Hi all,
It’s time for our weekly review of the Age of Sigmar Path to Glory rules. Today we will be examining the Soulblight Gravelords.
Army Special Rules and Quest:
The vampires get an interesting wrinkle in their army’s design. Rather than tracking all units normally, summon-able units are instead limited to a number based on your army’s composition. For each mortarch you can include 3 summon able units, 2 for each vampire hero and 1 for each Soulblight hero. While these units never gain experience they also can never suffer from casualties either which is quite handy. I like this rule as it’s a clever way to encourage players to take a lot of heroes and fit the lore. Your core units are freely expendable and your truly elite units are your focus for these campaigns.
Unfortunately, their quest isn’t very interesting as it is mainly a way to get a mount trait on a zombie dragon. At least it is easy, you just need to kill a unit.
Upgrade Table and Territories:
The vampires get a surprisingly fun table of upgrades to choose from:
- Blood Knights: Their upgrade allows them to use their Riders of Ruin ability (basically run through a unit they are in combat with) and run in the same move. Plus, they can also charge afterwards which is just amazing. It’s once per game but still a great option.
- Varghesits: These flappy bois get the ability to come in from reserve 2D6 inches away from an enemy unit. Another really cool ability that can swing a battle (although it can go the other way too).
- Corpsecart: This unit gets the ability to give an order to a summonable unit wholly within 12″ once per battle. A solid option that gives the Corpsecart more of a role and purpose.
- Zombie Dragon/Terrorgheist: These units get +1 wound though it doesn’t work on mounts. You gotta love abilities that don’t take activations to use!
The Vampires also have an umber of useful territories:
- Gravelands: +1 summonable unit, when upgraded +3. This is so good and fits their theme perfectly. You will really want this option
- Cursed City: Do you have another Death army you collect? Great! This upgrade allows you to add three of those units to your roster. When you upgrade it a hero from this faction also gets the Soulblight Keyword and a lineage trait!
- Bloodgrounds: Nothing at first, when upgraded you get +1 territory you can control, +1 barracks and +1 outpost. Outposts are still a little vague and only useful assuming a long campaign over multiple regions. Other than that it’s not a bad upgrade.
Summary:
While Soulblight players probably won’t get another Tome anytime soon these rules will tide us over. The veteran abilities are decent and the territories are useful. I continue to be impressed by these rule sets and I can’t wait to see how GW will expand on them in the future.
And remember, Frontline Gaming sells gaming products at a discount, every day in their webcart!
