Mr Mystery - Master Necromancers.

[Mr Mystery]

Well, OK.

Far from a master. But what I lack in skill and experience I totes make up for in sheer enthusiasm - so much enthusiasm I don't know where I want to go.

I kicked off an Undead force way back when Sigmar's Blood came out. Plan then was to assemble an Undead force in-line with the campaign book. But that didn't happen. Boring old real life stuck it's oar in what with work and needing to eat and that.

But now? Now I'm back in the graveyard, baby! Picked up the Malignants 'Getting Started' box yesterday, and a Mortarch (because it's nice to have a General).

So currently my force stands at.... 20 Ghouls, 20 Skellingtons, 10 Dire Wolves, a Corpse Cart, a Mortis Engine, 3 Spirit Hosts (gorgeous models, pain to build), 5 Hexwraiths. Oh, and Arkhan The Black.

I'm not one for comp systems (I'm enjoying the freedom of 'yeah, take whatevs) but I'm thinking it won't take a great deal more to round it all off, and already I have a reasonable selection of unit types.

Barring Arkhan, I'm still on course to complete my force to the original plan - that of following Sigmar's Blood :)

But has anyone dabbled in the dark arts in the Age of Sigmar? Got any pointers that are easily overlooked?

[Erik Setzer]

I could probably use some hints myself. Had about 8000 points painted up for WFB. Right now they're just looking really nice on some shelves (and occasionally being picked on by a cat who thinks she's a gamer).

[Mr Mystery]

I'd like some Undead formations.

Rules perks are of course nice, but it's more to give me ideas for how my force might look.

The stuff I've got so far is a reasonable sized force for AoS, and my local store is going to be doing a campaign. You start with a Capital. That grants you a General model, and up to five Warscrolls of no more than 20 wounds each.

None of my existing units breach the wounds limit, which is nice - but overall I'd like to boost my Infantry up to 30 strong so I can benefit from their size bonus for longer.

Also, still trying to get a handle on how many characters is 'about nice' in AoS.

For my Ogres, I'm well used to just fielding two or three from my square bashing days, and they don't really get much in the way of synergy boosts at present.

Maybe a couple of Necromancers will do - particularly if I use the Empire Wizard kit to convert up Acolytes for Arkhan to tow around.

There is much to consider!

[Erik Setzer]

I'd think a Vampire might be nice, a bit of extra magic and some punch in combat.

The new campaign book might have some formations, so at least there's that?

[Mr Mystery]

Very true.

I'm not 100% on including Vampires, as I'm going with Arkhan. I see him as being quite dismissive of Vampires, given he pre-dates them and their propensity for betraying Nagash - though having said that, if I go with a second Malignants set, I may do a Coven Throne - a way for Neferata to keep her hand in without keeping her hand in.

The second box really appeals, as I think quite highly of Spirit Hosts, and I can always expand the Hexwraiths to a deadlier 10 - or plump for some Black Knights who have serious hitting power on the charge.

I'm also considering either Morghast, Vargoyles or Crypt Horrors. I like the models, and I also enjoy the sheer hitting power of monstrous infantry.

Going to set a budget of £50 a month, as I'm also taking part in a Tale of Gamers via Facebook, though I will admit to an obvious cheat by using my existing Batallion to get a head start!

[Erik Setzer]

Oh, well, if you have Arkhan, you don't really need a Vampire for combat power. Arkhan's my Mortarch of choice.

If you've got the wounds allowed to pump up the Hexwraiths or Black Knights, go for it. The more the merrier, right?

Morghasts are nice, but given your budget limit, they might take up too much of your budget. I'm thinking that'd be a box of two Morghasts and maybe one of the older, more inexpensive characters, and there's your budget for the month.

Tale of Gamers thing sounds interesting. I think the local GW store would probably have some success trying that... Not much money from a single person each month, but likely to draw in a few, and that's a tidy sum each month. And it'd be fun for the gamers. I'm not sure if I'd be able to do something like that, though. Discounting the new armies for AoS, the only armies I'm missing, off the top of my head, are Dark Elves, Bretonnians, and Chaos Warriors (Slaves to Darkness now?). Of those, Dark Elves are most likely to get my attention, but heck, maybe Chaos to complete my collection and make use of the new book. That's a good way to keep yourself from going nuts with the purchases, though!

[Mr Mystery]

It'd also help to show that AoS doesn't have the same 'points floor' as Warhammer has/had*. It's not exactly a skirmish scale game, not a mass combat, but works best (in my experience) somewhere in the middle.

People just need to give it half a chance. It's not a groundbreaking rules set, but nor is it the turgid pile of poop many decried it as at the outset.

And in case anyone's wondering, the £50 ToG cap is indeed to make the most of the Getting Started Sets :)


*delete to taste

[grimmas]

May I suggest a big bucket of Zombies it's not really an Undead army if you can't raise the corpses of your enemies to fight for you

[Mr Mystery]

I would....and I will.

Just, not with the current models. I'm not even sure they were much cop when first released, let alone many years later!

Just checked their Warscroll.....40 stinky Zombies, with a Banner, and a Corpse Cart behind.

That's.....that's not a unit many people will want to tango with, no?

[grimmas]

Yeah they aren't great models. I have seen them kit bashed with empire, brettonion and Elf kits to good effect though.

They do get dramatically better in numbers with a corpse cart don't they 😮

[Mr Mystery]

2+ to hit and 3+ to wound, I should say so!

And as I eschew formal complaint systems (got nothing against them, just not for me) I'm containing to enjoy finding out what is and isn't OTT. If I did field the above, and despite efforts to mash them up it still steamrollers my opponent on at least three occasions, I'm cool to reduce down the main unit.

Why three occasions? Objectivity. Not everything that does well in a game is necessarily well hard - there's always room for a fluke, not to mention an unprepared opponent.

Though such a unit would be sent down a flank to help control my opponents movement options

[Erik Setzer]

My only real problem with AoS is the lack of real balancing mechanic (the number of models thing is awful, and even going by wounds doesn't work). And the whole killing off a 30 year old game for it, when they could easily have just kept both going.

I don't think my zombies will work in AoS, at least most of them. In order to make them easier to paint and not so boring to assemble, I was using larger bases to put multiples on. To represent four zombies I'd use a 40x40 base with a pair of gravestones in the rear and fresh zombies in front of them. Posed the zombies in different ways, like one holding his own head surprised, a father/son reunion with them clasping each other's shoulders/upper arms, one still dragging himself out of the ground, stuff like that. Works well in a block regiment, but not in a game base on individuals. Similar problem for units like Skeletons (my old school ones... got a bunch of new ones from a guy, and I did get them painted up, so they're fine), Skaven, and even High Elves (mostly the ones from 4th edition), where in each case I used the awesome old 20x80 bases to set four models on a base to make ranking easier. Eh.

[grimmas]

Very wise Mystery. Though I reckon with their lack of a save and fairly slow movement it would be quite a laugh taking them on.

[Erik Setzer]

Though such a unit would be sent down a flank to help control my opponents movement options

Sounds like the trick I did with Cobras' torps in BFG. Didn't matter if they hit the target, it forced my opponent to direct their ships where I wanted. It's fun when you can dictate to your opponent where they're not allowed to go. :D

[Mr Mystery]

As a scenario or otherwise pre-arranged game, and without the rest of the army cherry picked to take advantage, absolutely.

I saw a horror show of a game on FB. Nagash, two Mortarchs and then about 150 Zombies.

Yeah.....

- - - Updated - - -


Sounds like the trick I did with Cobras' torps in BFG. Didn't matter if they hit the target, it forced my opponent to direct their ships where I wanted. It's fun when you can dictate to your opponent where they're not allowed to go. :D

That's the spirit! All about rock and a hard place. Down one flank is reasonable, but down both would be lame behaviour on my behalf.

[malisteen]

The first thing to address with Age of Sigmar is the force organization issue. I prefer informal gut checks to more formal homebrew comp systems myself, but in general existing Age of Sigmar groups will have preferred ways of handling this by now, and if your local area uses a particular comp, you'll want to take that into account.

The second thing to consider is summoning - though this is often incorporated into comps, some do it wrong, and as a Death player you'll definitely want to do it right, even if that means doing some lobbying with your local scene. Here's the deal: in vanilla, plain old fashioned, no rules Age of Sigmar, there's no real limit on the models you can deploy at the start of the game. As such, any unit you summon during the game you could have just deployed to begin with. Summoning in vanilla Age of Sigmar is thus functionally just an alternate deployment method, and any force organization used - whether gut checks or formal comp - needs to maintain that. ie, when you agree to forces before the game, anything you want available for summoning needs to be part of that agreement, and then you simply hold it in reserve instead of deploying it at the start of the game.

With that out of the way, you do have a nice starter force going. Unless I missed something in the thread, you currently have the vamp counts battleforce plus the malignants box, and Arkhan? After that, I'd recommend upping the size of the spirit host unit with a second box (as you say, they're nice models, and pretty cheap by GW standards), and also look into a big block of zombies to go with that corpse cart. If you're playing at a GW store, you'll be stuck with GW zombies which... they're not terrible, but model-wise they're definitely looking their age. On the up side, they're not too pricey for a box of 20. If you're not playing at a GW store, I'd recommend Mantic models. 40 should be a good size for you.

I'd also consider a necromancer to be a high priority purchase, as it's a great model, it's very survivable for an infantry mage with the look-out-sir rule it gets, it benefits from both your mortis engine and your corpse cart so there's synergy there, and its spell is fantastic - which is doubly useful for you, since iirc Arkhan will get to use it as well.

Next, you might want to pick up a box of Morghasts. They're very cool models, and they're a solid bodyguard unit for either Arkhan or the Necromancer. I prefer Archai, in particular because they have a chance of saving wounds bounced to them from the necromancer.


After getting the zombies and a necromancer, you may want to consider an alternate commander. Arkhan's a great model and an excellent game piece, but his command ability isn't the most amazing ever. Additionally, sometimes you'll want to play in smaller games, where Arkhan can start to feel a little out of place. I'd recommend either a vampire or, better yet, Krell.

Krell is unfortunately in resin, which can be a bit of a hassle for GW (look closely for mold issues, and return for an exchange if there are any problems), but the sculpt is amazing, and he's an absolutely fantastic piece in game - excellent command ability, hits hard, and super durable thanks to halving incoming wounds (remember that's calculated per unit, not per attack), making him my favorite general in the death faction. When fielding Arkhan I often run Krell as the battlefield commander, and they're something of a duo in the End Times books. Krell is my own go-to general in all games large and small.

If you do get krell, though, you'll want to pick up some grave guard to go with him for both thematic and mechanical reasons, and that can get expensive. I'm a huge fan of running a big defensive 'deathrattle block' consisting of 20 to 30 spear-armed skeletons surrounded by a protective shell of 15 to 20 shield-armed grave guard (or tomb guard). Anything that charges the guard will come within range of the skeletons' spears with all their many bonus attacks, but will only be able to swing at the tougher guard. Put defensive buffs (mystic shield) on the guard, and offensive buffs (danse macabre) on the skeletons. Krell compliments such a formation well, as does a wight king BSB (Forge World makes a good model for that). Of course, if you've gone that far, you almost might as well pick up a box of black knights, and a couple more mini squads of 10 skeletons to get up to a full deathrattle horde formation, which works well for this sort of mixed unit block by letting the skeletons, wight king, and grave guard all reliably march the same distance each turn.

But if you don't want to get all that extra stuff that Krell likes to bring with him, then a vampire is a decent alternative. Much more fragile, but helps with melee punch, and gives arkhan another spell option (though not as useful a spell as the necromancer brings). Vlad von Carstein presents an interesting alternative to a regular vampire, having a less impressive command ability, but being considerably more durable. Offensively they're a bit of a wash, as Vlad has more attacks and better rend, but a regular vamp has more damage. If you do get vlad, you might want to pick up a wight king for his spell ability, though honestly you might want one anyway because it's just a nice model.

Beyond that, the only thing I'd strongly recommend is a trio of bat swarms, which can be summoned to hamper enemy shooting. The official models are kind of lousy, but there's a decent alternative in the lord of the rings line.


There's a lot of other great stuff in our faction, especially if you include tomb kings stuff (the statues are great in age of sigmar, for the same 'halve income wounds' ability as Krell), but you're already looking at a pretty big pile just with the stuff you already have plus recommendations already made, and you don't want to let things get out of hand with absurdly huge piles of unpainted models like I have (http://www.vampirecounts.net/threads/age-of-nagash.29983/#post-436141).

[Ben_S]

Just, not with the current [Zombie] models. I'm not even sure they were much cop when first released, let alone many years later!

As hard to believe as it may seem now, I actually remember thinking how amazing those were when they were first released. They were one of the early plastic kits, along with the hunchback chaos warriors, the dog-like Skaven, and the TK skeletons.