Lets Chat: Legions of Nagash

[Ahn-ket]

5 minutes ago, Killax said:

The only thing that is left out of the MW part is Mount weapons.

 

Is stated in the book under mounts that nothing effects mount attacks if not directly said it affects it

[Killax]

11 minutes ago, smucreo said:

Well if that's the case it may be pretty good to combo big enemy heroes down, although you need a bit of luck to get the 6+ rolls, so it's not the most reliable thing ever. 

It's a cool bet for sure. Feel free to ask the AoS page, it isn't like the ruling team is very consistent with it's own rules so it might not be intended.
Thing is really that if you want to go wild with Vampire Lords I think Legion of Blood has some great bonus too, which only becomes better with buffs, artefacts and all.

[WoollyMammoth]

@Killax
Khorne was a heavy focus for the first year of AoS and received a ton of new models. Most everything in Khorne lists are new models. They received a new tome organizing the army last year. Khorne lists have been played at tournaments regularly all throughout AoS. Death has yet to get its first new AoS model after 3 years - this tome is mostly for models which are older than before I started playing. I have been waiting a very long time for this. I was one of about 4 Death players at LVO. I've played hundreds of games with Death armies and have over 10,000 points in death models. What are you doing trolling me in my own section?  I don't go into chaos and complain that you have a lack of focus with Khorne. You don't understand the mindset of a death player because you have not been maining death for the last 3 years, waiting for this tome.

They released 24 command traits for armies designed to be led by named chars which are unable to take command traits. I call this a bad thing and you say I have a lack of focus? This was a bad move by the design team. There is plenty to get excited about in this new book, which is why my GOOD section had the most points. 

[Killax]

6 minutes ago, WoollyMammoth said:

@Killax
Khorne was a heavy focus for the first year of AoS and received a ton of new models. Most everything in Khorne lists are new models. They received a new tome organizing the army last year. Khorne lists have been played at tournaments regularly all throughout AoS. Death has yet to get its first new AoS model after 3 years - this tome is mostly for models which are older than before I started playing. I have been waiting a very long time for this. I was one of about 4 Death players at LVO. I've played hundreds of games with Death armies and have over 10,000 points in death models. What are you doing trolling me in my own section?  I don't go into chaos and complain that you have a lack of focus with Khorne. You don't understand the mindset of a death player because you have not been maining death for the last 3 years, waiting for this tome.

They released 24 command traits for armies designed to be led by named chars which are unable to take command traits. I call this a bad thing and you say I have a lack of focus? This was a bad move by the design team. There is plenty to get excited about in this new book, which is why my GOOD section had the most points. 

I agree with you on model release and I get your upset for that completely. I am not trolling you, I am saying to you that most of your complaints are resolved with this book. Though you act as if they arn't. Our discussion wasn't about model releases before. If you want to switch to that, feel free to make your complaint.

I say you don't have to play named characters, you act like if you do. In addition I also see that you assume named characters are useless within their Legion despite them recieving the same Legion bonuses as other characters.

What I believe you should do is reset your opinions and vision because the Battletome Legions of Nagash has done this. If you  see that as trolling, that's your choice really.

Lastly I don't think you own this section whatsoever. Nor do I own anything on these forums.

[Xasz]

To be honest, this book seems like a big pile of 'meh'.

I'll have to reread the pages but it is just underwhelming.

My biggest gripe are not even the battalions or lores (although the lores are garbage at best), it's all those "roll a dice and see if your items/abilities even works" nonsense .

[Burf]

47 minutes ago, Ahn-ket said:

Is stated in the book under mounts that nothing effects mount attacks if not directly said it affects it

For command traits and artefacts. 

[Killax]

7 minutes ago, Xasz said:

To be honest, this book seems like a big pile of 'meh'.

I'll have to reread the pages but it is just underwhelming.

My biggest gripe are not even the battalions or lores (although the lores are garbage at best), it's all those "roll a dice and see if your items/abilities even works" nonsense .

Yeah I am very suprised by this opinion. The ability to deep strike Summonable units automatically in this game is such a huge factor that somehow seems to be missed by a ton of players. My guess is that it's missed because it's new?  Or that Death players have disregarded this aspect for so long that they stopped seeing the value in it?

I guess the only way to give some insight on that is to physically show it? Bubble-wraps on command for any character are a huge asset, especially if you have enough Flying units and Legions of Nagash certainly doesn't have a shortage in that. This is just covering the Grave aspect, excluding all Legion benifits, 9+ double cast effect and extremely cheap Battalions.

If you see the Lores as garbage I really don't know what you are comparing it too...

[Xasz]

Luckily we have you, our lord and saviour!

It's definitely too early to deal with your condescending/know-it-all attitude, I'll pass and rather reread the pages at work.  

[Burf]

11 minutes ago, Xasz said:

To be honest, this book seems like a big pile of 'meh'.

I'll have to reread the pages but it is just underwhelming.

My biggest gripe are not even the battalions or lores (although the lores are garbage at best), it's all those "roll a dice and see if your items/abilities even works" nonsense .

Spectral grasp by itself would be able to stonewall any pheonix based mix order lists, as well as any Ironjawz list on a decently terrained up table (even if you never actually cast it!). Overwhelming dread is exactly that for skyfires. Fading Vigour basically removes a Mawcrusha/Stardrake from the game. And god forbid you roll a 9+ on any of them...

Debuffs of this caliber are actually more efficient then the 'totally not arcane bolt' that make up 90% of the other lores in the game.

[Xasz]

11 minutes ago, Burf said:

Spectral grasp by itself would be able to stonewall any pheonix based mix order lists, as well as any Ironjawz list on a decently terrained up table (even if you never actually cast it!). Overwhelming dread is exactly that for skyfires. Fading Vigour basically removes a Mawcrusha/Stardrake from the game. And god forbid you roll a 9+ on any of them...

Debuffs of this caliber are actually more efficient then the 'totally not arcane bolt' that make up 90% of the other lores in the game.

We'll see.

It's probably that I expected at least a little bit more damage potential. Not equal too DoT but... yeah.

Blades of Shyish is just a waste of print space.

EDIT: After going through the lores again, I'm content with the lore of deathmages. My disappointment is more centered around the lore of vampires. Which has 2-3 useful spells at best.

[Burf]

4 minutes ago, Xasz said:

We'll see.

It's probably that I expected at least a little bit more damage potential. Not equal too DoT but... yeah.

Blades of Shyish is just a waste of print space.

I do agree on both points. Offensively you're going to be relying on COY and Amaranthine orb double taps to actually kill anything, though Soulpike will do 2.33 mortal wounds on average and has a very powerful niche use of disincentivising your opponent from going for 9"+ charges.

I think the way death is going to work (at least in spell heavy builds) is it's going to try and isolate out the strongest unit in every army and remove them from contention, essentially turning some games into 2000pts vs 1500pts while simultaneously making the remaining units weaker. This does mean that the more MSU the opponent the harder it will be though. I love the idea conceptually, but in practice who knows?

Blades of Shyish is stupid though. I feel like they originally made it 'models' and then remembered arkhan+ balewind existed and were too lazy to think of a new spell so they just made this one terrible.

[Arkiham]

look how obscenely cheap those battalions are... 

[Jamopower]

It's hard to  see that one would have more than two vampires in the list 90% of the time, so having 2-3 useful spells is not that bad. Especially as someone needs to cast the mystic shield as well. 

 

Concerning the effectiveness of the new stuff, I would wait for few games before saying anything about them. The gravesites with their summoning and deahtly incantations have so many things influencing their use that at least I find it hard to visualized how well they work before I have the actual models on the table. Which also applies to those deathmage debuffs, which do seem more awesome each time I look at them.

[Josh]

after seeing all the leaks today, if anyone is unhappy with the new book lord have mercy

 

[ianob]

I also have a bit of a feeling of meh, but not for the same reasons as others.

Debuff lore is good - really good. I played Soulblight and getting the Vamp Lord’s spirit blight off can be a biggy; a whole lore of the stuff can be crippling. The problem is that it’s only crippling vs certain types of armies, ie ones that let you cast them before combat happens. So tier 1 alpha armies, ranged armies that outrange or match range with your spells (since they can move+fire but you can’t move+cast), etc all do a lot to invalidate this lore. The second problem is that we don’t have a lot of ways to capitalise on movement debuffs; we lack ranged attacks and spell damage and we also lack the manoeuvrability and offensive punch to really capitalise on isolated units.

Lore of Vampires is ok. It’s more spells for us to get round the rule of one and +5 move is a lot, Amaranthine Orb is a great nuke, the debuff/mortals isn’t terrible.

 

Gravesites are great but again situational. You need a hero and they can by countered by opponents sitting on them. Depending on what you play and who goes first they might be totally unusable for deployment; you can never count on them.

The new summoning mechanics are fine, but we are still vulnerable to focus fire and now we have to spam heroes to get the most out of this. The abilities want us to go wide to maximise summoning on multiple units but that is not how good players play; it really needed an option to return more models on less units to be truly good, but I still think it’s better than before.

Lets also not forget that everything we do is hero based, in a game where sniping heroes is a core tactic. Sacrament and then putting the two anti shooting artefacts on two necromancers will be common, but having to do that *just to get to use your abilities* is a tough sell. Outside of Sacrament we’re going to be very vulnerable to simply having all of our characters sniped as we have no real good ways to protect them. The main problem we’re going to have is this, and it’s going to be quite binary - shooting opponent and nowhere to hide? Lose game. Opponent has no shooting? Awesome. 

Battalions are the real kick in the teeth. For a total faction revamp, this is frankly absolute shite. “Take a mortarch, get a bonus” (of which only one is viable) and “here’s a way to make nagash viable except it’s too expensive so haha not really”. And then we get another character-based battalion that we had already, and one that uses 3 units of a nigh-unplayable unit. Only the legion of sacrament is really viable here. This was where we could have gotten things to make us shine, so now we just have to hope that we get more added later in the “year of death”

So barring the battalions I think we got a lot of stuff but it is all situational based on who you play against, and unfortunately the “bad” situational dare all against top tier armies. I think we’re going to have great game against armies that want to play a “normal” game of sigmar, and at an event good matchups could easily see us win now, but realistically I think we’re a tier 2 army with potential to spike. I think bemoaning what could have been is perfectly justified but equally I think there is a lot to work with here. And what could have been doesn’t win games, so it should time to knuckle down and figure out how to win with the tools that we have.

[Killax]

1 hour ago, Xasz said:

Luckily we have you, our lord and saviour!

It's definitely too early to deal with your condescending/know-it-all attitude, I'll pass and rather reread the pages at work.  

Hahah, luckily we have Xasz pointing out how mediocre this all is and completely missing the point of being able to summon.
If you think being functionally able to put a block of Undead up to 19" on the field is mediocre/mweh thats your choice.

Feel free to completely ignore how well this book allows you to boost Summonable units and see how poor LoN is.
Then focus on summonable units, control the board and win with LoN. I'd plan to do the latter.

25 minutes ago, ianob said:

shooting opponent and nowhere to hide? Lose game. Opponent has no shooting? Awesome. 

To put it in context, this is a crux of the game itself. Other than Order it's not like Chaos, Death or Destruction present such a common ranged attack offense that non of your Heroes can reach a gravesite. In addition the armies who can arn't the armies who can occupy Gravesites at the same time...

40 minutes ago, Jamopower said:

It's hard to  see that one would have more than two vampires in the list 90% of the time, so having 2-3 useful spells is not that bad. Especially as someone needs to cast the mystic shield as well. 

 

Concerning the effectiveness of the new stuff, I would wait for few games before saying anything about them. The gravesites with their summoning and deahtly incantations have so many things influencing their use that at least I find it hard to visualized how well they work before I have the actual models on the table. Which also applies to those deathmage debuffs, which do seem more awesome each time I look at them.

Comming from someone who's currently using 80 bloodletters to deep strike into 40K I can assure you the board control obtained by these kind of similar deep striking units is amazing.

Best aspects to consider here are:
- Bubble-wrapping your whole unit around key characters, often Vampire Lords in terms of summonning. These can be on Zombie Dragons but this isn't a requirement.
- Bone-wall your key units with minor smaller pockets of undead, which are easy to place.
- Set up shock troops (such as Black Knights) to threaten flanks and supporting Heroes. Which then cascades into the typical Hammer and Anvil.

The key is really to ensure some characters will get to gravesites. While some might focus on putting them on fancy flanks and all I'd personally consider putting them all on the middle line first (your territory) and have your opponent figure out how much space he can actually cover or wants to cover.

What this spread out tactic allows for is to have undead very far up the field and have several congo-lined units ready to stop pretty much any strong unit in it's tracks so you can apply presured damage at your oppossing key units.

Basically all Summon units are great for this job. All that is otherwise required from the Heroes is strong support and that's there sufficiently in spells. Based on this I think a great way to start out with the strongest assets in this book is with Legion of Sacrement and Legion of Night. These who aspects allow you to either have a stronger slew of Support units or stronger Summon units. Both of these in my eyes are very competitively designed and costed.

[boots468]

Having to choose which gravesite a unit goes in during the deployment phase is a shame, takes a lot of flexibility out of it. Will also miss the chance to change army composition during the game with summoning new units, but now at least will only need to carry 2k points of models for a 2k game :-)

The sites will still be useful for the healing and for turn 1 movement from the ones in your deployment zone, but it is going to be super risky placing a big unit in gravesites near your opponent, especially if they get the choice of first turn.

[RoyalDachshund]

5 minutes ago, Killax said:

Hahah, luckily we have Xasz pointing out how mediocre this all is and completely missing the point of being able to summon.
If you think being functionally able to put a block of Undead up to 19" on the field is mediocre/mweh thats your choice.

Feel free to completely ignore how well this book allows you to boost Summonable units and see how poor LoN is.
Then focus on summonable units, control the board and win with LoN. I'd plan to do the latter.

3

 Guess since we are all ignoring core things, let us ignore that fact that most of those buffs are coming from either a very expensive and durable heroes or cheap, almost chaff ones that will get gunned down instantly

Still, time will tell, at least Death will now be even more annoying vs mid-tier melee lists with all body blocking.

[5kaven5lave]

So, taking points and so on into consideration, here’s my final list which includes lots of Spirit Hosts just because:

Arkhan

Mortis Engine

2 x Necromancers

VLoZD

2 x 5 Dire Wolves

40 Skeletons with Spears

9 Spirit Hosts

Lords of Sacrament battalion

1990 points

 

Not decided on spells / artefacts yet. Thinking slow moving masses shambling / spooking forwards with some nippier units running round as appropriate.

Very excited about it all. 

[Killax]

1 minute ago, RoyalDachshund said:

 Guess since we are all ignoring core things, let us ignore that fact that most of those buffs are coming from either a very expensive and durable heroes or cheap, almost chaff ones that will get gunned down instantly

Still, time will tell, at least Death will now be even more annoying vs mid-tier melee lists with all body blocking.

Please point me to the army that currently doesn't use either  Other than Stormcast all GH2017 armies either function with a Monsterous general or cheap chaff like Heroes that are gunned down instantly. Though I'm honestly suprised if someone can gun down a Necromancer.

A lot of AoS' depth comes from body blocking. It's just that most armies can't deep strike to secure that aspect. Legions of Nagash can.

[RoyalDachshund]

There is a difference, at least in my book, between "buffing to give an extra edge" and "buffing to make it useful". It's not a +1 hit or re-roll coming from a chaff-like hero, it's a said buff with factions core mechanic. 

Once again, time will tell, tho I don't think we will see anything other then VLoZD spam lists in bigger places.

[ianob]

11 minutes ago, Killax said:

Hahah, luckily we have Xasz pointing out how mediocre this all is and completely missing the point of being able to summon.
If you think being functionally able to put a block of Undead up to 19" on the field is mediocre/mweh thats your choice.

Feel free to completely ignore how well this book allows you to boost Summonable units and see how poor LoN is.
Then focus on summonable units, control the board and win with LoN. I'd plan to do the latter.

To put it in context, this is a crux of the game itself. Other than Order it's not like Chaos, Death or Destruction present such a common ranged attack offense that non of your Heroes can reach a gravesite. In addition the armies who can arn't the armies who can occupy Gravesites at the same time...

Comming from someone who's currently using 80 bloodletters to deep strike into 40K I can assure you the board control obtained by these kind of similar deep striking units is amazing.

Best aspects to consider here are:
- Bubble-wrapping your whole unit around key characters, often Vampire Lords in terms of summonning. These can be on Zombie Dragons but this isn't a requirement.
- Bone-wall your key units with minor smaller pockets of undead, which are easy to place.
- Set up shock troops (such as Black Knights) to threaten flanks and supporting Heroes. Which then cascades into the typical Hammer and Anvil.

The key is really to ensure some characters will get to gravesites. While some might focus on putting them on fancy flanks and all I'd personally consider putting them all on the middle line first (your territory) and have your opponent figure out how much space he can actually cover or wants to cover.

What this spread out tactic allows for is to have undead very far up the field and have several congo-lined units ready to stop pretty much any strong unit in it's tracks so you can apply presured damage at your oppossing key units.

Basically all Summon units are great for this job. All that is otherwise required from the Heroes is strong support and that's there sufficiently in spells. Based on this I think a great way to start out with the strongest assets in this book is with Legion of Sacrement and Legion of Night. These who aspects allow you to either have a stronger slew of Support units or stronger Summon units. Both of these in my eyes are very competitively designed and costed.

Yeh, Chaos very often don’t leesent ranged threats. Especially those Tzeentch armies. And Order aren’t that common right? At least the two main fouls to our character based army are barely played :rolleyes:

Your character comments are flat wrong. Other factions don’t rely on their leaders for *every single core ability* - they get buffs, sure, and that is important, but Death rely on them to a whole other level. You’re wilfully ignoring how the army has been designed.

as far as gravesites go, everything you say is true as to what they can be used for but again - you’re ignoring the limitations of their use. They can be neutered wholly or partly by getting near them. Summoning units in them at max range puts them out of range of deathless minions. They are a great tool, sure, but many armies can play around them and they are not even close to as flexible as summoning which is what you seem to be comparing them agaisnt.

look, I’m al for seeing the good sides, but taking only the merits of everything and ignoring the flaws is about as useful as a Mannfred.

[Killax]

1 minute ago, RoyalDachshund said:

There is a difference, at least in my book, between "buffing to give an extra edge" and "buffing to make it useful". It's not a +1 hit or re-roll coming from a chaff-like hero, it's a said buff with factions core mechanic. 

Once again, time will tell, tho I don't think we will see anything other then VLoZD spam lists in bigger places.

I see the Legion bonusses as buffing to give an extra edge.
I see Hero bonusses as another buff on top of that.

VLoZD remains a great choice, I do also think that a lot of players seem to give no credit to 40 Skeleton Warriors with roughly 5 D3 returning every turn whilst the Vampire Lords near them provide the extra offense to make sure their attrition isn't just a stalemate. 

[kozokus]

I admit i am a little bit amazed.

This book is a straight-up upgrade with no downside/point increase from GA : DEATH.

Yet people are complaining that they didn't recieved Destiny dices.

Amazing.

Wait. Did the army get four free terrain pieces that can RELIABLY teleport units? Oh and they heal nearby units too? Absurd!

Yeah sure, people want to target your heroes, they pretty much have to unless they want to loose because they provide overwhelming bonus for your army. I am quite happy when skyfires are targeting heroes = overkill and less shots on the Skeleton horde.

It is a little bit dishonest. I can't stop noticing combos's and strategy in that wonderful book.

[Killax]

7 minutes ago, ianob said:

Yeh, Chaos very often don’t leesent ranged threats. Especially those Tzeentch armies. And Order aren’t that common right? At least the two main fouls to our character based army are barely played :rolleyes:

Your character comments are flat wrong. Other factions don’t rely on their leaders for *every single core ability* - they get buffs, sure, and that is important, but Death rely on them to a whole other level. You’re wilfully ignoring how the army has been designed.

as far as gravesites go, everything you say is true as to what they can be used for but again - you’re ignoring the limitations of their use. They can be neutered wholly or partly by getting near them. Summoning units in them at max range puts them out of range of deathless minions. They are a great tool, sure, but many armies can play around them and they are not even close to as flexible as summoning which is what you seem to be comparing them agaisnt.

look, I’m al for seeing the good sides, but taking only the merits of everything and ignoring the flaws is about as useful as a Mannfred.

Tzeentch relies on it's leaders for the effectively Skyfires, that's one aspect and most certainly Order armies do aswell. What I see here is that you willfully ignore the potential summonning has given to you. 

Since when is placing them on your side of the field (gravemarkers) an issue if you are a melee combat orientated army that as a result benifits from opponents moving towards you and your gravesite? Your opponent covering them doesn't mean he's now also out of reach of the rest of your army.

The oppossing army is either bound to shoot, and stay away from you, whilst you summon near them.
OR
The oppossing army is nearing you in which case you have a fair fight.