How does Death fit into the current meta?

[Thanatos Ares]

I've had mixed success on club nights (always tourney lists at SLL) with my death monster mash list. In certain match ups it's very strong and others not so much. Always great fun to play though


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[Countmoore]

The main reason I took the 3 Von Carsteins was to bump the spell option on Nagash. As such I was throwing her spell out all the time. Syth hunters do not like being hit their own champion ? I'm not sure any of them cast more than a spell each over the weekend. 

It would be better if there was a cheap way of reducing bravery in the list somehow. 

[Countmoore]

3 hours ago, Teletomas said:

Also, Countmoore: The vortex, I am guessing you summoned it for Isabella to make the arrow boys target themselves? Didn't work out?   Cheers for reporting back, all three! Well done, and congrats at Countmoore for placing best as Death.         

I used the vortex to push Nagash forward into a better position. 

[Nico]

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I used the vortex to push Nagash forward into a better position. 

Good stuff. I call it "Nudging the Beetle" - for Alarielle.

[Bradifer]

I think I've heard of both @ChippyRick and @Countmoore from the various UK based AoS podcasts.

Maybe Ricky from the Age of Sigbrah and Tony from Facehammer. (Are you the Tony who brought 2 x Mourngul & 12 Crypt Horrors to Masters? Scary.)

I'm US based but it's fun hearing about all the competitive events you guys have, and you're in close enough proximity that it appears there is a regularly fierce meta comprised of strong lists and players. Any chance either of you have your armies pictured?

I think it would be nice to see some of the armies we hear about on the forums and podcasts!

[ChippyRick]

12 hours ago, Bradifer said:

I think I've heard of both @ChippyRick and @Countmoore from the various UK based AoS podcasts.

Maybe Ricky from the Age of Sigbrah and Tony from Facehammer. (Are you the Tony who brought 2 x Mourngul & 12 Crypt Horrors to Masters? Scary.)

I'm US based but it's fun hearing about all the competitive events you guys have, and you're in close enough proximity that it appears there is a regularly fierce meta comprised of strong lists and players. Any chance either of you have your armies pictured?

I think it would be nice to see some of the armies we hear about on the forums and podcasts!

Hey Bradifer,

I used to be on The Black Sun Podcast and still appear from time to time to join Chris on his now weekly podcast. But you are correct, may have heard my name mentioned on Age of Sigbrah, the guys are all local and all good friends.

I dont have to many photos of my Death atm annoyingly, must get round to getting some up on here on a blog actually.
Here is a few which were taken from South Coast Grand Tournament Facebook Page from this weekend just gone, and i was also on the warhammer tv live for Game 1 of SCGT so my army can be seen there

 

Actually found this one of when i was still working on it. Will get some more and better pics though!

 

[ChippyRick]

22 hours ago, Moon said:

Congrats @Countmoore on top death this year!

I came 56th at SCGT with 3 major wins, 1 minor win and 2 major losses. (Losing to Lez Martin's stormcast stardrake of nothing can wound me list in scenario 3 where it is all about the general, which was looking like I would win but when flipped around in 1 turn to Lez, and in game 4 where 1 placement mistake cost me the game due to the nature of my list)

My list was VLZD,VLAT, Isabella, 20 skeles, 2 x 10 skeles, 2 Mournguls and 60 points for summoning (10 zombies,5 dire wolves or a cairn wraith). VLZD had ruler of the night and cursed book to tag team with the mourngul's minus to hit ability. I felt the list was strong with the combo of the minus to hit and double moving Mournguls and the VLZD where needed. However, it is a list where I can't make a mistake because I have so few units that are doing all of the work. It also suffers from scenarios where I have to spread out over the course of the game for different objectives, when having to send a Mourngul out to take on the world and make loads of new friends.

See my game on stream, game 4 where I made the mistake of over committing a Mourngul turn 1 to score early and didn't respect my opponents army being able to 1 shot the Mourngul, before it could attack and heal. Then with a bit below average dice rolls (always blame the dice ) I gave the game away but even though it dashed my chances of competing for top death it was really fun to play

I honestly wasn't expecting to do that well this year and was mainly interested to see how death did overall. Would be interesting to hear @Countmoore , @ChippyRick and anyone elses opinion on lists without the movement spell from the VLAT when trying to reach out and deal with gunlines as I think compendium is on its way out potentially post GHB2

Hey Moon, 

Congrats on your position, still a good finish considering the top end of the field. Really liked your list, makes for getting out and hitting the opponent so much better.

My army really struggled with being able to get across quick. The bloodknights are in your face early game, but cant reach the opponent unless they go first and move forward towards me, which doesnt happen much. What i do is run to an area to threaten the opponents army or key area of the table. This makes them then need to deal with them, and if they are buffed they do a good job at hanging around. This allows the army to move up next to and behind, then fly over to charge following turns (Spirit hosts and Mourngul).

Most of my other lists still include the VLAT, and i will look at adding one for lists going forward to try it out. prob with my list is i run out of points as the 4 key units are Bloodknights, Mourngul, 6 Spirit Hosts and 6 Spirit Hosts and this takes up large amounts of the points. I think i will try dropping the Bloodknights as i am not a fan of the models anyway so that is where i will try changes.

[ChippyRick]

21 hours ago, Teletomas said:

@Moon @ChippyRick @Countmoore

So seeing how you all played Isabella alone, apart from @Countmoore who did the Isabella/Vlad combo, I'm a little surprised at this,

I'm wondering whether the reason for taking her is mostly for the possibility of a cheap mystic shield/arcane bolt?

And maybe the occasional low bravery opponent or what?

Also, Countmoore: The vortex, I am guessing you summoned it for Isabella to make the arrow boys target themselves? Didn't work out?   Cheers for reporting back, all three! Well done, and congrats at Countmoore for placing best as Death.         

EDIT:

Actually, just looking up on Nagash's war scroll now, I'm wondering even more about Isabella....... ??

Pretty much as already mentioned, being able to fit a cheap hero in my list that has magic support is the main reason for me.

But i have also used the spell a few times. Kurnoth hunters are a good target as @Countmoore mentioned, but also lots of low bravery destruction monsters and heroes out there, and even used it on Morghasts in one game and got him to punch Manfred

[Nico]

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But i have also used the spell a few times. Kurnoth hunters are a good target as @Countmoore mentioned, but also lots of low bravery destruction monsters and heroes out there, and even used it on Morghasts in one game and got him to punch Manfred 

Arachnorok that has drunk Battle Brew (which is a fixed +2, not a may add +2) - Bravery 6 for the win!

[Teletomas]

1 hour ago, Nico said:

Arachnorok that has drunk Battle Brew (which is a fixed +2, not a may add +2) - Bravery 6 for the win!

 

shhhhhhh. My destruction army runs the arachnarok.. Please come up with another example!

[Marc Wilson]

I played against Marcus from the Warchiefs at the weekend and was highly impressed with his list. From memory it was Neferata, Vlad and Isabella, some hero he was bouncing wounds to, a Mourngul, Spirit Hosts and a big summoning pool. Everything gave a minus to hit which caused me all sorts of problems and though I was very much up on KPs I was unable to move out onto objectives as the board was soon filled with cheap summoned units and batswarms. Batswarms  - wow, 60 points... they really hampered my shooting list. I can see lots of applications for those; 15 wounds to chew through to clear them off is not to be sniffed at. I thought they were amazing value. It was my favourite game of the weekend. As someone said recently - you don't have to kill a single enemy model to win a game of AoS.

[Nico]

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some hero he was bouncing wounds to

Erm - a Tomb Herald? The one that was comped in the FAQ to stop this from working (except for Tomb Kings and Liche Priests)? Unlucky Sir!

Batswarms presumably? You can often walk backwards out of their inadequate range and then shoot....

[Sception]

I'm guessing the penalties to hit were from the mournghul and neferata, which, fair enough, though neferata's pretty fragile.

From what I can tell, the main things propping us up were the mournghul, settra, and, to be fair, ludicrously underpriced necroknights.  Post GHII nerf, it's mostly just the mourngul.  Overall our stuff is too pricey for its toughness and offensive power on their own, which leaves us dependent on synergies and buffs and spellcasting, which in turn makes us far too vulnerable to all the shooting and sniping that's already overpowered in this game.

Combine that with being the smallest faction with the least variety and fewest options - including exactly zero current-style battle tomes - and yeah, from my own vantage point the way Death fits into the current competitive meta is simply that 'we don't'.  Of course, GHII could easily turn that around if it lightened up on casting/summoning restrictions, did something to curtail sniping, lowered some of our points costs / raised points costs on other factions, gave us grand-alliance level spell lores, etc.

[Bradifer]

If they don't want us to have shooting attacks, that's fine.

But the problem is that Magic is just significanly weaker than shooting. Almost all Magic is 18" range, and you don't get to move until after you try to cast spells. So it's pretty easy for your opponent to just stay 19" away with their important units.

Balewind Vortex is sortof a cheese option that isn't allowed at a lot of tournaments anyways. Plus, 100 pts and paying and painting up a tornado that you really shouldn't need doesn't seem right.

Obviously a new battletome should put us back in line, and a few new unit releases would be nice as well. But they've also got to be careful to not buff us too much in simple ways. Healing/regeneration can be pretty disheartening to play against if its backed up by other strong elements (See Sylvaneth, healing treelords + regenerating kurnoth hunters when both have tremendous defense and solid offence).

It seems like Death always required a bit more finesse to play rather than the Kurnoth/Skyfire/Thundertusk point and click methods. Let's hope we get buffs but get to remain with unique playstyles, not just "me melee, me durable, point in direction and get in combat" style of the melee oriented Ironjawz/BloodBound/Ogre style older lists.

[Sception]

I think it's alright in principle to have subfactions without shooting, just like it's ok in principle to have subfactions without spellcasting, or monsters, or even infantry.  But the alliances are supposed to be big and diverse.  Your alliance choice shouldn't be locking out out of an entire phase or play style of the game.  There should be options for a functional death army that participates in the shooting phase, at least as a supporting tool if not the primary win condition.

It's especially frustrating that we're all but entirely locked out of one of the key phases of the game when there's almost nothing in the game that's exclusively ours.  we don't have the premier melee or tanking or speed or magic.

[Nico]

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Combine that with being the smallest faction with the least variety and fewest options - including exactly zero current-style battle tomes - and yeah, from my own vantage point the way Death fits into the current competitive meta is simply that 'we don't'.  Of course, GHII could easily turn that around if it lightened up on casting/summoning restrictions, did something to curtail sniping, lowered some of our points costs / raised points costs on other factions, gave us grand-alliance level spell lores, etc.

There's a distinct lack of variety. Your opponent is really faced with questions like "are they going to stack defence/regen and grind on one particular objective?" or "are they going to stack defence/regen and grind less well on two objectives?" or "are they going to speed something up, so that they can stack defence and grind my front line turn one?"

[FRoper]

4 hours ago, Nico said:

There's a distinct lack of variety. Your opponent is really faced with questions like "are they going to stack defence/regen and grind on one particular objective?" or "are they going to stack defence/regen and grind less well on two objectives?" or "are they going to speed something up, so that they can stack defence and grind my front line turn one?"

essentally every one of my games. we need some variety. PLease GW give the death some love or at least get rid of the frost wreated ice. damn abilty kills my vampire every game.