Legion of Nagash LoN: Update to 8th Edition (VC Book): Army Wide Rules

[The Dread King]

When I said 'the above post', I meant DoN's post- I started to write my post before Uziel had posted.

Maybe for take over, as the general has to have some kind of arcane power, they don't suffer wounds if they fail, but a roll on the miscast table as their magical attempt to take control of the army backfires.

Eternal legion characters would probably be Arkhan, Nagash and some kind of tactical mastermind/sneaky guy.

Nagashi-I didn't realise that they couldn't be stubborn when they were out of the Inspriing presence range. Knowing that, I think that rule is fine.

Character marching-I agree with DoN here, maybe all units in general's insipirng presence can march too, or is that overdoing it?

On everything else, I agree with the general idea being brought across.

By the way, is the Soulflayer rule going to be accepted or not?

 

[Uziel]

The Dread King:

I think we might all have been posting more or less at the same time yesterday. hehe

Personally, I,m not against any character with both the Locust special rule and the Lore of Nagash being able to take over if the general dies (on a LD test as DoN suggested). The magical backlash is a bit harsh though. hehe After all, it is not something you will consider NOT doing, so risking a second character to be killed/ruined along with the general is a bit much.

As far as The Eternal Legion and character goes, that is something I think wee need to look at when we get to the special characters. If Nagash is included, then yes, he'd probably be allowed to join them without causing too much disruption, although I can't really see this being ideal either, him probably being Monstrous Infantry and all.

As far as the soulflayer idea (did you change the name from soul eaters btw?) being in the army special rules section, I think this is a bit awkward, since it looks like it will be a very unit specific special rule, and not something that has a large eimpact on how the army itself works. It i not "general" enough for that in my opinion.

DoN:

As far as marching goes, I think it is fine with Characters with the Locust special rule allowing units to march.
BUT, for the Eternal Legion to work and keep its built-in balance (as well as to stay true to the fluff), I think I'd have to make an exception here, and modify it so that It can March if it is within the General's Inspiring Presence Range, to keep them somewhat tactically flexible, too keep their special formation rules as is, as well as to sort of tie the "proper" Legion element of the list directly more to the general himself.
I sort of imagine that the General directing the majority of the undead forces himself, but then hands certain more hard to control elements over to the charge of the army's Locusts, particularly the more Elite elements.
What do you think?

I'd change the Locust special rule to something like (the fluff is fine btw):

-Characters with this special rule that have joined a unit of Undead troops allows them to March as long as he stays with that unit.
-If the general is slain, then the Locust may take a LD test to take over command of any unit they are with at the time (i.e stopping crumbling after the initial damage is done), but must then stay with that unit for the rest of the game.

I can imagine Locust being quite a common rule among our characters, and this is part of the reason why I don't want to see just ANY character with this special rule being able to take over the command if the general dies, and also not to have them as some sort of "special" wizards.
The new VC army which it makes sense to compare ourselves with, has a built-in major drawback, that if it wants anyone to take over if the general dies you have to have two characters with the Lore of Vampires in the army (at least).
If any Locusts can take over (and I imagine we'll easily have more of them in general than the VC army has Lore Of Vampires wizards), we have more or less eliminated the effects of our general being slain. With superior magic, we can probably re-raise the crumbling damage better as well to compensate.
I think, and it appears that the Dread King and Bishop thinks so as well, that if the General is slain, only a character with the Lore of Nagash can take over as general. The Locust can however be very instrumental in keeping us in the game by protecting our more elite units. This is something that the VC army does not have at all.
We can't just make the whole list "better" than the VC/TK list, and then point to the home-made fluff if anyone raises an objection. I think it is very important that we get the balance "right" at the early stage and not move on until we have it in place, since it will affect everything we do from this point on.

-Nagashi: Why is Stubborn still being referred too here? Also, I think they should all take a Panic Test if the general dies. Even just witnessing the army starting to crumble (and having a pretty good grasp of what this entails) should be enough to cause this reaction, as it is pretty much as clear an indication that you can get that the General is dead...

-Alive/Undead mix:

Not really sure I see the real benefits of allowing them to mix at all to be honest. the idea had its appeal admittedly, but when I took some more time and looked at how it would affect the list and so on, I must say I had a change of hart. Especially if this would grant the list more bonuses so to speak.
We have cultists and Ghouls as living parts of the list basically, and I personally think we should have separate characters leading the living element, and the Undead elements for the following reasons:

-It keeps things a lot simpler (sometimes there is beauty in simplicity as well)
-With the exception of the "necromancer" type, I see little justification for letting a character being able to join both types of units. I'd rather see a special rule allowing the above "necromacer" type to do so. I don't see why something like a Zenith Lord would or ever should be able to join the Cultists or Ghouls, or a "Cultist type leader" should ever be able to join an Undead Unit (his rousing speeches would fall on deaf ears after all).
-If the cultists are going to be more of a "suicidal" unit, you wouldn't want to place your necromancer in that unit anyway, as he is too expensive too loose that way.
-It has the potential to become very complicated, especially as far as unit special rules and so on go. Just too big a potential for rule conflicts, and it would probably be a whole lot more effort than it would be worth in the end.
-On a side note, for the Favoured Ones, we could make perhaps a "champion-type" special character instead (such as can be found in the DE list).

-The "Black Armour":

I think it should count as Magical Armour if used on characters. I really don't see the justification of having it as sort of an armour upgrade that stacks with another magical armour to begin with. Maybe our "Wizards" could be allowed to use it though. Getting easy access to a 3+ Ward Save (with either the Talisman of Preservation or Armour of Destiny) is a bit much, and it gets quite confusing as far as points goes. 3+ Ward is very rare (Archaon and Mannfred's former Cloak of Darkness) and seems to cost quite a lot... I'd rather just see it granting a 6+ Ward save (cumulative with Parry special rule), count as Heavy armour, and something that perhaps out wizards could select as well. Thst way, our wizards have access to armour, and may thus select other armour if they so wish..

 

[The Dread King]

Black Armour: Chaos characters with mark of tzeentch + armour of destiny have 3+ ward save. As much as I like the 3+ ward save (Kairos Fateweaver with re-rollable 3+ for the win!) I think that only the best guys should have that-heck, maybe only the best guys should have the black armour. "The best guys" are:
Nagash
Nagash's followers (Arkhan, the 8 other dreadlords, Krell?, Dieter Helsnicht (if he returns) etc.)
One unit of Nagash's personal guards in the army-and that should only be allowed if Nagash is in the army (its my opinion that the personal guards should be able to best your average chaos warrior)

Souleaters/flayers: I can't decide between the 'flayers or the 'eaters. Maybe they should have a civil war. I'll probably decide at the last minute, but flayers seem to be in ascendancy at the moment.

Alive/Undead mix: Necros + DoN's should basically get this rule in my opinion, but this needs to be discussed in the characters thread

Locust rule: I like Uziel's suggestion. However I think that if this rule comes into play all casters should be Nagash lore casters, as it is stupid if some necro bothered to learn the lore of fire if he can't control undead other than himself!

Nagashi: hmmm... I can see valid reasons for both opinions on the rule.. I'm quite unsure about this

Awww, I really loved Manny's old cloak. Why can't GW ever make Manny the vampire god he once was?

 

[Uziel]

Personally, I'd like to see the "black armour" basically replace all Full Plate references in the list, and as such also be available to some of the characters (as normal armour that comes from the normal equippment option).

Locust rule: I think all wizard in the list should have lore of nagash (which I'd personally changes to Lore of Necromancy Btw) as an option, but I can certainly see arguments for making Lore of Death an option as well. VC necromancers have this option arter all.. The option can give us a lot of optional tactics, and it also suits a magic heavy army. You also have to consider how spells are chosen in 8.ed as far as duplicates of the same spelle work and so on. Only one spell lore can leve us with some problems...

 

[Marius]

Easy one first - Black Armour:

I have to agree that the +1 to a ward save is a bit much. Perhaps something useful, like immunity to KB & poison would be more appropriate?

Alive/Dead mix:

I'm going to agree with Uziel & partly with DoN - I don't think that living characters should be able to join undead units, but I also don't believe the undead ones should be able to join the living units.

Locus:-

I'm presuming, with the current idea's, that the characters will end up looking something like this:-

(Locus levels stated would be the maximum available for that character)

Heroes - Living
Berserker Cultist (R&F killer) - Nagashi Captain (adaptable warrior) - Cult Leader (Locus lvl1)

Heroes - Undead
Wraith Assasin (character killer) - Zenith Prince (sturdy warrior) - Mortuary preist (Locus Lvl2)

Lords
Immortal (Fighter Lord - locus lvl1) - Zenith Lord (All rounder, non-wizard lord - locus lvl2) - DoN (Locus lvl4)

If that's the case, then there's an argument to be make for the person with the next highest Locus being the one forced to take over in the event of the general's death.

Note: update & refine this post - way too tired to see if it makes sense anymore.

 

[Uziel]

Marius:

"Black Armour": I don't know if you read my first suggestion for the armour, in whch case it was a heavy armour (5+save) wit ha flat 6+ Ward save. The ward save could only be combined with the save from the Parry special rule.
I think making it a "Mark of Tzeentch" so to speak is the wrong way to go as well.

Locust: As we'll in all likelihood have more Locusts than a VC list has Wizards with the Lore of Magic (and comparing us with the VC list and not the TK one should not be automatic either btw), we will have backup plan stacked upon backup plan etc.. We'd be far superior to both lists (especially the TK one!), and with our living element as well as superior magic and characters not having to risk the front lines on account of we having more elite troops, it just makes for a bad and really unfair combination (especially compared to the TK's).

Also don't like how the Locust turn everyone into "petty wizards". Just teaching anyone some phrases and motions is from a warhammer perspective pretty meaningless. If it wasn't, then anyone could in practice perform any ritual and it would have the exact same effect. Risk free. This wouldn't just be a LoN issue, but it would be damned hard to justify why everyone else wasn't doing something similar as well. This is one of the reasons that I'd like to see the rituals in their current form go, to be replaced by something more like the Sigmar Priest ones instead (becoming something affecting the mortal elements only).

On the issue of "priests", I think we should have Hero Priests only, and then the leader of the Cult being a special character Lord option. The reason being that, well lets face it, the Cult of Nagash doesn't really come close to anything like the cult of Sigmar or anything similar as far as size goes, and more often than not they won't even know about each other. There is no just cause for having more than one leader at the top (as opposed to the Empire's several Arch-Lectors), and if I might be so bold, I'd like to see that special character being "The Disciple of Nagash" (obvious flattery here perhaps DoN, but I think this would make for a cool special character with a lot of potential as well as make the list even more "Carpe Noctem" in some aspects). Having a "DoN" special character could be awesome in its own way (NO DoN, all stats would NOT be 10's with a 1+ Ward Save!). :tongue:

Btw, as we are on army special rules here, how about an Immunity to Poison upgrade to the Undead in the list? I did that for the Legacies project. Not a big balance issue admittedly, but the principle that you can poison a skeleton is bordering on the insane.

A question regarding one army special rule we seem to have forgotten, the battle standard. Is he going to be the same as the other undead ones? We already have the -1 crumbling damage built-in in the Undead rule, should we really have a -2 option on top of this? The reason that I'm asking is that while it is fine for our weaker undead troops (Eternal Legion etc), it becomes really, really good on our elite fighting units, which I imagine we'll already have superior magic to re-raise for an so on. Admittedly, it is not the biggest of issues, but is there room for coming up with something else as far as Battle Standard affects the Undead in this list?

How about making the Will of the Great Necromacer's "Stubborn" effect be part of the Locust special rule as well to keep things simple? That is, if Locust changes how I hope it will.

 

[The Dread King]

The cult of Nagash is mentioned to have several DoN's. There is however, a supreme DoN, who I have suggested rules for in the non-dreadlord special characters in the legion? thread.

Orcs and goblins get on pretty well with two lores (well, not counting Azhag the Slaughterer with level 3 lore of death and Wurrzag with his own spell and a bound one) so I think that we should be able to incorporate lore of death into the list in some way.
I agree, all casters should be Nagash lore, however maybe there should be an upgrade for the best DoNs that allows them to learn lore of death as well. I still think that all legion casters should be lore of nagash first- it's stupid if you can't control undead when you're a necromancer.

The poison rule does not only incorporate poison, but also acidic venom which burns flesh and bone alike.

Evil warrior priest should be the new Nagash captain.

The battle standard is now officialy confusing.

Black armour could be really powerful but it could only be given to the best of the best of the best of the best of the best of the... etc. Black armour, in my opinion, should be quite powerful, but only the big guns should be able to have it (i.e. Nagash, the dreadlords, the special characters and Nagash's personal guards).

I think that it's time to post the amended rules, DoN.

 

[Disciple of Nagash]

OK, going off at tangent's with the character's again. Try and keep on track guys!

Still under discussion:

Nagashi: This is going to have to be majority agreement. We all agree on ItP with IP of the general and ItP against fear causing Undead regardless of range.
The two conflicting points are when the General dies:
1 - Units within IP of the general have to take a panic check
2 - All units on the board have to take a panic check

Personally I prefer option 1. In bigger battles, especially if you want to go cultist heavy your general dying could be crippling. We have to look at the option that some people may want to run all their core / special (if we have a special Nagashi unit) as Nagashi. Having every single one of those units having to take a panic check on not the best leadership would be too much of a nerf in my opinion. The main benefit is only applicable within IP range, I think the downside should only work in the range as well.


Locus
Right to clear this one up. Currently the Legion is going to have Rituals and and a magical Lore. It was voted through and there is little in the 8th to go against this. If anything it is less potent as there are less PD to play around with. The Rituals are meant to be the underlying basic necromancy of the Legion.

Now I do agree that we need to limit who can have this rule, perhaps currently too many characters have it. That can be discussed in the characters thread.

Limited in this way, it is not OP to have specific characters with this rule. Those with this rule are shown to have basic aptitude to bind and control the undead. Some creatures do that instinctively, you don't have to be a master mage to do that. This power is also meant to represent that.

So personally I think we should stick to this rule. Those with the rule know all four rituals, but dependant on who they are they can cast 1-4 per turn (using appropriate PD). It can be a powerhouse if you don't have the PD. If the rules don't reflect this, we can check to make sure they are not OP.

It allows for some flexibility in the caster as well. It allows us to take a Level 4 DoN with these rituals, and not have him tied to the LoN Lore. LoN would be centuries old Liche's, not mortal wizards. It would make sense they can cast from more than one Lore.

If we are going to limit the Locus rule, we could also amend it so these are the characters than can make the army march, much like the old vampire rule. So if you are only going to have 2 with the rule in your army for example, any units within 6" of a character with this rule may march move.

My biggest bone of contention is the results of what happens to the army if the general dies. I really do not like the idea of a character taking over 1 unit. Again we have to look at the variety of combinations. The current ideas (combined with the what has been suggested with the Nagashi rule), would mean the majority of units including the new core would crumble, and all Nagashi would have to take a panic check. I think it is far too harsh. Never mind being better than than VC or TK, I think this is going to the other extreme of being too much of a nerf.

If you want to make it a downside, I still think having somekind of side effect to the person taking over is a better choice. Even if if was something like he has to test every round to keep control, so some turns he is ok, some turns not. Fluff wise this is because the LoN is stronger and the has to be ritualistically tied to the general before the battle, and thus cannot be fully controlled by someone else. This way some turns you may crumble (units with characters would suffer less because of the characters leadership), some turns you may be ok. Worse than VC, better than TK.

Black Armour: I like the idea of it replacing any full plate options. It was second to be Nagash's second skin. Perhaps we could twist that fluff, that some element in the armour bonds to bone and skin etc. The result would be that it adds +1 to armour save and immunity to KB. Limit it for normal troops, reasonable price for characters and I think it is a decent but not overpowered option.

You would have to buy normal armour first (unless you already have it), so the option would look something like:

Character
Light Armour +2pts
~Black Armour Upgrade +8pts (5+ armour, immune to KB)
Heavy Armour +3pts
~Black Armour Upgrade +12pts (4+ armour, immune to KB)

This is just an example, points values would need to be agreed on.

 

[Uziel]

DoN:

Nagashi:

I agree on the first two points, but not on the reasoning of option 1 on the panic test issue.
There are issues being overlooked here, particularly the BSB re-roll, and possible characters joining these cultist units raising their leadership, which makes the panic tests (which only ever comes into play if someone can actually get to the general and kill him) far less of an issue if you're typically within the general's IP range in the first place.
That said however, I think it can be reasoned both ways, but I still don't like the idea that the cultist should "benefit" from keeping their distance to the general.
One can also view it from a point cost angle. Lets say the cultists cost X+1 points with your version, and X points with mine, which would you choose? Yes, I know 1 pts there was perhaps a lot, but if the rule is what tips the balance, this might be the reality of it still.
It is not the biggest of issues however, and in the end I think it's best if you make the call so to speak.

Locus:

I have said what I have to say on the Locust issue, and I don't really have more to contribute. I disagree here, but I realize that this is also partly because I disagree on the overall power-balance of the army as I see it, and how it all ties together. Others may see it differently, and I respect that. We could argue long and hard on this DoN, but in the end I think you should choose what fits your vision of the project as a whole the best.

Black Armour:

The fusing to the person is a bit like a chaos armour in my mind. Don't like the +1 armour save for comparative fluff reasons, and that nagash's (who was a poor smith himself btw) is creating a better armour than Chaos Armour/Empire full Plate/Dwarf Gromril armours etc is a bit over the top for me. The pure armour save increase is very easy to compare up with other armies, and if one adds the immune to K.B as well, one really stars to wonder how this can be justified and who no-one else with a better aptitude for creating armour has done so in the first place? especially as it works on all armour types as well.
That's my two cents at least.



On a side note though, I think that it's going to be very hard to update the list to 8.ed if one is to tie oneself to closely to stuff voted in for a 7.ed proposal some X number of years ago. Voting is also something that only really works if everyone allowed a vote is someone who has earned it and really contributes to the project. another problem with voting is that unit entries and such can really win by just going to the election unopposed. there might be some small arguments etc, but you're still likely to get a unit into the list just because there no alternatives proposed. I wasn't part of the Voting process back then, and I don't know the people involved, but from what I've seen on may of the character/unit choices and so forth, there wasn't really a whole lot of votes overall on average, and I got the impression that lots of them was from people sort of just "dropping in" on the project as it were.

No disrespect to the people involved back then, but I don't see many of them involved any longer and staying true to the democracy of yesteryear is going to do much more harm than good the way I see it. The game has changed too much just to do a superficial update in my mind, and I sort of got the impression that the rituals/magic/magic items were going to be reviewed once we did get to it (to bring the list with the 8.ed book/rules seen so far), and perhaps not just superficially. If that is all there to stay, and so are the characters and units, there is not really a lot of room for people today to properly contribute, and if the majority of those that did contribute originally don't care to be a part of the project any more, I don't see why changing anything from years back to make the list a proper 8.ed list is such a bad thing.

If one want's people to actually contribute here, there has to be room for it for people to take an interest and get properly involved creatively as well.
From what I can gather, it seems that it's mostly just you and Bishop that have been really involved in the 7.ed list from those that post here today; with me, The Dread King and Marius the only ones trying to involve ourselves and help out (based on the number of posts from Marius and The Dread King, I'm guessing that they were not involved in the original list either).
Maybe I've just been involved for too short a time to grasp the scope of interest properly yet, but It almost goes without saying that its going to be hard to get new people interested if the old list is near untouchable.

Just trying to get a more accurate sense where this is heading DoN, and what I can actually do to contribute creatively.

 

[Bishop]

I was thinking Immune to KB/Poison for Black Armour myself. I'm not a fan of the Ward or +1 save options.

The "death of the general" is intentionally harsh in all Undead armies. I think that it should be a harsh side effect. Maybe we will need to look at the Ld values of the other units more carefully to ensure that this is not overly crippling.

Everything else is workable or fine.

 

[Disciple of Nagash]

Contributing: It is a difficult position Uziel. As the LoN goes on, every so often someone comes along and wants to redo the list as they imagine it. So it becomes a case that the project never seems to finish. In addition, no I don't want to ignore all the hard work put in previously. Some ideas were fantastic, and we used the best method possible to be as fair as possible.

I understand this can be annoying when it comes to contributing later, because it feels you are constrained. However when it boils down to it I am not willing to totally ignore 4 years worth of input.

So, can you really contribute? Yes, but doing so understand what has already been done and appreciating it.

Example:

Cultists. You mentioned they didn't really make sense to you, their rules etc. We then discussed the idea and thought behind it, so you understood where the original ideas and intent came from. Then you proposed an alternative which I have now commented on. In general I like your new idea (apart from the magical element).

I am very open to:

Improving existing units and their rulesets
Suggests on totally new units to make the Legion more unique, as shown with the approval of the Legion Eternal etc


What I am not so open to:

Existing units and fluff being dropped for little justification. Fluff especially is very perspective based, and what one likes others won't. It is the reason I won't drop the Favoured Ones. The majority of people liked their fluff and the tribal / degenerate hunting with spears idea upon creation. There was little justification to drop them.

So there is plenty for you to suggest and improve upon, and I think some of your ideas are fantastic. You also have an excellent grasp on synergy and army mechanics, and perhaps we do need to look at the armies power level. However in some cases it is very difficult to tell. In those cases we won't make changes without cause but play test. I should note that when we finalise this list (and I swear we will do it this year!), it is not 100% set in stone. It will then be playtest, and if something is wrong then of course it will be changed - we at least then have good reason to do so.

I hope this clears things up?


Black Armour: Yes Uziel I can see your point in this regard. So how about as Bishop suggest, just immunity to Poison and Killing Blow?

Locus: I do understand your points, I am not ignoring them. I appreciate that if we use this rule, then all characters can not have it. However I think if we are careful to limit who it is applied to, then it opens up options whilst not being limiting.

Nagashi - Yes I think we will have to agree to disagree on this.


Bishop - where do you stand on the Locus and Nagashi ideas?

 

[Uziel]

DoN:

Admittedly I do find it a bit of a struggle to creatively contribute, as the lines are a bit blurry as to what can be changed and what can't and so forth,and how much of an 8.ed upgrade we're really going for.
I imagine the original skeletons were also voted on originally, and so were the cultists etc. I don't really have a real grasp of what were "popular" when the army was first being created for 7.ed either. It is not so easy as far as many of the units go, as they tend to have little fluff compared to let's say the characters in the list, so it is a little hard to judge what one can suggest without stepping on any toes. To me, a well defined unit typically has good fluff backing it, and when the fluff becomes vague and general in its description it also becomes hard to judge how strongly people originally felt about it. If it looks like it was thrown together with little or no fluff, with a handful of people not participating any longer voting on it, it is very difficult to judge for someone like me today what really sold the unit to people back then and so on.

I'll hence forward ask if I can be allowed to offer a suggestion for a unit alteration, and if you judge the current unit "unchangable", I'll just save it for my own little LoN project that I can perhaps one day finish (after the Legacies project that is).

I know that part of the reason why I disagree on things here and there, is because I tend to take a less "epic" approach (4.th ed Undead book angle) and lean a bit more towards having the option to actually depending on playing more tactically instead of having a more expensive/more dangerous character or unit to win the game for me in a classic toe-to-toe approach.
I like that challenge to play well to win to be there, so I'm perhaps leaning more towards a better army synergy (with weaker units forced to work more together), instead of ultra-powerful units taking on enemies by themselves. I do however understand that most VC players (hence members on this forum) tend to be naturally attracted more to "powerful characters" or just "power" in general than the average warhammer player player (that is my overall impression at least), and that I might be facing an uphill battle here. The "host" of 4 wounds Vampire Lords with all kinds of "kill-me-not redundancies" fount in the Necrarc's Workshop section sort of gives one a broader glimpse of the psychology of the "average" Vampire counts player.. hehe

Also, I like the Nagash triology by and large, and since this list was created before their time, I think we're robbing ourselves of the by far largest volume of official information on which to base the army fluff etc. I am quite partial to including more from these books, to take it a step along towards the present "official" take on things. I realize however, that this is next to impossible if one is to stay true to the voting that took place before these releases.
I just think it is worth the extra effort to create something that is not so "4.ed", if at all possible, and I would be open to contribute quite a lot to compensate for "lost" work to see this come true; but I also understand that you feel that you have to stay true to the vision of the original contributors/voters and are thus restrained from going that route.

As to your question, it somewhat clears things up. It is the "existing units and fluff being dropped for "little justification" part that leaves things a little open to personal interpretation.
In the end, you are the judge of what this really entails, and anyone wishing to contribute basically has to convince you that it can/should be justified (since most of the original voters seems to contribute only very sporadically at best)...

On to the specific points:

-Locust: I think this should really be separated from access to the rituals at the very least... That would leave us with more heroes allowing units to march, without many Locusts themselves becoming overly powerful, assuming the idea of rituals stay as they are currently.

-Black Armour: A Heavy armour (5+) with Immunity to Killing Blow is certainly not unbalancing game-wise, and also unique as far as an army-wide armour goes, which I think is a good thing. It is also a good TK counter in the sense that it protects us from the "Djaf's Incantaion of Cursed Blades", which is pretty fitting considering Nagash's hatred of them etc.. Not an expensive option on units either, which I like.
Immune to Poison is a bit strange on an armour protecting someone that should rightfully not be subject to poison in the first place, so is having armour with little or no openings where one can strike the wearer within to deliver said poison. This said however, I think we should stick to one of the options if this is chosen, and I'm leaning towards Immune to Killing Blow of these two options. We have to be careful of not making too many redundancies in the list overall, as that sends a bit of a "nothing is supposed to beat this unit" kind of a signal to other players interested in playing vs. the list.

 

[Bishop]

What is the decide wording on those last two items?

I'm okay with the ItP within IP range, and immune to "undead" fear globally. Panic check within IP is fine for Nagashi units. Some "crumbling" type of drawback for the Undead units.

The General must have the Locus ability? Is that the intent of what we are trying to do here? Make rituals less prevalent amongst the characters, but still allow for a "non-caster" general?

 

[The Dread King]

We should make the Locus rule and then debate over who gets it when we get to characters-what matters is passing the rule itself, not who is going to get it (at this stage, anyway).
Black armour-new idea! Different armour power levels! It shouldn't be an army special rule because different people will have less/more effective power levels, as Nagash will obviously give his most loyal followers something more than what some captain gets. On the other hand, it could still have different power levels, but there could be an army wide rule which applies to all models wearing it. Nobody should debate it being +1 to ward save; we can debate that when we get to characters. For now, we should just decide what rule is going to apply to all black armour. In my opinion, it could be a mini-nightshroud or maybe its shadows could confer -1 to hit penalty on enemy units trying to shoot at it/-1 to cast for wizards casting damage spells at it. Remember, this rule doesn't have to be potent as if we want to make it potent, we can always edit the specific rules for what it does to specific characters in the characters section when we update that section of the army list.

 

[Bishop]

Just trying to figure out WHY the Locus rule was added. I read back through the thread, and yes.. that's what I was thinking. So, it's fine. WHO gets this rule to be discussed later.

As far as the Locus rule goes... should it be the model with the highest Locus ability must be the general, then highest Ld if tied. or, the general must be the model with the highest Ld, which must also have the Locus ability?
The more competent "caster" or ritualist should be the general.

Some kind of Black Armour progression based on power would be kind of cool and characterful. Would have to be careful to restrict / cost it appropriately.

(insert fluffy name)
Mundane armour can be upgraded to Black Armour. Black Armour ignores the first -1 modifier to armour saves. (ie. a Str 5 hit would only be -1 save modifier instead of the usual -2)

Example progression, just to illustrate the idea...
Core: ignores AP
Special: ignores AP, -1 to be hit
Rares: ignores AP, -1 to be hit, Immune to Posion/Killing Blow
Heroes / Lord: ignores AP, -1 to be hit, Immune to Posion/Killing Blow, +1 to Ward saves (grants a 6 ward save if no other Ward, stackable)

 

[Uziel]

As far as the Locust idea and who's the general etc, I think that this army is one that really should be led by the the Wizard with the highest LD (probably more so than any other army that I can think of in warhammer in fact).
Even Krell, one of Nagsah's original Dark Lords was a puppet so to speak, so I'm struggling to see the merits of designing rules to let a warrior type be the general in this particular list.
Also, his legions have always been vast when going to war, and keeping them animated is no small feat. Nagash has traditionally not been a fan of "delegating" out more power than he strictly had to under any circumstance either, so fluff-wise I think his legions are best suited as being under the control of one individual (whom Nagash usually had in near slavery, most often due to their dependency on the original elixir of life).
Whether any of you agree with me or not, we have to keep in mind that this will never be a tournament-type army, and if we allow ourselves to stray to far from the fluff (as known by most warhammer players), it is going to be much harder to get our opponents into the spirit of things so to speak.

The Rituals being available to non-wizards is too me a major breach of warhammer fluff, and it's something that is going to be really hard to explain to players with some knowledge of warhammer lore, at least not without them being very skeptical to say the least, as there are no comparable examples to be found anywhere. The reasons for this being as I see it:

-Rituals are meaningless without power behind them. Otherwise, every race in the Old World would have come up with similar supposedly "non-magical" effects, and they could have been taught to anyone who saw the benefits.

-Nagash may very well be perceived as a god by his devout followers, but that doesn't mean that he is one. Even if he was, he'd be a minor/petty deity at best, and probably not one being able to influence much from his own little realm of chaos.

-As far as priests go in general in warhammer, they are supposedly not wizards, but granted their power from their god. According to Teclis though, this is wrong, although he was banned from speaking up on the matter by Karl Franz if I am not mistaking (or it might have been the emperor at the time he founded the colleges of magic)...

-Basically anything involving power dice, draws upon the winds of magic, hence it IS magic. Magic is something that is not "accessible" to the vast majority of the warhammer world. It is the wizard's curse so to speak.

I'm not arguing against the idea that the followers of Nagash would not have their rituals etc, but just that they can have what must be attributed to a magical effect, especially if being used by someone like a Zenith Lord/Prince (i.e Wight), who has the emotional depth of your average refrigerator...

Black Armour:

A sort of progressive black armour system seems unnecessarily complicated, exponentially powerful (and open to unfair magic item combinations), and from what we know of nagash, he was not well known for making magical armour/weapons for his troops in the first place. This is one of the advantages that Alcadizaar had over him in fact. The progressive system would automatically indicate that Nagashizzar was full over arcane weapon-smiths of some kind all of a sudden, designing magical armours of varying potency by the thousands (assuming some general troop use here). Why no just make it easy and design normal magical armour for character use, and than have the Black Armour for use on elite troops and characters (which would allow wizards to wear other types of armour as well btw?)...
The most balanced thing with any decent fluff potential I've heard so far is the Heavy Armour that ignores Killing Blow (a huge boon to character's in particular, yet balanced on troops as well).

It is also much easier to create something balanced that we can work with if we don#t go all epic in the general army rules section, as this is our foundation for all our units, leaving us with an expensive elite with less room to do something with on an individual basis. Look at where we are heading if we compare ourselves to the VC/TK lists;

-already we have a better general undead rule
-better wight blades
-most seem to want to have the death of the general almost meaningless for both the dead and the living
-just about the whole army will always be able to march, even a 6" march range from all Locusts have been suggested *comparable to the old Vampire rule in the 7.ed VC book)
-our living component is being suggested as Stubborn/Unbreakable for the Core level and up (cultists)
-people seems to want chaos armour equivalent or better to be relativly common in the list
-no vulnerable hierophant
+++

Again, I have to ask, where are the army's supposed weaknesses to lie? Going "Epic" is not good enough reason to heap on with strengths and redundancies for our weaknesses. No good/proper army in the game has all strengths and no weaknesses (which is reflected in their tactical options and overall point costs), and we have to get it right at this stage, because as we pass this, it will require a LOT MORE work to go back and change things to get it to work and convince our fellow players that it is indeed a fairly balanced list.

 

[The Dread King]

Black armour progression levels: well, Nagash has learnt from his war with Alcadizaar and he may have created the Carstein Ring, so he could easily create decent armour. I'm not saying that core should get their hands on it or that it should be very powerful (in most cases); I'm just saying that it makes more sense for some armour to be more potent than other armour. Here's the rough outline of my idea for the armour:

-Specials and Rares (probably only Shard Guardians and Guards of Nagash would get this): -1 to strength of opponents attacking wearers in base contact

-Hero level (only some will get this): -1 to strength of opponents attacking wearers in base contact AND immune to killing blow and poison

-Lord level (probably all will get this): -1 to strength of opponents attacking wearers in base contact, immune to killing blow and poison and 4+ armour save

-Dreadlords of Nagash: -1 to strength of opponents attacking wearers in base contact, immune to killing blow and poison, 4+ armour save and +1 to ward save (6+ ward save if the model has no ward save, it is cumulative with other ward saves)

-Nagash: he gets his own suit, it's bound to be ridiculously powerful

Yeah, I think that Nagash could get his hands on some pretty good armour, but only for the best of the best

I think that you should be able to choose who leads your army (not have it done by Ld or locus) because it's much more fun and easier to follow the fluff that way (e.g. some weak, clever necro shouldn't reign over The Executioner).

Where the weakness lies: lack of models-this is an elite force. However, this weakness will be lost if the cultists become too suicidal and thus very cheap.

 

[Uziel]

The Dread King:

As I've already said to DoN's original -1 to Strength suggestion, this is powerful out of proportion. It is equal to getting a T of +1 (which would mean T5 equivalent Grave Guards...) AND reducing any armour penetration of Strength 4 or more attacks by one. This might not sound as that much to begin with, but when you consider the real implications (keeps S3 opponents in mind in particular), it becomes a huge deal, and would have to be realistically represented in any costs. On characters it would be even more expensive, as +1 Toughness and a +1 to armour are not exactly cheap increases...

Is there anything wrong with just going with Bishops idea of a basic 5+ Heavy Armour, with (preferably) an Immune to Killing Blow special rule on elite units? I see no good reason to add armour progression levels either, as all armour on characters are better handled in the normal manner of selecting magical items. Just having the "Black rmour" option on wizards is enough to allow wizards to select Magical Armour in the first place, something that is quite rare and powerful as far as protection goes.

I do agree that Nagash's Black Armour should be powerful D.K, but at the same time we can't loose our heads because we're Nagash fanboys... The list will then be perceived as a "fanboy" list, which is not good. Mark my words.
It is first and foremost a game, and to be honest, we don't have that much fluff to base the accuracy on Nagash's armour on as far as actual game mechanics goes. If fluff is anything to go by, I would perhaps argue that Krell's armour could possibly be the most potent armour there ever was, yet he has a 4+ armour save in game terms (YES, this is a case where I think GW screwed up btw)... If you don't take my word for it, read the last Sigmar Triology book, then consider the fluff for Alarik the Mad, dwarf warriors in general +++, then you'll see what I mean.

Lack of models is far from enough as far as a general weakness goes for an undead army. No one in their right mind would really call a Chaos Warrior list "weak" because it had lots of of expensive Chaos Warriors after all... There are was benefits as far as reliability goes just by being undead etc, and that's why undead armies typically have some severe limitations to compensate. On top of this, we can utilize living forces to compensate for outr traditional weaknesses and so on if we care to.
So far, I have yet to see any true limitations for this list and the impression I'm trying hard to shake right now, is that we'll end up with a tactically flexible army, with units slowly approaching the power level of undead chaos warriors, without any of the limitations of the Chaos Warrior army..

If you think of it this way; a good army should be "average in all strength/weakness categories overall. By "average", I mean that you win about 50% of the battles you play, if you don't take different player's skill level etc into the equation, and you have a decent number of games.

Lets say an army is defined by strength levels, either low, medium or high in the following categories (and keep in mind that this is again based on a perceived "average" of all the other 8.ed armies), where do you think this army stands/looks to be heading, and where would you like to see it to balance things?:

-Power of Wizard Characters
-Power of Close Combat Characters
-Diversity/Power (above the norm for the list) offered by Special Characters
-Army overall Movement:
-Army overall Magic synergy:
-Army overall close combat ability:
-Army overall Ranged ability:
-Special Units (such as Etherals which can have a huge tactical impact):
-Deployment: Level of chaff available etc
-How are the Spells/Spell-like abilities:
-Power of Magic Items:
-Offensive Psychology:
-Defensive Psychology:
-Special Scenario Consideration (banners, good at defending buildings, random deployment etc):


There is no way to make a really accurate list such as this, but it is still useful to keep in mind that when all is said and done, the total result should ideally come out as "average"...

 

[The Dread King]

I think that Nagash would have given himself better armour than Krell.

 

[Uziel]

I think that Nagash would have given himself better armour than Krell.

It was from a fluff perspective. I agree that he would if he could, but just because Nagash is one extreme necromancer, this doesn't mean that he is particularly good at creating armour compared to lets say rune smiths or anyone similar. I think Krell's armour was from his Chaos Champion days, since it is a Chaos Armour, so essentially a gift from the chaos gods (whom, like it or not, makes Nagash look like very weak in comparison overall).

Trying to recall what was said about his armour in the Nagash triology here, and as far as I can remember, the main reason he created his armour, was because his flesh could no longer effectively hold on to magical energy as it used to, and the armour was designed primarily to stop magic "leaking" from him. I don't think it said much in the way of it's actual comparative protection value. I do remember it saying that it was "poorly" made from a smith stand point though, as nagash was a half decent armourer at best.

In game terms, much of Nagash's resilience will come through on account of his toughness, number of wounds and probably more than anything, his ability to heal himlelf... Adding an "invincible" armour on top of that can easily be too much. I'd rather like to see more of a conditional game mechanic for his armour I think, but off course, this all depends on the general power level of nagash etc that we are presented with.

What did you think about my points in the previous posts though, beyoind the perceived "slight" to Nagash?

 

[The Dread King]

I don't have much time, so I'll just say again that Nagash did create the Carstein ring
/

 

[Uziel]

I don't have much time, so I'll just say again that Nagash did create the Carstein ring
/

Which only proves that he was a great necromancer, and not an armourer... Don't really see your point here.. Even the Carstein Rings was primarily designed for Nagash to increase his control over the vampires. It's primary function was not the game effects it has, at least not from Nagash's point of view.

In the Von Carstein triology, the ring itself was also described as rather plain btw. Nobody disputes that he can put great amount of power into things if he wishes to, but this also always comes at a cost in resources.

Nagash himself is not that relevant either for the most part, as he would never himself stoop to create armour for the likes of his troops and so on. Not even Arkhan ever received armour from him, and neither did any of the vampires. He didn't create armour for himself before he was forced to either. Keeping "Nagash" as a justification for making everything more epic is simply not good enough, as nagash himself is by nature one who will go to great lengths not to share power with anyone, and those he shares it with will have to be dominated, one way or another... He is as far from a benevolent Santa as one can get.

But, getting off track here. This wasn't really the issue I wanted some general feedback on...

 

[The Dread King]

I don't think that we should base everything in the legion on the Nagash trilogy; there is the small matter of all the undead, vc and tk army books along with the other sources that have Nagash in them. I think that maybe there could be a bit of progression between power levels of black armour because although Nagash might not give his servants armour, he might enchant it for them (like he did with the carstein ring; hence I think that his armour should be powerful. Here are some suggestions for black armour:

--1 to strength of enemies in base contact with wearer of armour if the enemy's armour save modifier isn't enough to stop the wearer from having an armour save
--1 to hit the wearers (could be done only with shooting attacks aimed at the wearer
-Immune to Killing Blow on the wearers (this could be a bit overpowered but I'm not sure)

 

[Uziel]

You don't need the details of the trilogy to really get Nagash across as a character/personality at all, but they still give us the greatest insight into the personality of Nagash. Not that the trilogy really had any surprises in that department btw..
My point is just that all the magical items that we know Nagash has bothered to create, are as far as I know, ALL without any exceptions, incredibly powerful items. His skills/talent/power was never wasted on things he would have considered trivial.
I'm just arguing for the fact that if the spirit of nagash is to have an overall effect on the list, I think using his name as an excuse to grant ourselves lots of magical items etc is an error as far as creating a good list from a fluff perspective goes.

The Von Carstein ring was created so powerful ONLY because he wanted control of the vampires, not because Nagash felt like being generous with Vashanesh, his subject. It is not really a justification for Nagash personally taking any kind of interest in the armour of his subjects. By the same measure, Teclis also has better things to do than go around making enchanted armour for soldiers/captains/generals etc. He could perfectly well do this in theory, but no wizards of that magnitude really has an interest in doing so.

 

[Disciple of Nagash]

Ok, let's try and resolve this so we can get onto something else.

Nagashi - Following Bishop's feedback we will stick with my suggestion on panic within IP. Again, playtesting can alter this if necessary.

Locus - We will say a tentative "yes" to this for now, but we will need to see how this works with the Rituals (which are staying!). If it makes the characters to OP, we may have to review.

Uziel, in regards to your list:

-already we have a better general undead rule
Better than who? TK, ok I agree on that. Not VC as most of their characters can take over without any harm. Plus bear in mind I am actually suggesting a more harmful rule to balance the effects. See below for more details

-better wight blades
Barely better by being magical. It's not a huge bonus and will be costed in, it is not just a free bonus for nothing

-most seem to want to have the death of the general almost meaningless for both the dead and the living
Again, does not make sense when I am trying to make the rule harsher than the VC one. In addition the live units panicking within IP is hardly meaningless, especially if the leadership if said units is carefully adjusted.

-just about the whole army will always be able to march, even a 6" march range from all Locusts have been suggested *comparable to the old Vampire rule in the 7.ed VC book)
We have already said we need to review this on characters. You cannot state this is the case until we have seen what characters will have this rule.

-our living component is being suggested as Stubborn/Unbreakable for the Core level and up (cultists)
The agreed rule was ItP now and has been for some time with Nagashi? Not a valid point

-people seems to want chaos armour equivalent or better to be relativly common in the list
No. A unique armour was suggested which is being discussed. There has been no discussion on who actually is going to be given the option. Admittedly some of the suggestions may have been over the top. But as nothing has been settled on.

-no vulnerable hierophant
This doesn't really make sense to me. Unless you are saying we don't have a weak liche priest like TK, but then we are not TK. In addition, this again hasn't even been reviewed as we haven't discussed characters yet.


In summary, most of your points do not seem to be valid. Whilst you are saying that some of us going off the deep end in making the army overpowered, to be honest you seem to be going to the other extreme?


Now, based on the above points.

Black Armour.
I am not getting into a full discussion fluff wise. However a couple of points. No, Nagash will not be sitting making armour for his minions....that is just not Nagash. So this armour should not be based on what you would think Nagash can make with his own hands. That said if Nagash was to make something, I agree with Dread King that I think he would have the skill to make something of high quality.
When I suggested this, it was under the idea that the some of the ore used to make Nagash's armour was left over. It was this material that gives the armour is extra abilities. So basically the piece of armour is exactly the same in design (light armour, heavy armour), however the material is different.

Bishop and Dread King like the idea of graded armour. Fluff wise this is easily passed off that that those more elite have access to more of the ore, so the alloy of their armour has more of it. To keep it simple however (if you really want a graded version), I would suggest:

Troop Version: Immune to KB
Character Version: Immune to KB, +1 to armour save. (Cost accordingly to balance)


General's Death
So under the Nagashi rule this will panic the Nagashi within IP.

We still have not decided on the the Undead reaction. I suggest the following amended rule:

Crumble at end of phase that general dies (armywide). Can use Ld of champ / character if relevant. Character's immune as per previous rule
At start of next turn, any character with Locus rule can attempt to take over. However they must take a leadership test. If failed they suffer 1 wound, no saves of any kind allowed, and they cannot take over the Legion that turn.

This makes is worse than VC's rule, but still a reasonable chance.

Thoughts?