I'm sorry, too. It was never my intention to annoy people by posting here.
I'll do my best to avoid posting any complaints or such in future.
It's not complaints in general. I mean, I have several complaints about AoS myself. The single deployment battalions is weird to begin with, the first deployed gets to choose first turn is bad regardless of whether my armies can play that game or not, the double turn is bad and obnoxious, even if its something we have to lean on ourselves. Honestly, the biggest problems with AoS revolve around the player turn scheme. One player doing all their stuff with all their units, then the other player following with all their stuff, is just bad design. It can cause whatever player isn't going to get bored and become distracted, it causes a lot of arbitrary balance problems, and the things I have the biggest problems with - first deployed chooses first turn and the double turn in general - are problems because they dramatically exacerbate the problem with the turn order to begin with.
these are problems that whfb shared, that 40k still shares, but that aos made even worse. And there's an obvious alternative baked right into aos with how the combat phase works - alternating unit activations is simply much better game design, and the movement and shooting phases should work the same way. Sure you might need to adjust some things - charging might need to be added to regular movement so you don't just have units kiting each other around, melee might need a buff, or shooting a debuff, to compensate for the fact that melee currently gets two activations per game round for each one that shooting units get - maybe successful chargers could fight an immediate round of combat? Eh, I don't know.
And there are other problems as well. Points costs are arbitrary and rather inconsistent, especially points costs for battalions, though thankfully points are updated once a year now so if something's dramatically under or overpointed you don't necessarily have to wait up to a decade for a new codex to fix it. The way realm lores (introduced in the malign sorcery book) work isn't great. Etc etc.
Plenty of valid complaints to be had.
What I have (admittedly too much, and again I apologize) a hair trigger on is complaints in the form of or adjacent to "it's different therefore it's bad" which I've seen out of nerd hobbies a bit too often, whether in warhammer or D&D or what have you. Not liking something because it's different from what you liked is perfectly valid, but there's nowhere to go with it, and debating it too often comes down to attacking someone for liking different things, which is bleh.
But again, I overreacted, that's not what was happening here, and I apologize for reflexively thinking it was.
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That aside, do you happen to know anything about fighting Stormcast, Nighthaunt, Orcs, or Ogres with Legion of Nagash? I think these are the armies I'm most likely to see in my group.
stormcasts are probably the strongest faction right now, but they're also a huge faction, with less than perfect internal balance, so how strong they are and how to fight them will vary significantly based on what they're actually bringing. The newer, sacrosanct stuff is mostly their strongest stuff to my understanding, but I don't have a lot of experience against that stuff because the stormcast players I've personally played the most against were mostly playing armies built on the first edition starter box stuff. The new stuff seems much stronger, but it's also still new, so proper responses are still being worked out. They've only just started to show up on the tournament scene, due to the painting delay.
Orcs come in a few varieties from elite melee ironjaws to hoardy savage orcs which tend to spam bowfire. None are that terribly concerning. Standard LoN tactics should work fine against them. Ogres likewise have some variety. The stronger ones are the mostly mounted and monster heavy beastclaw raiders. They've got tough, hard hitting brute melee mashers and painfully accurate and super deadly to heroes snowball hucking elephants. Sacrificial screens to absorb stonehorn charges before counter-charging with units behind are helpful, and you'll want to keep your support heroes further back than normal until you can land a few wounds on the thundertusks. Even just a few wounds will drop the snowballs from nigh-instant-kill 6 mortal wound shots to a dangerous but more manageable d6 mortal wounds instead.
Thank you for that detailed explanation. If our opponents usally go first and can get to objectives first, do we have any good counterplays?
First is that you absolutely do have to force them to go first. If you say "I'm not going first anyway, so what does it matter", and build a slow plodding counter-charge oriented infantry force, place all your grave markers conservatively, and deploy all your units, such that you /can't/ dominate the board on your first turn /even if/ you go first, then your opponent gets to /make/ you go first, knowing you can't capitalize on it anyway, and then play normally and threaten you with a game ending double turn.
So you absolutely need to take fast units, capitalize on deployment shenanigans, threaten aggressive gravesite deployment (which requires both forward gravesites /and/ fast heroes who get move forward to activate them - another point in favor of vampire lords, whether flying or mounted, as support heroes), take advantage of outflanking options if playing legion of the night, deploy aggressively forward, etc. Doing all this can leave you somewhat exposed, but you have recursion mechanics to fall back on to absorb losses that might result. The point is, if your opponent does get to choose first turn, you want to force them to do so.
You'll also usually have numbers, especially against the specific opponents you mentioned, so taking all the objectives AND denying you use of forward gravesites for deployment is likely to leave them spread a little thin, and this allows you to land a heavy counter attack, one that you can especially hammer home when and if you get that double turn. Pick a weak point in the opponents probably-spread-thin line, use your speed to overwhelm it, spread out from there. Hope there's enough time left after breaking the enemy's army to make up the difference in objective points.
It's a bit of an uphill climb, sure. Again, I don't personally think the Legions are tier one in the current tournament meta, though others might disagree with me. But it's playable. It's a game. Especially in local settings where you're not as likely to time out and be unable to finish all five rounds.
AND, again, if you're not playing in a high end tournament setting, there's a good chance your opponent won't be one dropping their army, won't be playing for objectives, will just want to beat face. And in that sort of game the legions aren't just competitive, they're arguably outright overpowered.
Well, if it helps, I can get behind using a Necromancer as my General. It would at least let me be more aggressive with my Vampire Lords, without fear of losing my general.
If I go this route, I'm presuming it would be a good idea to have a unit of 10 skeletons or Dire Wolves to hang out with him at the back of my army (for LoS and to shift wounds to)?
if you can keep him largely out of sight, but still within casting range of your forward units, then a bodyguard of a few skeletons or wolves might be enough, but more likely you'd want him surrounded by the bulk of your forces, say positioned between two big skeleton blobs, or a big blob of skeletons and another of grimghasts. passing wounds to summonable models is a good defense, but a better defense yet is keeping enemy models out of short/melee range entirely by simply body-blocking them. Long range is still a threat, but if you're going for this kind of setup you should be looking for a solid ranged defense artefact anyway. Something like the legion of sacrament's shroud of darkness, which will impose a -2 hit penalty on long ranged fire, on top of the -1 look out sir penalty for being near another unit of 5+ models. You do want to be close enough to use your spells effectively. Vanhels works as long as the necromancer is within 18" of the friendly unit you want to buff. Necromage lore spells are mostly 18" as well, but they're debuffs rather than buffs, you you'll need to be a bit further forward to threaten enemy units. Not that big a deal unless you're running multiple necromancers though (which you should probably consider honestly, necromancers are awesome), as vanhels really is quite good on it's own.
Hit penalty artefacts don't help against snowballs, those hit on a 2+ regardless of modifiers, so you'll just have to stay out of range until the thundertusk takes some wounds.
I wish I was more into the big monster generals, it seems like it would solve a lot of problems.
Definitely something to think about. Age of Sigmar is still sort of herohammery, but in a different way that whfb. It's got a sort of 'hierarchical perspective' thing going, where bigger = more important = more badass, whether 'big' means a single huge model or a huge unit of many tiny models. This is the case in the lore as well, where the actions and motivations of deific figures like Sigmar, Nagash, Alarielle, or Morathi loom large, while the common soldiers and people get relatively little attention. That's gotten better recently, but it's still noticeable.
Even if you're not running a monstrous or monster-riding general, I'd still recommend considering adding a monster or two to your army. A terrorgheist in particular is a valuable tool, with its bite and scream both able to penetrate the heavy armor saves that can otherwise be tricky for our faction. The scream is especially effective given the multiple stacking bravery penalties available to a legions of nagash army (undead banners and the necromancer spell overwhelming dread being the most obvious and commonly used, but morghasts can impose an additional penalty, as can legion of blood units generally, and there's probably a couple others I'm forgetting). If nothing else, it's a large, imposing piece that will distract lightning bolts and snowballs away from your necromancers and vampire lords.
Out of interest, what do Nighthaunt do for their generals?
Usually a knight of shrouds, mounted or otherwise. A useful model with some good buffs and decent command ability options, but not game ending if lost, and they can be part of a decent formations with the sword-wielding-wraith unit. Reikenor the Grimhailer (spellcasting wraith on an undead pegasus) is very popular as a special character, but is usually not the general except in very small games without room for multiple heroes. He's mostly there to cast the 'chronomantic cogs' spell from the malign sorcery expansion (+2 to all movement and charge distances for friends and enemies, a big boon to nighthaunt armies with multiple melee units manifesting 9" away from enemy units), and once that's up he can put out a fair bit of melee or magic damage (in subsequent rounds the cogs can even be used to cast a second spell instead of increasing movement, provided reikenor hasn't moved away after placing them), but he's a big enough target without being your general, and as a special character can't take command abilities if you do make him your general. The basic, non-special character wizard, the guardian of souls, is also a decent option for your general, and is a great support hero regardless.
Some players like the other special characters as generals - the ghost bride mortarch or the king on floating throne, their names are escaping me for the moment. They're alright, but like reikenor are only barely more durable than a basic knight of shrouds, while unlike reikenor they're a lot more expensive points wise. They've got some good abilities, but it's difficult to make use of them without leaving them overexposed. If you use them, I'd recommend holding them as one of your reserve units to deep strike, hoping to tie up enemy threats before they have a chance to target your expensive special character, but that's just a thought, not based on any actual experience running them.
In terms of general advice, for a typical 2k army, I'd recommend 3 maxed out large melee blocks chosen from some combination of skeleton warriors (so many attacks) and grimghast reapers (rend! speed! flight! ethereal!), the latter being added to legions of nagash armies via errata. The reapers in particular are fantastic, but you should be warned, a lot of their power comes from points efficiency, which might get nerfed (again, points are updated every year now), and the errata that adds them to legions of nagash may get withdrawn at some point in the future, forcing them into your allies points, where they'd lose access to deathless minion saves and command point recursion, making them still good, but not nearly /as/ good.
beyond that, take a few units of dire wolves (usable in fewer large or more small units as you prefer, play around to see what works for you), 2-3 support heroes in any combination of vampires & necromancers, something to threaten heavily armored units (maybe a terrorgheist, maybe some morghast harbingers with halberds, maybe a big unit of spirit hosts or some hexwraiths if you trust your luck to roll sixes, maybe a couple banshees, maybe a vamp lord on zombie dragon or allied ghoul king on terrorgheist with attendant summoned crypt flayers), maybe a casting buff (lodestone corpse cart of mortis engine), and be sure to leave 100 or so points left over for extra command points (you get 1 extra cp per 50 points you don't spend) to use on unit recursion. And just see what you can make of that. Convert up some small markers for gravesites, place a couple in territory you control so you can rely having access to them, place a couple more aggressively within striking distance of objectives, keep at least one big unit of skeletons or grimghasts in reserve to threaten gravesite deployment, and see what you can do with it.
Legions of nagash have a lot to wrap your head around - tons of units, tons of allegiance rules, traits, and artefacts between the four different legions you can choose from, and two very different but very good spell lores to pull from. The gravesites in particular are tricky and require a lot of finesse and strategy to get the best use of them, but at the same time they're super rewarding and extremely thematic to play with, they make games very narratively engaging, with necromancers and vampires literally raising the dead from the earth during the game. Once you've got it working for you, it is a LOT of fun, and invites a lot of interactive, dynamic play from your opponents as they fight to keep your characters away from sources of fresh corpses, or desperately try to take out your general to keep the dead from rising up over and over again. Do be prepared for that to happen though - even with big monstrous generals your opponent is going to want to take them out, and if they dedicate enough effort to doing so they will more often than not bring them down before the game ends. You just have to make it as hard as possible to do, and to punish them as hard as possible for any mistakes or overreach they commit in the process.
To be clear, while I think AoS 2e is an improvement on 1e, I still don't think the core game is as good as oldhammer fantasy, and I too miss the fun of tinkering with the finer details of list construction, equipment etc. But there is still a lot there to mess with, and regardless of the quality of the game as a whole, the experience of playing the undead in AoS 2e, whether ghouls, ghosts, or legions (though sadly not tomb kings), is about as fun and engaging as the undead have ever been in any GW game.
), I wondered if GHoN actually had a way to accomplish that. 
