what do the death subfactions need?

[Sception]

This is just a wishlisting/speculation thread for what you think the various undead subfactions should get or need to get to work as stand alone armies.  Kind of pointless, sure, but hey, it could kill a spot of time while waiting for new official announcements.

As far as my thoughts go:

Everybody/ death alliance in general: post GH style battle traits, command traits, artefacts, and spells would be nice all round, and i'd like to see a general death spell list for mixed armies as well.  Something to help with the ranged problem would also be nice - either ranged elements of our own, or bodyguard type units/effects a la the necromancer & tomb herald, shrouding effects penalizing ranged to hit roles, fast units & movement buffs, etc.

specific subfactions;

Flesh Eater Courts: pretty much functional as is, though I'd really like to see actual models for the various courtier heroes.  conversion is a hassle, prone to confusion (is that horror model extra fancy because they're a unit champ, or a hero?), and, due to the batch pricing in AoS, tends to leave you with a bunch of unusable models.

Deathrattle: probably the closest to being a functional stand-alone subfaction next to flesh eaters, imo deathrattle mostly just needs in-faction wizards and some sort of monstrous unit (bone dragon, return of sphynxes, whatever) to provide a survivable in-faction general in larger games.  Skeletal archers and catapults are common enough in games and fiction that i wouldn't mind those making a return, either.  My personal preference would be to make this a 'necropolis' faction mixing the population of the dead city (the skeletons), and chunks of the city itself (animated gargoyles, statues, sphynxes), bringing back some ideas from the old tomb king line.

Deadwalkers/Deathmages: i don't see either of these really working as a stand alone faction, but I do think they would work very well as a sort of combined 'necromantic horror' faction mixing powerful necromancers and their nightmarish experiments & hordes of the walking dead.  The main thing i would look to add is a heavy hitting zombie unit emphasizing that necromantic experiment theme (maybe a frankenstein's monster sort of monstrous infantry group?) and some larger monstrosities (plain old unridden zombie dragon, plus maybe a stitched-together chimeric undead monster that can run on its own or with a necromantic boss riding it).  Upgrading the corpse cart rider and mortis engine riders to actual wizards (maybe mortis engine with & without book as two different units, one a hero/behemoth/wizard and one just the behemoth part?) could further drive home the magical theme of the subfaction.

Soulblight: though small, to me this faction feels relatively complete as is.  The main thing I would add is an infantry kit of human bodyguard/warrior thralls seeking battle as a means of proving their worthiness to receive the blood kiss.  Maybe nearby vampires could feed on them during battle, killing thralls to restore wounds.  A human unit could hint at societies of the living in Shyish, explaining where the vampires of Shyish get their blood from, and a weaker infantry unit would provide Soulblight armies with a less pricey battleline option when points are tight.

Nighthaunt: I don't really know.  Maybe a ghostly wizard of their own?  Maybe a behemoth or monster apart from the FW mourngul?  maybe move the mortis engine from deathmages to nighthaunt, to kill both birds with one already existing stone?

Deathlords: I'd like to see morghasts expanded with maybe a slightly smaller infantry / non winged version, plus maybe a morghast hero.  Beyond that, i don't really feel like the deathlords are meant to function as a stand alone faction, so making sure they interact well with the grand alliance traits & options & hopefully one day spells should be a focus, rather than worrying about giving them traits of their own.

new subfactions:

The main room i see for new subfactions comes out of recent developments in the fiction books of nagash trapping the souls of his enemies' favored servants, chaos champions, stormcasts, etc.  I could see undead versions of various other existing subfactions in AoS, each represented model wise with an upgrade/conversion sprue to apply to the existing models of that faction.  Undead stormcasts taken from the soul-thieving hypocrite Sigmar?  A haunted forest subfaction with tortured ghostly figures instead of pretty elven spirits sticking out of those tree revenants?  Zombified or Ghoulified ironjaw orcs, who, bored of the monotony of death, agree to fight for nagash just to have the opportunity to fight at all again?

Inevitably the elven gods will succeed in beating their peoples souls out of Slaanesh like some sort of absurd chaos piñata, and i could certainly see Nagash reaching out to stake a claim on what are by all rights dead spirits that belong to his underworld.  A unique undead elf subfaction built on such a fluff development would be a cool thing to see.  Or if not that exactly, then perhaps Malekith could come to blows with Tyrion, Teclis, & Alarielle over the restored souls, leading to the Shadow god breaking ranks with Sigmars alliance to join up with Nagash, bringing a subfaction of newly reborn, shadow magic using dark elf revenants with him, along with old dark elf legacy units swapping their allegiance alignment?

[Tomm23]

As a nighthaunt player id love to see the mortis engine move. The fact it has so many ethereal attacks and the banshees wail really lend it to the faction and it would provide a behemoth alternative to the mourngul.

Some kind of wizard is also needed as it would introduce a real level of synergy. Maybe something with a banshees stats and melee attacks so it isn't particularly damage heavy but with a spell that granted bonuses to hit to nighthaunt units or make them harder to hit.

[FRoper]

i would say:

Death rattle: i agree with you, maybe a lich some kind or decent survivalable Unit. Old tomb king style would work well. archers, catapults. magic casters are certainly needed

Night haunt: maybe a ghostking, some kind of leader of ghosts. 

Soul Blight: vampiric infanty/Thralls, a monstrous bat unit/large varghiest. were wolves

Death walks/death mages needs to be combined into a single fraction, based around magic, so zombies gain buff with necro's. Abomination's-huge monsters of flesh. myabe some kind of apothicary, explore mages, and necromany, acolytes. they should explore monstrous creations by necromancers.

Death lords: un winged morghasts as above would be awesome. i would also give the mortarchs key words associated with other fractions, so they can lead them.

Flesh eater,s are ok, they just need some form of special character to lead them.

[AverageBoss]

For Soulblight, I would like to see units of foot vampires make a return. Bring back the covens . Also, new (and affordable) sculpts for pretty much everything that's not the Dragon and Coven Throne.

 

[Requizen]

The only thing is, with how powerful the regular Death Allegiance ability is, I can't see them providing an alternative people would take over ward saves for the entire army. Either the Faction-specific ones need to be super powerful, or they need to tone down/redo the Death one.

[kcjling]

I've thought about this for awhile and I really do like the idea of mortal cult of nagash or something along those lines. I think a sacrifice mechanic would be fun although not sure how viable or some kind of death prayer? Something similar to how black works in MTG - sacrificing life/wounds for some benefit - I think that would be pretty unique to death. 

Never minded the lack of ranged weaponry. Although to counter this I think magic lore and above mentioned sacrifice or death prayer (so we can spread out 'casters' so we don't all get shot down). 

Vampire foot infantry, maybe newly minted thralls, would make total sense. 

Finally some sort of incentive or bonus for using summoning. 

Some kind of 'deep striking' for the rest of death, not just for FEC.

Just some things off the top of my head. 

[Countmoore]

I'd just take some optional offensive spells at this point as we are sorely lacking outside deathlords with only the vlozd having an offensive spell (compendium aside). 

If splitting the mini factions out I'd like to have them all do different things to each other and offer different play styles. Agree with deathlords being an all inclusive force (why should Nagash not be included where he wants? It's his realm!). 

Soulblight - Damage output, fast

nighthaunt - survivable, mortal wound spam

Deathrattle - tank, body spam, 

Flesheater- tank, 

deathmages/walkers - body spam, debuff

so units to buff these themes would be good ie don't give soulblight a really slow foot slugger unit if speed if the iconic style maybe opt for thrall cav (dark rider esk) to provide cheaper bodies. 

[Karhedron]

From a modelling PoV rather than rules, please can we have some affordable plastic Blood Knights? Pretty please? 

[KnightFire]

I would love to see deathlords as a faction but with more options to get other types of characters in, and then a allegiance trait that allows them to deploy with only characters and then summon the rest of their army.

[KHHaunts]

As a night haunt players i would lay it out as follows

Battlelines:

- Spirit hosts

- Hex wraiths

 

Elites/Heros

Cairn wraiths - id actually love if these guys could be converted into an elite unit. But if not support hero roll would just fine a guess

Banshee - same as above. slightly  happier for this to be left as a support hero.

 

Behemoths and centre pieces: Mourhghul (Maybe re jig the points), Mortis Engine(With hero option), Black coach (New flying model with revised rules)

Heros:

- Archwraith - Cairn Wraith on steroids (Scythe in each hand larger scarier. Possibly something like the 40k nightbringer) Possible general or combat hero with decent synergy buffs.

- Fell Summoner - possibly the only living thing in the army (Along with a mortis engine counterpart). Decent mage with summon bonuses. Some sort of funky unique spell dont really care what. and command ability.

[wayniac]

As a FEC player I think we need something like the new Dwarfs got, where you can shunt a wound/mortal wound off to a unit if there's a character nearby.  It would fix the major issue the army has (heroes being the lynchpin and super easy to kill off as they generally all have awful saves and only a handful of wounds so anything that wounds them will probably kill them if it does any sort of damage at all) and be very thematic (after all, the noble men at arms would be more than willing to lay down their lives for their liege lords).  I don't think the army itself needs much more than that, although special artefacts/traits would be nice; maybe a special spell list to represent the ghoul king's madness, something like being able to prevent an enemy unit from attacking or some such (like in a story in the battletome, a Stormcast is about to attack the king and pauses because for an instant he sees the king in his madness as a noble lord instead of a bestial vampire) as they are temporarily overcome with the king's madness.

As a whole I think the summoning rules need to be reworked for GHB2, as right now they are generally not worth taking (IMHO/YMMV), and summoning is one of the major things that make Death be Death.

In general the issue I have with Death from an aesthetic point of view is that there isn't much else that can be added (again, IMHO) without going for a "Castlevania" feel where it's basically a horror-themed faction (so werewolves, frankenstein monster-esque flesh golems, etc.) and not just undead.  There needs to be things to set each subfaction aside unique, because otherwise we basically have one single faction (i.e. the old Vampire Counts) split into multiple subfactions.

[Sception]

Honestly, some sort of look-out-sir rule is something this entire game needs, though yeah FEC do need it more than most.

I really hope a second edition of AoS rolls around sooner rather than later adding unit type keywords (infantry, monstrous infantry, cavalry, monstrous cavalry, etc) that don't do anything on their own, but with a rule that non-monster heroes cannot be targeted by ranged attacks if they're within 1" of a friendly unit with a matching unit type (unless the ranged attack has some specific rule that says otherwise).

[KnightFire]

4 minutes ago, Sception said:

Honestly, some sort of look-out-sir rule is something this entire game needs,

 

Please god no!

[Sception]

I'm sorry, but freely sniping heroes is a major problem, and the whole game is worse off for it.

[Requizen]

16 minutes ago, Sception said:

I'm sorry, but freely sniping heroes is a major problem, and the whole game is worse off for it.

Not as bad as unkillable heroes with tons of ablative wounds giving out buffs left and right. Deathstars are one of the major factors in why people are burning out of competitive 40k.

What I would more like is the ability for intervening units to actually provide cover or some sort of other shooting debuff. True Line of Sight is good and all, but the fact that my Relictor standing behind 10 dudes with shields gets nothing defensively is a bit silly. 

Look Out Sir would make sense if it was a 5+ or 4+ to hit an intervening unit instead. It doesn't make sense when a Hero is standing in front of a bunch of dudes and the guy 10 feet behind him randomly gets hit instead. 

[FRoper]

we do not need a look out sir, an intervening save maybe, on that allows hero's to transfer wounds on a 5+ so it adds a bit of survivability, but not over powered.

the last thing we need are unkillable hero's,

[TerrorPenguin]

Honestly what death needs is rules to bring them up to par, a spell lore and some batallions would make a world of difference

[zachariah_d]

 

I think weak support hero's need it(look out sir or equivalent). Like hienrich and necro. But not killy heros. They just need decent saves and/or some regen. Of your entire alliance has no shooting and is also highly vulnerable to shooting, in a shooting heavy meta... You will have a bad day.

 

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[Sception]

1 hour ago, FRoper said:

we do not need a look out sir, an intervening save maybe, on that allows hero's to transfer wounds

That's... that's what a look out sir is.  that's exactly what a look out sir is.  I don't?  ??

[Sception]

1 minute ago, zachariah_d said:

 

I think weak support hero's need it(look out sir or equivalent). Like hienrich and necro. But not killy heros. They just need decent saves and/or some regen. Of your entire alliance has no shooting and is also highly vulnerable to shooting, in a shooting heavy meta... You will have a bad day.

 

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what, killy heroes like vampire lords and wight kings who drop just as fast and easy as casters do?

I'm tired of unit champ generals.  I'm tired of 5 wound heroes being a waste of time and points.  The game is not better for it.

[Mohawk_Monkey]

Might be a bad idea, just throwing out a suggestion. 

 

-1 or whatever to hit heroes with a min-max range for heroes? 

 

unlike a bubble effecting all units in range, all units targeting the hero get the -1/whatever effect. E.g kurnoth hunters shooting at wight king are at -1 to hit from 24"- 6" if they get inside the 6" or are in Close combat, the debuff doesn't work?

If it's too much, maybe the hero has to be within a certain range of a battleline unit?

We tend to have heroes close to other units for synergy anyway. Could link the -1 debuff to the number in a unit if you wanted to get really complicated.

 

I think i'd just prefer:

"If your hero is the target of a ranged attack, the unit making the attack are at -1 to hit if your hero is within 10" of any DEATH battleline unit." 

 

Then you don't end up trying to give GA death a ton of ranged units (risking the possibility that some mainstay unit never get taken). You then have a bit more durability on your heroes, your skelly/zombie/ghoul hordes serve a purpose as larger buffers to heroes getting sniped without being a wound replacement?

Fluff wise, all that ghostly ethereal death shenanigans creates a haunting ghostly haze to settle around powerful undead.

Spitballing here so feel free to pick holes.

[zachariah_d]

Mabey shore up the weaknesses of each faction with their trait. So if you give up the death wardsave you get wound transfer for death mages heros... Or regen/better saves for nighthaunt heros... Or stronger buff for consuming thrall for soulblight.

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[zachariah_d]

On another note. I really like the mortal thrall idea for soulblight. But I also really want them to be a low model count elete army. For when I get sick of FeQ and deathrattle and zombie hordes, and just want to play a game with out moving 200 models.

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[Sception]

if every faction needs a different custom work around to deal with hero sniping, maybe hero sniping itself is a problem and should just be dealt with overall?

hit modifiers could work.  like, for instance, maybe have keywords based on size, something as simple as small (infantry dudes), large (monsters & war machines), and medium (everything else)?  Then a -1 to hit penalty if you're shooting 'through' an enemy unit of equal or larger size as the target, plus another -1 penalty if shooting at a unit made up of a single small model.  So no penalty to hit a horror courtier through ghouls, -1 penalty to hit a horror courtier through horrors, -1 penalty to hit a ghoul courtier in the open, -2 penalty to hit a ghoul courtier behind ghouls or horrors?

I don't know.  honestly, some kind of look out sir save would probably be easier to implement.

 

4 minutes ago, zachariah_d said:

On another note. I really like the mortal thrall idea for soulblight. But I also really want them to be a low model count elete army. For when I get sick of FeQ and deathrattle and zombie hordes, and just want to play a game with out moving 200 models.

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in my minds eye, 'weaker' and 'cheaper' would be relative terms for the mortal thralls.  weaker and cheaper than blood knights certainly, but still an elite unit more equivalent to grave guard or phoenix guard than skeletons or spearmen

[zachariah_d]

I like look out sir type rule for death mage because it fits the lore, is easy to implement, and still inflicts the wounds, just on the other unit. The other factions can have other fun ways solve the same problem... Or not..lol

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