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GW have, as of now, released 3 start collecting boxes for the Death faction: Flesh eater courts, skeleton horde and malignants. Flesh eater courts is clearly, as the name suggests, for the flesh eater courts allegiance; however skeleton horde and malignants don't correspond to one specific allegiance within the generals handbook.

So why am I not asking the question "malignants and skeleton horde. Forgotten army? Whilst it could be argued, and i believe this is the case for Skeleton Horde, that these boxes are just a collection of figures around a specific theme as opposed to allegiance.

My confusion stems from the fact that: malignant is a specific keyword on a number of unit entries. For example the keywords for the spirit hosts are: DEATH, MALIGNANT, NIGHTHAUNT, SPIRIT HOSTS. As a keyword malignant appears on every single warscroll that also has the Nighthaunt allegiance, and also the mortis engine and coven throne; I can seem to find any point to this keyword other than for thematic reasons.

It appears that the malignant keyword is on any unit with spirit-like qualities.

So what are peoples thoughts on this?
Do people think it was a planned faction that never materialised?
A purely thematic keyword with no actual crunch?
Or will we see more from the malignant army/keyword in the future?

I assume it is a keyword that will be used in future spells/abilities, like Mordant is now.

I don't think they put much work or though into keywords at all.
Other than assigning them their Grand Alliance keyword (Chaos, Death, Destruction, or Order) they don't seem to have put much though into it.
The don't seem to put much effort into the others and it shows in some things having keywords that assign them to a strange sub-faction like the Black-Coach which has "Nighthaunt" but not "Soulblight" so your Vampire transporting Coach (old fluff) is not part of the Vampire faction (Soulblight).

Also odd the only common keyword between the Tomb Kings warscrolls is "Death", they don't have a sub-faction keyword.
This could cause problems with certain types of people if you want to make High Queen Khalida your general to make Skeleton Archers" Battleline since you also need to have "Tomb Kings" allegiance but that keyword does not exist.
Obviously everything in the Tomb Kings rules PDF should have it but they don't right now.

The are Death overall, and I believe Nighthaunt has their own - with spirit hosts being battleline units.

I don't know what that does for you though.

Hexwraiths are awesome.

Considering they've changed a few keywords at times, they may change the scrolls in the future to match.