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What faction(s) do you play?

  • Soulblight Gravelords

    Votes: 13 92.9%
  • Flesh-Eater Courts

    Votes: 2 14.3%
  • Nighthaunt

    Votes: 6 42.9%
  • Ossiarch Bonereapers

    Votes: 3 21.4%

  • Total voters
    14

Grave Tacticus

Moderator
Staff member
Jul 26, 2020
334
Utah
A census to find where our loyalties lie, and in what numbers for Age of Sigmar. If you would, share a little about why you play them too.

As is well known, I have recently gone all-in on Ossiarch Bonereapers. Aside from Old Boney, I like the lore and personalities of the special characters and the defensive castle playstyle appeals to my sensibilities. I enjoy that the Ossiarch Empire is for order, strategy and empire building, under the banner of undeath.
 
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The Sun King

Moderator
Staff member
True Blood
Aug 22, 2012
4,989
Copenhagen
I play SBG, Haunts and FEC. 🖤

When Age of Sigmar initially came out I was a bit miffed that there were No faction for my old Vampire Counts (which have been my main army since I first fell in love with Warhammer 25 years ago). But I quickly got hyped by Flesheater Courts' lore and jumped in that ship. Initially the tournament scene died in Denmark when AoS came out. But that was fine by me as I had become a bit jaded by all the competitive play and wanted to refocus my hobby on just chilling and painting. So I've spent the last five years or so in becoming a better painter. In this time I also bought a Nighthaunts army as a collaborative project with one of my friends (she doesn't play but likes to paint).

But then something great happened - they rereleased my beloved Vampire Counts (now as Soulblight Gravelords) and I think the new miniature range is the best GW has ever made. This coincided with the fact that some of my friends that had never played decided to jump on the AoS train. The gaming really got going with the release of AoS 3.0 and my gaming group is growing in size and have recently built a gaming room in one of my friend's basement. I have played a bit with my Haunts for WarCry but never really for AoS so I'm excited for their new models and book so that I can finally take them for a spin.
 

Oppenheimer

Varghulf
May 26, 2013
743
I don't play Ossiarch Bonereapers but otherwise have every Death model that has been produced since 8e, with the exception of fell bats. Never got them for some reason. I do really like Nighthaunt both to paint and to assemble. But, like Sun King I also have always had Vampire Counts as my primary though and now that they have a real army my other armies are probably going to get neglected.
 
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eatU4myT

Skeleton
Feb 8, 2022
76
I am still blindly confident that we will one day wake up and find that the end times didn't happen after all, it was just a bad dream... As such, I still play Vampire Counts, regardless of what silly names anyone else wants to call them!
 

Raven Torrid

Moderator
Staff member
Sep 3, 2011
567
Croatia
At the moment I collect the SBG portion of the AoS Death factions. I always liked the western folklore and gothic architecture/art/iconography so it was a natural pick for the army. I reckon it was around 2011 or so, when Vampire Counts had some great relases like Terrorgheist, Mortis Engine, Hexwraiths etc. that I decided to embrace the undeath.

If I were to collect another AoS Death faction it would probably be OBR. They have some interesting designs and are currently the closest thing we have to Khemri. Plus, they have a decently diverse range of models (something that FEC and NH are lacking iny my opinion).

Speaking of Khemri, I really hope they return in all their Old World glory. I also like Egyptian themes, and they were such an iconic army...didn't deserve to get squatted like that (tho Squats are returning so...there is hope 😛).
It would be really cool to see what they could get now, when the sculpts and designs have really evoled (though Necrosphinx, altho old, is still one of the best GW models imo).
 

Sception

Master Necromancer
True Blood
Sep 23, 2009
2,714
I don't play much lately - I stopped going to the stores due to covid, and since then have started going to a new, closer hobby store that opened which currently lacks an active AoS player base. Still, I at least collect and actively follow news for Ossiarch Bonereapers (my new favorites) and Soulblight Gravelords (the familiar fallback). I've got handfuls of Flesh Eaters and Nighthaunts, plus a fairly large Tomb Kings collection - all hold outs of my oldhammer Undead Legion, but I don't really think about or aspire to play them in AoS any time soon. I'd like to bulk out the FEC and Nighthaunts, but I promised myself I'd get playable armies of the two main factions painted before I start entire new armies. As for the Tomb Kings, they're mostly still on old square bases, and I currently have them in storage with my fingers crossed that they'll become playable again in the Old World game, whenever that comes out. We'll see.

In terms of why I like them - the Ossiarchs have this cool, high fantasy, apocalyptic, necro-monger thing going, an active undead empire with their own unique culture and ambitions. That's just not something you get from typical fantasy undead, where whatever identity they have is always secondary to whowever they were before death. The ossiarchs also have a fun, toyetic goofiness to them, like 80s toy cartoon villains, which I know many don't like but is exactly up my alley. My only real complaint about the existing models is that the morteks are a bit short to be the super-elite warriors they're supposed to be in the fluff. I would have preferred them scaled up to stand eye-to-eye with their stormcast and chaos warrior rivals, and mounted on 32mm bases, even if honestly that would have made them less effective in game and probably would have resulted in them costing twice as much real world money per model. But short kings aside, I love the faction, and hope it gets some significant expansions soon (top of my wish list: archers, infantry lord, warsphynx-equivalent, chariot equivalents).

The Soulblight Gravelords on the other hand are the classic fantasy undead archetype, and, while I love the Ossiarch's for being a refreshing change of pace from it, there's a reason why the classics get to be the classics in the first place. Plus while the Ossiarchs are compelling as a culture, their shared goals and ambitions, lack of internal strife, and just general newness make it harder to engage with them on the level of individual characters, where as the vampire counts with their backstabbing aristocratic politics and their sycophantic but scheming necromancer allies have individual personality out the eye sockets. I especially love Mannfred, as essentially the Warhammer version of Starscream. Also, the new models are fantastic. I have so many old skeleton warriors and zombies, and I was pretty happy with them. I didn't think there was anything GW could do to get me to replace them, but I was wrong. And the new blood knights? Spectacular. I do wish the book had done more to make the basic vampire lord hero stand out, something to encourage running more than one of them, and to make them feel more distinct from legion to legion. Something like the old system of bloodline powers. And speaking of bloodlines, I love the ones we have, especially the Vyrkos, but I'd also really like to see the return of a Necrarch style bloodline or the now defunct Legion of Sacrament - mechanically built around necromancers and death magic, thematically explicitly loyal to nagash, creepy, and feared/distrusted by other vampiric dynasties. Maybe we'll see something like that in a future book.
 
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Grave Tacticus

Moderator
Staff member
Jul 26, 2020
334
Utah
In terms of why I like them - the Ossiarchs have this cool, high fantasy, apocalyptic, necro-monger thing going, an active undead empire with their own unique culture and ambitions. That's just not something you get from typical fantasy undead, where whatever identity they have is always secondary to whowever they were before death. The ossiarchs also have a fun, toyetic goofiness to them, like 80s toy cartoon villains, which I know many don't like but is exactly up my alley. My only real complaint about the existing models is that the morteks are a bit short to be the super-elite warriors they're supposed to be in the fluff. I would have preferred them scaled up to stand eye-to-eye with their stormcast and chaos warrior rivals, and mounted on 32mm bases, even if honestly that would have made them less effective in game and probably would have resulted in them costing twice as much real world money per model. But short kings aside, I love the faction, and hope it gets some significant expansions soon (top of my wish list: archers, infantry lord, warsphynx-equivalent, chariot equivalents).

I hear OBR gets some good characterization in The End of Enlightenment, which I've got on order, so I'll let you know how that turns out. As far as the size of our Mortek Guard, I think it plays into the Ancient Roman battle doctrine where a unit of professional soldiers don't need be hulking warriors to carry a battle, just training and discipline, so I don't mind their "small" stature. And there's always the Necropolis Stalkers and Immortis Guard, or Mir Kainan, for that big guy energy.

I wholly expect the next battletome to bring some of what you're hoping for to the army.

And the new blood knights? Spectacular.
Amen to that!

And speaking of bloodlines, I love the ones we have, especially the Vyrkos, but I'd also really like to see the return of a Necrarch style bloodline or the now defunct Legion of Sacrament - mechanically built around necromancers and death magic, thematically explicitly loyal to nagash, creepy, and feared/distrusted by other vampiric dynasties. Maybe we'll see something like that in a future book.

Don't you mean the Null Myriad Legion? 😅 They've definitely left room for AoS Necrarch, as we've talked about before, and the recent Vampire/Zombie warband in Underworlds might be presaging the very thing.
 
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