Top 10 at Facehammer with Deathmarch

[Ravinsild]

55 minutes ago, Undeadly said:

Well, I think the scenario you pointed out is EXACTLY why Ianob brought along the VLoZD with Doppleganger cloak; thats the exact reason, actually. As he points out, the Doppleganger VLoZD is a way for him to disable stronger units without necessarily fighting them; And if he does have to fight them, he has a reliable way to kill them. Assuming he fights first, or gets the charge on them, a VLoZD should easily go toe to toe with a unit of 4 Fulminators, especially if you make him waste his attacks with proper activation.

Secondly, where were your Wight King and Necromancers at?  

In the middle of the board behind my Black Knights and Grave Guard. Close enough for spell support but far enough away not to be charged. The Wight King was right behind them. 

I don’t yet have a vampire lord on zombie dragon.... but soon I will. Two weeks that is... when I get paid again lol. 

Still, my lack of rend meant that the Stormcast for all intents and purposes just shrugged off my attacks, especially with re-rolling saves. 

It was a total defeat. Aside from having a VLoZD, I have no answer to something like Fulminators. 

[Ravinsild]

1 hour ago, Undeadly said:

Well, I think the scenario you pointed out is EXACTLY why Ianob brought along the VLoZD with Doppleganger cloak; thats the exact reason, actually. As he points out, the Doppleganger VLoZD is a way for him to disable stronger units without necessarily fighting them; And if he does have to fight them, he has a reliable way to kill them. Assuming he fights first, or gets the charge on them, a VLoZD should easily go toe to toe with a unit of 4 Fulminators, especially if you make him waste his attacks with proper activation.

Secondly, where were your Wight King and Necromancers at?  

Although how do I charge what isn’t on the board during my first turn?

[Sedraxis]

So you complain about him bringing a tournament list when you are bringing one yourself? Cuz this is in no way a "fun/casual" list.

Anyway it seems that SC are very strong against no-rend attacks, so the alpha strike gameplan isn't great against them. His advice on playing the objectives is right, altho that doesn't automatically mean you win the game that way.

I think a lot can be said for positioning and movement. Those details are hard to describe in a text-based battle report, but it at least sounds like you can still gain a lot of ground there. See if you can get a rematch with the guy, worst case scenario you lose again but you'll learn alot (assuming that is what you want in the first place :p)

 

[Ravinsild]

18 minutes ago, Sedraxis said:

So you complain about him bringing a tournament list when you are bringing one yourself? Cuz this is in no way a "fun/casual" list.

Anyway it seems that SC are very strong against no-rend attacks, so the alpha strike gameplan isn't great against them. His advice on playing the objectives is right, altho that doesn't automatically mean you win the game that way.

I think a lot can be said for positioning and movement. Those details are hard to describe in a text-based battle report, but it at least sounds like you can still gain a lot of ground there. See if you can get a rematch with the guy, worst case scenario you lose again but you'll learn alot (assuming that is what you want in the first place :p)

 

How is my list tournament worthy? It’s exclusively Deathrattle almost, a high drop rate, a bad Hero is my general, and fairly inefficient. Ianob has the tournament list. Mine is too many drops, and apparently doesn’t hit hard enough. 

I pretty much picked a gimmick and units that I enjoy. 

[Honk]

2 hours ago, Ravinsild said:

How is my list tournament worthy?

Well, it seems it was not worthy enough...

XD

But still it is a strong list, with good potential. It might have a weak point or two against a good charge of filth. 

3 hours ago, Sedraxis said:

See if you can get a rematch with the guy, 

If you want to crank it up to 11, do it. If you‘d rather chill and play beer and pretzel style... don’t.

Or be very open about your playstyle and don’t be afraid to pack your stuff back in, if people come around for easy prey

[Sedraxis]

I mean if your list is specifically tuned to alpha strike charge with 15 guys buffed up to dish out an unholy amount of attacks, it is NOT a casual funtimes "I'm just playing models I like" list. It's a "I specifically designed this to ****** your ****** up turn 1" list.

Doesn't make you a bad man or anything, just don't lie to yourself.

[LJ26]

Yea I don't get what your complaining about. You had 40 skeletons, 20 grave gaurd and I'm assuming plenty of screens. Why were u worried about 6 fulminators? U can literally bog them down with skeletons bc after the charge they are worthless (exaggerating a bit but they suck after the charge). Why didnt you just summon back the black knights screen up and do it all over again like.... I don't know..... Ian said the list was designed to do? And no reason to get mad for losing. If you've never played stormcast before you should be thanking your opponent that he taught u alot and seemed to be very nice after the game. U wiped 10 sequitors turn 1 u said? I've never seen a fun "just playing the models I like" list do that before. 

[Seraphage]

Thank you so much for sharing all the wisdom @ianob. This is a very very constructive and useful thread. I 'm a Seraphon player and unfortunately don't get the chance to face Death more than once per 6 months so didn't know how they work at all, but at least I got a small idea of what to expect when facing them due to your conversation. I'll listen to the podcast as soon as I get the chance for it.

Congratulations on your exceptional results ! 

 

 

[Ravinsild]

5 hours ago, LJ26 said:

Yea I don't get what your complaining about. You had 40 skeletons, 20 grave gaurd and I'm assuming plenty of screens. Why were u worried about 6 fulminators? U can literally bog them down with skeletons bc after the charge they are worthless (exaggerating a bit but they suck after the charge). Why didnt you just summon back the black knights screen up and do it all over again like.... I don't know..... Ian said the list was designed to do? And no reason to get mad for losing. If you've never played stormcast before you should be thanking your opponent that he taught u alot and seemed to be very nice after the game. U wiped 10 sequitors turn 1 u said? I've never seen a fun "just playing the models I like" list do that before. 

Are Sequitors good? 

I don’t know what the high value targets of Stormcast are, I don’t keep up with the meta, and I’ve never been to a tournament. 

I picked up Death because of the Champions card game and I wanted to play with vampires and skeletons. 

I latched onto Deathmarch because it reminds me of Ironjawz Ironfist Battalion. 

I just made this list up by myself, I’m not preparing for any events, I don’t plan on going to any events ever, this just came out of my head. I have literally 10 variations of this list, all made up by myself. 

The gimmick is to see how fast skeletons can go. 

I already pasted my entire list: 

Allegiance: Legion of Sacrament
Mortal Realm: Shyish

Leaders
Wight King with Baleful Tomb Blade(120)
- General
- Mount: Steed
- Trait: Mastery of Death  
- Artefact: Ethereal Amulet 
Vampire Lord (140)
- Mount: Flying Horror
- Artefact: Azyrbane Standard  
- Lore of the Vampires: Vile Transference
Necromancer (110)
- Lore of the Deathmages: Fading Vigour
Necromancer (110)
- Lore of the Deathmages: Overwhelming Dread

Battleline
40 x Skeleton Warriors (280)
- Ancient Blades
10 x Skeleton Warriors (80)
- Ancient Blades
10 x Skeleton Warriors (80)
- Ancient Blades

Units
20 x Grave Guard (320)
- Great Wight Blades
15 x Black Knights (360)

Behemoths
Mortis Engine (180)

Battalions
Deathmarch (160)

Endless Spells
Chronomantic Cogs (60)

Total: 2000 / 2000
Extra Command Points: 1
Allies: 0 / 400
Wounds: 142
 

There may be screens there but the issue is that on turn 2 he was going to charge my skeleton screen and wipe them out (easily done with -1 rend giving them no save and 3 damage each) as I had retreated all the way back into my own territory to revive my Grave Guard with Endless Legions. He would smash my screen then kill everyone else. 

My 2 sets of 10 skeletons are literally just objective campers and my heroes aren’t very fighty and my Black Knights were dead and I didn’t have enough CP to revive them too (why is why ianob takes 150 points down)

Also: I’m not mad I lost. I’m mad because I don’t like this dropping on me at the last second that he’s playing a high end tournament list. 

We arranged the game two days before hand, and all he said was, “hey want to play a game on Tuesday?” Then after a 45 minutes drive out there right as we’re pulling out models he goes, “oh yeah I’m training for a tournament coming up this weekend so I brought my best possible list.” Oh ok cool thanks for telling me now. At the last second. 

I don’t know what a Death tournament list looks like but it’s not mine. Probably has Nagash, and Morghasts I would guess. Probably Arkhan too. 

[Honk]

46 minutes ago, Ravinsild said:

I don’t know what a Death tournament list looks like but it’s not mine.

Well... although my lawyer has a different opinion, but ianob scored single digit at facehammer, with a list, quite similar to yours. so it might have come to pass, that inadvertently of course, you designed a list, that, in the right hands, might be used highly competitively.

Buuuut, whatever, who cares...

against a strong countercharge or alpha, I would suggest switching your mortis engine to a coven throne or a poor bunch of puppies(3x5). Have them secure the flanks and stall enemy units till your set up to deal with them. Have them cute ladies talk to the fulminators, sure they’ll get along... those brave and honorable knights will never see it coming

[Ravinsild]

50 minutes ago, Honk said:

Well... although my lawyer has a different opinion, but ianob scored single digit at facehammer, with a list, quite similar to yours. so it might have come to pass, that inadvertently of course, you designed a list, that, in the right hands, might be used highly competitively.

Buuuut, whatever, who cares...

against a strong countercharge or alpha, I would suggest switching your mortis engine to a coven throne or a poor bunch of puppies(3x5). Have them secure the flanks and stall enemy units till your set up to deal with them. Have them cute ladies talk to the fulminators, sure they’ll get along... those brave and honorable knights will never see it coming

I guess I accidentally made a tournament-like list but ianob has already picked my list apart on why it’s not very good (not enough Grave Guard, often not enough Black Knights, fragile and bad heroes, too many drops, Mortis Engine is dumb [but it made casting way easier with the LoS +1 too] and overall inefficient.) 

He also mentioned comparatively mass skeletons aren’t good. I just don’t want to copy/paste his list. I want to run my own style and I’m not looking to be highly competitive or tournament worthy. I would rather avoid it. 

In over 8,000 League of Legends games I only ever had around 100 ranked games or less. 

I only did quick play in DotA and Heroes of the Storm. In Overwatch too. 

I just don’t play ranked or the most high end competitive modes. I play the ****** around and have fun modes, but I definitely play to win. 

Not sure how I would build a better Deathmarch list that isn’t just copy/pasting ianob’s list though and I’m not sure I want to. 

 

[ianob]

18 hours ago, Ravinsild said:

Well today was pretty awful.
 

I cant speak about your tactics, the scenario, the board, your opponent etc but looking at that game in a vacuum here's a few points:

1) 11 Black Knights buffed charging average about 50 wounds. Against sequitors rerolling saves that's about 12.5 wounds, or 6 dead. When they attack you back you should be taking off the ones that aren't in combat with the sequitors, and then you have 12.5 damage again. So that should be about 12-13 dead sequitors. If you only killed 5, that's just straight bad luck, which none of us can control

2) Fulminators sound like they had the run of the board. Did you establish board control so they couldnt come down in advantageous positions? Use your skeletons, Mortis Engine etc to control where they could go? Or did you maybe allow them a little too much dominance?

3) My list, and to an extent all death lists, play well....by dying. It's ok that he kills your stuff on his turn, you expect it, and your units suck defensively so you cant do anything about it anyway. Your graves should have been positioned in such a way as to mean that when you rezzed the units back, they got to charge and return the favour to him. Especially since you have cogs, which is exactly for this.

4) Fulminators are 110 points EACH. If you attack and kill 2, then your unit dies, and you go back in and kill another 2, you're in a good position. You need to use that points advantage and win elsewhere on the board.

 

Personally I consider Stormcast to be a good matchup for this list but you are always at the whim of Evocators spiking and killing all your ******. Such is sigmar

[Ravinsild]

2 minutes ago, ianob said:

I cant speak about your tactics, the scenario, the board, your opponent etc but looking at that game in a vacuum here's a few points:

1) 11 Black Knights buffed charging average about 50 wounds. Against sequitors rerolling saves that's about 12.5 wounds, or 6 dead. When they attack you back you should be taking off the ones that aren't in combat with the sequitors, and then you have 12.5 damage again. So that should be about 12-13 dead sequitors. If you only killed 5, that's just straight bad luck, which none of us can control

2) Fulminators sound like they had the run of the board. Did you establish board control so they couldnt come down in advantageous positions? Use your skeletons, Mortis Engine etc to control where they could go? Or did you maybe allow them a little too much dominance?

3) My list, and to an extent all death lists, play well....by dying. It's ok that he kills your stuff on his turn, you expect it, and your units suck defensively so you cant do anything about it anyway. Your graves should have been positioned in such a way as to mean that when you rezzed the units back, they got to charge and return the favour to him. Especially since you have cogs, which is exactly for this.

4) Fulminators are 110 points EACH. If you attack and kill 2, then your unit dies, and you go back in and kill another 2, you're in a good position. You need to use that points advantage and win elsewhere on the board.

 

Personally I consider Stormcast to be a good matchup for this list but you are always at the whim of Evocators spiking and killing all your ******. Such is sigmar

The map was the Better Part of Valour. 

He deployed a Lord-Arcanum on Gryph-Charger in the middle objective as well as the 10 Sequitors on his territory and his Lord Castellant, 5 Liberators each on the flanks. He put them all essentially right on the literal objective. 

I deployed my 2 Necromancers, Mortis Engine, Vampire Lord, 15 BK and 20 GG with Wight King right behind them center of the board as far forward as possible. 

I placed my Graveyards in such a way that via spreading my units I could get Deathly Invocations no matter which objective I want for, so about 10” out from either objective on my side and his side. 

Unfortunately he moved his Liberators in such a way that it would be physically impossible to summon my 40 skeletons from the Graveyard wholly within 9” and fully 9” away from enemy units moving them to block off my graveyards leaving only mine in my own territory. 

My initial plan was to summon my 40 skeletons from the Graveyard in his territory, but I didn’t get a leader within 9” to do it. 

I also didn’t know where he would deepstrike and didn’t think to block off avenues to accomplish it. 

Like I said I don’t play tournaments, so thinking so tactically didn’t really occur to me. 

I just like to fight anyway and typically ignore objectives. 

Even if I don’t win by battlemap rules I consider it a win if I kill everything. 

I play it like an RTS where building an army and fighting them is the most fun: which is why in WC3 and Starcraft I only played by myself against the computer. 

The building and fighting was the most fun, not necessarily the actual strategy or APM or anything. 

 

[jobume]

Hey @ianob! Really liked the show you did about the list. It was fun hearing about it after you teased it on the Twitters! I was wondering, what do you think about using a Coven Throne as your general? Do you think it could be survivable enough?

[Honk]

28 minutes ago, jobume said:

Hey @ianob!

Well, I‘m not as well versed in high competitive gaming, as silverback himself, but...

12 hp, 4+ save, high mobility, melee regen, beguile spell, tactical insight,if all fails scrying pool...

if you get their signature spell off, they are no valid target for attacks or spells, very defensive and durable

with tactical insight those ladies will scratch some eyes out, no rend though, but together with the hunger pretty good

give them a high regen artifact or whatever suits your playstyle and they rock...

fit perfect next to an aggressive VloZd and might survive longer

disclaimer: imho, ymmv and terms and conditions apply...

[Ravinsild]

Is my maths correct on this? 

10 Grave Guard in Grand Host of Nagash, within the range of Lord of Nagashizzar, and with VHD would average this amount of damage versus Chaos Marauders? 

30 attacks at 3/3/-1/1.25 is 45% chance to hit averages 16 wounds the first time they attack. Because they don’t get a save (6+ -1 rend = no save, they don’t have a FNP right?) 

I would guess like 15-20 Marauders could pile in to retaliate and probably kill 5 of them leaving me with 5 giving me 15 attacks to an average of 8 damage so 16+8 is 24 killing over half the unit. 

How many would run in battleshock? 

Seems it’s a favorable match up for my Grave Guard, and worth using as a screen breaker without burning any CP so I can save it for later for a truly juicy target like the Keeper of Secrets or Chaos Lord of Slaneesh on Daemonic Mount to take down to kill his buffs. 

[ianob]

10 hours ago, jobume said:

Hey @ianob! Really liked the show you did about the list. It was fun hearing about it after you teased it on the Twitters! I was wondering, what do you think about using a Coven Throne as your general? Do you think it could be survivable enough?

I think it’s undervalued as an option in general but I also think it’s underpowered (it’s one of the many death units that were forgotten/ignored in the LoN book and really needed updating to “modern” stats). It’s damage output is pathetic compared to similarly priced models. It’s also significantly less “flat” survivable than a vlozd (less wounds, no chalice, less save) and often your vlozd o my suevives by the skin of its teeth so that’s a real thing!

I think I’d consider it more if getting those 200 points back let me add something that the list really needed. But I don’t think losing the vlozd threat, rend, and survivabilty to turn one of my 10 Skellies into 40 or grab some extra BKs is worth it.

[N.I.B.]

On 9/29/2018 at 11:40 PM, ianob said:

The VLoZD is there to survive. I wish we had a cheaper option to do it, because being 440 points he has to commit somewhere on the board quickly otherwise its too many wasted points, but given that we dont I went all in on him with the cloak. This does double duty as a control piece; I use him to "remove" units from the battle that I dont want my other units to fight.

The cloak could of course be something else - Scales of Ignax or Ethereal Charm are certainly contenders, but the cloak is very good in the current monster meta and also completely shuts down entire armies of deepkin which I expected to see a lot more of.

I've had my first game now, Ethereal Charm on VLoZD worked like a ...charm. Not sure I'm following you here, why is Doppelganger Cloak good against monsters - is it because you can usually be sure to knock on them first, and taking them down a tier or two (unlike when fighting units with lots of models), plus monsters otherwise being threats against the Black Knights? 

And how can Doppelganger Cloak 'shut down' entire armies of Deepkin? I know basically nothing about them, but I'm curious. 

 

@Ravinsild threadjacking alert!

 

 

 

[Black Blade]

On 10/1/2018 at 6:14 AM, ianob said:

I think its one of them artifacts that is brilliant on paper but weak in practice. Against a lot of lists, it will do nothing.

There are times when it can be good I think, when your army is *so* good at a specific thing that all you need to do is make sure the enemy doesn't have an artifact to mess you up (eg, we've been testing it in Deepkin) but I think that's a very niche case. I don't think it's good for us - its too important for us to protect our general. Never say never to stuff like that though, you never know when you'll come up with a build where you feel like that is the best thing for you.

In what way are you using it against the Deepkin?

@N.I.B. I don't know how it can be used the Deepkin as a faction but I can explain the rest. I've used the cloak in most of my games, though I own no monsters myself it's effective on any larger than infantry sized base (the bigger the better). The cloak says the wearer cannot be target in the combat phase until it has activated and attacked itself. Therefore a monster can hold up big blocks or big models while potentially erasing an entire units attacks. For example My hero with the cloak is engaged with an enemy unit and I have a second unit engaged with a different enemy as well. My opponent has two choices, technically one because he cannot hit the hero. So he activates them but they make no attacks so he loses that units combat potential.

Now that I'm typing this you could have a stardrake soak up some eels and have them not be able to attack.

[Isotop]

Due to their allegiance ability, all Deepkin fight before the opponents units during the third battle round. So every Deepkin unit engaged by the Vlozd will not be able to attack. I guess this is most efficient when the LoN player is able to take the first turn of the third battle round and uses the high movement of the dragon to engage the maximum number of units. Typing from my mobile, so no references - but I think the ability in question is called High Tide.

[Black Blade]

2 minutes ago, Isotop said:

Due to their allegiance ability, all Deepkin fight before the opponents units during the third battle round. So every Deepkin unit engaged by the Vlozd will not be able to attack. I guess this is most efficient when the LoN player is able to take the first turn of the third battle round and uses the high movement of the dragon to engage the maximum number of units. Typing from my mobile, so no references - but I think the ability in question is called High Tide.

It is high tide but that only works so long as you don't have to activate your hero before opponent misses their activation

[Pangu]

This thread... it makes me think of sitting in class in middle school. The teacher is trying to to teach and explain, while one kid insists on arguing with him, another is going all emo and hijacking the class, and the rest of the kids are rolling their eyes or trying to help the teacher get things back on track. 

[Ravinsild]

2 minutes ago, Pangu said:

This thread... it makes me think of sitting in class in middle school. The teacher is trying to to teach and explain, while one kid insists on arguing with him, another is going all emo and hijacking the class, and the rest of the kids are rolling their eyes or trying to help the teacher get things back on track. 

I was giving my results with a similar but definitely worse list. Ianob’s is the list to go with if you want to win tournaments. 

Mine is just an experiment in something that doesn’t involve Nagash himself. 

[ianob]

Doppelganger Cloak is good vs Deepkin because they have a very low chance of killing your VLoZD with their mortals alone. Factoring Deathless Minions means that each eel does just under 0.7 damage with its mortals - meaning it'd need 20 of them to kill your VLoZD on average. If they charge him and fail to nuke him off the table, all of their attacks are wasted that turn, and if they've flipped tides to T2, they're also wasted next turn. It puts them in a horrible predicament where they have no right answer of whether to charge him or not, so they're forced to either throw it out to luck or fight your endless hordes. It changes the Deepkin matchup from meh to favourable.

[Nevvermore]

2 hours ago, ianob said:

Doppelganger Cloak is good vs Deepkin because they have a very low chance of killing your VLoZD with their mortals alone. Factoring Deathless Minions means that each eel does just under 0.7 damage with its mortals - meaning it'd need 20 of them to kill your VLoZD on average. If they charge him and fail to nuke him off the table, all of their attacks are wasted that turn, and if they've flipped tides to T2, they're also wasted next turn. It puts them in a horrible predicament where they have no right answer of whether to charge him or not, so they're forced to either throw it out to luck or fight your endless hordes. It changes the Deepkin matchup from meh to favourable. 



Wasting their attacks hinges on you being able to delay activating the VLOZD until they are forced to activate the eels, right? So if they had several units of eels alpha striking (I guess more than two would be difficult to fit) they could get to attack with at least some. Of course, your VLOZD attacking before any of them could would mean not too many eels left... yeah I can't see this ending well for eel spammers! Would love to play this guy against the 27 (I think???) eel-list at a tournament this weekend. Sadly not attending