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[soots]

27 minutes ago, WoollyMammoth said:

Death doesn't need a lot of help in the combat phase, they need more tactical options for ranged attacks.
 

This x1000

Everything we have is solid predictable melee. Shooting is basically non-existant and magic to date for undead has been severely underwhelming. All ive seen is skeleton buffs and some high risk- high reward suicide spells.

Skeletons look like a really really solid choice and honestly I don't see much benefit of taking anything else for tactical reasons, especially with the deployment rules for gravestones and wraith fleet and the limited summoning/healing rules. I don't think undead should be tabling armies with shooting but I do think some decent *ranged magic would give them more tactical options.

The only thing left that would make me happy would be some decent consistent ranged attacks that involve either magic or banshee type bravery checks. id prefer for it to not be based on bravery though - just a flat D6 roll so it can become more reliable and balanced regardless of opponent.

I loved playing the terror and fear game back in 6th edition. It certainly gave the army another facet.

[Tizianolol]

Favoured retainers: it says " all melee weapons" this mean we can make our zombie dragon ( I'm speaking about vlozd) even stronger.. And we can still take soulblight allegiance!! It's amazing:)

[swarmofseals]

1 hour ago, WoollyMammoth said:

1. I don't tend to like 'mathhammer' because the sample sizes are way too small for statistics to be predictable, and a million things happen on the table to cause you to throw the math out the window. For example Retributors are easily mortals on 5+ near the Celestant, and I'm sure at that point they are over the .1. That being said I am interested in this 'WDR' calculation as an indicator of base offensive potential. 

2. Its also an issue with this new allegiance, because you want to take as many as you can to optimize the +1 attack boost. 

3. What really makes Blood Knights great on the table is their staying power with the regen. After they hit and do their damage, they turn into an anvil that is hard to take down, but their attacks go way down in damage potential. Death needs an option to retreat and charge - then they will really be in a great place. It also fits into the lore with vampires being supernaturally quick. Otherwise, the +1 attack is nice in that I might take one unit, but not relay on them (unlike soulblight which currently relies on them and its not going very well). The regen of that one model is also extremely tactical - you could put it down to tie a nearby unit in combat, or you could put it behind your unit in combat to tie down an objective that is 3" away, or put it down to get 3" closer to the unit you want to charge before movement, etc. (I really hope they only removed the regen to place it someplace else - like they have done with skellies)

4. stuff about Legion of Sacrament

5. In terms of large hordes, you pinhole surrounding multiple units as a bad thing. Pinning down 2 or more units in combat is very often an amazingly useful thing.  Not everything is going to hit you very hard in combat, and even so if you have 40 models to start + a lot that are coming back, its not a big deal at all. Even against really good melee, you are often fine with immunity to battleshock (I've only ever lost a 40 man horde in one shot once, and my opponents army is no longer legal). Also being able to attack and weaken multiple units all at once, while your opponent has to wait for multiple steps, is most often a good situation. I don't have a lot of trouble getting 25mm bases a good surround so that a very large number of them get attacks. Units like skeletons and ghouls have extra attacks to reflect how difficult it is to get most of them in - so the few that are in attack more. Also hordes have the option of staying back rather than surrounding if you don't want to give the opponent too many attacks. I'm just defending hordes here - I completely agree that being able to pinpoint a lot of attacks in a small footprint can be used to devastating effect. Hordes are probably not going to do as many wounds, but they have a lot more flexibility in what they can do for you on the table. This is why I'm saying I'd take only one unit of Blood Knights + hordes and other stuff. I'm not a fan of Soulblight but this Neferata allegiance might be really cool with more varied units.
 

Just gonna respond to each of these 5 main sections in turn to make it easier to read.

1. Mathhammer isn't supposed to tell you what will happen in any given game. I think of it like this -- your warscrolls are tools in a toolbox. Mathhammer tells you how good those tools are in comparison to one another, and the more similar the tools are in purpose the more mathhammer will allow you to compare them accurately. But you still need to know what tool to use for which job and how to select the correct set of tools for a given project. With mathhammer alone you end up with an army that may or may not function well on the battlefield. Without mathhammer you end up with a bunch of tools of the correct type, but the tools may or may not be of the quality that you need. Mathhammer combined with planning, judgment and player skill ensures that you bring the best set of tools for the job at hand.

As far as WDR goes, you are correct that once you start to factor in outside buffs the frame of reference for the numbers shifts. The numbers I gave are based on the warscrolls alone without adding any other synergies or buffs. Retributors supported by an LC will be more efficient, as will Blood Knights supported by a Vampire Lord. There could be battalion bonuses that will make a difference as well. I should be clear that WDR doesn't capture offensive potential. It captures offensive efficiency (how much bang you get for your buck, so to speak). A warscroll can provide GREAT WDR but if it's super cheap it still won't actually do that much damage in absolute terms. Blood Knights break the usual patterns that I see because they have both very high efficiency AND very high offensive potential. That's relatively unusual. I should also note that WDR is a slightly rough calculation that requires a judgment call or two, but I'm confident that it is at least close to accurate. It weights the different rend values at 1.33 for rend 1, 1.66 for rend 2 and 2.16 for mortal wounds. The way I got those numbers was through using actual math with some guesses at how often you run into different armor saves. If you know that you will be facing heavy armor then the weights should be increased some, and if you know you will be facing light armor/unrendable saves/or ward saves they should be decreased some. 

WDR numbers should be considered in the context of the damage types that the warscrolls provide. WDR itself is intended to capture efficiency vs. the full range of possible targets. In a practical scenario, each damage type is best in specific situations. Rend - is very efficient against light armor while high rend and especially mortal wounds are very efficient against heavy armor. Rend 1 is probably the most versatile damage type in that it's only inefficient against unrendable/ward saves, literal no armor, and very heavy armor all of which are relatively rare. When you talk about people over-relying on Retributors you kinda get to this conclusion. Retributors derive most of their offensive efficiency from mortal wounds, which means they are only at peak efficiency against heavy armor. A lot of opponents don't use heavy armor, so if you build your whole army around Retributors then you are going to have a lot of in game situations where you are being inefficient. They are weak in other ways too, of course. Anyway, this gets back to the point about mathhammer earlier. If you do the math and conclude that Retributors are the most offensively efficient warscroll that SCE have and just spam them, you are setting yourself up for frustration. To use the former analogy, you picked the best hammer but not every problem is a nail.

 

2. This is very much connected to the point about mathhammer. Getting tunnel visioned on the +1 attack will be a rookie mistake that people make. This bonus may make Blood Knights the most efficient warscroll available on offense, but that doesn't mean it'll be right to spam it. The same argument could be made about literally any bonus in the game -- they all push you to optimize in a certain way, but if you over optimize based on any one bonus you are probably going to hamstring yourself. That doesn't mean that bonuses are bad. The better way of thinking about the bonus is that the +1 attack means that your points spent on hammers will be more efficient thus allowing you to better fill other areas of your roster.

 

3. I'd argue that this assessment is very much grounded in your current experience and could change a lot under the new book. Right now if you run Soulblight it's only remotely doable because Blood Knights can kinda bit a decent tarpit, thus allowing more roles to be filled by a very limited roster. Under the new system the strength of Blood Knights could easily shift from being a generalist unit to being a very specialized unit.

 

4. All valid points, and I think Legion of Sacrament looks super sweet. Of course certain opponents can crush this approach in a way that might not work against Legion of Blood.  It's OK though if Legion of Sacrament is more powerful. Not all of the allegiance packages will be exactly equal -- the best we can hope for is that they are viable.

 

5. I totally agree about hordes. I didn't mean to imply that their size is a disadvantage. It's a mixed bag -- offensively it means they are more awkward to use efficiently. Taking up space is also really valuable in a lot of situations, as is potentially tarpitting multiple units. In generally I think hordes are fantastically useful and part of the problem with Death up until now is that people haven't been willing to field truly massive model count armies. My point was just that the kinds of offensive efficiency that Legion Blood Knights provide is usually paired with the drawback of awkward size, and in this case it isn't. This points to Blood Knights being potentially very useful.

I'm not sure how you can say for sure that you aren't a fan of Soulblight when we know literally nothing about the Soulblight abilities. If it's the exact same as GHB2017 then I agree, Soulblight will be pretty well eclipsed by these new packages. But I see no reason to assume that. 

 

EDIT: In response to @soots as well, I don't think we are going to get new shooting attacks in this book. I'd love to see some good shooting in Death, but I suspect that will have to wait until a new subfaction gets released (which GW has said will happen this year).

[WoollyMammoth]

@swarmofseals
1. Agreed just generally there is so many factors that happen during a game that I don't personally bother with the math, though I see the merit in wanting to know the raw power each unit has on their own.  

2. Agreed I think I'll try one unit of 10 or two units of 5

3. There is a lot that we don't know yet but as I described losing the regen is a huge hit tactically and as-is the unit is not bad but not the kind of thing death currently needs.

4. With the Corpse Cart+Mortis and Arkhans army, all wizards are +3 to cast. With Arkhan as the general, 18" spells are well out of range of a dispel. Even the new Amulet of Screams sounds like you have to be in range to attempt an unbind. Unbinding also requires LoS, so there's another way to get around being unbound (provided the spells don't require LoS) The only thing I know of is the Khorne thing to unbind the next spell, but that is only one. My point is, there is a million ways to protect against charging blood knights, there are very few ways to protect against spells. A few scrolls might have protection from  mortals/spells, but that is rare. Once we are into the game and things are in range to dispel, it can start to be a  pain, though even a LoC is going to have difficulty unbinding Arkhan at +6 to cast. 

5. I Just did LVO with 80 ghouls. Someone had 120 skeletons and did really well. I only have 30 skeletons and 20 grave guard now but I'm happy to make 100 more. The key thing is you have to have a system in place to be able to roll your attacks quickly so you don't bog down the game. I keep exactly 60 dice handy to quickly add/subtract from that, and I roll using a cup, and all my dice have clear colored numbers. I can roll 60 attacks with re-roll 1s in about 45 seconds. A lot of people aren't afraid to horde up with Fyreslayers right now, and Kunnin Rukk is fairly common as well. With the new death book I think we will see a lot more. I was able to paint up 30 ghouls to almost top standard in 2 days, so I'm not afraid of doing hordes anymore. 

I mean I'm not a fan of existing soulblight (GH2017) which we agree. I hope there is some cool new stuff. We are off to a good start with Neferata and Mannfred getting the keyword, and a spell lore incoming.

[AverageBoss]

3 hours ago, Tizianolol said:

Favoured retainers: it says " all melee weapons" this mean we can make our zombie dragon ( I'm speaking about vlozd) even stronger.. And we can still take soulblight allegiance!! It's amazing:)

That bonus is only for Legion of Blood Allegiance. It looks to apply based on keyword though, so it will also apply to the new named character.

[Sception]

The new named character was one of the leaked scrolls.  He does not have the 'vampire lord' keyword, so does not get the legion of blood attack boost.

[AverageBoss]

Ah, you are right. That is unfortunate.

[Malakithe]

Sounds like he will be fine without the bonus anyway lol still i a vampire so he could probaby lead Soulblight well enough plus would get access to the Lore of Vampires and such

[WoollyMammoth]

7 hours ago, swarmofseals said:

EDIT: In response to @soots as well, I don't think we are going to get new shooting attacks in this book. I'd love to see some good shooting in Death, but I suspect that will have to wait until a new subfaction gets released (which GW has said will happen this year).

Yeah my theory is Settra comes back and frees the Katophranes of Shadespire who lead a revolt against Nagash. This would be the new Tomb Kings, with lots of shooting. I don't expect any shooting in this book, but some potent ranged spells would be key. 

[Malakithe]

25 minutes ago, WoollyMammoth said:

Yeah my theory is Settra comes back and frees the Katophranes of Shadespire who lead a revolt against Nagash. This would be the new Tomb Kings, with lots of shooting. I don't expect any shooting in this book, but some potent ranged spells would be key. 

How does Settra come back if he was obliterated in the old world eons ago? 

[smucreo]

As I said before, if we get really good bravery debuffs with Mannfred (and ways of dealing damage with it outside of battleshock) Tomb Banshee could make a come back as a potent shooter for that specific list. It's a lot of ifs but it could happen.

[Cargo Cult]

10 hours ago, swarmofseals said:

In response to @soots as well, I don't think we are going to get new shooting attacks in this book. I'd love to see some good shooting in Death, but I suspect that will have to wait until a new subfaction gets released (which GW has said will happen this year).

As an observation on that last point, it depends on how allies will work with the new Legions. For example if a Legion can have 400 points of any death units as allies then, if you were so inclined you could include tomb kings skeleton archers or even (if you are a total ******) a screaming skull catapult.

leaving aside that specific point I’m very curious about how allies / qualification of a specific Legion will work. Let’s see.......

[Envyus]

6 hours ago, Malakithe said:

How does Settra come back if he was obliterated in the old world eons ago? 

How does Teclis, Neferata, Mannfred, Tyrion, Morathi, Malekith, Alarielle and Nagash come back if they were obliterated in the old world eons ago?

They can bring back whoever they please.

[Sception]

If you want the in-universe explanation, Nagash came back because his soul was bound to the wind of Shyish.  Mannfred, Neferata, and Arkhan didn't survive, and the current ones we know are clones created from Nagash's memory to use as lieutenants.  Settra could theoretically be brought back the same way, though I'm not sure why Nagash would choose to do so.

A more meaningful question, though, might be "Why would you even want to bring Settra back?"  He was a one note character, only really interesting as the iconic face of a kingdom that no longer exists.  I'm sure a clever writer could turn him into something interesting in Age of Sigmar, but... why bother, when there are so many other more interesting, nuanced characters to pull from?  Characters with open plot threads or who never got their day in the sun?  Or, better yet, why bring back more old characters at all, when what the game and our faction in particular really needs is fresh blood, with histories and motivations tied to the people and places of Age of Sigmar.  New faces to invest in, with new perspectives through which we can learn about and invest in the new setting.

[Envyus]

21 minutes ago, Sception said:

If you want the in-universe explanation, Nagash came back because his soul was bound to the wind of Shyish.  Mannfred, Neferata, and Arkhan didn't survive, and the current ones we know are clones created from Nagash's memory to use as lieutenants.  Settra could theoretically be brought back the same way, though I'm not sure why Nagash would choose to do so.

A more meaningful question, though, might be "Why would you even want to bring Settra back?"  He was a one note character, only really interesting as the iconic face of a kingdom that no longer exists.  I'm sure a clever writer could turn him into something interesting in Age of Sigmar, but... why bother, when there are so many other more interesting, nuanced characters to pull from?  Characters with open plot threads or who never got their day in the sun?  Or, better yet, why bring back more old characters at all, when what the game and our faction in particular really needs is fresh blood, with histories and motivations tied to the people and places of Age of Sigmar.  New faces to invest in, with new perspectives through which we can learn about and invest in the new setting.

Neferata and Mannfred are different then Arkhan. They remember the Old World while Arkhan does not. 

[shinros]

23 minutes ago, Sception said:

If you want the in-universe explanation, Nagash came back because his soul was bound to the wind of Shyish.  Mannfred, Neferata, and Arkhan didn't survive, and the current ones we know are clones created from Nagash's memory to use as lieutenants.  Settra could theoretically be brought back the same way, though I'm not sure why Nagash would choose to do so.

A more meaningful question, though, might be "Why would you even want to bring Settra back?"  He was a one note character, only really interesting as the iconic face of a kingdom that no longer exists.  I'm sure a clever writer could turn him into something interesting in Age of Sigmar, but... why bother, when there are so many other more interesting, nuanced characters to pull from?  Characters with open plot threads or who never got their day in the sun?  Or, better yet, why bring back more old characters at all, when what the game and our faction in particular really needs is fresh blood, with histories and motivations tied to the people and places of Age of Sigmar.  New faces to invest in, with new perspectives through which we can learn about and invest in the new setting.

Pretty much the only reason people got interested in settra in the first place is due to that one line from end times and then suddenly everyone was a fan. 

[Sception]

they may be different, but their creation was likely the same.  Mannfred was there at the end times to be torn apart when the rift was at its most fearsome.  Maybe Neferata might have made it through along with a chunk of sylvania, since she was farther away.  If she did, then Isabella and Khalida might also be about as survivors, and IMO both of them have more interesting narrative prospects then Settra.

[Sception]

1 minute ago, shinros said:

Pretty much the only reason people got interested in settra in the first place is due to that one line from end times and then suddenly everyone was a fan. 

Yeah, a meme derived from the character had a bigger impact than the character himself.  That's not really a mark in his favor, imo.

[shinros]

Just now, Sception said:

Yeah, a meme derived from the character had a bigger impact than the character himself.  That's not really a mark in his favor, imo.

Pretty much which annoys the heck out of me and I found people only started caring about Vlad during the end times they haven't even read vampire wars. The amount of times I facepalm on the total war forums when people say that Vlad is a nice guy most of them did not even read the end times properly either if they are saying such things. 

[Sception]

Vlad at least had a compelling and interesting narrative going on in the end times, with the whole noble undeath, defending humanity, fighting the forces of nurgle to rescue isabella, even sacrificing himself to break nurgle's hold on her.  That was good stuff.  End Times vlad was cool, and I won't fault anyone for getting into him then instead of for the vampire wars stuff, which, frankly, I was never that into.  That said, I wouldn't want them to bring Vlad back, he had a good and most importantly complete story, with a fantastic end, and I wouldn't want the writers to sully it by tacking on more now.  On the other hand, I'd love to see Isabella brought back and given a chance to shine as a character in her own right.  See what she makes of the unlife her husband sacrificed himself to give her.

[AverageBoss]

Is it not stated that Nagash made 9 Mortarchs in AoS as well? Some of those could very well be recreations in the same way the current 3 are.

[shinros]

40 minutes ago, Sception said:

Vlad at least had a compelling and interesting narrative going on in the end times, with the whole noble undeath, defending humanity, fighting the forces of nurgle to rescue isabella, even sacrificing himself to break nurgle's hold on her.  That was good stuff.  End Times vlad was cool, and I won't fault anyone for getting into him then instead of for the vampire wars stuff, which, frankly, I was never that into.  That said, I wouldn't want them to bring Vlad back, he had a good and most importantly complete story, with a fantastic end, and I wouldn't want the writers to sully it by tacking on more now.  On the other hand, I'd love to see Isabella brought back and given a chance to shine as a character in her own right.  See what she makes of the unlife her husband sacrificed himself to give her.

People miss the fact that vlad himself states he cares nothing for humanity in the end times or for sylvania either. He just wants to be emperor still if they survive but sigmar caught him out saying that he is not allowe a vote due to being dead. Plus I could not get into his whole rescuing Isabella because going by vampire wars she had no redeeming factors and was merely vlads insane vampire wife. Now who I feel were amazing in end times? Arkhan and Mannfred IMO.

my problem with vlad is that he is written like a character without flaws and I dislike such characters that's just me imo. Then when his flaws are mentioned people outright ignore it. Vlad kept peasants in cages while mannfred turned them into cultists that gave blood freely. Vlad is a terrible person like all vampires he just hides it better.

[Sception]

the misuse of any and all possible female characters in order to promote some boring and chiche dudefolk is a big part of why the vampire wars never appealed to me.  Controversial opinion, but End Times Vlad and Mannfred were better and more interesting characters than their Vampire Wars versions.  Honestly, after all the build up, when I finally read the Vampire Wars omnibus I found myself sorely disappointed, and thought the several hundred pages of novelization was dramatically less compelling than the half dozen pages of fluff describing the same events and characters from the 4th edition Undead army book.

Wouldn't be the only time game book fluff was a lot better than a detailed novelization.  The difference in quality between the old Pandorax campaign book in 40k and the novelization based on it in particular was jaw dropping.

[Malakithe]

Sure anyone can be brought back via GW magic. But lore wise didnt Nagash rez all his favorite undead buddies/servants? Pretty sure he wont be doing that again to his mortal/immortal enemies

[Elmir]

3 hours ago, AverageBoss said:

Is it not stated that Nagash made 9 Mortarchs in AoS as well? Some of those could very well be recreations in the same way the current 3 are.

It is, Phil Kelly even mentioned during his latest live stream that MP only has the 3 mortarchs in there that have up to date models. The rest will not be involved (implying they could still see Resurrection at a later point in time.)