AoS 2 - Flesh-eater Courts Discussion

[Honk]

1 hour ago, aquenaton said:

What would you recommend to give the first steps in this faction? Are spells necesary?

Welcome to the court fellow King… May your feasts be glorious!!!1!!

sadly the serfs are not worth of deeper considerations and serv best holding objectives and protecting the noble knights and royalty.

fast and furious flayer-knights are the stuff legends are made of, the rightful wrath of a mounted king commands respect and strikes fear into the vile forces who oppose us. Under the wise guidance of an Archregent your court will defend the glory of the Lady as honor demands…

the mighty throne is kinda obligatory if you field a regent and the endless spells are to be considered, especially the chalice. The battalions from the book are not for matched play in AoS 3.0 anymore, sadly.

For a small hunting squad King on Gheist, 2x10 ghouls and as general a courtier with dark Acolyte…

Or 6Flayers, 10 ghouls and an infernal (general Dark acolyte) and a King 

i personally have no luck with only 3 flayers 

[aquenaton]

Thank you very much, my Lord. Your wisdom is trully legendary and your advice shall be considered.

Is our Menagery worthy of consideration if no Lord is guiding them into the battle?

[Honk]

15 hours ago, aquenaton said:

Is our Menagery worthy of consideration if no Lord is guiding them into the battle?

Every delusion is worth considering, if the court jesters are gaming… but on the harsh battlefields, where no quarter is asked not given?
The loss of the battalion and the substantial increase in power, which I declare beyond 130 points(spell,summon,command), just demands very good reasons why to not mount the poor gheist.

Maybe in a double dragon list running side by side, when points are an issue. Gheist or dragon? Usually gheist, because the maw. Buffed by a regent and feasting, it munches just toooo much. As mounted variant, the dragon has a nice spell and courtier summon (always varghulf)… there might be moments where one could prefer a dragon. If your against high bravery and are planning a relativ defensive approach, rerolling wounds aura and stuff could be a nice touch. Buuuut, planned suicide bombing a buffed GkoTg into something juicy going feasting is just soooo good, while your serfs protect the objectives… if the GkoZd was only 400 or 410

[bonzai]

So we have access to Nagash now... Thoughts? 

My initial instinct that he is too big of a commitment, but we will see. I am excited to see how it impacts my Wife's Nighthaunts though.

[Honk]

1 hour ago, bonzai said:

So we have access to Nagash now... Thoughts? 

The old „supreme lord…“ command ability was better than the +1 ward (but on a GkoTg with unholy vitality 4+😻) but „ignore battleshock“ alone was so nice
The invocation sounds interesting,

but if he can compete against TWO GkoTg 🤔 I think not . Old scroll maybe, new scroll not. Need to run trials though 

Edited December 21, 2021 by Honk

[JCar09]

The time of Cryp horrors come!!!!!!!!

[Sception]

On 12/21/2021 at 1:34 PM, bonzai said:

So we have access to Nagash now... Thoughts?

It's great that Nighthaunt and FEC can run him now, but his warscroll was ~heavily~ nerfed with no reduction in points value.  He might still see some play in Nighthaunt, who are desperate for decent monster heroes, but FEC already have fantastic, points efficient monstrous heroes.  His points would have to come down A LOT to see regular play in competitive FEC lists imo, especially since his invocation as written can't be used on any FEC units.

Unless maybe crypt ghouls will get the 'summonable' keyword back next time around?

Anyway, it's nice to see him for fluff reasons and for narrative big games, but I don't think his new warscroll will be making a significant competitive splash any time soon.  We'll see, though.

[Honk]

19 hours ago, Sception said:

especially since his invocation as written can't be used on any FEC units.

Well done, GDubs, well done indeed…🧐

 

deadline came quickly this year, didn’t it?! 

[Sception]

I'm not even sure it's a mistake.  I mean, narratively he ~can~ get FEC to work for him, but they're his least favorite / last choice servants, as mordants aren't nearly undead enough for Nagash to approve of them.

[Honk]

3 hours ago, Sception said:

mordants aren't nearly undead enough for Nagash to approve of them.

Then I demand a discount Nagash 800 points for FEC… 👻

[Joseph Mackay]

15 hours ago, Honk said:

Then I demand a discount Nagash 800 points for FEC… 👻

Nagash is just a placeholder until Ushoran The Carrion King returns

[Maddpainting]

On 12/23/2021 at 10:01 AM, Sception said:

It's great that Nighthaunt and FEC can run him now, but his warscroll was ~heavily~ nerfed with no reduction in points value.  He might still see some play in Nighthaunt, who are desperate for decent monster heroes, but FEC already have fantastic, points efficient monstrous heroes.  His points would have to come down A LOT to see regular play in competitive FEC lists imo, especially since his invocation as written can't be used on any FEC units.

Unless maybe crypt ghouls will get the 'summonable' keyword back next time around?

Anyway, it's nice to see him for fluff reasons and for narrative big games, but I don't think his new warscroll will be making a significant competitive splash any time soon.  We'll see, though.

What was actually nerfed? I never actually played him and everytime i played against i just ignored and sat on points letting him basically kill 1 unit a turn. 

[Sception]

The biggest nerf was to his command ability.  The new one is used in the combat phase, and adds +1 to the ward save of another death unit (ie not nagash himself).  Not a bad ability, but it replaces a truly godly command ability used in the hero phase to grant all friendly death units (including nagash) re-roll 1s on hit and save rolls and immunity to battleshock until your next hero phase.

Immunity to battleshock was huge, especially since nagash takes up half your army, so the rest are super vulnerable to battleshock losses otherwise.  And nagash's 3+ save is easy to push up to 2+.  Add in reroll 1s and nagash was nigh immune to normal damage without significant rend.

The next big nerf is that he no longer gains the faction and subfaction keywords of the army you take him in, as he used to in obr and soulblight.  This is a huge nerf in obr, where he loses the ability to use or benefit from obr command abilities, but per faq still can't use generic command abilities in that faction.  He also no longer gains petrifex reduction to rend on incoming attacks, which previously combined with rerollable 2+ armor to make him even more difficult to kill.  and since he no longer gains the obr keyword, he cannot heal himself with his own invocation, nor can other obr healing options like boneshapers be used on him.

He didnt benefit as directly from soulblight faction abilities, but many faction buffs no longer apply, including casting bonyses from carts & engines, & vhordrai's CA.

nagash doesn't even get the generic 6+ death ward anymore.

Other nerfs include reductions to his personal damage ooutputin the form of reduced to wound on his sword, and no mortal procs for his spirit hosts.

All in all, he does less damage, is far less durable, is much harder to (edit: heal, harder to heal, easier to kill), and less effectively buffs the rest of your army, and has dramatically reduced synergies with whatever army takes him.

The new warscroll is still strong and impressive.  it's not bad in and of itself.  But its not nearly 1000 points good anymore, imo.  I think his points will have to come down a lot before the new scroll makes much of an impact.

But we'll see, ive been wrong more often than ive been right when making competitive judgments, maybe im wrong about newgash.

Edited December 27, 2021 by Sception

[Sception]

23 hours ago, Honk said:

Then I demand a discount Nagash 800 points for FEC… 👻

Honestly imo 800 would be a more alpropriate points cost for this new nagash warscroll anyway.

[Honk]

14 hours ago, Sception said:

Honestly…

Sometimes I get the feeling, that GDubs doesn’t want Nagash to be playable 🤷🏿‍♀️
whenever interesting lists pop up, he gets a point raise or they „re-imagine“ his warscroll 🙄 

doesn‘t need to be imba op like AoS 0.5, but now? You may take him anywhere, but he doesn’t get the rules and the warscroll was written in a way, that nerd rage and debates are certain if you field him… even thou you just went full fluff

not sure how the chaos crew is thinking about Archaon, but nighthaunt is just happy, that they got something for x-mas 

[bonzai]

12 hours ago, Honk said:

not sure how the chaos crew is thinking about Archaon, but nighthaunt is just happy, that they got something for x-mas 

To be honest I am glad to at least have the option. I will be happy to use him in large scale games for fun.

[Sception]

10 hours ago, bonzai said:

To be honest I am glad to at least have the option. I will be happy to use him in large scale games for fun.

Imo that's where figures like Nagash belong anyway.  Ive blathered a lot about how much weaker Nagash is, but I'm honestly not unhappy with the changes overall (apart from reduced to-wound on the sword).  2+ rerollable armor is just bad for the game in general, and largely eliminating faction rule synergies lets death faction rules be written to be cool and effective without having to worry about accidentally creating some unholy nagash list abomination.

I think his points will need to come down, but points are updated twice a year, more if death faction books are released with him included, plenty of opportunity to fix that problem if usage results support my gut reaction.  And that's assuming my gut is right to begin with - it's usually not.

[Maddpainting]

I just don't understand why he doesn't have a basic Ward save now. That blows my mind.

[Liquidsteel]

29 minutes ago, Maddpainting said:

I just don't understand why he doesn't have a basic Ward save now. That blows my mind.

They probably forgot. Genuinely. 

[Maddpainting]

3 hours ago, Liquidsteel said:

They probably forgot. Genuinely. 

I believe it lol. We need to email the AoSFAQs about this.

[Sception]

On 12/26/2021 at 3:38 AM, Honk said:

Sometimes I get the feeling, that GDubs doesn’t want Nagash to be playable 🤷🏿‍♀️

 

To be fair, I think they just want him to be vaguely evocative of his fluff without being completely broken, and that's difficult because the fluff basically boils down to 'completely broken'.  Honestly, if you look at all the different variations of nagash in the rules, they've said 'to heck with it, just let Nagash be completely broken' more often than not.

4th edition Nagash?  Absolutely nuts.  End times Nagash?  Even more nuts.  Early AoS Nagash?  pretty nuts as well.  LoN Nagash?  ran riot over the earliest days of competitive AoS 2e, especially after he gained access to cheap grimghasts.  Eventually his points costs balooned, along with every unit he liked to run with, and other OP stuff was introduced that was able to keep pace with him, but Nagash still made regular showings on tournament tables and it seemed like every random rules change would catapult him back to the top of the field.  Remember how crazy he was when Realm of Battle spell lores were actually used in competitive games for like six months?  And towards the end of 2e he was big again with OBR (now he teleports AND heals himself AND gets all the time +1 armor... er, I mean, -1 to incoming rend), and then again in Soulblight (Nagash + Blood Knights, or zombie hordes, or vhordrai), and then came 3e with monster rampages and heroic feats and old school mystic shield to make nagash extra OP for another month or three.

I mean, this new warscroll feels like the first significant attempt to reign Nagash's rules in since... possibly ever?  I'm not going to fault them for erring a bit to far in the underpowered direction after making him either purposefully or accidentally way overpowered like nine different times.  Again, though, that's easy for me to say, I wasn't planning on taking him to any events this year.

[Honk]

14 hours ago, Sception said:

they've said 'to heck with it, just let Nagash be completely broken' more often than not.

They seem to say „to heck with it“ a lot while writing rules.

The OBR escalation? access to spell lore and stupid keywords…

LoN with grimghasts? To heck with it, what is the worst that can happen…

AoS 0.5? Nagash summons double, gets +3, 8 spells and summoning is on the warscrolls 🤯 Nagash Arkhan and a corpse cart could easily cough up 2k of models in one phase.
 

They just don’t playtest their rules.

but I‘ll run him in a 1k flayer list 🧐 and see what happens 

[Sception]

2 hours ago, Honk said:

They just don’t playtest their rules.

This has always been the core problem.  Serous play tests are expensive, and slow down release schedules, and risk leaks, and GW dislikes each of those things individually more than it dislikes printing poorly balanced rules.  If a release really proves to be that much of a problem they figure they can patch it in post, which is at least more support and attention to balance than we used to see from them in the oldhammer days, when an army book could come out and destroy the game and that was just it for the rest of the edition.  Subsequent books might be individually built to counter the problem book, usually only to become problems themselves.

7e was the worst of it - people remember how broken the daemon book was - but it was only that broken in the first place because it was built to counter the vamp count book, which had already ruined the game.  later elf books were even more broken to counter the daemon book specifically, but by that point people were already just waiting for 8e.  A shame really, as the 7e core rules were pretty solid imo.

 

As for AoS 0.5 - I always thought the summoning 'problem' was overblown.  Sure, summoning was dumb in theory, but there were no points or other limits on what you could field anyway.  For every unit you could potentially summon with a spell mid game your opponent could just as easily simply deploy an extra unit to start out with.  If you imposed house rule limits on how many models players could deploy at the start of the game, but didn't make units deployed by spells or other special abilities mid game subject to those same limits, then that was on you.  And if you did make summoned units count towards whatever homebrew points limits you were using, then summoning was just deep strike with extra hoops to jump through, almost exactly like gravesite deployment is now.

Edited December 29, 2021 by Sception

[Honk]

1 hour ago, Sception said:

Serous play tests are expensive, and slow down release schedules, and risk leaks, and GW dislikes each of those things individually more than it dislikes printing poorly balanced rules. 

Your wise words never fail to enlighten…

and as usual, Big Daddy needs to be tested 🤷🏿‍♀️ Full lore access, the resurrection rules, the regen 🤔🧐🤔

[Evil Bob]

In mid December the local gaming club finished a Path To Glory campaign that ran for most of a semester. I had a blast. It may have helped that no one went out of their way to cheese. In every battle at least two units of three Flayers were deployed and with proper care/strategy/planning they worked. It was an odd feeling about a unit type that tended to get ruthlessly slaughtered in matchplay.

Path to Gory Roster

https://photos.google.com/photo/AF1QipO-81D3DZnw2fBRo_KcBtW9M-KWkTNAx7ijHJ4

Order of Battle

https://photos.google.com/photo/AF1QipPIb--vTkuGubd1bZcXgkBYsFbuYesaWW1_TYg