GA: death list building tips/advice

[Dracothjay]

So I'm a long time FEC player. Writing lists for FEC is easy and pretty straight forward, limited units and a number of synergies to chose from makes it so.

now that I've branched out into GA: Death, I feel 'naked' so to speak as to how to build lists as the selection got a little more vast. I'm aware of the different synergies/unit combos, but how does one go about writing mixed death lists?

[Thanatos Ares]

Depends on your theme if you have one, your choice of general will actually decide what kinda list you’re gonna end up building as well. 

 

Always remember rule of cool wins

unless you’re writing a list that’s aiming for top tables of a tourney then rule of cool isn’t always so good ?

[Aginor]

Hard to tell from your perspective, but for me the starting point was Deathrattle.

So I knew what I had: a huge tarpit.

And I knew what I lacked: magic and a hard hitter.

So I got a Vampire Lord on Zombie Dragon and Necromancers.

So think of what you have and what you lack and it might just come naturally.

[xspire]

There's lots of different ways to start out.

I always choose one thing that I want to do, or one thing I want to play with and build around that.

I'll make that decision and then from there I think - 'what do I want/need to be doing on Turn 1, 2, 3' etc.

Do you want to start off offensively/defensively? Do you need to be mobile with high movement?  Do you need to make sure you have a certain amount of wizards for X, Y, Z?  Is your tactic going to be to attack in waves and hold things back to adapt to reserves etc?  Or just go all in on specific units to stop any late game resistance.? Or you could play something that's really durable, you can be more passive, take casualties, grind it out and plan a lot of your moves for after the first two turns once the opponent starts to wind down the pressure a bit. 

[Dracothjay]

Thanks for ththe advice guys.

how I have written lists in the past (and still do)  is more of the balanced 'react to any situation' type of a list. I tend to play offensive and defensive.

so I think I'll throw my 40 skellies as my tarpit, however, is a Wight king always a must with them? I understand why but I find a VL far more lethal than the Wight king, speaking from a general leading the army point of view.

also, is 40 skeletons in one unit too much in 1k games? With a Wight king that's 400 Pts already.

 

[lastdarkness]

The Wight King dosnt have to be your general. Hes mostly there for the Banner.

 

Your react to any situation lists might be hard to pin down now with the evolving meta heavily leaning towards massive 120+ hordes.

 

[Dracothjay]

Well I play quite aggressively with FEC, even though that's how the army is meant to be played lol, but I'd love to incorporate that style into my GA: death lists. 

[Heroflegend21]

I’ve been looking into death and I’ve been thinking about a summoning centric list around Arkhan and full battle line of Morghasts is there any advice on where to go from there? 

[AverageBoss]

1 hour ago, Heroflegend21 said:

I’ve been looking into death and I’ve been thinking about a summoning centric list around Arkhan and full battle line of Morghasts is there any advice on where to go from there? 

If you want Morghasts as battleline, then you will be playing Deathlords Alliance. Unfortunately that puts quite a few limitations on you. You will need to take 3 Morghast units to fill out your minimum requirements in a 2,000 point game. That is a minimum of 660 points, Arkhan brings you to 980. Though he makes a pretty mediocre general, so you probably want a second Mortarch. You might add a Mortis Engine for bonus to cast, healing, and MW output. Though that would take up ally points.