Age of Sigmar/Tactics/Edition 1.1/Soulblight

Warscrolls

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

Heroes

• Vampire Lord: Unfortunately, your Vampire Lord isn't the unit-shredding dragon-outdamaging monster he used to be. Fortunately, he's still very decent. While most armies must choose between fighter and caster, your Vampire Lord does both. He's got a great melee profile, can cast a spell a turn and has a powerful Command Ability. And since he can heal wounds by killing stuff, you want him in the thick of it. Can also have wings or a nightmare to increase his movement, with the wings letting you fly while the nightmare grants you another melee weapon. Since the command ability grants an additional attack with each weapon of the affected unit, it's best to use this on models with few strong attacks or better yet on models with more than one weapon profile. If you want to be a real jerk, use the Lord's buff on a Necrosphinx, which turns into an absolute rape machine thanks to this. Using his command ability on a big unit of skeletons is also a great tactic to just drown the enemy with attacks. If you play carefully enough, 30 skeletons would be getting 4 attacks each (1 attack base, +2 attacks with a unit of 30, +1 from buff) with +1 to hit if they are near a lord

• Vampire Lord on Zombie Dragon: Finally, finally the Zombie Dragon actually out-damages the Vampire riding it. It has a bunch of devastating attacks and what might be the meanest breath attack in the game, as it hits units of 6 or more models automatically and then Wounds on 2+. The Vampire, on the other hand, provides a bunch of healing to the Dragon and yet another powerful melee profile. Like all Vampires, he's a Wizard, but with a very gimmicky unique spell that will never see use. Trust me, it is far more worth it to give him Mystic Shield for that sweet 2+ save. His Command Ability is providing rerolls To Hit to a friendly Death unit. If you want this guy tearing EVERYTHING up and just refusing to die then give him the red fury command trait as well as the sword that allows you to heal a wound for each model you killed in CC. With the sheer amount of wounds pumping out from this beast he'll almost always be attacking again and if you stick him into one of your opponent's larger, single wound model units the chances are he's going to take out at the very least 10 as well as healing ALL those wounds back up. Couple this with the once per game chalice of blood that gives you D6 wounds back and this guy will have your opponents wishing they had one. He has the same healing ability as the normal vampire lord which boosts this further. Use him as an absolute beast to shred through large number units or stick him into an enemy monster, but make sure to be attacking first, using the output at full wounds will almost likely guarantee that second wave of attacks to finish it if it still stands.

• Coven Throne: For when you really want to cherry-tap some shmucks. This thing pours out TWENTY-FIVE attacks in melee, but only one of them is actually powerful and can potentially make new generic Vampire Lords, but don't bet on it. They also allow you to reroll a single dice roll per game. Don't you dare forget that, it might help. It's also a wizard with a meh unique spell and its Command Ability lets you auto-win ties on the Initiative roll, which is potentially powerful. It's also ridiculously fast with a 14" flying movement.

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

Troops

• Blood Knights: Vampires on undead horses. Now these guys will be winning you best cavalry ever awards. They do a lot of damage, ridiculous amounts of it on the charge and they can regenerate lost wounds, as well as bring 1 slain model back every hero phase with the banner.

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

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

• Vargheists: Like most 4-Wound models, Vargheists have to endure the obligatory comparison with Ogres. And they don't come up short, as they have a 12" Flying movement and -1 Rend on their weapons over Ogres. Unfortunately, unlike basically all Vampires, they can't heal lost wounds.

Army Building

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

Matched Play

Don't buy blood knights. They're an overpriced relic of single-model metal clampack days and are the single most overpriced thing in the universe. Instead, buy Aelf Dragon Blades and paint them red. Bam, you can get two boxes of these for barely over half the price of a single blood knight box and they look pretty much perfectly the part. Hell, get the Death Upgrade Pack with them: you'll have enough vampire-looking shields to equip both boxes, a cool banner, and it'll still cost you less than buying the actual blood knights... Even if you buy enough oval bases to fit everyone on top of this. That's how overpriced blood knights are.

Once you've done that, you got 2 units of 5 blood knights, leaving you at 520 points. From there, there are actually a lot of options:

-Get a Vampire lord on zombie dragon. That'll drop you at 960 points, meaning you will usually get a Triumph in 1000 points games. That's also a 1000 points army with 11 models in it, which is sort of hilarious.

-Get a Coven throne and a Vampire lord. that'll leave you at 920 points, leaving you with the option of either putting a bat swarm, fell bats, or keep the points to summon something (probably skeletons). Since the old bats are both ugly as sin and expensive, you'll probably want to look at alternatives: options that won't get you thrown out of GW stores include slightly converted tyranid gargoyles for fell bats (Seriously, they're way cheaper and you can just not put the gun arms and bam, that's it. As a bonus, they come in big boxes, making it easy to supplement your army as you go bigger), and the sky slasher swarm from FW (one pack will give you three swarms for slightly more money than one pack of two bat swarms, shipping included) or the slightly-less-ugly, still-expensive LOTR metal bat swarms. Otherwise, a bunch of companies make decent-looking bats, although usually not for cheaper than the GW ones... Either way, I suggest the swarms, as they give your army some much-needed protection against shooting.

-Get two vampire lords. That leaves you with 200 points for summoning things and decent wizardly prowess at this low points scale, which will help vary things, but will probably be weaker as you'll need to use a lot of your magic trying to get units in time, and you also don't have any big monster. On the other hand, since summoned units don't need to be chosen before the game, this essentially lets you list tailor on the spot if you have enough models for different units. Thankfully, the blood knights are so tanky this might actually work.

-Cheapass option: Get three vampire lords and a unit of zombies or dire wolves. Keep the zombies/doggies for summoning (they're the only things you can summon that only cost 60 points). You don't have any monsters either, but you have a -ton- of magic at this low points scale, letting you cast arcane missile, mystic shield and Spirit Blight (the vampire lord unique spell) every turn.

-If you don't mind having to use rules for out of print models, the vampire lord on abyssal terror is 220 points, which is actually absolutely perfect to reach the cap seamlessly. Example: 3 units of blood knights + vampire on abyssal terror = 1000 points. 2 units of blood knights + vampire on abyssal terror + coven throne = 1000 points as well.

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

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

Free Play

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

External links

Rules are here