Death1942

Death can fit your described play style quite well but keep in mind Age of Sigmar is not Total War Warhammer. The biggest difference is they got rid of all of the rank and file stuff and now the game is much more fluid in its movements and a bit more focused on the heroes. A blob of skeletons, ghouls, reapers or graveguard is great for holding an objective but they aren't really going to tie up a front line like they would in total war, the battles are fought in a different way. In regards to your question about your force, I wouldn't worry about being in the hole for $30, this hobby is far far more expensive than that haha. You can ally in the flesh eater courts and I think you can even run them as a big combined death army but typically most people wouldn't run the big death army. Usually you pick one of the legions in the book (Nagash, Sacrement, Blood, Night, Soulblight) or you pick one of the sub factions with their own book (Flesh eater courts, Nighthaunt, the new tithe army) and build your army from there. Your choice is to either go down the FEC route (not a bad shout, an incredibly powerful army), pick a legion or possibly even wait for the new army (tithe) and see what that is about. Your death collection will grow and allow you to field a bunch of different forces as it does grow (for example I have a blood army and if I go out and buy some vargheists I can easily transition it into a soulblight army). I suggest you read through the lore (fluff) and rules for all of the legions and see which ones takes your fancy and come up with some rough lists around it.

If you scroll down a bit on this forum you will see another post about them with some awesome ideas to try and fix them. In short I would personally never run any of the battalions but I really would love to have an extra artifact sometimes.

Thoughts on the Coven Throne in Legion of Blood? Not overly amazed by the model and transporting it would be a pain so I always avoided it, however it does seem to be a fairly decent support hero for a Blood Legion force and I am tempted. Has anyone run it in Legion of Blood and if so, how did you find it?

Back on topic... Are we getting model previews this Thursday?

AOS Coach did a video on Legions and they brought up this topic. The consensus was the swords are probably slightly better (although either choice is fine) mainly because that extra +1 to hit will make a big difference against all of the -1 to hit that is floating around. As for the original question, you should try and not mix weapons but explaining what a unit is armed with clearly to an opponent should be more than enough (I certainly wouldn't care). I will also say that it is surprisingly easy to replace those arms as they are very fragile, I broke a bunch of arms off when I dropped some while spraying on the undercoat and it was easy enough to glue back on the arms. You could easily cut off the sword (or spear) arms at the shoulder joint and just glue on the other weapon.

Bit hard to be judging it off of still images in a trailer. I am very curious to see the model reveal especially if we get some painted model shots. The theme looks very interesting.

I might be in the minority but I don't want to see Tomb Kings come back. They were my first fantasy army and I enjoyed my time with them in the past but I feel like a clean break would be much better for the designers and the game overall. Happy to see things like constructs re imagined into the new army but I definitely don't think they should bring back any of the old models.

The above advice is solid gold. Personally I went for Legion of Blood initially with an eye for soulblight in the future. I got the start collecting skeletons box set, 3 more boxes of skeletons (for the 40 man horde), some blood knights, 1 box of wolves (2x5 man units), a necromancer and 2 zombie dragons. That sets me up with a pretty decent initial force that can go in multiple different ways. I can get more blood knights and go soulblight (or add in Vargheists), I can add the mortarch in and proxy as whatever one I want (Manfred, Nef, Arkhan) and that changes up the army quite a bit.

Anything that can dish out mortal wounds really. 1000 point games can be really rough when someone takes a beefy hero (just like you are) so having the ability to do say d6 mortal wounds to a vampire lord on zombie dragon is going to make your life a lot easier.

Seems incredibly solid. An option might be to drop the reapers down to a cheaper unit like black knights and take another endless spell (maybe jaws or purple sun or something else to stifle movement). I think blades on the skellies is better and seems to be the more competitive choice.

I have always subscribed to the rule that if you say a unit is armed with X but visually it has Y and you have no other of that unit with a different weapon then you should be able to run them as whatever weapon you want. If you also play that way (and most people I have come across play that way) then I suggest you go all shields and when you use them in game just tell your opponent that they are actually great blades.

If you take the 3 debuff spells then how are you ever going to deal damage? I think the idea is fine but you want 1 or 2 decent offensive spells to help take out enemy units as the wolves aren't going to do much on their own.

I can only speak about a competitive front as that is what I play. The shields aren't great as there is so much rend these days (and you go to 4+ to wound), also consider that grave guard are summonable and so you can bring them back for 1cp. For those reasons I think taking the great blades are a better shout as they will hit harder and their situational defensive boost from the shields doesn't really matter as much if they can come back to life. Regiment size is typically min or max and nothing in between. I think due to the ability to bring back a unit for 1cp I would always lean towards the biggest unit possible. These guys are either going to be the big centre block that is hard to shift (shields) or your big anvil (blades with buffs) and you want to maximise its potential by taking the biggest unit available. I find that taking small units only works well for really fast units (black knights, direwolves, various nighthaunt units) because they can quickly threaten objectives and so their min size isn't as much of a hindrance to their output in the game because I am not expecting them to kill anything. I really want a unit of graveguard and I plan on modelling them to be mostly blades with some shields because I like the look. I think rule of cool should definitely be considered as well and for that I think the shields look the best by far.

No FAQ to remove Reapers from the Legion of Nagash feels like a mistake. Surely the meta lists are just going to take 20 instead of 30 and do basically the same trick as before? Nothing in the book really jumps out as equal to that unit for the same slot and points cost.

That last point was my feelings on a lot of these. I really really want to run 2 units of blood knights and Vhordrai but 3 is too much of a stretch and it becomes basically my entire army at that stage. I think they need to be careful (or rework the benefits of a battalion) to avoid the mess that is the 40k detachment spam and allies. Making the battalions easier to run is good in the long run but we need to avoid opening up any for abuse (or auto includes).

So I was digging through the book last night trying to decide between a Soulblight or Blood army and I was trying to see if I could fit any battalions in. Aside from odd restrictions that need to be FAQ'd (No Crimson Keep in Soulblight or Blood from what I can see) it seems that our Battalions are far too restrictive and frankly the benefits are rubbish. On a whole it seems like none of our battalions would ever seen competitive play and even if you do take one your benefits (outside of the CP) are very situational. Do you think this was an oversight or a deliberate design decision for the death army?

Awesome, love that combo and it is mighty tempting to take Neferata but I am worried she still gets blown off the table early on. I might be missing something but it seems like on the warscroll builder the Vargheists aren't listed as battleline in Soulblight? Was that just a rumour or did it actually get released that way in the handbook?

Thanks for the replies, my list is now looking like this: Vampire lord on zDragon: General, Sanguine Blur, Ethereal Amulet, Vile Transference Vhordrai Necromancer: Overwhelming Dread 2x5 Direwolves 40 Skeletons: Swords 10 Blood Knights Purple Sun Extra command point The grave guard definitely don't feel as good as the skeletons for their points. Added a necromancer to try and get some debuff spells in via the death lore. Not overly sure what the necromancer is going to do, maybe he can sit on an objective down back but then he won't really have anything other than maybe some dire wolves to back him up. Hoping that 10 blood knights and 2 dragons slamming into something will give me enough of a boost to close out a game.

How do you get the double ethereal dragons? New to the book so trying to gather up all the combos available to the army.

Thinking of diving into Legion of Blood as my first Sigmar army and eying off the following units: 2 vampire lords on dragons 3x5 dire wolves 10 blood knights (not sure if 1 big block or 2 5 man units) 30 grave guard 3 Vargheists No real idea if that is a decent army or not but it looks like it could be fun (and quite fast other than the grave guard). Struggling a bit to see how I can make proper use of the blood legion bonuses, it seems pretty lackluster when it only applies to a handful of units in the whole army. The other army I was considering was with a few more banner units to try and maximise the -1 to bravery.