Nagash Returns to the Grave.

Nagash is Dead long live Nagash!

I’m your dream, make you real
I’m your eyes when you must steal
I’m your pain when you can’t feel
Sad but true

It is sad but true the king is being laid to rest in the tournament scene. I have not played AOS very long and my during first tournament I fumbled around trying to control the master of magic and fell in love with him. However after the GHB19 point increase I must step away. Let me explain.

For years I have been a 40k Guard Player. I cut my teeth on 5th edition mechanized melta vets. My list was strong and I was always a contender to win. My combat doctrine was simple: Force Redundancy. What is force redundancy….some call is SPAM. But for years I liked to find the best unit for the job and bring as many as possible. Currently in 8th edition 40k I like to run and as many Catachan Tanks as I can. The thought process is simple. I have X amount of units that can do a job. If one is eliminated or fails to do that job, I have like 5 more of the same unit to take up the slack. I always played with this in mind. overwhelming firepower mixed with board control. It is just how I played. As a general it is very forgiving. If I made a mistake in a game  my list would hold me up while I got my mind straight. Flash forward to AOS and I totally went the opposite direction, “I picked the most expensive unit in the game”. At first it was hard for me to grasp how to play with Nagash, but over time I learned what was a threat to him and how to position him for max effect. However all the while even at Warzone, I felt a little behind the curve, because he was half of my points. Pre GHB2019 He cost 800. I felt you needed a spell portal to play him properly. I also feel that a Necromancer is an Auto include in any list. So 4 models = 970. That is just about half or your list. Now you need to fill it out with enough models to protect Nagash and claim objectives. It worked ok, I would just smash some armies that could not deal with my Chainrasps backed by LON resurrection, but others armies were hard to deal with. I was 100% confident I could out attrition any army I faced, but in a tournament you are lucky for 3 turns not the 5 you get in causal. So all in all I felt I was in an ok place, but not a great one. In fact I argued with my buddy Mike Nguyen all the time that Nagash was over costed. He would scoff and say that Nagash was OP. “all this from a Skaven player”. So as the GHB19 approached I wished and I hoped that I would see a reduction in cost. But as we all know that was not ment to be.

With the release of the GHB19 I saw the writing on the wall. I saw an increase of about 200 points in my Warzone list, “thank goodness the let us use 2018, or I may not have won 3 games”. Nagash, the portal, and the Necromancer went up to 1050. Don’t even ask how much my 20 Grimghast Reapers went up. Look I know Nagash is good, but is he 850+70 good? I am not so sure.

Nagash Pros:

1. Command trait:  board wide no battleshock, re-roll 1 on save and to hit. “this is the best thing hands down IMHO”
2. 8 spells and unbind
3. +3 to cast and unbind “at full”
4. good damage in combat for a monster
5. 4+ to ignore mortal and 6 to shoot it back
6. knows all death wizards that are on the boards spells
7. Great model with a Pope hat
8. Most opponents are scared of him for no reason. Hand of Dust

Nagash Cons:

1. 850 points, “half your army”
2. 16 wound 3+ save 6++ – can die in one combat to most greater daemons. can die to Skaven shooting, can die to mass wound. CAN DIE DIE DIE.
3. His spirit attacks suck ass. Even with a re-roll of 1
4. Needs the spell portal to have a good threat range. Most of the spells that he can take are 18 inch max range. His great ones are 3 inch range.
   1. For the first turn of most games he cast 1 possibly 2 spells if you go first.
5. Can cast 8 spells – but you need other wizards on the board to give him good ones. He knows 5 plus mystic shield and bolt. You will never use shield because of his command ability. So you need a few more wizards on the board or buy some endless spells “#tax”
6. If he gets killed you will never win a minor victory. “2 many points lost”
7. He can only be in one spot at a time. Some deployments/opponents cause him to commit.

There are many more positive and negative to the Supreme Lord of the Undead, but these are the ones that effect me the most.

As I was sitting around trying to come up with a new Nagash list without GGReapers and taking the things I learned from Warzone into consideration I knew I needed a few things. More bodies and more heroes to give the 6++.  I came up with a list that I will go over later in the article. But It never felt right. I felt I was fighting against myself and against the board, “these fears would be confirmed”. Was I crazy to think that Nagash was over costed, was a crazy to think that I needed a new direction? At least I did find one soul that shared the same opinion with me…..

 

HeyWoah

I was looking around YouTube to find something AOS to watch while I built some models. On my recommend video list HeyWoah popped up and his video titled, AoScast19 – General’s Handbook 2019 and FAQ Review caught my attention.  I had not had a chance to dig into the impact of the GHB19 yet. So I put the video on and listened while I painted.

I will say that I enjoyed is tone and some of the edits he did during his 1.5 hour video to kept things interesting. I also like some of the analytics he added. I agreed with him on many of the opinions he presented and others I would possibly disagree with. However I believe he was spot on in his Nagash assessment. Check out time stamp 39:49 to hear what he had to say about LON.

If you are a competitive AOS player his video is definitely worth a watch. You may not agree with his assessment of things, but he does make some great points.

video link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJByxBrLUZE

HeyWoah channel link: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCPd3QpPbl6ldSlKk9de2PCg

 

Death T-Shirts

For all the Death AOS players out there I found an artists that is producing some very cool artwork, known as Russell Ng on ArtStation.com. I was just searching around trying to find some cool Nagash art to put on a shirt for Warzone. I stumbled across his page on ArtStation and really liked what he had going. He uses Photoshop to produce his art, but it has the feel of vector graphics, which I am partial too. Once I found his work I made an account on ArtStation and messaged him for permission to make a shirt for Warzone. In a day or so he replied that I had permission, but he also linked his teepublic.com page and said I could use it if I wanted. I thanked him and said I would use Teepbublic. The good news was Teepublic had a great price and a coupon. The bad news was my shirt would not arrive in time. I ordered it anyway and decided to wear it to the local tournament at Goldmine Games on the 20th. It cost about $25 after shipping and the material was thick and soft, cant complain.

Here is a picture of the shirt I ordered:

 

If you are interested in checking out his work or ordering at shirt here are the links. This is unsolicited I just thought it was cool art.

Link to russ29 T-shirt page: https://www.teepublic.com/user/russ29

Link to Russell Ng on ArtStation: https://www.artstation.com/russell

Maybe I should order a Lady Olynder shirt next? LOG?

 

Free Triumph Cards!

I have been finding and printing AOS spell cards for a while. It just helps me keep things in order when I play. Some of you have sceen the cards and asked about them. Here is the link to MTGcardsmith. This is one of the places I find printable MTG style cards for AOS. You can also make your own cards with custom pictures and text. Get Jiggy Wit It!

Before Warzone I made up some Triump Cards on MTGC and they are free for anyone to download and use. I just find it easier to have a card in your hand to remind you to, “Re-Roll those____”.

Link to my Triumph card set: https://mtgcardsmith.com/user/Thejtj/sets/43831

Link to Cardsmith: https://mtgcardsmith.com/

 

July Goldmine Tournament AKA My Worst Tournament Ever

OMG I suck. How the mighty have fallen, from 4th overall at a GT to 0-3 at a local. So I was up late into the night barfing in the toilet after some bad brisket. I woke up groggy, but my stomach was ok. Lets get it on. The turnout was good, we had 10 players, so we qualified for the Texas Masters. My whole point for the day was to just get as many points as I could for The Masters. It would make my decision to go to Slambo easier.

I had reworked my list to add as many bodies as I could, and decided to add in the Purple Sun. Partly because I wanted to paint the softball and partly because I did not read the FAQ. “yeah the part about needing to roll a 6 for the model over 6 wound, not just getting the auto d6”

My list for the day was:

Game 1

I drew a Legion of Sacrament player. My first thought was, “finally a death player to steal spells from”. I played Kevin, this was the first time I had ever met him. He was a veteran death player that was on point with the rules and his tactics. His list was Arkhan, Vampire on dragon with ethereal amulet, 5×2 dire wolves, 2 x 40 spear skeletons, max grave guard, and a necro.

A view of his army center:

The mission was Total Conquest and I selected Center Ground for my Hidden Agenda. I chose Center Ground because there are 4 objectives equal distance from the center. All I needed to do was claim 2 of them and I got the Agenda points.

Turn 1

We both had 8 drops but he won roll off and chose first turn. He double cast Pinons on his Vampire and was able to move into position to summon his Gave Guard in my face on my weak flank. his army moved up but stayed out of threat range. His vampire killed some Chainrasp, but luckily his Grave Guard failed the charge. He did take the Left objective and scored 3.

My turn one was weak, failed some spells or was out of range for other, I did manage to neutralize a 40 block of skeletons that was on the GG flank. I moved my Chainrasp and Cairn Wraith up to charge the GG. I had to get their numbers down or they would just destroy  my flank. I charged my Cairn Wraith first. I wanted to get him in a good position before my CR made combat. I had my CR 3 inches out, all I needed was a 3 on my charge roll, did I mention I had Vanhel’s Danse Macabre on them. Double ones, fail fail fail. And no command point to re-roll. Now my Wraith was in combat with like 30 GG, goodbye.  luckily I did take the point back when I moved up

Tied after the round  3 to 3

Turn 2

He won the roll and crushed my left flank. He took the point and now I was left floundering. He scored 4.

My turn 2 was a bunch of dancing around trying to get off some spells and re-position. I cast Purple Sun and sent it through the portal. HAHA eat 2d6 wounds Vampire. No not so fast. Kevin said “you still need to roll a 6 to do that”. I was like WTF no, cant be that way, it was the whole reason I took the thing. He was like check the designers commentary. Sure enough I needed to roll a six. well F it. here we go…6 hahaha. Now for the number of wounds.. A 2 and a 1. 3 wounds. looking at the board I knew I was going to lose. I did not have the numbers or the firepower to take the left objective back.

at the end of 2 the score was 7 to 4 in Kevins favor.

Turn 3

He sent the Sun back through the portal and it killed my Necro. “yes I know”.  I also forgot to use the spell mirror artifact that he was caring. Other than that he just shuffled around and collected points. I moved in for the charge on his right objective. I was able to make the charge with Nagash and 2 units of CR. However  I was barely able to shift enough skeletons to take the point.

End of 3 and score was 7 to 9.

Last Turn 4

I was able to double turn, but it did little good, I was just mainly hopping to kill Arkhan for personal moral. There was no chance for me to take back the Left flank. I finished off his right flank, but time was about up. I conceded, but came away with my hidden agenda. He did not complete his, he chose to let his highest point model get killed. I only did 3 wounds to his Vampire on Dragon. He was thinking that It may have gotten hand of dusted. But I never got in range, because I  had to dance around  the vampires 30 inch threat range.

Summary

I was out played for sure. I made more mistakes this game than I usually do. I would say on a given game I make about 1.5 mistakes. This game I made about 5. I forgot easy rules and was just off my game as a whole. Failing the 3 inch charge hurt me, but in retrospect I should have played a bit more aggressively with Nagash and countered his Vampire.  The only real positives from the game for me was that Kevin would go on to win the tournament and I completed my agenda.

 

 

Game 2

Scorched Earth was the mission for game 2 and I was matched up against my friend Mike Nguyen. For my Hidden Agenda I chose to Conserve, all I had to do was keep like 33 models alive.

Mike was playing Skaven and had a minor victory in round one against Slaanesh. His list was 2 x 40 clan rats, 1 small unit of clan rats, a Warpseer, 2 Warp lightning cannons, a bell and 40 monks.

Yeah that is going to be a problem:

I have played Mike many times with Nagash, and have learned to stay out of his cannons range. His bell and monks would wreck my 30 CR, so I would have to counter with Nagash. Thankfully he deployed the cannons to my right and monks to the left. If he would have put them more center I would have had a problem.

Deployment

I deployed symmetrically so I could make a decision to push R or L once he was all deployed. The best thing I did was use 2 of my Cairn Wraiths to lock down his holes and claim the objectives at the back of my board. They would effectively be out of the game, but served a super important purpose.

He made a few mistakes during deployment. He should have put is cannons more of center board and not on a flank, that way he could threaten more of the board. The biggest mistake he made was not putting any units next to one of his back objectives.

Turn 1

I choose to go second. He shuffled up a bit, but did not know that he needed to move a unit over and claim his back objective. He thought that he would auto claim it because it was in his deployment. I felt bad about this because I saw it coming. I wanted to tell him and felt like a bit of a dick, but he is running Skaven after all.

I started committing my forces to counter his on my left. I charged my left unit of CR into his monks as a speed bump. They did a few wounds, but the main thing was to just slow him down and try to start putting wounds on his bell.

end of 1 and score was 4 to 3 with me up.

Turn 2

Mike and I traded blows on the Left. On the right side we both just shuffled around. He killed off my unit of CR and I charged with the next one. The round was just us grinding each other down.

end of 2 was 8 to 7

Turn 3

I won the roll off and charged Nagash in. After spells and combat I was finally able to kill the Bell and some of the monks. They did some damage back from of Death throws. I made my big tactical error of the game on this turn. I should have moved my Right side up to center field to screen the objective. However I moved them back a little. This would lose me the game.

At the end of 3 the score was 12 to 13. We only had 15 minutes remaining. We should have ended the game here, there was not enough time for 2 rounds. However I still felt a little bad about not telling him about his objective. So we decide on a 7 minute turn each.

Turn 4

He charged in with is Clanrats on the right and killed a good amount of my models. He was able to take the objective and burned it for 3. If I would have moved up the turn before I would have kept him off the objective and won. Mike moved his unkillable Warpseer over to the Left objective. So for me to win I needed to Hand of Dust him and cast pinions to get to the objective and take it. I cast HOD, but he picked the correct hand. I was locked in combat so there was no way for me to charge his Warpseer.

Summary

I made 1 big mistake that cost me the game. I did complete the Hidden Agenda.

 

Game 3

I am 0-2, so I should have a good match-up for the last game right, wrong. I got the pleasure of going against Cody from Venomous Wargaming. He was the ringer for the tournament, but was playing is Slaanesh 3 greater deamon list. The mission was Total commitment. With the objectives so far back, It would take me 2-3 turns running to even make it across the board with my CR. His army is so fast that I knew he could counter anything that I wanted to do. So this is one of those games were I would turtle up and play for a minor at best. For my hidden agenda I choose to sacrifice. “I thought it was for Nagash, but latter learned it would have had to be on my necro”.

Purple Rain:

I am not going to go into detail about this battle. I played it ok and Cody also played it properly. His rolling was bellow average and it caused many of his spells to have little impact. I actually held out better to his assault that I thought I would. He did take the right objective and once that happened I knew that he would win on points. I was able to HOD one of his Greater Deamons, and take out a few of his smaller units.

The last round I was ready to commit Nagash and let him die for the Agenda. Cody charged Shalaxi and his other Greater Deamon into Nagash. When he was about to roll for his locus of diversion I was joking around and said,”now roll that 1″, and he did. I did not want that to happen. My luck was just backwards for the day. Shalaxi did only a few wounds, and then I went and killed his other Greater Deamon. He could not fight again because I killed the one with the command trait, “I thougth Shalaxi had it also”. So at the end I could not even die when I wanted too and complete my Agenda. What a way to end the day.

Thoughts on the day

I have been wargaming since 2008 and have been to many tournaments for many different game systems over that time. Never in all those years have I been O for at a tournament. I think that I definitely made some mistakes. I never got an easy draw for opponents. But at the end of the day I just think it is time for me to shelf Nagash while I work on some different lists. I really just need to figure out what kind of list will work best for me over the next 6-12 months and go with it.

Looking Ahead

I will try to get a few practice games in before the next local at Atomic. I will most likely be running a Legion of Grief army or my blookcrusher list. “tested it today and it was not good”

I am finished building Lady Olynder, and have also built my Khorne Bloodcrusher list. I almost have all the components I need for a Flesh Eaters army. I am going to keep building away and see what happens.

What do you think, Nagash OP, Just right or, over costed.

 

Thanks for reading.