Sooper88

Yes

He can't use his own CA on himself. And even if he could, it's only during combat.

Nice. How did your Seraphon matchup go?

So, the math on Deathriders basically comes out to swords being better in general. On the charge, I think swords are still the same / a little better against most targets, with some rare exceptions (particularly targets not affected by rend or that have such a high armor save that the added rend doesn't matter). The best case argument for Spears would be in 10+ man rider units where it could allow you to get more attacks in due to coherency. My personal suggestion is that riders function best as 5 man units. They do best as objective grabbers / fighting smaller skirmisher units / heroes IMO. 10 man units become much clunkier due to coherency rules and lack the hitting power to justify their costs.

Example: My Nagash has Protection of Nagash active, which means he currently has a 6++ deathless, a 5++ from PoN and a 4++ save only against mortals. Nagash targets himself with Burning Head in an attempt to trigger PoN so that he can teleport. The new errata states you can use up to 1 ward roll but doesn't state any other restrictions. Is there anything in the core rules that would imply that I cannot choose to use my weakest ward (6++ deathless) so that I can improve my chances of triggering PoN? OR, can I choose not to use any at all, since the errata states "choose UP TO 1", implying you can choose to use 0? Thanks.

So, as far as competitive lists are concerned right now, do you think Umbral Spellportal is 100% must have for Nagash? I can see the obvious benefits for why it is good for him, but I also see myself eyeing some spicy lists that drop it to allow more points invested into the rest of the army, particularly this list: (see below). This list offers more Mortek with Boneshaper back up, and Helm of the Ordained adding a nice aura to our Mortek. Obviously, Hand of Dust will be less consistent but perhaps Nagash can still ear his paycheck without?

Hope you don't run into Sons. Good luck!

Fair argument. I can see your point of view. My thought personally is that the Mystic Shield spam in a way makes up for the guaranteed all out defense every other army had, so if you needed to add defense on something critical like a Harvester, you had that reliability somewhat through Mystic Shield that other armies had. Now you don't necessarily have that. I play in a pretty shooting heavy meta so I don't think I'll keep running Harvester anymore because I barely, but fairly consistently kept him alive as is with mystic shield up and now that's a lot less likely to go off on my key target, I'll probably pass him up for more bodies.

Was he a problem though? OBR was 35-42% win rate in tournaments and the only list that won anything didn't run him. I don't think it was necessary to nerf him, IMO. I'm guessing they did it just so he didn't have something Nagash didn't

Doesn't work like that anymore, unfortunately. Slain models are all removed at once now, so you can't keep recycling the same Mortek until it fails a harvester roll.

I'm surprised you find 2x crawlers a must still after the nerfs they've had (15 points, can only endless duty one and AOD making them really bad against armored targets), especially considering our army really needs more bodies now that we're a lot worse at fighting (can't stack CAs and use the same more than once, which were the mainstays of our power in combat.) My instinct is telling me that they're a one of in Katakros lists because they can move up with Katakros. I don't think I like them at all with Arkhan in PE lists. I think having the liege sit back with the Crawler is a waste of 400 points when it could be up providing support to the Mortek and Deathriders. Good battle report by the way. I mostly play against my friend's Seraphon and I can say, from my experience, it is an extremely tough matchup, especially Starborne.

Does the Harvester becoming slain trigger its own Bone Harvest ability? Does this allow it to target himself to heal back 1d6 wounds and/or can he heal another unit within range when it dies?

Pretty much the only viable lists in a competitive scene for this army at this point is a core consisting of: Katakros 40+ Mortek 2 Crawlers. Katakros's buffs add too much value to the army to not take. He buffs up everything in the army, has valuable debuffs for your opponents, can heal up to 9 total wounds to allies a turn, Generates a lot of RDP, and is decent in combat to boot. Mortek are a necessity in such a low model count army. You need these boys to hold objectives and become quite point efficient with Katakros buffs. Crawlers are the only real reach the army has, and is the only reason why they literally don't auto lose against the top dog armies (Seraphon, KO, Tzeentch, IDK) that are all wayyy more mobile and can just basically run circles around our army all game. These back a punch, although can be pretty lackluster against higher armor save armies sometimes. The alternate shots are usually just gimmicks that aren't worth using but can come up from time to time. The usual options to round out the list: a Liege or Zandtos, perhaps a Soulmason and/or Boneshaper, some more Mortek and/or a unit of Deathriders. Maybe Arkhan. Everythin else in the army ranges from okay to bad. You pretty much have to play the army turtle mode and hope your catapults blow out key targets and then let the Mortek try and outlast stuff. Not a super fun strategy IMO and I hope the errata and/or next book opens up some new builds and/or let's their range/magic/mobility not all be pretty bad.

The same source you referenced. The only difference is that they interpret the mortal wounds technically as all occurring at the same time, but the defending playing can only allocate the wounds amongst a target unit so the priority would be on them to choose. Don't get me wrong, I can see the logic behind what you're saying, and an argument could be made for the casting player choosing the order, but since the only precedent that exists in the rulebook about ordering of wounds states that the one suffering the wounds chooses the order, it seems like it is more likely that the defending player would choose the ordering and not the casting, since the spell doesn't reference any specific order. I think if the spell made even some sort vague implication of there being some sort of sequencing of the mortal wounds being applied, I think I'd be more inclined to agree with your interpretation, but there isn't so I'm leaning towards the defending player choosing. This is definitely something that warrants an FAQ though! I've read at least 3 different interpretations of this from multiple people and they all could arguably be correct.

If only it were so simple of a question. There's unfortunately no source that supports that's how that the ordering would occur. The defending player choosing the order seems to be the most common response I've gotten from other places I've asked the question since the defending player allocates the wounds and the spell seems to imply the mortal wounds occur simultaneously but again there's no source text that can really confirm or deny it specifically. I appreciate your input in either case. Wish GW could be a little more detailed with their rules, they certainly have a history of including ambiguous rulings.