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Death FacehammerUK 2017: What happened?


Spiny Norman

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You need to take into account that these standings weren't just based on games won. Painting and sports added to the total points. 

Tom (12th place Nighthaunt) was on top tables most of the weekend and on table 2 last game. I was on table 13 round 4 with Soulblight, and my opponent and me realised that the major win to major loss was decided by me losing the turn 5 priority roll. I felt like I could compete in each scenario but death are more susceptible to "hard counters" because of the differences between what the other grand alliances have to offer on paper.  For example I played Tzeentch round 4 and 5, major lost one and major won the other. Both from dice not going my way and going my way when they needed to. So yes it is tougher because you haven't got the raw warscroll power / wider variety of options to choose from to help you balance your army against certain match ups better.

Happiest moment for me over the weekend was getting the double turn to take off a unit of 9 skyfires with 2 units of blood knights, after being shot by them for 2 turns! :D 

TL;DR So in short I think the options death have on paper compared to the others turn people away, so you get low turnout but they are still competitive if you work for it and accept that in certain situations you are relying on the dice going your way.

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Tom's list had two Mournguls and 21 Spirit Hosts (From memory).  I only went with one Mourngul and 12 Spirit Hosts as that was all I had and I thought variety would make for more interesting games.  I finished with two major wins, a minor defeat and two major defeats but it could have been better if in the third game 4 spirit hosts could have killed the one Judicator I needed to claim the winning objective.

Yes, that was 24 dice, one 6, three 5s only one of which wounded (Which he saved).

I finished just outside the top fifty not helped by my low kill points total.  Nighthaunt makes for a good tactical army but it's not one for smashing the opponent.  I did have a great time though.

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44 minutes ago, Sutek said:

Tom's list had two Mournguls and 21 Spirit Hosts (From memory).  I only went with one Mourngul and 12 Spirit Hosts as that was all I had and I thought variety would make for more interesting games.  I finished with two major wins, a minor defeat and two major defeats but it could have been better if in the third game 4 spirit hosts could have killed the one Judicator I needed to claim the winning objective.

Yes, that was 24 dice, one 6, three 5s only one of which wounded (Which he saved).

I finished just outside the top fifty not helped by my low kill points total.  Nighthaunt makes for a good tactical army but it's not one for smashing the opponent.  I did have a great time though.

Thank you for the info! Congrats on your wins! Are spirit hosts core in a Nighthaunt army? I'm surprised only 2 different types of units can do so much damage. I know the Mourngul is insane though.

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20 hours ago, Moon said:

You need to take into account that these standings weren't just based on games won. Painting and sports added to the total points. 

Tom (12th place Nighthaunt) was on top tables most of the weekend and on table 2 last game. I was on table 13 round 4 with Soulblight, and my opponent and me realised that the major win to major loss was decided by me losing the turn 5 priority roll. I felt like I could compete in each scenario but death are more susceptible to "hard counters" because of the differences between what the other grand alliances have to offer on paper.  For example I played Tzeentch round 4 and 5, major lost one and major won the other. Both from dice not going my way and going my way when they needed to. So yes it is tougher because you haven't got the raw warscroll power / wider variety of options to choose from to help you balance your army against certain match ups better.

Happiest moment for me over the weekend was getting the double turn to take off a unit of 9 skyfires with 2 units of blood knights, after being shot by them for 2 turns! :D 

TL;DR So in short I think the options death have on paper compared to the others turn people away, so you get low turnout but they are still competitive if you work for it and accept that in certain situations you are relying on the dice going your way.

 

 

I can't agree with these assumptions. I do argue that Death is NOT competitive right now.

 

A 100 Player tournament is something different than a small event with 10-20 players, where some Death Army made it to the top 3. It attracts another group of gamers and therefore inherits another power level than these small events. I can't recall any big event, where Deathplayers ranked  fairly comparable to any other Alliance. Order and Chaos - pfff. Even the whiny Destruction-Players outpower us everytime.

 

Competitiveness is not about that particular games, you effectively won, because you were the better player, you accidentally hardcountered your opponents list, or he just had a bad day on decision making and dice rolls.

 

Competitiveness is about being at the opposite edge of the table and knowing you have the same chances of beating your opponent by default and vice versa.

And this is just NOT true regarding Death Armys. We are the lowest end of the food chain. No doubt about that.

 

 

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Some lessons I learnt.

Hexwraiths don't do much.

I shouldn't run all my Spirits in units of six. Split at least one into two threes.

Avoid other monsters with the Mourngul. It needs to be killing a model every turn to heal.

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I would love to see some of these death lists.

I could never bring myself to play Nighthaunt competitively. As @Sutek points out, Hexwraiths don't do much.  They just have a bad scroll right now, bottom line. Spirit Hosts are literally the entire army, and if any -1 to hit comes along they are about as useful as a bag of trash. If you are up against Sylvaneth you are pretty much 100% screwed. A mirror match would be just depressing to experience with both Mournguls negating each others armies. Slaanesh is on the rise, and Hellstriders will completely ruin your day. While its an awesome anvil army, its far too risky to have an army that is completely hard countered by any -1 to hit. I would have loved an allegiance trait that makes Nighthaunt immune to negative modifiers, that would have secured them as a competitive army (if still desperately in need of models). As it is now, they can only do well as long as they get the right opponents. I hold on to hope that their roster will be filled out soon.

@Spiny Norman
The only thing I  can say about death is that it is the most melee focused army  in the game. Thematically, Death has always relied on powerful magic in order to fill out their ranged,  yet magic has been heavily mitigated in AoS. This was particularly true at launch - and Death magic has not changed since launch. The same is true for Tzeentch, but they have a plethora of offensive spell options available to them, where death has little more than one Arcane Bolt per turn. Khorne is another army with heavily limited range, despite generally being a lot harder hitting and with a well organized book and a ton of unit options - they often struggle as well. Ironjaws is another good example. Lists with good shooting options have been, and continue to be in the top spots. They tried to mitigate shooting in the GH:2017, and to some extent its working, but it doesn't seem like enough.

That being said I win games with death all the time. Death has incredible durability. If you play objectives smart you can still win a lot of games. I wouldn't say Death is in a great position, but its not like they are completely non-competitive.
 

On 10/3/2017 at 7:35 AM, Moon said:

You need to take into account that these standings weren't just based on games won. Painting and sports added to the total points. 

Tom (12th place Nighthaunt) was on top tables most of the weekend and on table 2 last game. I was on table 13 round 4 with Soulblight, and my opponent and me realised that the major win to major loss was decided by me losing the turn 5 priority roll. I felt like I could compete in each scenario but death are more susceptible to "hard counters" because of the differences between what the other grand alliances have to offer on paper.  For example I played Tzeentch round 4 and 5, major lost one and major won the other. Both from dice not going my way and going my way when they needed to. So yes it is tougher because you haven't got the raw warscroll power / wider variety of options to choose from to help you balance your army against certain match ups better.

Happiest moment for me over the weekend was getting the double turn to take off a unit of 9 skyfires with 2 units of blood knights, after being shot by them for 2 turns! :D 

TL;DR So in short I think the options death have on paper compared to the others turn people away, so you get low turnout but they are still competitive if you work for it and accept that in certain situations you are relying on the dice going your way.

Well put. This tournament has really swingy standings. For example, Tony Moore got 1 sports vote but didn't get the 10 sports score? If so he would have tied for first. A lot of people got 10 extra for painting and 10-20 extra for sports. Getting both those is like getting a second major victory. The nighthaunt was only 25 points off of first place. Clearly, anything could have happened. 

As far as turnout, there is 11/91 players in the Death grand alliance. That is only 12%, half of what it should be if each grand alliance was represented evenly. If there were 11 more death players, who knows what would have happened. There were 8 DoT players, that's almost as many as total death players.

  


 

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Hey guys,

I played Tom in the last round. His list from memory as follows

3x Wraiths (general allowing re rolls for units coming on, wizard artefact)
2x Banshees
6 Spirit Host
5x3 Spirit Host
2x Mourngul

Tom is a top player and one my club mates.  It was just a horrible match up for him as he can't match the damage output nor the positional play of the changehost.  He also struggled with me splitting horrors as he had to commit to claim objectives he had no chance of actually scoring on even with two units of three going in.  Mourngul are much less survivable to TZ now too.

Reckon Tom would have took the event had he played Jacks winning list in the last round though.

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As much as I got to show some love to the Nighthaunt lists......

 

...it's just sad, that our most competitive Faction consists of 5 models. But it clearly shows that - plain stupid - written rules are everything in this game, not variety or clever listbuilding.

Yea, I could have noticed by the 18 Skyfire lists, but I thought it was just a 'thing'.

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