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New to AOS building a vampire counts army.

I noticed watching battles online like with Miniwargaming and such that individuals would bring, for example, a 100 wound list and then use their necromancers to summon in a group of 20-30 zombies at the onset of battle. It seemed that these models did not count towards the wound total.

What is the interpretation on this? Can you summon in an infinite amount of models or are you limited? How does this work for summoning back in models after they have been killed, can you do this as many times as you want? Thanks

TheGovernor212 wrote:
I noticed watching battles online like with Miniwargaming and such that individuals would bring, for example, a 100 wound list and then use their necromancers to summon in a group of 20-30 zombies at the onset of battle. It seemed that these models did not count towards the wound total.

Wound totals (and any other comp systems) are house rules to begin with, so limiting how many wounds they could summon would have to be house rules as well.

Wouldn't watch MWG, they can't batrep for gak tbh. And also, if you playing by the rules you can technically summon infinite zombies etc. However those same rules also state you could just put them all on the board to begin with.

I have found recently it is just as unfun to play an army with infinite summons as it is to play against it.

People say "summoning is fine if you're not a dick about it", but it sucks all the satisfaction out of the tactical decisions I make during the game.

If I have a Zombie Dragon sitting in my case, for the whole game I'll be thinking "Is it a dick move to summon it?"

The solution? Clearly define all summoning before the game. If you're playing to a wound limit, have that wound limit include the summoning pool. If you're playing to points, include the summoning in your total. If you're not - clearly state what you have in reserve to your opponent; "I have a Zombie Dragon in reserve for summoning, so deploy with anticipation for it."

It will completely free up all the stress of worrying about if you are being a cheese mongerer or not, and you can instead focus on winning through all the options you have available. :-)

Summoning is a cause of much discussion.
However, played RAW there's an important detail that often gets missed.

Models that are summoned do not count as starting models - but any casualties suffered amongst summoned units count towards the number of starting models.

Most scenarios trigger on math related to starting models.

So for example, 100 models a side, and the loss condition is first side to lose 50% of starting models.

If you get spammed with zombies - who are *very* easy to bring down - your opponent is effectively gifting you a way of winning quite quickly as it doesn't matter if his 100 starting models are all Nagash, by wiping out zombies you will still win.

But yeah, it's considered good form just to let your opponent know what you still have in your case, whether you intend to use it. I've seen victories turn to defeats in last round of a game because one player deep-struck or summoned into existence a unit that met some victory condition at the last minute and the opponent had no idea those units even existed.