Bringing life back to DEATH - pt 2: Keywords

[Killax]

Hi guys! I decided to make a topic here for an Allegiance I don't play. So please don't lynch me for it  What has lead me here however is diving into the deep for Age of Sigmar's many Warscrolls (for Khorne tactica) and sidetracked as this sounds, I think a lot of design within Death is extremely cool but also seems to have an odd approach to some of the Keywords.
It's something I'd love to talk about with you guys! Especially since GH2017 has given you some very cool Allegiance abilities.

Let me say first that one of the prime inspirations for this topic has come from @WoollyMammoth's posts, many of which contain a good ammount of critism but perhaps want to dive too deep into the shoes of designers. Sometimes looking from the outside in gives another perspective.

Keywords
Keywords are however the subject of this topic and this is where I'd like to ask you guys about! Instead of looking what can be fixed with un-created Allegiance abilities I'd like to discuss how you guys feel about several Keywords on Warscrolls. Specifically the Warscrolls who seem to lack Keywords. To date this is the list of Warscrolls I'd like to see obtain one additional Keyword. I feel that this simple step could at least give Death Allegiances a push in the right direction as I feel a lot of army design power actually comes from the diversity in the ways to construct them. Allegiances (and thus Factions) all are tied to Keywords so the moment they are rarely found on Warscrolls it could lead to very restrive design.

My proposal
Corpse Cart gain Keyword Deathrattle
Dire Wolves gain Keyword Deathrattle
Zombies gain Keyword Deathrattle
Morghast Archai gain Keyword Deathrattle
Morghast Harbringers gain Keyword Deathrattle 
Arkhan the Black gains Keyword Nighthaunt
Mortis Engine gains Keyword Nighthaunt
Necromancer gains Keyword Nighthaunt 
Mannfred, Mortarch of Night gains Keyword Soulblight
Neferata, Mortarch of Blood gains Keyword Flesh-Eater Courts
See below for more!

Nagash, Supreme Lord of the Undead gains rule: Lord of Death: Nagash, Supreme Lord of Undead can always be your general and does not count towards the limit of Ally points spend in Matched play. 

Question
What would you Death players think about Warscroll updates? 
The following Warscrolls obtaining the following Keywords?

What I'd love to know from you guys is if in your opinion it would make narratively and visually sence for these Warsrolls to obtain these Keywords. I get that the Necromancer would probably gain more benifits from recieving all relevant Keywords but I do think it would make sence for him to be an Ally for many forces, afterall a Necromancer is a practicer of the Lores of Death but not ****** an death individual. 

Many thanks for reading in advance! I hope to have a go at Death with this soon @Sedraxis' home.  I feel that this is an relatively easy step that would make the Death Allegiance very interesting and allow for much more different army builds, as logical Allies that become part of the Allegiance allow for more Ally points spend in models that truely feel like Allies.

Cheers,

[skool]

I like a lot of the ideas but I don't like Arkhan becoming nighthaunt, and I don't like Neferata becoming Flesh Eater.  You can shoe-horn the Arkhan bit, but Neferata wouldn't ally her self with the ghouls, she is much to civil for that, I mean she used to be the vamp who placed political spies everywhere.

I see no reason why death mages shouldn't be on everyone's ally list. I have always thought that dead walkers should be merged with death mages.

I always thought they should have Mortarch for each sub-faction even the FEC . 

Arkhan = Deathlords

Some necromancer dude(That new necromancer chick from the books?) = DeadWalkers

Named Banshee ( The silver lady?)= Night haunt

Named sentient wight( return of krell??) = Death Rattle

Manfred/ Neferata  = Soulblight ( could possibly expand the model line to warrant two Mortarchs, beasts and monsterous vamps for Manny, and more elegant and humanish vamps for Neferata)

Neferata/Prince of Dust = tomb kings 

The carrion king = FEC

 

Would love some warscroll updates,  they also need to go through and clean up a lot of the extra keywords on the Death warscrolls. Mordant, malignant, ect... 

 Honestly we just need to get new models and units. So I'm just going to keep hobby-ing until we get some more love.

Hoping we get more than a short campaign book and a herald, but at this point I've been done holding my breath. I'm not jumping ship, I'm not playing other games, I'm just a little sick of feeling like they don't play test Death stuff. (I.E Skirmish and lack of well known GT winnings)

Side note: AOS(not WHFB) was my first miniature game, so I'm not pissing and moaning about that glory days.

 

[WoollyMammoth]

@Killax
The key part of this proposal is to reverse some of the damage splitting VC seven ways has done. I don't know why they are so afraid of giving multiple keywords out; Arkhan is Deathlord, Deathmage, Deathrattle and Nighthaunt. Neferatta is Deathlord, Deathmage, Soulblight, Deathrattle and Nighthaunt, etc. They aren't afraid of this so much with Chaos; if a mortal is on a Daemonic mount - in most cases he becomes Daemonic. They certainly aren't afraid of this in 40k, where many models can be fielded in multiple different armies and keywords share synergy all over the place. For some reason they want to pigeonhole every model into one thing. The introduction of allies makes it more apparent that this is unnecessary; you can have the same model in multiple different armies.

They might do some of this stuff with the new Deathrattle book. I can see them absorbing Arkhan and Morghasts but - who knows.

@skool
You are talking about adding new models which every death player agrees with.

The reason for Mordant/Malignant is because: 
A. The necromancer can double pile-in the Mordant (infantry) but not the Flesh-Eater (which includes Dragons, Tgheist, etc). In 40k they have troop keywords which negates this complexity (IE, a necromancer can select any Death Infantry model, rather than any death blah, blah, or blah blah)

B. My earlier point about how they are hesitant to share keywords. A Mortis Engine cannot be a Nighthant because its it not exactly a Nighthaunt since its not 'all' ghosts, so instead its a Mordant which is 'ghost-like'. Obviously this is outdated and unnecessary at this point, where Malignant means and does nothing and they could fix it simply by just calling it Nighthaunt so that it can be used in a legitimate army. 

[lastdarkness]

Many of those suggestions go so hard against the lore.  Neferata as a flesh eater physicaly hurt me lol 

Im actualy surprised though we dont have a model for the other Mortarchs and Ushoran.

[Inqy]

Presumably they're going to add new Mortarchs whenever they want to make a cool new Death release.  Did seem an odd choice not to do some stats/model for Ushoran when FEC came out though. Age of Sigmar doesn't seem as attached to "awesome background characters that never get stats" as WHFB did.

The super-split factions thing is presumably just an artefact of Death not really having much attention given to them since FEC got released while the game as a whole has gone through considerable changes since then. Given how much matched play changes the summoning rules, and Death's reliance on them, Death could really do with a new Grand Alliance book and a rebuild from the ground up, not so much to change stats as just completely reform their keywords, interactions with summoning etc. 

And yeah, particularly with the new rules for allies in matched play, the Deathlords faction in general should probably have each model given alternate faction keywords as well. Sensible really unless you want them to be very rarely seen in competitive lists.

[jimmyrut]

Please don't forget about the Tomb Kings, they after all fall under the Death umbrella.

[lastdarkness]

Neferata and Mannfred should have Soulblight.  I like how Arkhan has Skeleton which is almost interchangeable with Deathrattle( it should be the same)

 

I wonder if Malignants is ever going to be looked at as I think the Necromancer Mortarch would fit in there. (And Death mages should be Malignants too)

 

Deaths really hurting on missle units/siege outside of Tomb Kings and has been stated the Summoning changes really hurt death.  It used to be Death summoned most of its forces in where needed and used magic to make things go faster.  Now its a generic melee horde army with buffs like ALOT of current ones.

[Gotrek]

15 hours ago, Killax said:

My proposal
Corpse Cart gain Keyword Deathrattle
Dire Wolves gain Keyword Deathrattle
Zombies gain Keyword Deathrattle
Morghast Archai gain Keyword Deathrattle
Morghast Harbringers gain Keyword Deathrattle 
Arkhan the Black gains Keyword Nighthaunt
Mortis Engine gains Keyword Nighthaunt
Necromancer gains Keyword Nighthaunt 
Mannfred, Mortarch of Night gains Keyword Soulblight
Neferata, Mortarch of Blood gains Keyword Flesh-Eater Courts

Nagash, Supreme Lord of the Undead gains rule: Lord of Death: Nagash, Supreme Lord of Undead can always be your general and does not count towards the limit of Ally points spend in Matched play.

No to nearly everything. If mortarchs were to get faction specific keywords, then mannfred and neferata would both be soulblight (they are vampires) and arkhan would be deathrattle (he is a skeleton). Now, i am not opposed to the mortarchs getting faction keywords but it wont solve any of deaths problems. 

Shoving all those units into deathrattle wont help or make sense from a lore perspective either. Now the mortis engine should be nighthaunt, its more ghostly than the black coach could ever be and its a current model. Making the necro nighthaunt would cause more problems than it solves(because of the allies matrix) AND doesnt make sense because his spell cant affect anything in that faction. Move the mortis engine to nighthaunt and merge the deadwalkers into the deathmages (which without the engine is now just the necro). That makes more sense from a lore perspective and makes it a playable subfaction.

As for nagash...no, just no. That makes no sense. You play the GOD OF DEATH you play as the grand alliance. Itd be like allying in alarielle into a nom sylvaneth army. 

[Spiny Norman]

@ TS

Bloody minefield you stepped in, as it seems.

How it feels walking in GW's shoes for a moment?

[Killax]

First of all many thanks guys! Leading to some healthy discussion which is what I hoped to archieve with this topic in the first place. As before the idea really is to work out how well things are supported now and how well Keywords have become an obvious Keyword and the lack of it being a strange part of some designs.

15 hours ago, WoollyMammoth said:

@Killax
The key part of this proposal is to reverse some of the damage splitting VC seven ways has done. I don't know why they are so afraid of giving multiple keywords out; Arkhan is Deathlord, Deathmage, Deathrattle and Nighthaunt. Neferatta is Deathlord, Deathmage, Soulblight, Deathrattle and Nighthaunt, etc. They aren't afraid of this so much with Chaos; if a mortal is on a Daemonic mount - in most cases he becomes Daemonic. They certainly aren't afraid of this in 40k, where many models can be fielded in multiple different armies and keywords share synergy all over the place. For some reason they want to pigeonhole every model into one thing. The introduction of allies makes it more apparent that this is unnecessary; you can have the same model in multiple different armies.

They might do some of this stuff with the new Deathrattle book. I can see them absorbing Arkhan and Morghasts but - who knows.

I completely agree with you. Again many thanks for the correction and the list above will indeed be updated with the information obtained so far. In some cases I do think Keywords are less obvious or specific (such as the Necromancer in Death Mages) but for most of them there indeed wouldn't be a reason why Warscroll X or Y couldn't have that Keyword.

There is a reason to be afraid of just slamming them onto anything, the prime reason being not following own future design plans and in other cases we also see that a vast multitude of Keywords can create an unbalance in design to some extend. 40k's 'Fill in your own Keyword' has backfired on them several times which has lead to several Errata's rectifying certain uses of Keywords. Practically all released 40K Chaos content has been under this.

I also hope Battletome Deathrattle will cover more of it all, include several undead under the logical same Keyword banner. Afterall this is what the game is mostly about. Creating armies comes down to creating Keyword synergies. The more models with the Keyword your looking for, the better.  

13 hours ago, Inqy said:

Presumably they're going to add new Mortarchs whenever they want to make a cool new Death release.  Did seem an odd choice not to do some stats/model for Ushoran when FEC came out though. Age of Sigmar doesn't seem as attached to "awesome background characters that never get stats" as WHFB did.

The super-split factions thing is presumably just an artefact of Death not really having much attention given to them since FEC got released while the game as a whole has gone through considerable changes since then. Given how much matched play changes the summoning rules, and Death's reliance on them, Death could really do with a new Grand Alliance book and a rebuild from the ground up, not so much to change stats as just completely reform their keywords, interactions with summoning etc. 

And yeah, particularly with the new rules for allies in matched play, the Deathlords faction in general should probably have each model given alternate faction keywords as well. Sensible really unless you want them to be very rarely seen in competitive lists.

I think you have a really fair point, at the same time I also think GH2017 Allegiance rules really arn't where the problems lie.
If we look at GH2016 we see Death not preforming incredibly high but higher as they do with GH2017 and to me a large part of this comes from the field obtaining their own potent Allegiance rules.

The prime difference between 'the field' and Death is that Death is unique in that it currently consists out of only sub-sub-Factions and Flesh-Eater Courts. Unsuprisingly FEC has had some Tournament showings, nothing extremely impressive but I also do not believe the intend of designers is ever to have one Faction rule over them all.

11 hours ago, jimmyrut said:

Please don't forget about the Tomb Kings, they after all fall under the Death umbrella.

The issue with TK is that GW has not shown any intend of keeping them a playable Faction. While I know this isn't cool, ultimately this choice is GW's.

It's a different subject but more Faction lines in my opinion could unfortunatly not have a very bright future. It really all depends on what GW will do with it's line. So because they arn't part of GH2017 I really can't comment on them ever being a supported part of Age of Sigmar.

Updated list
Corpse Cart gain Keyword Deathrattle
Dire Wolves gain Keyword Deathrattle
Zombies gain Keyword Deathrattle
Morghast Archai gain Keyword Deathrattle
Morghast Harbringers gain Keyword Deathrattle 
Arkhan the Black gains Keyword Deathrattle
Mortis Engine gains Keyword Nighthaunt
Necromancer gains Keyword Nighthaunt 
Mannfred, Mortarch of Night gains Keyword Soulblight
Neferata, Mortarch of Blood gains Keyword Soulblight
Nagash being available to all sub-Factions as a general, not soaking up Ally points

Note: gaining Keywords is not removing one for the other  I sometimes see comments who assume this is what I mean. Which is absolutely not the case. I believe the Mortis Engine and Necromancer can gain Keyword Nighthaunt while retaining Keyword Deathmages.

The intend remains to have Death's sub-Factions be less restricted in their own way. The prime reason as to why I believe this will succesfully give Death a push in the right direction is because we have several tournament examples who prove this, E.g.:
- Seraphon like Death has not recieved any new model since their Battletome was created for Age of Sigmar, they are preforming well because the vast mayority of their armies can include Seraphon-only models and thus synergy is optimized.
- Even Khorne has just recieved 10 new units, 8 of which are single model units, the other two are Bloodreavers and Blood Warriors. Again why they are preforming well has actually little to nothing to do with those 8 single model units. Why they are preforming well is because they can include Khorne-only models and thus synergy is optimized.
- On the other side of the spectrum we have Fyreslayers and Kharadron, preforming decently, nothing too worthy of note. They excist out of completely new lines! However they are a smaller Faction and thus in many ways still resctricted in design. One thing that has favoured them and all other sub-sub-Factions of Order is Firestorm granting a ton of additional reasons to go for Grand Allegiance Order.

Even when the Keywords are added, Death will not sudenly rise to the top, it will however be at least capable of creating armies similar in tactical depth as seen in Order, Chaos and Destruction. It's this list flexability that can easily be added with gained Keywords. I am aware new models and Warscrolls are welcome for the line but this applies to anyone and isn't a guarantee for succes if it's it's own brand new sub-Faction, examples mentioned above.

What makes this intresting?
- Being capable of 'deepstriking' a Mortis Engine or Necromancer under the Nighthaunt Allegiance allows for some very potent flanker and area controller. The bonus translates into having a unique board control option that is either very powerful on it's own or creates the punch where it is required later that game.
- Soulblight with incorporated named Vampire Lord and Vampire Queen will indeed be the elite army it's seemfully going to create. Adding the Bloodlines on top of them is even a way to quite possibly create an Monster Hero army that presents similar potency as seen in for example Tzeentch and Serpahon now. To me this boost would not only set the elite even further apart but opens up to a fantastic way to represent a Vampiric army being capable to wrestle the badest Monsters in the game.
- Deathrattle is obviously waiting for it's book but even now Lord of Bones is a very meaningfull addition to both of the Morghast units. More importantly though, next to the masses it will give this faction a boost in being able to deal with key pieces aswell. As a combination of tarpits and assassin pieces simply said is fantastic. 
- Lastly Nagash being capable of at least being the general and not soaking up Ally points means he is always available if your looking for such a titan. Note that I too feel more Lores should be added for him but this is something outside of Keyword discussion.

Lastly, what I do not want is remove Keywords. In my opinion there is for example a great reason to keep the Mordant Keyword around. It essentially is the Keyword for Ghoul and I think other types of Ghouls can be very interesting to include for other types of factions. For example Soulblight could eventually include an "Igor"-like servant that is Mordant but not Flesh-Eater Courts.

Again thanks for the many replies!

Cheers,

 

[Aginor]

I agree that Mortis Engine should probably be Nighthaunt.

The merge of Deathrattle and Deathwalkers....I don't know. I can't really think of Zombies being Deathrattle.

Or maybe Deathmages and/or Deathlords should not count toward ally points, or only with half their point cost. Something like that.
IMO it is a bit ridiculous that a Deathrattle army at 1500 points cannot have two Necromancers.

[Killax]

22 minutes ago, Aginor said:

I agree that Mortis Engine should probably be Nighthaunt.

The merge of Deathrattle and Deathwalkers....I don't know. I can't really think of Zombies being Deathrattle.

Or maybe Deathmages and/or Deathlords should not count toward ally points, or only with half their point cost. Something like that.
IMO it is a bit ridiculous that a Deathrattle army at 1500 points cannot have two Necromancers.

I think that Zombies could be part of Deathrattle, or in other words, I can't think of extremely good reasons why they wouldn't be part of Deathrattle. As before, I see this as the skeleton faction but surely before that process occurs your at least half a "flesh-bag"? I just can't envision a world where former humans cannot coexist, after all Deathwalkers and Deathrattle currently are all representations of former humans. For sure you could discount the Dire Wolves or Morghasts if they where to obtain the Deathrattle Keyword but still, I havn't found a pressing reason as to why Deathwalkers cannot obtain the Deathrattle Keyword aswell.

Initially I agreed with you on Deathmages and Deathlords simply not adding to Ally points, however the real question then becomes why internal synergy shouldn't be allowed for. However we turn this path it's odd that a Mortis Engine composed of Nighthaunt Spirits cannot benifit from the same rules as Nighthaunt. Likewise it's odd that the Vampire Lord and Queen cannot benifit from Soulblight rules despite the narrative of Soulblight clearly stating they are lead by Vampire Lords and Queens...

Most importantly though, several of the sets start to make sence aswell with the correct Keywords:

Start collecting: Skeleton Horde

If Arkhan obtains the Deathrattle Keyword the set allows for a completely legal Deathrattle army at it's level (at any level).

Start collecting: Malignants

If the Mortis Engine obtained the Nighthaunt Keyword the set allows for a completely legal Nighthaunt army at it's level (at any level).

So if anything it seems like even the marketing team of Games Workshop itself assumes these Keywords are on these models. They are selling great ways to start an army, which I really love for Death players though it should be an easy task to ensure the player obtains a legal army for any kind of play  .

Cheers,

[Aginor]

I completely forgot about Arkhan since I sold Arkhan when I bought that Start Collecting box.

Actually I agree with most what you said, good arguments.

...oh and also that Zombie Dragon should be Deathrattle, I love it.

[Killax]

Lets hope Death will eventually follow  

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2017/10/15/chaos-warscroll-updatesgw-homepage-post-4/

Cheers!

[xspire]

I think they could design some kind of rule where a Montarch can be your armies general without breaking your allegiance. This has some issues lore-wise, e.g FEC / Nighthaunt, but it seems like the easier way to make them more playable and accessible without having to mess around with giving them all key-words or specific key-words.

For example it's not unreasonable to assume a force of deathrattle would follow any of the Montarch's into battle, You could assume that they're powerful enough to earn the allegiance and compliance of any force, but as mentioned above there's definitely a lot of obstacles to this lore wise.

[WoollyMammoth]

Ushoran is likely the Carrion King. Since they are heavily moving away from named chars I don't expect to see any new ones. Its not profitable to sell a named char because you only ever need one of them. it only makes a profit if its in some kind of multi kit or if its a huge $100+ model. 

That being said, they just released Typhus which is very surprising. They also released a ton of clampacks for DG. I think they have a lot of faith that a ton of people will be playing death guard. They definitely don't have that faith for Death in AoS, however. 

[someone2040]

Eh, personally I think you basically just have to live with what GW have envisioned and buy into that method of thinking.

While I do think Mortarchs should be multi-faction, I don't really agree with any of the other changes at all.

Deadwalkers aren't Deathrattle. There's a clear delineation that GW want the Deathrattle to be the skeletal remnants of ancient kingdoms, while Deadwalkers are the recent dead. In fact, I'd argue that merging these two factions doesn't actually do anything, Deadwalkers to me don't really add any value to the Deathrattle faction.

Similar thinking with Nighthaunts, just because the Mortis Engine has some spirits floating around doesn't make the core theme and identity of that model a Nighthaunt. Necromancers aren't even ghostly. It's fine that some factions like Deathmages are more auxillary in nature (Even if it's stupid and doesn't make sense that you can't ally them into Nighthaunts).

IMO if you wanted to move Deathmages somewhere, I think a combo faction with Deadwalkers would in fact, be a more logical choice (and already have a common link with the Corpse Cart). Where the Necromancers are the puppet masters, and the zombies and zomdogs are the puppets.

And ultimately if you want to run a Grand Nagash Army, then run a Grand Alliance Death version. Nagash not being allyable is a good thing! Why would Nagash bow down to some Deathrattle Wight King or some Soulblight Vampire? He wouldn't, he'd be in charge!

 

So personally, I don't think Death's issues can be solved by 'adding keywords' and the only ones that really make sense to have keywords added IMO are the Mortarchs.

[Sception]

I'm not sure why you'd make necromancers nighthaunt, considering that ghosties are one of the very few undead types they /don't/ currently support.  Honestly, ally points probably make deathmages workable enough as a mini-group to go with everything rather than a faction of their own, but if you did want to drop them, then I agree the mortis engine could go with nighthaunt (yes, it's not currently primarily ghosty themed, but that's easy enough to refluff, just as the black coach used to be vampire themed but is now ghosty themed itself), while the necromancer, as a fleshy bloke, would probably go best in deadwalkers.  Which I would absolutely not combine with deathrattle, for the mechanical and thematic reasons already discussed.

Otherwise, while I wouldn't want the deathlords keyword dropped, I wouldn't mind that faction getting dual keywords if it stays so small.  +soulblight for Manny and Nef, +Deathrattle for Arkhan and Morghasts.  Nagash I'd leave as pure deathlords.  Then again, what I'd prefer to see even more than that is an expansion to the Deathlords faction, fleshing it out with some extra units & generic characters.  A slightly smaller (but still big, maybe slightly bigger than stormcast scale) wingless infantry versions of morghasts, a character version of the full sized flying morghasts buildable as either a melee guy or a buffing / banner sort.  Maybe a couple more Mortarchs - though even in this case the Mortarchs themselves I'd like to see get dual keywords.

In general, I'd prefer to see our smaller factions get built out with more units and new models.  Elite 'revenant' zombie heroes inspired by Jason Voorhees or the Crow, ogre sized stiched together frankenstein monsters, & hideous undead abominations & war machines made of the corpses of dozens of different monster corpses spliced together to flesh out Death Walkers, plus maybe throwing necromancers in here since the other additions would already turn them into the weird necromantic experimentation faction.  Deathlords expanded as I already mentioned.  Deathrattle absorbing some of the old tomb king stuff with liches, archers, chariots, catapults, and maybe animated statues - emphasizing their connection to their necropolis home by having the statues and gargoyles of the city rise to join them in defending it.  Soulblight gaining some cheaper willing vampire thrall mortal infantry, and actual different kinds of vampire heroes rather than half-hearted bloodline rules layered on top of a single hero unit with little reason to double up on them within the same army anyway.  Nighthaunt gaining some single-based, non-swarm infantry units, and casters (maybe make the mortis engine a caster and give it to them), and some big ghosty monsters with fear penalty auras for banshees to capitalize on.  Maybe undead versions of some of the other factions in the game - petrified wood undead treekin?  zombie orcs?  wrathful stormcast spirits brought under Nagash's rightful rule of the undead?  Spectral elven revenants snatched from the Elven gods as they beat them out of Slaanesh?  These sorts of factions could be easily added with conversion kit style releases to undeadify multiple different units from other factions, making them much easier and cheaper to introduce than factions of entirely new units.

In general I'd much prefer to see the smaller, vestigial portions of our range expanded, rather than merging them together and in the process shrinking our already-the-smallest alliance even further.

[Elmir]

I've said it in the GT discussion threat:

I don't think death suffers from bad synergy necessarily through bad keywords.  They suffer from a lack of choice in every sub faction. Our largest subfaction (FEC) is comparable (in terms of number of unit warscrolls) to the smaller-ish subfactions of other races.  

So we either have to choose very spammy feeling armies (like nighthaunt or soulblight) for the extra abilities, or choose the grand alliance. With TKs now being legacy (and heavily nerfed as well might I add), the grand alliance is essentially one old warhammer army: Vampire counts: 40-ish unit warscrolls  available for purchase and that's it... Some sub-factions from order and chaos have as much choice as our whole GA:D. 

Reshuffling the keywords to have slightly bigger sub-factions would help, but it would still be just a band-aid around an open leg fracture... We are in dire need of expansion through new unit warscrolls.  GW is doing a good job at giving our subfactions a good identity (barring some weird stuff with the mortis engine), but each of those subfactions will need a lot of new models/units to make them worth considering and less spammy. 
 

[grungolah]

I am going back a couple decades on this, but Malignant versus Nighthaunt might start to make more sense if they bring back the generic lich and ghosts.   Certainly the Nighthaunt allegiance benefits strengthen the idea they are leaderless.  Malignant, with the Mortis Engine, looks like a more structured ghostly army.

[Melcar]

On 12/10/2017 at 5:28 PM, Killax said:

My proposal
Corpse Cart gain Keyword Deathrattle
Dire Wolves gain Keyword Deathrattle
Zombies gain Keyword Deathrattle
Morghast Archai gain Keyword Deathrattle
Morghast Harbringers gain Keyword Deathrattle 
Arkhan the Black gains Keyword Nighthaunt
Mortis Engine gains Keyword Nighthaunt
Necromancer gains Keyword Nighthaunt 
Mannfred, Mortarch of Night gains Keyword Soulblight
Neferata, Mortarch of Blood gains Keyword Flesh-Eater Courts
See below for more!

Nagash, Supreme Lord of the Undead gains rule: Lord of Death: Nagash, Supreme Lord of Undead can always be your general and does not count towards the limit of Ally points spend in Matched play. 
 

I like it... However I would say that all the 4 Mortarchs and Nagash, should simply get Mark of Death. A death version of the Chaos Knights Mark of Chaos, so you could basically assigning them keywords when you place them, so you could always use the 4 über-heroes as generals.

Other than that I like your proposal. I'm working on a similar thing in my gaming group for precisely the same reason. 

[Killax]

@Melcar I think a lot of it is allready in the works for 2018 and think that some ideas suggested in the topic are quite likely to eventually come out as wished for. A lot of design for me from Death is actually not difficult to fix but would indeed alter the Warscroll as we know it, sometimes in the case of abilities and the like, more often in the form of adding or changing Keywords.

Ultimately it's also the easiest route to go on about it so this is why I think Games Workshop will also embrace it. The same occured for the Blades of Khorne book. Quite some Warscrolls where changed and suddenly the army clicked. By no means is it a top Tier army that banks on Battle Traits doing most of it's job but ideally I also think this is not the kind of army any real fan wants.

[Melcar]

1 hour ago, Killax said:

@Melcar I think a lot of it is allready in the works for 2018 and think that some ideas suggested in the topic are quite likely to eventually come out as wished for. A lot of design for me from Death is actually not difficult to fix but would indeed alter the Warscroll as we know it, sometimes in the case of abilities and the like, more often in the form of adding or changing Keywords.

Ultimately it's also the easiest route to go on about it so this is why I think Games Workshop will also embrace it. The same occured for the Blades of Khorne book. Quite some Warscrolls where changed and suddenly the army clicked. By no means is it a top Tier army that banks on Battle Traits doing most of it's job but ideally I also think this is not the kind of army any real fan wants.

Indeed... I haven't talked to anyone yet, who thinks it makes sense to put those 4 named heroes in one allegiance and most I talk to feel - like I do - that Death is such a small factions, that it should be considered simply just one large allegiance instead of 7.

I do really hope they update Death soon! Not only does the GA need a lot of new models, both ranged, behemoths and artillery, but they really need to fix the keywords - so that not only the 4 über heroes are usable, but that all skeletons belong in Deathrattle, all the malignant belong in nighthaunt etc... oh yeah and actually make a Deathrattle allegiance to begin with. 

I really like death, but my list of complaint (which really makes gaming less fun for me) is growing constantly...

[Killax]

Pretty much think the Keyword reconsideration will go into effect soon. Very happy about that prospect.

Also don't get too high hopes with everything changing.  

What I do expect to appear is Soul points who lead to free points who lead to potentially summonning a lot. Also based on Nurgle Rotbringers ability to do the same.

[someone2040]

Hmm I don't know if they'll change keywords. 

I think it's going to be more like the Great Cities allegiances. You basically get told what you can include in that allegiance in terms of keywords. This means if they ever want to add more DEATHRATTLE units in future, they won't be excluded from say the Legion of Sacrament just because they're not in the book.

So in this case, you wouldn't even have to change the Mortarch keywords, as they'd just be an option under that allegiance.