Games Workshop Warhammer AoS - Soulblight Gravelords Deathrattle Skeletons

Product Information

One in every 10 models can become a Standard Bearer, carrying an ancient and tattered battle flag to the fray. This standard allows you to reroll 1’s of the roll for your Deathless Minions battle trait for the unit. Furthermore, the Deathrattle Skeletons are a Skeleton Legion. This ability allows you to roll a dice for every slain skeleton during their fight phase, on a 4+ it is reanimated and re-joins their comrades in their eternal war. Deathrattle Skeletons are nothing more than the undead legions of their Wight King. They are often seen wearing ancient armour and robes whilst wielding rusted weapons and tattered banners. It can be assumed that the bulk of the Deathrattle Skeletons were the mortal soldiers of whatever nation existed before the Wight King took command. The Wight Kings are often prideful and intelligent beings, often engaging in beneficial alliances with Soulblight Gravelords. Thus these vampiric lords can often be seen commanding Deathrattle Skeletons as well. A Wight King was once a mighty and brutal warlords that were buried after their deaths in tombs, protected by shamanistic spells from thieves and looters. Some of these tombs where built where dark magic flows and pools, and many Wight Kings rest uneasily in these accursed places. When this dark magic grows strong these undead king rise from their crypts as Wight Kings, their eyes glowing with unnatural life. [2] [3] [4] Role

The outgoing zombies kit (below) was hard to love. Like all zombies it kept shambling on long after it should have been laid to rest but at long last it’s suffered the metaphorical headshot to put it in its grave (and this time it can damn well stay there!). Soulblight Gravelords: The Wight Kings that lead Deathrattle armies - whether being cruel Shyishian despots or enlightened Hyshian philosarchs - feel a deep sense of pride and individuality within them, making all but the weakest of them difficult to dominate by any but the Mortarchs and Nagash himself, as many a foolish Necromancer and Vampire Lord has found out. Thus, wise Soulblight monarchs often form alliances and pacts of mutual respect with the Deathrattle Kingdoms - offering them freedom of conquest and mountains of corpses with which to reinforce their hosts, in return for serving as valuable lieutenants and champions. With the coming of the Ossiarch Bonereapers, these alliances are becoming more necessary for all but the most stubborn of Kingdoms to survive. [3a] Despite the Soul Wars coming to an end, the vampiric conquerors of the Soulblight Gravelords are setting out on the warpath to bring more of the Mortal Realms under their despotic control. Nagash’s body may be broken,* but his drive to conquer the lands of the living burns on, and these Vampire Lords will see his will done.They wield cursed Baleful Tomb Blades into battle, which they often use to behead their foes. Some pair these with Ancient Shield to batter enemy's blows aside, while other pair them with Infernal Standards saturated in Death magic that sustains and prevents the destruction of the undead. [1a] [1c]

As an Undead fan who started the Warhammer hobby in the late 90’s, I already had the GW kits on hand. For the purposes of this article I bought one sprue of each kit from other manufacturers. It makes a lot of sense for wargamers to look at miniatures available outside Games Workshop when they’re looking for gaming pieces. Early on in my hobby days I often wondered how I could fill out an army without paying the GW tax for their ‘premium’ models. There weren’t many options at that time, and finding them could be difficult. Today however there are a variety of models available. Mantic recently released Ancient Egyptian styled skeletons in their Army of Dust, they look neat, but don’t really fit the flavor of this article. Games Workshop: 1988 Skeleton Warriors First plastic skeleton warriors with metal command. Source: Undead Army Book by Games WorkshopParticularly strong and capable bearers of the Soulblight curse come to command entire armies of their lesser kin, striking out across the realms to conquer their own domains. These Vampire Lords are incredibly powerful figures, strong both martially and magically, and with the indomitable will to hold together thousands of undead servants.

Inside Battletome: Soulblight Gravelords, you’ll find all the warscrolls, battle traits, and more to field an army of vampires and their risen minions. Nagash himself is even making an appearance, so perhaps all that moaning about being broken was just some classic melodrama.The central villain of the ill-fated game Cursed City (surely a case of nominative predeterminism if ever I heard one!) was the vampire lord Radukar the Wolf. Did you hear that? The chiming of the midnight bell, the chitterling of bats, the groaning of the crypt door… The Vampire Counts, once a staple of Warhammer Fantasy, are rising from the grave and they’re doing it in style!

Next we have the zombies, and if ever there was a kit that deserved a do-over it was this one. These newcomers are nice, straightforward walking-corpses, with a sufficient mix of sexes and appearances to suggest a whole town of people have suffered an unfortunately demise, only to be raised again in service to their vampiric lords.This is where I will introduce the metric of dollars per skeleton (DPS) going forward with the in production kits. These prices are based on official company webstores. Indeed the longer I look at Vengorian Lord the more I start to think of the ways I’d tweak him (a new head for starters!) so perhaps, should I decide to get this kit for myself it’ll be an altered version Vengorian Lord rather than Lauka Vai by the time that I finally put brush to plastic. Of all these releases this is the one which has my creative juices flowing the most as a converter so don’t be surprised if some twisted nightmare comes crawling up out of the dark depths sooner or later. One thing that does strike me though, especially as I look at the new vampire characters, is how much old Neferata and Mannfred feel out of place. For the uninitiated these were two of the most powerful vampires in the old Warhammer setting and when the great necromancer Nagash became a god in the new Mortal Realms he raised their souls once more and bound them into his service, reasoning that as their miniatures had only been released in 2014 it might be premature to kill them off without giving people a proper chance to buy them – a fate which Radukar the Wolf can only envy. Now I’m certainly not complaining that the models are still available, both of them are excellent miniatures and I certainly intend to paint one or other of them someday – probably Neferata (sorry Mannfred, you’re a much more interesting character and your devious villainy is a hoot to read about, but I have a secret love for Neferata so she jumps the queue). The Vengorian Lord isn’t a bad model, although the Nosferatu vibe is perhaps a little heavy handed and that distracts from the model’s other qualities for me. Beyond that he echoes her quite closely, they’re just different ways of building of the same model at the end of the day, so if you particularly like or dislike one you’ll probably feel the same way about the other. If I hadn’t already seen Lauka I’d probably quite like him, but I have and so I can’t help but see him as an inferior version.