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1 minute ago, bsharitt said:

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.

Yeah this seems to be the case, though the models are seen as seperate the Warscroll provided online is the same for both. No worries though I think they indeed will have seperate Warscrolls for the both of them, which fills out the single unknown in terms of Warscrolls in the book.

So far Ash hasn't given further awnsers to questions so I think generally the costs and battleline functions remained the same but the overall aspect of using the army has been very much increased. So while Legions of Nagash is more or less GA Death 2.0. it does seem to work very well and give a ton of options to fans of all Death aspects, barring TK. 

FEC offcourse could have used a bump also but Im sure it will be adressed somewhere down the lines. GH2018 is a good contender or AoS 2nd edition.

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The two corpse carts are separate units and both gain an extra ability.  Lodestone buffs your casting and lets you reroll deathly invocations.  Baleflame debuffs enemy casting and deals a wound to any enemy casters within 6" each turn on a 6+.  Neother actuqlly generates invocation dice on their own, iirc.

The slow range and limited movement make the lodestone cart easily the better of the two, since itll be easy to keep your mages in range, and difficult to xatch enemy mages.

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13 hours ago, WoollyMammoth said:

LOADS OF STUFF

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Great summary, although I disagree with a couple of things. I'm not sure if you are saying that the spell lores aren't enough to make Nagash competitive as a specific model or if you're talking about Death in general. If you're talking about Nagash specifically, I definitely agree. The two spells revealed so far aren't really tools that Nagash needs. I do think they are a bit better than you are suggesting though, particularly in the context of the Legion of Sacrament. Both spells benefit a lot from Arkhan's command ability. Soul Stealer looks a lot better with a 9" radius. Slap a Balewind on there and now we are looking at a very spicy 18" radius. Amaranthine Orb likewise looks a lot better if you get to pick a spot within 18" (or a sick 36" with Balewind). In that scenario rolling on 3-4 units is a lot more realistic. It's a spell with a lot of variance, but the high end of that variance is very good damage. Also keep in mind that you'll be getting a double cast something like one in four times. There is a really good chance that these spells were featured because the top end of their effects is pretty spectacular and they synergize particularly well with Arkhan. I have every expectation that there will be some other spells that are interesting. It would be really difficult to design 12 different spells that were all just mediocre, unreliable damage. 

The other point that I take exception to is the idea that the regen doesn't really matter because our units are either at full strength or dead. I just don't buy it. There are plenty of times when your opponent doesn't successfully wipe out a unit or doesn't get the double turn, particularly if you are taking large blocks. Also, if the logic is that the heals don't matter because units are either full strength or wiped out, then the banner changes are actually a buff -- removing a mechanic that did nothing in favor of a bravery debuff. Even if these arguments held water, it still wouldn't be accurate to say that the new summoning system has no impact. It has a huge impact on your opponent's decision making. Now opponents are under a lot more pressure to wipe a unit out fully. If your opponent tried to take out a big unit before and failed, he'd be looking at a handful of models returning on average. No big deal. Now he has to face the possibility of many more models returning. If you get a double turn yourself returning 20-30 models to a unit is not out of the question.  

The reason why this pressure is significant is that it forces your opponent to make a choice between gambling hard and allocating attacks inefficiently. This is particularly true of shooting. Every attack allocation decision is probabilistic, particularly when you are shooting with a large unit like 9 skyfires, 30 arrowboys or 9 raptors. Your opponent knows the expected value of his attacks, but there is still a lot of variance in the actual outcome. If your opponent spreads out his attacks then he isn't going to waste any, but he also increases variance. If he concentrates attacks, he reduces variance but risks waste. The pressure generated by the healing potential now strongly encourages opponents to minimize variance at the cost of waste, which makes opponent's ranged attacks significantly less efficient. 

While ranged damage might currently be the king of the hill, it's still a lot less efficient than melee damage. In my WDR calculations I've found that ranged efficiency is a little better than half of melee efficiency (and that isn't factoring in the fact that you shoot only during your turn while you fight during both players turns). This is somewhat mitigated by the number of battalions that currently allow you to double up a unit's shooting (Warrior Kinband, Kunnin Rukk, Aetherstrike Force). 

Just to give a frame of reference, Vanguard Raptors have a ranged WDR of .037. A unit of 9 shooting twice thanks to Aetherstrike Force has a ranged WDR of .055. That's good enough to be pretty awesome considering all the advantages of long ranged shooting in terms of damage concentration. Take 25% off that due to your opponent having to allocate attacks inefficiently to protect against variance and suddenly you are looking at WDRs of .028/.041 or so. That's a big difference. Kurnoth Hunters with Greatbows used to be considered  a seriously competitive choice. Under the old GHB their ranged WDR came in at .033. Under the new GHB it's .027. Kurnoths are now considered to be much more of a niche unit that is good for sniping heroes but isn't efficient enough to rely on as a main battle unit. 

Anyway, I very much agree that based on what we've seen so far Death are likely going to have a tough time against some of the top tier lists (which is to be expected right? Otherwise they wouldn't be top tier). That said, I don't agree that the top tables are all dominated by shooting/magic. Vanguard Wing, Murderhost, Mixed Order Phoenix, Gore Pilgrims, and Thunderquake all have serious melee components. Kharadron Dropship armies shoot a lot but they aren't really a pure gunline. Bill Souza's 7th place list at LVO is a melee list (as will be most Nurgle lists, probably). Warrior Kinband has a big shooting component but it's power comes from its defensive efficiency and deployment shenanigans. The main top tier lists that are truly shooty are the Tzeentch lists and Aetherstrike Force. So yeah, I suspect that any Death list you build will struggle with some of these. That's the way it should be. But lets not pretend that all of these lists are just gunlines and that Death has a ceiling because it can't deal with shooting. I also think it's super likely that Tzeentch will get nerfed again in GHB2018 given how overwhelming its metagame share is getting. Take Changehost and Skyfire Spam down a notch and you won't be facing gunlines all that often.

 

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I can't believe I'm writing more, but I also wanted to point out the possibility that the releases of Death and Nurgle could shift the metagame quite a bit. Changehost got nerfed a bit by the FAQ, and both Death and Nurgle are positioned to be reasonably good against current Tzeentch builds. Mortal Wound spam is powerful and all, but it's still mostly at its best against heavy armor. The combination of cheaper wounds, ward saves and healing really has the potential of overloading Tzeentch's MW output. It's also plausible that Death (and Legion of Sacrament in particular) could have enough dispel power to actually interfere with Tzeentch's casting to some degree. 

Death vs. Nurgle could be really interesting (and quite a slog). The new Nurgle tome definitely looks powerful enough to show up at competitive tables. It's got good mobility and great resilience but has some of the same weaknesses as Death (very little ranged damage). It really depends on how the rest of the abilities shake out, but I definitely think Death has the potential to get the better of this matchup. 

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27 minutes ago, Mikeymajq said:

Those graveyard tokens look to be about the size of cavalry oval bases?

Not that it matters if we measure from the centre of them I guess. I'm just pondering if I should get some bases and decorate with tombstones.

Yea I hate the small ovals.  I think I will use rounds.  Not sure if I will go 40mm, 50mm, or 60mm.  Will play around with it a bit and see which looks better.

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I'll use 25mm round tokens i was using as objective markers at first, maybe transition to larger scenic pieces later.  A use for some of my old unit fillers.  Maybe my casket of souls could find use as a grave site, as it isnt even useful in tk armies these days.

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29 minutes ago, Sception said:

I disagree.  Most of the builds in this book seem very character dependant, and thus are highly vulnerable to the ranged mortal spam tzeentch can put out.  

I don't know why you would reach that conclusion. It's not like the warscrolls suck at baseline. Also, pretty much all of the Tzeentch spells are range 18, and with the changes to the Changeling it'll be a lot harder for Changehost to swap casters in and out of your territory during the hero phase. You can protect at least some of your characters. If you are running a magic heavy build then Arcane Supremacy is going to be a problem, but so far it looks like Death may be one of the few allegiances that can actually overpower a Lord of Change's dispels. Corpse cart + mortis engine + legion of sacrament is already +3 to cast, plus any further beneficial artefacts or command traits or other bonuses (from Arkhan or Nagash, for example). Still though, I think any LoC+Arcane Supremacy build will be tough for a character and magic heavy Death build. For a horde + support build though I think it's a very different story. 

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1 hour ago, Sception said:

I disagree.  Most of the builds in this book seem very character dependant, and thus are highly vulnerable to the ranged mortal spam tzeentch can put out.  

most of death character are buffers, who don't need to be very close to the frontline. Spells have a 18 range, before movement. With the sole exception of the Changehost, spells are quite predictable, and it's possible to avoid at least a good number of spells slinged to your heroes

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@swarmofseals
I agree with everything you said.

I don't think they will botch up the spells that bad, but I've seen them do worse. They could be 3 spells per lore and all the rest of the spells could be buffs/debuffs only. The Nurgle lores are likely a theme, but it could also be a shift to 3 spells per lore going forward. Sylvaneth got one lore (6 spells) so they could say - now Death has two lores but its still only 6 spells.  Tzeentch got 18 sure but ...... Tzeentch. In regards to Nagash, he also might only be able to pick one extra spell - he would need a special rule if he is going to know all of them or multiple, which leaves you with 5 spells instead of the 4 he knows now ... not a significant change. This means you would  have to invest more points on top of his 800 points in necros and Vlords just to give him more spells, which would be very unfortunate (unless Nagash gets a 200 point decrease).

The spell combos you point out are pretty sweet. This does pidgeonhole death into Arkhan lists to have significant range threat, but that's not the worst thing. 

Regen is not a nothingburger at all, and the ability to do it to Grave Guard and Spirit Hosts is very exciting. I'm just being realistic, as a player who frequently plays hordes of ghouls. If you charge them then get double turned, that is 3 combats and 2 shooting phases they have to endure before you get to regen again - this happens all the time. But also a lot of the times my opponent cant kill enough or I get the double turn and they are coming back too fast and overwhelming my opponent. Obviously, the ability to come back as much as 8D3 per turn is going to be crazy, and it's also significant that you can charge in 3+ units at the same time, all of which could have potential to benefit. It also creates extreme tactical advantages where we can conga-line resurrected models across the board onto objectives or create walls. I don't know how its all going to play out, but I've had games where everything on the table regens and I never got the chance, so it can be a toss up due to the swingy turns.

Shooting is annoying because there is no way to counter it or stop it. Your only hope is to try and keep some distance or use cover which is rarely a good situation. Sure, melee is extremely potent and twice per round, but charging is only once per round so melee can easily be controlled on the table with walls/screens/tarpits where shooting just can not be controlled. Some shooting slits have over 300 shots per turn, you would really have struggle to get that many attacks in melee. Shooting needs some kind of counter to make the game more interactive. I would prefer a simple rule such as - if charged you can only shoot the unit that charged you. 

I'm not saying "gunline" armies are the only competitive, but everything that is competitive has a reliable way to do significant damage from long range. Khorne heavily features Gore Pilgrims which is 3D6 mortals at 18". If Death had something like that, it would totally open up the game up for us.

The other major competitive issue is the wacky rule about one dropping your army and forcing your opponent to go first. This happens all the time in competitive play. You see 2,3,4,5 drop armies. FEC has some options but death in general has only one battalion in 3 years! I hate this rule but its important to point out that death is at a disadvantage in competitive when most often your opponent can dictate the first turn order.

I don't fully understand changehost - what is it about the changeling being spotted earlier that screws up this battalion?

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5 hours ago, Sception said:

I disagree.  Most of the builds in this book seem very character dependant, and thus are highly vulnerable to the ranged mortal spam tzeentch can put out.  

Are they though?  Are they character dependent? There's been quite a lot of foofera about the deathly invocations, but that really only effects basic battleline, graveguard, and spirit hosts; even bloodknights don't regen from it . The only lists that actually give a ****** about the easy to kill characters are deathrattle lists and they get almost the exact same amount of regeneration out of the gravesites as they had with the banners. 

As for buffs, most of the weaker characters buff chaff units like skeletons. Sure, if you built your list around skeletons this sucks, but I don't think that's what many people are going to do. Even GG and Spririt Host lists will have more regen than they used to just from the gravesites. I haven't seen enough of the book yet to say what IS going to be the competitive option, but I very much doubt it will be skeleton spam or dire wolf rush, at which point deathly invocation becomes irrelevent.

I actually think that with a decent wound regeneration spell, Nagash lists become viable. I've seen people talk about Tzeentch a lot, but a Tzeentch list that goes hard in the paint after Nagash is taking a pretty significant risk. He's more than capable of stonewalling even a LoCs casting, forcing your opponent to burn destiny dice or risk getting shut down. Even if the Skyfires and LoC get everything they want out of their mortal wound attacks, between the 4++6+++ it's entirely possible for you to laugh off a Tzeentch army with hot dice.  A Tzeentch player that goes after Nagash(provided Nagash has access to some form of regen, that IS what would make this work. He needs all 8 spells for his counter punch.) first is saying 'I will kill him right here, right now or lose trying'.

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1 hour ago, WoollyMammoth said:

@swarmofseals
3 spells per lore going forward.

 In regards to Nagash, he also might only be able to pick one extra spell - he would need a special rule if he is going to know all of them or multiple, which leaves you with 5 spells instead of the 4 he knows now ... not a significant change. This means you would  have to invest more points on top of his 800 points in necros and Vlords just to give him more spells, which would be very unfortunate (unless Nagash gets a 200 point decrease).

The spell combos you point out are pretty sweet. This does pidgeonhole death into Arkhan lists to have significant range threat, but that's not the worst thing. 

 I'm just being realistic, as a player who frequently plays hordes of ghouls  ...  so it can be a toss up due to the swingy turns.

Shooting is annoying because there is no way to counter it or stop it. Your only hope is to try and keep some distance or use cover which is rarely a good situation. Shooting needs some kind of counter to make the game more interactive. I would prefer a simple rule such as - if charged you can only shoot the unit that charged you. 

I'm not saying "gunline" armies are the only competitive, but everything that is competitive has a reliable way to do significant damage from long range. Khorne heavily features Gore Pilgrims which is 3D6 mortals at 18". If Death had something like that, it would totally open up the game up for us.

The other major competitive issue is the wacky rule about one dropping your army and forcing your opponent to go first. This happens all the time in competitive play. You see 2,3,4,5 drop armies ready to ****** you over. FEC has some options but death in general has only one battalion in 3 years! I hate this rule but its important to point out that death is at a disadvantage in competitive when most often your opponent can dictate the first turn order.

I don't fully understand changehost - what is it about the changeling being spotted earlier that screws up this battalion?

Yeah, it would be annoying if there were only 3 spells per lore. Definitely a disappointment if so. That said, I think it's somewhat unlikely as Death definitely has the history of being a strong magic faction (unlike Nurgle, for example).

Arkhan is needed to get the most out of those two spells, certainly. Who knows though with the rest!

I understand where you are coming from re: ghouls. Skeletons/Zombies/Dire Wolves are definitely a lot more defensively efficient than Crypt Ghouls which probably accounts for some of the difference there.

I totally agree re: shooting. It would be very nice to have some active counterplay. There is some counterplay, but it mostly relies on the fact that shooting is less efficient. If you use a lot of highly defensively efficient units you can kinda overload your opponent's shooting. This is a boring and uninteractive solution though.

I suspect Death will be able to get at least as much mortal wound "shooting" as that. With the bravery debuffs Mortis Engines and Banshees are going to be more viable now. Add on the likely new spells and I think there will be some significant potential there. Will have to wait and see though.

There are quite a few high-tier lists now that aren't short drops. It's definitely a weird advantage of certain battalions though. Now that Death will have access to more battalions it'll be interesting to see if it's worth it to try to go short drops ourselves.

I'm not sure that I fully understand Changehost either, but basically they can swap the position of their units during the hero phase. The Changeling can set up in your opponent's deployment zone, so you can basically swap your big casters into range for their spells and then swap them out. Now that strategy is a lot more unreliable, so it means that the Tzeentch player's first magic phase should be less overwhelming.

 

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27 minutes ago, BURF1 said:

The only lists that actually give a ****** about the easy to kill characters are deathrattle lists

Grand host lists whose offense seems to want to come from deathrattle buffs.  Sacrament lists whose offense wants to come from casters screened by skeletons or zombies.  Maybe not most of the builds in the book, but some of what the designers seem to have slent a lot of page and word count on.

And sure, you drop those kinds of armies in favor of less character dependant elites and monster spam, but a lot of the feel of warhammer undead is lost along with that transition, and it doesnt even necessarily fix the mortal wound vulnerability, as, yeah, you arent as worried about small hero buffers or casters getting picked out, but your army's model and wound count go way down, and you become more directly vulnerable to mortal wounds as a result.

There's nothing I'd rather have in my pocket when facing down a pair of zombie dragons, a bunch of blood knights, or several morghasts than the ability to output a bunch of mortal wounds.  Especially if that can be done at range from behind some sacrificial melee screens that those melee units will have to burn a turn or two chewing through.

And while Nagash is a scary dude, spell lores depending, when I list in my head the elements I'd want to have in an army to take him on, they include ranged mortal spam, melee screens, and a very strong anti magic game, all stuff tzeentch has.

I dont mean any of this to be overly negative.  Its ok for an army to have weak match ups, and thematically given the undead's reliance on magic, tzeentch would make sense to be an uphill climb, but.  I mean, do you really think we're especially strong against tzeentch?  I could easily be wrong in my assessment, but if so, what do you think our weaknesses even are?

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1 minute ago, Sception said:

Grand host lists whose offense seems to want to come from deathrattle buffs.  Sacrament lists whose offense wants to come from casters screened by skeletons or zombies.  Maybe not most of the builds in the book, but some of what the designers seem to have slent a lot of page and word count on.

And sure, you drop those kinds of armies in favor of less character dependant elites and monster spam, but a lot of the feel of warhammer undead is lost along with that transition, and it doesnt even necessarily fix the mortal wound vulnerability, as, yeah, you arent as worried about small hero buffers or casters getting picked out, but your army's model and wound count go way down, and you become more directly vulnerable to mortal wounds as a result.

There's nothing I'd rather have in my pocket when facing down a pair of zombie dragons, a bunch of blood knights, or several morghasts than the ability to output a bunch of mortal wounds.  Especially if that can be done at range from behind some sacrificial melee screens that those melee units will have to burn a turn or two chewing through.

And while Nagash is a scary dude, spell lores depending, when I list in my head the elements I'd want to have in an army to take him on, they include ranged mortal spam, melee screens, and a very strong anti magic game, all stuff tzeentch has.

I dont mean any of this to be overly negative.  Its ok for an army to have weak match ups, and thematically given the undead's reliance on magic, tzeentch would make sense to be an uphill climb, but.  I mean, do you really think we're especially strong against tzeentch?  I could easily be wrong in my assessment, but if so, what do you think our weaknesses even are?

You're misrepresenting the argument. I'm saying that NAGASH specifically creates a situation in which Tzeentch has to take risks in order to win it might not against other armies. No one is particularly strong against Tzeentch. Even Tzeentch isn't particularly strong against Tzeentch.

Grand host lists that heavily emphasize the units that regen from Deathly invocation aren't going to have much in the way of offense. Sure, graveguard hit reasonably hard...turn 3 when they finally make it into charge range, but outside of them even wightking+ Vanhels isn't making skeletons SCARY it just  helps them win the grind battle a bit faster.

Most of the units that DI benefit are inherently defensive, which makes the characters unnappealing to go after. Yes, you could kill the necromancer or w/e but why? Your opponents gravesites mean his skellies are still coming back every turn anyway.

I actually think the big weakness of death is that the things that are scary are too expensive, so yeah  technically  it's a character reliance issue but offensively not defensively. and has little or nothing to do with DI. Oh, also the whole shooting issue.

As for thematics, that's subjective so no comment.

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Offensive character dependence (whether buffing, magic, or plain old beatings) is what i was talking about in the post you responded to, and in that post i was disagreeing with swarm's immediately preceeding comment that

Death... are positioned to be reasonably good against current Tzeentch builds. "

Which I don't really see, and it sounds like you don't really see either, so...  ?

I mean, yeah, we can throw more recursive wounds at them than they can burn, but if they can pull all our teeth before we get stuck in, I'm not sure that leads to anything beyond a stalemate.  Though maybe thats the best anyone can hope for against tzeentch these days.  :P

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@Sception Monsters, Blood Knights and the like are not necessary against Tzeentch offensively, at least not the most common Tzeentch lists. Changehost lists mostly rely on wounds protected by poorer than average armor as their only defensive mechanism. Guess what tears through that just fine? Basic Skeletons, Dire Wolves and the like. Big blocks of these will rip through horrors and absorb those mortal wounds without much concern. The one truly scary model is the Gaunt Summoner, which is a totally broken warscroll when combined with the balewind. 

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3 hours ago, Sception said:

Offensive character dependence (whether buffing, magic, or plain old beatings) is what i was talking about in the post you responded to, and in that post i was disagreeing with swarm's immediately preceeding comment that

Death... are positioned to be reasonably good against current Tzeentch builds. "

Which I don't really see, and it sounds like you don't really see either, so...  ?

I mean, yeah, we can throw more recursive wounds at them than they can burn, but if they can pull all our teeth before we get stuck in, I'm not sure that leads to anything beyond a stalemate.  Though maybe thats the best anyone can hope for against tzeentch these days.  :P

Your previous comments have heavily implied that Deathly invocation was your primary problem with this book in regards to character sniping, it would stand to reason that comments related to character dependence would be primarily related to Deathly Invocation as well. I'm simply of the opinion that DI is a largely irrelevant change unless there's more tricks to it(or unless you're bloodknights). Behemouth dependence is real though, and Tzeentch is broken stupid bulls**t.

 

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2 hours ago, swarmofseals said:

@Sception Monsters, Blood Knights and the like are not necessary against Tzeentch offensively, at least not the most common Tzeentch lists. Changehost lists mostly rely on wounds protected by poorer than average armor as their only defensive mechanism. Guess what tears through that just fine? Basic Skeletons, Dire Wolves and the like. Big blocks of these will rip through horrors and absorb those mortal wounds without much concern. The one truly scary model is the Gaunt Summoner, which is a totally broken warscroll when combined with the balewind. 

I actually do like a 30 of dire wolves for battleline now. A bit on the pricey side but quite a few wounds to chew through, decent attacks, decent save for a chaff unit, fast, gained regen synergy with the much more useful than previous corpsecart. Not sure how competitive it would be but has a lot going for it.

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1 hour ago, Burf said:

I actually do like a 30 of dire wolves for battleline now. A bit on the pricey side but quite a few wounds to chew through, decent attacks, decent save for a chaff unit, fast, gained regen synergy with the much more useful than previous corpsecart. Not sure how competitive it would be but has a lot going for it.

The thing about synergy between slow and fast units is that you have to keep in mind that the faster units will be "tied up" sort to speak to the slower ones if you want to reliably have the buff applied. Of course how much this matters depends on the type of units, the difference of move speed and the type of buff applied, but in the case of the wolves I feel the synergy with the corpse cart is situational at best, since they want to be moving fast anyways and the buff it provides, while nice, is not a super huge deal. 

With this I'm not saying the unit is bad, it is quite good for its cost, but maybe not worth spending so many points for a 30 man unit (or wolf in this case :D).

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7 hours ago, Mandzak-Miniatures said:

As a modeler, I was hoping that LoN would bring back the old tombking constructs under a new name. I’m sure there is a silver lining in that book somewhere though

While I do get that hope I also feel that Battletome Legions of Nagash is much more as a silver lining. From my perspective, with more and more of the information we recieve it's functionally Grand Allegiance Death 2.0. With this in mind it incorporates a whole lot more as Tomb Kings or FEC and because of that it's actually at least in my opinion, the most impressive change we've seen to Grand Allegiances. Because as per GH2017, barring that one Firestorm Battalion/GA Order I don't think Grand Allegiances are popular anymore. 

For Legions of Nagash to have this template is the only logical thing to do. I say this also with knowing the alternative as can be seen in Chaos. Archaon for example leads the Slaves to Darkness armies and cannot do that. Likewise the Everchosen Battletome has so much stuff in it that could be cool but will never come to life in a Matched play competitive setting.

Now, I can assure you with the full knowledge that you can present any of the Legions and have a good game with them, especially when you play Matched play games most of the time. In addition a lot of Warscrolls can also be proxied with TK units, it's just a matter of being a little more creative as usual.

58 minutes ago, ledha said:

Well, with lot of wounds, invulnerable save, regeneration and competent spellcaster, death has everything you would want against mortal wounds, so i understand the reasonning behind "death is efficient against tzeentch"

First of all I think that some of the loudest voices in Death's community sometimes have a good point and sometimes don't ;) . In regards to Tzeentch... It's still the strongest Allegiance ability Age of Sigmar has but this doesn't make it the strongest army.

When we objectively look at Tournament winners (so also non-LVO) we actually see that the most common winners (the same armies that defeat all the Tzeentch out there) are actually Order players. Yes, Stormcast, Seraphon and Fyreslayers are all stronger choices as Tzeentch are when you objectively look at the tournament results. 

I think that Death is efficient against Tzeentch but I do not ever think any direct competitor should appear for it's Allegiance. The prime reason Legions of Nagash will make a competitive standing is if players evaluate their choices correctly. Because the additional abilities LoN obtains here are not useless, not weak and most certainly are the only real push Death should have expected if there are no new releases (and well, we know there arn't).

13 minutes ago, smucreo said:

The thing about synergy between slow and fast units is that you have to keep in mind that the faster units will be "tied up" sort to speak to the slower ones if you want to reliably have the buff applied. Of course how much this matters depends on the type of units, the difference of move speed and the type of buff applied, but in the case of the wolves I feel the synergy with the corpse cart is situational at best, since they want to be moving fast anyways and the buff it provides, while nice, is not a super huge deal. 

With this I'm not saying the unit is bad, it is quite good for its cost, but maybe not worth spending so many points for a 30 man unit (or wolf in this case :D).

Quoted you in terms of the army build up discussion we had previously :D Especially because I pretty much agree with you that the middle road will likely be the best! 

My review so far is purely going with the assumption that the costs found in Legions of Nagash will not be extremely different as found in GH2017's Death. Better put I wouldn't even count out the option that they are all the same. This is still largely a guess but a few of the awnsers given by Ash himself more or less lead to very few expected changes. E.g. if the Blood Knights arn't any cheaper, nor Nagash nor Direwolves etc. it can very well be the case that generally speaking a lot of the costs remained the same.

So my premature review on Battletome Legions of Nagash is: 
 

  1. Dire Wolves seem great in small units for Objective purposes, also neat with the idea that one of the Legions brings to summon them in the Combat phase, so your mobility for capturing Objectives can be great. As before would prefer the smaller unit due to board space and general bonusses found in 'hordes' elsewhere.
  2. Zombies remain an okay tarpit as far as I'm concerned, which leads to them being a neat Battleline choice if you like Zombies. Nothing really more to add, it's certainly chaff in my eyes.
  3. Corpse Cart seems like an effective support with the Lodestone. Fully optional, again nothing must thake.
  4. Basically all Deathlord units are nice elite additions, they provide a strong named character which means you can function well without Battalion if you want to. We see the same in Nurgle who's also heavy on the named characters and this doesn't really have to be an issue. If players want to keep drops low, summonning is more viable as ever.
  5. Mortis Engine again is really an optional piece. Can be great if you feel like going down a heavy magic path and in general is a nice centerpiece option.
  6. One of the must thakes remains the Necromancer in my opinion. As one of the strongest Death assets are actually their Summonable units. I wouldn't skip out on one ever, two can certainly be a great consideration.
  7. Skeleton Warriors are personally one of my favourate theoretical candidates in LoN. It's actually a fantastic deal if 40 cost 280 because they drastically improved them due to all the Deathly Invocation triggers found within this army (which is also why I think the Necromancer is an amazing deal for 110 if he retains that cost).
  8. The Wight Kings are perhaps the two models who I can see dropping from 120 to 100 but even then they remain cool models but logically their functionality dissapears a little if you could also have added additional Necromancers instead... Nontheless I do think that every cheaper Hero is a worthy consideration in LoN because of Deathly Invocation. The better you can attrition the better it becomes globally.
  9. IF Black Knights retain their cost they will be an amazing piece to almost always include for Summonning purposes. Yes I like these units over the Dire Wolves for a simple reason and that's that they actually got buffed. So 120 points for that buffed profile would actually make them an amazing deal and reminds me of Plaguebearer Drone riders as a massive issue if they show up in your rear or flank. 
  10. Graveguard are also a cool choice, I will have to see how their PBP looks because I personally think they are still costed on the high side. Workable for sure but what I have found typical about GH2017 is that generally speaking 480 points on one place limit army flexability to a point where unless you have a Battalion to validate it it's not an amazing choice. Having said that though they do have a good damage output so if you skip on the Flying monstrosities feel free to consider such a block.
  11. For Nighthaunt I think almost all choices are very viable if they retain their costs again. It's all cheap for Flying and what is certainly fun is that I think the Cairnwraith is a wonderful deal for a combat Hero.
    *The strongest Nighthaunt aspect here in my opinion is found in the (now) reliable summonning mechanic combined with Flying, combined with rend-proof saves combined with the fact that they come from Gravesites. So what I would consider if my assumptions are correct is to use these units to threaten Heroes with the Gravesites placed in my opponents territory.
  12. Soulblight is the narrative more elite aspect of this army but due to most of them not being a summonable units I do think that other than their Legion the prime great choices from their previous faction are the Vampire Lord on Zombie Dragon (amazing hard hitting do-it-all general for costs imho), Vampire Lords in general for graet Deathly Invocation purposes and bat considerations for again cheap Flying support troops. 
  13. Lastly I think the Terrorgheist and Zombie Dragon are an amazing hammer piece for all the anvils found in Summoning hordes and this basically leads to have a complete selection of hammers and anvils in the army.

In general I believe that indeed quite a lot of effective designs found in Nurgle are also applied in Legions of Nagash but it's all fleshed out a little bit different. The prime predictions from competitive Death armies for me would be to:

  • Include 1-2 40 Skeleton Warrior as the attrition blocks, supported by Necromancer and/or other spells who improve them considerably. They are the backbone of the army and reliable because of Deathly Invocation attrition boosts and in addition to that you simply said want them on table so your opponent cannot ignore them.
  • Include 2x 5 Black Knights/Nighthaunt units for Summonning purposes. Which functionally means you keep these to deepstrike into key targets. Support Heroes, warmachines you name it.
  • Include a hero mix however you like it and basically pick the Legions for the combination you like the most. Be it Magic for overall buff presence, Bloodknights which allow you to have elites that love Arcane shield, Morghast to have very small elite platforms for big block supports or have a tactical mix of a little bit of everything.

Lastly I do think that every Legion will come with 6 spells and 6 Artefacts. To me it seems rather clear that GW wants to present Legions of Nagash as a very potent army with scary spells. The Gravesites in general to me feel like they are essentially a free Gutrot Spume to the army and I think good Death players will certainly make great use of it. 

I know that on paper quite a lot of Anvils might seem slow but I also fully expect that much like Deathrattle in Shadespire you will find a wide selection of spells who adress this 'weakness'.

Cheers,

 

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@Killax A few thoughts I'd add on top of what you said (great analysis btw!):

- According to what we know for now, Legion of Night and Legion of Blood seem a bit less competitive than Legion of Sacrament and Grand Host purely based on allegiance bonuses, though artifacts, traits and battalions that we don't know of could change that. Plus, I feel Legion of Night has a lot of potential synergies that may be escaping me, so I won't say it's outright bad.

- I'd say that the choice between zombies and skeletons will largely depend on good their respective supporting characters are. Both benefit from mostly the same stuff, but two changes to specific units that synergize with one but not the other stick out to me and could mean the difference between grabbing zombies or skellies, Wight Kings and Corpse Carts. It remains to be seen how the changes affect them both, but for now my money is on Corpse Carts being better in general, specially in casting builds, which could translate into more zombie usage, at least in those lists. Again, it remains to be seen how everything plays out, and I'd prefer Wight King to be viable since I already own him and 40 skeletons haha 

- As I said in previous posts, I do agree that VLoZD (unless his points get drastically changed) still seems like a go-to. It's a great unit overall and the model looks fantastic, so you can look cool and unleash some hell while you are at it :D

Overall though, I like the way they've gone with this book even though I was super negative at first (I apologize for that), and will enjoy reading it and trying to find cool and powerful lists so that I can someday beat my Changehost using friend (although I'm not counting too much on that hahah). I'm still not one hundred percent convinced with Gravesites summoning, but just like with Legion of Night, I'm sure someone will come up with a sneak attack build that could be really strong.

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