Legion of Nagash Path to Glory

[Naflem]

Have any Death players tried using the Path to Glory warband rules from the Legions of Nagash book and found it to be immensely overpowered? My group and I have been looking it over, and I think it must be a mistake - the starting power level is far beyond what any other force can have. In the official Path to Glory book, released in summer of 2017 I believe, a starting general of VLoZD can have 1 unit from the followers table - a very balanced approach compared to the tables of all other armies. Now, in LoN, the same VLoZD can have FOUR units of followers - and as far as I know they only got better from new allegiance/artefact/spell options. That vastly outclasses anyone else in the game! You can begin with a 1000 point force when others are normally 500-600 points. The Vampire Lord on foot option nets you SIX follower units, which no other general option in the game can get - not a lowly Black Ark Fleetmaster, or a Grot Shaman, nothing. And at 140 points the VL on foot is really no slouch!

We thought it was just an issue of GW not balancing the new battletomes to be consistent with the PtG book - as earlier tomes had the issue of being a bit overtuned as well. However the recent Nurgle tome is completely in line with expected power levels (like the other Chaos factions). We don't have a DoK book to check yet, but does anyone else have any sort of explanation that we're missing to account for the massive power spike?

[BaldoBeardo]

Death units can no longer be summoned and their mechanic for attrition - arguably their key feature - is determined by number of characters available.

So yes, may seem strong early on but they won't progress in potency at the same rate other factions would.

[angrycontra]

1 minute ago, BaldoBeardo said:

Death units can no longer be summoned and their mechanic for attrition - arguably their key feature - is determined by number of characters available.

So yes, may seem strong early on but they won't progress in potency at the same rate other factions would.

I strongly disagree with this. Sure, attrition plays key part, but I don't see how my harbinger of decay can face off against vlozd, terrorgeist and 2 small units of whatever with only 2 units of 5 blight kings. Even points-wise my opponent has at least 400 points advantage, 400 points! Those death ptg rules are ridiculous, it's basically the return of stardrake with 4 followers or whatever it was. Ptg may not have been intended to be balanced to begin with but the difference in power level here is ridiculous. My playgroup has already decided that we use the original ptg book for building those forces for death, 'cause otherwise death would just roflstomp everyone else.

[BaldoBeardo]

Fair enough. PTG is supposed to be a bit of silly fun.

As such, I'd be very dubious about anyone talking anything with the monster keyword.

It's not like the tables were remotely sensible to begin with. All cost and narrative considerations aside, why would you ever think 10 skeletons are in any way equivalent to 5 BKs?

[Naflem]

6 hours ago, BaldoBeardo said:

As such, I'd be very dubious about anyone talking anything with the monster keyword.

 

Although sometimes a few monsters is a bit of silly fun too.  

 

That's true on the summoning, although they did get a few things like healing in return, and I suppose you could say the same for Nurgle (at least they're not summonable in the same way/without winding up for it) but their battletomb kept basically the PoG balance but added in their new units.  

[BaldoBeardo]

1 hour ago, Naflem said:

Although sometimes a few monsters is a bit of silly fun too.  

 

That's true on the summoning, although they did get a few things like healing in return, and I suppose you could say the same for Nurgle (at least they're not summonable in the same way/without winding up for it) but their battletomb kept basically the PoG balance but added in their new units.  

True, but the lesser LoN units tend to run at a very high rate of attrition and as you can't increase model count and the healing is linked to number of characters it does make it a more fragile force in that format.

Unless you're being a donkey cave and taking monsters and blood knights for 'a bit of fun'.