Part II:
The GF has gotten sick her in egypt, so it seems I have some time on my hands that was not planned for, so I thought I'd try to elaborate a little more on what I have talked on before, on the purely tactical aspect of the army as a whole (particularly in light of the preexisting VC/TK armies).
First off, I think it important that while all these armies are undead, there is little reason to make a whole new army list if they all become too similar tactically. If not, we might as well just make a modified VC or TK list and be done with it after all.
So, basically we are dealing with strengths vs weaknesses here, something which any good fantasy army should have both of in abundance in some form or another.
So far, I've seen a tendency to focus a lot on the strengths, but not so much on the weaknesses (even though we have placed us somewhere in the middle of the TK/VC army books as far as army special rules go now that we have finished that part). Pretty happy with the balance we achieved there btw.
Still, that leaves other, non--army special strenghts and weaknesses to be decided upon. Some of which we will have to discuss and come to terms on, are:
1. The power of our Spells/spell Lore/magic support etc:
I think that in this case, we all agree that beyond average makes sense, but how do we implement it and still make it different from the VC/TK lists?
We have already implemented some of it, by making Channeling easier within the BSB range. How about taking it a bit further, by making the aspect of Channeling itself an area in which we excel? No other army has much focus on this aspect, which is something that I like.
Some of the ideas I have browsed on so far, have been:
-make the mortal element of the force able to help with channeling.
-make necromancy somewhat "safer" to cast, especially for the general, so that we can cast it with impunity if you will..
-to make a "special rule" which states that all dead infantry/cavalry models on both sides to be counted up as play progresses (or maybe just the enemy dead and the dead of our own mortal units), and that we don't have simple to cast IoN type spell (or perhaps one that can only be used on the "skeletal" element of our forces), but instead have a truly game changing summoning type spell that if we can time it correctly, will have a huge impact on the game, allowing us to raise a large number of more dangerous zombies than what is to be found in the VC book. This also balances out the more dangerous zombies in combination with an easy to cast, frequent flyer type spell, which I think is essential both to distinguish us from the VC list, as well as to keep things balanced.
I think it was DoN who mentioned somewhere that we could roll a dice for each dead model in the "dead pool", and on a roll of 4+ that model would rise as a "revenant".. I really like this idea, especially as it removes any need for a spell range as it were, and that it leaves room for adjustments, as well as possible improvements due to magic items, more powerful casters, etc...
2. The army's overall Melee ability:
This is where I personally tend to disagree with most of you here, ranging from D.K's wish for more chaos warrior type undead units, to the existence of the Zenith Lord, the extreme executioner special character, etc. You have heard this all before however, so I won't go into details on this again.
My view on this however, stems from the idea that apart from the vampires, the undead have never had any astonishing warriors, and have always been, and should continue to be a grinding type melee army, and not one which often wins due to a huge difference in CR on one turn. I see this as the VC army's prerogative, not the LoN list. I think our strengths should lie in cunning, ruthlessness, underhanded tricks/tactics, etc, as that is how Nagash himself fought his wars.
This is the main reason I wan't to see the Zenith Lord removed from the list (apart from the fact that he comes off as a bit of a super charged Wight Lord, while also undermining the TK Tomb King and the existing Wight Lord a bit, not to mention the oddity of a not fully sentient being leading an army that he can't possibly have raised himself (and remeber, there is no hierophant requirement in this list either)),is that removing him, will leave us with a little bit of a disadvantage in the character melee department, i.e a weakness we have to work around to win.
What's the point of cunning and ruthlessness, if you don't really need it after all?? Besides, melee combat monster type characters cost a lot of points, as do high lvl spell casters, and if we go for both, that will leave precious little in the form of a "Legion" on the march...
That said though, I think if we sacrificed our better melee characters, we can in good conscience field troops that are slightly better than what we see in the TK list, to even things out.
3. Ranged ability:
This is a little difficult. One one hand, we have the VC list, with only short ranged screams, and on the other, the TK list with lots of bows, dangerous catapults etc.
I think, that we can do well to limit our long range capabilities, and instead focus on the medium range (javelins, naptha-jars, maybe roman style smaller type ballistas, maybe something mounted on monsters etc?) I quite like the more non-exotic and ancient type weaponry here, a sit fits Tactically, this seperates us from both the exisring lists, and it is also in keeping with the ancient legions type army that would hail from nagashizzar.
It is hard to say if it will be considered to be an advantage or disadvantage overall, but I'd call it a conditional advantage/disadvantage. Missile weapons should certainly not be something we're great at, but at medium range, we can certainly do a little damage, and also use it tactically to counter the tactics of other armies.
4. Psychology:
This is an area in which we will be pretty superb, unless we field an all mortal force that is. With lots of fear and terror causing units, and basically a whole army immune to psychology, there is really not that much need to say more.. This is a huge advantage offcourse, although not to such a degree as in earlier editions of the game..
5. Tactical flexibility:
This is a bit early to say, as we do have some unit slots to fill and so on, but I think with the legions, auxiliary units, the mix of mortal and undead units, we will be a whole lot more flexible tactically than the existing undead armies. This can prove to become our major strength, apart from superior magic.
6: Fancy Wargear:
This is one of those areas where I think overall that it would be natural for a predominantly bronze-age type army to suffer a bit. We shouldn't eclipse the "later" undead armies, apart from perhaps a very limited number of elite type units that have for some reason received an "upgrade" from the forges of nagashizzar. With an army the size of those typically led by nagash, any meaningful upgrade in weaponry would require an insurmountable expenditure of resources, bordering on the insane. why bother, if you can just raise a fallen soldier again after all?
I think this is an area of which we should have a small weakness overall, for the above reasons.
7. The Movement Phase:
This is traditionally an area in which the undead armies suffer, but that is a built in weakness to counter the benefits of being unbreakable and so on. We will probably never be what one could call a swift moving army, and neither should we be, but one advantage that we do have over the other undead armies, is that we have some flexibility due to both how the legions themselves operate along with their auxiliaries, as well as possible mortal scouting element that can have the option of fleeing and so on. Since most of our mortals will be in range of the general etc, they will be immune to psychology, and can thus not elect to flee as a charge response.
Overall, we will offcourse have a weakness in the movement phase compared to most armies, but not so much when compared to the existing undead armies. At least, we will have a pretty secure way of countering the non marching on our important units, and possibly spells etc to help any stragglers along, we will not be at such a risk as the VC army for if randomly deployed, etc..
Overall, while I think we have a weakness in the movement phase if we ignore the fact that we have unreakable, have fear and so on to compensate, we certainly don't suffer like the TK army, and while we might not be quicker than the VC army, we will certainly be more reliable and be more flexible.
If I ignore the benefits of being undead element, I'd rate the army as having a disadvantage in the movement phase overall (but this also depends on how the spells will work, and what upcomming units we will see etc).
I think I have to call it a night. Getting sleepy here. In any case, does it seem like it makes sense to go down this path with the army, or do we take it in another direction entirely? Any comments or suggestions? My overall points it that the army list needs to have a built-in balance, as well as fit the frame of the established fluff of the warhammer world etc...
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