A few random questions about Death...

[Simon1971]

Do Death armies use chaff units like Dire Wolves, Bat Swarms and suchlike? Do they play a role or are they useless?

What do you think of Banshees? For an army short of shooting they seem to have a place. 

Is summoning absolutely essential to a good Death list? It's obviously very useful, but what are its disadvantages?

[Nico]

Dire Wolves are excellent chaff for their cost. Sadly not Battleline.

Bat swarms should provide a shield to nearby friendly units not an easily escapable debuff to enemy units near them.

Banshees combo with the Screaming Skull Catapult - not for long....?

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Is summoning absolutely essential to a good Death list?

It's in no way necessary. All it does is allow you to have a quasi-sideboard at a high risk of losing the points or never getting them on.

If you think you can summon a Banshee onto an objective on 3 Places of Power, think again, it's a set up rule, so it's not a move, so you cannot score from setting up a hero on the objective (unlike all the other battleplans, this one requires a hero to move onto an objective to tag it). See game 1:

 

 

You could summon a Banshee and then charge onto the objective, or summon, then double turn to get onto the objective in the second turn, but not amazing.

  

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It's obviously very useful, but what are its disadvantages?

You don't have that many spells to use - you need the spells of the GKoZD and GKoTG and the Ghoul King for example if you take them. Most of the 2 spell wizards are either compendium (Kemmler, Little Mannderp) or named characters Arkhan, Neferata., Big Mannderp - Arkhan's main reason to exist is not to fail mystic shield (which justifies his cost by itself).

The VLoZD's spell is dismal, so he might be able to summon a unit.

Nagash may as well not exist at 2k matched play until he gets a lore, especially following today's nerf to the Tomb Herald (which fixed an infinite chain exploit as well as nerfing the Deathlords - perhaps inadvertently). Nagash would probably be quite good at 1,500 points oddly enough.... Certainly great at 2.5K and above.

[deynon]

47 minutes ago, Simon1971 said:

Do Death armies use chaff units like Dire Wolves, Bat Swarms and suchlike? Do they play a role or are they useless?

What do you think of Banshees? For an army short of shooting they seem to have a place. 

Is summoning absolutely essential to a good Death list? It's obviously very useful, but what are its disadvantages?

They can be used, obviously as each list they have to besynergic in the list.

It can be useful for ambushes and other things, I don't find the crazy piece, but it's good. If coadiuvated with the Screamskull Catapult surely is better.

 

Nothing is "aboslutely essential", but it can help a lot to lure, contest, assault, menacing, reinforcing etc etc. It's an added card to your pocket.I and when using it is on you.

There are ways to summon by command abilities and by "unholy sword"(this last one can't b spelled, doesnt' care about the level till you have points avalaible and don't take the cast of the model).

[CoffeeGrunt]

Dire Wolves don't have a great damage output, but they do work well as cheap, fast outriders that can survive a surprising amount of attention and slip away by Retreating.

[mmimzie]

Dire wolves work as one of the best walling unit. 120 points for 20 wounds. Easy to get them to a 3+ save with a corpse cart and mystic shield. Then with ruker of the night 5+ and they are tough to deal with. Also they have a nice foot print when they single file line up.

 

As said summined isnt required, but it can be nice for getting up the board. As said above though we dont have s lot of spell we want to give uo. So you either need special characters or to double up one one of your wizard most likely a necromancer for the cost and resilience.