Arkhan and Nagash

[Grimoriano]

What do you thinks about their changes? How affect those changes for LoN?

[Sception]

in OBR I'd say they're both better, arkhan especially, as self healing, faction rules, full faction lore, and in arkhan's case an extra cast per turn make up for what they've lost.  Whether it makes up enough to also justify the increased points cost when they weren't really worth their price before is up in the air.  If they get subfaction rules probably, but while current rule text supports it, I wouldn't count on that surviving faq.

In legions, assuming these changes are retroactive?  Where they don't gain full lore access to make up for the lost ability to borrow spells and can't heal themselves?  I don't think so.  Maybe in arkhan's case with the extra cast, but even then, I don't know.

[Indecisive]

flat W3 resurrect handy, especially nice for W3 things like hosts

[Evil Bob]

Feeling pretty grateful they got an AoS 2.0 pass by the Devs.  The LoN bandaid fell off some time ago.  I’ll muck around with both of them to see if they can work in narrative or competitive play.  I’m not really expecting much from Nagash (I’ve only really enjoyed him in Open Play) but Arkham with the new endless spells is offering something interesting.

[LordPrometheus]

15 hours ago, Sception said:

in OBR I'd say they're both better, arkhan especially, as self healing, faction rules, full faction lore, and in arkhan's case an extra cast per turn make up for what they've lost.  Whether it makes up enough to also justify the increased points cost when they weren't really worth their price before is up in the air.  If they get subfaction rules probably, but while current rule text supports it, I wouldn't count on that surviving faq.

In legions, assuming these changes are retroactive?  Where they don't gain full lore access to make up for the lost ability to borrow spells and can't heal themselves?  I don't think so.  Maybe in arkhan's case with the extra cast, but even then, I don't know.

My guess is that LoN will be getting a new battletome soon/next year, and Arkhan and Nagash will know all spells in that tome just like in Bonereapers.

Edited October 28, 2019 by LordPrometheus

[Grimoriano]

8 hours ago, LordPrometheus said:

My guess is that LoN will be getting a new battletome soon/next year, and Arkhan and Nagash will know all spells in that tome just like in Bonereapers.

I hope that man.

[Major]

No more save rolls against curse of years to stop the extra dice rolls???

Before Arkhan got a new warscroll, the FAQ on his CoY was:

Q: With Curse of Years, are rolls that may negate the mortal wounds inflicted by the spell taken immediately after the wounds are caused, but before you roll the dice again to see if any more mortal wounds are suffered by the target unit? If yes, do I get to roll for additional mortal wounds for wounds that were negated?
A: Yes to the first question, and no to the second question.

So Arkhan's new rules for Curse of years mentions nothing of that

It seems that the rules in his NEW scroll supercede his OLD scroll AND the FAQ on the old scroll? If so, bar the fact a 1 is now a fail and not an outright slaying, has Curse of years been made good again?

Edited October 29, 2019 by Major

[Honk]

On 10/29/2019 at 5:41 AM, Major said:

has Curse of years been made good again?

Think not. CoY had the charm, that once you got down to rolling 1s, poor victim exploded. Math wise you had like a 17% chance of vaporizing a unit. Once you passed the 4s you could see sweat and tears in your opponents eyes. 
The new ruling just snipped that one extreme helterskelter chance right off. You’ll do the classic 2-5 MWs and if Nagash is with you, you might even get double digits.

if you’re able to roll that one leftover die 20 times without a 1 you still could crush a unit, but that’s even far wider out into the wild statistics than before.

the MWs denial FAQ should be untouched by this new wording, but imo the wording is not clear on that.

 because it does not say „for each MW caused, roll a new die“, but it says „...target suffers a mortal wound ((which can be saved)) AND you can roll another die...“

tricky. If there is a rule that says „target suffers a MW and you can pile in again“...

you cause an effect with two results, A and B. Why should the outcome of event A prevent the event B?

(Because faq doesn’t count, yet)

buuut, pretty sure faq will be out for x-mas at the latest

Edited October 30, 2019 by Honk

[Sception]

On 10/28/2019 at 10:43 AM, LordPrometheus said:

My guess is that LoN will be getting a new battletome soon/next year, and Arkhan and Nagash will know all spells in that tome just like in Bonereapers.

You have more optimism than I do then.

As for CoY, by my reading the new wording superceeds the old faq entirely, as the new wording very clearly ties follow up rolls to the triggering roll, not the mortal wound inflicted by it, if that makes any sense.

Against most targets, the '1s always fail' is a bigger nerf anyway.  Full deleted units are still possible, but now very unlikely.  Still, any set of rolls that previously would have killed a unit are still probably putting out close to a dozen mortal wounds in the new version, so the spell is still quite dangerous.

Overall I'd call it a nerf, but a minor one, more than compensated for by his extra cast & unbind, full lore access (fingers crossed that part is made retroactive to LoN), self healing (only in obr), etc.

[Bademeister]

As is understood it is a nerf for Nagash. Before he knew all spells by alls Death Wizards. Now he only knows his 4 spells, but he can spam Mystic Shield and Arcan Bolt. Shield is nonsense because of his Command Ability. Cast 8 times Arcane Bolt to do something around 12 Mortal Wounds. is pretty lame.

I see the changes on Nagash's warscroll as a (big) nerf.

[Sception]

Eh, wait for the FAQ.  If Nagash & Arkhan in LoN armies get full access to even just the deathmages lore the way they get full access to the mortisan lore in OBR armies then that goes a long way to making up for losing access to other wizards' spells.

[Honk]

5 hours ago, Bademeister said:

Cast 8 times Arcane Bolt to do something around 12 Mortal Wounds. is pretty lame.

Is there a definite ruling on „the casting roll“ for arcane bolt? Didn’t find it in the faq, but with +3 to cast, the 10 (d3 MWs) could be average for Nagash...

sounds unlikely, but a quick search turned up empty?!

[Craze]

It should work like this, as normally it is specially mentioned if only the unmodified roll is used (e.g. double-casting lore spells in LoN).

Alarielle for example can use Throne of Vines to buff her Metamorphosis, which has a similar wording as Arcane Bolt.

[Death1942]

I faced off against a bonereaper Nagash on the weekend and it is very very good (although the rest of the list is quite lackluster).  I think not having the ability to heal themselves in LoN makes them probably not worth the price hike but being able to spam arcane bolts I think is worth 800 points for Nagash.

I think death is slowly hitting a point where we need either a decent FAQ mini overhaul or a new book, we are falling behind a lot of other books right now and running out of tools.

[Bademeister]

Still no new FAQ. picking Nagash for LoN for 880 Points is pain in the nonohole.

[DragonSix]

I think GW aims to eventually make LoN obsolete. It was a nice stopgap solution, but eventually you'll have to choose between bony boys, spooky ghost, crazy ghouls and finally vampires.

Once the Soulblight battletome is out, I expect LoN to be completely done for.

[Sception]

warhammer undead with no necromancers and no zombies?  A dual kit coven throne/mortis engine where the mortis engine part doesn't actually exist in game?  I mean, it's possible, but I doubt it.  I'm not saying LoN won't be phased out eventually, but I don't think it will be any time soon, and I don't think soulblight is the only spinout faction yet to be seen from it before that happens.  IMO we'll probably see at least one more revision of the LoN more or less as is - minus the haphazzardly attached nighthaunt units and plus some endless spells and a gravesite kit - and at least two more spinout factions from it, soulblight as expected plus a faction combining zombies & necromancers.

But that's all guesswork.