Good comps for summoning?

[The Sun King]

Okay so I just got my ass handed to me by my own undead army by a player who had never played AoS before. Surely that cannot be right, right? I lost because he summoned insane amounts of zombies. Does not seem that frightening at first but when a blob of 100 zombies attacks your Verminlord you need to reconsider. On its own the blob hits on 3+ and wounds on 3+ plus and has a bravery of 10! Right, okay... but then they ALL get an extra attack from the Vampire Lords command ability... Game over no matter how many Mystic Shields my Verminlord (or anything) is rocking.

Normally I play completely without summoning to avoid exactly this. But I was wondering, do any of you guys have a good way to balance the game and still keep summoning as a part of it?

Cheers
- Sunny

 

[Demian]

I've tried two things:

1. A limit on how many summoned units you can have on the field... which was fine at first, but Zombies do trump this balancing limitation and, well what happened to you D:
2. Have a WOUNDS pool to summon stuff. Something like 25-30 wounds is optimal in a game where you field an average of 120. Regardless of comp systems, having WOUNDS as a limiting pool on summoning is actually quite nice, and it doesn't break the game since you won't be bringing that many extra models anyways (3 Vargheists are 12, 2 Morghasts are 12... so if you play at 25, that's it!)

As a side note, you may want to consider that Slain models cannot be re-summoned, so if you summon 2 Morghasts and they die, you must own another set of Morghasts to be summoned, etc.

That should balance things out!

 

[The Sun King]

I like the second option! Will have to give that a spin at some point.

 

[Alabaster427]

I agree. Option 2 is great, simple solution that allows for a lot of versatility and doesn't make summoning pointless.

 

[The Sun King]

I have another question. I'm not sure where I heard this and I cannot find the rule supporting it, bu supposedly you can only cast one of the same warscroll each turn, is that true? I mean what is stopping me from having 10 Necros that cast a Zombiedragon each?

 

[Demian]

Well, it only says a Wizard can only cast each spell once.

So, you could have 10 necros attempting to summon a Zombie Dragon each...

Having too many wizards also ruin the game a bit ^^u even with Summoning Limitations, casting 2x Mystic shields + 3 other spells is quite powerful, specially if you play with 1 or 2 big units, since buffs stick to them far better.

5 Wizards should be the maximum you should use, but saddly, there is no way to limit that. Comp systems have this fixed with points values anyways!

 

[The Sun King]

Yeah I agree, too many mystic shields can get powerful, but that only goes to show how important mortal wounds are at screwing with "putting all your eggs in one basket" type armies.

 

[{VIPER}]

I agree summoning can create auto win situations, one game I was playing was swaying in the balance, so summoned a Terrogheist... There are few answers for that in a tight game.

I do like the idea of balancing it somehow with the above options, one thing that my group has decided is that AoS is king of narrative now. So as the Death player I might say for this game what do you say if I only be able to raise skeletons and zombies etc. But then as @The Sun King pointed out, even this could be ruined by spamming zombies so you do need some limit.
You could say that you can only raise what you kill? As in kill 5 enemy warriors on the battlefield, add 5 wounds to your summon pool?

Rather than just a cap, I guess the summoning wound cap could be seen as the available pool of spirits the Death army can call upon within the spirit realm at the moment the battle is taking place.

 

[The Sun King]

You could say that you can only raise what you kill? As in kill 5 enemy warriors on the battlefield, add 5 wounds to your summon pool?

Rather than just a cap, I guess the summoning wound cap could be seen as the available pool of spirits the Death army can call upon within the spirit realm at the moment the battle is taking place.

That is a brilliant idea Viper!

 

[Demian]

That is a brilliant idea Viper!

I can see how Daemons can be summoned with the above post as well, making sacrifices for their dark gods to lure their gaze and earn their favor...

However, any cool ideas for Lizardmen?

 

[Seneschal]

Lizardmen used to be involved in sacrifices, too. I believe it ended with the advent of sixth edition.

 

[Demian]

You could also add to your summoning pool depending on how many wounds you lose, as if the Lizardmen tried to reinforce themselves, but never adding more.

Could be D:

 

[The Sun King]

Well if we assume that Lizardmen work a bit like Stormcast Eternals their soul essence would accumulate somewhere when each celestial daemon died. This pool of celestial souls could then be used by the Mage-Priests to summon new beings to fight for them.