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What makes death competitive besides TK and Mournghouls?


wayniac

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What makes death competitive is the fact that they grind so well.  

  • Unless you're utterly tanked in combat battleshock isn't overly an issue with Bravery 10 across the board.
  • Army wide ward save
  • Models get back up in many units due to banner/abilities
  • summoning back into units/then just standing back up with FEC abilities

What does this mean?  Well, I think it means they're very good at objective play. However there are limitations to this:

  • no matter how many bodies you have it's no use on some scenarios were 1 model can contest
  • It's not much use where you need characters to score
  • as a rule a lot of the survivable options aren't terribly fast so capturing far flung objectives can be tricky (Summoning, subject to rule restrictions on objective capture, can help with this)
  • holding your own objectives isn't the be all and end all you need to be able to capture opposing ones which means some hard hitters

What's needed to make them a competitive list:

  • They lack the ability to drop en-masse like Sylvaneth, Stormcasts and Sayl or the ability to traverse the board in a turn of destruction.  So chaff screens/bubble wrapping are important which means cheap chaff.  Fortunately death have that in spades
  • Some form of hard hitter.  This can take a few forms, most obviously are the characters but it's worth noting that generally these are the easiest parts to kill in a death list.  Outside the characters there are a few options but they often feel overpriced (Blood knights, vargheists, necropolis knights)
  • The right buffs to turn their meh units into reasonable ones
  • Some form of consistent mortal wound output (without this I think Sylvaneth turn into a bogey army as you simply can't kill the hunters)

One part I've not said is an essential but I think is a major selling point for death is the flexibility of a summoning pool.  They are able to tailor their list to any given game more so than most other armies, I think this is an undervalued strength.

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A new battletome with a lore is the hoped-for solution - either Deathlords or Soulblight would be amazing!

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One part I've not said is an essential but I think is a major selling point for death is the flexibility of a summoning pool.  They are able to tailor their list to any given game more so than most other armies, I think this is an undervalued strength.

A major hindrance to this is that all (perhaps mostly all) of the two+ spell wizards are named characters (so you're either casting their unique spell or you're casting a summon spell). When AoS came out, having the most and the best named characters was a significant strength of Death. Now, as a result of the allegiance abilities, having named characters as your general has become at best a trade off and at worst actively suicidal (because losing the 5+ ward save is a fast route to losing the game - I cannot overstate how important that is). Mannfred and Neferata are the worst hit, since they are pointed on the basis of their command abilities; and taking them as general is a high risk strategy against any army with pew pew (4+ save, cover not available), particularly any army that can choose to take turn one (which is most armies against Death, given their limited reliance on battalions). Nagash is ill-suited to the GH battleplans and presumably is costed on the basis that he will one day get a lore of spells to choose from.

I've tried over and over to come up with a credible Nagash list. It's even harder now that the Tomb Herald battery pack is not longer available for Deathlord heroes.

This has sadly forced Death towards taking the VLoZD as the general option that doesn't tend to die to pew pew in turn one and has a useful command ability. 

Here are some other weaknesses:

  • No viable single drop armies (the Tomb Legion was never strong as it required so many junk units and the December FAQ stopped the option of using Settra within it). 
  • Fewer units in the Death Grand Alliance part of the GH (the current version) than Order have Battalions.
  • The only remotely viable >12" shooting is the Catapult. The Catapult was a decent, albeit risky option, but is now overcosted under the SCGT pack. Most crewed artillery are extremely high risk, since they are one lucky Kurnoth Hunters arrow away from being a useless warmachine without a crew. The bringing back crew spell mitigates this a tad, but runs into the above problem of Death not having surplus spell casting slots. The Ushabti with bows are cheap but also junk (they are expert at waddling to objectives and not dying, but the damage output is low and very hard to buff).
  • Many of those units are never played with good reason (Fell Bats, The Black Coach, probably Vargheists as well now - Crypt Flayers can be buffed).
  • I'm struggling to find any credible counter to the Kunning Rukk arrer boyz (Nagash plus Neferata isn't a viable list for the other four games at an event).

A new battletome with a lore is the hoped-for solution - either Deathlords or Soulblight would be amazing! (trying to be positive about the situation for Death at the moment - it's not easy).

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22 minutes ago, CoffeeGrunt said:

First time I've heard Necro Knights referred to as overpriced, though I haven't tried Blood Knights yet.

Blood knights are great on the charge but after that? They start to whiff IMO they become like more tanky black knights, as mounted vampires I personally think their combat stats should be a little better. Necro knights are pretty much a better version of blood knights.

Move 8, 5 wounds, 5+ save. With as shield that gives them +1 in the combat phase and can restore 1 MODEL a turn. Their melee weapon is pretty much a standard cav weapon but their mounts? 3 Attacks 4 to hit and 3 to wounds -1 rend D3 damage. 

Also this. 

REANIMATE NECROPOLIS KNIGHT - Reanimate Necropolis Knight has a casting value of 5. If successfully cast, pick a unit of Necropolis Knights within 18". You can add one model to that unit.

You can bring them back to possible full strength in one turn if you have a spellcaster. 

If the wound roll is a 6 the enemy suffers a mortal wound. 

They outshine blood knights IMO and I feel the current point change is the correct amount in points for their worth in my opinion. Also don't forget they are deathrattle and the host of buffs they get from other death units for the key word. *looks at a necromancer as an example*

Blood knights? 

3 wounds, Move 10, 4+ save. Their lance weapon 3 attacks 3 to hit and 3 to wound -1 rend and 1 damage. 

Mount? 2 attacks 4 to wound and hit - rend 1 damage. 

Hunger:We all know what that does in the death forum. 

Martial fury: The damage of the lances is d3 if they charge in the turn

Banner: You can return 1 slain model a turn.

For 260 points. 

I am going through the slaanesh host rules and they have so many fun synergistic AND individual abilities which I feel Death (If you are not playing tomb kings) is lacking right now. They don't even have a tome and imagine WHEN they get one.

Also the vampire lord I just have to say is a TERRIBLE foot general I think one of the worst and it does not help we still don't have a plastic vampire yet. I do think the wight king would be great foot general if we could upgrade him to a wizard without using the sword of unholy power option.  

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21 minutes ago, CoffeeGrunt said:

First time I've heard Necro Knights referred to as overpriced, though I haven't tried Blood Knights yet.

I didn't really mean they were overpriced, more that they fell into the category of hard hitters.  With the revised pricing they're at the top end of about right. 

 

Basically you can't get anything in death that hits hard for under 240 other than vargheists and they're only 'reasonably' choppy.

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1 minute ago, Dave Fraser said:

I didn't really mean they were overpriced, more that they fell into the category of hard hitters.  With the revised pricing they're at the top end of about right. 

 

Basically you can't get anything in death that hits hard for under 240 other than vargheists and they're only 'reasonably' choppy.

Yup I personally also find it baffling that Vargheists can't recover wounds if they could they would be tons better. 

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Necropolis Knights lose to old fashioned bunker gunline lists (5+ save), however once those went out of fashion in the GH (particularly due to battleplans where you score every round and cannot just castle in the middle all game), Necropolis Knights became increasingly dominant. 200 would have made them balanced (a 25% increase, rather than a 50% increase on top of also increasing the costs of the buffing units by vast percentages as well).  

Blood Knights do have a 3+ save (effectively) against rendless attacks, which is good. They are a bit overcosted though (cf. Dracoth Knights), since they aren't very easy to buff at all.  

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Blood Knights do have a 3+ save (effectively) against rendless attacks, which is good. They are a bit overcosted though (cf. Dracoth Knights), since they aren't very easy to buff at all.  

 

I'm hopeing blood knights get:

A: new model

B: better buffs/synergy from new soulblight book/leaders (whenever that comes)

C: lower cost (they raised necro knights, and they are still cheaper for a similar unit)

D: shields not made of rotten paper (vamps should have shield like VLoZD not like ****** skeletons)

 

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Death need new book for sure but we still have good options:

- VLoZD now you can build him with red fury and tomb blade and he got so mutch sustain, with mortis engine ( i love 2 of them) you got better sustain 

- blood knight : best cav unit in game, 1 guy come back every turn give us sustain, try it in unit of 10 .its expensive unit but it worth the points

-spirit hosts : sustain is keyword word when we speak about death. They got 4+ armor save verus everything, you can t modify it. In addition they got many attacks and with 6+ it's mortal wound! So good

-Mortis engine : it give sustain to your heros and aoe mortal wounds. In combat we got  many attacks and with 6+ Is a  mortal wound. Cool

- varghaists : one of most underrated unit of death, they can fly ,good movement, many attacks. It's a really good glass cannon unit

-VLoAT : unfortunately its compendium unit, we can t buy it. I hope they remake this unit. It got really good ability to doble movement speed ( immagine Vargheists or VLoZD)

 

as you can see we still got choice.. I hope you liked this post, sorry for my English!!:)

 

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