flesh eater vs malignant start collecting

[MikeGreen]

So I own Skeleton horde box, I'm about to finish gluing it and think about my next purchase.

 

Which will be either Malignant or Flesh Eater box.

 

I was pretty much decided to go with FEC, but here I see that almost nobody uses ghouls or vargheists. So only 1 competitive playing piece Vampire on zombie dragon in this box ? (taking into consideration that I'm mainly into vampire counts not flesh eater army)

I understand that 40+ skeletons with spears are the way to go on a tournament but ghouls seem to be pretty solid to me, and they do keep their 1 reroll because of Manfred. Vargheists except their poor save on 5+ look great on paper. If I'm wrong please correct me. maybe they are not worth the points.

On the other hand people write that malignant set is a great deal. Why is mortis engine/coven throne good ? From it looks you get an impression that it must be  superpowerful, but after reading its both warscolls I was disappointed. Black knights - I guess I'll be better with another 5 of hexwraiths than them or does this d3respawn is worth it? So it looks like in here I'm left with only spirit host that is competitive.

 

Please write what you think about those 6 units. I haven't played AoS but I do have an opponent with huge Nurgle/generic chaos army - so I want my purchases to be competitive.  I'm inclined more for the FEC box but maybe I should not wait for those predicted december bundles and just get both of them ?

[CoffeeGrunt]

But there's a tonne of FEC threads in this section? If you mean in Death at large, it's normally because FEC synergise very well among themselves, and don't really gain much from bringing in most other Death units. I'd say the Malignants box works better with the Skeleton Horde box than the FEC one, but neither of them are bad, really.

Black Knights vs Hexwraiths is another question of synergy. For example, my Wight King or Settra can make Black Knights quite good, and they're survivable if they don't try to rambo it up there, but the Hexwraiths are much more self-sufficient, hit a little harder, and are more durable.

[kozokus]

On the FEC box, everything is great and needed. Ghouls are nice, Horrors are great. In terms of competitiveness all are viable. I would point the Ghoul patrol and Deadwatch in that case for example. It is a great box.

On the malignant one. This one is very good too. The spirit host is one of the best "troops" of the Death faction. The hexwraith and deathknights are both viable. don't forget that the knights are not what they used to be in 8Th, they are more something like a mobile placeholder, they are also much cheaper than hexwraith. The mortis engine is some kind of combinaisons between 2 spirit host and some banshees plus some additional rules about casting rolls and occasionnal healing/mortal wounds. It may looks superpowerful on sight and disapointing on warscroll but it is a cheap and fast 180 points behemoth. The Coven Throne is also a nice piece, less damaging than you could think but provide a lot of utility, like the spell and the reroll.

[MikeGreen]

C'mon don't tell me that black knights are good...I have not played AoS but I've had math at school Their only advantage is respawn, so I'm curious how often they make it until it happens. They should have been battleline always, with no subfaction restrictions.

 

How about vargheists then ?

[TerrorPenguin]

Black Knights are great as a tar pit, if you use them expecting to take anything out you won't have fun, but their range means they can charge an opponents unit fairly early and tie it up for a good 2-3 turns. They will die eventually but they should have kept something busy in that time. Units of 5 to tie up cavalry or infantry; units of 10 to tie up a monster.

Doesn't work for everything of course.

[CoffeeGrunt]

If you pick your targets and support them right, they can do work. I run Settra these days, and giving them +1 to Hit and Wound goes a long way. You're looking at 3+/2+ on the charge at Dam 2 each. That's a whole lot of diddly my frienderino.

I'll note that mathhammer is generally the refuge of a bad general, too. You can math stuff out in your head, but you'll never account for all the variables. The Black Knights might not kill that Glottkin rampaging towards your objective, but it's the dawn of turn five and you need it held up so your scraggly Skeleton unit of 5 survivors doesn't get wiped out by it when it rocks up and charges, seizing the point.

You can try and distill everything down into a Points:Kills ratio, but it never takes into account the synergistic elements of the game, which scale awkwardly meaning that a unit can outshine its points value one game and operate woefully the next. Dice don't help that one iota, either.

[MikeGreen]

9 hours ago, CoffeeGrunt said:

If you pick your targets and support them right, they can do work. I run Settra these days, and giving them +1 to Hit and Wound goes a long way. You're looking at 3+/2+ on the charge at Dam 2 each. That's a whole lot of diddly my frienderino.

Black Knights Flanders style I'll consider gluing 5, if I buy start malignants. I admit they look cool with plate armour, but these foam weapons ruin everything.

 

You defend BK so intensively and nobody is interested in poor  vargheists ?

 

Edit: crypt ghast courtier requires spared army points to use his summoning ability ?

[ThePhyx]

Points wise, FEC has one of the biggest start collecting boxes. I really liked the synergy of them too, which is why I picked up 2 to finish my death army.

That being said, I agree that ghouls and skels do not really work. So I'd suggest avoiding the FEC box, since they work best as the core of an army, instead of an add on.

[MikeGreen]

Just wanted to let you now that you have convinced me to buy malignants box, so now I have all 3 start collecting Death.

 

But now I wonder - should I glue 5 more hexwraiths ? Is 10 of them any better than 5 ? Or 2 small units ?

Black Knights are cra.p but I like their armoured look.