Legions of Nagash: Battle Reports

[Thostos]

3 hours ago, Laerethian said:

Hi guys,

Here's some reports from a 3-games tournament I did last sunday.

My list:

Nagash: Orb, Transference, soul harvest

Necromancer: Overwhelming dread, Tomb sand Hourglass

2 Morghast Harbringers (double swords, just have those models  )

30 Grave guards

20 skellies

20 skellies

3 spirit hosts

The idea behind this was to focus everything on the summonable units, that would revive soooo much thanks to nagash and the tombs, Nagash is packed with spells that could heal him, so that he can sustain himself. Before going into the reports, let's say I won the tournament, with 3 wins, but I still have some doubts about Nagash in a competitive way.

1st GAME: vs Kharadrons (1 Ironclad, 2 Chemists, 6 Skywardens with drill-cannons and other troops, 20 fyreslayers with priest. He could pop anywhere in the map with almost his entire army)

Those little dwarfs can shoot  

I was VERY lucky, and managed to keep Nagash alive for 2 turns. He managed to crush an Ironclad and 2 heroes, together with many troops before dying, and he also gave me the VP that made me win the game. But I admit it, I was too lucky, my opponent couldn't believe my rolls. Against a shooting force like the one I had to face, Death is still very vulnerable, even with all the healing. And after Nagash dies, the army can't sustain a lot. I won the game, but was wiped out of the board.

2nd GAME: vs High Elves (3 units of phoenix guards, 1 cryo phoenix, 1 pyro phoenix, 1 ballista, 2 heroes and some sea guards)

This was very easy. He had almost no rend in his army, even though the guards are really hard to kill (4+ and 4+ save), they could do nothing against a 2+ save (rerolling 1s) Nagash. The phoenix tryed to charge Nagash, but  he 1shot the pyro one in combat, and sniped the other with spells and his lazer gaze. His ballista was too far from the center of the board, so Nagash was untouched by it.

3rd GAME: vs Legion of Sacrament! (Arkhan, mortis machine, 2 necros, 40 skellies, 60 zombies, 1 corpse cart, 1 wight king, 40 skellies with spears, some bats)

This was funny. We checked the book, and Nagash knew Arkhan's spells!!!!  Needles to say, I spammed curse of time as much as I could. Managed to blow up the bats, but then not much else. This time I won thanks to the superior command ability from Nagash, and the grave guards who chewed all the  zombies in 2 rounds of combat.

It was funny, because with all his buffs, Arkhan was casting with a +5, so I rarely managed to dispel anything of his. Anyway, I won thanks to a fast objective taking, thanks to summoning (which he did not capitalized on).

 

So... I still think that Nagash is not that much competitive. Yes, he's a beast, and now he's worth his 800 points. But there are still too many ways he can be melted, especially by shooting. His healing spells are not so effective, so he normally doesn't heal too many wounds in one turn. My current thinking is that the most competitive list is something with Mannfred, VLOZD and some Vargheists. You make them ambush and destroy the sides of the enemy's army, while keeping them safe from early game shooting. I'm also going to try an Arkhan list too, giving to the VLOZD the shroud of darkness, to protect him from shooting.

 Thanks for the writup,,about what I figured with Nagash,,ive been facing Tzeentch and having a rough go of it,,though I can see some luck needed against KO`s as well.
 Ill be playing in a 3 round 2k event tommorow and will be running Nagash and Arkhan,block of skellies and the rest msu,,though im not using First Cohort this time.

 

[Countmoore]

So played tonight against an order gun line. My list as follows

Nagash (orb, vile transference and Dread)

VLoZD (pinions)

Cairn Wraith (timeglass)

20/10/10 skeletons

2 Harbingers (one of each weapon)

First Cohort

his list was

3 waywatchers

Huricanum

Drakeseer

Loremaster

2x 10 skinks

30 Glade Guard

2x 3 bow hunters

 

Mission was Total Conquest and the terrain was rolled but despite a few mystical and arcane did not have an impact on the game. I popped all the skeletons in the grave and deployed Nagash and VLoZD aggressively  wraith hidden on my right in range for claiming that objective.

I chose to take turn one and cast pinions with Nagash and rolled the 9! Speed 19” Nagash is sweet but it did mean he left the Harbingers in the dust. Summoned some skeletons leaving one in the ground. Harbs also made a charge deleting a unit of skinks leaving Nagash to clear the general and the glade guard (with a little help from battleshock). I score 2

Mark does some movement and shoots off the harbingers and the drake (with hand of dust) deletes the 20 skeleton unit. Score 2

I win priority buff and spell some more. Vamp scores boxcars on pinions and if you thought 19” Nagash was fast then try 24” VLoZD. After this turn Mark is left with the two big characters, 10 skinks and 3 bows. I score 4 total 6

Mark managed to get 8 wounds on the VLoZD but not much else. Managed a sneaky skink charge and flee to score for a total of 3 total 5

After winning turn three priority it was pretty much mopping up what was left  over turns 3 and 4.

Major win to Nagash who never looked in  danger personally. Need to see how KO do against him for a real test of survivabilty mind.

 

[jobume]

I had my first games with Nagash and The First Cohort today. My list:

Nagash: Pinions, Vile transference, Fading Vigour

Necromancer: Overwhelming dread, Timeglass

2xMorgasts

40x10x10 Skeletons

6x Spirit hosts

First cohort

First game was against another Death-army in Battle for the pass. He had VLoZD, Mortis Engine, 30xGraveguard, 10xdogs, 40zombies, Corpse cart, 3xVargeists, 1x Vampire, 2xNecromancers.

Turn 1. I deployed 40 skeletons and the spirit hosts in the grave and took first turn. I moved up and took both objectives with skeletons and spirit hosts and blocked three of my opponents gravesites.

In my opponents first turn he charged the VLoZD, The Mortis Engine, a Vampire and a Corpse cart into Nagash and the Morgasts and the 40 skellies. Nagash was safely bubble wrapped behind Morgasts and skeletons, and the VLoZD failed most of his attacks. The Morgasts then struck back and did 12 wounds to the VLoZD! They hit hard! Nagash finished of the lord. On the other flank, his Vargeists got into a fight with my Spirit hosts, but not much happened. My opponent only scored 1 point. 5-1 in my favour turn 1.

Turn 2. My opponent got the double, summoned some grave guard and tried a 9" charge against the skeletons buy failed. On the other flank some zombies got of a long charge against the spirit hosts. Nagash killed the Mortis Engine and the zombies and Vargeist started to grind down the Spirit hosts. 3 points scored.

In my turn 2, I pushed up with Nagash and went into his grave guard, close to his home objective, after giving them -2 attacks, -2 to hit, -2 bravery! Nagash killed 10 or 12 grave guard. I scored 3 points putting the score at 8-4.

Turn 3. I got the double. I finished of the graveguard and some dogs in his back field and scored 7 points. At this point we called the game. Great start for the big hat!

 

In the second game I played the fatesworn warband in Total Conquest. He had 15 Knights, 18 warriors, 9 chosen 2x9 marauders, a lord on daemonic mounts, a lord on manticore and some chariots and some spawn.

Turn 1. He gave me first turn. I moved up with a screen of 2x10 skeletons in front of Nagash, 40 skeletons and 6 spirit hosts, and braced for impact. I scored 2 points. He came crashing in to my army on his first turn. The knights strung out all across my line, pinning my army in place and carefully leaving Nagash out of combat. The Chaos warriors used some fate dice and made a long charge on my Spirit hosts. He activated the Warriors first, and I rolled unbelievably well on my save rolls (made 8/9 4+).  The Spirit hosts struck back, and they hit hard. They had Van Hels, Mystical and Damned Terrain, and the killed 7 of the 18 warriors. My opponent still took the objective from me, and passed his bravery with fate dice. Score 2-4.

Turn 2. My opponent got the double and started grinding down the big block of skeletons and wiped the small block of skeletons on my left. The Manticore lord and the Daemonic mount lord joined in on the big block of skeletons. Nagash could only watch as the big skeleton block was reduced down to 20. My opponent scored 2 points. On my turn,  Nagash finally joined the fray and went into the knights. The Morgasts went over to the other flank to try and take back that objective. The skeletons got healed by Endless Legions and 3x Gravesites and went back up to 30. Unfortunately, the spirit hosts failed their mystical and were left standing, too far away from the objective. Nagash killed lots of knights, but could not kill them all, and battle shock was passed with fate dice. Score 3-6.

Turn 3. The long grind in the center continued, the skeletons went down to below 20. My opponent scored 3. On my turn, I had a plan to take back two of the objectives. The objective in my territory was only held by two chariots and 9 marauders, and I had two Morghasts and 5 spirit hosts ready to go. The objective in my opponents territory was held by 9 marauders and 1 chaos spawn, and I had Nagash close. I made a bad decision and put Nagash's offensive spells on the Lord on Manticore, confident that Nagash would kill both the spawn and the marauders with shooting and close combat. He did not, and I failed to take the objective. On the other side, the Spirit hosts failed mystical again, and now I only had the Morgasts to claim the objective. They managed to kill the Marauders, but when I piled in, I went too close to the chariots that then killed one of the Morgasts and piled onto the objective. So I failed to score both, only scoring my home objective for 1 point. Score 4-9.

We had to call it here due to time, but we rolled for the next priority (I lost) and worked out that I would probably have lost the game even if we could have played the full five.

I had two very fun games. I really love playing with Nagash. He is a ton of fun.

[Richelieu]

1 hour ago, jobume said:

I had my first games with Nagash and The First Cohort today.

Thanks for the battle report.  Sounds like that mystical terrain really burned you in game two.  I avoid it like the plague.  

[Tittliewinks22]

 

 

[Thostos]

  A run down on my event I attended yesterday,we had 14 show up so a great sign that our area is growing in competition players,our average size events last year were 8-10 players:)
 This was an ITC event so for many of us,the first recorded points for this year.

 My list-

  Grand Host
 
 Nagash-General Overwhelming Dread/Spirit Gale/ Vile Transference

 Arkhan the Black- Amehtystine Pinions

 40x Skeletons-Spears
 10x Skeletons-SnB
 5 Black Knights
 5 Hexwraiths
 3 Spirithosts
 10x Dire Wolves

 126 wounds/75 models/8 drops

 

  I chose to go without the First Cohort this time,so my list was not tested at all,,I also dropped the Morghasts since I had such a rough time vs Tzeench with them.Added Arkhan in mainly due to him and Nagash being fully painted so I just had to run both of them together for one event at least.
 

 

  First round I faced off against one of our most skilled player of both 40k and AoS in the area,he was running a LoN list as well(there were 3 of us running LoN in the event)He was using Arkhan as his gen and had,I think 2 Necros,10 BKz 40 skellies 2x 10 Skellies,unit of 4 Morghasts and a Mortis engine,,best I can rem.First scenario was Knife to the Heart,,which I felt straight away as he had larger units and this scenario often results in a minor on kill count.Anyhow we actually skirmished a bit for the first 2 rounds with me chaffing with my wolves and swinging my cav to his left flank.Then I pinioned Arkhan from the middle over to join the cav and hove for a line jump on his skeleton block there,,wolves were actually holding well against BKs and Morghasts but did go down in the third round,my feeding of his kill count had begun,lol.He shifted his Bks and Morghasts to refuse my flank jump,took out the Hexs and locked up the remaining BK's and Arkhan,pushed up his Morghasts to meet my skellie block screaning Nagash.Next turn I was looking at a hail mary attempt on his objective by retreating pinioned Arkhan over his line to the pocket near his objective,,at the time he had a 10 strong unit of skellies and a Necro in range there,then I retreated my last 3 bks through a hole in his skeleton line and tried to move to screen Arkhans jump.In his turn he cleared the screen easily and brought in his last 10 skellies that were in the grave to reinforce the back objective..ok so I tried at least,lol.The rest was just me jumping Nagash out of his pocket to kill his Archan(cuz imposter ya know,lol) so at least I got some point,yet in doing came very close to giving him a major but his morghast could only clear 9 of my 10 skellies on my base,,he was very unlucky on that outcome.Fun battle though and I knew going in I wasnt likely to get a win,,good learning session though as he is a gamer that makes very few mistakes.

 

 

 Second fight was against one of our newer players in the area,hes a top notch painter though,and looked to be in my age group(near/at retirement age,hehe)He was playing a Khorne Bloodbound army and we played Duality of Death.Starting out I actually had less drops but had him go first(plan to do that alot with LoN)He moved up toward the middle and was able to get Valkia in range of scoring an objective.My turn I was just in 18" range of Valkia with Arhcan and was able to shoot her off with archane bolt and Curse of Years.Moved Nagash up to the other ovbjective and was able to screen him with the BK unit just in front of his base by charging his Blood warriors near his side of the objective.ran the right side skellies up,spirit hosts along with them and Dogs into blocking postion of his Skullcrusher units that were mid right of the field.He took second turn and locked in with me along the line,though with all his charges and attacks were not able to take out any unit as he didnt really have any synergy buffs going,he did get his Slaughter Priest into the right side objective to cap it.My turn two I attempted to spell off the slaughter priest with Arkhan again but he actually countered it with the Slaughter priest due to my pathetic casting roll.Anyhow I pinioned and jumped Arkhan over his Reaver line and got into easy charge distance of the Slaughter priest and took him out in combat.The rest of the combat was pretty much my Skeletons taking out his remaining Reavers and Hexwraiths taking aout a Deathbringer.We had agreed on a prearranged time that he had to leave so Knew that the game would end early and called it hear as the time limit had just passed.It was pretty clear he didnt have enough firepower to take back the objectives anyway,,Khorne Bloodbound is always a tough army to win with,,not even sure if they have any top table lists at the momement.He was a great player and really looking forward to seeing him at our regular group nights when he can make it.

 

 Third round had me matched against a Skaven Plague list I think it was,he had a verminlord that he could teleport with and a big rat ogre thing plus 3 plague catapults and some Chaos Warriors and Marauders.This was Battle for the Pass,,he finished deployement first in which I placed my skellie block too far back thinking that range on those catas was 36(its 31)..anyhow he had me go first so I moved everyone up,got my cavs into cap range of both mid field objectives,made sure Nagash and Arkhan were wrapped well in the middle of the blob,scored 5 points.He went and ported his Rat ogre thing(sorry I dont know much about Skaven,heh) to the rean near the skellie block,nearly took out the BKS with his catas(2 remained I think),he also was able to throw a fire spell at the skellies since he was just out of 18" from Nagash,killed 12 skellies with it I think,then charged in and killed another 8 or so.I counted with them and managed 4 wounds on it.Turn 2 he doubled up on me and started straight away with porting the Deciever into charge position of Nagash,tried a few spells but was shut down by Nagash and Arkhan,finished off the BKS with Ranged,took a few wounds off Nagash with a Cata,then charged in with the Deciever taking Nagash down to the 8 wounds,I attack back and didnt do much to the deciever,,the Skellies took more losses but did manage to put a few more wounds on the Rat thing.I went and had a big regrow session on the skellies,got a double Overwhelmind Dread off on the Deciever,got Hand of dust off on it but he chose the die,heh.then tried some regrow wound stuff but only ended up getting 2 ones on both of the d3 attempts.I moved the Hexes into charge position on the deciever,charged them in then did melee with Nagash first and removed the Deciever from the board,the Skellies finished off the Rat thing.He maintianed initiative turn 3 and tried to shoot Nagash off with the catas,got him down to 3 wounds but in my turn I pulled him back out of range..we called it there as he was way behind in points and not really even close to midfield with his gunline guards.

 

  So I ended up just making 3rd place behind the other two LoN lists with the player I lost to winning the whole thing,,the other LoN list was a Nagash list like mine,he won all his games as well but was using less units with more numbers in them,one of the units being 4 Morghasts.I will be making adjustments.It was unusual that none of our local Tzeench players were able to make it,though we did have one top table Aetherwing list and a Nurgle list that were both played by very experienced players.The top death player did face off with the Aetherwing list in the final round and pretty much walked right through all the shooting and wrecked it hard core..I was very surprised to see this as I thought for sure that his Morghast block would go down hard to all the shooting..actually though after talking to the Aetherwing player,he said the BKs were what really wrecked him with the Van Hels Dance on them,they were attacking twice each turn.He pretty much said his shooting couldnt keep up with the unit regrow.Nurgle players said the same thing,,they cant deal enough damage to keep up.

 

  I will probably pull Arkhan as I knew he was a bit overkill in the magic dept,a bit of wasted points there.Its fun and fluffy and all but really,a Necro would be a much more effective addition to the list and I probably could still maintain the hitting power by bringing some Morghasts.Ill drop the Spirit hosts as they didnt do much at all,,just too slow.Bump my Bks up to 10,then probably drop the SnB skellies,that Hexwraiths and drop in a second group of Harbingers,these have the Glaives though.I still like the Hexs though,,they performed and were a nice tank unit so I may do something different there.

 

 Anyhow,,nice to finally be playing Nagash!

[WoollyMammoth]

I played a tournament today with Nagash. 

Nagash in Cohort with 30 skellies and 2 units of 5 Grave Guard, Necro, Wraith and 6 Spirit Hosts.

Game 1: Duality. Got on both objectives & tore Tzeentch apart, killed 1000 points by the end of turn 2 and time ran out. Major Win
Game 2: Scored Earth. Nagash locked with a 0+ Stardrake. failed two hand of dusts. Killed 1800 points but due to libs failing ambush several times, they came on an objective late game and took too many points to catch up. Major Loss.
Game 3: Knife to the Heart. sniped a Harbinger of Decay over 20 Blightkings. Completely Neutered BK until they were dead. Attacked the objective  and cleared out everything in one turn for a Major Win.

I came in 3rd place, slightly less kill points which was mostly from only playing 2 turns in game 1. The Stormcast,  which I nearly tabled, won the tournament. 

Learnt a lot, not sure how I would change my list, just play it differently. Nagash was never even a little threatened at any point.

IMO - too many people are taking soul harvest. Fading Vigor is so much better. no attacks = no wounds to heal. With Vigor and Dread, you can neuter everything and anything that might threaten you, sometimes doubling the debuffs. 

Also Nagash is not much of a powerhouse in melee. He's good, but not that good. His Morghast bodyguards can do most of the heavy lifting. The point is if you just want to charge Nagash in and rely on Soul harvest to make up for his mistakes, you are not going to be very happy. The only time I might do this is with Vordrai in the list to steal Quickbood for more reliable attacking. 

The only thing to balance in this list is that with such few models, its hard to manage board wide objectives like scorched earth. 

Regardless its incredibly strong and a ton of fun to play.

[WoollyMammoth]

I'm 4-1 with First Cohort, and the one loss I nearly tabled the guy but lost on objectives.

[Sception]

I agree on soul harvest being less than ideal for nagash.  In a sacrament list on arkhan or a VLoZD with arkhan or a bound to the master general, I love it.  But there is a huge difference between a 9" harvest and a 3" one.  Nagash is threatening enough up close that opponents tend to avoid him anyway, better to ficus in spells than don't require Nagash to be in melee at the start of the turn to even attempt them.

[WoollyMammoth]

Nagash is not much of a powerhouse. He likes to roll 2s to hit and 1-2 to wound a lot. Half the time I have my bodyguards attack for him. He doesn't need to get his hands dirty. I can't imagine crashing him into several units and having it go well enough to get off a potent Soul Harvest when the next hero phase comes around. I'm dying for Nagash to have Spectral Grasp, Prison of Grief or Decreprify. In fact, I might get rid of  Ama. Orb, its a scary spell but it is never a big factor in my games, typically I can hit one unit and at 50/50 to cause D6 - that's an average of 2 mortals per attempt, where Decreprify could horribly weaken a super hero, or Grief could just turn a unit into a nothingburger, or Grasp could make an entire army stumble and gives Nagash more first turn options.

[Honk]

 

 

 

 

Here comes my revenge battle report:

Tried out a 2k First Cohort List against my Archenemy, who, while being quite nice, trampled my Undead with his stupid IronJawz for the last 2 years.

I went with:

Nagash: Vile Transferance, Amar. Orb, Soul Harvest Necromancer: Overwhelming Dread 4 Morghast Harbringers Halberds 40 Skellis Spears 10 Skellis Swords 5 Black Knights	Megaboss on Mawcrusher Megaboss Shaman Warchanter 20 Ardboyz 10 Brutes 5 Brutes 6 Gruntas
First Cohort

Played Battle for the pass and it was a pretty straight forward brawl, with four pinnacle moments.

1.He positioned his brutes with the megaboss on one side, which I answered with my skellis and Black Knights, positioning Nagash with his Morghast against the Mawcrusher, ardboyz and the gruntas. The brutes would have been way more effective against the big dudes.

2. Nagash and the Morghast ****** up their first combat. He screened his Mawcrusher and Gruntas with the ardboys and luckily I rolled bad and the screen held, denying the mawcrusher one round of combat, while getting smacked over the head by Big N´s Walking cane.

3. Unbelivable staying power of the 40 Skellis within 4 Gravesites with the Necro, that got me the VP to stay in the game. His 14 brutes and the megaboss didn´t get the double turn to finish what they started.

4. Total broken Magic Round 3 with Nagash rolling like crazy. Blasted the Megaboss and 3 brutes in one crazy Orb (Locus, both 2d6 MW), Vile Transference the Shaman and Soul Harvest the Drummerboy. I was almost a little bit ashamed of the cheese, dripping down my dice.

 

Was tricky to hold objectives with 1400 points in 5 models, but with some luck on my side, that Deathstar wiped his guys start of the third turn.

Waiting for some models to give Arkhan a fighting chance and will be going into a mini tournament 750 (1 hero) with Legion of Night…

 

 

 

 

[jobume]

I played my third game with The First Cohort the other night. This time it was a rematch against The Fatesworn Warband. The scenario was Starstrike.

My list: Nagash, Necro, 40 skellies, 2x10 skellies, 2xMorghasts, 6xSpirithosts First cohort

I decided to keep everything in the grave and was given the first turn. I moved up the center and summoned the Spirit hosts from the graves to screen Nagash and the Morghasts. I had two gravesites centrally and two to the sides to be able to summon skeletons onto the locations where the star might land. My opponent charged the Spirit hosts with Chaos warriors and bounced. His Chaos Knights moved up on my right side. This is where i realized my fatal mistake. If my opponent got the double turn, he would be able to use destiny dice to make long runs and long charges on to all of my gravesites, effectively removing 60 skeletons from play. This is exactly what happened. Nagash and the Morghasts got charged by Chaos knights and pinned. Nagash could not remove 15 Chaos knights and the game was basically over. I tried to make a retreat to one side with Nagash, hoping that the stars would land on that side, but they fell on the other side, and the game was basically over. It was a major loss.

Lessons learned: do not leave your gravesites exposed!