Before getting distracted by video games and derailed by the 5e rumors, I was somewhat looking forward to White Dwarf 522 and the included 'Army of Renown: Rules for the Legion of Nagash.' I have now finally gotten around to reading through the article, and it's pretty interesting. Not good, I don't think, though that's to be expected of Armies of Renown, which seem designed to be bad on purpose as a general rules. And even if it wasn't bad, like most Armies of Renown published in White Dwarf it is considered Legends from the start and thus not matched play legal anyway. Same as with the Petrifex Elite AoR from a while back (which is probably worth re-exploring in light of the new battletome rules).
Even so, The Legion of Nagash is an interesting experiment as a rules template for Grand-Alliance level mixed armies. The AoR requires Nagash (with an entirely new warscroll, more on that below), and allows for any non-unique Death units, including heroes, but note that the units in a given detachment will still be limited according to the hero leading that detachment. The AoR has a custom spell lore with nine (!) spells in it, but no unlimited spells, no recastable spells, and the LoN Nagash loses his signature spell, so you'll need to make extensive use of this lore. You do get to choose one (and only one) of the Death faction manifestation lores. No generic manifestation lores are allowed though, not even the death themed ones. No Purple Sun for the Legions of Nagash. The LoN Nagash warscroll does have all of the death faction keywords, so he can cast whichever manifestations you choose, though other wizards in your army will only be able to cast your chosen manifestations if they have the matching faction keyword.
Battle traits are extremely minimal. Nighthaunt units get to be ethereal (because without their faction rules they wouldn't be otherwise). Other than that there's a control score debuff for enemy units that are in combat with Nagash or with 2+ LoN units that must all be from different death factions, which is awkward and I don't think quite what was intended. IE, if an enemy unit is in combat with exactly one nighthaunt units and exactly one Soulblight unit they get the debuff, but if a second nighthaunt unit joins the same combat that debuff goes away. It's kind of dumb, but control score debuffs don't matter, so the rule being bad doesn't matter. Unfortunately, that kind of means the army of renown effectively just doesn't have actual battle traits at all, except that the real battle traits are hidden away in that massive spell lore.
The singular trait and artefact are pretty good though. The heroic trait returns a replacement unit wholly within 12" of nagash and more than 9" from enemy units the first time the hero dies, but if it's not infantry or cavalry it comes back with 8 damage already applied to it. Where regular Nagash can bring back any non-hero Death unit but not heroes, LoN Nagash can bring back any Death hero, but not regular units.
The artefact is once per battle, but has two different uses. It can either add 2 to attacks and 1 to rend for the hero's melee weapons for a single turn or the hero can take 3 damage to make Nagash's next spell auto-cast with a casting roll of 7 and no unbinding allowed. Both are decent if not spectacular effects. While the once per battle limit is disappointing, it is nice that the AoR effectively gets two artefact choices instead of the usual one AND allows you to pick which one you want mid battle.
The largest chunk of the AoR is the spell lore, with nine spells, 3 'regular' and six 'faction pair' spells. All of which require a 7 to cast, making them relatively reliable to cast with Nagash, but rather unreliable for any other death wizards you might field
The regular spells are:
- Rise in My Name, target a visible LoN unit wholly within 24", restore 3 slain models if the target has a health characteristic of 1. If the target's health characteristic is 2 or 3, return 1 slain model and heal 2. If the target's health characteristic is 4 or more, heal d6. This is a stronger than typical healing spell particularly for health 2+ models.
- Undying Demand, can only be cast by Nagash. Ignore the first damage point allocated to each visible friendly LoN unit each phase while that unit is wholly within 24" of Nagash. I'm not normally a big fan of these 'ignore a point of damage' effects, but this covers a huge area, so pretty impressive.
- Gaze of Nagash, can only be cast by Nagash. This is a cool spell, like an anime lazer beam that sweeps across a line on the ground trailing explosions where it touches. You pick 2 points within 12" of each other, both of which are within 18" of and visible 2 nagash, and deal d3 mortals to every enemy unit on a straight line between those two points. There's also a risky power up mecanic - you can choose to empower the spell by rolling an extra 2d6. On a 1-5 the spell fails, on a 6+ it powers up and you can either unleash the beam or roll another 2d6 to power it up further. You can keep charging the beam until you eather fire it or fail the 2d6 roll, which causes the whole spell to fail. When you do fire it, it adds +1 mortal damage for each successful 2d6 roll. So if you successfully charge the beam three times before firing it, you'll do d3+3 mortals to every enemy unit on the line. It's honestly probably never worth charging the beam unless you're specifically trying to gamble on one shotting a small hero or something, as you're always risking losing more damage than you gain, but it's still pretty cool.
- OBR + NH, Brringing Order to Horror. the Nighthaunt unit can use a Charge ability as though it were your charge phase, even if it is in combat already, but the charge fails and the unit does not count as charging if the roll is 3 or less. The OBR unit can use a retreat ability as if it were your movement phase, and for the rest of the turn it can use charge abilities even if it used a run or retreat in the same turn.
- OBR + SBGL, Reap a Bloody Tithe. the SBGL unit gains +1 to hit rolls for combat attacks until the start of your next turn as long as it is visible to and wholly within 12" of the OBR unit. The OBR unit can either heal d3, or return d3 slain models if it has a health characteristic of 1 or 2, or return 1 slain model if it has a health characteristic of 3 or more. Yes, there's no cap, this can return an entire morghast.
- OBR + FEC, Delusion and Discipline. the OBR unit has ward 5+ until the start of your next turn as long as it is visible to and wholly within 12" of the FEC unit. The FEC unit can either heal d3, or return d3 slain serf models, or return 1 slain knight model.
- NH + SBGL, Fell Blades and Bloody Fangs. The SBGL unit gains +1 rend until the start of your next turn as long as it is visible to and wholly within 12" of the NH unit. The NH unit can either heal d3, or return d3 slain models if it has a health characteristic of 1 or 2, or return 1 slain model if it has a health characteristic of 3 or more.
- NH + FEC, Insanity and Nightmares. until the start of your next turn, as long as the targets are wholly within 12" of and visible to each other the FEC unit gains +10 control score and enemy units in combat with the NH unit suffer -1 to ward rolls
- SBGL + FEC, Rivers of Blood and Shallow Graves. The FEC unit gains +1 rend until the start of your next turn as long as it is visible to and wholly within 12" of the SBGL unit. The SBGL unit can either heal d3 or return d3 models if the unit has health 1 or 2, or return 1 slain model if the unit is health 3 or more.
Or he could Bloody Tithe the other way around, returning an entire slain morghast while giving himself +1 to hit rolls.
Lots of combinations, so you should be able to see what I meant when I was talking about the faction's real battle traits being hidden in the spell lore. This army lets you mix all the different death factions, and specifically encourages you to do so via a bunch of strong spells with multiple simultaneous effects that require units from different factions to be next to each other to trigger them.
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Of course, the army requires you to field nagash, so how many points to you really have spare for all those different units? That's where the variant Nagash warscroll comes into play, and... it's different. I don't know if it's intended to be a trial run for a different take on Nagash going forward, and if it is I don't know how I feel about that. The basic stat and weapon profiles are unchanged, and he still has wizard 9, +2 to cast (and can keep casting after a miscast but without the bonus), and loses 3 power level at 10+ damage. Everything else has changed.
First and most notably, Nagash's big revive is gone. This Nagash cannot return an entire unit of reinforced morghasts or blood knights or anything else. This ability has been the defining ability of Nagash for a while now, so losing it should be a deal breaker, though this Nagash is also significantly cheaper in points - 670 instead of 830 for OBR (though some death factions pay less). But that's 160 points of savings vs. probably 500 points worth of free morghasts that regular Nagash would have been bringing.
This Nagash also loses his signature re-castable spell. He can no longer hand out 5+ wards like candy or deal d3 mortals to every enemy unit that dares to come wholly within 18" of him. He still has power level 9, but without a recastable spell outlet he's very dependent on your faction and manifestation lores. The spells described above are all good, but to cast them you're going to need a mix of death faction units and you're going to need to keep them relatively packed together to stay wholly within in range of each other and Nagash, which I imagine will get awkward in practice. And it will get more awkward as the game progresses and you start to lose units - effectively losing spells as you do so. A death faction manifestation lore will help (all 3 obr endless spells are good, I'm not sure if one of the other faction lores would serve better), but the most spells you get out of that is 3. It's a real shame that Morbid Conjurations isn't available to have even one more usable spell to cast.
It's not all negative though. While this Nagash doesn't have the free full unit revive, he does have one points efficiency ability - once in each of your hero phases you can pick 2 visible friendly LON units wholly within 18" of nagash and automatically slay up to 3 models in one of the units to return a number of slain models to the other unit with combined health up to the combined health of the slain models. I haven't looked through all the death warscrolls to figure out what the most efficient donors and recipients are in terms of points per wound, but you could, off the top of my head, turn 160 points of crypt horrors into 260 points of morghast archai.
This version of Nagash also trades his iconic but very swingy and unreliable hand of dust instant-kill for a new rampage which, at the end of any turn, picks any number of units (friendly or enemy) in nagash's combat range and deals d6 mortals to them, healing Nagash a single point damage for each model slain. Even if there are never enemy units in range, with just two units of cheap 1 wound infantry standing next to him that's 2d6 healing to nagash at the end of every turn.
Finally, in every combat phase his Nagash can pick a visible friendly LoN unit in his combat range to suffer d3 mortals (with no ward rolls), and if any models are slain then Nagash's sword gains crit mortal and his staff gains crit 2 hits for the rest of the turn. Considering that his attacks are already pretty good, and he could be giving himself +1 to hit, +2 to rend, and inflicting -1 to ward rolls if he successfully cast all the combat buffs on himself, and his personal output can get pretty impressive. On the other hand, losing his iconic instant kill ability means big enemy heroes and monsters are a lot less afraid of wading into combat with him.
I guess the biggest take away for this Nagash is that he's a lot more durable - unless your opponent can kill him in a single turn through 18 health with 3+/5++ saves, probably ignoring the first point of damage each phase, then he's very likely to heal back to full between his end of turn rampage and multiple healing spells - though much of that durability is coming from the LoN spell list so if this warscroll did make it into future battletomes I'm not sure it would still work as well.
Thematically, I personally prefer the current warscroll - the full unit revive conveys 'Great Necromancer' and the instant death ability conveys 'God of Death' better than anything in this new warscroll imo. On the other hand, this version feels a lot more reliable thanks to all the healing, and without having to account for the full revive this version can cost a lot fewer points, which makes it easier to fit into something that better approaches a proper army.
I don't know, what do you all think?
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Personally, the more exciting death content in this issue is the in depth description of an Ossiarch settlement, very exciting for an OBR lore nerd, but I have to go to work now so I can't get into that right now.