Lets Chat: Legions of Nagash

[smucreo]

Yeah, the idea would be to have four possible places for the skellies to appear, one of which is behind, combined with two units of morghasts to punish bad positioning. By adding a VLOZD and a terrorgheist in front the list would present a threat from all places at once until you start revealing your hand, which should happen on the same turn you charge with the units that were hidden.

[WoollyMammoth]

7 hours ago, Killax said:

As before, this Legion of Nagash Battletome resolved all the issues Death previously had. In addition to that there are/where a lot of Death players who wanted to play the army but simply didn't saw the competitive viability.

Not really. It resolved the fact that death is no longer a fractured concept, but it doesn't resolve "all the issues" with them . Death is surely a legitimate army now without glaring holes (like a lack of spell lores), but it doesn't have all the tools we'd like (or perhaps need).  First and foremost, Death continues to be a 'Grand Alliance' completely devoid of shooting in a meta where the majority of the successful lists are shooting-heavy.
 

• The new book gives death a little bit more punch but not up to the level of Khorne, so we will not suddenly be overwhelming things with pure melee power (at least not noticeably more than had always been possible). The height of our melee strength was with 400pt Necrosphinx with double move + free 10" move VLoZD, even then Death was not doing particularly well. Death has some great options to hit hard in this book but there is a lot of investment for each hammer and some of the tools are not completely reliable (like ambush into failed charge). When you are tying up all your hopes in say, 7 Nagash attacks, games are likely to be very swingy. We still cannot rely on only hitting hard to win games.
   
• The book definitely gets Death up to par with movement (ambush, summon, Ame. Pinions), but it doesn't break the bank like some of the best tournament lists. There is nothing here to get overly excited about. Its possible Neferata's battalion has 3 monsters moving at least 18" to start which could be something, but gets back into the fact that we just aren't going to hit consistently hard to regularly win games that way. Even if we can get into combat easily, opponents can just tarpit us and control the game. A lot of people are really excited for Night's ambushing not realizing what Ghoul Patrol players have known for a while - opponents are going to continually block out their edges with tarpit units and so your best case scenario will be charging a tarpit (and most common scenario will be failing a charge and becoming a sitting duck).
   
• The book provides a little bit more defense (+1 save for skeletons, +1 save in Arkhans battalion) but mostly relies on  coming back to life for defense. This is not always going to cut it. Against lists that hit hard enough, there isn't going to be any unit left to regen. A lot of people playing these new lists are going to have expectations of unkillalble armies that all pop back on the table as soon as the hero phase comes around - the reality is not often going to live up to the expectation - getting blown out after a double turn just like any other list. Maximizing the regen is going to be a careful balancing act. We still have nothing overly special to do first turn other than summoning and ambushing which will often split our army into pieces for our opponent to more easily manage.  I was hoping for some nice buff spells to boost our army when we have nothing else to do, but we mostly got debuff instead. Our lack of first turn options is going to really show against the Kharadron dropdhip list. Really the only thing we can do defensively is to bubble wrap our expensive pieces, which is nothing new. 
   
• The book provides very little in the ranged offense which was the biggest limitation in death. Already you see a lot of people taking the Grave-Sand Timeglass, which is not going to cut it when you have a 12-wound Magmadroth preventing battleshock on 90+ un-killable models. For all 12 new spells, we got only 1 that can deal a significant threat from range, and at 12" its only 2" farther than the T-gheist screams that we were working with before. In an Arkhan list we might be doing it once at 36", but this is a lot of investment for a 50% chance at doing D6 wounds ... is just not going to be our saving grace. We are still going to be grasping at straws as far as dealing with super synergy heroes bubble-wrapped and hidden in the back of the board. Literally every other army continues to have better options for sniping heroes than the entire Death grand alliance. 
   
• So, what did we get with spells? Everyone is excited for Overwhelming Dread, but is it really that good? Seems like a temporary replacement for the Mourngul (nice to save 400 points at least, but doesn't actually change much). Our lores are centered around debuffing our opponent, but most lists I see are already navigating directly to the offence of Orb, the necessity of Transference to protect our overpriced monsters, and then only relying on only Dread, usually on a necromancer. So our opponent snipes the necromancer and we are back to square one.
   
• Seeing as how Nurgle just came out, and that Nurgle works similar in a lot of ways as death, we should compare the tomes. Do our debuffs shine over the new Nurgle book? An entire nurgle army is easily -1 to hit in combat to start now, with several more -hit options, the best anti-armor in the game, while forcing opponents to re-roll all wounds of 6. What has LoN given death to deal with armor? Nurgle can take a 40 point unit of Marauders for 200 points, having them causing mortals on 6s, have a 5++ save and  2 wounds each. A unit of 40 skeletons for 280 points is never going to shine like that. And the -minus bravery? Yeah Nurgle has got that too. Nurgle is easily 5++ compared to deaths cap at 6++ saves. Nurgle has debuffs along with the buffs, more ranged mortal output, cheaper hordes, handles armor better, a good summoning system, great mobility. There are even a few shooting gems as well in the book (compared to zero shooting whatsoever).  

I'm not saying the new tome is bad, just pointing out that we did not get everything we wanted. There is still a lot of great new things:

• The summoning is a big deal. Before we had "wait here while I go kill stuff" kind of lists.  Now we can have 80 skeletons summoned 9" from the opponent as we charge our monsters in. The skeletons might get the charge too. The key is that we are no longer automatically sticking 50% of our army into 100% of our opponents army.  Even if they fail a charge, our opponent has to deal with a unit 9" from them, where they used to ignore skeletons on the other side of the table. Being able to get our armies into place also puts them on free objectives and gets them moving to contest objectives sooner. Just being able to get our entire army in threat range makes death a lot easier for us to play and harder for our opponent to manage.
   
• All the bravery debuffs are going to add up. Even daemon armies which never had to worry about battleshock are going to be losing a lot more models than they expected. Death is finally the horrific army it was always supposed to be. They had this in WHFB and it was fairly useless, but in AoS its going to be a huge part of playing death, especially against units of multi-wound models who aren't used to having to worry about battleshock, suddenly having entire units melt away. 
   
• Death suddenly has a lot of spells for preventing or limiting movement, which could be the biggest thing. Death becomes the only army which can reliably force their opponents into splitting their army, making it more manageable. This is huge for any army trying to get you in melee, but can also work to a certain extent to keep spells and shooting out of range. We might prevent a unit from being able to move on an objective which is huge. We also get some unique tools like taking away the attacks and damage of units. We now have the capability to take a lot of punch out of units and reduce threats, which I think is what we should be focusing on.

Currently, people are focused on creating a giant hammer kind of army. I'm happy to hear that its working well, but I think its a sucker punch kind of list. Lists are getting a boost because its all new and people don't know how to deal with it yet. Our opponents will learn to kill the Dread wizard fast, they will bubble wrap better against rampaging death monsters, they will snipe Archai before melting Nagash, they will block out ambushing units.

I think death is going to be one of the most tactically difficult armies to play, but it has a lot of potential. We will have to balance the regen properly by building low drop armies, forefitting double turns and using the right debuff at the right time.  We will have to learn to use the new spells more on controlling the battlefield more than just keeping our heroes alive or doing damage. We will have to understand exactly what our opponent wants to do and we will have to stop them with a lot of small tools rather than simply shooting it dead like most lists try to do. 

All the issues with Death are far from resolved, but we got some new tools we didn't expect, and we still have a long way to go to see what we can do with them.


Knight of Shrowds
Just as a side note, KoS is kind of reserved already in regards to the Keeper of Secrets, so it might be better to call it Keldrek, or KofS or something like that.

Speaking of Keldrek, there is kind of a gray are whether its a named char. If it is a named char, then it can't take anything regardless. He has a name, but not on his scroll, so it seems like hes not a named character. The rules seem to clarify that he can take artifacts/command, so hes not a named char, even though he is? I wish this were the case for the Mortachs as well, this would open up the book a lot for Death players. 

120 points is a bit much for him. He doesn't really do anything. You look at a Lord Celestant and he has the same thing with a 3+ save and awesome shooting attack for 100 points. Its not good to compare armies like this, but come on. A Celestant is the head honcho super elite hero, and Keldrek is just a Wraith with a sword. It seems like they priced him for Malign Portents and not for general AoS play. If you are going to be playing Malign Portents games, then you will absolutely want Keldrek and all his special abilities. Given that this is a Death topic, and Malign Portents is moving the narrative into plot line heavily featuring Death, I am assuming most of you have some interest in playing Malign Portents and so he will do a lot of cool stuff in whatever army you put him in, but will obviously shine when you feature a lot of Nighthaunt (which you should, they are all awesome now) even without command abilities/traits. I hope they FAQ that, but the FAQ team is not traditionally nice to Death players, so I am not holding out any hope.

Playing Nighthaunt is a different story, absolutely all of it is outshined by everything in the new book. Nighthaunt is better served as a legion with 15 wolves as battleline instead of playing Nightaunt allegiance. I'm thinking a Nighhaunt update is coming so this might change.  The only notable downside is the lack of Mourngul, which I'm sure that FW will FAQ very soon to not lose out on model sales.

 

 

[Malakithe]

@WoollyMammoth

A lot of what you said is true and makes sense but what Death players need to wrap around their heads is this is not a in your face killy kind of faction. Its a slow grind debilitating faction that is supposed to come back from the dead in order to beat people instead of out right wiping out units left and right. All the regen, all the healing, all the spells play to this concept.

[Sception]

Re: Knight of Shrouds, he is absolutely not a named character, and the Malign Portents book makes clear that there are a bunch of them, it just happens to follow a particular one in the narrative.  Same as the other harbingers.  Keldrek isn't the Knight of Shrouds, he's a Knight of Shrouds.  And the rules in the MP book make clear that the harbingers can take command traits and artifacts, but only if they share your army's faction keyword.  Which for the Knight of Shrouds would require you to run a Grand Alliance: Death or Nighthaunt army, not a Grand Host or Legion of X, barring some future errata.  Errata which, to be clear, does not seem to be forthcoming, as answers from GW when questioned about this are mostly taking the form of 'see the malign portents book on how to field your harbinger,' not 'wait for FAQ' or 'we'll pass your question along to the development team.'

Still an open question on whether the Knight of Shrouds can wrest control of a Grand Host or Legion army from Nagash or their respective Mortarch.  Right now it's entirely up in the air as a specific-vs-specific rules conflict, but I expect the ruling to come back in the negative.  Of course, if the KofS can't take traits or artefacts in a legion army anyway, then you don't really get much from making him your general instead anyway.

I'm just sad that the new ethereal wording kills what was the best command trait for nighthaunt.

[kozokus]

1 hour ago, WoollyMammoth said:

'm not saying the new tome is bad, just pointing out that we did not get everything we wanted.

The more I read you the more I think you just wanted skyfires and destiny dice for death. 

As a khorne/sce player there are lists here that I can't beat without a specialised list.

Quite shocked to see you denying the strengths of the book.

Sure death has no skyfire and tzbolts. But no one can field that much cheap powerful heroes and powerful 2" attack range on 25mm bases hordes.

[swarmofseals]

Here's a list I've cooked up that is intended to be semi-competitive but not a top tournament contender. It's more of a fun idea that would probably be reasonably hard (at least I think):

Coven Throne - General, Spell: Vile Transference, Command Trait: Aristocracy of Blood (260)

Prince Vhordrai - Spell: Amethystine Pinions (480)

Necromancer - Spell: Overwhelming Dread (110)

5 Blood Knights (260)

2x 5 Dire Wolves (120)

40 Skeleton Warriors (280)

2x Mortis Engine (360)

Reserve: 130 (likely to be used on a balewind)

 

This version of the list would be Legion of Blood and probably use the Amulet of Screams artefact, on either the Necromancer or the Coven Throne. Not sure which yet. Depending on the opposing deployment and battleplan you have a pretty good chance of getting some turn 1 charges off. You can use Amethystine Pinions if necessary on Vhordrai for a 19" move (or 24" if very lucky) and get an additional bump of 3" off the balewind. Combined with rerolling charges you should be able to get him pretty deep. He should also be relatively durable with a 3+ rerolling 1's, 2+ if you get the Mystic Shield off with the Coven Throne. 

If you are lucky you might also be able to get a turn 1 charge with the Blood Knights, depending on the scenario. 12" move plus 3" bump gives you 15", which is likely a 9" charge or so. With the reroll you have a ~50% chance to get it. 

If your opponent lets you, you can deploy the Dire Wolves out of the grave in a forward position to screen you from countercharges. I wouldn't count on this, but it's a tactical option that should force your opponent to deploy in a way that prevents it. 

Of course you don't have to play it like this either -- if the opponent's list is more aggressive you can deploy the Dire Wolves as a screen and then counterpunch with your hammer units. You can deploy the Necromancer back out of reach and use the balewind to dish out a -1 to hit penalty where it's needed most without as much risk of counter-attack.

The Mortis Engines provide a number of functions. They help get your spells off turn 1 and interfere with enemy magic later. With the enemy at -2 to -3 bravery their wail attack becomes quite threatening, and then they can unleash the reliquary for more damage/healing.

If the enemy fails to wipe out your behemoths you have quite a lot of healing power between The Hunger, chalice, Vile Transference and two activations of the reliquary.

There are a few things I don't like about this list. I'd rather have a block of Dire Wolves instead of Skeletons but I'm 10 points short on that. I'd also like to get a unit of Bat Swarms in there to interfere further with shooting. 

Here is another version:

Coven Throne - General, Spell: Vile Transference, Command Trait: Mastery of Death (260)

Prince Vhordrai - Spell: Amethystine Pinions (480)

Necromancer - Spell: Overwhelming Dread (110) 

Necromancer - Spell: Fading Vigour (110)

2x30 Dire Wolves (640)

5 Dire Wolves (60)

Corpse Cart - Unholy Lodestone (80)

Bat Swarms (80)

Mortis Engine (180)

 

This one is Legion of Sacrament. You trade hitting power for a lot more sustain with the two huge units of Dire Wolves. Opponents will have a hard time clearing them in time to win the objectives game, especially if they take the time to deal with Vhordrai. You lose the ability to reroll that first turn charge, but you should still be able to charge turn 1 most of the time with Amethystine Pinions if you want. The Mastery of Death trait makes up for the loss of the balewind bump, but you could also drop the second Necromancer in favor of a balewind if you want. The other advantage of this list is that it should be much more consistent in its casting with up to +3 to cast from the Corpse Cart, Mortis Engine and battle trait. 

[Malakithe]

20 minutes ago, kozokus said:

The more I read you the more I think you just wanted skyfires and destiny dice for death. 

As a khorne/sce player there are lists here that I can't beat without a specialised list.

Quite shocked to see you denying the strengths of the book.

Sure death has no skyfire and tzbolts. But no one can field that much cheap powerful heroes and powerful 2" attack range on 25mm bases hordes.

*cough*SKAVEN*cough*

But yeah...Death was never meant to be played like those other faction. Doesnt fit the lore or style. We win through cheap unending masses that we have to replenish as the battle goes on and destabilize the battlefield.

March those blocks of skellies up or ambush them. Khorne coming at you? Hit em with either half movement, one dice to charge, soulpike, or -1 attacks, -1 to hit...or all! Same with SCE...teleporting block of libs? Hit with -1 to hit and -1 attacks and let them sit there. Sure skellies cant touch them but there wont be able to chew through a block of 40 reviving skellies while debuffed.

Got to use the tactics and tools available.

Also i really want to see Skaven get a LoN style book lol

[Killax]

1 hour ago, WoollyMammoth said:

Not really. It resolved the fact that death is no longer a fractured concept, but it doesn't resolve "all the issues" with them . Death is surely a legitimate army now without glaring holes (like a lack of spell lores), but it doesn't have all the tools we'd like (or perhaps need).  First and foremost, Death continues to be a 'Grand Alliance' completely devoid of shooting in a meta where the majority of the successful lists are shooting-heavy.
 

• The new book gives death a little bit more punch but not up to the level of Khorne, so we will not suddenly be overwhelming things with pure melee power (at least not noticeably more than had always been possible). The height of our melee strength was with 400pt Necrosphinx with double move + free 10" move VLoZD, even then Death was not doing particularly well. Death has some great options to hit hard in this book but there is a lot of investment for each hammer and some of the tools are not completely reliable (like ambush into failed charge). When you are tying up all your hopes in say, 7 Nagash attacks, games are likely to be very swingy. We still cannot rely on only hitting hard to win games.
   
• The book definitely gets Death up to par with movement (ambush, summon, Ame. Pinions), but it doesn't break the bank like some of the best tournament lists. There is nothing here to get overly excited about. Its possible Neferata's battalion has 3 monsters moving at least 18" to start which could be something, but gets back into the fact that we just aren't going to hit consistently hard to regularly win games that way. Even if we can get into combat easily, opponents can just tarpit us and control the game. A lot of people are really excited for Night's ambushing not realizing what Ghoul Patrol players have known for a while - opponents are going to continually block out their edges with tarpit units and so your best case scenario will be charging a tarpit (and most common scenario will be failing a charge and becoming a sitting duck).
   
• The book provides a little bit more defense (+1 save for skeletons, +1 save in Arkhans battalion) but mostly relies on  coming back to life for defense. This is not always going to cut it. Against lists that hit hard enough, there isn't going to be any unit left to regen. A lot of people playing these new lists are going to have expectations of unkillalble armies that all pop back on the table as soon as the hero phase comes around - the reality is not often going to live up to the expectation - getting blown out after a double turn just like any other list. Maximizing the regen is going to be a careful balancing act. We still have nothing overly special to do first turn other than summoning and ambushing which will often split our army into pieces for our opponent to more easily manage.  I was hoping for some nice buff spells to boost our army when we have nothing else to do, but we mostly got debuff instead. Our lack of first turn options is going to really show against the Kharadron dropdhip list. Really the only thing we can do defensively is to bubble wrap our expensive pieces, which is nothing new. 
   
• The book provides very little in the ranged offense which was the biggest limitation in death. Already you see a lot of people taking the Grave-Sand Timeglass, which is not going to cut it when you have a 12-wound Magmadroth preventing battleshock on 90+ un-killable models. For all 12 new spells, we got only 1 that can deal a significant threat from range, and at 12" its only 2" farther than the T-gheist screams that we were working with before. In an Arkhan list we might be doing it once at 36", but this is a lot of investment for a 50% chance at doing D6 wounds ... is just not going to be our saving grace. We are still going to be grasping at straws as far as dealing with super synergy heroes bubble-wrapped and hidden in the back of the board. Literally every other army continues to have better options for sniping heroes than the entire Death grand alliance. 
   
• So, what did we get with spells? Everyone is excited for Overwhelming Dread, but is it really that good? Seems like a temporary replacement for the Mourngul (nice to save 400 points at least, but doesn't actually change much). Our lores are centered around debuffing our opponent, but most lists I see are already navigating directly to the offence of Orb, the necessity of Transference to protect our overpriced monsters, and then only relying on only Dread, usually on a necromancer. So our opponent snipes the necromancer and we are back to square one.
   
• Seeing as how Nurgle just came out, and that Nurgle works similar in a lot of ways as death, we should compare the tomes. Do our debuffs shine over the new Nurgle book? An entire nurgle army is easily -1 to hit in combat to start now, with several more -hit options, the best anti-armor in the game, while forcing opponents to re-roll all wounds of 6. What has LoN given death to deal with armor? Nurgle can take a 40 point unit of Marauders for 200 points, having them causing mortals on 6s, have a 5++ save and  2 wounds each. A unit of 40 skeletons for 280 points is never going to shine like that. And the -minus bravery? Yeah Nurgle has got that too. Nurgle is easily 5++ compared to deaths cap at 6++ saves. Nurgle has debuffs along with the buffs, more ranged mortal output, cheaper hordes, handles armor better, a good summoning system, great mobility. There are even a few shooting gems as well in the book (compared to zero shooting whatsoever).  

I'm not saying the new tome is bad, just pointing out that we did not get everything we wanted. There is still a lot of great new things:

• The summoning is a big deal. Before we had "wait here while I go kill stuff" kind of lists.  Now we can have 80 skeletons summoned 9" from the opponent as we charge our monsters in. The skeletons might get the charge too. The key is that we are no longer automatically sticking 50% of our army into 100% of our opponents army.  Even if they fail a charge, our opponent has to deal with a unit 9" from them, where they used to ignore skeletons on the other side of the table. Being able to get our armies into place also puts them on free objectives and gets them moving to contest objectives sooner. Just being able to get our entire army in threat range makes death a lot easier for us to play and harder for our opponent to manage.
   
• All the bravery debuffs are going to add up. Even daemon armies which never had to worry about battleshock are going to be losing a lot more models than they expected. Death is finally the horrific army it was always supposed to be. They had this in WHFB and it was fairly useless, but in AoS its going to be a huge part of playing death, especially against units of multi-wound models who aren't used to having to worry about battleshock, suddenly having entire units melt away. 
   
• Death suddenly has a lot of spells for preventing or limiting movement, which could be the biggest thing. Death becomes the only army which can reliably force their opponents into splitting their army, making it more manageable. This is huge for any army trying to get you in melee, but can also work to a certain extent to keep spells and shooting out of range. We might prevent a unit from being able to move on an objective which is huge. We also get some unique tools like taking away the attacks and damage of units. We now have the capability to take a lot of punch out of units and reduce threats, which I think is what we should be focusing on.

Currently, people are focused on creating a giant hammer kind of army. I'm happy to hear that its working well, but I think its a sucker punch kind of list. Lists are getting a boost because its all new and people don't know how to deal with it yet. Our opponents will learn to kill the Dread wizard fast, they will bubble wrap better against rampaging death monsters, they will snipe Archai before melting Nagash, they will block out ambushing units.

I think death is going to be one of the most tactically difficult armies to play, but it has a lot of potential. We will have to balance the regen properly by building low drop armies, forefitting double turns and using the right debuff at the right time.  We will have to learn to use the new spells more on controlling the battlefield more than just keeping our heroes alive or doing damage. We will have to understand exactly what our opponent wants to do and we will have to stop them with a lot of small tools rather than simply shooting it dead like most lists try to do. 

All the issues with Death are far from resolved, but we got some new tools we didn't expect, and we still have a long way to go to see what we can do with them.

It's a long part of text to quote but because you put the time into it I feel very much obliged to respond. If only for the respect to you with the time you put into this.
The fact of the matter is, in my quote you snipped to a few sentences, I also mentioned how the Shooting phase is an issue for every army that doesn't have units who thake part of it. The idea that this is somehow exclusive to Legions of Nagash as a whole is both incorrect and there is something to be said for the ranged potential of Legion of Night with two Terrorgheists to begin with... That stuff is on the levels of the biggest problems we see now.

In regards to your bullet points:

• Why on earth should Legions of Nagash work out on the exact same combat levels of Khorne? Not only is every relevant character a Wizard in addition to a potent melee options you outspeed Khorne by the virtue of at least 9".  The idea that you cannot hit hard with things is completely false, with a Terrorgheist doing 6 unstoppable wounds at the roll of a 6 with 3+ attacks if you want to, with Morghast Harbringers with Halberds in Grand Host of Nagash or a Vampire Lord on Zombie Dragon within Legion of Blood you easily hit hard enough and reliable enough. Khorne has no way to summon/deep strike/even remotely have a relevant Ranged Attack and does not Deadly Invocation back what hasn't been killed. Want to deal with Bloodsecrators? Look into Legion of Night and Grand Host of Nagash.
   
• The idea that that summonning, ambushing and movement is so easily stopped altogether is simply not true. Because the fact of the matter is that Legions of Nagash isn't FEC and has acces to multiple much more potent tools, a ton more flying AND a ton more relevant Magic. Play it, see how effective it is. Because you can summon opponents going for the edges mean you can summon smack right where you want to. All that is required is some form of plan...
   
• Your third point shows an extremely bad and biased opinion. Offcourse this isn't always going to cut it. Opponents their attacks will not always cut it either. IF you want to play Tzeentch and think this will always cut it, do it, I encourage it. What you seem to look for is unbalanced or poor design. AoS has it, be happly Legions of Nagash has strong design but not instantly wins you the game.
   
• Again no, you cannot rely on one simple trick to do the job. No army can, currently. 
   
• Sniping heroes is again currently a weakness of the game, not one exclusive to Legions of Nagash. Do your best to block LoS, if you have issues with how this core rule works (Shooting phase) feel free to mail GW's design team about it. I will join you on that. With Khorne as your first example, know that it massively suffers heavier as Legions of Nagash as there is not a single rule that allows you to pawn damage to units, like the Necromancer has, or one that allows you to put several blocks of 40 Skeletons near the center of the table. Again I want you to use this to your advantage. It is not that difficult to do.
   

• Quote

  An entire nurgle army is easily -1 to hit in combat to start now, with several more -hit options, the best anti-armor in the game, while forcing opponents to re-roll all wounds of 6.

  Again, this thought patron is based on a falsehood. -1 to hit applies for Plaguebearers. All the others don't have that. If you call rolling 6+ for Mortal Wounds the best anti-armour in the game, know that 1. It's a spell and 2. You can do this with Legion of Blood's general, no questions asked, no roll to be made. The re-roll of wounds of 6's again based on the random Cycle effect is only applicable if you A. Have a Wizard that wants to spend it's spell to the Cycle and B. it assumes it's highly relevant to begin with compaired to the absolute massive ammounts of attacks Legions of Nagash has by Nurgle comparison.
  If you want to know what deals with armour, here are your options:
  - Terrorgheist
  - Zombie Dragon
  - Morghast with halberds
  - Arkhan
  - Bloodseeker Palaquin
  - Hexwraiths
  - Spirit Hosts
  - Vampire Lord on Zombie Dragon

As before, I agree with you on the great things you furthermore mention. But the mayority of 'your points' do not hold any water.
A. You have the speed/teleport options
B. You have the Attrition if you want to (I'm hammering on running all foot characters so much now yet named character focus remains...)
C. You have the attack numbers and buff/debuff spells that matter
D. You have the Mortal Wounds

With these four tools, all you require is good play to be a competitive presence. If you want to replicate Khorne-like attacks, you can on certain units. But the fact of the matter is, a Bloodsecrator makes those attacks and it isn't like a Vampire Lord on foot doesn't do the same. IF you want a hammer, you create a hammer. The tools above are the best for it. Like Khorne strong hammers come in big numbers. All you need to do is 15+ Hexwraiths/6 Morghasts/2 Terrorgheist/2 Vampire Lords on Zombie Dragons...

Big hammers are not sucker punch lists. They are the game. That hammer is sometimes called 30 Bloodletters, more than a dozen Stormcasts with Hammers, double Lord of Change, Glottkin with 40 Marauders and many more.

The only issue that remains is that who do not focus on the current meta of the game and acknowledge how well these big hammers work. Analyzing the actual competitive top isn't hard to do when you stop working on assumptions like an army being constantly -1 to hit, Khorne being without a lynchpin, Skyfires being immume to double Terrorgheist effects or in general armies having the ability to deal with 15+ Hexwraiths, 6 Morghasts, double terrors and 40 block Skeleton units.

All I can say is to see this army as a complete new army, because it is. The Allegiance abilities and fact you have such a massive toolbox to browse through quite certainly make Legions of Nagash armies one of the most competitive flexible and indeed very competitive with big blocks, the right hands and the mindset of 40K deep striking.

[swarmofseals]

1 hour ago, WoollyMammoth said:

a lot of stuff

I really would love for you to consider how many times you have rehashed these arguments in this thread. It's really feeling like every page or three you feel the need to come back and remind everyone that you don't think the book is competitive and that the spells aren't good enough, the ranged support isn't good enough, the hammers aren't good enough, the defense isn't good enough etc. etc. 

You frame it like Death needs to be able to have Murderhost level melee offense plus all the healing and deployment shenanigans, or it needs to be a gunline list, or the horde units need to be literally unkillable by even the fiercest double turn tournament lists. 

You build up strawmans like "A lot of people playing these new lists are going to have expectations of unkillalble (sic) armies that all pop back on the table as soon as the hero phase comes around - the reality is not often going to live up to the expectation - getting blown out after a double turn just like any other list." Anyone who comes to the table with this expectation SHOULD be disappointed. If it worked like that it would be completely and utterly imbalanced. Sometimes it will work like this and sometimes it won't. In fact, some of us have been trying to figure out the conditions that are needed for opponents to destroy our units before they get healed. Spoiler alert: if you build you list to be defensive, it's a lot. Many opponents won't be capable of concentrating that kind of damage, and even the ones that are capable won't get the rolls they need every time. If you build correctly, then the vast majority of opponents will be relying on double turns just to kill the horde units. 

You don't need to have an invincible army that never loses a model without healing it to win the game. All you need an army that is tough enough to hold the objectives for enough time to outscore your opponent. If you held the objectives for four turns and get tabled, you just won the game. In many situations if you held the objectives for three turns and get tabled, you just won the game. 

We have the book now. It is what it is. At this point anyone who is reading this thread knows your opinions on it. Rehashing them over and over only serves to make people feel bad -- there is no other purpose. At this point GW should rightly dismiss complaints about the book that are based on supposition. What we need to do now is come up with ideas (ideally supported by some reasonably rigorous analysis) and actually test the hell out of them. We need to figure out what works and what doesn't. Or we can just spitball and come up with fun lists for casual play. That is totally valid too -- not everything needs to be tournament competitive.  

I think at the very least Death will be casual-competitive and will actually likely get complained about a lot by casual players as the healing mechanics will be really demoralizing to play against. What remains to be seen is if it will be tournament competitive. We can't figure that out with guesswork.

If in six months Death still isn't tournament playable then we can complain about the book and have a leg to stand on. We'll actually have real evidence for what the shortcomings are.

[Killax]

35 minutes ago, kozokus said:

The more I read you the more I think you just wanted skyfires and destiny dice for death. 

As a khorne/sce player there are lists here that I can't beat without a specialised list.

Quite shocked to see you denying the strengths of the book.

Sure death has no skyfire and tzbolts. But no one can field that much cheap powerful heroes and powerful 2" attack range on 25mm bases hordes.

As before, the mayority of those posts really seem to not even look beyond Tzeentch.  
Fact of the matter is that double Terrorgheists actually is a whole lot more of a problem as Skyfires are. 

But hey... If actual Death players can't figure out the potency of this Battletome it's really their loss.

My opinion on Tzeentch is simple if you want Tzeentch, play Tzeentch. It's a whole lot cheaper as Legions of Nagash, has nothing to do with the undead and a starter package for "I don't know how to play but I MUST WIN against others who are new" is very easy to put in the basket too,
Get two Lord of Changes, make one Kairos, get 30 Pink Horrors and 9 Skyfires. Have fun, good luck, whole army has again nothng to do with Legions of Nagash...

[Richelieu]

1 hour ago, Killax said:

As before, the mayority of those posts really seem to not even look beyond Tzeentch.  
Fact of the matter is that double Terrorgheists actually is a whole lot more of a problem as Skyfires are. 

But hey... If actual Death players can't figure out the potency of this Battletome it's really their loss.

My opinion on Tzeentch is simple if you want Tzeentch, play Tzeentch. It's a whole lot cheaper as Legions of Nagash, has nothing to do with the undead and a starter package for "I don't know how to play but I MUST WIN against others who are new" is very easy to put in the basket too,
Get two Lord of Changes, make one Kairos, get 30 Pink Horrors and 9 Skyfires. Have fun, good luck, whole army has again nothng to do with Legions of Nagash...

Yeah, as a Stormcast player, I was pretty shocked to see some of the mechanics in action in my first game against a Legions of Nagash list.  I've been pretty active on this thread helping clarify some of the new rules and this tome really appeals to me.  If I wasn't hoarding money for the DoK release, I'd buy some of the great death bundles in a heartbeat. 

LoN has strong, strong magic.  The sheer quantity of debuffs is pretty astounding.  Screening units galore.  Fast units.  Tarpits.  Hammers.  Anvils.  Even though I have been thinking about the strength of the regenerative ability of summonable units for the last couple weeks, I still had difficulty applying the right amount of force .  I screwed up repeatedly and ended up having to deal a total of 21 wounds to a unit of 5 black knights to finally kill it.  This will not be an anomaly, but a constant thorn in the side of LoN opponents. 

[Malakithe]

The only thing that will deter me from Death is if Skaven got a similar style battletome. But thats it. The fact that i cant nail down a list i like is good lol any other faction i could knock a list no problem 

[Elmir]

I think that's the real strength of this book. It seems to have a series of playable/viable build to try out. What will float to the top as best "netlist" will remain to be seen. 

I also doubt the days of not seeing any death in a top 20% of tournaments will continue. Sure, it will probably not be as easy to play as Tzeentch, but like Killax already said, it's got more to do with how broken shooting is in this game (the lack of targeting limitations at least), rather than the actual LoN book. 

[Arkiham]

4 hours ago, WoollyMammoth said:

a good summoning system,

 

sorry. what?

I think you mistakenly wrote good instead of terrible.

it's extremely restrictive, so much so ive seen next to no talk of using it to summon at all.  

3 turns to summon 10 plaguebearers compared to whenever you wanted previously? pffft ill just deploy them an move run and charge into where i want them

[Black_Fortress_Immortal]

4 minutes ago, Arkiham said:

sorry. what?

I think you mistakenly wrote good instead of terrible.

it's extremely restrictive, so much so ive seen next to no talk of using it to summon at all.  

3 turns to summon 10 plaguebearers compared to whenever you wanted previously? pffft ill just deploy them an move run and charge into where i want them

I guess it depends.  The reason why it's like this now is so that you can bring in very large units of 30-40+, whereas you could not before.  It takes a lot of planning and foresight to set up gravesites so that the enemy will have trouble blocking them as well as claiming the objectives.  I like it better for if I was running 40-man skel units, but not for popping up the occasional Bat Swarm.

[swarmofseals]

20 minutes ago, Black_Fortress_Immortal said:

I guess it depends.  The reason why it's like this now is so that you can bring in very large units of 30-40+, whereas you could not before.  It takes a lot of planning and foresight to set up gravesites so that the enemy will have trouble blocking them as well as claiming the objectives.  I like it better for if I was running 40-man skel units, but not for popping up the occasional Bat Swarm.

I think he meant Nurgle summoning

[WoollyMammoth]

The responses show a misunderstanding my post. It was in no way a 'death is not competitive' post, rather an argument against the statement "LoN resolved all the issues Death previously had."

Here is a more simple TL;DR for you to get a better understanding:

BAD
- LoN does not give death players significantly more offence than before. Death melee is still really good (it has to be) but it is not so good that you will consistently win games relying on offence alone. 
- LoN gives a lot more movement options. This could be a great benefit, but there does not appear to be anything amazing (like Vanguard Wing)
- LoN provides very little with ranged offence, and Death lists will still struggle more than any faction when you have to kill a hidden char at the back of the board or bubble wrapped behind hordes.
- Overwhelming Dread is good but we have to be careful not to rely on it
- Does this book stand up to Nurgle in comparison? Nurgle got buffs, debuffs, range, hordes, defense, bravery debuffs. Their book seems more well-rounded than LoN.

GOOD
- Summoning is extremely useful
- We can punish bravery more than any other army
- There are a lot of really good spells we should be testing out, other than Orb/Transference/Dread

SUMMARY:
LoN did not resolve all the issues, but maybe its okay - there is a lot of stuff we have to test.

@Malakithe
I made a lot of points about how death has to play the long game.

I don't want death to play like Skaven, I just wanted more ranged offence via spells like they were originally deigned in WHFB.

I would love a Skaven battletome. I don't want to say like LoN though- because I would prefer a few new models.

@Sception
I confirmed hes not named in my post. I agree about the FAQ team. For Nighthaunt, I agree with what you have said, i think they are going to get a new tome this year. In the meantime everything got a boost and fits great into LoN lists (except black coach).

@Killax
I said death cannot rely on only offence like Khorne. LoN does not bring a whole lot of new things. Tgheist are mostly the same as they have ever been. Khorne does not need any help getting into combat.

I did not say anything about stopping movement or summoning. Ambushing on the other hand, is very easily stopped. When you have to come in on a table edge, your options are very limited and easily mitigated. The only really good thing about the ambush is you can choose what turn to bring a unit in - your opponent is likely to forget about the unit and have it surprise them late game. But - first turn any good opponent is not going to give you any good options for ambushing. 

I specifically asked what LoN did for anti-armor - the answer is very little. You might argue that Death already had plenty of rending anyway.

Its called the Plaguetouched Warband. Everything in the army is -1 to hit, and there is nothing you can do about it. There is also the Lord of Blights which can give the plaguebearer buff to any unit. Its time to bone up on Nurgle, because we will all be seeing this stuff a lot. 

@swarmofseals
I'm not rehashing old arguments. Most of what I say is new information. The only things I'm repeating is my disappointment in the lack of offensive spells, and at the bottom I mention something about named chars again. There were a lot of positive things in my post which are new things to think about, which you have not addressed. 

In order for it to be a strawman, it would have to be false statement and to be a strawman argument, I would have to be making a strawman example to refute a point. For example, you would say that Fell Bats are not a good unit, then I would say "everyone who fields 30 fell bats thinks they are a great unit". The idea is, you cannot prove I don't know people who field 30 fell bats. 

Since it is likely true that some people will be dissapointed that the regen does not work as well as they hoped, and the fact that I'm not trying to refute anyone's argument, its not a strawman argument. I'm speculating based on my experience, that people are likely to get their hopes up with the regen and have it not often work out as well as they hope. I could be wrong, but you back up my argument to an extent, implying that reality often falls short of expectation, which I agree with.

A list with say, 160 skeletons would benefit from all the regen, but this is a tough road (especially with the current cost of skeletons) so I don't think many people are doing this.

You don't need to wait 6 months to see some of the limitations, but I agree that we have to test a lot of things and see how it all plays out in the future, as I said in my post.

@Arkiham
I agree with that however if you are taking Horticulous, you are generating a lot of points. Its not an early game ambush technique but it is a very viable mid-late game summoning which cannot be countered by your opponent (compared to gravesites). It also accounts for larger units (summoning 20 PB was not possible before). All and all, its a good summoning system, just not widely usable in every list.

Personally I think the gravesite system is better, which is good because death will be relying on it for mobility, where Nurgle has got a ton of mobility outside of summoning now.
 

2 hours ago, Killax said:

Fact of the matter is that double Terrorgheists actually is a whole lot more of a problem as Skyfires are. 

LOL.

 

[Malakithe]

6 minutes ago, WoollyMammoth said:

@Malakithe
I made a lot of points about how death has to play the long game.

I don't want death to play like Skaven, I just wanted more ranged offence via spells like they were originally deigned in WHFB.

I would love a Skaven battletome. I don't want to say like LoN though- because I would prefer a few new models

Oh i was referring to the style of battletome. It works well for mixed factions. Might even see chaos and order books going this route. The old standard was the DoT book but the LoN style has upped the game a lot in terms of mixing factions...perfect for a skaven clan system

[Killax]

Edit: those who want some ideas about strong LoN lists can Pm me, this discussion is so not focused on LoN that it doesnt even serve much purpose to respond.

Those who picked up the LoN Battletome will find/have all the buffs needed/required. No real reason to repeat what has been said.

For those who want to discuss other armies, pick the right topic.

[annabolina]

How does this list look?

The 10 skelly unit would be for summoning 

 

Allegiance: Grand Host of Nagash

Leaders

Arkhan The Black Mortarch of Sacrament (320)

- Lore of the Dead : Decrepify (Deathmages)

Necromancer (110)

- Lore of the Deathmages : Soul Harvest

Vampire Lord On Zombie Dragon (440)

- General

- Command Trait : Lord of Nagashizzar

- Deathlance

- Artefact : Deathforged Chain

- Lore of the Vampires : Vile Transference

Vampire Lord (140)

- Nightmare

- Lore of the Vampires : Amaranthine Orb

Units

40 x Skeleton Warriors (280)

-Ancient Spears

40 x Skeleton Warriors (280)

-Ancient Spears

10 x Hexwraiths (320)

10 x Skeleton Warriors (80)

-Ancient Spears

Total: 1970 / 2000

 

 

[kozokus]

What would be your perfe t hero line-up? I can' help but start with a couple of necro and a vampire Lord.

[Xasz]

7 minutes ago, kozokus said:

What would be your perfe t hero line-up? I can' help but start with a couple of necro and a vampire Lord.

I always end up with:

Arkhan, 2x Necro, 1x Vampire Lord and sometimes a second Vampire Lord.

But I'm a sucker for the spell heavy variant and Lords of Sacrament so... it is not really surprising.

[lare2]

1 hour ago, kozokus said:

What would be your perfe t hero line-up? I can' help but start with a couple of necro and a vampire Lord.

Definitely the necros but, for the life of me, I'm really not a fan of the vamp. lord models (except for the VLoZD). It's something I'm trying to deal with as their spell lore is immense and it's fairly clear they should be used... especially the flying or horseback variety. I've always preferred playing Wight Kings but they're substandard since LoN dropped. 

[AverageBoss]

2 hours ago, annabolina said:

How does this list look?

The 10 skelly unit would be for summoning 

 

Allegiance: Grand Host of Nagash

Leaders

Arkhan The Black Mortarch of Sacrament (320)

- Lore of the Dead : Decrepify (Deathmages)

Necromancer (110)

- Lore of the Deathmages : Soul Harvest

Vampire Lord On Zombie Dragon (440)

- General

- Command Trait : Lord of Nagashizzar

- Deathlance

- Artefact : Deathforged Chain

- Lore of the Vampires : Vile Transference

Vampire Lord (140)

- Nightmare

- Lore of the Vampires : Amaranthine Orb

Units

40 x Skeleton Warriors (280)

-Ancient Spears

40 x Skeleton Warriors (280)

-Ancient Spears

10 x Hexwraiths (320)

10 x Skeleton Warriors (80)

-Ancient Spears

Total: 1970 / 2000

 

 

I really feel you should take one of the debuff spells on the Necromancer over Soul Harvest.

5x Dire Wolves would be a better option than the 10x Skeletons. If you stick with the skeletons anyways, swords is a better option for a small unit like that.

[WoollyMammoth]

Things I would love to do with the new spell lores:

- Cast Fading Vigor on 30 liberators and cut their attacks in half. Combine with Dread to make them wet noodles. 

- Spectral Grasp a large piece of terrain in the middle of the board and create a big tar pit to annoy my opponent. I'd love to Locus this and cover the board.

 - Win objectives after Prison of Grief blocks a unit from being able to walk a few inches onto an objective. Block a Skink unit from retreating. Hit a unit on the side then prevent them from making any pile-in move. 

- Double Decreprify to reduce the Ghal Maraz to  4+ to wound, 1 damage.

- Push a bunch of units aside using the Vortex then casting an 18" Soul Harvest to hit most of my opponents army.

- Stack Spirit Gale, Dread and Neferata to give a unit -3 to hit.

- Use Amethystine Pinions to make a first turn charge with Neferata into Archaon then roll a 6 to kill him outright with her dagger.

- Use Soul Pike on some Dracoth Calvary and then have one of them die in the charge. 

- Have Arkhan get a double turn then cast Amaranthine Orb on a 9. Draw an 18" line across most of my opponents army twice to cause a plethora of D6 mortals.