Duke Danse Macabre said:
Thats all new models for the most part.
+1 attack?... I can get magic gear for that, Red Fury is not based of weapon types so it works the same as now, a couple of units have gotten cheaper, skellies, fell bats etc but they were mostly useless before and now that we have droped marching unless your within a certain range of your general, we have no helm of commandment for leadership, we have lost allot of our traits and best magic items and we have no spamable necro spells....
Apart from some flashy new models we have been done over.
Rule wise not model wise show me the up side.
Given that the current book has got to have the worst internal balance in the game, I have to say I see a lot of upside in the new units alone.
We haven't seen a lot of the rules which most people probably don't think of as important. For example, can vampires buy mundane equipment now? We haven't seen any powers that give them mounts or other equipment, so they may purchase them normally now. This is actually a pretty big thing, especially for combat vamps.
IoN with a radius effect is excellent news, especially for the weaker core units. You may not want to waste IoN on skellies, but if you cast it for your GG the skellies get the boost for free anyway. Sure it isn't spammable but its going to hit a few units even on the lower casting value, which means you can use 2 PD to heal a few units. When it was spammable you would have to spend more PD to impact the same number of units. I actually see this as a reason why skellies might become more popular than ghouls (assuming the rumour that you can't raise ghouls is true).
With cheaper skeletons, we might potentially have a much easier time with steadfast as well.
If Dire Wolves become true core then you can field a pretty sweet all cavalry army. Throw in a combat vampire as your general (if he gets killed you can transfer generalship anyway) and you could have a very mobile destructive force, with well rounded units. Dire Wolves, Hexwraiths, Black Knights, Blood Knights, and maybe even Vargheists; provide pretty much everything you need. Blood Knights and Vargheists can march without the general, so you don't need to worry about that too much.
In fact I see combat generals and armies becoming much more viable (and thus Blood Dragons). I see new units like hex wraiths, Mortis Engine and the MI lending themselves to a Necrarch armies, along with much more viable Skeletons (Zombies are probably still a write off, but we'll see). Strigoi armies are seeing a very pronounced boost and even the Lahmian's who generally fight political battles are getting the main centrepiece unit. Don't forget the Necromancer is back! Brilliant!
Keep in mind that Banshee and Wraith heroes are a product of the new book which we were treated to early. A Banshee in a unit of skeletons might go down very nicely.
TBH the few new rules that I have seen seem incredibly positive to me. I think that
VC have one or two competitive builds atm and they're overpowerd. Losing the GG deathstar is
good. Necromancy spam certainly added something to the lore that no one else has, but some tricks like van hels charging are pretty cheap now that no one else has it.
Giving me more units to play with, which at this stage seem pretty reasonably priced, is awesome. Bring on the variety in our competitive builds. I think making strong, themed armies will be very easy if the rumours are anything to go by.
/ramble
Lets have a look at the book before we write it off. I see some amazingly positive things coming out of the rumours and given that our current book sucks, I'm very excited. It's really important to see how it all works together before we make any judgements. Also try to keep it in the perspective of the 8th ed. books which have all lost many things but seem to have been brought in to line.
