Lets Chat: Legions of Nagash

[Sception]

Im not fisagreeing on dire wolves being good, but i do want to point out that dwolves are a fast, vanguard unit and corpse cart is a slow, backline unit, so even if you take both, there's a good chance you won't be using that bonus.

Also, what point change on zombies?

[swarmofseals]

34 minutes ago, Tittliewinks22 said:

What changes to corpse cart?

Balefire has an added chance to wound enemy wizards while Lodestone now allows you to reroll Deathly Invocation rolls within a radius.

 

EDIT: @Sception yeah, it's not super likely that you'll get the Corpse Cart bonus without balloon stringing a large unit. It's still a decent option though that will come up occasionally. 

[Sception]

9 hours ago, Malakithe said:

6 battaltions...we know of 4. Wonder what the other two will be then? Maybe a pure Nighthaunt one?

My guess is one for each allegiance, so each legion gets a formation including their named character, plus something for soublight (probably centered around named vamp), and something for generic death (most likely reprint of the existing skeleton formation).

[Malakithe]

I cant wait to see this thread with all kinds of list ideas

[AverageBoss]

Just waiting on the full leaks to hit before I start in on that.

 

[WoollyMammoth]

Here is a summary of the video:

Spoiler

FEC can ally with any of the death factions except soulblight allegiance. 

NOTE: ghouls not summonable, therefore nerfed (no more double pile in w/ Necro)

KEY POINT: All 33 Scrolls in this book are available to all 4 grand hosts, giving you 4 large armies instead of 7 mini ones

All units:
Battleline
Dire Wolves Skeletons Zombies

Units
Mortis Engine, Tgheist, Zdragon, bloodseeker palanquin, coven throne, bat swarms, black knight, blood knight, 2 corpse carts, Fell Bats, Grave Guard, Hexwraiths, 2 morghasts, spirit hosts, Vargheists

Chars
Cairn Waith, Necromancers, Banshee, Vlord, Nagash, 3 Mortarchs, Prince Vhordrai, VLoZD, 

(only 31?)

6 battalions

Legion Details
Deathless Minions 6+++ (still everyone gets) 
Heroes can restore destroyed summonable units @ gravesites
Gravesites for all legions (2 points you can summon from + Regen D3 within 9")

Grand Host of Nagash
-Gravegaurd battline, Morghasts if Nagash general
-Morghast +1 attack
-Every unit heals D3 on a 5+
- Move Gravesite abilites

Legion of Sacrament
- if you kill an enemy unit within 9" of gravesite, you can restore your own unit destroyed earlier in battle
+1 to all casting 

Legion of Blood
- minus 1 bravery for all units within 6" of your units (in addition to the banners, mortarchs)
- +1 melee attacks for VLords and Blood Knights.

Legion of Night
- +1 save for deathrattle in territory
- 3 ambush units within 6" battlefield edge

This is essentially it for the video, other than details about warscrolls which have already been leaked. 
Nothing about spells, nothing about points.
 

Here are the key confirmed GOOD things this book does for death:
- Reorganizes all the unusable mini-armies into one giant army with 4 different allegiances. 
- Allows you to summon full units instead of 10 models.
- Summoning is now a useful and reliable ability rather than a risky (and mostly useless) spell
- Death is finally able to take advantage of its potent magical abilities through 2 new spell lores
- Spirit Hosts and Grave Guard now benefit from necromancer (huge)
- Certain units like Black Knights are vastly improved. A lot of outdated stuff was updated for the current state of the game. I haven't seen all scrolls so I cannot say for sure, but it seems like all death units were reviewed and improved to all have relevancy .... (hopefully) this means no more frustrating silly duds that no one would ever use. 

Here are the key confirmed BAD things this book does for death:
- Blood Knights loose regen, Vlord loses his spell, zombies lose the merge ability.
- In a book centered around named chars, they reiterate that you cant take command traits. If the command traits are essential like Stormcast, this creates a really lame bassackward situation in which no one will ever lead except a VLoZD (pretty much the current sate of death). If the traits are nothingburgers like Nurgle, then it dosen't really matter. Either way, putting us in a situation where we hope the command trait rules suck is not a great place to be in. 

Here are my biggest unconfirmed HOPES for the book (and my hopes for the last 3 years)

#1
We need INCREDIBLE spells. The two previewed are nowhere near good enough. Soul Harvest is not good, if you have multiple units within 3" you are most likley dead before casting, making it little more than a 3" arcane bolt. Ama. Orb is low chance, low range and very situational. There two are not cutting it for what we need. Nagash needs all kinds of spells to make him viable - protection, healing, and nasty damage. Basically this entire tome is weighted on how well they wrote the spells.

#2
If we DON't get amazing spells, he needs to be much cheaper. 800 is insane. With the number of mortal output in the current game I've never had him make it to turn 3.  Archaon is so much better and  100 points cheaper. Hes got 4 more wounds with the ability to cancel any spell on a 4+ and then 5++ to mortals after that. In the new Nurgle tome he is easily an additional 5+++ save and his Slayer of Kings is easily 5+ making it more reliable than Hand of Dust for deleting models.  If you add all that in, Archaon is still not popular, because when you factor how expensive his wounds are, its just not worth it. It creates an extremely swingy game where if things go bad for you, your points are bled out way too quickly. (That being said i think Archaon lists are about to get a huge upsurge with Nurgle)

Is Death Competitive?  
Yes, Death competitive right now, they just have a glass ceiling against some of the most competitive stuff. Whether that's a flaw of Death or the current broken lists is a matter of opinion. With the current state of the rules, Shooting is the absolute king. Shooting has literally no limitations making it the most useful tactic in the game. Spells are a close second, depending on range and damage potential. Tzeentch literally has the best of both and they are dominating the competitive scene more than any army we have seen since AoS started. Most stormcast units have some kind of reliable shooting and they are also at the top. Kharadron and Kunnin Rukk are not far behind. Fyreslayers combine hordes of unkillable bodies with a massive amount of shooting built in.  These lists are incredibly uphill for any death list, which will rely on a lot of luck and/or outplaying your opponent to win. If you are playing against a good player with one of these armies, you will have to rely on luck alone, which is not competitive.

So how can we compete agasint competitive stuff? The new army makes us a bit better hitting hard, and a little better at sustain. I say only a little better because anyone familiar with playing regenerating hordes knows you are almost always in one of two boats: 

A. All my models are at or near full health so regen is not helpful
B. All my units that need regen are dead. Its too late for them

Coming back D6 or 8D3 models doesn't make any difference in either of these scenarios. Its not like WHFB where you could rely on alternating turns to plan out your regen - you get two turns and you don't need to regen anything, or you get two turns against you and everything dies before you could hope to regen. One of my biggest concerns is this book focuses too much on flashy ways to do the same exact things death has always done and do nothing for our limitations. 

So again, this book is entirely resting on the shoulders of the spell lores. We need long range spells which we can reliably snipe out key units. In all of our worst match-ups, our games are incredibly uphill since we currently cannot do that. A great example is against Fyreslayers - one way- any way- to kill the general who's making everything immune to battleshock would make the game so much more reasonable. Currently death has absolutely no way to get through to hordes to attack the general .. save an insane Curse of Years cast, which is like 6% likelyhoood. Literally every army in AoS has a way to kill the general within 18" with good listbuilding - except Death. 

The Bottom Line?
99% of the games I play are not against steamroll lists or overly competitive players, so its not like playing death is misery. I have loved playing my death non-stop since AoS Launch. This new book starts to really support death and brings back a lot of the models onto the table, and makes the ones I have been using even more fun (in most cases). The only thing that I am worried about in this regard is that it will not work to play  fun & reasonably competitive games with Nagash.
 

[AthlorianStoners]

@WoollyMammoth thanks for the breakdown! FEC being able to ally is cool, happy with that. 

[Malakithe]

Im really hoping for good spells. Thats going to make or break

[Elmir]

Shooting described as a " useful tactic" is overstating it. In this game, a child can play with shooting units and win... Characters will need some protection and assassinations should require a bit more skill than it currently does.  Mind you, if that Akhan battalion is good (giving adequate protection by the mortis engine), I could see Legion of Sacrament doing very well, because they might get access to a ton of assassination themselves due to very hard to counter magic spells. 

One simple negative modifier to shoot at minor heroes, or full blown protection by your own troops would actually balance this game massively. 

[smucreo]

Legion of Sacrament seems really nice from what we've seen, it just needs that final push of spells of death being really good to become amazing. A 4++ protection from shooting as an artifact, a way to redirect damage (for necromancers as baseline and for Arkhan with the battalion) on your mages, great casting buffs... the only concern I have for now is point costs as going for Arkhan, Necromancers, Mortis, battalion, VLoZD leaves you scrambling for enough points to fill battleline with something big enough to reliably redirect damage to.

[Killax]

9 hours ago, Mikeymajq said:

So are Dire wolves any good? And do you mean straight up battleline no matter what alliegance(legion)?

Don't know if they are good, don't play Death. Yeah they are Battleline no matter what Allegiance/Legion.

9 hours ago, TheKingInYellow said:

Do we have any idea on the Palanquin point cost yet?

Also where is the confirmation on the Blood Knight cost?  I haven't seen it confirmed anywhere.

Maby. I have the information directly from the GMG video chat. Ash confirmed the above in that chat because people asked. Maby he has given more information now.

[5kaven5lave]

1 hour ago, smucreo said:

Legion of Sacrament seems really nice from what we've seen, it just needs that final push of spells of death being really good to become amazing. A 4++ protection from shooting as an artifact, a way to redirect damage (for necromancers as baseline and for Arkhan with the battalion) on your mages, great casting buffs... the only concern I have for now is point costs as going for Arkhan, Necromancers, Mortis, battalion, VLoZD leaves you scrambling for enough points to fill battleline with something big enough to reliably redirect damage to.

This is my thinking. If you only need 2 Necromancers and battalion is ~200 then you could get 40 Skellies, 2x 5 Dire Wolves  (at 60 each) and 6 Spirit Hosts, with the Skellies and ghosts being kept up by a Necromancer each. Then you could go hit-and-run mobile beatdown squad with Arkhan, Engine and VLoZD. It won’t win anything, but that’s the fluffy list I’d like to run. 

[Xasz]

Yeah, the spell lores and battalions will be the deciding factor and we know very little about them currently.

If I'm not mistaken, only two spells were features, so 2/12 probably and we have seen nothing about battalions except for some out of context snippets...

I'd go out on a limb that there will be around ~3-5 more direct damage spells, but most likely not in the way DoT handles them, i.e. straight up carbon copies of arcane bolt. I expect stat-damage of some kind (either stapled onto weaker than arcane bolt damage spells or stand alone) and at least one spell that can heal non-summonable units.

There won't be a whole lot of battalions but the one from Legion of Sacrament could be really powerful especially with the hinted protection. As always, battalions can only be measured with point costs and the full list of restrictions/abilities. They might be bonkers, they might be too expensive or too narrow... who knows.

Overall, I'm actually more interested in this book than I expected, after the initial reveal. My personal wishlist-army, would be spell heavy, supported by spirit hosts or blobs of skeletons and/or double VLoZD.

[smucreo]

A really cool spell to have could be a damage over time kind of spell, or a spell that triggers when the enemy does something with that unit, say like moving.

36 minutes ago, 5kaven5lave said:

 if the battalion is ~200 then you could get 40 Skellies, 2x 5 Dire Wolves  (at 60 each) and 6 Spirit Hosts, with the Skellies and ghosts being kept up by a Necromancer each. Then you could go hit-and-run mobile beatdown squad with Arkhan, Engine and VLoZD. 

Why go for Spirit Hosts? They have too many wounds to be resurrected reliably by DI. Assuming the point costs haven't changed I'd wager getting another Necromancer and running 60 zombies to protect them would be better. You could replenish them for 5d3 wounds each turn assuming all heroes are within range of their DI. A really similar list was suggested by Sception I think where he added a Corpse Cart, which synergizes with both your general casting plan and the deadwalker battleline. 

This is assuming no point changes to this units happen and the battalion is around 200 points.

[Malakithe]

From the sound of it you can take almost any unit in any of the Legions. So the possibilities could be crazy. 

I prefer a spell heavy force too. Caster heavy with bodies. Arkhans battalion sounds like a dream lol

[Burf]

5 minutes ago, Malakithe said:

From the sound of it you can take almost any unit in any of the Legions. So the possibilities could be crazy. 

I prefer a spell heavy force too. Caster heavy with bodies. Arkhans battalion sounds like a dream lol

Morghast harbingers with halberds outflanking with a 3d6 should be fun.

Big unit of Grave Guard could be pretty interesting as well, provided they have access to some kind of speed buff.

[5kaven5lave]

2 hours ago, smucreo said:

A really cool spell to have could be a damage over time kind of spell, or a spell that triggers when the enemy does something with that unit, say like moving.

Why go for Spirit Hosts? They have too many wounds to be resurrected reliably by DI. Assuming the point costs haven't changed I'd wager getting another Necromancer and running 60 zombies to protect them would be better. You could replenish them for 5d3 wounds each turn assuming all heroes are within range of their DI. A really similar list was suggested by Sception I think where he added a Corpse Cart, which synergizes with both your general casting plan and the deadwalker battleline. 

This is assuming no point changes to this units happen and the battalion is around 200 points.

Yeah, you’re dead right, I just like Spirit Hosts!! Also it would stop me having to paint 80 Skellies instead of potentially 40, those Zombie models are showing their age a bit. Looking and the recent Nurgle tome it looks like the biggest Batallions are 220 points, think we can expect that or even slightly more for another spell all round. 

[Killax]

2 hours ago, Malakithe said:

From the sound of it you can take almost any unit in any of the Legions. So the possibilities could be crazy. 

I prefer a spell heavy force too. Caster heavy with bodies. Arkhans battalion sounds like a dream lol

Yeah the aspect that was discussed per GH2017 has been resolved, which was the direct Keyword issue Death began to suffer from with the new Ally and Allegiance rules. Now personally I still think there isn't always a logical approach in this for GW but it's 100% better as it used to be because indeed like you said you can thake all units from Legions of Nagash and give them the Legion Keyword.

In many ways Legions of Nagash is now like Slaves to Darkness in the sence that because you can add that Legion/Chaos Mark you can apply them for all kinds of armies without having to deal with Ally rules or other restrictive aspects.
With this in mind the are just a massive ammount of Allegiances you can choose from in Death, because Grand Allegiance Death and Soulblight are in this book in addition to the Legions but there is nothing that will prevent you from using any of the GH2017 Allegiances either. So yeah, tons of options!
If you want go Caster heavy, Elite heavy, Undead heavy or general Death it's all optional. I think the most important aspect though is that summonning has been set seperate from Magic which in turn means you can always do it if you want to. There is a cap to it for Matched Play but this applies for all other armies in the game too  

From my perspective Death will indeed be capable to very much function like the Chaos armies and that's honestly a good position to be in. While Chaos does things in a bit more extreme manner Death combines several aspects of it for minor buffs on specific units instead of all. The cool thing is that while I have not played a game with them yet I can confirm that mixed Chaos still has a place in the game and that place is one Death has now too, at least on paper and this usually means it's true on the table also.

One last thing I will say though is that playing Death still isn't 'easy', placement of models remains as essential here as it is for Chaos and indeed thaking out oppossing supports is a very relevant plan to armies with very limited acces to Shooting attacks. So from a competitive standpoint my tips remain:
- Pick up the Vampire Lord on Zombie Dragon for sure, because even if you will not use it as Vampire Lord you certainly want a flying monstrosity that can dish out heavy mortal wound damage to break ties.
- Certainly consider (ideally Flying) elite units that can thake out support heroes. You have acces to it, undead numbers matter a lot but if you can't reach oppossing support it's still going to be a very hard game.
- 3 massive Battleline units should be the backbone for pretty much all Legions of Nagash.
- If you really want to summon, consider cheap MSU units for it, use them for Objective purposes, less Hammer roles.

Cheers,

[smucreo]

Yeah the VLoZD kit seems almost mandatory, specially with the 4++ save with the artifact. I would agree that at least one big blob is also mandatory, but depending on what you want to accomplish three seem a bit much. Imo you are much better off having one single big summonable block where you can focus all your Deathly Invocations to minimize randomness on the healing and make sure it stays alive until the game is over, oh and also I feel the DI changes favour way more those summonable units with single wound models, so those would be the ones I'd take over other options almost all the time.

[Sception]

Note that, while you can play old allegiances, you can't use the legion allegiance benefits with them, only the grand alliance death ones.  Grand alliance bonuses can be used instead of those of your chosen facion, but another faction's rules cannot, even if all of your units are also in that other faction.

For instance, you can play a nighthaunt faction with battleline spirit hosts, and can choose to use either nighthaunt or grand alliance death allegiance abilities with them, but you cannot use legion of sacrament allegiance rules even though all your units can also have the legion of sacrament keyword.

Legion of sacrament is a faction, not a grand alliance, so you can only use their allegiance rules if your army faction is legion of sacrament, in which case spirit hosts will not be battle line for you (at least not unless legion of sacrament separately also gets battleline hosts).

[Sception]

8 minutes ago, smucreo said:

I feel the DI changes favour way more those summonable units with single wound models, so those would be the ones I'd take over other options almost all the time.

With lodestone rerolls DI isnt too bad w two wound units, and 3+ wound units get more use out of DIs ability to restore wounds pn surviving models.  I agree its best with single wound units, but not by so much that multiwound units need be avoided altogether.

[Killax]

21 minutes ago, smucreo said:

Yeah the VLoZD kit seems almost mandatory, specially with the 4++ save with the artifact. I would agree that at least one big blob is also mandatory, but depending on what you want to accomplish three seem a bit much. Imo you are much better off having one single big summonable block where you can focus all your Deathly Invocations to minimize randomness on the healing and make sure it stays alive until the game is over, oh and also I feel the DI changes favour way more those summonable units with single wound models, so those would be the ones I'd take over other options almost all the time.

Well I see the big blocks as the strong asset because these are the units with the single wound models. The thing really is that I believe that the strongest aspect of Death now very much functions like Chaos', you present all issue units that basically all require some form of awnser.
The moment you go heavy on the elite (again my opinion) the downside becomes that it falls apart when they are gone, or at least the problematic units seem to handled better. Whilst Grave Guard, Undead and Zombies just are still capable of generating tons of attacks. 

In any case though the fact that all options are there is the strongest asset. Because unlike Slaves to Darkness there isn't really an new collection needed to switch marks of Chaos effectively  What I mean by this is that I feel aspects of Death can function as Rotbringers or Skullreapers and no model switch is needed  

16 minutes ago, Sception said:

Legion of sacrament is a faction, not a grand alliance, so you can only use their allegiance rules if your army faction is legion of sacrament, in which case spirit hosts will not be battle line for you (at least not unless legion of sacrament separately also gets battleline hosts).

Yeah you still have to pick one Allegiance, despite having acces to multiple (same for Chaos indeed). 

The quoted last part isn't completely correct though. You can pick the Legion of Sacrament for your army, then all Warscrolls in your army from the Legions of Nagash Battletome will obtain that Keyword. By doing so though you can still choose another Allegiance, because you have the Keywords for it. Though there doesn't seem much reason to do it, you can add any Legion Keyword to those Warscrolls and pick another Allegiance.

It works the same with Chaos, you can still choose the Slaves to Darkness Allegiance if most units have that Keyword, even if they for example also all have the Khorne keyword. What is different is that for Chaos that Keyword addition is done per Warscroll and here it's done for the whole army.

[Sception]

All im saying is that you cant have two factions, even if all your units qualify for both.  If your faction is nighthaunt, then you get battleline hosts, but cant take sacrament allegiance benefits, only nighthaunt or grand alliance death, since your factions allegiance bonuses can always be traded for those of your grand alliance.

But they cant be traded for those of another faction, even if you army qualifies for both.

[smucreo]

30 minutes ago, Killax said:

Well I see the big blocks as the strong asset because these are the units with the single wound models. The thing really is that I believe that the strongest aspect of Death now very much functions like Chaos', you present all issue units that basically all require some form of awnser.
The moment you go heavy on the elite (again my opinion) the downside becomes that it falls apart when they are gone, or at least the problematic units seem to handled better. Whilst Grave Guard, Undead and Zombies just are still capable of generating tons of attacks. 

Well the answer may very well be in the middle of both our opinions  I tend to build lists that don't accomodate big blobs that well so that's why I generally feel they aren't that good when spammed. If you ask me I'll say your approach requires heavy support that can be easily sniped with how the game plays out right now, but I guess you could say the same things about my elite core, that you could just focus it haha

[bsharitt]

14 hours ago, Tittliewinks22 said:

What changes to corpse cart?

It's basically getting its two builds(the brazier and lodestone) broken out into their own warscrolls and I think it's also getting the "summoning heal thing" that a lot of the heroes are getting.