How to play Death

[WoollyMammoth]

Death is a crazy powerful army. The argument is that they don't have anything 20" which is preposterous. First off, they can summon most of their units into the game, so that is 18" before a charge attempt. Since you have to be 9" this is only a 28% they would make their charge, but there are many exceptions, such as Vlad's +1 to charge or Harbingers which charge on 3 dice, which give you reliable first turn charges much longer than 20".

Death is a magic based army and so you have all kinds of powerful spells. Arcane bolt is only 18" by default but you could summon a Balewind Vortex to extend that to 36" first turn. There are lots of nasty spells that can hit long past 20" with a Balewind Vortex. Also, Nagashs Soul Stealer is 24".

A Vampire Lord on Abyssal Terror has a spell that doubles movement, turning a lot of units into a first turn threat (my favorite being blood knights)

The Necrosphinx can run & charge for a decent chance at a long charge. Especially potent combined with Vlad to give him an additional 2 inches and then a very decent chance to cause 10 flat mortal wounds to a monster. 

The Terrorgheist is more than decent, hes one of the most powerful monsters in the game. Preferably with an Abhorrent to get D3 wounds every turn and a spell that makes it insanely hard to hurt. Technically it has a possible range longer than 20". The Shriek is not a big deal, its all about the maw.

There are a lot of good battalions with rules that make range not really matter. For example the one where you have all your ghouls appear behind the enemy. 

You have to try really hard to have the limited range of death play against you, there are so many powerful tricks and a ton of fast moving units.

[CoffeeGrunt]

Balewind Vortexes cost 100pts. That's a big cost to get more range on an Arcane Bolt, which ultimately does 3 wounds absolute max. Summoning relies on many factors to succeed.

Also you keep saying, "Death," when you really mean FEC, given that most things you mention are Ghouls. (You can't say Death has alot of Battalions, there's only 1 in the GA book, IIRC.)

But yeah, your answer to, "we have no ranged," is, "yes you do, look at all this combat stuff you have. Running and hitting someone is basically shooting them, right?"

[Bradifer]

I would agree Death seems to have very little ranged capability.

The ranged they have is unreliable via very short ranges or attacking in an unreliable way (vs. bravery).

They have a few spells that are decent.

But primarily they are based around:

A. Getting hordes into combat/holding objectives and buffing them.

B. Outlasting the opponent via healing wounds/regenerating models/ethereal tankiness

C. Tarpitting the opponents best threats and using your beatsticks to destroy key units/take objectives.

D. Strategic summoning.

 

Death seems like re-flavored Destruction with an emphasis on regeneration/summoning over Destruction's emphasis on raw speed/damage/numbers.

Only...Destruction seems like a one-trick pony faction where you go for Turn 1/2 charges or play a mass arrows army.

Death has seemingly more variety to it, but the end goal is usually to get your mostly melee army into melee range...

I think a small issue is being forced into pretty lame battleline units while each sub faction of death isn't filled with enough tools to justify a pure (Soulblight/Deathlords/Deathrattle allegiance) for example.

Like...Deathlords as a faction, has 6 units. 

Deathrattle also has about 6 units.

If you look past the interesting fluff for Flesh Eater Court, you get a bunch of orc/ogres with orc leader/ogre leaders, except they can regenerate/heal. The strategy seems hard to go beyond "Get my army into melee with your army." Yes certain units in combat wit certain units matters, but there's not exactly a lot of flexibility.

I'm not counting Tomb Kings for this whole analysis because they aren't really being supported and that's not a viable way to look at the future of a faction.

[deynon]

4 hours ago, CoffeeGrunt said:

You're misunderstanding my point. I can buff to hit rolls, I can buff wound rolls, but (2D6 - Bravery) is always a wildcard no list or strategy can plan around, it either hurts or it doesn't. Granted, there's times where you roll 40 1s, but in general you can mitigate failure in hit and wound rolls, which is the point.

Plus there isn't any real synergy for Skeleton Archers aside from the Wight King, Tomb King and Queen Khalida. No-one else really does anything for them because they specifically buff melee weapons, or attacks in the combat phase.

Excluding that I've been able to roll 40 ones (rerolling even them^^); youforget that those 40 attacks not necessarily can do something. You need to invast quite a bit of points to make them valuable and they don't necessarly have the option to be mortal wounds.

As you can mitigate the failure you cna mitigate also the scream low rolls.

 

Skelton arcers have quite a bit of sinergy form the number of their units themselves, to Khalida, to Settra, or also the VLoDZ (it buff everything not only the melee weepons).

[CoffeeGrunt]

12 hours ago, deynon said:

As you can mitigate the failure you cna mitigate also the scream low rolls.

You can't do anything to change the scream rolls, that's what I said.

12 hours ago, deynon said:

Skelton arcers have quite a bit of sinergy form the number of their units themselves, to Khalida, to Settra, or also the VLoDZ (it buff everything not only the melee weepons).

Settra only works in the Combat Phase, so no. The VLoZD would help though, hadn't considered that, but 5s re-rolling is still alright. You also don't get much synergy because you only can choose one General and one Command Ability.

 

[deynon]

33 minutes ago, CoffeeGrunt said:

You can't do anything to change the scream rolls, that's what I said.

Settra only works in the Combat Phase, so no. The VLoZD would help though, hadn't considered that, but 5s re-rolling is still alright. You also don't get much synergy because you only can choose one General and one Command Ability.

 

You can with the Coven Throne.

About Settra I use it so often then I remembered bad the rule... sorry.

You can use the screaming skulls, you can use models  to improve the hits. So both archers and screams can be quite heavy a damaging. The screaming skulls moreover is quite fearsome cause in case of necrotect near it can fire twice and you don't even need to hit to make effect for the units to take malus on the bravery. With 2 screaming catapult and a necrotect near to each other you can fire 4 times each turn and you don't even need to see the target in a 36" range... not really bad.

If you want to point on the shooting you have to se tthe army to do it. If you want to point on other than the shooting with a minimal of fire you can. And so on. There is shooting and there are options to do.

You can not appreciate it but it's avalaible.

A unit with 10 Bravery move to 8, it means that a FEC TG does quite a lot of damage to it if it doesn't roll bad. And the other units risk even to be blastened away. But it's not much worth talking it's still fantawarhammer and it doesn't take consideration about field, missions, both dice rolls and so on.  And it's quite usufel when there is the battleshock phase too.

Sincerly I use only a bit  of shooting: TG, DZ and banshee usually and apart of the banshee (I can't roll more than a 1-1 with her each time...) the other ones have always done mishief and it's really useful for when they have to go against more units or take care of big monsters.

The shooting part is a valid arsenal and a support not to 

[wayniac]

As a pure FEC player, I really don't have an answer.  I've played a few games, mainly 1000-1500, and I feel majorly outclassed every game.  Just the other week I had a 1k point game against Stormcast w/Ogors (all the guy had, so I let him do a mix) where I fielded a blob of 40 ghouls, 6 horrors, crypt haunter courtier (general w/ruler), ghoul king on foot and crypt ghast courtier.  As soon as my Crypt Haunter Courtier and Crypt Ghast Courtier were sniped out, around turn 3, I felt like my chances of winning plummeted like a stone.  The only thing that saved me was the horde of ghouls moving forward, but if we had not stopped the game his Knight-Venator could have flown around the board picking off ghouls and, while it would have taken him forever he would have been able to wipe out the entire unit.  I basically went from handily winning to having a strong chance of losing the game simply because I lost two heroes that were almost impossible to hide.  Somehow, that doesn't feel right.

Death feels extremely weak to me.  I'm not sure if it's because summoning got nerfed with matched play, so the main way Death is able to mitigate having paper-thin units and heroes is gone, the fact that the LOS rules and shooting means you have to have your fragile characters cowering behind buildings the entire game so you can buff units, or what, but I find that Death tends to not hit hard, can't take a punch, and the only real mitigating factor is having heroes who buff the units, but at the same time those heroes are trivially easy to be shot off the board by things like Judicators, Kurnoth Hunters or even magic spells, which leaves you with no way to augment your already-weak units.

Maybe it's just me, I don't know.  Maybe it's because there are a lot of Sylvaneth and other shooty players at my GW, but I can barely seem to win with Death and never against any competent opponent who kills the characters first, because while we don't have the old rule of killing the general causes units to crumble and die, that rule is in spirit still in effect because the units seem to be nothing without the heroes to back them up.

[deynon]

29 minutes ago, wayniac said:

As a pure FEC player, I really don't have an answer.  I've played a few games, mainly 1000-1500, and I feel majorly outclassed every game.  Just the other week I had a 1k point game against Stormcast w/Ogors (all the guy had, so I let him do a mix) where I fielded a blob of 40 ghouls, 6 horrors, crypt haunter courtier (general w/ruler), ghoul king on foot and crypt ghast courtier.  As soon as my Crypt Haunter Courtier and Crypt Ghast Courtier were sniped out, around turn 3, I felt like my chances of winning plummeted like a stone.  The only thing that saved me was the horde of ghouls moving forward, but if we had not stopped the game his Knight-Venator could have flown around the board picking off ghouls and, while it would have taken him forever he would have been able to wipe out the entire unit.  I basically went from handily winning to having a strong chance of losing the game simply because I lost two heroes that were almost impossible to hide.  Somehow, that doesn't feel right.

Death feels extremely weak to me.  I'm not sure if it's because summoning got nerfed with matched play, so the main way Death is able to mitigate having paper-thin units and heroes is gone, the fact that the LOS rules and shooting means you have to have your fragile characters cowering behind buildings the entire game so you can buff units, or what, but I find that Death tends to not hit hard, can't take a punch, and the only real mitigating factor is having heroes who buff the units, but at the same time those heroes are trivially easy to be shot off the board by things like Judicators, Kurnoth Hunters or even magic spells, which leaves you with no way to augment your already-weak units.

Maybe it's just me, I don't know.  Maybe it's because there are a lot of Sylvaneth and other shooty players at my GW, but I can barely seem to win with Death and never against any competent opponent who kills the characters first, because while we don't have the old rule of killing the general causes units to crumble and die, that rule is in spirit still in effect because the units seem to be nothing without the heroes to back them up.

Maybe you have only to play better. It's not a massacre game, but a mission game. You have to do the objectives. 

You are playing quite a low standard list, but there is also somethings to consider. For example why did you advance so much with the Heros so they were shot down so easy? They were swiped aroud turn 3, but you also let the opponent swipe them. 

It's not so bad to lose models, what it's important it's to have sinergy.  In the list you proposed you almost don't have rend. 

Summon it's quite good as now. Otherways we'd be doomed by the summoning of other armis.

I suggestyou to simply play more variating and eventually not counting only on FEC units (or if you do play with battalion warscrolls and taking note of the unholy sowrds to summon what you need.

There are a lot of units stand alone in Death, but the better is sinergy. FEC works quite awesome together, but they also need to be planeed correctly. At 1000 points for example I'd not suggest you to have the crypt haunter courtier as general while you are maybe also playing the Ghoul Patrol. There are a lot of points that are blocked and only to have the crypt horrors as units doesn't suit.

[Celestant651]

Yeah. Does anyone know some good objective games for death?

[deynon]

33 minutes ago, Celestant651 said:

Yeah. Does anyone know some good objective games for death?

what do you mean?

[chunk85]

I highly rate the Deathrattle horde warscroll.  The extra 4" to movement can get you half way across the board, negating their relative slow speed.  Two necromancers and a Wight King for double pile-ins and an extra attack combo's well.

Its not always about killing everything.  Sometimes, its putting so many bodies on objectives that your opponent cannot claim any.

[deynon]

1 hour ago, chunk85 said:

I highly rate the Deathrattle horde warscroll.  The extra 4" to movement can get you half way across the board, negating their relative slow speed.  Two necromancers and a Wight King for double pile-ins and an extra attack combo's well.

Its not always about killing everything.  Sometimes, its putting so many bodies on objectives that your opponent cannot claim any.

I don't think that warscoll attalion is usable. Doesn't exist models named only as "wight knight"

[chunk85]

11 hours ago, deynon said:

I don't think that warscoll attalion is usable. Doesn't exist models named only as "wight knight"

There are two, one compendium and an updated one in their tga book.

[deynon]

9 minutes ago, chunk85 said:

There are two, one compendium and an updated one in their tga book.

both of them require a unit called "wight king" and such unit doesn't exist... such thing comes from the FAQ about only "bold" words talk about Keywords and the name of units in the warscroll battalions are not so.

[chunk85]

Good enough for the GT :-) 

[TerrorPenguin]

1 hour ago, deynon said:

both of them require a unit called "wight king" and such unit doesn't exist... such thing comes from the FAQ about only "bold" words talk about Keywords and the name of units in the warscroll battalions are not so.

Could make the same argument for prosecutors, it's  a subtitle (baleful tomb blade, black axe; hammers, javelins).

Can still use legion of death

[deynon]

22 minutes ago, TerrorPenguin said:

Could make the same argument for prosecutors, it's  a subtitle (baleful tomb blade, black axe; hammers, javelins).

Can still use legion of death

It's not so. Even the prosecutors if so have the same restriction. Before the FAQ they were considered the Keywords, now not anymore. So all the warscroll battalions who doesnt' respect such terms are now invlaid by FAQs, not mind if Death or Order, Stromcast inclused

[TerrorPenguin]

37 minutes ago, deynon said:

It's not so. Even the prosecutors if so have the same restriction. Before the FAQ they were considered the Keywords, now not anymore. So all the warscroll battalions who doesnt' respect such terms are now invlaid by FAQs, not mind if Death or Order, Stromcast inclused

As @chunk85 says, legion of death was played (presumably by him) at warhammer world last week, in a GW organised event. As was warrior brotherhood with plenty of prosecutors.

If your local scene wants to rule out both of those formations that's up to them, but most people (GW included) are taking tomb blade / black axe to be subtitles.

[deynon]

Just now, TerrorPenguin said:

As @chunk85 says, legion of death was played (presumably by him) at warhammer world last week, in a GW organised event. As was warrior brotherhood with plenty of prosecutors.

If your local scene wants to rule out both of those formations that's up to them, but most people (GW included) are taking tomb blade / black axe to be subtitles.

It's not the first time GW play with different rules than the ones she settles. The rules says that, it's not my invention. Otherway they have simply to be more clear with what they say.

The only way to play the Legion of Death is by the Keywords, the name of the units are different

[OwenM]

All I know is that I have never beaten my brother's skeleton horde SC+ Grave Guard+Skeleton archers.

I suppose that army can regenerate.

[chunk85]

Keyword argument aside, the formations main benefit is an extra 4" movement.  Even without it the component units are incredibly hardy with excellent (but low rend) damage output. 

[deynon]

54 minutes ago, chunk85 said:

Keyword argument aside, the formations main benefit is an extra 4" movement.  Even without it the component units are incredibly hardy with excellent (but low rend) damage output. 

if it would be usable it 's good as formation. It adds a good speed, the only problem is to protect the Wight king of it cause it's the one to let the speed progress, so to him a Ring of immortality could be an investement even if it requires to set aside some points beforehand.

The damage can be integrated anyway with the rest of the army,  so not much to worry about it. Some Blood knights, morghasts, or even some Zombie dragon can be really thematica about it. 

If someone likes to modify it could even realize a VLoZD like riden by a Wight king. 

[CoffeeGrunt]

Ring of Immortality won't work like that, depending on your interpretation. The ruling was that it's considered to be a new unit that is set up, hence the points cost, so you're setting up a new Wight King that wasn't part of the original formation.

[Andreas]

To give chunk85 some credit he did, (if it was you), place 4:th in argubly the most compeditative age of sigmar tournament up to date using the legion of death.

Can't you write a little bit more how you played it. What was good or bad matchups using the legion? What was good or bad battleplans using the legion etc..

I think it would add a lot to the how to play death discussion.

[deynon]

1 hour ago, CoffeeGrunt said:

Ring of Immortality won't work like that, depending on your interpretation. The ruling was that it's considered to be a new unit that is set up, hence the points cost, so you're setting up a new Wight King that wasn't part of the original formation.

I know, but you're yet using a warscroll formation you shouldn't be abe to use...