Petrifex Elite and Nagash, beyond a joke?

[El Syf]

So I know most people are in the camp of the nerf needed to happen. I am not, never have been and never will be.

In the lore the Petrifex Elite are made from the bones of great beasts etc making there bodies tougher than other Bonereapers.

Bonereapers are supposedly Nagashs answer to Stormcast and Petrifex are the elite, the +1 save fitted the lore and made you feel like you were fielding an "Elite" army.  So the great nerf to me was a real slap in the face, especially when you look a bit further into it.

If you field Nagash in a petrifex Elite army. his command ability allows re-rolls of 1 for saves army wide and negate battleshock (which OBR already do anyway)leaving the only useful part of it being the re-roll 1's on attack rolls. I accept that Nagash has to work in Legions still, but his command ability doesn't actually do that much in OBR which really does shaft him and Petrifex Nagash lists.

Warhammer Weekly had a podcast concerning Monsters and Gods recently where they hit the nail on the head for my money; Nagash needs to work in whatever army he is taken in like Archaon apparently does for Chaos (never played against Archaon so have no knowledge as to whether this is true or not).

This would mean LoN, OBR, FEC, Nighthaunt and the incoming Soulblight release would all be able to take him as the general (because if Nagash is on the field why would anyone else be in charge?) and his warscroll should be such that he works with all of them and doesn't end up with redundant rules in one army etc.

 

I fully accept I'm in the minority about Petrifex and the +1 save, even if lore wise it actually fits. The replacement just seems ill thought out, especially if you filed Nagash.

Here's to Soulblight having good models and good but not overly good (for fear of hard nerfing) rules in 2021!

[Nullius]

Petrifex nerf was sorely needed, but it should have just specified that all Petrifex Elite models *of FOUR OR MORE WOUNDS have +1 to their save in close combat. Petrifex is supposed to be a legion of primarily giant monsters, where the big guys are supposed to shine. The problem was that the buff effected the already frustratingly hard-to-kill Mortek Guard (which aren’t really supposed to be a prevalent part of the Petrifex). This would have opened up a fun alternate build for OBR with immortis guard standing in for Mortek Guard and Morghasts flying all over the place. 

Edited December 17, 2020 by Nullius

[jeremym]

Anyone who already knew how to play against OBR didnt think the petrifix elite nerf was necessary, so yes I agree it killed Nagash again for the army, which is a shame because it's the most beautiful model in death (except maybe katakros).

Anyone who complained about PE probably still doesn't know how to win against a katakros MP list. The only difference is now our shooting is even more damming than it was in PE. 

[Lucky Snake Eyes]

53 minutes ago, Nullius said:

Petrifex nerf was sorely needed, but it should have just specified that all Petrifex Elite models *of FOUR OR MORE WOUNDS have +1 to their save in close combat. Petrifex is supposed to be a legion of primarily giant monsters, where the big guys are supposed to shine. The problem was that the buff effected the already frustratingly hard-to-kill Mortek Guard (which aren’t really supposed to be a prevalent part of the Petrifex). This would have opened up a fun alternate build for OBR with immortis guard standing in for Mortek Guard and Morghasts flying all over the place. 

Honestly yeah, the right way to do petrifex would be to have it incentivize monsters like how stalliarch incentivizes mounted units. Make the trait +1 for monsters and conditional battleline for stalkers and immortis. That way mortek could still benefit from bludgeon but your incentivized to drop them for stalkers

[Lucky Snake Eyes]

3 minutes ago, jeremym said:

Anyone who already knew how to play against OBR didnt think the petrifix elite nerf was necessary, so yes I agree it killed Nagash again for the army, which is a shame because it's the most beautiful model in death (except maybe katakros).

Anyone who complained about PE probably still doesn't know how to win against a katakros MP list. The only difference is now our shooting is even more damming than it was in PE. 

Honestly it was the loss of stacking shrugs that killed nagash, it seems like a nerf that hits death almost exclusively and nagash could stack 3-4 shrugs if you include terrain and immortis guard wound catching. I feel the shift to crawlers was inevitable as it's our only way of effectively dealing with the meta of magic/shooting that was emerging at the time, before that my only strategy against shooting armies (primarily gun line cities lists) was to get an early point lead and die as slow as possible because i couldn't really touch my opponents army.

[Overread]

The problem with Petrifax as it was wasn't just its ability against other armies, but within its own Battletome. Like it or not it was more powerful, significantly so, than the other options. In general we should always hope that GW aims for mulitple viable options within a tome rather than just one that always works. It's the same reason people dislike the current Slaanesh focus on Depravity, which is again far more powerful than the Tomes other options. 

 

I agree GW could have made it more complex so that the +1 save only affected select units; however I feel that they just wanted to have a very simple very easy to grasp ability that wasn't getting bogged down in technicalities. 

[jeremym]

Just now, Lucky Snake Eyes said:

Honestly it was the loss of stacking shrugs that killed nagash, it seems like a nerf that hits death almost exclusively and nagash could stack 3-4 shrugs if you include terrain and immortis guard wound catching. I feel the shift to crawlers was inevitable as it's our only way of effectively dealing with the meta of magic/shooting that was emerging at the time, before that my only strategy against shooting armies (primarily gun line cities lists) was to get an early point lead and die as slow as possible because i couldn't really touch my opponents army.

Its certainly contributory. You're right, nagash used to have the 4+, 5+ ,6 + after save. I dont know how many people took immortis guard but his extra defense being gone is a major factor. 

I think the shift to shooting was really just people realizing how powerful it is

[Lucky Snake Eyes]

2 minutes ago, jeremym said:

Its certainly contributory. You're right, nagash used to have the 4+, 5+ ,6 + after save. I dont know how many people took immortis guard but his extra defense being gone is a major factor. 

I think the shift to shooting was really just people realizing how powerful it is

In some cases yes, armies like stormcast and cities caught on to some nice tools they had for shooting. But newer releases also got powerful shooting, in the case of KO shooting is kinda the point but paired with fly high and suddenly you have no way of protecting your centerpiece units from a first turn boat ambush. Lumineth also are aggregious with super reliable long range shooting that ignores line of sight and does mortal wounds so all nagash would get is a single 4+ for 20+ mortal wounds coming his way. Seraphon got the salamanders (which where so good as to being auto includes) and solar engines which are pretty strong in their own right as well.

[JackStreicher]

15 hours ago, El Syf said:

I accept that Nagash has to work in Legions still,

Spoiler: He does not.

[Evil Bob]

I just wish GW was more even handed with their nerfing.  Serephon kept an option for easy free unit teleport.  Lumineth have a crazy -1 To Hit ability and cheap mortal wound spamming archers.  My thought on this is GW sometimes nerfs things to appease the loudest people.  

Game balance is something they tend to save for poorly written rules or fixes from old battletombs when the next one comes out.  Look at how many iterations SCE had to go through.  They still need help because people who think they are playing an army of Sigmar’s chosen don’t feel it.

[Santious]

I agree 100% they completely destroyed the bonereapers, feels like just another death army when they are supposed to be super elite . And I also agree that its sad that GW nerfs things without doing much investigation only cause people get super salty, they make their new new fancy armies ridiculous to only nerf them first errata without much thought. So the 2020 general handbook was a slap in deaths face from making their elite army a joke to taking away our power of double or triple negation. Its death but now we just as fragile as everyone else without being really good at something else. 

Edited December 18, 2020 by Santious

[Sception]

It was a mistake to let Nagash & Arkhan benefit from legion rules in the first place.  And the petrifex nerf was needed.  There's no way to put a single points value on OBR units with or without the +1 save.  The points units had, and mostly still have, are closer to right for actually /having/ the +1 save, so now without it they're overpriced.  I'm not claiming they're correctly balanced as they currently are or that the overall faction is more balanced with other factions in the game than it was before.  But with petrifex out of the way OBR points can come down further and eventually get to a better place, and whether they do or not is a separate issue.

As for nagash not working well with new petrifex, post nerf the main (and still very real and significant) benefit of petrifex is the command ability, and that still works just fine with Nagash in the army.  And even if it didn't, I don't see "petrifex specifically are a poor legion choice for Nagash armies" to be a worse situation than "petrifex specifically are the only acceptable legion choice for Nagash armies."

Otherwise, undead have been spoiled on Nagash being overgood for overlong.  The reason you've never played against Archaon is that he /isn't/ good with every chaos army.  To the contrary he's hardly good with /any/ chaos army.   In contrast, for a long time in AoS you could hardly go two tables without tripping over a Nagash.  A near 1000 point model probably shouldn't be a clear top competitive choice for 2000 point formats.  That led to a lot of terribly lopsided games and a really rather wonky meta for much of early 2e, and if Nagash is finally taking a bit of a hiatus from the competitive scene, moving instead into more of a big narrative game context, that wouldn't exactly be the worst thing that could happen, imo.

Granted, I would prefer if more than one of his mortarchs had been made into viable competitive alternatives /first/.  Obviously.  But that didn't happen, and, given where we are now, if I had to pick the order in which our named characters get some mechanical love to try to increase their competitive presence, Nagash would be close to the back of the line at this point.  Even within the OBR I think that effort would be better spent on Arkhan and Vokmortian.

Edited December 18, 2020 by Sception

[Lucky Snake Eyes]

5 hours ago, Sception said:

It was a mistake to let Nagash & Arkhan benefit from legion rules in the first place.  And the petrifex nerf was needed.  There's no way to put a single points value on OBR units with or without the +1 save.  The points units had, and mostly still have, are closer to right for actually /having/ the +1 save, so now without it they're overpriced.  I'm not claiming they're correctly balanced as they currently are or that the overall faction is more balanced with other factions in the game than it was before.  But with petrifex out of the way OBR points can come down further and eventually get to a better place, and whether they do or not is a separate issue.

As for nagash not working well with new petrifex, post nerf the main (and still very real and significant) benefit of petrifex is the command ability, and that still works just fine with Nagash in the army.  And even if it didn't, I don't see "petrifex specifically are a poor legion choice for Nagash armies" to be a worse situation than "petrifex specifically are the only acceptable legion choice for Nagash armies."

Otherwise, undead have been spoiled on Nagash being overgood for overlong.  The reason you've never played against Archaon is that he /isn't/ good with every chaos army.  To the contrary he's hardly good with /any/ chaos army.   In contrast, for a long time in AoS you could hardly go two tables without tripping over a Nagash.  A near 1000 point model probably shouldn't be a clear top competitive choice for 2000 point formats.  That led to a lot of terribly lopsided games and a really rather wonky meta for much of early 2e, and if Nagash is finally taking a bit of a hiatus from the competitive scene, moving instead into more of a big narrative game context, that wouldn't exactly be the worst thing that could happen, imo.

Granted, I would prefer if more than one of his mortarchs had been made into viable competitive alternatives /first/.  Obviously.  But that didn't happen, and, given where we are now, if I had to pick the order in which our named characters get some mechanical love to try to increase their competitive presence, Nagash would be close to the back of the line at this point.  Even within the OBR I think that effort would be better spent on Arkhan and Vokmortian.

I can agree with most of your points but honestly if they want 2000pts to be the standard format then they should balance high cost units to work within that format. I also stated earlier that petrifex being focused around stalkers/immortis with a battleline condition would have been a fine and thematic way to go.

I agree wholeheartedly with updating the other mortarchs first tho. I expect LoN to get "sunsetted" as an army when soulblight and possible a necromancy themed army release so worrying about individual mortarchs working in multiple books will hopefully no longer be an issue. Arkhan can then be balanced to be purely OBR and hopefully be on par with Katakros in terms of perfectly viable but not a must have. Every death army barring flesh eaters follows a trend of 1-2 mortarchs and 1-2 lieutenants for those mortarchs so for soulblight we'll have neferatta plus either mannfred or a new mortarch of shadow or abyss, maybe an updated Vordrai and some new hero like Abhorash. That way Neferatta can be reworked as a buff/debuff piece to support elite vampire units and not need to waste rules space on deathly invocation. Same for Mannfred who can have his gimmick of cast buff/fight buff cycle refined to be something scary enough for your opponent to want to try to stop. Even FEC can get this treatment with new heroes, maybe a dual kit that can build either the carrion king or a new mortarch nagash has brought in to reign in the ghouls showing off the loyalist and absolutely delusional aspects of FEC as the wildcard faction.

Finish the update cycle of with a nagash update in the vein of archaon that gives him every death keyword and self sufficient rules. Any buffs or command abilities would simply use the Death keyword. This would open him up to different playstyles in each army like archaon in the different chaos armies.

[Saxon]

On 12/18/2020 at 6:13 PM, Evil Bob said:

I just wish GW was more even handed with their nerfing.  Serephon kept an option for easy free unit teleport.  Lumineth have a crazy -1 To Hit ability and cheap mortal wound spamming archers.  My thought on this is GW sometimes nerfs things to appease the loudest people.  

Game balance is something they tend to save for poorly written rules or fixes from old battletombs when the next one comes out.  Look at how many iterations SCE had to go through.  They still need help because people who think they are playing an army of Sigmar’s chosen don’t feel it.

It's hard to argue that the nerf for Petrifix wasn't necessary. Whether or not they got the nerf right is another thing. The way Petrifix played originally was just unfun to come up against. You know it's bad when multiple Youtube channels have to put forward warnings on videos about the army. 

[Saxon]

On 12/18/2020 at 10:16 PM, Santious said:

I agree 100% they completely destroyed the bonereapers, feels like just another death army when they are supposed to be super elite . And I also agree that its sad that GW nerfs things without doing much investigation only cause people get super salty, they make their new new fancy armies ridiculous to only nerf them first errata without much thought. So the 2020 general handbook was a slap in deaths face from making their elite army a joke to taking away our power of double or triple negation. Its death but now we just as fragile as everyone else without being really good at something else. 

People got salty because the original rules were super potato but it made a lot of WAAC players buy a heap of models really fast haha. Triple negation is a terrible mechanic. 

What it has done is make people think about tactics rather than running the same boring core list and murdering. 

[Overread]

I think part of the issue is that the best way to beat Ossiarchs is to go for distraction/delay/tarpit/avoidance tactics rather than a straight kill. Which is not intuitive to many gamers. With the +1 to every single models save in an army that already has generally very good saves. This shifted those tactics from desirable to essential whilst a straight killing match would favour ossiarchs very heavily. 

This isn't to say that some models need/benefit/are not broken with a +1 to their save, but that the effect rolled out over the whole army was overpowered. 

 

In the end since the chance we've seen more opening up of using other Ossiarch subfactions and those same counter tactics still work on the Ossiarchs. But you can also try to kill them too. 

[Saxon]

3 hours ago, Overread said:

I think part of the issue is that the best way to beat Ossiarchs is to go for distraction/delay/tarpit/avoidance tactics rather than a straight kill. Which is not intuitive to many gamers. With the +1 to every single models save in an army that already has generally very good saves. This shifted those tactics from desirable to essential whilst a straight killing match would favour ossiarchs very heavily. 

This isn't to say that some models need/benefit/are not broken with a +1 to their save, but that the effect rolled out over the whole army was overpowered. 

 

In the end since the chance we've seen more opening up of using other Ossiarch subfactions and those same counter tactics still work on the Ossiarchs. But you can also try to kill them too. 

It's also extremely boring tactics to have to use every time you play a faction which for a time was extremely popular..... 

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

8 hours ago, Overread said:

This isn't to say that some models need/benefit/are not broken with a +1 to their save, but that the effect rolled out over the whole army was overpowered. 

The +1 to saves was just especially egregious in OBR. +1 to saves gets more valuable the higher your base save is. Going from no save to 6+ gives you an extra 17% effective wounds against no rend. Going from 4+ to 3+ gives you 50% more. 3+ to 2+ doubles your effective wounds. Plus, OBR have all the tools to play a grindy game, with their access to good healing, magic and artillery.

At some point you just have to adjust your design when a significant number of your players don't enjoy it, even if it's not "broken" at the top level of play. Top players can handle a lot of unbalanced stuff, but that does not mean the sam stuff won't ruin the game for the majority of players. I am not actually sure every faction has the tools to handle pre-nerf Petrifex (and Hearthguard spam Fyreslayers as well, who only ge away with it because nobody plays them), but I know that dealing with them was a struggle for the average or even somewhat tuned casual list that brings a bit of everything. and it's not like shoving a bunch of Mortek and Nagash into a Petrifex list is some kind of advanced list building, so casual players are likely to run into this wall.

Of course it would be nice if Nagash was still good somewhere. Right now he's OK in OBR and probably not so good in LoN. Let's hope they find a better balance for him in the future. If nothing else, his rules should be consistent in his different factions. It makes no sense that he gets all OBR spells but only three LoN spells. Or the ability to self heal in OBR but not LoN. Even if it means nerfing him, he should at least work the same everywhere.

[Evil Bob]

On 12/20/2020 at 7:13 PM, Saxon said:

It's hard to argue that the nerf for Petrifix wasn't necessary. Whether or not they got the nerf right is another thing. The way Petrifix played originally was just unfun to come up against. You know it's bad when multiple Youtube channels have to put forward warnings on videos about the army. 

I never stated a personal position on this nerf.
 

Again my points were

1. GW is uneven with their rules balancing.  Lazy game development one would expect from a monopoly.
2. They can react to pressures.  Deal with one problem while ignoring the broader systemic ones.

 

This “fun” talk falls under politics.  The loudest people got their way.  A book filled with mediocre faction options that can chill until the next release.  I’ll cross my fingers for Null Myriad to get a decent magical resistance and not this 5+ nonsense.

[Saxon]

2 minutes ago, Evil Bob said:

I never stated a personal position on this nerf.
 

Again my points were

1. GW is uneven with their rules balancing.  Lazy game development one would expect from a monopoly.
2. They can react to pressures.  Deal with one problem while ignoring the broader systemic ones.

 

This “fun” talk falls under politics.  The loudest people got their way.  A book filled with mediocre faction options that can chill until the next release.  I’ll cross my fingers for Null Myriad to get a decent magical resistance and not this 5+ nonsense.

GW rule making is lazy. I think its been argued to death on this forum.

Fun is subjective. But bottlenecking tactics to beat an army is just poor. My favourites:

--just tar pit them

- kill the heroes

- but they're slow!

Yawn. Its a shame because the mortem crawler is a really cool model. 

GW will always have trouble when they stagger releases the way that they do. Hard to maintain balance when things change periodically instead of all at the same time. 

[Gibs]

I hope Nagash has less and less to do with vampires as time continues on. 

[Sception]

On 12/18/2020 at 1:28 PM, Lucky Snake Eyes said:

I can agree with most of your points but honestly if they want 2000pts to be the standard format then they should balance high cost units to work within that format. I also stated earlier that petrifex being focused around stalkers/immortis with a battleline condition would have been a fine and thematic way to go.

2000 point matched play may be the 'standard format' for competitive play, but it's not the only intended format for competitive play and competitive play is not the only or even primary intended play style.  Free play and narrative play, whether the wider community has embraced them or not, are intended to be equally valid play styles, and as long as that's the case it's perfectly appropriate for faction ranges and battle tome rules to include models and unit rules aimed more at those play styles.  Things like the formation-of-formations 'super battalions'.

IMO, vaction-leader super characters like Nagash, Archaon, Alarielle, Morathi, or Teclis would be better for the game if they were aimed specifically at those formats rather than trying to design them for 2000 point competitive games where they end up accounting for like a third or more of your total available points.  That's inevitably going to create wonky, lopsided situations.  Just thematically, Nagash on the field should basically be a scenario unto himself, and mostly has been in Age of Sigmar.

But that's just my feelings on the matter.