Lets Chat: Legions of Nagash

[Elmir]

I'll be playtesting a list for a local GW tournament soon:  1500p with 2 BL requirements. Picking Legion of Blood

Neferata

VLoZD

2 units of 5 blood knights

2 units of 5 dire wolves. 

Just going to go for a  simple "just smash through it" approach and see if it can work at that points limit. It'll have a ton of hitting power on a small foot print, that's never to be underestimated if you actually play on a table with terrain in stead of a bleak football field. 

[Killax]

6 minutes ago, bsharitt said:

Forgot the wooden sylveneth dice, and was associating the tzeench with 40k only. I never did pick up those deathguard dice, I just don't see how they're balanced properly. I'm pretty sure I had some MP dice on my order of new stuff coming in. My FLGS usually gets their GW stuff in on Wednesday, so hopefully I'll have it all soon.

The real question is do I try to get my VLoZD and new Vargheists painted so they'll be ready to go with the new book for my games Friday, or do I finish out my Moonclan grots and hope I can get the cave shaman assembled, primed and painted by friday knowing I'll probably have to leave it over night between priming and painting.

You can squeeze those odd Nurgle dice and that's fun  don't think any GW dice are actually balanced properly anway, not the intend nor the shape for it really. But I think you'll enjoy the MP stuff by the looks of it. As above still a bit upset someone snatched that Battletome away right before I was there. Could have picked up the Warscroll cards and token set but we pretty much all know what the units do and yeah some of them are still great.

For painting I'd say toss a coin! I mean the VLoZD is very neat to spend your time on. In addition I also think it will thake a while to fully optimize the gravemarker usage because I have the feeling that several Legions will work ever so slightly different with them. For example the Legion of Night has much less insentive to play them very forward while the Legion of Blood for example shouldn't have any issues with that.

The biggest part that interest me is the 'insta-bubblewrap' that the units will provide for VLoZD's near the Gravesite. Making it impossible to reach him with if your intend is to put a good layer of wrapping around him. Which especially against non-Shooting armies will be mad fun  

@Elmir looks cool though I'd strongly suggest to go heavier on the Direwolves so you can keep them around with the Deathly Invocations you have.

[Elmir]

My original plan was to bring them in late game actually through the grave sites if needed... Running neffy and VLoZD is already quite a point sink. I'm still debating dropping neffy though if the playtesting shows I have too few bodies. 

[Killax]

9 minutes ago, Elmir said:

My original plan was to bring them in late game actually through the grave sites if needed... Running neffy and VLoZD is already quite a point sink. I'm still debating dropping neffy though if the playtesting shows I have too few bodies. 

If anything should work well with Legions of Nagash it's maxed bodies on units with the Summonable keyword. I'd certainly not leave the house with at least one numbering 30+...

[smucreo]

Let us know how it goes!

[Undeadly]

1 hour ago, Killax said:

Yeah I dislike the Khorne dice with a passion. It's also a typical example of old GW vibes, you pay an arm and a leg for them and a shaker and well... It's not even remotely enough dice to do anything with

But there have been quite a lot of Age of Sigmar dice:

"Fate dice"

"Sylvaneth dice"

And then if you are a Nurgle fan of 40K too it's not too difficult to find Death Guard Nurgle dice still:



But certainly as many as 40K, that's true also. I believe together with the Stormcast and Khorne dice this is pretty much it.

I think the MP dice are the coolest of the bunch to be honest with you:

At least GW learned to put the Skull on 1's and Faction Icon on 6's now. Thank god for that...

[Undeadly]

Honestly, the two lists I'm looking at running both seem pretty viable, depending on Prince Vhdorky's point cost. Him and a VLoZD in a Legion of Night army, backed up by Grave Guard and Skeletons to hold my field, with maybe a unit of Black Knights or Archai to help give my list some bunch, points permitted of course. Really, the thought of a VLoZD attacking twice is scary as is, but his Breath of Shyish ability is dead scary. The only thing that gives me pause is how his spell works; It targets the Caster and gives him +1 to wound/hit, but does it work on the Dragon's attacks as well? 

Otherwise, if the spell list/Mortis Engine Battalion is good, I think that Arkhan's Magic Show might be pretty sweet as well. The only question is, what to use as a melee component?

 

[Killax]

Just now, Undeadly said:

Honestly, the two lists I'm looking at running both seem pretty viable, depending on Prince Vhdorky's point cost. Him and a VLoZD in a Legion of Night army, backed up by Grave Guard and Skeletons to hold my field, with maybe a unit of Black Knights or Archai to help give my list some bunch, points permitted of course. Really, the thought of a VLoZD attacking twice is scary as is, but his Breath of Shyish ability is dead scary. The only thing that gives me pause is how his spell works; It targets the Caster and gives him +1 to wound/hit, but does it work on the Dragon's attacks as well? 

Otherwise, if the spell list/Mortis Engine Battalion is good, I think that Arkhan's Magic Show might be pretty sweet as well. The only question is, what to use as a melee component?

 

Uhmm well I can't really say I'd directly follow that Vampire Lord on Zombie Dragon plan... It can be cool for the Legion of Blood but it also means your spending close to 1K points on characters and with all the additional power obtained through Gravesites and Deadly Invocation I can't really say it's a plan I'd go for right now.

Offcourse attacking twice with a VLoZD is scary but I think the key thing to realize here is that you also present a massive target that isn't impossible to thake out and when taken out basically all the oomph is out of the list.

On the other hand, thaking multiple undead hordes, buffed/supported with cheaper Vampire Lords mean your opponent will have close to no way reaching your characters if you do not want to and the stack of X returning D3 can easily go towards X = 5 and then we're looking at easily 10 summonable models returning. At least from my mortal wound mania Khorne perspective that aspect is much and much scarier and all the more relevant for Objective play. 

I believe that the Undead hordes can function as the melee component the moment a Vampire Lord/Necromancer supplies it's Magical Support. But there are many paths here. Paths that reward the swarm aspect most of the time.
 

[Sception]

I'd imagine (much to my personal frustration ) that the best melee hammer for arkhan's magic show will be a dragonlord with the wristbands, though obviously it's too soon to say conclusively.  Vanhelsed summonable hordes will probably also be a key offensive element, relying on deathmage debuffs to weaken enemy units enough that wolves or skeletons can go toe to toe.

[AverageBoss]

5 hours ago, smucreo said:

I'm eyeballing the Legion of Night too, while the Legion of Sacrament's potential is more apparent I feel the Legion of Night will need some testing before solid lists can start coming out of it, but if one does appear it can be brutal. So far a unit of 4 Morghast Archai with Halberds is really attractive to me, and some kind of Deathrattle battleline + a VLoZD. I still have to decide what other units to bring, but if my suspicion is correct and we get some artifact or trait for the Legion of Night that allows us to guarantee one charge out of our deepstriking units I'll be sure to try to stick it to the meanest thing I can find and try to build a competent rush list

I am thinking similar, though I think Harbingers with halberds might perform better in the legion than Archai, especially if they are going to be one of the deepstrike units. That long charge seems really good and important.

[Jamopower]

2 hours ago, Undeadly said:

At least GW learned to put the Skull on 1's and Faction Icon on 6's now. Thank god for that...

How do you know which is which?

[Xasz]

16 minutes ago, Jamopower said:

How do you know which is which?

Because of the standard positions on a dice.

Look at the left side of the picture and where the 2's are (and their orientation).

[WoollyMammoth]

@Killax
I guess you have to clarify what you mean by "AoS understands it narrative". I thought you meant that they know how to make the rules work like the lore, which I disagree with. I read everything you said I just don't feel the need to get into a long debate with you. I stated that nurgle dosen't have any 'must take' command traits so there is not much of an issue with taking the Glottkin as your general (though he dies way too fast IMO).

The named char rule often makes it more competitive to work around the lore, and not take Named chars or take them as your general. 

A perfect example is if they bring back the 5++ death save as a command trait in the legion of Nagash.  If this is the case, you are not going to take Nagash/Nef/Arkhan/Mannfred and lose out on that command. You are not going to take a low wound slow & easily killable hero. You are going to take a VLoZD because hes got a huge footprint, easily a 2+ save and a D6 heal for emergencies. Most death armies you see would run a VLoZD as the general. VLoZD geenral has been common since AoS started, even with the nerfs and price hikes, because he is fast, survivable, strong and customizable (such as adding the Cursed Book for a large -1 to hit bubble). 

I don't like this, I have never run a VLoZD, but that is the reality of the situation. Last year 9/10 death armies I saw were VLoZD + Mourngul as the core of every death list. This year .... well, nobody runs death anymore ... but most of the ones I see have a VLoZD general unless they are doing FEC, Nighthaunt or the deathrattle battalion.  

In contrast, simply allowing named chars to take a command trait would open death way up and you would see people taking all the named chars. Sure a VLoZD is still a great choice with cursed book, but it would not be a mandatory choice.
 

8 hours ago, shadowgra said:

Orghotts is probably the worst unit in the entire battletome. And by far the worst leader Nurgle has along With tamurkhan and kazyk

Yeah, its weird that they made him 1 damage axes, making much less offensve than Morbidex.  Sorry .. I meant Bloab Rotspawned is being highly considered in many lists. In the everchosen battalion hes easily -2 to hit and maybe the best deliverer of Rancid Visitations, or a hardy carrier for Blades of Putrefication. 

[shadowgra]

13 minutes ago, WoollyMammoth said:

Yeah, its weird that they made him 1 damage axes, making much less offensve than Morbidex.  Sorry .. I meant Bloab Rotspawned is being highly considered in many lists. In the everchosen battalion hes easily -2 to hit and maybe the best deliverer of Rancid Visitations, or a hardy carrier for Blades of Putrefication. 

He is a bit overrated, but still a good hero to have around. The best carrier of rancid is glottkin tho with 130mm base!

orghotts axes make no sense at all. As the 1 damage of a beast big as a griphon

[S133arcanite]

I already designed army list:

Prince Vhordrai + 2/3 blood knights go in reserve with legion of night allegiance

2 20 grave guard stand at the back, 3 necromancers + wight king behind them, 

2 30 skellies in gravesites:

 

Enemy advances towards grave guard, Vampires appear behind them, pincering them

Force them towards a grave site, skellies appear, they are now surrounded by a constantly regenerating undead killing machine

 

PS the age of hope isn't dead, its undead

[RoyalDachshund]

8 minutes ago, S133arcanite said:

I already designed army list:

Prince Vhordrai + 2/3 blood knights go in reserve with legion of night allegiance

2 20 grave guard stand at the back, 3 necromancers + wight king behind them, 

2 30 skellies in gravesites:

 

Enemy advances towards grave guard, Vampires appear behind them, pincering them

Force them towards a grave site, skellies appear, they are now surrounded by a constantly regenerating undead killing machine

 

PS the age of hope isn't dead, its undead

And what in case - and I'm honestly asking, it's not a snarky irony of

a) enemy one-drop to positions/objectives and sits there
b) enemy is heavy shooting/MW army and grinds down your "small" heroes

It's easy to find a great tactic vs melee oriented enemies as Death, heck, you could have done a similar thing without LoN. But outside of this... there are some problems.

[swarmofseals]

11 hours ago, Burf said:

People always tout skeletons but if you look at it they're more fragile than dire wolves, slower than dire wolves, more expensive than dire wolves per wound, the only things they ever had was regen and doing marginally more damage when buffed. For regen, that's still better than Dwolvez regen, it's not as big of an advantage as it used to be and for damage, the amount of damage skeletons do is largely irrelevant anyway. All buffing them ever really accomplishes is either bouncing off of good saves or having a moderately scary brick of dudes...that are so slow you can ignore them for 2-3 turns and be fine.

For 40 more points, I think the extra 20 wounds the dire wolves have ALONE is enough to make them at least on par with skeletons.

In fairness, Skeletons hit MUCH harder than Dire Wolves, particularly in large blocks. You can get like 3-4 Skeletons in range for every Dire Wolf. Even without considering that factor the skeletons hit harder.  30 Dire Wolves charging do 20.33 rend 0 damage on average (if you could miraculously get them all in range) while 40 Skeletons with spears in range of a hero will do 30 rend 0 damage on average. Skeletons are reasonably defensively efficient and can shred light troops while Dire Wolves are amazingly defensively efficient but hit a lot less hard and are more awkward to use in combat. Both have a role to play and both are good at what they do.

I'd love to see someone take like 150+ dire wolves against a Changehost list just to see what happens.

10 hours ago, angrycontra said:

I gotta say that I'm really disappointed about the lack of point changes ... no matter how I look at it, mannfred is NOT worth 420 points (he is not some glottkin with 18 wounds for crying out loud) and neither are blood knights worth 260. I'm somewhat annoyed how almost ultra-conservative gw is when it comes to dropping points as if sky would fall if they would slash 20-40 points off from something. What ends up happening is that people just use proven and true models (vlozd for example) and ignore the rest ... In fact thanks to blood knight nerf, there's no reason to pick them outside legion of blood. Mornghasts are also most worth their points in legion of nagash.

Now I don't want to sound too negative. Obviously new rules, spells, etc. Are gonna improve death and there's always ghb2018 but still I wish gw would not be so afraid to cut those points when needed.

I wish they had been a bit more aggressive with points changes, but points decreases are really dangerous. Even small changes can make a huge impact. Consider the impact of GHB2017 -- Vulkites went from seeing no competitive play to being one of the most obnoxious units in the current metagame. Certain warscrolls are at their best in certain legions, but why is that a bad thing? I disagree that they are only playable in their "optimal" legion. It's possible that you are right if you are talking about no-holds-barred top level tournament play, but most players don't play like this.

10 hours ago, Killax said:

Though quite frankly, with Terrorgeist and Zombie Dragon as great options I don't think you need a Mourngul either because of them.

Jamo, I got to be honest here, in general the opinions are so pessimistic here that I don't know what else some players expected.
I agree that outside Legion of Blood the Blood Knights are about as good (thus bad) as Bloodcrushers. But because Legion of Blood excists I still see some role for them. The thing is really that 260 is so close to 300 that for a small bump you can get a much scarier Flying hammer.
 

Hmm, I dunno. If you run the numbers BKs are better than Bloodcrushers although not by a ton. I don't know about your comparison to the Zombie Dragon/Terrorgheist though. Obviously those models have some advantages (flight, some ranged damage) but their melee profile is much worse. Charging Blood Knights (with no buffs at all) are doing 14.22 rend 1 damage and 2.5 rend 0 damage on average. A Terrorgheist does 1.5 mortal wounds, 2.625 rend 2 damage, and 2.67 rend 1 damage on average. A Zombie Dragon does 3.5 rend 2 damage and 4.67 rend 1 damage on average. 

Performance vs. various armor saves (charging BK/non charging BK/TG/ZD)

2+:  5.16/2.79/3.7/3.31

3+: 7.94/4.39/4.59/4.67

4+: 10.73/5.99/5.47/6.03

5+: 13.52/7.59/6.35/7.39

6+:  16.3/9.19/6.8/8.17

-: 16.72/9.61/6.8/8.17

Charging Blood Knights dominate against every armor save. Even against a 2+ save they are some 40% better than a Terrorgheist. Both the ZD and TG outperform non-charging BKs against a 2+ save and barely against a 3+ save. ZD also squeaks by against a 4+, but non-charging BKs are better than the TG against a save of 4+ or worse and better than a ZD against a save of 5+ or worse.

All of that is just pure output ignoring the point cost. Blood Knights cost 40 points less. They also have 1 more wound, a better save against rend 1, can benefit from cover and don't count against your behemoth allowance. They also benefit from multiple known buffs. They debuff bravery by 1 and never fail a charge 6" or less. 

The behemoths on the other hand start with 2" more move and fly, but their movement drops off with damage taken. They do both have shooting attacks, but I'm not sure it makes up for the worse offense and defense combined with higher point cost. 

All that being said I do find the Terrorgheist to be interesting with all of the bravery debuffs that are cropping up. I don't think it can compete with BKs as a pure hammer, but that scream could turn him into a short ranged Thundertusk. 

5 hours ago, Killax said:

So have to get this of my chest, went to a place where they had the book and it was sold allready.

2 minutes ago, RoyalDachshund said:

And what in case - and I'm honestly asking, it's not a snarky irony of

a) enemy one-drop to positions/objectives and sits there
b) enemy is heavy shooting/MW army and grinds down your "small" heroes

It's easy to find a great tactic vs melee oriented enemies as Death, heck, you could have done a similar thing without LoN. But outside of this... there are some problems.

I can't speak to how good the proposed army is, but every list is going to have weaknesses/bad matchups. I suspect that if the enemy drops on objectives the plan is unchanged - hit them with the big stuff from behind and grind with the skellies from the front. May or may not work depending in the dice and the enemy composition. Against heavy shooting/MW it'd depend on the list. Luckily, small heroes can be hidden behind terrain pretty easily. 

Honestly though, if your minimum standard for the list is that it must excel against melee opponents, excel against shooting/mortal wound/magic opponents and be able to reliably obviate one drop deployments/deepstriking and similar shenanigans then you should probably just give up now. Such an army would have no bad matchups, be tier 0 and threaten the health of the game.

[smucreo]

3 hours ago, AverageBoss said:

I am thinking similar, though I think Harbingers with halberds might perform better in the legion than Archai, especially if they are going to be one of the deepstrike units. That long charge seems really good and important.

woops yeah i meant harbingers hahah they seem like a nice option in a unit of 4, you can choose to delete a lot of units with them with the 3d6 charge basically guaranteeing the charge and the -2 rend chewing through a lot of saves. I'm still debating on whether or not I should even consider GG for such a list too, on one hand they are really cool, on the other if they don't drop in points they probably won't be worth it... 

[Nactigal]

Someone on Reddit posted an image of point costs

Knight of shrouds - 120

PrinceVhodrai - 480

Bloodseeker palanquin - 320

 

[Xasz]

The battalions are surprisingly cheap.

[swarmofseals]

7 minutes ago, smucreo said:

woops yeah i meant harbingers hahah they seem like a nice option in a unit of 4, you can choose to delete a lot of units with them with the 3d6 charge basically guaranteeing the charge and the -2 rend chewing through a lot of saves. I'm still debating on whether or not I should even consider GG for such a list too, on one hand they are really cool, on the other if they don't drop in points they probably won't be worth it... 

GG are a really extreme unit. Their defensive efficiency is quite poor, although that is compensated for to some extent by the value you get from healing them. Their offensive efficiency, however, is excellent. With Great Wight Blades their WDR (as a massive regiment) is .107 which puts them in elite territory. Given that they are also already quite buffable (Vanhels, +1 attack command trait, +1 attack command abilities are already known, there could be more), they can be absolute slaughter machines. The problem of course is that they are squishy and slow.

That's where gravesites come in. Grave Guard are going to be a fantastic option for deploying via gravesite. It's a bit risky, of course, but it does solve the speed problem to some degree. It also gives you the chance to take out some of the enemy ranged support, thus making it harder for them to kill the entire unit at once.  Bringing these guys in when you are going second in the battle round and have a chance at a double turn could be a really powerful play.

The best part is that you don't have to bring in GG if the situation doesn't call for it. If you just need to bog the opponent down you can bring in a truckload of Dire Wolves or Spirit Hosts. If you need to get somewhere fast and push a light unit off an objective you can bring in Black Knights. Or bring in a mix. I think there is a real chance that we could see Death players leaving a lot of reserve points, and GG are a great tool for the toolbox. 

[AverageBoss]

Just shy of 500 points for the named VLoZD is WAY too much imo. There is no way he is that much better than the 8 Nurgle/Tzeentch/Khorne Greater Demon variants, and there is no way he is approaching Stardrake good (especially when all but 3 of those get the benefits of command traits and artifacts). Given the unfortunate lack of points changes all around, I am thinking the 1st list I try will look something like this:
 

Vampire Lord On Zombie Dragon (440)
- General
- Vampiric Sword & Shield & Chalice
Vampire Lord (140)
- Mount: Nightmare
Vampire Lord (140)
- Mount: Nightmare
Necromancer (110)
Necromancer (110)
Tomb Banshee (80)
40 x Skeleton Warriors (280)
- Ancient Spear & Shield
10 x Black Knights (240)
5 x Dire Wolves (60)
5 x Dire Wolves (60)
2 x Morghast Harbingers (220)
3 x Spirit Hosts (120)

Total: 2000 / 2000
Allies: 0 / 400
Wounds: 139

Could run is as either Grand Host or Legion of Sacrament. Will have to wait to see all the traits and artifacts first.

[smucreo]

5 minutes ago, swarmofseals said:

GG are a really extreme unit. Their defensive efficiency is quite poor, although that is compensated for to some extent by the value you get from healing them. Their offensive efficiency, however, is excellent. With Great Wight Blades their WDR (as a massive regiment) is .107 which puts them in elite territory. Given that they are also already quite buffable (Vanhels, +1 attack command trait, +1 attack command abilities are already known, there could be more), they can be absolute slaughter machines. The problem of course is that they are squishy and slow.

That's where gravesites come in. Grave Guard are going to be a fantastic option for deploying via gravesite. It's a bit risky, of course, but it does solve the speed problem to some degree. It also gives you the chance to take out some of the enemy ranged support, thus making it harder for them to kill the entire unit at once.  Bringing these guys in when you are going second in the battle round and have a chance at a double turn could be a really powerful play.

The best part is that you don't have to bring in GG if the situation doesn't call for it. If you just need to bog the opponent down you can bring in a truckload of Dire Wolves or Spirit Hosts. If you need to get somewhere fast and push a light unit off an objective you can bring in Black Knights. Or bring in a mix. I think there is a real chance that we could see Death players leaving a lot of reserve points, and GG are a great tool for the toolbox. 

Yeah I guess you could do that! I'll find any excuse to play them if I can, I just need to be sure I'm not shooting myself in the foot too hard haha

[5kaven5lave]

70 points for the Sacrament battalion is amazeballs. Let the spells rain down etc etc. 

[Undeadly]

10 minutes ago, swarmofseals said:

GG are a really extreme unit. Their defensive efficiency is quite poor, although that is compensated for to some extent by the value you get from healing them. Their offensive efficiency, however, is excellent. With Great Wight Blades their WDR (as a massive regiment) is .107 which puts them in elite territory. Given that they are also already quite buffable (Vanhels, +1 attack command trait, +1 attack command abilities are already known, there could be more), they can be absolute slaughter machines. The problem of course is that they are squishy and slow.

That's where gravesites come in. Grave Guard are going to be a fantastic option for deploying via gravesite. It's a bit risky, of course, but it does solve the speed problem to some degree. It also gives you the chance to take out some of the enemy ranged support, thus making it harder for them to kill the entire unit at once.  Bringing these guys in when you are going second in the battle round and have a chance at a double turn could be a really powerful play.

The best part is that you don't have to bring in GG if the situation doesn't call for it. If you just need to bog the opponent down you can bring in a truckload of Dire Wolves or Spirit Hosts. If you need to get somewhere fast and push a light unit off an objective you can bring in Black Knights. Or bring in a mix. I think there is a real chance that we could see Death players leaving a lot of reserve points, and GG are a great tool for the toolbox. 

Don't forget how the radius of grave sites; You have to deploy the whole unit within 9" while also staying away 9" away from an enemy unit; that can tricky with units like Skeletons or Dire Wolves which rely on big numbers to keep up the damage.