AoS - 3rd Winter Balance Update for Undead is here!

  • The masquerade of murder returns! A new game of Vampires Amongst Us has begun. Unmask the killers, trust no one, and try to survive the night. Find out more and sign up now!
The new balance update is here - and what a treat for the Undead!


The key highlights for me are:

  • Black Knights are now playable with their big points reduction (from 120 to 100).
  • Mortis Engines went from 180 pts to 200 pts. I think they were pretty good before this, will they now be the next hot thing?
  • Shooting armies and their annoying Unleash Hell has been nerfed.
  • Amulet of Destiny is now only a 6+ ward and thus really bad - which is good for us because we already have 6+ wards :D.
  • FEC has gotten some really needed points adjustments as well with -10 pts for Ghouls, -15 pts for Crypt Horrors and -10 pts for Abhorrant on ZD.
  • Nighthaunt has gotten -20 pts on Black Coach which is great because now it can be taken as an ally in 1000 pts games.
 
Last edited:
These are all great things. I still think that the Coven Throne is too expensive but it's getting slightly closer!

Also the fact that we still benefit from our Hunger heals and now everyone else has to be out of combat to heal is a great benefit of our army.
 
  • Love
Reactions: The Sun King
These are all great things. I still think that the Coven Throne is too expensive but it's getting slightly closer!

Also the fact that we still benefit from our Hunger heals and now everyone else has to be out of combat to heal is a great benefit of our army.
Yeah that is a really good point Oppie! I hadn't thought of that. It somehow feels dirty to enjoy when we benefit from nerfs hitting other armies :P.

Btw. Unas the slayer aren't you excited by the points drop for the Coach?
 
  • Like
Reactions: Unas the slayer
Yeah that is a really good point Oppie! I hadn't thought of that. It somehow feels dirty to enjoy when we benefit from nerfs hitting other armies :P.

Btw. Unas the slayer aren't you excited by the points drop for the Coach?

I don’t know what to love more: the points reduction for the coach or the one for black knights. 😀
 
  • Like
Reactions: The Sun King
Do these updates make the soulblight starter a decent buy now? I know that knights were a 2 out of 5 in Sunny's handbook and the mounted wight was a 3.
 
  • Like
Reactions: The Sun King
To me the most notable change was to nagash. On the positive side, he's now available to every death faction. On the negative side, this new version is ~heavily~ nerfed.

1) his command ability has been completely rewritten. It now grants +1 to another death unit's ward save for a single combat phase. Note it only lasts for a single combat phase and he can't use it on himself. This isn't a terrible or useless ability by any stretch, but compared to his previous ability that granted your entire army (including himself) reroll 1's on saves and attacks and immunity to battleshock from your hero phase until your next hero phase - ie up from your first hero phase until nagash dies. This is a massive nerf for summonable heavy soulblight nagash armies which depended heavily on the battleshock immunity to make up for how much nagash cut into your numbers. This is a massive nerf to nagash himself regardless of what army you take with him with because there's a vast difference between a 2+ save and a 2+ save re-rolling ones. Granted a 2+ rerollable is obnoxious and probably shouldn't exist regardless, but good for the game or not its much weaker than it was.

2) nagash cannot benefit from allegiance abilities. Not a huge deal in soulblight as most of their traits were written in a way that he didn't benefit anyway, but a major blow in OBR where he can no longer benefit from petrifex's protection from rend. He also probably can't make use of emerald host bodyguard hexwraiths in nighhaunt, though that's still contentious. He doesn't even get the usual 6++ death save, so Nagash has no ward at all against normal damage.

3) in OBR nagash also cannot heal himself with his invocation anymore.

4) And he's still restricted by the relentless discipline rule so he can't use normal command points and generic command abilities, even though he now also can neither use nor benefit from OBR faction specific command abilities. He can use RDP to power his own command ability but otherwise can't use or benefit from CAs at all in an OBR army. Someone /really/ didn't want nagash to run in obr anymore.

5) damage output reduced - his spirit hosts hit and wound a bit better but no longer deal mortals, likely a preview of what spirit host attacks will look like whenever nighthaunt get their book. His sword now wounds on a 4+ instead of a 3+, which thematically confuses me (i could see him heeding a 4 to hit if they thought it needed a nerf, he's more wizard than warrior after all, but if he does hit shouldn't the god of death's own sword be overwhelmingly likely to wound?), but whatev.. These aren't major nerfs, but they do combine with the above to further weaken our patron deity.


On a more positive note, he does get full access to the spell lores of whatever death faction you run him with. Still, despite all the nerfs his points cost is still 955. Either he was woefully underpriced before - which I highly doubt - or new nagash is easily 100 points or more overpriced. IMO you could drop this version of Nagash back down to 800 points without causing problems.

...

It's not all down sides - he does now enhance abilities that restore slain undead throughout whatever army he's in, though it's awkwardly worded and basically requires further clarification for how it interacts with basically every ability that restores slain undead, even his own. His invocation can return slain death models to a unit with a combined wounds total of no more than 3, while his supreme lord ability says that abilities you use to return slain death models can either re-roll the die to determine how many models are returned or can return one extra model. But invocation doesn't return a set number of models, it returns any number of OBR or Summonable Death models with a total wounds characteristic of up to three. So do you restore 'any number of models plus one, but they still must have a total wounds characteristic of no more than three since nothing about the ability mentions any exception to wound characteristic limits' or do you restore 'any number of models with a combined wound characteristic of up to 3+1=4' or do you restore 'any number of models with a comined wound characteristic of up to 3, plus one extra model total regardless of wound characteristic? And if it's the latter, does the ability work even if the total number of models you were initially able to return to the unit was zero? Like if I field a unit of 6 wound morghasts and one of them dies, can nagash's invocation restore 0+1=1 of them?

Or what about the Gothizzar harvester. If a model near the gothizzar harvester dies, then on a 4+ the harvester can return slain models to a nearby OBR unit with a combined wounds characteristic limit based on the model that was slain. Does nagash's ability reroll the 4+, or return one additional model but you're still limited by the same max wounds characteristic maximum, or return any number of models up to the given wound characteristic maximum plus one additional model regardless of wounds characteristic? In practice, do you get a re-roll on the 4+, or do the abilities not interact at all, or, if using the ability as is typical to use slain mortek guard to restore mortek guard to that same unit, do you roll a die for each mortek guard slain in range and restore /two/ slain mortek guard for each 4+?

Or what about Deathrattle Skeletons? Before they activate in combat you roll a die for each skeleton slain earlier in that same combat phase, and on a 4+ you return that slain model to the unit. So do you get rerolls on all those rolls? Or just one of them? Or do you not reroll the die because it's for triggering the ability not setting the number returned, and instead for each 4+ you return up to two slain skeletons? Or do you roll all your dice, return a skeleton for each 4+ rolled, and then restore just one additional skeleton total? Do the additional skeletons (if any?) provided by nagash's ability also have to have been slain earlier in that same combat, or can they have been slain at some previous point in the game?

....

So... what armies will want to run this new Nagash? As expensive as he is, I don't know.

Maybe Nighthaunt? They're so desperate for monstrous heroes, especially ones that can take a hit - even if his durability isn't anything like what his points suggest, he's still probably not going down in a single round the way literally any other nighthaunt hero will should the opponent choose to focus on them. And they've got some ok spells for him. People will certainly try.

For FEC... If he had kept the battleshock immunity CA I could maybe see some sort of fluffy ghoul horde but as is no. Honestly even then, FEC are exactly the opposite of Nighthaunt when it comes to access to multiple strong, points efficient monstrous heroes. I have a hard time envisioning a FEC list with Nagash that isn't going to do a lot more using those points on a pair of Terrorgheist Kings.

For Soulblight and OBR, I don't know. I guess it depends in part on how the supreme lord ability ends up interacting or not interacting with their various recursion abilities?

..

IMO 955 is just too much for this version of nagash, regardless of the list you put him in, but honestly I'm not too upset about it. Being able to run him in Nighthaunt and FEC at all is fantastic! And if you ignore the points cost, his warscroll is still plenty impressive, still conveying that 'god of undeath' feel. If I'm right and the points need to come down, then tournament usage and results will show that and over time it'll happen. In the mean time, I've always felt Nagash was a better fit conceptually for narrative big games rather than the 2k competitive tournament scene, so if that's where Nagash lives for a while I'll be ok with it.


Then again, I wasn't planning on taking him to any events this year.
 
Last edited:
Do these updates make the soulblight starter a decent buy now? I know that knights were a 2 out of 5 in Sunny's handbook and the mounted wight was a 3.

Great somebody read my handbook, good times! 🤩 I've just updated and I have given the Black Knights 3 out of 5 now. They might even be stronger than that, only playtests will tell.

Yeah I would say the starter box is a decent buy now, but get your hands on the battleforce instead.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Seneschal
Hehe. I love army guides. I remember when you and Najo worked on the old one, once upon a time...

Seems like the battleforce is a solid start for sure.
 
  • Like
Reactions: The Sun King
Yeah I'm hoping this handbook can reach the same level of quality as the one we did for 8th. However, it will take time and I miss my partner in crime. 🙂

The battleforce is brilliant. It is basically the exact models I bought individually when I started the new army, just cheaper 🙈.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Seneschal
I bought one of the soulblight starters. I was going to use the wight king on steed and use the great weapons in a conversion. Of course, now I think I will use this for AoS instead use the sword and shield parts from the infantry as planned. As I ended up with too many great weapon parts instead. I have not really looked into AoS 3 yet. So honestly have no idea where to start.
 
  • Like
Reactions: The Sun King
The Wight King makes Grave Guard battleline and in Legion of Blood the Black Knights are also Battleline, that way you get a playable army from the box.
That was the faction I was looking at. It also allowed Blood Knights. I received a start collecting flesh eaters court for my local Warhammer store secret santa this year. I had on my list zombie dragon. So I was pleasantly surprised with this kit. I am not really sure what I want from a build or a list yet though.
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: The Sun King
Nagash has never really been worth his points in any iteration. Losing access to the 6+ ward is surely some sort of oversight though? Thought they’d make morikhane cover everything to get round that but apparently not. :(
Also as others have said spirit attacks no longer doing mortals is pretty whack, but Alakanash got more attacks right?
 
Here's a tournament top three list I saw linked on another forum:

Top Three Lists from Blackout (AoS)

Surprised to see Cities of Sigmar at the top, but then again the Phoenix Guard/Fulminator combo is probably very good.

ON TOPIC: Soulblight Blood Knight spam, BUT with Nagash in there. Guess he can still maybe be competitive? 😉

And of course another Dragon spam list. I'm guessing we'll be seeing a lot of those for quite some time.
 
That list is before the winter update though 🙂

yes, I'm aware of that... however, a winning list like that would suffer that much from the adjustments to Nagash's warscroll?

a pity that even with Nagash's points discount, you won't be able to pick a unit of fell bats.
 
Personally, I think that people are overreacting a bit to his nerf - the things that made him good are still there: He is still an insane caster, he still wrecks face in CC, he is still tough to kill and in exchange for his command ability he got a really good resurrection ability. So yeah, he might not be as good as before, but I don't see him going away completely.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Oppenheimer

About us

  • Our community has been around for many years and pride ourselves on offering unbiased, critical discussion among people of all different backgrounds. We are working every day to make sure our community is one of the best.

Quick Navigation

User Menu