Lets Chat: Legions of Nagash

[BURF1]

1 minute ago, Richelieu said:

I'd have to agree with you on this.  The psychological effect alone is devastating.  It will frequently force your opponent into irrational decisions because they can't accept that there's nowhere to hide.

What's great about amaranthine orb is that it picks a point on the table too! In my opinion, the Balewind vortex is absolutely mandatory for the Lords of Sacrement battalion. Without it, any opponent that can outdrop you is going to make you go first, you're not going to have range on any of your spells, he'll double turn, now you're down half your army before you can even actually utilize the battalion, god forbid they kill Arkhan or the Mortis engine (neither of which is particularly tough).

[Killax]

 

13 minutes ago, Jamopower said:

I don't think there are many situations where it is necessary to cover all of them. The Runebrush's post above is IMO very good speculation concerning the Gravesites. 

 

My plan at this point is to run an unit of zombies in the grave and maybe 10 grave guard or 3 spirit hosts in a 1500 point army. The zombies are there to have an unit that can either be a threat on the opponent's side objectives or back up for the own end and the grave guard / spirit hosts are to be used more aggressively. The grave sites around the area where the battle will occur most likely wont be much of use concerning summoning, but are useful for the healing side of things.

I think that there are situations where your opponent is completely unable to cover them.
1. Your Vampire Lord flies 10" over to them.
2. Your Skeleton hordes now recieved an incredible movement boost (max 9" from that point), no Hero ability or Spell required.

Just called my local Death player, will make a rundown later. I think that one of the most effective Legions based on this and flanking options is Legion of Night. The other I also really like is Legion of Secrament if you want to exclude the VLoZD altogether. For those who do want to go tripple Morghasts or double VLoZD I'd certainly go Grand Host or Legion of Blood, though it plays into an elite aspect that LoN doesn't nearly buff as much as the Summonable units and smaller Heroes.

12 minutes ago, Richelieu said:

I am completely in your camp.  As the LoN player YOU get to decide where they go, which means YOU get to decide where your opponent has to either send units, or allow your units to deepstrike.  You can do silly things like place one deep in your opponent's backfield.  Then what?  Are they going to leave models there the whole game to babysit the gravestone?  If they do, you have neutralized one of their units for a cost of...0 points.  These things are strong if you use them as the tool that they are instead of wishing they were a different tool.

Exact.

Thing is really I think that it's new, I think many havnt looked into 40K and many might want to go way too fancy with Gravesites. Even if it's just a movement boost, ultimately that's all most melee centric armies want. Legions of Nagash is one of them.

11 minutes ago, Arkiham said:

Its a tree. You can barely hide behind it using true los.

Also your initial comments were about summoning using the trees. The only discussions I've seen about that is no different to just using the old method. 

The top 10 nurgle didn't use any summoning and didn't hide anything behind it.

Also the level of ability at the lvo is less than in the uk, most of the players there were super casual, often never had played competitively

It's a tree, it's the essential Nurgle free bonus that the whole army recieved since the book.

2015 till 2017, not a single noteworthy showing.
2018, Nurgle obtains Ferulent Gnarlmaws, has two showings in the top 10 at large events, one of which it became second.

Obtaining the ability to charge and run for free is the edge between being competitive or not, even if that was what all the Blight Tree did... But it does more.
Looking at Khorne, I'd trade the Blood Tithe table for Khornate Ferulent Gnarlmaws, in a heartbeat, no questions asked.

[smucreo]

4 minutes ago, Killax said:

2015 till 2017, not a single noteworthy showing.
2018, Nurgle obtains Ferulent Gnarlmaws, has two showings in the top 10 at large events, one of which it became second.

Obtaining the ability to charge and run for free is the edge between being competitive or not, even if that was what all the Blight Tree did... But it does more.
Looking at Khorne, I'd trade the Blood Tithe table for Khornate Ferulent Gnarlmaws, in a heartbeat, no questions asked.

Well I do have to say that Nurgle did not only recieve the tree, it recieved a full battletome with their own spell lore, artifacts, command traits etc... 

Not to say trees are bad, being able to run and charge is good, but it's not the only contributing factor for sure!

[Xasz]

13 minutes ago, BURF1 said:

The jump from 24-36 is actually, in my opinion, more valuable than 12-24 on the simple basis of being able to hit enemy models first turn.

Good point.

I have to think about the rest of a LoSacrament army... currently I want to buff blobs of skeletons into oblivion, which is way easier with a Grand Host setup.

[Killax]

5 minutes ago, smucreo said:

Well I do have to say that Nurgle did not only recieve the tree, it recieved a full battletome with their own spell lore, artifacts, command traits etc... 

Not to say trees are bad, being able to run and charge is good, but it's not the only contributing factor for sure!

The thing remains, Ferulent Gnarlmaws (all) are free, you are obtaining free runs/charges.
The thing with Graveyards on your side of the the field/centerfield is the option to have Undead units 9" near them for free. This too efficiently boils down to free runs/charges.

I pay 120 points for Murderhost movement bumps. Some consider this Battalion OP even. Understand some Allegiances, Nurgle and Legions in this case, get a slightly worse effect for free...

If you arn't part of the Shooting phase, you better have a good Movement. Nurgle outpaces Khorne unless I pay 120 points to increase my Bloodletters speed. Legions of Nagash now has the option to speed up, a lot. Every effect like this comes at costs for most of the 2017 era armies.

[smucreo]

Oh definitely, I for one believe Gravesites will be really good. With smart placement and specially using the Legion of Night trait that allows you to deepstrike you force your opponent to either clump up or spread out, and either way you then get to react to that. If worse comes to worse and they block the best positioned gravesite you still have others to cover for it, plus all of them will still be giving free regen each turn.

[Jamopower]

I also do think they are good, but just something that you can't count too much and base your strategy totally around them as they are so easy to block. In most cases it's good enough to block one of them as there is always a place your unit will want to be the most nor the characters in good places. It's good to remember that at the start of the opponent's turn, he can measure the location of the Undead heroes and thus will know exactly which of the sites are available for summoning. Having a grave site far away behind the enemy lines will be quite hard to utilize, even if it would be a great place to summon units from.

 

23 minutes ago, Killax said:

 

I think that there are situations where your opponent is completely unable to cover them.
1. Your Vampire Lord flies 10" over to them.
2. Your Skeleton hordes now recieved an incredible movement boost (max 9" from that point), no Hero ability or Spell required.

 

I can't follow this? The location where the skeleton horde comes from is determined by the gravesite, not by the location of the vampire. I understand that the vampires are easy solution to have stuff out from bit further away gravesites, but at the same time if you're looking at summoning big scary units out of gravesites ahead of your force, those will be exactly the sites the opponent will want to block and if they are located closer to them, they can fly something like 3 prosecutors on top of them and that's it. Remember again, that your opponent can measure the 10(+d6)" move of the vampire and see where he can fly and raise the dead. It's not like that he has to be vary of all the places in a 11"+9" circle around of the vampire, just the locations of the gravesites that are within that circle.

[RuneBrush]

Summon a unit is also hero phase only, so you might want to stagger gravesites to be "staging points" - one 6" away from your deployment line, another 11~16" away

[Sception]

1 hour ago, Xasz said:

Is that really the case?!

After reading the rules several times, I'm not sure if this interpretation is right.

Actually i think i was wrong here, incorrectly confusing "the grave" ie a generic term for units deploying via gravesites, as "the gravesite" ie one particular gravesite.

Read correctly, the ability to bring a unit from any gravesite makes it a lot more flexible.  The opponents will have to dedicate units to camping all your sites in their territory, and even then you can always bring the unit from a gravesite in your territory instead.

I do think the ability is better with faster units that can still make it into the game if you are forced to deploy them in your backfield due to enemies camping your spawn points, and i do think the healing property of the gravesites is the better part of them, with LoN providing better deployment shenanigans if that's what you're looking for.

I only wish the book had been a bit more creative & experimental with the summonable & gravesite rules.  What about abilities to move gravesites, or create more during play, perhaps when units die?  What about allegiance abilities making some units summonable, the way they can make some units battleline?  What about damage or debuff spells or abilities targeting enemy units near gravesites, forcing hard decisions on whether or not to camp them?

Maybe instead of one nigh worthless 'bring back a unit' command ability, each legion could have a unique command ability tied to gravesites, some offensive and some utility, matching the flavor of the legion in question.  Abilities that wouldnt be shackled by reserve points.

Grave sites and the summonable rules in general i think are the coolest, though far from the most powerful, elements of the new book, i just wish the designers had pushed the idea further.

[Jamopower]

1 minute ago, RuneBrush said:

Summon a unit is also hero phase only, so you might want to stagger gravesites to be "staging points" - one 6" away from your deployment line, another 11~16" away

It's at the end of the movement phase.

[Undeadly]

1 hour ago, Killax said:

My point remains it's up to the LoN player to place them. 

Are we so unable to configure where an opponent can actually place it's model?
Or do we simply assume that every enemy model can reach any point on the table? 

The latter is a very big and vague assumption to begin with. The placement of markers depends on scenary, oppossing army and plans from the LoN player himself.

As to me this is pretty much the same discussion had with the Ferulent Gnarlmaw... Some players simply assumed from the getgo that it isn't impactful. I am quite certain that voice is gone now.

Now I read some players assumming that opponents can cover them all. I assure you this assumption is very incorrect aswell. But the thing is really that many seem to want to focus on what's not good. All the while they completely ignore all the bonuses all Legions give. It's funny to see but a very blurred perspective on reality. 

You have to remember, you place the Gravesites before deploying; the enemy will know full well where and when they need to plave their stuff. 

 

Although, the fact you can put your Gravesite anywhere is intresting; you can definetly be cheeky and get 1st turn charges off, if you deploy correctly. 

[RuneBrush]

1 minute ago, Jamopower said:

It's at the end of the movement phase.

My bad - managed to misread something that made me think that!  I'll edit my comment to prevent confusion!

[Xasz]

5 hours ago, BURF1 said:

Legion of Sacrment relics are so much better than Grand Host's (you can basically make 2 units immune to shooting) that unless you're taking Morghasts LoS will be extremely close, especially considering if you're taking the Lords of Sacrement and NOT using Arkhans command ability, you're losing out on a lot of potential help. (I can has 36" amaranthine orb?).

Your combo does not work, at least not without adding a vampire wizard.

Arkhan cannot be placed on the vortex.

Necros do not have access to the orb.

Or... I am missing something, in that case I'm ready to be illuminated.

[swarmofseals]

I'm a little surprised nobody is talking about Vhordrai + Coven Throne general. With his spell his attacks all become either 2+/2+ or 3+/2+ and the Coven Throne gives reroll 1s to hit and wound. That's something like 19.5 rend 2 damage and 10.5 rend 1 damage on one combat round on average! Probably not a combo for hyper-competitive lists but it sure does bring the pain.

If you really want to go all in on it take the 5" move spell on the Coven Throne, another mage with a Balewind and the 3" move ability in Legion of Sacrament to push the prince up 6" and bump his move to a 19" fly for a 25" + charge threat range on turn 1. 

[Kingliono_brian]

Now that Legions of Nagash is up in the AoS app I want to build a Bloodseeker Palanquin. Does anyone know what the build is? Is it just a Coven Throne build?

[Sception]

coven throne, minus the two attendant vampires, but with the back cage of the mortis engine, including attached banshees.

[RuneBrush]

5 minutes ago, Kingliono_brian said:

Now that Legions of Nagash is up in the AoS app I want to build a Bloodseeker Palanquin. Does anyone know what the build is? Is it just a Coven Throne build?

Indeed we do!  https://www.warhammer-community.com/2018/02/02/legion-night-bloodseeker-palanquingw-homepage-post-2/

[WoollyMammoth]

I'm amazed at a lot of this negativity. I've been negative for a long time - mostly about the fact that they could fix most of the problems with death with one book. This book could have come out any time over the last 3 years, but they were holding it in their pocket for Malign Portents. Of course it doesn't just "fix everything", but for the first time Death feels like a legitimate army and not an afterthought, so most of my complaints, and all of my biggest complaints are fixed with this release. As @kozokus points out, this is a straight up upgrade with no downside or point increase for Death. 

Sniping Heroes
Yes of course death is heavily reliant on Heroes - this has been the theme since Death began. You expect reanimated zombies and skeletons to function on their own? Yes, we live in a time where shooting and magic is too good and heroes die too fast. So what can we do about it? 

• Zap a unit with Overwhelming Dread. Now the unit is -1/-2 to hit. Kunnin Rukk is not overly scary when they are hitting on 6s only. Zap a unit of Skyfires, and they cannot get mortals and have a hard time hitting you at all. This spell kicks the Vanguard-Raptor list hard. Take Neferata, play her aggressively and give anything that is going to kill your heroes as much as -3 to hit. With a balewind, you are going to have zero problems shutting down any unit right away. With all the pluses that you can get in death, the chances of you failing the spell (or the balewind) are extremely low. 
• Zap a unit with Prison of Grief. This could make them stumble with their ranges. This one is probably going to want Arkhan and cast on a Balewind. This could trip up some shooting lists from getting into range, or Tzeentch from getting into range with spells. Spectral Grasp also works well but is less reliable.
• Vile Transference can now be used to heal any heroes provided they are  within 6" of an enemy unit. If it goes off twice its 2D3 heals! This goes a long way to helping our chars stay alive now.
• Necromancers basically have a 4+++, which is one of the best hero protections in all of AoS. 
• The book is packed with hero-saving artifacts - at least one in every host (most notably the -2 to shoot in Sacrament)
• Death already has 6++ on all the heroes, and most of them have healing capabilities most heroes could only dream of
• Really great artifacts to shut down magic now (my favorite is Oubliette Arcana)
• Most issues with hero sniping is that the whole army is resting on one hero. Kill the Orruk Big Boss and gimp Kunnin Rukk ... kill the general and start forcing Fyreslayers to take battleshock, etc. The complaint here is that we need the Heroes for Deathly Invocation now. Well with gravesites and heroes any one hero is coming back at 10D3 models per turn. If you are a good conga-liner (something very easy with all these models coming back) its not going to be hard to get your units to constantly get in range of lots of things at once. So if your opponent focuses and snipes down a hero you now have 9D3 healing capabilities - not exactly breaking our army. Even when all the chars are dead, our large blocks can conga line over our gravesites for 4D3 healing. 

There is a misunderstanding here that heroes have to be near the units; in contrast, the units have to be near the Heroes. If you have been playing death since GH:2017 - you are very familiar with trying to stay within the 6" for the 6++. All you have to do is take a few models and conga line them back into your heroes. The big heroes should be in the muck with your army, and the Necromancers should be moving forward and using their 4+++ protection. Even so its fairly easy to stay as far as 20" back with your heroes with conga-lining. Invocation does not require LoS so you can hide behind scenery to provide all the buffs while fully hidden. This is not usually a good tactic at the start, but once you are into the game and have most of your enemies army pinned down, you can just hide from their sight knowing they can't move much to try and see you.  Also - unbinding requires LoS, while most spells do not - so finding a nice hiding spot can really pay off.

Gravesites
Summoning is currently extremely good free 18"+  move which negates one of the main limitations in a death army - slow movement. The main problem with summoning before is you are confined to summoning a useless unit of 10 zombies or other chaff, with just a few notable cases (spirit hosts and morghast) where it could be used to good effect. The other issue is you had to throw away one of your precious spells, and it could be countered. All of this is fixed now. You can summon entire units 9" from the enemy. The main argument against this is that your opponent can "block out the gravesite". Sure that's a limitation, but I don't think you are understanding what the board is going to look like:

The "I'm going first" 


In this example, there are two central cites in your territory used for moving up right away and easily ambushing within 9" of your opponents deployment zone. Failing that, the majority of the center of the board is dominated with gravesite areas, so your opponent would have to spread out his whole army to fully block you out. If you are going first, this gives you plenty of room to take full board control and protect your gravesites while getting a lot of your army within 9" of the opponent.

The "I just want to heal" 



In this example, you don't expect to summon anything, so you just create a huge block of condensed super-healing. Any units which can get at least one model in the center of the board are healing 4D3  every turn. Depending on the battleplan, you might have this in the center or move this to one side to dominate one half of the board. 

The "Protect my butt"


In this example, you have some room to summon but you also have space to bring your units in the back of the board in case all your plans fall through. You would have models on the bottom gravesite, so your opponent cannot block you out. You can simply move forward to create space and summon behind you.

The "I'm not going anywhere"



In this example, you know that your opponent is going to take board control and there is nothing you can do about it, so you use the gravesites defensively. You can summon  behind, but your best bet may be to deploy everything defensively. 

There are tons more examples. You are not committed to any one concept and can change it up depending on what you expect from your opponent and what you need to accomplish. Grave sites are an awesome new free tool combining great offence (ambush) and mobility (summon on an objective) with defense (healing). No matter whats going on you should be able to get something out of your gravesites.

Remember, depending on what you are up against, you are never committed to summoning anything. You can simply choose not to summon if your opponent is in your face. In this case the gravesites just become a spot on the board that heals all your core units every hero phase. Not really a bad situation.

[Sception]

"I'm not going anywhere" is not a legal gravesite set up.  Two must be in your territory, and two in your opponent's territory.

[Killax]

@WoollyMammoth great write up, as before this is what I see as the key power. Which furthermore allows for tons of different builds. Either horde or elite focused, Legions obtained amazing speed and board control. With options to go either.

Other than the last example, the middle focus seems excellent to me and the flankings optional.

Going where you want to be is the essence of these Gravemarkers.

As before, Blight Trees in Nurgle does the trick to compete with ranged forces. Gravemarkers speed up the army considerably. This makes hordes dangerous.

[smucreo]

Beautifully put, I feel this book has upped the complexity of the army by quite a considerable amount, in a way I feel our gamestyle with Gravesites is akin to Sylvaneth, with the obvious limitation that you can't place more graves, which makes correct placement even more important. As much as people are critizicing artifacts, every legion has at least a way to reduce shooting potency on one hero of our choosing, with Sacrament taking the cake with the 4++ that stacks on top of your other saves. Say what you want, but this book represents a direction I'm sure we'll continue to see in future battletomes, and in GH18, and I'm happy with what I'm seeing.

Legion of Night still strikes me as the best allegiance to get board control, 3 outflanking units (of which I'd use 2x2 Morghasts to get that juicy charge in), a fast lord to get to grave sites and summoning forward Deathrattle units to get them into combat way more safely and quicker is an interesting prospect for sure. And if you feel you won't get the summon in you can always put fast units in the graves, so that if your advanced ones get blocked you at least can plop a new unit on another place and get it fast into combat.

[swarmofseals]

1 minute ago, Sception said:

"I'm not going anywhere" is not a legal gravesite set up.  Two must be in your territory, and two in your opponent's territory.

"you may pick up to two points in your territory and up to two points anywhere on the battlefield"

[Arkiham]

1 hour ago, Killax said:

 

I think that there are situations where your opponent is completely unable to cover them.
1. Your Vampire Lord flies 10" over to them.
2. Your Skeleton hordes now recieved an incredible movement boost (max 9" from that point), no Hero ability or Spell required.

Just called my local Death player, will make a rundown later. I think that one of the most effective Legions based on this and flanking options is Legion of Night. The other I also really like is Legion of Secrament if you want to exclude the VLoZD altogether. For those who do want to go tripple Morghasts or double VLoZD I'd certainly go Grand Host or Legion of Blood, though it plays into an elite aspect that LoN doesn't nearly buff as much as the Summonable units and smaller Heroes.

Exact.

Thing is really I think that it's new, I think many havnt looked into 40K and many might want to go way too fancy with Gravesites. Even if it's just a movement boost, ultimately that's all most melee centric armies want. Legions of Nagash is one of them.

It's a tree, it's the essential Nurgle free bonus that the whole army recieved since the book.

2015 till 2017, not a single noteworthy showing.
2018, Nurgle obtains Ferulent Gnarlmaws, has two showings in the top 10 at large events, one of which it became second.

Obtaining the ability to charge and run for free is the edge between being competitive or not, even if that was what all the Blight Tree did... But it does more.
Looking at Khorne, I'd trade the Blood Tithe table for Khornate Ferulent Gnarlmaws, in a heartbeat, no questions asked.

That's literally what I said..

 

The tree is useless aside from run and charge.

 

Summoning never gets looked at as it's too restrictive. The trees are just better along with having your units out 

But this is not the thread for nurgle so ill end it there..

[Drofnum]

3 minutes ago, Arkiham said:

The tree is useless aside from run and charge.

You say it like that isnt a huge advantage to a slow army...

[WoollyMammoth]

@Sception
what @swarmofseals said

@smucreo
With the 6" board limitation, I'm not convinced. This  "ambush" thing will often just mean you are sticking units way out of position on the side flanks of the board. Mortatchs can move as far as 21" with Ame. Pinions & the VLoZD moves 19". this gives you a lot more flexibility to get where you want to get without needing any ambush. A lot of people have this idea of ambushing behind the opponent, which will only happen if your opponent is playing very poorly. You don't need a whole lot of tools to beat an opponent whos playing poorly. This book has all kinds of mobility now, I just don't see the ambushing as useful at all. The only thing I can think of would be to hold some Morghast in reserve and wait till mid-late game when my opponent forgets and use the opportunity to come out of nowhere and hit hard.