Advice for a new Death player

[JonnyTheKing]

Hey guys, so I've decided to start a Death army as a side project, but there's so many options! I've picked up the christmas battle force and 2 more boxes of Skelly warriors. Where should I go from here and which Mortarch would you guys recommend building first?

[Sception]

The mortarchs are all, imo, pretty equivalent in gameplay value.  Arkhan might have a marginal edge, given the extra power of spellcasting in 2e and the fact that his formation is halfway decent (the other two mortarch formations... well, they aren't unplayable, but still).  But really they're very close in utility, as they all are monsterous named heroes with some useful utility abilities, but who suffer from being relatively easy to pick out (large models, monsters), not being all that tough as big monster heroes go generally (dragon riding vampire lords are tougher even by default), and as named heroes they don't get command traits or artefacts (which is where dragon riding vampire lords shoot way, way ahead in survivability).

So basically they're all decent, but none of them are particularly great mechanically, just sort of ok.  On the up side, this means you should absolutely feel free to assemble your model as whichever mortarch most appeals to you, whether visually or in personality.  Read up on their profiles in the Legions of Nagash battletome for a sense of their personalities and base your decision on that.

Or base your decision on your legion preference.

• Grand Host of Nagash is the legion of morghast hammers and skeleton hordes.  They can take all the mortarchs equally, so if you like grand host then you can again fall back on appearance and personality when choosing your mortarch.  This is the best fit for your existing models, but your army is small and starting off and you could still easily transition into any of the others without anything you currently have going to waste.

• Legion of Sacrament is Arkhan's legion, built around powerful spellcasting and sporting the artefacts with the best defense against shooting to keep your more fragile spellcasters alive, or make your more powerful spellcasters a real pain to remove.  As with arkhan himself, the casting bonus takes on added significance in 2e.
• Legion of Night is Mannfred's legion, with a deadly outflanking maneuver tailor made for terror attacks and lightning raids.  This legion particularly favors terrorgheists and morghast harbingers with two handed glaives.
• Legion of Blood is Neferata's legion, which center around her web of vampyric aristocracy, with the lordliest vampire lords and the knightliest vampire knights.

......

In terms of assembling your existing models:

• as mentioned, any of the mortarchs is good.  assemble the one matching your preferred legion, or if you prefer grand host whichever you like best for aesthetic or narrative reasons.
• the morghasts should be assembled with the two handed glaives.  If going legion of night, definitely build them as harbingers.  If going grand host, and you eventually plan on getting Nagash, probably build them as archai.  Otherwise, harbingers are probably slightly better, but either is fine, so just go with your aesthetic preference.  Again, go with the glaives either way, not the paired swords.
• Skeletons should probably be built as a single unit with spears, unless you know you eventually want to get more skeletons than you already have.  Skeletons are generally taken either in units of 10 with swords just to fulfill battleline or formation requirements, or in units of 40 with spears, where they're an intimidating if fragile and a bit slow melee hammer.  In-between isn't ideal.
• grave guard are generally better with the great weapons, though the difference is not so large that you can't use the swords & shields if you greatly prefer them.  They're not generally considered the most efficient unit, but a squad of 10 has uses, particularly for gravesite summoning.

In terms of what to get next, you should probably get:

• Battletome: Legions of Nagash.  I don't know if you have this yet, but if you don't you need it.
• A necromancer.  Necromancers are great in any legion, the model's real nice, you'll want one around, especially with you're big skeleton block.
• Regardless of legion, you'll probably eventually want to swap out that wight king for a vampire lord, but that's not urgent and if you greatly prefer the wight king aesthetically it's not really necessary either.
• General's Handbook 2018.  Not an absolutely necessary purchase, since matched play no longer has adjustments to the core rules not found within those core rules, and you can get the points values from scrollbuilder.com, but it still has a ton of scenarios, some nice campaign and narrative ideas, etc.  It's worth grabbing, imo.
• Malign Sorcery, with the rules and models for endless spells plus the rules for realm of origin artefacts.  Realm based magic lores are cool for narrative games, but less likely to be in play in matched play games.  check with your opponents.

In general, I would advise a Vampire Lord on Zombie Dragon as a big centerpiece / monstrous hero to new Legions of Nagash players.  You already have a mortarch, and it would compete for space in the army with that, so while it would still be a good addition it's a much lower priority for you, though running one alongside your mortarch might be a good choice, particularly for Legion of Sacrament or Legion of Blood lists.  Otherwise advisable next unit choices varies somewhat with legion, though in all cases you'll need more battleline.

• Grand Host: grand host, as mentioned, really is the legion of morghasts and skeletons, more of both, particularly more skeletons, is the advisable next step after the above.  2x40 skeleton warriors with spears is a common backbone, and with good reason.  Alternatively, you can run one big unit of skeletons and one big unit of grave guard.  This is worse due to the reduced points efficiency of grave guard, but not so much worse that you should avoid doing it if you prefer such a set up aesthetically.  Remaining required battleline slots can be spent on 10 man units of sword armed skeletons (especially if you eventually plan on running the first cohort or death march formations), or minimum units of dire wolves or chain rasps.  Otherwise, a second morghast unit, or expanding the first, could also be a worthwhile purchase.

 

• Sacrament: I'd either push towards the lords of sacrament formation (with yet a second necromancer plus a mortis engine) OR grab a vampire lord on zombie dragon to pair up with arkhan and take advantage of sacrament's good protective artefacts.  Otherwise, sacrament doesn't really push particular units, so your choices are pretty open.  you'll need more battleline units, which can be more skeletons (again either max units with spears or min units with swords, avoid inbetweens), dire wolves (like skittles work best in max or min unit sizes), or the new chainrasp hordes if you want something more spectral (these actually work ok at basically any unit size).  You'll want some more hard hitting units, but the options here are also wide open.  More morghasts works fine just like in legions of nagash, but so do unridden terrorgheits, or an allied ghoul-king on terrorgheist plus three summoned crypt flayers, or a big unit of 20 to 30 grimghast reapers, or an allied mournghul, etc etc.  Sacrament, being the most magic oriented legion, also really really wants that malign sorcery box set.  Arkhan in particular loves umbral spellportals.  It's also worth pointing out that the trade up from wight king to vampire lord or maybe another necromancer is more urgent here since you really want your heroes to be spellcasters.

 

• Night: battleline slots probably want to fill out battleline requirements  with more skeletons since night gets a slight boost to them, but it's not a major thing so if you prefer the speed and maneuverability of dire wolves or chainrasps they're fine options too.  The biggest thing for legion of night is outflanking, so you'll want some really scary units to outflank with.  More morghast harbingers, unridden terrorgheists, vamp lord on zombie dragon, that sort of thing.  Theoretically Mannfred likes vargheists, and they're an alright unit if you absolutely love them, but in general morghast harbingers with glaives do more or less the same outflanking melee hammer job much better due to better rend and especially the enhanced charge range.

 

• Blood: vampire lords, vampire lord on zombie dragon, one to two units of 5 blood knights, maybe even three if you want to run the castellans of blood keep formation.  Expensive vampyric elites are what blood benefits the most, that's what's on your short list to add if you want to run neferata's legion, maybe even higher priority than the necromancer & malign sorcery kit mentioned above.  A coven throne might also be decent, but isn't at all necessary.  The extra bonus for vampire lords means you'll again really want to replace that wight king sooner rather than later.

 

Regardless of your legion or specific unit choices, Legions of Nagash revolves heavily around grave site use and our faction spell lores, so you'll want to take the time to really familiarize yourself with those rules and experiment around with them in play.  It might take a while to get the hang of it, to figure out if you prefer more aggressive gravesite use for summoning & re-summoning, or a more central, defensive placement for horde attrition.  There's a lot to play around with, especially with the 2e changes and new units from soul wars, so take your time with it.

[spoon_fed05]

If you’re not sure which mortarch to make they are really easy to magnetize. You just need to glue the riders to their respective seat / saddle then stick a magnet to the underside and on the back of the beastie. The heads can be done as well. The armour can just slide on and off.

Painting wise I’ve found mannfred and neferata look good on the steed with the mannfred colour scheme. I’ve ended up with two mortarch sets so have also done a bone / ethereal scheme.

Anyway. - you really should magnetize! I’ll find out the magnet size if you need me to

[Sception]

For a counter-argument, I find swapping the bits on and off can cause chips and wear on your paint job.  And with arkhan in particular, the reigns are likely to break if you try and keep them, most folks who magnetize the mortarchs I find remove the reigns entirely, and that's sad because they're a pretty cool detail.  going for specific mortarchs also lets you tailor the basing to the chosen mortarch while also providing some extra support for what can be a wobbly model.  A gloomy tree for manfred, black obelisk for arkhan, or elegant statue for neferata could provide an extra point of contact to improve the stability of the model.  You can, and maybe should, still do this if you magnetize, but you won't be able to tailor such an addition to the personality of the specific mortarch you're using.

If you really can't choose between them, it's certainly an option that many go for, but I prefer to just pick one and build around that.  And if you want to be able to swap between them, well, buying the kit three times over is three times as expensive and takes three times as long to assemble and paint, sure, but then again it also allows you to run all the mortarchs together in big games, which won't happen often, but is cool as heck if & when it ever does.

[Tobjen99]

 

6 hours ago, JonnyTheKing said:

I've picked up the christmas battle force and 2 more boxes of Skelly warriors. Where should I go from here and which Mortarch would you guys recommend building first?

Atfter christmas I bought the BBQ, box. I wanted more units and did a big mistake (the mistake was: I wanted 2000 pts asap). I got 4 bokses of skeleton warriors, 2 graveguard sets, a necromancer, a vampire lord and alot off books. Please don't rush 2000 pts you don't know what you want in your army yet. I did a Sacrament list with Arkhan and did not like it, it was to slow for my prefered playstyle. Then i bought a FEC startcollecting box (to get the vampirelord on zombiedragon and vargheists) and a box of direwolfs, to play a Legion off Night list. I have played two games with the Legion of Night list and i like that legion/list cause of sneaky ambush. My list is not compedetive, but i won both my games. 

Now i have a Mortarch wich i don't use together with 20 skeleboys and a wight king. That is a lot off mony halfway wasted (not realy). My tip for you is to buy the Legions of Nagash book and play a few games with what you have. Try the legions you find fancy, at least 2-3 games with them. Then you find your favorite legion and buy some units wich fits with that legion. 

If you want to buy any more models asap i would recomend direwolfs or a necromancer. I can say that after two games with the Vampire lord on zombiedragon he is my moste loved unit together with fast direwolfs. I also like my Grave Guard becasue they have killed alot (they are expencive tho  ). A blob off 40 skelleton warriors with spears supported by a necromacers "vanhels danse macabre" is almoste required i any death list.

GL wiht finding your prefered Legion^

[Sception]

dont rush is good advice that doesn't really come accross at all in my long long post.  Play a few games with the different legions to figure out which you like the play style of before getting a bunch of new models.  BBQ + 2 boxes skittles (and a necromancer, that's probably a safe choice) is a good foundation for any of the legions, but where you expand from there really depends on which legion's playstyle you end up preferring - an overwhelming sea of bone (grand host, my own preference), arcane supremacy (sacrament), fast elite melee (blood), or tricksy deployment shenanigans (night, probably still the strongest legion in 2e, though it's too soon to say, certainly the most dynamic).

All the legions can and will do a little bit of all of those things.  Huge recursive keletons blocks and powerful morghast elites are still good melee hammers even for non-grand host armies.  Our powerful spell lores, multiple sources of casting buffs, and the fact that our most powerful melee heroes are also spellcasters will ensure that effective exploitation of the magic phase will remain a key part of your battle plan, even for non-sacrament armies.  Their potent combination of melee power, spellcasting, and command abilities make vampire lords among the most attractive hero options even for non-blood armies, and the undead banners will give non-blood armies options for bravery debuffing as well.  And gravesite deployment ensures that even non-night armies have some potent deployment tricks that they can use to close with or encircle their foes.  The fact that there's so much overlap is part of why BBQ is a decent starting point regardless of legion.  Ironically, it's probably the worst fit for legion of blood, where IMO dire wolves are a better battleline foundation than skeletons and blood knights a, well, if not 'better' at least a more thematic choice for fast hammer unit than morghasts.  But even there that's a sorely debatable point that is far from universally agreed.

Regardless, while BBQ is a decent starting point for basically any legion, their individual areas of expertise and special rules benefiting specific units will definitely  affect the overall play style of your army and the specific units you want to pick up next.

[JonnyTheKing]

1 hour ago, Sception said:

The mortarchs are all, imo, pretty equivalent in gameplay value.  Arkhan might have a marginal edge, given the extra power of spellcasting in 2e and the fact that his formation is halfway decent (the other two mortarch formations... well, they aren't unplayable, but still).  But really they're very close in utility, as they all are monsterous named heroes with some useful utility abilities, but who suffer from being relatively easy to pick out (large models, monsters), not being all that tough as big monster heroes go generally (dragon riding vampire lords are tougher even by default), and as named heroes they don't get command traits or artefacts (which is where dragon riding vampire lords shoot way, way ahead in survivability).

So basically they're all decent, but none of them are particularly great mechanically, just sort of ok.  On the up side, this means you should absolutely feel free to assemble your model as whichever mortarch most appeals to you, whether visually or in personality.  Read up on their profiles in the Legions of Nagash battletome for a sense of their personalities and base your decision on that.

Or base your decision on your legion preference.

• Grand Host of Nagash is the legion of morghast hammers and skeleton hordes.  They can take all the mortarchs equally, so if you like grand host then you can again fall back on appearance and personality when choosing your mortarch.  This is the best fit for your existing models, but your army is small and starting off and you could still easily transition into any of the others without anything you currently have going to waste.

• Legion of Sacrament is Arkhan's legion, built around powerful spellcasting and sporting the artefacts with the best defense against shooting to keep your more fragile spellcasters alive, or make your more powerful spellcasters a real pain to remove.  As with arkhan himself, the casting bonus takes on added significance in 2e.
• Legion of Night is Mannfred's legion, with a deadly outflanking maneuver tailor made for terror attacks and lightning raids.  This legion particularly favors terrorgheists and morghast harbingers with two handed glaives.
• Legion of Blood is Neferata's legion, which center around her web of vampyric aristocracy, with the lordliest vampire lords and the knightliest vampire knights.

......

In terms of assembling your existing models:

• as mentioned, any of the mortarchs is good.  assemble the one matching your preferred legion, or if you prefer grand host whichever you like best for aesthetic or narrative reasons.
• the morghasts should be assembled with the two handed glaives.  If going legion of night, definitely build them as harbingers.  If going grand host, and you eventually plan on getting Nagash, probably build them as archai.  Otherwise, harbingers are probably slightly better, but either is fine, so just go with your aesthetic preference.  Again, go with the glaives either way, not the paired swords.
• Skeletons should probably be built as a single unit with spears, unless you know you eventually want to get more skeletons than you already have.  Skeletons are generally taken either in units of 10 with swords just to fulfill battleline or formation requirements, or in units of 40 with spears, where they're an intimidating if fragile and a bit slow melee hammer.  In-between isn't ideal.
• grave guard are generally better with the great weapons, though the difference is not so large that you can't use the swords & shields if you greatly prefer them.  They're not generally considered the most efficient unit, but a squad of 10 has uses, particularly for gravesite summoning.

In terms of what to get next, you should probably get:

• Battletome: Legions of Nagash.  I don't know if you have this yet, but if you don't you need it.
• A necromancer.  Necromancers are great in any legion, the model's real nice, you'll want one around, especially with you're big skeleton block.
• Regardless of legion, you'll probably eventually want to swap out that wight king for a vampire lord, but that's not urgent and if you greatly prefer the wight king aesthetically it's not really necessary either.
• General's Handbook 2018.  Not an absolutely necessary purchase, since matched play no longer has adjustments to the core rules not found within those core rules, and you can get the points values from scrollbuilder.com, but it still has a ton of scenarios, some nice campaign and narrative ideas, etc.  It's worth grabbing, imo.
• Malign Sorcery, with the rules and models for endless spells plus the rules for realm of origin artefacts.  Realm based magic lores are cool for narrative games, but less likely to be in play in matched play games.  check with your opponents.

In general, I would advise a Vampire Lord on Zombie Dragon as a big centerpiece / monstrous hero to new Legions of Nagash players.  You already have a mortarch, and it would compete for space in the army with that, so while it would still be a good addition it's a much lower priority for you, though running one alongside your mortarch might be a good choice, particularly for Legion of Sacrament or Legion of Blood lists.  Otherwise advisable next unit choices varies somewhat with legion, though in all cases you'll need more battleline.

• Grand Host: grand host, as mentioned, really is the legion of morghasts and skeletons, more of both, particularly more skeletons, is the advisable next step after the above.  2x40 skeleton warriors with spears is a common backbone, and with good reason.  Alternatively, you can run one big unit of skeletons and one big unit of grave guard.  This is worse due to the reduced points efficiency of grave guard, but not so much worse that you should avoid doing it if you prefer such a set up aesthetically.  Remaining required battleline slots can be spent on 10 man units of sword armed skeletons (especially if you eventually plan on running the first cohort or death march formations), or minimum units of dire wolves or chain rasps.  Otherwise, a second morghast unit, or expanding the first, could also be a worthwhile purchase.

 

• Sacrament: I'd either push towards the lords of sacrament formation (with yet a second necromancer plus a mortis engine) OR grab a vampire lord on zombie dragon to pair up with arkhan and take advantage of sacrament's good protective artefacts.  Otherwise, sacrament doesn't really push particular units, so your choices are pretty open.  you'll need more battleline units, which can be more skeletons (again either max units with spears or min units with swords, avoid inbetweens), dire wolves (like skittles work best in max or min unit sizes), or the new chainrasp hordes if you want something more spectral (these actually work ok at basically any unit size).  You'll want some more hard hitting units, but the options here are also wide open.  More morghasts works fine just like in legions of nagash, but so do unridden terrorgheits, or an allied ghoul-king on terrorgheist plus three summoned crypt flayers, or a big unit of 20 to 30 grimghast reapers, or an allied mournghul, etc etc.  Sacrament, being the most magic oriented legion, also really really wants that malign sorcery box set.  Arkhan in particular loves umbral spellportals.  It's also worth pointing out that the trade up from wight king to vampire lord or maybe another necromancer is more urgent here since you really want your heroes to be spellcasters.

 

• Night: battleline slots probably want to fill out battleline requirements  with more skeletons since night gets a slight boost to them, but it's not a major thing so if you prefer the speed and maneuverability of dire wolves or chainrasps they're fine options too.  The biggest thing for legion of night is outflanking, so you'll want some really scary units to outflank with.  More morghast harbingers, unridden terrorgheists, vamp lord on zombie dragon, that sort of thing.  Theoretically Mannfred likes vargheists, and they're an alright unit if you absolutely love them, but in general morghast harbingers with glaives do more or less the same outflanking melee hammer job much better due to better rend and especially the enhanced charge range.

 

• Blood: vampire lords, vampire lord on zombie dragon, one to two units of 5 blood knights, maybe even three if you want to run the castellans of blood keep formation.  Expensive vampyric elites are what blood benefits the most, that's what's on your short list to add if you want to run neferata's legion, maybe even higher priority than the necromancer & malign sorcery kit mentioned above.  A coven throne might also be decent, but isn't at all necessary.  The extra bonus for vampire lords means you'll again really want to replace that wight king sooner rather than later.

 

Regardless of your legion or specific unit choices, Legions of Nagash revolves heavily around grave site use and our faction spell lores, so you'll want to take the time to really familiarize yourself with those rules and experiment around with them in play.  It might take a while to get the hang of it, to figure out if you prefer more aggressive gravesite use for summoning & re-summoning, or a more central, defensive placement for horde attrition.  There's a lot to play around with, especially with the 2e changes and new units from soul wars, so take your time with it.

Thank you, you've gave me a lot to think about! I should probably have mentioned I own the Malign sorcery, LoN book and GH 2018 already. I personally really love Arkhan's model so I think I will go with a legion of sacrement! I actually really like the rules of Grimghast Reapers so may look into a bigger unit of them as a battle line option and probably a min unit of dire wolves to fill up the last slot. I also quite like the battalion for Arkhan but was unsure of its usefulness so hearing that it's decent I will look into it definitely.

 

[Rahr]

They are only battline in a nighthaunt army sadly

[Sception]

Yeah, grimghasts won't be battleline f or you, though they are a perfectly decent summonable melee hammer that works just fine in sacrament lists.

Your battleline options are:

Skeleton Warriors, the most offensive choice.  Best in max units of 40, where the extra attacks f or large skeletob units and points discount for m ax size squads makes them hideosly efficient in terms of points per attack.  In such large units, spears are preferred to get more attacks in.

They are a bit fragile though.  Heavy offensive units can smash them down to inconsequential size (without their bonus attacks, they're kind of pathetic), after which battleshock can see the rest off the table, even with their high leadership.  It might be worth using inspiring presance on them, though do remember that they're summonable.  With proper gravesite management it might be a better use of command points to let them fie and just summon the unit back.

Minimal units of 10 to 20 eith swords can fill battleline or battalion requirements, but such units are less points efficient, and without the extra attacks they're not good for much beyond standing on objectives or blocking charge lanes.

 

Dire Wolves, the fastest and toughest battleline, great for supporting fast armies built around quick melee hammers, like blood knight based legion of blood lists.  Also good at quickly covering ground to support outflanking units in legion of sacrament.

Big units of 20+ are fast and hard to kill, making them great at occupying central objectives early on.  Small units of 5 to 10 are grwat at briefly tying up shooty units, blocking charge lanes for melee ynits, or serving as a mobile bodyguard for big fast monsters thatvwould prefer not to be charged, such as for instance arkhan himself.

But while dire wolves are faster and tougher than skeletons, they don't hit nearlybas hard.  They aren't entirely toothless, but will definitely need support if they want to kill much.  Additionally, while having 2 wounds per model makes them quite tough, it also makes them harder to heal with grave sites and deathly invocations.

 

Zombies, unfortunately are not very good at the moment.  While they're as cheap as wolves per wound, their lack of armor makes them about as fragile as skeletons overall, and with dramatically weaker attacks.  They're just as slow as skeletons, too.  The old models aren't exactly inspired either.  Sadly, I'd skip them for now.

 

Chainrasp Hordes are one of the new starter box nighthaunt units that were added to legions of nagash.  The big unit of littler ghosties in chains, with the champion holding a candleabra.

There's a good thread number crunching their stats somewhere around here.  General upshot is they're not much punchier than dire wolves, but are sumilarly resilient, at least to attacks with rend.  Not as fast as wolves, but fly helps.  And they heal easier than wolves.  A lot less offensive than skeletons, and no tougher against rendless attacks, but much tougher against attacks with rend, faster, and no where near as dependant on fielding huge units.

They're kind of a halfway compromise between dire wolves and skeletons, at least if you think you're going to run up against much rend.  Not as good as either unit in their specialized niche, but a bit more versatile.  And if you want to field a few medium sized units of 20 models for aesthetic variety, they work better at that size than skittles do.

 

And if you do like grimghasts, then you might also borrow some of the other nighthaunt heroes that buff them specifically, in which case chainrasps mught be able to piggy back on those buffs.