Age of Sigmar: Soulblight Gravelords Battletome Overview
We’re taking a tour of the new Battletome for the Soulblight Gravelords. Get ready for Undead Legion refresh that we’ve all been waiting on!
This one is for all you dead-heads out there. If you have been waiting for your old-school vampires, skeletal hordes, and the dead-men walking, then the new Soulblight Gravelords are for you!
The Dead Don’t Rest Easy
The first thing to know about this book is that it’s a massive update for the traditional Death army that comprised vampires, skeletons, and zombies. Oh and don’t forget your fell bats, necromancers, and dire wolves either. If any (or all) of those units are ticking some memory boxes for you then you know exactly what this army is already.
However, structurally, this army has gotten a lot more refined and defined. There are now your two big legions and then 3 other dynasties you can play. This effectively gives this book 5 core armies to build around and start from. You’ve probably already seen previews for all 5 of these army types already.
If you haven’t, here’s a quick refresher.
- Legion of Night – Mannfred’s Legion
- Legion of Blood – Neferata’s Legion
- Kastelai Dynasty – Blood Knights (cavalry) undead army
- Avengorii – Dynasty – Big Undead Beast Army
- Vyrkos Dynasty – Small Undead Beast Army
Again, those are some REAL high level overviews of those armies. Can you have Zombie Dragons in your Legion of Night army? Sure. Can you run dire wolves with your Blood Knights? No reason you can’t. Are these the best option for those specific army special rules? Probably not – but hey, you do what you want.
At this point, Games Workshop has already shown off all the models coming inside the book, too. So there should be any major surprises there. The rules look solid and while I haven’t gotten a chance to fully digest the book yet, I’m curious about a couple of options. Nothing looks completely busted (yet) and it seems like a less flashy Battletome but really solid at the same time.
This might be another one of those “sweet spot” books that GW has designed where you’ve got lots of flavor for the armies, you’ve got solid rules, and you’ve got lots of viable options without people going “oh that’s just OP.” A good general should be able to give most other armies a run for their money with a Soulblight army, regardless of the mission or match-up. Are they going to win every time? No, not at all. But they should put up a fight and will get those wins sometimes.
And for all you lore junkies out there, this book does include a nod to the events of Broken Realms: Be’lakor. It’s the last entry in the “timeline” pages of the lore section. Everything else is a good run down of how they got to that point so it’s worth a read if you have no ideas about the history of these undead armies.
Cursed City And Nagash?
One more thing to note in this this battletome. It does contain a new copy of the Cursed City warscrolls and units. There are some tweaks and they did go up in points. So bear that in mind. As for Nagash, well, he’s also in the book and can be taken as part of any of the these armies, too. His warscroll really didn’t change a whole lot but he went up in points (go figure). You would of thought that after the beating Teclis gave him, GW would make him cheaper or something…but no, he’s now 975 points. Enjoy!
The new Soulblight Gravelords is a nice overhaul of a core set of Undead armies. It’s probably the “traditional” undead army book we’ve had with regards to the Undead armies in Age of Sigmar. If you missed you old Vampire Counts book, well, they are back and ready for the next edition of Age of Sigmar right around the corner!
I can’t wait to see what the community does with this army book!
Promotional material provided by Games Workshop PLC
