Be prepared

[Deplayer]

I am a druchii player and an VC player, and as such I have a few predictions that I think the community should be prepped for as it relates to Nagash. The biggest problems that I can see is that his large cost will be quickly offset with the discussing amounts of troops he will be able to bring. Btw these are the tactics I plan on employing myself when I run him.

The largest problem other than the fact that he, himself, is no slouch in close combat and would present a tough challenge to any of our lords, is that on turn one he can summon 300 points of grave guard anywhere within 36" of him. On a natural dice roll of 4. He could also bring like 450 points of vargheists or worse crypt horrors reliably on 4 dice. This is all on the first turn, it gets much worse on the second turn as some of these summoning a turn into 360 or 400 pts of grave guard. I see us becoming inundated quickly with risen units, locked in combat, then flanked and murdered by " elite" undead troops. Also, for the price of a hero khemri prince, those units get ws like 6. This might hurt.

Any thoughts?

[T.D.]

There's a youtube battle report on the Nagash thread where most of our power tools - WarlockMasterBus, CoBWitches, LightCouncil - are applied against ol' Bone Pope.

The key seems to be to cross the board and kill him ASAP ...easier said than done, but the alternative is to be infinitely tarpitted

[Dalamar]

Bring Morathi with 4 Death spells
And Malekith

Together they are still less than Nagash

Malekith goes with Witch Elf Horde (they won't hurt him with his 2++ against non magical attacks)

Morathi flies around Nagash, casting Ld10 Spirit Leech every turn (should put a wound on two per casting attempt) and throwing Purple Sun every turn, angled to hit some of his troops as well (1/6 chance of instant death... on a 1000 points model. I'll take those odds!). Then Malekith Throws Black Horror at his face (1/12 chance of instant death due to 4++, can be improved with Word of Pain), while Witch Elves just plow directly at him. They will go through any unit between Nagash and themselves. Wouldn't bother with Reapers, but Scourgerunners can put up to 4 wounds per successful shot (and the undead army will be tiny... or big and crap).

Nagash' summons need to be stopped. A Dispel Scroll is necessary as it can shut down a single magic phase. Hex Scroll can be hilarious but he's level 5 so I'd say not worth the effort... but so hilarious

Nagash may know 9 spells, but unless he invests in a casket (which means even smaller army) he will have trouble casting more than 3-4 spells per turn. Summoning spells are on the high end of casting value... but they are absolutely worth it in case of Nagash.

[Thraundil]

Feedback scroll, baby! When Nagash decides to 10-dice a big summon, you put on average 5 wounds on the bugger.

[Demetrius]

Toad Scroll him + Dwellers = profit

[Dalamar]

Feedback scroll, baby! When Nagash decides to 10-dice a big summon, you put on average 5 wounds on the bugger.

Um. actually, you put .6 wounds on him from a 10 dice cast.

10 dice, wounding on 5+, that's 1.3 wounds, that's 0.66(6) wounds after his ward save.

[Shadowstalker18]

Hahaha I haven't thought about the toad scroll in a long time! Win

[Haagrum]

Taking on Nagash means going old school against the Undead. Kill the big guy as fast as possible. Sure, they won't crumble (although I'd argue that they should, since the reason for getting rid of that rule was that Nagash is back), but taking him out of the equation means a minimum 1100 VPs, and you won't have the tactical nightmare of new units appearing all over the place.

Prioritise his summoning spells for dispelling. Most of the time, it's worth wearing a direct damage spell or a hex if it means not having to deal with another 300-450 points of enemy troops/a Terrorgheist popping up where you don't want to have to deal with them.

Feedback scroll, baby! When Nagash decides to 10-dice a big summon, you put on average 5 wounds on the bugger.

Um. actually, you put .6 wounds on him from a 10 dice cast.

10 dice, wounding on 5+, that's 1.3 wounds, that's 0.66(6) wounds after his ward save.

Actually, it's 3-4 wounds from a 10-dice spell (1 in 3 chance per power dice), dropping to 1-2 wounds after his ward save. Arguably not worth it if they're taking spells from the Lore of the Vampires, since those will put wounds back on Nagash very quickly.

Of course, if Nagash throws 10 dice at a spell, then (1) he's asking for a miscast or a scrolling, and (2) he's nerfed a previous magic phase by putting four power dice into the staff.

EDIT: Also, not an option for us... but I'd be in hysterics if an Empire player managed to get Nagash into a challenge against a character carrying Van Horstmann's Speculum.

[Deplayer]

Ok so I just had a 3000 pt game using Nagash vs tomb kings and will post some sort of battle report soon but wanted to give you my thoughts on Nagash post game.

Let me say first that I tabled my opponent, we'll not quite, he had one unit of 20 archers with a lv1 and prince left and the casket at the bottom of turn 3 and we called it but in 3 more turns I would have taken those too. The other side is that, at the point we called it, he had 0 victory points of mine. I will also say that this was my opponent's third or fourth real game, but he was being coached by a very seasoned player so I feel it was less an issue that it would have otherwise been.

Ok now that the backdrop of the game has been given to Frame my following assessment of Nagash, here goes:
Nagash seems to be a little over rated and over priced for what he does. I will try to explain this in as logical a manner possible by addressing his magic performance and then close combat abilities, then survivability.

Magic, yes he is single handedly a superb magic phase all by himself and he makes the lore of Undeath truly terrifying. The spells I had were 5 from the lore of undeath, all but the hand of dust and the soul stealer, and 3 from lore of vamps, invocation, dance, and curse. First friendly magic phase I drew a dispel scroll, because my opponent wisely did not want me to raise 7 spirit host swarm bases, then dice dispelled 300 pts of infantry which would have been about 28 grave guard, but I got through summoning a 195 pt character, so I brought a fully kitted out vamp hero on nightmare with red fury and lance. Put him in my black knight unit. This gave me another caster and channeler and gave a ton of combat potential to that unit. Turn 2 I was able to get my 6 vargheists a second movement phase which put them In a position to flank a 20 man archer unit with Khalida, the lv 4 special character a tomb king and necrotech. He also cast dance on the black knights and invocation which let me murder Arkhan the black's 10 strong chariot unit. Third magic phase I was again largely stopped from raising my grave guard hoard, but with the Undeath tokens I had by this point I was able to summon a vampire lord with nightmare and lance. His staff ability was wonderful as the first 2 turns I stored 4 dice and that let me get some needed spells through. Overall, in the magic phase he is much like any other wizard, your opponent will probably be able to stop all but one or two spells, and depending on the winds of magic he may only get one spell. When he gets a summon spell off however it is amazing as he was able to summon about 450 pts of vampire character death dealers in 3 magic phases. Truthfully, I only see lore of undeath being of value when using Nagash, as most others would have gotten a 65 pt hero, and who cares about that.

Close combat: Nagash never got into combat today, but honestly, unless against chaff or maybe a large monster like a chimera or dragon that will struggle to wound him and who will suffer from his sword's d3 wds I would never risk my 1000 pt magic phase in close combat, especially not against something that has lots of attacks, like witch elves or chosen, or even a ghoul hoard as the poison would scare me. With one a 4+ and 4++ he is not unbeatable. So as a rule I would try to avoid him in combat if possible.

Survivability: my opponent had a 20 man skelly archer unit with Khalida in it on the left side of the board that really scared me as I did not want 40 always hit on 4s poison shots comming at me. Yeah they wound on 6s, yeah I'm going to save half from armor, then half again from ward, but that still leaves me taking 2 or so wds a turn. Light councils with banishment, cannons, hell even masses of bolt throwers ( not uncommon to see 4 in an elf army). Really it seems massed ranged shooting is dangerous to him, as is close combat with certain units.

All in all, I feel he is far from broken. I would say most armies can handle him, though you are going to work at it, but what his 1000 pts really brought was a great magic phase, but the game was won by my blender lord and Black knight unit flanking arkhan's unit killing and crumbling it with the aid of dance ( which Nagash cast, but any Mage could have) then over running into a heirltitan, killing it then into khalida's archer unit and killing and crumbling that out. I think Nagash's 1000 points are a little much simply for a dominating magic phase, and there is no real guarantee that you will get an amazing magic phase, and despite the fact that he is no slouch in close combat I would try to never put him in the situation where he would need to fight.

[Cornix]

Since last weekend my wife and I have played two games using Nagash. Both have been 5000, she was using used an undead legions army based on VC with a smattering of TK, I used Druchii.

His performance was vastly different in each game, in both games she took 5 undeath and one each from the other lores available. In the first Malekith entirely shut down his magic phase (thank you circlet of iron, you are amazing), We found that there were just not enough power dice for him to unleash his hordes, the best he did was giving some grave guard additional attacks so they killed by black guard, Nagash was pretty much the only model left by turn 4 and not in a happy place about to be charged by a horde of WE with CoB.

In the second I trusted my luck too much and charged with Malekith on Seraphon backing myself to destroy either the sword or the armour, neither happened and 6 successful ++ saves in a row meant Nagash was free to run rampant. Morathi was casting as many spells but I just couldn't dispel enough, and his have so much more impact.

What pearls of wisdom have I gleaned?

1. Stating the obvious, unless it's absolutely essential let the no summon spells through, his raises are frightening, 8 blood knights charging from behind that weren't there a turn earlier is distressing!

2. He is going to have a much bigger impact in smaller games, he is going to dominate the power dice regardless of size but with less lvl4 to dispel and each unit he raises worth proportionately more of opponents army. Just one summon could be fatal in 2000pts where as he needed four or five in the larger battles, even after Malekith teleported himself into the Realm of Chaos.

3. He is not all powerful, there are several characters that would be able to nullify his casting, Malekith did, and there are others on a par, Teclis, any high elf lvl 4 with that reroll magic item, a tooled up slann, most armies can do something even if it's the book of ashur.

4. Don't charge him with big characters unless you know they will win. It was fun but I played the odds and lost, not everybody would be happy putting 810 of lords choice on a roulette tables saying black all in.

5. Big units are good, especially poisoned ones, if only we had a really aggressive poisoned attacks core choice, oh well. We are planning another game today I'm going to try SoS against him. 2++ to hit and 5+ to would should be good, and last a while due to 4++.

6. Watch out for RtD counters. With two he can raise any Mortarch! As monsters they can be summon more easily, characterful but having to deal with Nagash and Mannfred is going to cause all sorts of issues.

Have fun, good luck
Cornix

[Vulcan]

What's his ward save, and how many wounds does he have?

That'll tell me how many cannon my dwarves need to take him down in one volley.

[Dalamar]

4++ and 8 (or was it 7?) wounds. Three cannons should do it. Two will have a chance of not killing him in one salvo.

[dms505]

as most others would have gotten a 65 pt hero, and who cares about that

I was actually thinking about this the other day. I found no reason I couldn't raise a 60 pt Necrotect conferring Hatred on some Saurus Temple Guard, Ironguts or other already nasty unit. If there is no limit to what items you can give them then there are a ton more options like bringing up a 60 pt character with a stubborn crown or other unit helping or character killer item if you had a few Raise Dead tokens out there. Also some armies being able to summon even a single base of spirit host could permanently gimp an enemy unit very cheaply. In fact I'm sort of tempted to make some lizard spirit bases.

However, I was under the impression that summoned troops came essentially naked or chosen mundane gear don't they?

[Dalamar]

They can be summoned with equipment.

But good luck joining a necrotect to saurus.

[dms505]

Also i just went back and read this:

"Signature Spell Call of the Grave (9+)
Call of the Grave is a summoning spell with a range of 12". Base spell summons a 50 point infantry unit from the Undead Legions list. Bigger versions summon a 100 point (13+) or 150 point (16+) unit."

Does anyone have the actual rules in front of them? Hopefully I'm wrong. Read RAW would mean anything that is "Infantry' can be raised with this spell. While probably not as intended it doesn't negate the option to summon infantry characters with the signature spell.

[dms505]

They can be summoned with equipment.

But good luck joining a necrotect to saurus.

Myself and some others looked up rules and could find no reason an undead character couldn't join them. The rules state that a character without the Unbreakable rule can't join a unit WITH it, not the other way around. Is there another rule or an FAQ that I'm missing?

[Fr0]

Does anyone have the actual rules in front of them? Hopefully I'm wrong. Read RAW would mean anything that is "Infantry' can be raised with this spell. While probably not as intended it doesn't negate the option to summon infantry characters with the signature spell.

Yeah, that was close - the spell is actually called The Grave Call and you can summon ~x~ pts worth of inf/MI from a specific UL list. The lore attribute makes it a bit more interesting, successful casts add counters to the table - casters can consume them to adding additional points values to the signature spell.

As for how to fight Nagash specifically.. I haven't really planned that one out yet. Too interested in this new book, will come back with some thoughts.

[flatworldsedge]

There's a youtube battle report on the Nagash thread where most of our power tools - WarlockMasterBus, CoBWitches, LightCouncil - are applied against ol' Bone Pope.

The key seems to be to cross the board and kill him ASAP ...easier said than done, but the alternative is to be infinitely tarpitted

This inspired me to hunt it down. Thought I'd just footnote the link; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0W0RKoSO5Q.

[dms505]

Yea I watched that as well. While I don't play undead and obviously never used Nagash, I saw some pretty major flaws in the strategy and play of the undead player. But I think Naggy is fairly new and people will need to learn him. On the other side so will opponents.