Summoning and Allegiances, Oil and Water?!

[DeGriggs]

Alright, I've asked around my local meta and Ive gotten no real answers:

 

Let's say I make a 2000 point Soulblight army with 500 points reserved for summoning. Now rules as I know it now, this constitutes as a "Soulblight Army" (and when there are specific Soulblight bonuses they will apply). Now let's say I summon a unit of skeletons throughout the game, do I keep my Soulblight status? 

 

Really the question comes down to when allegiances are evaluated and chosen. 

 

What are your thoughts?!

[WoollyMammoth]

FAQ is out;
Page 108 – Reinforcement Points Add the following to the end of the second paragraph: ‘Reinforcement units must belong to the same Grand Alliance as the rest of your army, but can otherwise have any allegiance. Because restrictions are determined when you pick your army, units added later using reinforcement points can allow the army to exceed the normal limitations for leaders, artillery and behemoths.’

Honestly I didn't expect them to go this way with it. I guess it makes sense given that taking a wizard is a risk - if he dies you can't summon. As I said I would have let people summon skeletons into their soulblight allegiance, though I thought this would have to be a house rule, and not the RaW.

Unfortunately this means there are certain broken nonsense things we can now expect in competitive play; Skyre allegiance army summoning a bloodthirster for example. They did a good job with the Flesh-Eater courts, taking generic summoning away from all the nasty death stuff, hopefully they will limit daemons in some way as well. IMO they should just make it so that a chaos wizard can only summon a deamon which shares the same chaos-god keyword. 

Its still 1000% better than open summoning but this is a much bigger step away from balance then I expected.
 

[WoollyMammoth]

I haven't seen anything about summoning whatever you want in any faction.  I just don't see skaven skyre allegiance being able to summon blue flamers of tzeentch. Your morbidex list is legal in open play but if it is intended as a Nurgle Rotbringer list you may have to change your tactics in strict play. 

I don't have the rules in front of me, but I haven't seen anything about summoning out of your allegiance directly stated - this is an interpretation and as such could go either way with a FAQ, so we wont know until the FAQ comes out on release date. Even if it is FAQ'd out, it could become a faction thing where it says nurgle mortals are allowed to summon nurgle daemons. We just don't know. But I wouldn't declare an unstated rule as a given fact. Unless -you have the book and there is an exact wording I have missed? I just haven't seen any evidence to back your claim.

[Andreas]

Come on ? list building rules are about restrictions. You build your list under some restrictions. You can house rule it with futher restrictions. So if they dont state your specific restriction on the reserve points the assumtion should be that it isn't there. But lets leave it there if no one else have the book in hand and want to contribute.

Me personally I dont have any summoning in my armies so I have no stake in this other than I hope reason will prevail.

[shinros]

On 7/5/2016 at 2:39 AM, WoollyMammoth said:

Yes thematically a vampire can raise a bunch of skeletons. And that vampire would have an allegiance to Nagash/Death summoning various kinds of Nagash's troops. A vampire with an allegiance to Soulblight is a very particular vampire who only trusts in his vampire and beast kin, and would not summon since he has an entire battalion of fierce Blood Knights at his disposal and prefers to use his magic to protect and support his troops rather than summon some dirty skeletons. A vampire who likes to reanimate the dead is not faithful to his soulblight bretherin and so they are unlikely to follow him/her in a large group. As such this vampire would have to summon lots of skeletons & zombies to fill the ranks. 

I don't think you can claim a faction allegiance if everything your summon pool does not have the proper keyword. When we do get soulblight allegiance, there might be a spell in there (like raise dead in the lore of vampires) which allows it.  

Well actually according to death book.  Soulblight section "To feed their unnatural appetites, they raise armies of undead, sire more nests of vampires and march to war so their kingdoms might forever run red on rivers of blood". 

In the dead walkers section. "The deadwalkers have bolstered the armies of shyish in countless wars across all the realms. Soulblight lords use them as fodder for their merciless assaults, on the living and their rivals. 

Honestly I have no idea how GW are going to handle the soul blight book I suspect they are going to fuse several units because with the changes to magic. I don't REALLY see the army being that good and the price point for blood knights is crazy(they are battleline). Plus the bats look bad honestly their models are sub par save the leaders. 

I mean GW mixed beast of the graves with flesh eaters. I suspect the may put a few skeleton and zombie units in there with their own unique synergies with the vampires they will have no other choice since flesh eaters technically have the Varghulf as well so that's a vampire beast choice out of the window. Plus they need a vampire elite infantry set. It would not surprise me if they merge malignents with the deathlords. 

Now I agree in my opinion from a rule standpoint you are breaking your allegiance since it should be soul blight summons not deathrattle. 

[daedalus81]

40 minutes ago, shinros said:

Now I agree in my opinion from a rule standpoint you are breaking your allegiance since it should be soul blight summons not deathrattle. 

Absolutely not in terms of rules.  

[Stauderpower]

You declare allegiance at the beginning of the game. If we are playing a 2000 point game, I can deploy a legal 2000 point soulblight army (following all restictions). If I deploy less than 2000 points (I still have to make what I deploy legal under the 2000 point restricion)  I can summon the difference by any model that can be summoned by a DEATH WIZARD. My allegiance doesn't go away since I declared allegiance at the beginning of the game. 

[shinros]

8 hours ago, daedalus81 said:

Absolutely not in terms of rules.  

Hmm well, I am a more fluffy kind of guy but hey people can do what they want. 

[daedalus81]

4 hours ago, shinros said:

Hmm well, I am a more fluffy kind of guy but hey people can do what they want. 

You can justify almost anything fluff-wise.   Someone wants to summon daemons of khorne for their khorne army in another thread - well, enslave the sorcerer!  You need to summon skeletons?  You're only doing so to protect the lives of the far superior vampires.

[The Jabber Tzeentch]

You declare allegiance at the beginning of the game. If we are playing a 2000 point game, I can deploy a legal 2000 point soulblight army (following all restictions). If I deploy less than 2000 points (I still have to make what I deploy legal under the 2000 point restricion)  I can summon the difference by any model that can be summoned by a DEATH WIZARD. My allegiance doesn't go away since I declared allegiance at the beginning of the game. 

From everything I have seen in he GH this is how it is meant to be played.

Age of Sigmar's whole philosophy is about minimal restriction, so anything that's not written down specifically restricting you is then considered to be allowed.

[Andreas]

13 minutes ago, WoollyMammoth said:

You have to choose an allegiance that's all their is to it.

Faction Allegiance works like 8th where you are totally limited to one faction and bringing in another would be akin to summoning demons in a wood elf army. It's no different than summoning skeletons in a soulblight army - it's just weird because GA:Death is basically VC split up for no reason. Eventually well get new death models to fill out the ranks of each faction. I mean, they have to release a new death model eventually right?

Grand Alliance Allegiance works more like how AoS has been so far (open play). You can bring a slann with your sylvaneth, you can summon daemons with your chaos mortals, you can summon skeletons with your soulbight. But you can not claim faction traits and bonuses.

If you claim Soulblight you cannot summon skeletons (but I would let you anyway because I want you to have fun).

What you have written above are your house rules, you have added rules on top of the rules in the book that you think makes the game more fun. You say no to all abilities that could make reserve points be allocated to some thing outside the allegiance. No more nurgling for Morbidex. That is fine. I am just saying that is not how it is written in the leaked rules.

[daedalus81]

35 minutes ago, WoollyMammoth said:

Unfortunately this means there are certain broken nonsense things we can now expect in competitive play; Skyre allegiance army summoning a bloodthirster for example. 

How, exactly is this broken?

[daedalus81]

Oh I get it - you're concerned about skyre battleline benefitting from units that would break that.  I guess we will see how it pans out.

That said...it is a 10 to summon a bloodthirster and with no real bonuses that is a tall order.

[mmimzie]

true but summoning zombie dragons and terrorghiest or something is quite doable for death as they get many benefits to cast.

[Stauderpower]

Would you have an issue if they just had a terrorgheist or zombie dragon in their list? Honestly the summoning is going to be used for more specialized units that need to get into specific positions, it's too risky leaving 300 to 400 points aside hoping you can summon your big gribbly. I've played about 20 games with the handbook now using the leaked points and rules and summoning is in a good place, just play some games with it and you'll find its not really game breaking at all

[Nico]

To be fair though Daemons are basically a junk army compared to Skaven now that their Tzeentch triple casting is toast. There aren't any strong cross synergies (you cannot summon Epidemius as a Pestilens army). The only thing you are likely to see if Flamers spam.

[Brian Andrews]

I think it only matters if your allegiance uses specific allegiance abilities. Right now Soulblight only has the Grand Allegiance Death abilities so if you are summoning skeletons that are also Grand Allegiance Death I don't see a problem with it. I can only see an issue if you are using allegiance Sylvaneth abilities and wanted to summon something outside that allegiance.

[Nico]

As per the other thread it does allow you to take a Deathlord and 6 Morghasts (Battleline) as your army - take any hypothetical Deathlords Allegiance abilities (or the existing Death Allefiance abilities) - and then summon anything else onto the table. This goes some way to justifying what look like very high costs for the Deathlords themselves (i.e. You can take good Battleline units).

[WoollyMammoth]

I've been playing match-play like rules for over a year now. If you think rolling a 10 is hard you are sadly mistaken. Nagash already rolls a 10 on average, with the morghasts its an average of 11. (Corpse Carts and Mortis Engines can add another +2). A Lord of Change does not often fail his spells, he is going to be able to summon anything he wants. 

As I mentioned Flesh-Eater courts scrolls took summoning off of "nasty death stuff" aka zombie dragons, T-gheists & more however the FAQ specifically states that you can use whatever scroll you like (simply suggesting to use the newest). Hopefully the GH has a rule for matched play that you have to use the newest scroll (or this comes out in a FAQ) because this is needed for GW to have some control over balance. 

Its not a big deal, its not like Tzeentch has awesome battleline options to use and then benefit from summoning a bloodthirster. I dont see anything from a gameplay perspective that is really annoyingly broken, just stuff that as a fan of WH lore might make you cringe like a Grey Seer summoning Daemonettes or a Lord of Change summoning some Plagebearers. I think the issue is more that the alliance of Order and Chaos is not really working well, I feel like they should have split it up more, at least with more restrictive rules so that individual factions can maintain more of an identity.

[Bass294]

I really don't understand why people are so opposed to summoning like this, especially since people were so mad already that it got "nerfed". The two main things here that people think summoning could affect are allegiances and army construction things like behemoth limits.

 

The second point on exceeding behemoth limits seems rather obvious. Those restrictions apply to what you include in your force i.e. what you put down at the start of the game, and not anything you summon. Your army doesn't become illegal if you drop below 2 battleline units, why would it become illegal if you summoned one behemoth more than you were allowed to bring at the start of the game?

 

The first on allegiances is a bit more tricky. Reading the rules more closely it states all units in your army must have the same keyword, and summoning units does add them to your army. In the same section however it states you determine allegiance at the start of the game, and nowhere does it state those abilities could be cancelled during the game.

2 hours ago, WoollyMammoth said:

I don't think you can claim a faction allegiance if everything your summon pool does not have the proper keyword. 

There is no summoning pool, only reinforcement points. The drawback to being able to summon diverse units above your allegiance and army limits is that you have to cast spells to even get them on the table which can be dispelled, or worse your wizards can get killed.

[Andreas]

I guess that allegiances are chosen when you are writing the list and since you do not need to state what you want to summon it isn't part of the list writing other than reserving points for it. That your allegiance should change mid game depending on what you bring on makes no sence to me.

It also makes alot of fun list not viable if we would choose that path, like the one you described or for example a rottbringer army with with morbidex or the future tzeench arcanites or if my brayherd army get some cool rules and I use Savage dominion etc..

I guess the counter argument is that some tournaments will probably make you list what you want to bring on and therefore you could make out pre game what your new allegiance are. I am fine with the house rule to list what you could summon but should we house rule the allegiance rule also because of this.

Disclaimer - I dont own the GH yet ?

[BaldoBeardo]

You write a single faction list to get bonuses, then intentionally flaunt the condition for those bonuses mid-game.

That's pushing it, frankly. Don't expect any sportsmanship points.

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[Andreas]

7 minutes ago, BaldoBeardo said:

You write a single faction list to get bonuses, then intentionally flaunt the condition for those bonuses mid-game.

That's pushing it, frankly. Don't expect any sportsmanship points.

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I think the summoning nerf counter your abillity to abuse this. If i would make a prediction I guess that this will be settled when the arcanites gets bonuses on summoning as a faction rule. ?

[DeGriggs]

17 minutes ago, BaldoBeardo said:

You write a single faction list to get bonuses, then intentionally flaunt the condition for those bonuses mid-game.

That's pushing it, frankly. Don't expect any sportsmanship points.

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Hi there,

So my point in all this is to build a thematic army while still following the rules. I want a soulblight army. But from the many years of literature that have been produced, vampires frequently toss menial skeletons or zombies into a fight through willpower and necromany. None of this is meant to be unsportsmanlike, in fact, I ask because I want to be a fluffy hobbyist

[BaldoBeardo]

Soulblight faction is vampires and bats.

Rules may say you're fine, but you'll find no fluff vindication/justification here!

To put another way - with the changes to summoning, it's effectively a magical deployment method now.

So... would you still feel your army was fluffy if you deployed your whole force at the start?

You appear to already know the answer...

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[Turragor]

If your army is built so that it's really tightly constructed - and it should be for a tourney really - then summoning anything (that's not a faction specific battleline unit) will render the force on the board 'illegal' in terms of construction. Is that correct?

Maybe you could require the summoned detachment to be balanced in terms of unit composition. I dunno, even then you could summon the elite or monster first.

I don't see a way around summoning and army composition even in a broader sense than just faction allegeiance - because it is probably quite limiting to request that the summoning units fulfill all compositional criteria for the main force as they're summoned.

Maybe the first unit summoned would always need to be battleline? Kind of like a necromancer building towards a big summon? Maybe that's harsh?

With that in mind, I don't think that summoning can be as restrictive as normal army composition. I think other restrictions on top of points restrictions might turn people off to summoning entirely.

 Speaking of points limited, does that not restrict most abuses?

I mean, it's a huge advantage to summon the most powerful units or combo of units but, just like in your main force, you pay more for that. So you deploy less overall. You've reduced options.

Hmmm, yeah. I really do have limited knowledge of summoning so I can't really pick this apart.

The keyword restriction on the unit and wizard warscrolls already covers things like a seraphon army summoning a bloodthirster right?

What about a tough army of Khorne demons summoning a lord of change?

I guess I'd want to know - what kind of abuses are possible within the current summoning limitations if the summoned units are limited by points?