Death army and summons/reinforcements

[Wallack]

Hi!

I'm thinking on starting a death army and paint them in an ethereal way to have them tabletop ready faster and have a different army to play with.

I want to know how summoning or reinforcement works in death. What units can summon or reinforce? I'm more interested in reinforcing up to the original unit's size but would love to hear about everything.

What would be the cheapest 1k army? What are your favourite units/tactics?

Thanks!

[TerrorPenguin]

Hello Wallack,

Wizards can summon, these are generally within 18" of the wizard and more than 9" away from the enemy.

The Ghoul Kings can also summon, this is from a table edge.

A lot of units will reinforce up to the unit size - skeletons; grave guard, black knight; zombies will reinforce through their banners (I'm sure there are more)

Ghoul units can be reinforced using special characters (the courtiers) or a specific batallion (ghoul patrol)

You can find some suggestions for 1k armies here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Wl3zJzmXcXrievqvnoqtlOMHwG3-SCtRXMWfKFQ2ZVw/edit#gid=0 with prices

 

[Bradifer]

Another idea for painting, you can paint skeletons/zombies a traditional style, then use glowing spirit colors in/around their eyes. Gives it the same ethereal vibe but you can add variety if you want.

 

Death is best to start as a grand alliance rather than faction based. The Start Collecting boxes can give you a variety of units, although the skeleton horde is generally easier, as you get options for 1 of 3 generals (Mortarch) and some battleline units.

[KHHaunts]

The majority of reinforcement comes through the unit banner and some abilities.

Nearly every unit that cant summon can be summoned. But i have found that while useful for certain things summoning isent nearly as pivotal as you would think.

[Wallack]

Thanks for all the answers!

I was more interesting about reinforcements and already read about it in the warscrolls. I won't du it now because I have so many armys but I will for sure start one, not sure if skeleton horde or deathrattle. What I think I'll do is skeleton horde because the start collecting box gives you 5 black knights but also gives you another 5 bodies for the Hexwraiths right?

I have some bretonnian horses, I think I have at least 5 so I could use them to have 10 black knights out of the start collecting if I painted similarly and explain that they are both black nights.

I hope I have at least 5 not sure if I have only 4 or more

[Bradifer]

Start Collecting Skeleton Horde:

10 Skeleton Warriors (You choose swords + shields or spears + shields.)

1 Mortarch. (3 different heroes can be placed on top, 3 different heads for the mount, and 3 different armor plate for mount)

5 cavalry units (You choose either Black Knights or Hexwraiths, both bits included)

 

 

[Wallack]

If I'm not mistaken I can make both riders for the black knights right? so I would only need 5 extra horses (I have 4 :()

About the mortarch and the 3 different heroes as long as is the only one I field I think the model doesn't mater that much as long as I leave it clear before I start.

I will paint everything I have and probably go with that.

[Sedraxis]

Correct, you get both riders so if you have extra horses you can build both!

The Mortarchs you can pin or magnetize without too much effort, but it all depends on your plans.

[Wallack]

I don't think I'll magnetize them. If a player complains that I can't use the "count as" if I let that clear before the game is just a player I don't want to play with/against.

I was also looking at the ghoul patrol and saw that they also get a really nice reinforcement abilities and might consider them as well.

[mmimzie]

IF you'd like an etheral army an easy way to get a ghosty look with out having to go with the same old boring bluish look is to:
Prime black > Dry brush Dawn Stone> Wash with color of your choice. THis will make a nice wash out ghosty color on your whole model, and you can get different colors as you see fit. Which is quite nice and spices things up from your normal pale blue ghost.  Here are some pics if your interested of my green ghost.

Spoiler

Reinforcements work well and can be very cool just have to use them with a strategy. 

good luck!! We're always happy to give lsit and painting advice.

[Wallack]

Love those minis!

Thank you for all the advices!

[Sception]

Stuff that restores models:

* Most of our unit banners restore slain models to the unit

* Tomb Kings stone stuff (Sphinxes, Ushabti, Necropolis Knights, Scorpions) have spells that let friendly death wizards restore wounds or models to the unit

* Flesh Eaters courtier heroes restore models to nearby flesh eaters units.

* Tomb Kings tomb herald heroes restore models to nearby deathrattle units

 

Stuff that summon new units altogether:

* any Death Wizard can cast the summoning spells that appear on many death units' scrolls.

* non-wizard death heroes can access those same spells via command traits or artefacts

* Ghoul Kings have command abilities to summon flesh eaters units

* Vlad von Carstein can summon wight kings by killing an enemy hero with his signature spell

* Neferata can summon vampire heroes by killing enemy heroes

 

Stuff that can be summoned via spells:

* skeleton warriors, archers, horsemen, catapult crew (not the catapults themselves)

* grave guard, tomb guard, black knights

* spirit hosts, hex wraiths, cairne wraiths, banshees, mornghuls

* zombies, dire wolves

* unridden terrorgheists & zombie dragons

* morghasts

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Note that to summon anything in matched play, you have to leave that many points out of your lists.  However, you don't have to choose what you summon in advance, so summoning can work as a sort of sideboard, letting you choose what you need depending on the course of the game.

For instance, in games of 2000 points or more, I often run arkhan, and leave 240 points aside for summoning, which gives me a choice of:

* 6 spirit hosts (I need a unit that can tank an enemy with a lot of rend)

* 40 zombies (I need to swamp an enemy with wounds / shore up existing zombie units / something with a lot of models to hold objectives)

* 2 morghast harbingers (I need to a hard hitting charge from an unexpected angle)

* 2 morghast archai (I have a vulnerable unit on an objective, and need a strong unit with reach to stand behind them and fight off any enemy light melee units that were threatening to charge them and take the objective)

* 20 skeleton archers (I need to pick off the last couple wounds from an injured model that I can't reach in melee)

* 6 bat swarms (I need to mitigate enemy ranged firepower)

Needing to burn a casting roll to summon anything, and needing to hit sometimes pretty hard numbers to do so, means I wouldn't bother with summoning spells if you aren't fielding arkhan, or multiple bonuses to casting rolls, or both, however.  For instance, if I wasn't running Arkhan, then in most cases a trio of tomb scorpions for the same points could do most of the above jobs almost as well, and some of them better, without needing to cast summon spells.

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In terms of restoring wounds to existing models, however, deathrattle does that best, thanks to the Tomb Herald, which can be fielded in multiples, as well as multiple high-wound units to get the most out of the bonus, including necropolis knights and battleline chariots.  Both are 5 wound deathrattle units that already bring back a single slain model each round with their unit banners, and necroknights even have a spell that nearby death wizards can use to restore yet another 5 wound model a turn.  Add a single tomb herald and you bring back up to 10 wounds to each such unit during each of your command phases.

A unit of three chariots or necropolis knights will be back to its full model count in each of your command phases provided that even a single model is left.  Or take 2 heralds, and units of six, to restore up to 15 wounds per unit per turn (up to 20 on one unit of necroknights thanks to the spell), which can become very, very hard to chew through, even for some of the most offensively potent units in the game.  And they're fast - M8 for all of them, provided you mount the heralds on skeletal steeds.  Chariots are decent mobile walls that can still hit reasonably well on the charge for battle line units and have a decent formation if you really want to go all out with them, while necropolis knights are absolute beasts, easily on par with blood knights or other high end cavalry, that only get stronger with all the support available to deathrattle (heralds and their spell for recursion, command abilities of mummies and wights for offense, buff spells from necromancers and wizards for even more offense, etc).  Even at the new points cost of 240 for 3, necroknights are still a very strong unit.  At 160 they were just ludicrous.

Finding the models can be tricky, though.  Easy enough to find chariots, replace the crew with skeletons, and either paint the steeds ghostly or replace them with black knight steeds.  Likewise, converting a mounted undead banner isn't too hard, starting off with a black knight unit standard, or the empire BSB with a skeletal head swap, a ghostly-painted horse, and that lovely wraith-looking empire battle standard.  Harder to find something that works for necropolis knights, given how big they're supposed to be.  I tried demigryphs, but they're too small.  I'm currently working on converting some undead Dracothian Guard to fill the part, but it's slow going.

But even if you don't go in for recursion on chariots and necroknights, Deathrattle are still strong in this regard thanks to cheap infantry backed up by a wight king banner for an extra 6++ save, in addition to their faction trait, ruler of the knight, banner recursion, and extra recursion from the legion of death formation.  Wight king banner + tomb herald + legion of death + ruler of the knight + a whole lot of skeletons gives you horde infantry with up to 4 attacks apiece (3 from having a big unit, +1 from the wight king's command ability), who have 6+ and 5+ rend-ignoring saves against all wounds mortal and otherwise, and that bring back d6+2 models per unit every command phase (banner + formation + herald), and can still benefit from other buffs like necromancer and lich priest spells.