Warcry: My Life With The Unmade And Soulblight Gravelords

I don’t know what my choices in Warbands say about me. Granted, the first warband I owned was The Unmade and it was actually gifted to me from a friend but it was STILL one of the two sets I was looking at (The other being Khainite Shadowstalkers).

My first few games were less than stellar. The main reason was that while I was getting used to a new game I also had to compete against guys who’d been playing for a while and had a bit of an arms race going. My first couple of matches I made a ton of mistakes but I felt my army was generally being outclassed.

Always Buy a Second Box

So I bought a second box of The Unmade. What a complete game-changer. Having the extra chaff units gave me tons of added fodder to clog up the field or to help control objectives. I was having more success now but I still felt there was more I could do to ensure victory. I had succumbed to the arms race. I mean, I didn’t have a choice. One of the hardest lessons to learn is that you gotta play to your meta.

So, with my new lust for victory in hand, I did some reading. I came across a unit so beautiful I realized at long last what I needed.

Sphiranx Masticore

I was reading about Allies and Monsters and came across this bad lookin kitty. For 240 pts you get a beefy body at 30 wounds, an extremely solid attack with 4 dice and a strength 5 and damage output of 2/5. Yowza that’s a spicy masticore! Not only that but the thing is fast. 8 inches of movement can get you just about anywhere in a hurry. Lastly, for a quad this must have monster can charm an enemy unit, taking away it’s whole turn.

This unit is nuts. And it’s huge too! The amount of times I’ve been able to bottleneck opponents just by turning this guy sideways along makes it worth the investment. Oh yeah, and for some reason the ToC actually dropped it’s points making it even better.

That all being said, it is a monster and so if you want to play by the “rules”, you shouldn’t use it until you’ve defeated it in combat or something like that. At least that’s what my buddy told me.

Blissful One…Meet Blissful Two

So I’ve got a new outfit I want to try out soon. Instead of running the Masticore, I’ll run TWO Blissful Ones. It looks really cool, which is a big selling feature for me. Aside from that, it frees up some points to make room for the fact that my whip chaff guys went up in points (thanks for nothing, stupid Tome of Champions).

What I like about this is that, if I keep my Blissful buddies together, I know I’ll get retaliation on units that target them. In the past, and maybe this was solely due to mistakes on my part, but I’ve noticed these guys are like glass cannons. They hit hard but can’t take much damage before they go down. I’m running those two guys, an Ascended One and then just a swarm of chaff. If nothing else, it will be fun.

The Rise of Soulblight Gravelords

If I learned one thing about buying the Warcry-specific warbands was that you were going to be limited in your options for what to include. As I mentioned, my Unmade Warband only really clicked once I had that second box. It’s a bummer because if I could just buy blister packs of units I would have done that instead of having a bunch of extra packaging and pieces of units lying around.

Anyway, for my next army, I wanted options. LOTS OF OPTIONS. So I obviously had to look outside of the Warcry sets and wade into the world of Age of Sigmar. There were a lot of great options that had my attention but ultimately, I went with Soulblight Gravelords who have so many cool units to choose from. Hoards of shambling zombies and skeletons, gnarly, bat-like monsters and skeleton cavalry are all playable options. Plus, there’s a bunch of leaders to choose from. But aside from that, after doing some research on how to field a Warband without spending an arm and a leg, Soulblight Gravelords sealed the deal.

And here’s the reason.

Soulblight Gravelords Are Great On a Budget

I bought a Vampire Lord, Necromancer and a box of Graveguard Skeletons. All said and done, this was a great price to pay for a solid-looking warband. The Vampire Lord is by far the most important unit being fielded. Lose this guy early and it’s lights out. That being said, he’s super tough to kill, can fly, can heal and does a good dose of damage too. Graveguard are a little pricier than regular chaff (70pts) but my goodness they hit hard! Three attack with a strength of 5 and hitting for 2/4 is crazy.

On top of that, one of the units in the box can built as a Seneschal which is like the leader of the Skeletons. It can even be used as you leader but it’s better utilized as a heavy hitter.

The Necromancer has a couple really cool abilities like bringing destroyed units back (including Seneschal) and can also give bonus moves or actions to a bunch of allies within a certain range. It’s the dark, macabre Warband I was looking for.

But my god, they are slow as shit in a snowstorm.

Enter The Vargheist

Having an average movement of 3″ is just too much risk. Sure, if you get lucky and have a couple of doubles to dump in the early rounds you can get a little more distance out of your guys but it’s still gonna be hard to get in position. Especially matches where you’re chasing something. Pain….full.

The Vargheist solves a lot of that. Sure, I had to give up a bunch of chaff units (I was running 7 Grave Guard) to make room for the 195pt hit but honestly, having another flying body that is fast at 8″ movement, can soak damage with 30 wounds, and do a decent amount of damage is just a game changer. I’m going to be getting one soon to add to the mix. It’s exciting times for me. I’ll totally let EVERYONE know how it goes once I’ve bought the box of three freaking units when I only need one……goddamn it.

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