AoS 2 - Legion of Grief discussion

[XReN]

On 8/2/2019 at 4:30 PM, Bayul said:

So I tinkered with the warscroll builder and came up with this 1000 points list for my first AoS army.

Do I have too many leaders? Should I replace one for some Mymourn Banshees to dispel endless spells?

Allegiance: Legion of Grief

Leaders
Dreadblade Harrow (90)
- General
- Trait: Tragic Emanations
- Artefact: Grave-sand Gem
Reikenor the Grimhailer (170)
- Spell: Shroud of Terror
Necromancer (130)
- Spell: Shroud of Terror
Knight of Shrouds on Ethereal Steed (120)

Battleline
20 x Chainrasp Horde (160)
10 x Skeleton Warriors (80)
- Ancient Spears

Units
5 x Dreadscythe Harridans (80)
5 x Dreadscythe Harridans (80)

Endless Spells / Terrain
Horrorghast (60)
Suffocating Gravetide (20)

Total: 990 / 1000
Extra Command Points: 0
Allies: 0 / 200
Wounds: 63

You have a massive bravery debuffs without a way to leverage it and your units are rather fragile and I really can't see how to change this list into anything that will make sense for me.

[Yamarahj34]

Having a lot of heroes is ok,  just know what purpose they are serving. Like xren said you have a lot of bravery debuff but no way to use it. The harridans will live a little longer i suppose? You wont kill much with your units and your heroes arent really beatsticks so you wont be forcing many bravery checks to begin with.

If you want to make the bravery bomb work either get some heavy hitters to force a rout (grimghasts can do some work and are decently tough) or convert the debuff into mortal wounds with mortis engine/banshees.

[Yamarahj34]

This is what i usually run for meeting engagements, which are 1k but also  have those specific limitations. Mortis engine when properly protected can be overwhelming when everything is debuffed and you get the +1 to cast.

 

Edited August 7, 2019 by Yamarahj34

[RuneBrush]

Well, wish me luck!  My Blackout Legion of Grief is complete, packed and waiting for me to take it to Cardiff!

Quote

Leaders
Dreadblade Harrow (90)
- General
- Trait: Tragic Emanations (-2 bravery within 12")
- Artefact: Grave-sand Gem 
Guardian of Souls with Nightmare Lantern (140)
- Spell: Dread Withering (-1 to save rolls)
Necromancer (130)
- Spell: Shroud of Terror (-D3 bravery)
Tomb Banshee (80)
Reikenor the Grimhailer (170)
- Spell: Shroud of Terror (-D3 bravery)

Battleline
10 x Chainrasp Horde (80)
10 x Skeleton Warriors (80)
- Ancient Blades
10 x Skeleton Warriors (80)
- Ancient Blades

Units
20 x Bladegheist Revenants (320)
20 x Dreadscythe Harridans (280)
20 x Dreadscythe Harridans (280)

Behemoths
Mortis Engine (180)

Endless Spells / Terrain
Horrorghast (60)

Total: 1970 / 2000
Extra Command Points: 0
Allies: 0 / 400
Wounds: 128

I've tried to focus on a more narrative feel to the army rather than going for all the super brutal bits (as such only one Banshee, but lots of grief stricken Harridans), but hopefully with enough poke to it that I'll avoid coming bottom!  I'll try and remember a pad and to take notes and do an update next week 😊

[RuneBrush]

So Blackout is now over and (spoiler alert), I didn't actually get any wins at all - however I would say that I had more fun playing Legion of Grief than either my Khorne or Grand Host armies.

I'll quickly go over my 5 games and then give a summary opinion on what I struggled with and weak points and then things that I learned from my games.  I will also add in that I managed to leave my one and only Banshee at home - this wasn't ideal and I think she could have made a massive difference to my games.  I also apologise that this is such a long post!

Game One vs Gloomspite - Starstrike, Shyish, Aetherquake Aftershock

First taste of the new Legion and I was far too tentative, the Harridans performed wonderfully against a number of low bravery units, but the sheer amount of command points being generated by my opponent meant that there was Inspiring presence abound!

Game Two vs Nurgle - Battle for the Pass, Realm of Metal, Rust Plague

The effectiveness of the army dropped massively against bravery 10 opponents.  I actually only lost this game due to me not paying attention to my back edge and a summoned unit of 20 plaguebearers - quite litterally moving my Mortis Engine back 3" would have given me a draw if not the game.  Dice rolling on this game was painfully bad for both of us.

Game Three vs Legion of Blood - Relocation Orb, Hysh, Dazzing Glow

My first "awful matchup", bravery 10 opponent with 4 Behemoths (two zombie dragons, Neferata and a Palaquin).  My main units were quickly bogged down so I couldn't get into combat with Neferata, and Harridans really suffer with a -1 or -2 to hit and not having something like a Spirit Torment to allow re-roll hits of 1.  Quite simply not enough tools to deal with four big monsters.

Game Four vs Mixed Order - Duality of Death, Ulgu, Shrouded Lands

Weirdly my last two games were much tougher than my first three (bearing in mind I was now lurking on the bottom tables).  My opponent had Morathi and a dragon model with Ethereal amulet, couple of ignore damage rolls and a strike last ability.  He also had less drops, so was able to take both objectives on turn one and just sit on them.  Both me and my opponent feel that the victory point scoring on this battleplan is awful and puts far too much sway into both the priority roll due to the 1vp vs 3vp scoring.

Game Five vs Skaventide - Focal Points, Ghyran, Hidden Festering Corruption

My most difficult game, but without a doubt the nicest opponent I've played.  We were on the last but one table and he was kind enough to let me use one Harridan as a Banshee so I was actually able to get a feel of how the army "could" play.  Losing my Harrow on turn 2 was enough to seal the game, preventing me from bringing back my units to deal with the big unit of plaguemonks (which is how I dealt with a similar unit in Game Two).

Summary

So, five losses, but four Hidden Agendas achieved, so I've actually come away quite happy.  The list I was running was very much a list written to be more friendly - one I'm happy playing round the club with friends.  I would have loved a win on day two, but the battleplans worked much better for my opponents than me.

I also have to hold my hands up and admit that I'm very out of practice, I've not played any 2k games this year and as such, not completely up to date with the new battleplans - which really showed.  I think having your objectives almost as second nature means you can then focus on the army achieving them, rather than having to try and juggle both in your head.

My ability to roll a 4+ armour save was awful - struggling to make a third of my armour saves across the whole event.  I'm putting this down (quite realistically I feel) to New Army Syndrome.

Forgetting my Banshee - one of the key pieces of the army, was a massive blow and I do think could have shifted things in my favour certainly on game one and four.

I'll go over the weaknesses of my list/the Legion in general.

First and foremost is the number of drops for a Legion of Grief army is huge - even with my forgotten model I was running at 11 drops - on every game my opponent placed first, regardless of who won the roll-off.  Until we get a roll-off for the first turn or battalions, we're always going to start off on the back foot because of this and the way some battleplans work results in it being an uphill struggle such as I had in my game 4.

My list was really low on wizards and unbinds (3 in total).  In short it wasn't enough and I was often casting different spells to the ones in our lists.  Better knowledge of the realm spells would help (but many of them are situational).  Myrmourne Banshees would help, but such a small unit will get removed pretty quickly due to their short 18" unbind.

The Horrorgast didn't see any board time and was pretty much a waste of points.  Around 50% of the units I faced were bravery 10, so required a -5 on them to get them to suffer the -1 to hit from the Harridans (which increases the survivability a lot).  With limited casting, most of my spells were spent doing different things to debuffing bravery.  A second Necromancer would help - but that's a very big investment of points.

I have no idea why the Mortis Engine isn't a wizard!  It's also not a hero?!

I also have no idea why Harridan's aren't battleline for us?!  For a narrative allegiance, this genuinely confuses me 😵

We don't have a proper beat stick available to us.  All of our unnamed heroes are really quite soft and physically small (I'm excluding Nagash).  This makes us really vulnerable to shooting and magic, and once we've lost our heroes the army pretty much begins to melt.

I didn't get very much mileage with Reikenor at all - however he did absorb a lot of my opponent's attention.  He should also really be a 2 spell caster!

Command abilities were in short supply - however that was in part for me not having the generic ones written down on a crib sheet (as there are now 6).  I also need to go through and make tokens for them - possibly on a flying stand type base with an arrow pointing to the unit in question.

Now onto the positives

Against an army with bravery 6 or below, the army performs really well - don't get me wrong it still takes a beating in return, but hitting your opponent with that -1 to hit, increases the survivability of your army a lot.

The Mortis Engine is great fun.  The reliquary ability is a pretty good way to throw out a cheeky D3 wounds within a fairly large range (my best 4d6 was 17")

The army felt thematic - this endless tide of grief flowing across the battleground was brilliant.

And finally things I've learned

You need to be aggressive and not afraid to lose a unit in order to recycle it.  This way you can whittle those big opposing units down.  Although you'll feel like you're giving your opponent kill points, it's essential to the way the army works.

Protect your general at all costs.  Use the Harrow's blink to send it across the battlefield out of harms way.  Keep an eye on scenery too - if there's a line of sight blocking piece (or Overgrown using the new rules), put a gravesite near it and don't be afraid to simply park your general there to bring back dead units - most ranged attacks require line of sight.

Unlike a Legion of Nagash army, where you want to be putting units in the grave due to poor movement, the same doesn't apply when most of your units have an 8" move!  When combined with an army with "ok" movement and less drops than you, a lot of the time you'll be going second so will struggle to bring those units up where and when you want.  This applies even more if you're going up against an army with more physical models than you.  Instead, put everything on the table and deploy the gravesites for resurrection (both D3 and units) - that said it never hurts to have a "safe" gravesite somewhere that you can bring dead units back from.

Hero deployment is critical.  Even though I barely succeeded with most of my Deathless Minion rolls, there were a lot more situations when a unit was outside the 6" distance so didn't even get one (forgetting the banshee didn't help).  Can be difficult as most heroes are slower than your combat units too.

Don't sit the Mortis Engine at the back doing nothing, once the army has got under-way the +1 casting bubble will be difficult to maintain, so throw it towards the enemy and open that reliquary!

Changes

As ever there are changes that I'd potentially consider.  In keeping with this being a friendly list I'd likely drop the endless spell for a second Banshee or possibly a second Harrow.

If I were looking for something more competitive, I'd likely swap out the Bladegheist and Harridans for two units of thirty Grimghast and 8 Myrmourn Banshees and a second Banshee.  Although expensive (and I feel overpriced), the reapers just cause so much more damage with their 2" range and re-rolls.

[Ferrus65]

Thank you Rune for sharing your army wip and the blackout report. It’s not easy to have such  an accurate battile report to understand how our legion is on the table. I took from your post a lot of interesting points to think about. And wait to see how your army will envolve for next tournaments !

[RuneBrush]

5 hours ago, Ferrus65 said:

Thank you Rune for sharing your army wip and the blackout report. It’s not easy to have such  an accurate battile report to understand how our legion is on the table. I took from your post a lot of interesting points to think about. And wait to see how your army will envolve for next tournaments !

Thanks!  I'm sure there's a lot of other builds possible - certainly somebody running Legion of Grief came in the top half of the rankings, but will have to wait to see what army they ran for a day or two.  I do think drops is our biggest Achilles heal at the moment though.

[ACBelMutie]

I have a tournament next month and I'll take Legion of Blood with the VLoZD as my General. The reason I want him instead of 5 wounds heroes is because he can survive thanks to Ethereal Amulet and can resurrect killed units.

Greetings

[Bayul]

On 8/13/2019 at 6:36 PM, RuneBrush said:

Thanks!  I'm sure there's a lot of other builds possible - certainly somebody running Legion of Grief came in the top half of the rankings, but will have to wait to see what army they ran for a day or two.  I do think drops is our biggest Achilles heal at the moment though.

@RuneBrush The only thing I could find out is that the other LoG list placed 24th and was played by Dan Arnold. Where would you look it up?

[RuneBrush]

3 hours ago, Bayul said:

@RuneBrush The only thing I could find out is that the other LoG list placed 24th and was played by Dan Arnold. Where would you look it up?

Army lists should be up in the next couple of weeks from the sound of it

[ArcTrooper525448]

Hey all,

Got a tournament coming up and this is what I’m thinking. No battle plan list yet but this has a pretty wide spread.

The goal is to control movement with endless spells and the Briar Queen. Then isolate and overwhelm key units with 60 recycling reapers. 

 

Ive only had the dreadblade die in one game (of about 35ish) due to his size and ability to teleport. I think he will make a hard to pin down general to summon units. 

 

What at do you think?

[Bayul]

15 hours ago, ArcTrooper525448 said:

The goal is to control movement with endless spells and the Briar Queen. Then isolate and overwhelm key units with 60 recycling reapers. 

Ive only had the dreadblade die in one game (of about 35ish) due to his size and ability to teleport. I think he will make a hard to pin down general to summon units.

@ArcTrooper525448 So you already played 35 games with this list? What was you hardest matchup? Is movement control a meta call? Aren't Thorns of the Briar Queen 0 Points if you take them in a set with the The Briar Queen?

[AverageBoss]

16 hours ago, Bayul said:

@ArcTrooper525448 So you already played 35 games with this list? What was you hardest matchup? Is movement control a meta call? Aren't Thorns of the Briar Queen 0 Points if you take them in a set with the The Briar Queen?

Briar Queen and thorns are bought together for 150 points.

[Bayul]

I know that. The additional 150 points seem redundant in his posted list, so I thought it might be a bug.

[ArcTrooper525448]

Sort guys to clarify, I have used dreadblade in 35 games across varied lists in Nighthaunt. I’ve only played this list once. 

The additional 150pts for thorns is displayed as cost but they calculate as 0. Not sure why Azyr displays them like that though.

went up against Khorne tonight in escalation. Was a really tight game with the final priority role deciding who won (1vp between us, and my opponent took it).

The opening rounds were tight and I took an early lead Sutton on 2 objectives but wasn’t able to hold both flanks.

I did summon 60 reapers and killed most of my opponents army but just couldn’t swing it.

Changes I’ll make likely revolve around removing shards and shackles but I’ll try a few more games first.

[Bayul]

Look what I discovered on Twitter: https://twitter.com/golongdesign/status/1163530947834200066

Printable Legion of Grief cards by Andrew Long: http://bit.ly/legionofgrief

Edited August 22, 2019 by Bayul

[flowerpot_chimp]

@RuneBrush I was the Legion of Blood player in game 3, think you're underselling yourself a bit ! It's a really hard scenario to be forced to go second in, because if you get the double that you sort of want you're then massively behind on points. Plus, the orb wasn't very helpful to you.

I'm gonna be taking Grief to the LGT and am definitely stealing your trick of using the Harrow general to do an unexpected gravesite summon, that was something I hadn't considered after writing off the Harrow outside of Nighthaunt.

[ColsBols]

I was extremely excited for LoG when it first came out but now I'm just so frustrated with GW's lazy, half assed rules writing. Why don't we get access to any battalions at all? Why would you give Lady Olynder a legion and then block her from being taken by locking the key piece of it (the -2 bravery command trait) behind taking a random unnamed hero?  Why are all the artifacts just variations of "do 1 (ONE!!!) mortal wound after meeting these requirements?  

I played a game last night against new IronJawz and got absolutely destroyed. I had all my squishy heroes behind a line of 40 chainrasps and it still didn't matter; he charged across the table with his insane +4 to charge, fired off 4 WAAGHs and gave his ard boys 7 attacks each, hitting on 2s, rerolling 1s to wound, and they just chewed through them like butter. Course I was rolling god-awfully but I don't know what I could have done to stop it

Edited August 23, 2019 by ColsBols

[Evil Bob]

8 hours ago, ColsBols said:

Snip

Course I was rolling god-awfully but I don't know what I could have done to stop it

You don’t stop it.  When encountering board crossing super charges I put out a single battleline screen stretching the table.  It costs up to 280 points and a CP.  Although it does suck if the other guy has first turn and several mid-point objectives are now behind his army.

Edit: Controlling where his charge stops leaves options for counter attacks.

Edited August 24, 2019 by Evil Bob
Clarification

[AHexInScarletRed]

8 hours ago, Evil Bob said:

You don’t stop it.  When encountering board crossing super charges I put out a single battleline screen stretching the table.  It costs up to 280 points and a CP.  Although it does suck if the other guy has first turn and several mid-point objectives are now behind his army.

Edit: Controlling where his charge stops leaves options for counter attacks.

How do you stop supercharging flyers? Doing it long rather than broad? 

[Evil Bob]

3 hours ago, AHexInScarletRed said:

How do you stop supercharging flyers? Doing it long rather than broad? 

The closest to that I’ve deal with is Eel Force.  Those require more rectangular (square-ish) blobs to manage.  Even that doesn’t necessarily work.

If you can provide details others and myself may be able to offer more targeted advice.

[Bayul]

On 8/23/2019 at 9:41 PM, ColsBols said:

I was extremely excited for LoG when it first came out but now I'm just so frustrated with GW's lazy, half assed rules writing. Why don't we get access to any battalions at all?

Is it possible that LoG might get some battalions in a White Dwarf release some day? Or do we have to wait until a new battletome for LoN devours LoG and makes it a proper Legion?

[RuneBrush]

On 8/23/2019 at 11:14 AM, flowerpot_chimp said:

@RuneBrush I was the Legion of Blood player in game 3, think you're underselling yourself a bit ! It's a really hard scenario to be forced to go second in, because if you get the double that you sort of want you're then massively behind on points. Plus, the orb wasn't very helpful to you.

I'm gonna be taking Grief to the LGT and am definitely stealing your trick of using the Harrow general to do an unexpected gravesite summon, that was something I hadn't considered after writing off the Harrow outside of Nighthaunt.

Thanks!  You could be right and it was a great game too!  Certainly one that I learned a huge amount about the army overall.  The harrow is a really nice piece for surprising your opponent like that 😉  Sorely tempted to put a second one in at some point!

[Bayul]

Not one LoG list at NOVA: https://www.bestcoastpairings.com/r/e1j0rdl9

Are people even trying to figure out this army anymore? 

I'll need to overthink my decision to start AoS with Legion of Grief and might sell Forbidden Powers. Buying units for Legion of Grief feels like betting on a horse that doesn't even take part in the race.

[Evil Bob]

59 minutes ago, Bayul said:

Are people even trying to figure out this army anymore? 

Hold the Faith fellow undying one.  The Great Necromancer raised this Legion so us Old Hammer players could pull out the generic Death stuff for giggles and the kills.  Getting around the weak bravery rules and lackluster relics/spells is a fair trade-off for the chance to field some TK & VLoAT.  That’s good news in my book (the one bound with undead human skin).

Some of the Spectral newcomers have made use of Gravesites in ways normally unavailable to them.  Nagash finds it pleasing indeed.

LoG may not be showing up in top AoS tournaments but we seem to be having fun in the casual scene.  Forbidden Powers is a narrative release after all.