'll get there. Uh, all right So your command traits, uh set up anywhere on the battlefield not six inches from the edge In other words, you can just drop anywhere. Uh, I find that to be interesting and valuable depending on what your general was And the kind of things you might achieve with him Especially if you were to say have grimmy And uh, or something like that or the right bonuses where you could reliably get cogs up Uh The plus two to run in charge. So the the one exception to the thing I just said Uh, which is nice Like I mean, that's not that's not bad like swift form Like plus two to run in charge is good But obviously you can't take both that and the setup anywhere because it is a command right So, but you know, you could You can give it to somebody come in from six inches on the board edge and then scream it on the seven or even the five With cogs, which isn't that I think this is literally the only instance of a bonus to charge in the book right here I yeah, there's some rerolls, but some of the dragons that are 100 100 millimeter base on the zumbah dragon It's not no he's won. It's not it's not the Okay, but it's not the 160. No, it's not the main. He's okay. Good. All right, so you can actually ambush it. All right, good That would feel bad But I leave you tonight has some really solid I'll just say I think it has some solid command rates Uh, the problem with the plus two to run in charge is that it's actually like overwhelmed by other things So unholy impetus if the in the combat phase if any enemy models are slain by attacks made with melee weapons by this general net phase Add one to the attacks characteristic of melee weapons used by friendly Legion of night models wholly within 12 with a general until the end of that phase. I mean, that's pretty great You'll often have people who have lots of attacks. You'll often have units that want to fight seconds So that's bad. It is another wholly within 12 bubble, but it's like plus one attacks is good That's what Melnik set up and that that report I reference hands mafia. Yeah, so you had manfreds Blasda and however many like 20 graveyard So they were all in combat And yeah, he didn't oh unholy impetus activated the Blasda first So then kill something to get the plus one attack. So everything else Particularly the graveyard wholly than 12 and then I think you did the same Yeah, manfreds command ability plus one hit plus one wounds. Yeah, yeah, really. Yeah pretty nice Yeah, that's the thing like with this and there's actually quite a few ways to get plus one attack in this book Still like that's still a pretty common Benny that's handed out in in a couple different places And most of it is at like 12 inch type of bubble to do it But I mean again that really says you can do some power pairs where you can get a unit swinging way above its weight You know, if you push graveyard up to like four attacks Unit of mini turnout swords Yeah, rolling around. It's it's scary.  I stand behind neg wonder wound. I think it's just a way better bonus than neg one to hit so I mean some of this stuff too and really you take it with an asterisk of stacking in 3.0 Like the negative negative one to rune rolls in melee Corpse guards do it better plus one to attacks There's three other reliable ways to get plus one attacks If you can't stack them Then suddenly some of these are like, well, do I want to use my can't command tree there? Luckily night has two other ones like you said the set up anywhere in the plus two run and charge So solid options solid options. Yeah Yeah, I'm really curious to see if they do that if they take away the pluses to attacks Yeah, I just don't see it being capped. I'll really say that I just don't see it. Um Now that being said Uh, if they do I mean it changes a lot of things, but I I we haven't heard any rumors about it I don't think it'll happen. Yeah Um I I could see yeah, whatever we'll we'll see we'll see um And then artifacts, uh, they basically have a sort of battle brew right plus one to hit and wound Uh rolls, uh further for in melee once per battle solid, right?  I mean battle brew was great for a long time. It was good because You know, usually you have one round where you really really need to kill something Yeah, and you absolutely positively need to kill everybody in that unit except no substitutions Uh, but then the artifact you're probably gonna take in legion of knight is the hero can give plus two to cast all wizards Holding within 12 of the bearer, but the bearer cannot move charge shoot or fight. So, you know, it's Necromancer in the back hanging out with some zombies or skeletons Sure. Yeah for sure. I mean and This this legion of knight and we saw it in legion of blood and we'll basically see it for the most part in the other ones Is they're all most of them, especially the good ones are about a killy General and that bugs me because that just means vampire lord and zombie dragon May maybe vangorian lord. Maybe I still won't necessarily agree with that, but it's like you are pigeonholing Every army to run that one thing. It's like, why would why wouldn't you give us some other cool options? For all these other interesting characters that we just you know, we can't use them as Our generals or we we can but we're not taking advantage of what what all these good command traits and artifacts are giving us Yeah, do you want to know what my biggest So remember when I mentioned the keyword bingo at the start of the show? This is one of the places where it pops up because you know who I want to give the claw to crits Oh, yeah Because crits is cheap and he's six wounds Okay, so he's harder to like one shot with a catapult, which is always what I'm thinking about like I live in that catapult is uh, is this bogeyman that lives in my mind, right? and Uh, crits it would be so perfect because it's cheap. I could just throw the claw on him You know, you could run around and then plant where he needs to be right and then just bonus out Like maybe he moves first round and then later rounds. He's just set up now. He's just boop boop boopy But he pulls us out. It's all thing. I don't need to fight or whatever The the problem with that is he's vircos He's he's already stapled and these artifacts can only go to legion of knight heroes So this is one of those places where I was talking about sort of like this this kind of keyword bingo thing sucks Because yes, you're right.  So yep Well, he's also he's also a named character. So he couldn't do it even if he wasn't Oh, sure. Yeah, yes, exactly. You know, you're absolutely right. But that's who I like the vircos locking is that kind of thing Um, but yes, you're right.  Uh, yeah, we mentioned rikinor for the bonuses to gas But yeah, that's I mean this you've got to build an artifact right there for cogs now now cogs in a five There you go. Sure without having that ally rikinor again The problem is rikinor goes into any sub faction here. You've got to be in legion of knight to get this sure Yeah, 100% but yeah, yeah, that gives you, you know, fairly reliable ambush charges. So lots of blood knights Bar guys coming in So yeah, definitely see a lot of builds that kind of match what I said on that game on saturday night You know, lots of bodies and a good number of hammers like then with cogs up come in and just got a lot in your face That then you know, the nines just look for sevens. Maybe some re-rolls Right depending on what three point it looks like in terms of number of cp. We're going to be generating But yeah, I think it's interesting. I really like legion of knight. I think it'd be, you know, fun and competitive Yeah, man for its bonkers Yeah, I'm pretty pretty intrigued by it Yeah, so what what does legion of knight do well? This is my read on it good for again Classic vampire style builds of like valazda and skeletons and stuff like that with necromancer support That's still true here as well. I think it's a great anti alpha Right between the bonus to save and your ability to set up and reserve.  If that's right, if that ends up being real then the fact that I could take Skeletons or something like that, you know, have them be my Like in the first round then they'd be on a three up Right in the first battle rounds Like yeah, that's pretty was that one of the charge reactions as there was like that was one There was like a move away a shoot and then a hold. Yeah Okay, the whole yeah, okay And again mystic shield potentially or yeah, or mystic shield. Sure exactly But the point is is that that could act like in this build I think you're really strong anti alpha tech if you've got some dumb unit of body skeletons With you know sitting on like a high save that's nuts. That's that's actually quite tough to move right and when it does So you're saying there's not going to be a cap on plus to save Yeah, like if I'm assuming You're right. I'm assuming like I said, we haven't heard a rumor. There's a cap or we have her Well, that's true. We have a rumor there's a cap on plus to save so you're right Then it would they stick on four up. You're absolutely right. John.  I know I want the dreams. I want the dreams to be real. You gotta keep me honest.  You're absolutely right. Yeah, you're absolutely right. Thank you, John. You keep me honest Trying Yeah, like kind of like this It's so weird right now to be talking about a book because I'm trying to like hold in my mind How it works now and hold in my mind with all the rumors of what's happening in 3.0, right and like Yeah, okay. Anyways, please keep that Well, yeah, just uh this lesion and I yeah plays very much into that alpha bunker. I mean that was part of what The army provision that the gash could always do really well Uh, like it had that built in You don't necessarily want to get this army first turn, which is just amazing as part of the foundation for an army And you know grave sites are many teleport beacons. So you you'd be thoughtful, you know, put two up Outside of your territory near your opponent Um, you know on objectives in little of the board you can zone out those objectives with Lots of lots of bodies just I I love that aspect of this army and that you combine that with more damage output As far as I can tell that they have now like they didn't use I don't remember them doing as much Damage as I'm seeing you do other than like skeletons and grim guys creepers. I mean, so you had that From those units, but Yeah, uh, I yeah, I think it's really intriguing legion and in that regard. Yeah, it's sort of the alpha bunker and a hammer combo Yep Okay, cool All right, beer coast dynasty. It's a wolfie boys Uh, all right Was it wolfies? Uh, okay, so lapacta loop here, uh, obviously an amazing movie Uh, go watch the brotherhood of the wolf if you haven't already come on now. Yes. There we go At any rate plus one to wound for death rattle and dead walker units Holy within nine inches of a vampire hero Reroll casting rolls for vampire wizards and I have written here for some reason Poor poor necromancers. They just get jobbed at every corner every turn Uh, I don't understand why it's only vampire wizards And I don't understand why it's only why this is in the beer coast dynasty the werewolf dynasty I do not understand this in any way shape or form that feels so stapled on I can't even like Uh, uh, I I can't even like I don't get it, but it's good. It's fine. Maybe they decided ben hells doesn't need any help I guess right. I mean, I think this so so my read on beer coast is I I quite like it I'll just say that. Um, plus one to wound on these units is freaking great Um, like what an amazing bonus. I do dislike strongly the holy within nine Why couldn't this just be holy within 12 guys? Yeah, we've had the talk you figured it out with gravesites Most books now the the the smallest range you see is holy within 12 Why? Yeah, why that's pretty brutal Like it's a Yeah, okay Anywho, um, yeah, so like that's that's this little thorn in my paw of an otherwise. I think great sub faction But it's I just I hate when like just it should be 12 Yeah, I would I would love it if they just in the faq they won't do this But I would love it if in the faq they just were like replace holy within nine holy within 12. We're sorry Okay, we had enough day like oops Back out through okay commands rates Uh once per turn uses ca without a command point being spent huge fan of that Again, especially in light of rumored new command abilities and just even what's in this book now Whether we're talking 2.0 or 3.0 Fantastic Love it. Okay. Yeah, especially as I recall beer coasts in the worst go like there's a number of command abilities You want to use with beer coasts? Yes, you know the generally strong abilities in this in this lineage. Yeah Yeah Uh, okay, uh, you can seven five dire wolves once for battle That's cool. Uh, it's a cool ability. I I don't mind that at all Uh, I generally like those kinds of like free summon things Uh, I think they are generally quite good Uh, the other thing that I will say about this the summon five dire wolves Well, I think why I think it is even better than it initially reads Is because much like the dock Uh kelton our ability to summon five canary. It is not round locked Like the um Like all ambushing units are where they have to show up by turn four. Okay Now it is tied to this guy still being alive Right, right Which is a thing but the fact that in round five if that dude or lady is still alive She can just be like oh point mine Yeah, yeah Is so strong So strong I mean dock was keeping a 60% win rate for a year and a half off of the ability to hold canary until round five Right, okay. Like in a five round tournament, you were winning one game with dock off of that ability That's that's what I'll say Uh, and then but of course none of this matters because we're going to talk about the only one you're actually going to take Which is hunter snare Which is the general counts as a number of models equal to his wounds for purposes of Taking an objective. Holy moses. What why is this here and not in the monster one, right? What yes Yeah, it doesn't feel like it should be an avingori trait. Yes. Yep The all monster mash one where it's literally just going to be you know Six monsters who are all derpily running around counting as one guy. Yeah Yeah, dumb dumb dumb Also, there's another command trait that you didn't put on here that I think is is in contention for consistent news And that is the the spores that allows dead walkers to move three inches in the hero phase if they're within 12 inches of the general Um, just having that flexibility of move in the hero phase with a unit of 40 zombies and then a screen of 10 direwolves in front of them as well It can be pretty pretty good. Okay. Okay I'll I'll agree with that but not actually for the 40 zombies because that sounds like a nightmare I Can move in three and then again in two minutes. Yeah, exactly my answer would be Look man. Just move your seven. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, so fine. Yeah, I'm I'm all right with that I'll count it. I would seriously force my opponent to just move the seven and just like if you move three and then move four I'm coming across this table. Yeah, okay I've been enjoying that as iron jaws. They were like just just do your 18 or whatever. Yeah, just do it Just do the whole move Hunter snare equal to wound characteristic. Let's say you've got four wounds left Is it the four wounds that you have left or is that the 14 wounds on the zombie dragon that you start out with It's your it's your characteristic. Not your wounds remaining Okay, okay. I figure I could just want to check. Yeah, okay uh, and so Uh, you know, I I agree with you john, but actually I like it for a different reason Which is when I'm thinking about that the dead walker move three inches And that is for the corpse cart Uh, because that is a dead one is also a dead walker And it oftentimes has interesting bonuses that I want to make sure I'm my heroes are in the range of And so getting a little extra movement to scoot that bad boy around on the hero phase when like oops I'm not oops. I'm not going to get its bonus to cast Yes, I am Right, right the number of times in a game you've been an inch outside of a holy within bubble Uh in your hero phase how many times that happen in your games? I'm just saying Or to just or to just or to just poke a unit for the negative one to wound nine inch aura too Like that's that's that's a game changer if you can get it there or not Yep, absolutely. So yeah, I actually I am going to fully agree that I did miss that one Uh solely because of yes, I agree on the chaffing for for the uh giving a little speed to zombies chaffing for the dire wolves and most importantly for the um Uh for the moving the corpse card in a position because I I just think the corpse card's one of the best units in the book like It's so good. It's ridiculous uh, yeah On the hunter snare like on a that that was the one piece where I could see a vangorian lord and I haven't started writing lists yet But I was thinking about what are potential uses of a vangorian lord, you know, it's like a little cheap Blast uh stick that on there. You've got an independent operator, you know, they can go around and yeah try to stack objectives Yeah, it's still more than 10. That's all that matters, right? Like once you cross the threshold of 10 On the wounds Yeah, you're where you need to be right.  Yeah, exactly So like that's like theoretically that that thing can kill one model So Okay artifacts plus d3 attacks to the bear's chosen melee weapon, so Velazda lance plus d3 attacks is what that might as well read. Okay. Yeah Uh, I mean that dude's shoulders are going to get tired from all the weight. He's got a carry in this book Uh, by the way, I love that they said sang siri sirin. That's sang sang saran I don't know how to notice these words. That's the name of the artifact. I love that. It's a sword Okay And like You knew when you wrote that who it was going on you couldn't just say it was a magical lance Right, right No, it's a magical sword. Okay, fine. Uh, and then Plus one to charge and then the other artifact plus one to charge. Oh, that is the other plus one. Sorry I forgot plus one to charge once a battle for each vampire I I I wrote this in a messy way. So let me rewrite it. No, let me re-say it Once per battle in your charge phase You can say that the bearer will be imbued with the villainous stealth if you do so, which That seems wrong If you do so until the end of that phase add one to charge rolls for the bearer for each other friendly Vircos dynasty vampire hero on the battlefield. So you can get like plus quite a bit to charge right theoretically Uh, theoretically plus five I guess if you had the full if you had six vircos heroes on the battlefield, sure Um, yeah, it's fine. It's cool. I mean plus five to charge pretty good Like I don't know Pretty good ability even once per battle. It's not bad Yeah, okay What does vircos do well, uh, great for all the new faction locked heroes being put to the best use so Here i'm talking about shatacar the beast. I'm talking about, uh, uh poison grandma you know Even even maybe like critsa and uh, and and anika doing some work here, right? solid choice if you love dire wolves For various reasons we've talked about better spell casting again somehow Uh, I guess wolf blood makes you a good spellcaster who knew and uh, really strong objective play with the command rate So, there you go. Yep. Absolutely. Can you guys hear me? Okay? Yeah, you're good man. All right good Yep, okay um, all right Uh Cw why are you saying it's plus three at most? I don't understand why that would be cat Why why that thing would be cap to plus three? I don't understand that Maybe i'm missing something uh, okay Anything else you want to say about vircos gentleman? I guess it's in My opinion, it's the best Allegiance in the book or sub allegiance. Okay for sure. I think it's definitely in contention. It's it's strong. It's strong All right, especially when we're talking about belladonna and reticar counting as generals and we're doing the the 3.0 mystical ball If that means something for cp generation if it means something whatever because they count as generals There are a faction faction locked generals in this book in the book does nothing with that it literally doesn't exist so We got to assume that there's something there that could make this stronger because They're the two strongest named characters or two of the three if you want to Argue a couple others um in that whole book the strongest point wise for sure so Yeah Okay All right fair enough all right Castellai dynasty Blood knights can be put into ambush set up from six inches of the edge Vampires gain bonuses when they destroy units quite good bonuses too. I might add and this is vampires gain bonuses So not just blood knights, although certainly they can do it but also, you know any any any vampire stuff including Fargeists which are also vampires ironically big monstrous vampires, but they are vampires Uh Command traits quite a few I think here that that stand out the general gains the ability off of that Off of that blood steal. What is that actually called? Might no, that's not what it's called. What is this called? Uh, yeah, might of the crimson keep that is what it's called. Um Blood knights are sorry The general gains the might of the crimson keep ability when a friendly unit destroys an enemy unit within six inches kind of cool that you don't have to try to like play the game of Who destroys the thing so if the general's there and then the unit beside him destroys it The general still gets the ability even if he failed to destroy it or didn't activate or whatever Uh, again, we will charge within 12. There is a run in charge ability in here But to me it's all about the once per battle go super saiyan and gain the might of the crimson keep abilities regardless of enemies being slain Yeah, not even a question. That's what we're in for here. Let's let's not kid ourselves, right? Yep because This is like it's not just for that Person it's once per battle at the start of the combat phase you punch this button And friendly castellae dynasty vampire units wholly within 12 of this general Benefit from bloodied strength, which is one to damage characteristic of their melee weapons And stolen vitality, which is uh add one to the wounds characteristic of that unit, right? Uh If they have not already gained them sure that's pretty good. Yeah, it's pretty good Because that's that's what this comes down to is you're trying to get the the plus one to your damage characteristic The other ones are yeah, and you need to kill a hero Um or like a monster with x wounds or more which the opponent sees hey Oh, you're playing this army where if you kill my hero really really bad things happen for me I'm just not going to allow that to happen And this whole dynasty is suddenly not very good But if you can once a phase you have two two flanks of 10 blood knights in the middle You've got a vampire lord and zombie dragon. You can just torpedo them if you can set that up that is yeah Yeah, I mean this is it like castellae is about setting up for that explosive turn, right? That's what it is like everybody here wants to charge. This is the I want to charge Lineage, right? And so yep That'll do it Like a giant bubble of plus one damage does a crazy amount of work Yeah, I again suddenly not experience that two zombie dragons benefiting from it I That's a lot of damage pretty good. Yeah, it's a lot of damage Well, it doesn't count for the mount stuff, but it does give you the scarier lance Right. Yes uh, okay And obviously like blood knights themselves or honestly even like I said, I mean this is going to be vampires you can get it Even a unit of our geists. Oh, yeah Three damage of our geist is not that's that's you know, it's pretty good. Yeah, uh, just saying Yeah Okay, uh artifacts that going to be hit by shooting attacks Okay Sure Once for battle plus one to death deathless minions for soul light grave lords. Holy within 12 inches of the bear Really good And neg want to wound rolls in melee for enemies within six inches of the bear I quite like both those last two the The fact that you can Uh, you're that's like what is opening your door behind you john. Is that there's there's something trying to stalk you Yeah There's a cat. No, it's just funny because I couldn't see the cat at first with a door just where like One of the vampires have come for him. He knows too much um the uh The fact that you can like buffing the deathless minions to a five up in an aura around the dude it's just really strong for that turn you need to hold and uh plus one to wound rolls Or sorry neg wanted to wound rolls in a six inch radius is again really strong I really stand behind the neg one to wound roll As a penalty. I think it's really strong. So I just think that's really good. Yeah, that's my favorite Yeah, I'm getting experience that one and then it was yeah, it was huge saturday Yeah, turning threes in the fours and yeah, not not fun I think john has to go deal with a cat issue. Oh, gotcha. Yeah, so, uh, what does it do well? Uh shockingly if you like blood knights, this is a pretty good place for them as what I have here Uh, the ability to make blood knights both an incredible hammer and an anvil for a round when you're pushing in like I think about the ability to combine both the uh bonus like to pop the button of uh, we all now have plus one damage and an extra wound and Uh, we all have a five up deathless minion save in this in this aura around me Yeah, right And just like what a crazy thing to shift that is that round like you can charge into most anything And be like, yeah, we'll we'll probably weather this Yeah, right. Yeah Which I I I quite like Uh, it does obviously focus on charging and destroying and it will be even better if blood knights gain retreat and charge with their Ability in 3.0, which they do not have right now, but it very much feels like they want to It feels like yeah that they should sure I mean the one thing that confuses me with this with castelli and legion of blood is like why are it why Why are they not the same like they feel like they're the same thing? Why didn't they have Just make them all legion of blood or castelli and then actually have a magic one or right, right, you know It's like I don't like that. These are two separate ones that feel similarly in how you wanted to build them But I don't know No, I agree It feels like they could have probably condensed both of those into one And then had the sort of necrarch kind of inheritor right a weird spellcasting necromancy focused Vampires and and and death mages and stuff like that, right? Yeah Of course that was sacraments which with arcanax. That's yeah, that's why that's the big hole But yeah, I mean again, do we need him though? Like we could have just done it with without arc on like again Classically going back to the old vampire books, you know, we had necrarch bloodline vampire. Yeah, it existed We didn't need right. We didn't need arc on before we don't We could have done this he was a pretender to the spellcaster throne anyways, right? Uh, so yeah, I mean it just feels like we we had the tech there and we just didn't bother to go draw on it so I guess Yes, holy hand grenade said castella. I don't like skeletons legion of blood likes them. That is the difference like I guess That's a thing. Okay. Nephi really likes skeletons. She thinks they're cool And that's she's drawn a line. Okay That's it. It's lying in the sand What never ought to wants never ought to gets and she wants skeletons She likes the bone boys. That's what she's here for Yeah, I'm not going to judge her. Don't you either? I did uh, I think there was I think in the end time short story there was a bit of a romance between her and arc on Okay, so I mean she does have a thing for skeletons. I'm just saying You know That happened. I don't know what to tell you Okay so Avangori, uh the one that I love the most of course because Guaranteed if what like I will love whatever the worst thing is That's funny. You say that I think it's the second best. Oh, wow. I don't think this is not good, but that's okay. Wow. Yeah Uh, all right. I love it nonetheless. I want to build like I legit have been thinking about collecting this army. Okay Granted the version of this that I think is the second best still uses a butload of zombies vint. So you're probably out Sure, exactly. No, I'm talking seven model army here, bro. Yeah, that's what I'm looking for All right Alvin gory Uh curse mutations for your terror geist and zombie dragons who uh including your Uh, you're you can you can put those on on like the losses and stuff The regular terror guys and zombie dragons are battle line. They become battle line. So you get your big monster monster mash battle line Uh neg one to wound against your monsters by non monsters, which I think is just a really cool ability It's very good. Very very good. Uh, and uh one monster can fight as though it had zero wounds each round once per battle per monster So you basically no matter how damaged you are you can fight at the top of your chart For one monster each round, which is cool. I do like that rule being put in there Uh, the problem with this dynasty Is that now you only have three command traits and three artifacts because you got the curse mutations Because I guess just there's some kind of law You cannot extend over another page or something to a page limit. Yeah, that's I guess that's just it. So we were I had to had to put the hammer down on that one real fast Uh the command traits the only one that I think is is probably worth anything Is the uh the eye for an eye if any wounds or mortal wounds are allocated this general the combat bays Add one to the damage characteristic of melee weapons used by this general including their mount Until the end of that bays Which is why I quite like that command trait because it does include their mount and um because you're Neg one to be wounded generally and you can oftentimes also get a neg one to rend on there depending on what kind of how the Board is shaping up and how you're using your vanguard and lords or luke of eye You actually can withstand pretty well Uh an enemy assault And so punch back and like the key is between that and the fact that if you want to you can fight at the top of your profile Right means you can go okay. I can take the chance.  I'm fighting at top. You're done. Right exactly Uh, so I will say this is what I did run when I did my test game or my when I played a test game of spg two weeks ago I did win that game. So that was cool. Um, I did have some zombies on my list because you know I'm a sellout, uh, but anyways the And uh, and I did use this grant rate and it was pretty good. So that's what I'll say Um artifacts They're all bad. So great. Yeah, there's really no reason to discuss them. They are some of the worst written artifacts in this or any book The people who wrote this should probably feel bad That was this was this the list of a whole bunch of once per battle just garbage garbage Once per battle do a garbage thing that wouldn't even be good if this was every round. Yes Just lazy.  I like the artifacts in this are in this in this dynasty are so mind-blowing It might as well just say Boy, I hope plate of perfect perfection sticks around in 3.0 Right because I love plate, uh in this because you can then, uh, combine it with the the, uh, Vangorian lord to take neg 2 round down to Uh down to zero So is it once played again? Is it a reduce rim by one or is it ignore a rend of one? It's the plate of perfect perfection is you treat rend neg one as as zero Okay, so you reduce rim by You okay, but do you treat neg rend of neg two as rend of neg one then if you reduce like the vangori lord Because you get to choose the order So then you would use the vangorian lord to bring it down to neg one and then the plate would ignore the other one I gotta say. Yeah, that's interesting. Okay um, so that's fun Uh, but again, like it's I hope that sticks around because otherwise this Just literally has an artifact you could write down and then forget about me would miss nothing Uh curse mutations. I actually think pretty decent Uh, the once per turn at the start of combat you get to slay a one wound model and heal a wound I actually quite like Not because of the heal of wound, although that's fine Because I like removing Uh the champion out of l rl units so they can't cast spells and the Hector toast out of that uh, and also, uh, you know the the rumor that list labs dropped on us was that um Unit champions are going to be able to use command abilities in the next Uh in 3.0. And so I want to eat unit champions Yeah, right So like removing a unit's ability to use a command ability seems pretty good Uh con armstrong says where is the plate from it is the chamon realm artifact So if you declare that your army is from chamon chamon You can then take that artifact in replacement of one of your other normal artifacts And you will only have one artifact in this build. So there you go Yeah, and then once for battle you can run in charge, which that's the other curse mutation I like because you know run in charge is just always good. So yeah, yeah, you take that top one though That one's just right quite quite good. Yes. Yes agreed What does avingori do well? monster mash It was in fact a graveyard smash. I think it's the weakest build of the book But it is great fun. It does make fairly resilient monsters that can do good work in concert. So there you go Hmm. Yeah Um, I think it's I think it's strong because of zombies because zombies are so good and so cheap that this lunatic This one can smash harder than any of the others And it can still have the bodies now It doesn't have the thing that most monster lists need to actually function Which is count as x models in terms of objective scoring It doesn't have that but if you can if you can control Two out of three or three out of five objectives and you are in their face and not letting up Will be to the end of three and I'm not going to be able to catch back up In theory. That's my thought. This is completely my theory, but I think this list has potential Uh, yes, uh, okay so Uh, let's move into the uh, let's talk about the spells real quick and then we'll get into the units So the spells one great lure one very lacking lure We already mentioned the universal spell. John already fixed it. So I look forward to that in the FAQ That's not how it works right now. Yes You have a universal spell that casts on an eight plus one for each sole blight graveyard hero on the battlefield You can cast it an unlimited number of times You heal up to three wounds or restore up to three wounds of models No unit may benefit more than once per turn Which means that the most you can restore to any single unit is three plus a d3 assuming both of these things fire Between your two things now zombies and skeletons themselves have their own self healing so those are kind of separate but Outside of that it's three plus d3 on top of that Which is nice because it's tied into action right it's tied into doing something with those units And I'm I'm all for that in terms of a fun game, you know Yep I agree Lore the vampires there is one spell that is worth talking about it is called amethystine pinions It is what every one of your vampires will have the problem. It's it's cool that it's plus six inch move That's a great spell. It's fantastic But the cast it it's on the cast of themselves And yes, uh, they cannot benefit more than once per turn So if they do get lucky enough to double tap it Nothing happens. It's a complete non bow with their locus of shahish Right 95% of the casters in your army can only cast lore of vampires There's one good spell the one rule we gave is you can double tap and you can't double tap on this spell How dumb is that? Let me choose another hero within 12 inches let like it's not any reliable thing that it's going to happen anyway Just let me do that or what I I don't know. It's just it's silly. Yeah Yeah, the lore of the vampires is truly underwhelming like boy. Oh boy What vile transference is odd that lasts roll a number of dies equal to half of that enemy units wound characteristic rounding up For each six you can heal one wound allocated to the caster wound character enemy units wound characteristic So if you do that Unit wound characteristic isn't a term in the game Right, so I mean it's like in other words if you throw it at a once so so let's make this real Yeah First of all six inches ridiculous Secondly Dice equal to half that enemy units wound characteristic their wound characteristic if they have a wound characteristic of one of one Right your old one die For each six you can heal a one wound allocated to the caster. This spell is so bad I can't wrap my head around what they thought it did Yeah, well the old one. Yeah, the old one was Yeah, you deal d3 mortal wounds to a unit you heal that number of wounds back Why did you nerf that? It wasn't even that great to begin with 100 it was fine in its old form This spell is so bad again like it's so just It's not even that good and presumably what they intended which is like 20 skeleton 20 skelies your old 20 dies But that's not what you do. It doesn't even work that way I'm trying to figure out like what may have they and what were they thinking this spell did? I don't know. Yeah, let's say well, let's say that's a case.  A unit of 40 skeletons you cast it your old 20 dice. You are all three sixes. You heal three wounds in the best case scenario Right. Yeah, even even in yeah generous. Yeah like you throw this at Let's let's use the here we go. Let's be The most positive we can about this. You ready? I know what you're gonna. Yep. I got it. Okay My my character happens to be within Six inches of a mega garganty. I have a mega garganty. Okay I cast this spell I'm almost at I'm almost at to I get to roll 18 dice That's half his wounds characteristic rounding up Right. Yep. I'm charting out the literal best case here Okay Statistically, I heal three wounds. Yeah Amazing In what universe Would you take this spell? This might win an award For like the worst spell ever printed. Yeah, it's shocking And this is coming from somebody who plays slanesh and let me tell you what there's some real stinkers in there. Okay Like bad super bad, but this Yikes Okay, so anyways lord of the vampires They all have amethystine panions Next I guess I guess but only one of them only one of them can cast it around so Right. Wow. There we are Lore of the death mages, uh, where the good stuff is which is like negosh or the martyrex Or necromancer necromancer. Yes. That's it. That's all we can cast these spells. Yes. Yeah um So but quite a few good spells Uh overwhelming dread You know cast of like 5 18 inch range neg one to hit um, theoretically in 3.0 win Neg ones to hit are capped You'll have to hit two units if you double tap instead of being able to pile on to one But that's still a decent enough range that like you can there's probably gonna be two enemy units So giving multiple units neg one to hit. I'm fine with that Yeah Fading vigor casting really six 18 inch range neg one to attack Assumingly the penalties on attacks aren't limited. We haven't heard anything about that So if that's true, you can still neg to attack somebody Uh, which that actually seems Good like super good really really good because there are a lot of big multi attacking units out there Obviously to a minimum one Um spectral grasp uh train feature holy within 18 inches have the move of any unit starting within three inches of that terrain Uh, I don't hate that one at all. I think that's actually quite an interesting unit for coming up the army Uh, and then decrepify casting value six 18 inch range single hero neg one to wound neg one to damage I really like that. There's a lot of armies right now t