Homebrew: Necrolith Knights

So... is this the homebrew subforum for AoS, or not? It's still rather hard to tell, the topics in here are a mishmash, and there's still no subforum description or tool-tip text anywhere that I could find. I'm just going to keep assuming it is.

Anyway, about 6 months ago, my hobby thread (link) was going pretty strong for Age of Sigmar, when I decided to try a counts-as conversion for a more gothic-styled version of necropolis knights. Figuring 'monstrous cavalry = monstrous cavalry', I based the conversion on Empire Demigryph knights, with black knight bits for the riders, and was initially rather happy with the result:



Unfortunately, upon comparing my conversions to actual Necropolis Knights, I found that my models were entirely too small to be a suitable stand in. This was a rather punishing blow to my motivation, as I had spent rather more than I should have on the models, and now was left without a use for them.

Lately, I've been considering running them as blood knights, but on the off chance I play against someone willing to give house rules a chance, I decided to try to stat up my own version, something half way between Necropolis Knights and Demigryph Knights, with the stats and special rules for the riders modeled on grave guard:



I ball parked their points cost at half way between Necroknights and Demigryphs as well, though I think the unit is better than the 200 point demigryphs, and worse than the 160 point necroknights....

Would you feel comfortable playing with or against this unit? Any suggestions where I might have missed the mark? Six of these cost about 100 points more than 5 blood knights, does that seem about right? Do they get too strong with available deathrattle support (double swing from necromancer, extra recursion from herald, +1 attack from wight king, or +1 to hit from tomb king, or +1 to wound from royal warsphinx, or +1 to hit and wound from settra, etc)? Are they not strong enough without that support?

Any feedback at all would be greatly appreciated.

 

I think this knight looks really great and suits well, although necropolis ones are too specific because of their egyptian style, so such kinds of knights are better as blood knights really. Maybe you could mount such warriors on the serpents? but your own necroliths ones I find interesting and see no problem in facing them in battle!

 

Thanks. I'm working on a homebrew battletome that incorporates them, or at least a version of them. I'm glad to have some positive feedback. Does 180/3 sound about right for their points cost?

 

Can't say about that really, math was always a bit difficult but as the first impression rather yes, sounds suitable. And yes, by the way, I find using demigryphs a good idea, but think stormcast cavalry looks better, especially for the blood knights.

 

Stormcast cavalry are far to big for blood knights, but might work as necropolis knights.

The problem is that they, and the steeds in particular, are very... 'stormcasty'. Twin tailed comets, hammers, suns, literally sigmars name, are sculpted all over their armor. If you wanted to use them, there'd basically only be two ways to go:

1: just leave it as is, maybe convert the riders slightly, or maybe not. Maybe paint the army corroded or whatever, paint the beasts spectral. Have them represent stormcasts that Nagash has captured and corrupted, now that he can do that in the fluff. Use the Necropolis Knight rules, since that's the right size. The down side of this is that, while necroknights rules work well enough for soul-trapped stormcast dracoth riders, there isn't a good undead unit to represent regular stormcast guys to spread the theme out into your army. They're too big to be grave or tomb guard, but too small to really work as ushabti. Without a good counterpart for regular stormcasts, the soultrapped stormcast army doesn't really work terribly well as a theme.

2: massive conversion, trimming, cutting, filing, and dremmeling away a whole bunch of sigmar-themed details and sculpting in more undeady, nagashy stuff in their place. Probably entirely replace the riders while you're at it. Upper torsos of black knights would be fine, but their lower torsos would probably have to be scratchbuilt or sculpted, and removing the stormcast legs from the dracoth would be a pain. The beast could be painted spectrallly or as animate stone. This probably would result in better looking models for an undead army, and ones that would fit in with the rest of your army without thematic trouble, but would be a colossal amount of work even for just a moderate unit of 6.


.........................

Hrm... I mean, maybe you could work stormcasts as grave/tomb guard? I mean, they'd be pretty huge, though. 40mm bases for a unit usually on 25mm bases at best....

But you could get 10 of them out of the starter box, plus one "tomb herald", plus a unit champ for a dracoth to round a box of them up to a legal unit of three...

no real fitting use for the wingaling guys, and not enough hammers to do a separate great weapon unit, even if you get two kits worth....

I don't know....

In the end I thing wights are just too fragile a unit to use the stormcast models for. You'd need a 2 wound undead infantry unit, and there just isn't one right now.

 

Aye, fair point - I've considered all of this and this will be really difficult. The original idea was in the fact the stormcasts wear just the kind of armor our vampires also like, full plate armor with segmented parts plus crests (and masks are good for those who paints faces not that well like me). We really need just more thematic bits - skulls, bat wings, bones, all that stuff. I just don't think we will see plastic blood knights any time soon... But the idea about soltrapped stormcasts is really great and helps a lot with backstory in case people need it.

 

a handful of stormcasts work as infantry or winged vampire heroes, and the stormcast dragon can be converted to run as a vampire lord on a zombie dragon, so if you wanted to sprinkle in just a couple corrupted stormcasts in your army, that could work. But if you wanted to extend the theme beyond just heroes it falls apart, because we have no vampire infantry, and the only stormcast cavalry are the dracoth riders, which are way too huge to use as blood knights, and the stormcast wingaling guys look too armored to use as reasonably proxies for vargheists.

Again, it works fine to field one or two 'corrupted stormcasts' as wight kings or vampires, but when it comes to fielding units or an entire army of them it really doesn't work.

Hopefully GW will push the theme and actually release Nagashii Stormcasts as a death minifaction at some point in the future. Maybe call them Soulcast Immortals? You might not even need new models for them, maybe just a conversion kit sprue.

Oh, well. 'If wishes were fishes' and all that.

 

Got your point, sadly you are right more or less. But maybe there is a chance of converting not only demigryphs, but also reiksguard knights to our cause? or just creating a new unit like you've created your own necrolith knights?

 

And yes, the idea of converting Stormcasts came to me after I had seen this awesome picture!

 

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