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I'm sick of waiting for GW to finally throw Death (or, more specifically, Deathrattle) a bone, so I decided to take matters into my own hands.

Every army needs a big nasty General on Monster to lead it, and I figured that if Vampires and Ghouls can ride Zombie Dragons, so can Wight Kings... but I'm not sure what abilities said Wight King should have, nor how much points the end product should cost.

Below you'll find the unit's custom Warscroll. At the moment, his weapons, abilities and Command Ability are a blend of various parts of the Wight King's warscroll, the VLoZD's, and the Tomb King on Exalted Chariot's.



There's still a lot of things I'm unsure about, so comments and critique are more than welcome. Some points I'm definitely curious about are the following:

- Keyword Interaction: at the moment, he still has the Skeleton keyword, which allows a Necromancer to cast Vanhel's Danse Macabre on him, which sounds horribly OP. Should I just drop the keyword?

- Command Ability: this was inspired by the Tomb King on Exalted Chariot's "Incantation of the Desert Wind" ability. The double movement would certainly help to get units faster, but it does basically nothing to improve their damage output - which seems to be the running theme in Death's Command abilities.

- Baleful Tomb Blade: I tried to combine the stats for the Vampiric Sword with the Baleful Tomb Blade, but the Beheading Strike ability got me wondering what damage it should normally do. Maybe it should just do mortal wounds on 6+?

- Wound count: currently, he has 14 Wounds, like the regular VLoZD, but I'm wondering if that isn't too much.

So what do you think? How could this warscroll be improved upon?

Keyword: No, keep it. A Wight King is a skeleton. Arkhan also has it and he's also a skeleton riding on a big beast.

Command Ability: While the idea is good, I think you should keep the Wight King's Command Ability, as it's not only good, but also helps keep point cost similiar. Also: Vampire Lord has the same Command Ability than the VLoZD.

Baleful Tomb Blade: I would keep the Tomb Blade stat line, along with D3 instead of 1 damage, but increase attacks to 6.

Wounds: A normal Vampire lord has 5 wounds, as has the normal Wight King. So I think 14 wounds should be fine.

I would delete the option for the Standard.

As Wight Kings are not wizards and Vampire are... I would price him around 380-400. (VLoZD: 440)

 Hanskrampf wrote:
Command Ability: While the idea is good, I think you should keep the Wight King's Command Ability, as it's not only good, but also helps keep point cost similiar. Also: Vampire Lord has the same Command Ability than the VLoZD.

Good point, but don't you mean that the Vampire Lord and the Wight King have the same ability? Both allow a unit to make one extra attack with its weapons, whilst the VLoZD allows a unit to re-roll failed hit rolls.

I'd really like to incorporate that movement bonus somewhere, though... Perhaps I should make "March of the Dead" a regular ability, rather than a Command ability, and have it work in the same way as the Tomb Kings' "Incantation of the Desert Wind" (with the unit suffering a mortal wound on a roll of 1)?

Baleful Tomb Blade: I would keep the Tomb Blade stat line, along with D3 instead of 1 damage, but increase attacks to 6.

Wouldn't that make the Deathlance somewhat useless? And would the Tomb Blade still get the "Beheading Strike" ability?

No, I meant that the regular VL and the VLoZD have the same Command Ability. So the regular WIght King and the WKoZD should also have the same ability.

A normal Tomb Blade would be too weak. The VL sword has a fixed D3 damage not only on 6s.
So either lose the ability for Beheading Strike (unfluffy) and give it also a fixed D3 damage or improve something else. My suggestion would be to give the regular Tomb Blade 2 additional attacks and keep Beheading Strike. I think the lance would still be an option, 3 damage on charge is still pretty good and much more reliable.

Maybe the WKoZD should have the same Command ability as the VLoZD, giving re-rolls to failed hit rolls for a Deathrattle unit within 18"?

As for the Tomb Blade, I'm not sure if adding more attacks would be a good idea. I mean, suppose I give him 6 attacks, with D3 damage each. If he's lucky, he can dish out 18 wounds with the sword alone (given that he rolls really well) - which seems a bit excessive. Even the Vampire Lord can't do that.

Perhaps the Beheading Strike rule could be tweaked some more to make the Tomb Blade more interesting. Maybe it should do a mortal wound on a 6+ to wound roll?

Here's the newest version of the warscroll:

I think the undead hunger and invocation abilities should be dropped and the baleful tomb blade set to match that of the wight king on foot. This will make the model weaker and you can drop the point cost accordingly. You basically want to make as few changes as possible beyond wight king scroll + zombie dragon scroll since that will make people more receptive to letting you use it. Also consider intentionally overcosting it at first so people don't think you're just trying to bring a strong model to the table.

Why drop the Undead Hunger ability? All of Death's Hero/Monsters have a similar ability, so why shouldn't the Wight King get one?

Also, I'd really like to keep the invocation, as it makes Deathrattle -as a faction- a lot more threatening on the tabletop. I still believe it'd be better if said invocation was his Command Ability rather than a regular ability, but it'd be inconsistent with the rules for other Death heroes.

As for the point cost, I'd make him cost 420 points - but only if he has some decent abilities to justify said cost.

Come to think of it, "March of the Dead" might be a bit OP as a regular ability. As the ability can be used without him being the General, he might become an auto-take for generic Death lists that use a lot of Skeleton Warriors. Then again, the same is true if it were his Command ability...

Because the wight king on foot doesn't have a undead hunger ability. Note that vampires on foot and ghoul kings.on foot have their own healing without the dragon.

Good point; I assumed the ability was related to the Zombie Dragon, not the rider. I checked the Zombie Dragon's warscroll, and it apparently doesn't have any healing ability either. I'll be dropping that ability then.

Now, without the "March of the Dead" and "Undead Hunger" abilities, and with his Tomb Blade reverted to its original state, here's what we end up with:



I feel like he's missing something, some flavour that makes him stand out from the other Heroes on Zombie Dragons. Maybe I should give him the Infernal Standard option again?

What makes him stand out is the deathrattle keyword (which is a big deal, note he can use his command ability on himself) and that he will be cheaper than other characters on zombie dragons. Giving the infernal standard option would be fine IMO since he'd be giving up the shield for it. You really want to avoid filling in gaps as much as possible, because abilities written by players tend to make opponents much more uncomfortable than ones copied over from other warscrolls.

Hadn't really thought about it that way, to be honest. I think I'll give him the standard back, to keep his loadout consistent with that of the regular Wight King, and to make him slightly less 'homebrewed'.

Speaking of points, how much should he cost in his current form? The other guys on Zombie Dragons cost 440 points each, which seems a bit much...

I'd say the 350-380 range. Which means start him at 400 and see if people are OK with that.